Cheating a bit (exploring the game)

**magraev** · March 30, 2012, 02:38 AM

Hi all

I own every TW-game except Empire, and the reason I didn't buy that is, that I love modding, and I heard it was almost impossible in empire. I've been waiting for a bundle of empire and napoleon, but it hasn't come. For me modding is almost as much fun as playing usually, but I just can't figure out how to edit Shogun 2! Most of the advice on these forums is about a year old, and I wonder if it still works?

I've dl'ed the latest pack file reader, but I have so many files to choose from (patch 1-16 + data + more?).

So what do I do if I want to give myself a solid start, so I can play around a bit? Maybe 2 mill. and a black ship or two

I want to be capable of deleting my changes again, but the prevailing advice (albeit a year old) seems to be to create a new .movie file and stuff it in the data folder??

Can anybody help me find the updated advice I need or tell me here what to do? Thanks.

Hmm - no takers I see. I guess it can't be done... thank you to the 100 people who at least read this, even though noone had any answers.

**Hieronymos** · April 02, 2012, 10:49 PM

I sympathise entirely magraev. Tinkering with Total War series mods is almost more fun than playing.

I'd like to figure out how to start my chosen Clan du jour with a slightly larger castle and sl. better dojo(s).

The days of making simple tweaks to descr_strat.txt are long gone it would seem!

**zowrath** · April 03, 2012, 06:00 AM

If you want to cheat, you still can but it is not as fast and easy as before. But it ain't too difficult either. Use a program called EsfEditor on your savegame for example and give yourself a bunch of cash. Same program can be used to give units as well, but it is editing this time so you need to read the forums a bit. You can also use Pack File Manager to edit the DB files and make your own mod too, and PFM is really easy to get in to. Head on over here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1552 and these program will work for ETW, NTW and S2TW as well. Have fun!

**magraev** · April 03, 2012, 08:04 AM

Thank you for the replies! I was afraid I was all alone in here.

So esfEditor works with the latest version of the vanilla game? You can read all sorts of warnings about it on these forums, so I figured it wasn't updated.

I found a mod that gives the Mori 3 black ships and 100K (and more, like a bonus to research that was nice). I just sunk all ships but one, disbanded the troops and that was what I needed basically. The mod is on these forums, and you just have to dump it into the data directory and it works even though it's a year old.

Now the fun is going be to make it work with other factions

**Hieronymos** · April 04, 2012, 03:53 AM

Zowrath,
can you link to any guides on how to use esf2xml or esf editor 1.4.8 to tweak S2TW savegames?

I got the latter installed and running on desktop, but it won't let me open any of my savegames..
Other posters claim esf editor 1.4.8 no longer works for savegames since the last patch changed compression system..
Taw says esf2xml works just fine; but there are no guides to its use stickied..

**zowrath** · April 04, 2012, 05:06 AM

Don't have time to search through the forums, as it's Easter and I'm pretty busy with family but have a look at the Empire/Napoleon-part of the forums where they first originated. There are guides there, that are very close to what you need for Shogun 2. esf2xml is pretty "advanced" though, you will need to install Python I think (?), or was it jruby (?), and be somewhat familiar with it.