new to the forums; a little overwhelmed!
first off, i just wanted to begin by saying thankyou to all the immense contributors in this community, as i'm just blown away by how many mods/tips/resources are available for the game.
I apologise if this sort of thread isn't appropriate but i've gotta say that i'm more than a little confused by all the mods and info available on what i thought was a game i had pretty well down pat, and so i wanted to use this thread to help get answer to some questions which i couldn't solve on my own, or at least so people could direct me in the right way.
Well i've been playing the total war games since MTW, and while i was a bit young to appreciate the intricacies of the game then, RTW was a game i absolutely loved to death and spent many, many hours on. Up until now, the total war games (which is the only game i really play) have come at the end of my computer's life-cycle and so they've been a bit of a struggle to play. While i'm a little late to the party, having got MTW2 just a couple of days ago, i have a computer which can finally handle it with ease.
Anyway, to get to the point, i'm fairly confident in my abilities with the standard game, i've started a long campaign with england to get my feet wet (on normal difficulty) and am fairly close to conquering all of europe up to modern russia. in RTW i basically played the 'vanilla' game and it's two expansions exclusively, until mtw2 came out (which i couldn't play on my system) at which point i first discovered the modding community through the extended greek factions mod and RTR, both of which i enjoyed but i also felt that there were some balance issues which the real games didn't have.
But now with MTW2, i find that i'm at see with what's been happening and how i can best enhance my experience. So i'm hoping some people can help get me up to speed:
1. From some of the posts that i've read, it seems that more than a few people are disenchanted with MTW2/CA, however i can't seem to work out why? Is it the lack of big new features, the lack of realism, poor AI or what?
2. Why oh why is the 1.2 patch and 1.3 patch each 650MB? Is the 1.00 game 'unplayable' in it's initial state? does the 1.2/1.3 patch fix the majority of these problems? do i need to start a new game to get all the benefits? is the 1.3 patch as important as 1.2, as it seemed to be directed at Kingdoms (which i don't own yet).
3. Does the Kingdoms expansion provide any engine enhancements which aren't available in patches? (For instance, Barbarians added religion, night attacks and other stuff). If so, will those changes also apply to the original game (grand campaign) or will they only exist in the expansion campaigns (new world, britain etc.)?
4. Does changing the campaign/battle map difficulty ONLY alter AI or does it just give the computer factions bonuses (eg. easier public order/more finances on campaign map and higher morale on the battle map)? I've seen conflicting views on this, but the manual seems to say that it's only AI improvements.
5. Is there plans for an official second expansion for MTW2 or is it full steam ahead with empire:TW?
With regards to mods:
6. Do all mods run their own local copy or do they alter the core files (and thus change the way the normal campaign plays out), or should i just look out for them on a case by case basis?
7. As with the above question, do mods that affect things like AI, unit textures and campaign balance run on their own independent copy or do they alter the core files, and if so, is there any way to uninstall them later without just doing a fresh install of MTW2?
8. For mods that look to enhance the standard campaign as opposed to provide a totally new style of campaign, do they play well together? For instance, if i wanted to install a mod which reintroduced areas of recruitment and another which improved campaign AI, would that result in an 'unbalanced' game?
9. is there any significant part of MTW2 that can be altered which was unalterable in RTW? Might sound like an odd questions as MTW2 seems to me to be almost entirely changeable but can things like the papacy also be toyed with?
10. Similar to question 1, is there any part of the game which just simply HAS to be modded, or some mod which is essential for fixing bugs/glitches?
11. Is there a mod which adds areas of recruitment to MTW2 in a fair (and not over-the-top way) so that if you take over a city like in Spain, you can also acquire spanish faction only guilds and those associated knights?
12. Is there an expanded campaign map mod like the ones available in RTW which divided the world into more provinces and added places in africa and india? If there are, do these mods suffer from the same sorts of problems as in RTW where there was simply too much money around, resulting in obscenely large armies being churned out by a couple of super powers by the endgame?
13. I've read of how to alter the vanilla campaign to increase the number of turns you get by reducing how many years pass each turn. Does this result in any odd behaviour (agents/generals dieing too young or too old). Do production times become longer or are they still the same? Does the AI still function properly over a campaign which may be 2 or 4 times as long and do the 'events' still happen at the right time?
14. Is there any easy way to disable events such as the discovery of the new world, the invention of gunpowder or the mongol/timurid invasions? or would this screw up the game?
15. Is there a specific mod which you see as the equivalent of RTR in terms of AoR, more factions, bigger map, longer campaign, more units for the small factions, more and altered building etc? (I'm not so concerned with higher realsim, just a broader variety of strategy to employ in a game).
16. Are there any game overhauling mods (in the same vein as the LOTR:TW mods and RTR for R:TW) which you consider to be in a complete stage, that you'd highly recommend?
Lots of questions, thankyou very much for your help and this immense community!
Cheers,
Prakimus
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by prakimus88
