Great Mod!

[XDex9]

So I'm just over 40 turns and 20 years into my first campaign, and let me say, I Love this Mod! Seriously, Great Job!

I'm playing as the Scottish. It's c.a. 1100, and I've finally secured Scotland and Ireland as Mine! I've also just finished my first successful crusade against Cairo, and let me say, it hasn't been easy! I lost one of my family members in a desperate fight for one of the Irish towns, and my attacking ratio, in other mods never less than 2:1, is most frequently 1:1. It's been a tough fight, and I've been close to losing my whole army more than once.

For diplomacy, all the Catholic factions are allied, the Orthodox factions are allied, and the Islamic factions are at least friendly with each other. No problems there.

Plus, I was attacked by an invading army of Independents! I had taken 3/4 of Ireland when William Roos leading an army of Irishmen started to move dangerously towards one of my lightly guarded settlements! I pulled the single 3/4 stack that I had in my kingdom and faced him in a 5:7 ratio battle along a fording point in central Ireland (also my first fight at bridge location before the bridge is built!). I figured the fight would be no problem, but the AI actually used their archers effectively by lining them up along the bank and pummeling me. I pummeled them right back with my own archers, but I didn't dare move my troops out of range lest they charge! My archers were doing more damage than their's, and eventually they charged! Well, the fight along the river bank went as expected, a complete route, but I lost many more troops in the battle than I wanted to. It meant that I had to lay seige to the final city in Ireland (the SW one) on even terms or worse with the defenders, or send my army home to Edinburgh (my one place that could retrain them). Well, I pulled it off, and it was very satisfying overall. I've never thought of conquering the British Isles as anything other than tedious before, so great job!

My only tips for improvement (from a guy 40 turns into his first game):

1) I can't really tell the difference between castles and cities. In many cases there doesn't seem to be any besides the wall structure. Greater differences would be nice.

2) I got a character with no name. I think that can be fixed.

3) AI Field Interception seems to happen at sea too. Sail out of port at your own risk! I'd like the AI not to send every pirate ship in the Mediterrannean to incercept my galley (from a very brief Byz campaign)

Things I love:

1) AI seems aggressive. I sent a spy south to England and found that they're rapidly expanding as well. I turned off FOW for a second, and it looks like all the AI factions are expanding quite nicely.

2) Field interception seems to work great! Enter the AI's territory at your own risk!

3) Cavalry balance! I love how a frontal cavalry charge is devasting, but pikemen will stop the cavalry dead in their tracks and good spearmen will pick them apart (at least once the cavalry is stopped). Just how it should be!

Well I've typed enough. Great job! I can't wait for 2.1! Well, I can since Torn had a baby, and I'm only 40 turns into my game.

Thanks TLR!

XDex9

P.S. The addon mods are fantastic also! I've never seen skies so beautiful, and the realistic blood is awesome!

[Valdamar]

I agree with you on many points. The campaign was a little buggy and 13 royal knights took out 59 viking raiders in one charge but I was really impressed. My poor navy . It still was easy to expand as Spain but I had to carefully manage it. Excommunication sucks!

[Condottiere SOG]

TLR 2.0.0 has many great features, but, as buggy as it is, it is far from great. Hopefully, 2.1.0 will be a vast improvement. It is my hope due to the many features of TLR. It is my favorite mod and right now I am very disappointed in it. I have even tried to download 2.0.0 again thinking it was a download error. Nope! Game ctd'd in the year 1087, winter.

Was trying DLV, but it is no comparison as far as features and units and the map needs to be updated. I think I'll try LTC, but with TLR units and buildings.

[Irishmafia2020]

It is good that you appreciate the mod, since most of us in the forum are fans of it. Torn promises some challenging a.i in the 2.10 version, but its ETA is unknown right now. I agree that some differentiation in cities/castles could be expanded, but torn's reasoning on the matter is that the current system allows the a.i. factions to easily make balanced armies (vs a lot of militia). I nearly always conquer Ireland for sentimental reasons, and it has proven to be a mini campaign in itself nearly everytime. Whether a faction or just the rebels control the Island, the logistics involved mean that sooner or later you have to gamble your army against a foe with more and better troops. Torn has hinted of a "surprise" in the next build that I speculate has to do with making the rebels into a more cohesive force - sort of a super faction, possibly. If I am right, then Ireland will be even more difficult to conquer, and thus more rewarding as well.

[Condottiere SOG]

Lets just hope I can play it all the way through. I have yet to able to finish this mod. I have been playing it since 1.2. I always get a show stopper along the way. The most recent is more disappointing because it happens so early. I not only appreciate torn's work, but I am also a fan. I envy you your ability to play it at all. It is hard to have anything of note to say about the mod since I seem unable to play it. Please, don't rub it in!

[Rex Inanimatus]

Lets just hope I can play it all the way through. I have yet to able to finish this mod. I have been playing it since 1.2. I always get a show stopper along the way. The most recent is more disappointing because it happens so early. I not only appreciate torn's work, but I am also a fan. I envy you your ability to play it at all. It is hard to have anything of note to say about the mod since I seem unable to play it. Please, don't rub it in!

There are some CTDs though if you try a couple of times you'll get past it. So enjoy Condottiere this mod

[acegogo]

well one diferentiation I have made in my own version is allowing Armed Guilds( Templar, Teutonic, etc) only to be built in castles.

With this minor change it has made a huge difference in my usage of each of them, also roleplaying a bit doesn´t hurt.

Cities= money, Castles= army

[ciciocle]

well one diferentiation I have made in my own version is allowing Armed Guilds( Templar, Teutonic, etc) only to be built in castles.

With this minor change it has made a huge difference in my usage of each of them, also roleplaying a bit doesn´t hurt.

Cities= money, Castles= army

acegogo, please tell us how you did that, because i don't want to delete something by mistake...and can you please tell me how to make paved roads to be build in stone castles?

[Freedom]

Even though I'm sorta a novice at changing the files, looking at the reqs to upgrade a wooden castle to a castle and a castle to a citadel I think you want to change

c_paved_roads castle requires factions { northern_european, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, }
{
convert_to 1
capability
{
road_level 1

trade_base_income_bonus bonus 2
}
material wooden
construction 10
cost 7000
settlement_min city
upgrades

to settlement_min large_town.

Speaking of modifying files, is it just trial and error to fix random crashes or are there general rules as to what areas you shouldn't mess with? My mod was just fine when I upped mission rewards, increased mercenary recruitment pools, allowed merchant guilds to be built in towns and deleted superstitious, but when I started nerfing priest conversion rates and or buffing heretics in both ability and number it started barfing.