Minor & Emergent Factions Unit Pack
v1.01, August 5, 2017
Joint 2nd Place in the Unit Mods category, 2016 Modding Awards
Why use this mod?
In the Road to Independence campaign, I liked the idea of leading an emerging independent nation to freedom. I enjoy the challenge of playing minor factions (such as Venice, Hannover and the Thirteen Colonies) and emergent factions (such as Ireland and the United States). Perhaps you like the idea of playing an 'underdog' nation, too?
Perhaps you have tried playing minor factions (using the All Factions Unlocked mod) or emergent and minor factions (using Empire Total Factions). Playing smaller countries can be challenging. You often cannot research technologies for some time, until you have built or captured a school. Generally, your unit roster is quite limited. Some minor factions (such as the Barbary States, Morocco and the Crimean Khanate) can recruit very few units.
Some mods offer very powerful units. This unit pack includes some powerful units, but it is based on a different approach. The idea of this unit pack is that minor and emergent factions rely on militia, irregular and light troops. Generally, the units made available by this mod are improved militia, cheaper (and less powerful) infantry, irregular and light troops. For me, this can make a campaign on Normal (or Hard) difficulty level challenging - because the player is not using a professional army (at least, not in the early stages of the campaign.)
What this mod does: Units Unlocked and Made Useful
This mod allows minor and emergent factions to recruit the following units:
Improved Militia
Desert Warriors (North Africa)
Minutemen (United States)
Provincial Militia (Europe)
Revolutionary Guards [elite, high-morale militia, can only be recruited by a republic] (mainly in the Americas)
Some of these units (Desert Warriors and Minutemen) can be recruited in the vanilla game. The differences with these mod are (1) they are now worth recruiting (they have the powerful 'skirmish fire' ability, like Minutemen, and other abilities such as 'paths seldom trod') and (2) they are unlocked for minor and emergent factions generally.
Cheaper/Earlier Line Infantry
African Infantry (North Africa)
Conscripts [can only be recruited by a republic] (Europe)
Expatriate Infantry (Europe)
George Washington Regiment [only recruitable by the United States] (United States)
Irish Brigade (a few regions in North America and Europe)
Maroon Rebels Insurgents (West Indies)
Provincial Line Infantry (Europe)
Sepoys (India)
Voluntary Revolutionary Infantry [can only be recruited by a republic] (mainly in the Americas)
Some of these units (African Infantry, Conscripts and Sepoys) can be recruited in the vanilla game. This mod makes these units more attractive to recruit. As your technology progresses, they will use the same abilities as Line Infantry (such as square formation and fire by rank). Some units have other improvements - for example, African Infantry are now about equal to Company Infantry. These units are also unlocked for minor and emergent factions generally. Some of these units, such as Expatriate Infantry, provide early access to line infantry for smaller factions which do not begin the game with a barracks.
More Powerful/Later Line Infantry
Highland Infantry (Scotland)
Superior Line Infantry (Global)
By the late stages of the campaign, you are likely to need some elite units. Not all minor and emergent factions can recruit Guards units. With higher-level barracks in major cities, you will be able to recruit these powerful units.
Improved Artillery
Board of Ordnance 24-pounder (some Mediterranean coast regions and Georgia in North America)
Colonial Howitzer (North Africa, the Middle East and parts of India)
Marine 12-pounder Artillery Independent Company (West Indies)
Some minor factions can recruit no (or very few) artillery units; these units help to fill that gap. They also provide improved artillery units for minor and emergent factions generally.
In v1.0 of this mod, the Board of Ordnance 24-powder was a horse-drawn heavy cannon (slow-moving, but not fixed, like a 12-pounder cannon). However, this unit crashed the game, so I fixed it in v1.01. In v1.01, the Board of Ordnance 24-pounder is a fixed cannon (it can move on the campaign map, but it cannot move on the battlefield, like demi-cannon). The unit card does not include a full description (it does include a picture and the unit statistics); otherwise, the unit works normally.
The Colonial Howitzer and Marine 12-pounder cannon are horse artillery (like the 3-pounder and 6-pounder horse artillery) so they move quickly.
Early Light Infantry
Barbets (Italian Alps, specifically Turin in Savoy)
Guerillas (Europe)
Mountain Troops (Norway)
Voltigeurs (France)
Early access to light infantry (before researching the Light Infantry Doctrine technology) can give smaller nations a crucial advantage. Barbets and Guerillas are cheap to recruit and less powerful; Mountain Troops and Voltigeurs are more expensive and are more effective.
Shock Infantry
African Musketeers (West Indies)
Highland Clansmen (Scotland)
Riskers of Souls (North Africa)
The defenders of smaller nations may lack supplies and training but they do not lack courage! These fearsome fighters are under-supplied (they have only 5 ammunition). They have the powerful 'skirmish fire' ability (like Minutemen) and they are skilled swordsmen. They also have the 'scare enemies' ability (this causes wavering enemy units to break earlier.) You can use them to break through an enemy line, firing a few volleys and following this up with a devastating charge. Like shock cavalry, they tend to suffer heavy losses after prolonged melee.
Other Units
Cemaat Janissary Grenadiers (north Africa and the Middle East)
Colonial Pikemen (outside Europe)
These units provide grenadiers for factions which would not otherwise have them and a potentially useful defensive unit.
If you also use the pack which unlocks ships, then the following units are available:-
Ships
Sixth Rate (two types of better Sixth Rate are unlocked, one in Europe and the Middle East and the other in the Americas. You can recruit them using a Major Fishery, a Commercial Basin or a Global Trading Company. They are still called 'Sixth Rate' in the game, but their firepower is higher than the firepower of a standard Sixth Rate.)
24-pounder Frigates
Xebecs (North Africa) [this unit has a unit limit of 15. Setting a unit limit encourages AI factions to recruit the unit, which should encourage the AI Barbary States and Morocco to recruit these ships as well as galleys]
For the Barbary States, the Crimean Khanate and Morocco: brigs, sloops, frigates and ships of the line (in vanilla, if you play one of these factions, they can recruit only galleys at the start and very few units after that.)
The idea of unlocking more powerful frigates for minor and emergent factions is that, like the early United States, smaller nations would rely more on frigates than ships of the line.
Known issues
Unlocking ships can cause a bug in which two of several types of ship can be recruited in your ports (two types of brig, two types of sloop and so on). The game is still playable.
The unit card for the Board of Ordnance 24-pounder does not include a full unit description. The unit card includes a picture of the unit and its statistics; it does not include paragraphs of text about the unit.) The unit works normally on the battlefield, despite this problem.
Compatibility
I have tested this mod with both the All Factions Unlocked startpos and with the Empire Total Factions mod, as well as a startpos from my Early American Revolution mod. This mod works with my No Gabionades mod, Removed Bomb Ketches and Rocket Ships, my Navy Recruitment mod and my Weather mod.
This mod uses the vanilla unit statistics, so it would not work well (if it worked at all) with Hosted Mods which make significant changes to game-play (such as Darthmod, Empire Realism, Imperial Destroyer and Imperial Splendour). If you use those mods, they probably provide you with plenty of units for minor factions already, either in the main mod or a sub-mod.
Which factions?
This mod unlocks units for Afghanistan, Barbary States, the Crimean Khanate, Dagestan, Colombia, Courland, Denmark, Genoa, Georgia, Greece, Hannover, Hessen, Hungary, Ireland, the Italian States, the Knights of St John (Malta), Louisiana, Mamelukes, Mexico, Morocco, the Mughal Empire, Mysore, Naples & Sicily, New Spain, Norway, Persia, Portugal, Punjab, Quebec, Savoy, Saxony, Scotland, the Thirteen Colonies, the United States, Venice, Westphalia and Wurttemberg.
Recommendations
I recommend using this mini-mod together with mods such as Shokh Hates Sieges (available here) and (for better appearance of units) the optional graphics pack for the Additional Units Mod (you can use the graphics pack whether or not you use the Additional Units Mod) or the Vanilla United Enhanced Mod. If you would like improved AI, I recommend trying the improved AI mods by Bran Mac Born.
Strategy & Tactics Discussion
If you would like to share ideas on how to play minor and emergent factions successfully, please join the discussion here.
Feedback & Suggestions
Feedback and suggestions are welcome - feel free to post them on this thread. While I have some modding experience, I am not an expert, so I might not be able to produce the effects which you want.
Credits: I am very grateful to erasmus777, husserlTW, Lazy Knight and others for your helpful guides and tools and to all members of the modding community who have helped - thank you! Thanks to Sar1n for reporting the problem with the Board of Ordnance 24-pounder in v1.0 of this mod.
Permissions: if anyone would like to use any of these files as part of your mod (including your own edited version of them), please do so; if you do so, please credit my work. If the links stop working and if I have not posted on the TWC forum recently, then you have permission to re-upload it so that other players can use it.
My other mods: you can find a list with links to my other mods, here.
How to install (and uninstall) this mod
Download the files. The files are called:-
emergent_minor_units_mod_v10.pack (this mod unlocks and improves land units)
emergent_minor_ships_mod_v10.pack (this mod unlocks ships)
Unzip them (they were zipped with the free software 7zip). Copy and paste the file(s) to your C:/ProgramFiles(x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Empire Total War/data folder. That's it - you do not need to activate the mod using a user.empire_script file.
If you want to uninstall this mod, just remove the file(s) from your data folder.
Download Links
In case the download links below disappear, you can also download these mod files from this mediafire folder.