General modding query

[mandead]

I've just started playing Empire again after a long period without my PC (and several patches later...); anyway, I am enjoying it apart from a fairly lax AI, which I hope gets fixed at some point.

Anyway, I digress.

1, Does anyone know if a more accurate 1700 scenario exists? By this I mean England and Scotland exist and Spain's relations & alliances with other countries are fixed. Spain should be neutral, or more enclined to be allied with Austria against France (at least until Carlos II dies, except he never tends to die in my games)

Is it not possible to have him die earlier, short of changing his age? He was severely deformed, and I was surprised to see that his traits do not reflect this by way of having him die earlier. Is this even possible?

2, How can I give New Spain to Spain and Louisiana to France, and how can I give New Spain's flag to Spain? I don't like the normal Spanish flag - those colours weren't used until the 1770s IIRC, and Spain isn't even Bourbon in 1700 anyway, as Carlos didn't die until November.

3, How difficult is it to mod fairly easy stuff? I don't want to make huge changes to the game. I just want to try and make it a little more historical at the ouset and learn how to fix/change flags. I also want to nerf Spain somewhat. In 1700 Spain was bankrupt and in a state of severe decline, yet in most games (with vanilla Empire) Spain manages to take Venice and central Italy and sometimes even expand in North America. IMO Spain needs nerfing, and certainly shouldn't manage to receive the majority of the money that comes in from the Americas.

I am aware of the ETF mod but I don't want to change many of the flags, and I don't like their 'static' look - also they are too inconsistent for my liking.

Sorry for this long post but I just wondered if anyone could help me. I've read numerous mod-related threads but is modding Empire really that difficult?

I hear that there is a max number of nations, but as I intend to remove the American protectorates I was wondering whether it would be possible to start out as England then keep Great Britain as a nation you can become if you're England and own Scotland.

Can anyone help me? I've done a lot of modding in the past (including Medieval 2, but I don't remember it having all these un-moddable packages) but never with Empire. I've tried the ETF mod but as I mentioned above I don't really like the style of some of them and I really like the wave-effect style of the vanilla flags, but learning how to fix Spain's flag would be awesome.

[mandead]

Bump!

[Demokritos]

You have far more questions than three and they're quite comprehensive. I suggest you search these forums for the answer to some of them (use the search function when on the main Empire: Total War (& Napoleon TW) page). There are, for instance, a couple of Scottish mods out there. Also check the tutorials for making minor nations playable, or modding the startpos file. Changing flags is just about finding the folder for flags and renaming the files in question. You may have to extract those files first to do the renaming and then import them back again into a new mod of your own. Check the tutorials for using Pack File Manager (finding the patch file where the flags are located etc) and activating mods for this. Nerfing Spain is probably a DB files job, so a task for the DB Editor. That is found in the Tools & Tutorial section of the Workshop as well. Some things are very easy to do yourself and others are not understood by anybody yet. You have a lot of reading to do.