Custom battles don't work with some mods

**Respenus** · January 30, 2016, 03:56 AM

Thanks to the recent TW Humble Bundle, I have gotten back into Total War and MTW especially. I can see why people consider it the best in the series and when put together with its excellent mods, I have to concur.

Unfortunately, as the title of the thread says, I cannot get custom battles to work with some of the mods. Battles loaded from the campaign map work with every mod I have tried, custom with only a few. Redux and NTW work as intended, but I cannot get the Ancient TW, Hellenic TW, and Pike&Musket mods to work with custom battles.

What happens is that after selecting the factions, units and map, the game seems to start loading the battle (the loading bar fills up about 1/10th), then it just CTD's. Quick battles load up the map, but of course, the units are all wrong.

I am using the latest Steam version and JSGME (Generic Mod Enabler) to install the mods (but have a separate game copy for each of them).

I hope that some of the MTW veterans here will be able to help me solve this problem. Thanks in advance.

**Stazi** · January 31, 2016, 03:06 AM

Custom battles need some extra work. Many modders care only about campaign mode. Others never finished their mods (like Pike & Musket). I think that's the main reasons.

**Respenus** · February 01, 2016, 06:39 AM

Ah, that would explain why Redux and NTW work, while "beta" releases have problems. This is probably also the reason why historical battles/campaigns work (being manually set-up), but custom battles do not.

**Axalon** · February 01, 2016, 10:34 AM

Actually its probably more a matter of active design-choices and limitations of the MTW-engine. The engine cant handle more then 256 units at a time in the files (this includes agents, boats and everything). Anything more then that and all solo/single-battles will fail to work and crash (if I remember this right). Its probably an active design-choice/trade-off in most cases, whether to keep that feature (solo-battles) or not in order to enable more units in the campaign. The Pike & Musket creator obviously made an active choice to discard solo-battles in order to enable more troops in campaign, as he valued that more. Probably knowing all too well that this would break all attempts at playing any solo-battles. ...He made an active choice. I think he actually said something along those very lines somewhere if memory serves. I have no clue on ATW and HTW, it may be true for them as well... I don't know.

I for instance discarded the historical battles-part of MTW as I failed to see how it would be worth workload involved to actually put something together for Redux, and thus keep it as a functional part of the Redux-experience. BTW, both Samurai Warlords and Redux are still in their beta-stage. I think only last NTW and XL were ever declared completed or final. Possibly BKB Supmod 2.2 something may have been as well. Medmod, Samurai Warlords, Age of Warlords and Pike & Musket are all unfinished/abandoned somehow, as far as I can tell. On general terms its shame all over as there was many new ideas and various ground-breaking work done in each of these projects. As for HTW, I think much of the above is true for that one as well. I am unsure if it ever was declared "completed" at some point.

- A

**Respenus** · February 01, 2016, 01:47 PM

Thank you for the technical explanation Axalon; I was wondering what would be the "programming" reason for the problems I experienced.

However, doesn't Redux have more that 256 units? Or did you do something to make certain custom battles work despite this limitation?

**leviath** · February 09, 2016, 06:44 AM

Ancient TW and Pike & Musket both work on the steam version (campaign/custom battles), the Hellenic TW mod doesn't work at all unfortunately, it only works if you change the EXE with a cracked one instead of the steam one.

**claymore833** · February 09, 2016, 08:06 AM

PMTW's custom battle totally works for me on steam version.

**Stazi** · February 09, 2016, 09:14 AM

Originally Posted by leviath

the Hellenic TW mod doesn't work at all unfortunately, it only works if you change the EXE with a cracked one instead of the steam one.

Hellenic mod overwrites original Medieval_TW.exe with its own version during installation. So first, make the backup of the steam version of Medieval_TW.exe, then install the mod and after the installation overwrite the exe with your steam backup version. This way the mod works with steam and you don't need cracked exe.

**Axalon** · February 09, 2016, 02:56 PM

The limitations of the MTW-engine are real. If stuff like P&M, actually can do solo-battles, as folks here claim (I believe you), the only rational explanation would be that its creator somehow adjusted or expanded his designs as to fully comply with those limitations in order for it to work (in some way). Maybe creating some special and dedicated file for solo-battles or something (if I remember all this mechanics-blaha correctly, that is). Anyhow, all this will obviously be true for all other stuff too, like HTW or something else...

Originally Posted by Respenus

However, doesn't Redux have more that 256 units? Or did you do something to make certain custom battles work despite this limitation?

Actually, it does not. The RXB1005 has some 200+ units that can fight in battles. Then some 30+ agents, ships, horses and haha etc. etc. The rest, about 20 slots are actually blanks as to allow flexibility, customization and modifications, should anyone want to do some. This bit is actually a very deliberate design on my part. Enabling room for some customization for all RX-players, like adding more or special units they can't live without or something... The 'ol crowd-pleaser that one, anyways... For reference, raw MTW had 115 units, and gold/steam edition that has another 34 additional such units (mostly spearmen). So that would be 115+34 = 149 units.

- A