boredom alleviation volume 2.

[antaeus]

i know a few of you have turned to boredom relief at various points.. playing games like migration - taking an entire faction and moving them to a random part of the map, or turtling your nations up when you usually conquer the world or other such things..

i have just stumbled on a fun way of spicing things up a little...

factions swapping.

finding the game less and less challenging as time goes on and you naturally get better at it... why not swap factions, make things real hard for yourself.

an example. i was playing as portugal, i had taken control of france, spain north africa as far as tunis, and had just invaded the new world... it was 1425, money was flowing in to the point where i didnt really have any restraining factors on expenses. i had 7 cardinals, so could win most votes and control the papacy, i could do what i wanted to whoever whenever.

boring.

so i swapped. using the 'control faction' option in the console, i chose the weakest remaining faction... venice. they only had crete left and 2 family members. they had 2000 in coin in the bank and the only gunpowder units they had were bombards. they were at war with the mongols, the turks, the timurids the milanese and the HRE.

there was a mission. i started by capturing rhodes and cyprus, giving my economy solvency and as a bonus getting some ships as a reward for taking rhodes. then it was a matter of a long slow graft with a bad bad economy, sending raiding parties out in multiple directions, taking poorly guarded cities when i could assemble enough men. eventually, by games end, i had taken the coastline from alexandria to nicea, far from winning the game, but with a respectable bank sum and a reclaimed empire i felt well placed!

edit: and sorry, this probably belongs in game reports etc forum but i thought other people might like to share stories too... feel free to move.

[Skyline Pete]

Could one theoretically use this to take control of Norway in the Britannia campaign and build ships for them so they actually invade from their islands?

If so, could please list the exact instructions on how to do this please?

[Bluice]

I only know how to remove fog of war, creating units and controlling factions would be a great cheat to use. Could some please direct me towards a thread that has the instructions on how to type these cheats in the console command screen?

Much appreciated.

[antaeus]

I only know how to remove fog of war, creating units and controlling factions would be a great cheat to use. Could some please direct me towards a thread that has the instructions on how to type these cheats in the console command screen?

Much appreciated.

its technically not a cheat, its called hotseat, and it is designed so you can have more than one person playing a campaign at once. if you have 2 factions enabled, it stops on each, when you press end turn and you swap seats with the person you're playing against.

you need m2tw 1.2 at least i think, you go into the config file, activate hotseat (as described here http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=hotseat+modus )

once you have activated hotseat, you simply type "control england" in the console to take control of england or "control france" to control france. i think you can add all factions if you want. to stop controling factions you just type the control faction thing again and they change over to AI

[Samir]

besides hotseating I found that a more self restricting playstyle in combination with roleplaying brings back a lot of fun.

+ army composition
not more than 30 to 40% knight units in the army (total army), mounted or dismounted.
and send home units that you dont need after war (militias and non knights)
this already increases the AIs chances in battles as you cannot overrun an army with peasants, (ok you can, and it looks funny)

the downside of this is that you earn more money, as the upkeep for your armies is lower

+ no blitzing
sure take rebel provinces in the beginning, but no blitzing of the AI.

+ do not assault the enemies troop building centers.

I went that far, that I took over control of certain factions, cheated some of their cities/castles to maximum so that they field better armies against me. helped a lot and made the game more challenging for sure.

[Bluice]

Further to my post;

I only know how to remove fog of war, creating units and controlling factions would be a great cheat to use. Could some please direct me towards a thread that has the instructions on how to type these cheats in the console command screen?

Much appreciated.

Here is a relevant link;
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...onsole+command

[HANDsolo]

I like this idea a lot. I got the hotseat working thanks to the links to the "Config file how to" thread. Haven't tried the control command on the console yet. Do I type "control england" or "control_england".

But, is it possible to remove the hotseat settings/password screen before each turn and to view the AI movement on the campaign map (instead of the black screen)? I also heard that when you are attacked, during another factions turn, in hotseat, then the battle will be auto resolved. These are major reasons for me not wanting to use hotseat for a singleplayer campaign, even though I really like the idea of swapping factions to the underdog when you've gotten to the point where you know you are going to win with your original faction.

Is there any way of swapping factions without having to play a hotseat campaign? Even if it means going in and editing the game files, e.g. to edit a savegame file to change the faction the human is controlling.

[Samir]

control england

and you can also give back the control for a faction to the AI with the same command. (names of the factions you see in the descr_strat.txt, took a while to find out how Rebels are called i.e.)

http://twcenter.net/forums/showthrea...66#post2358466

with this settings you can even play defensive battles, as long as you are not the attacking faction too...

[HANDsolo]

Thanks, Samir. I gave it a try with the parameters in your link and it is exactly what I was looking for.