Third Age Total War - Installation Troubles! Help!

[VolsungaSaga]

Hello, guys.

I'm having a gigantic amount of trouble with the installation of Third Age: Total War for my Steam version of Medieval II: Total War. No matter how many times I uninstall and reinstall Medieval 2 and Third Age, it seems that this mod is out to get me. I shall now describe, in the greatest amount of detail possible, what I've done so far.

Before my most recent reinstallation, I made sure to go to User Account Control and gave full control of the main Medieval II Total War folder to Users(MyName-PC\Users). I then proceeded to install Third Age 3.0 part 1, Third Age 3.0 part 2, and then the 3.2 patch. I ensured that all of these parts were installed in C:/ProgramFiles/Steam/steamapps/common/Medieval2TotalWar, as outlined in the installation guide here. I did not subsequently rename any folders. After installation was complete, I then made a copy of the "medieval2.exe" file and renamed this copy to "kingdoms.exe".

At this point, I then attempted to start Third Age:Total War by clicking on the One Ring icon that appeared on my desktop. At this point, one of two things happen, depending on whether I ran it as administrator or not. When I ran the shortcut as administrator, the Windows Command Prompt appeared along with the error message "Windows cannot find 'kingdoms.exe'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again." Upon inspection, the filenames inputted for the kingdoms.exe file and the line in the .bat file were completely identical. If I ran the shortcut normally by double-clicking, the Command Prompt appears for a split-second, then after a short pause, vanilla Medieval II:Total War is started instead. It's worth noting that any saves I create while playing this incarnation of vanilla Medieval II appear in my Medieval2TotalWar/mods/third_age/saves folder, not the Medieval2TotalWar/saves folder as they seemingly should.

I'm at a complete loss at what I've done wrong. I've had trouble with other mods of Medieval II, such as Call of Warhammer, with very similar problems. Am I just missing something obvious?

Computer Specs:

Operating System: Windows 7, 32-bit
RAM: 4 GB
Video Card: NVidia GeForce 9600, 512 MB
Processor: intel Core 2 Quad, 2.4 GHz

I can supply additional details upon request, for what good they'll do.

[ElvenKind]

Hi there, and welcome to TWC Forums

1) Does your M2TW and Kingdoms start properly? Can you start a campaign?

2) Is your TATW installed in this bolded/underlined folder: Medieval2TotalWar/mods/third_age ?

If it is, then you just have to rename that third_age folder to Third_Age_3 ( be sure to name it as I have just wrote it, cause it is name/space sensitive).

Then, go into your M2TW/ mods/ Third_Age_3 folder, and double click on your Third Age.BAT ( Batch) file to start TATW.

Good luck!

[VolsungaSaga]

Hi there, and welcome to TWC Forums

1) Does your M2TW and Kingdoms start properly? Can you start a campaign?

2) Is your TATW installed in this bolded/underlined folder: Medieval2TotalWar/mods/third_age ?

If it is, then you just have to rename that third_age folder to Third_Age_3 ( be sure to name it as I have just wrote it, cause it is name/space sensitive).

Then, go into your M2TW/ mods/ Third_Age_3 folder, and double click on your Third Age.BAT ( Batch) file to start TATW.

Good luck!

Thanks for the welcome, Elvenkind!

1) While Medieval 2: Total War works perfectly (I am currently playing an English Campaign, as a matter of fact), none of the Kingdoms campaigns work. All of them crash with the error message saying, "Medieval II has suffered a fatal error and will now exit." I might have attempted to rename the Third_Age_3 folder to americas, in an unsuccessful attempt at getting Steam to launch it.

2) The third_age folder contains an empty "packs" folder, a "preferences" folder containing an "advice" file and a "keys.dat" file, and a "saves" folder, containing an Autosave and my English campaign save. All the actual data such as world data, textures, animations and such are contained in the Third_Age_3 folder, as they should be.

[ElvenKind]

1) You need to get your M2TW/Kingdoms working.. Since it is a Steam version, verifying Steam Game cache should fix it.

2) Copy whole content from that third_age folder, and paste it into your Third_Age_3 folder. Try to start TATW again. If it does not work, delete Third_Age_3 and third_age folder ( since your English campaign save and Autosave is there, copy and paste it somewhere, and later on put it back into your Medieval 2 TW/ saves folder so you can continue to play), and reinstall TATW 3.0 both parts + TATW 3.2 Patch by using these steps: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14422184

Good luck!

[VolsungaSaga]

Hah! I've got the Kingdoms campaigns working again! Apparently, I had set a launch option in Steam that led it to be unable to find the real campaigns. What a silly mistake!

I bet that was what screwed me up before with Third Age, as well. I shall attempt to install Third Age once more. Thank you for your kind counsel so far, Elvenkind. Let's see if I need it anymore!