changing turns

[eXistenZ]

I want to change the time of a turn, because i find that two years-turns don't give you enough time. So how do you it, and what do you guys advice? (6 months, 1 year,....)

Also what do you guys advice for the kingdoms expansion and how do you change that?

thanks (i know it's a noob question)

[Augustus Lucifer]

You'll want to see this thread. It has files for making multiple turns per year work properly with aging of characters, and lists the values which should be input in the turns area to complement it. Before doing that you'll want to have unpacked your game, and then set up a mod folder to make changes in. For M2 see here, for Kingdoms see here.

[rebelyell2006]

I can answer your first question. In descr_strat.txt, which is in the Medieval II Total War\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign folder, you can change the timescale, which in vanilla is shown as 2.00. That means each turn lasts 2.00 years, which I have changed to 1.00 and 0.50 on different occasions. I don't know what would happen if it is changed to anything else.

If you want to change it to, say a turn lasting one month, you would have to change the scripts in the campaign_script.txt folder, which is beyond my knowledge.

Edit: Looks like Augustus Lucifer beat me to answering your question.

[eXistenZ]

And what do you guys like? 6 months, 1 year,...?

If I change it to 1 year(which seems the best to me), will the aging be normal?

[rebelyell2006]

Having it set at 6 months per turn might be more realistic in terms of army movement, but it will make the campaign tediously longer. Likewise for 1 year per turn. You will also see historical inaccuracies, like gothic armor and French pikemen in the 1200s. I'd say that for the Medieval 2: Total War vanilla campaign, 2 years per turn is the most balanced of turn length choices.

I think character/agent aging is hardcoded to be six months per turn.

[eXistenZ]

And do you guys know how to the change the turns for Kingdoms without downloading mods?

I'll read your links when i get home

[konny]

I think character/agent aging is hardcoded to be six months per turn.

Character aging happens at the end of the slave faction's winter turn. When you want to change characters' aging acording to your time scale you need to mod the script to have the accurate number of slave winter turns, otherwise characters will always age on every other turn, what makes any time scale different to 0.50 rather pointless.

In return this follows that you cannot have a higher time scale than 1.00 with proper aging because there cannot be more than one slave winter per turn.

[Gigantus]

And do you guys know how to the change the turns for Kingdoms without downloading mods?

Post #3 pretty much tells you how.

[eXistenZ]

Say I've changed the turning by editing the text files, changing it from 2.00 to 1.00. If i change it back, will i be able to play my current campaign, and with the 2 years turn?

And is 1.50 an option, or will it make the game crash?

sorry for tthe noob questions

[rebelyell2006]

If you change the files in the imperial_campaign folder, or other campaign folders, you will have to restart the campaign.

And the year count does not cause the game to crash if it is set at 1.5. I deleted the line that made the campaign map to show turns, so it shows years instead. And here is what I found:

1080
1081
1083
1084
1086

And so on. It does not provide a "Summer" or "Winter" or a 1081.5 year count, so the year counter will act strange.

EDIT:

And then I tried 3.00, 0.250 and 10.000, for 5 turns each, and I did not experience any crash-to-desktop issues. I am beginning to think that turns-per-year only matters for counts towards events, otherwise theoretically one could play 100 years per turn and just have a massive list of events popping up each turn.

EDIT 2:

100 years per turn does work. Makes a really messed up campaign - defeat in just 5 turns, and a long list of events each turn, not to mention messing up the Mongol and Timurid scripts.

When it comes to the years per turn number, it is up to you to decide what is the best choice for balancing all the factors involved in the campaigns.

[eXistenZ]

Thanks for checking. I'm gonna try normal 2.00 turns first, and then I will change it if it doesn't work out.

but what do you mean with:

And so on. It does not provide a "Summer" or "Winter" or a 1081.5 year count, so the year counter will act strange.

[rebelyell2006]

On the campaign map HUD, the date is displayed as:

1080 (Turn 1)
1081 (Turn 2)
1083 (Turn 3)
1084 (Turn 4)
1086 (Turn 5)

In reality, the date should be:

1080 (Turn 1)
1081.5 (Turn 2)
1083 (Turn 3)
1084.5 (Turn 4)
1086 (Turn 5)

It only lists whole numbers for the date. It also does not say "Summer 1080" or "Winter 1080." And when the years per turn was set at 0.25, the seasons changed like they do every turn, so there were two winters and two summers in the year 1080. That can be scripted out, and I think the "Winter - year" and "Summer - year" can be scripted in for the date display.