Personal Tweaks

[Ogmios]

I really enjoy this mod, but since it's no longer being developed and doesn't allow submods I've been tinkering a little bit with my own game (strictly for personal use). To that end, I had a few questions I wanted to pose and also provide a space for others who might have questions as well.

1. Do factions care about their win conditions? I started adjusting all of them to better suit my desires. For example, I changed the Reich's victory conditions from outlive Valiente, Kukulcan, and Povos to outlive Kukulcan, Royaume, and Privs. I think I can also mess with the faction standings to encourage war between factions, but I haven't tried that too much - I'm not sure how it works. Some factions - Tahar, Valhalla - tend to grow on their own and I'd like them to see more action/resistance.
2. How difficult is it to create a new faction - even a copy of an existing one? There's only 21 factions in Thera so I imagine that leaves some room for a few more. I would only be using existing factions or mercenary units to build it out. Off the top of my head, I'd like to break out Tahar into a Moorish side and an African/Indian Kesh faction; split out an Italian style Medici faction on the east of Ibellica using those mercenary units; and collect the Jotunn units into a small faction up north. I don't mind having factions be very similar, but if it's not hugely complicated I would prefer breaking up some of the big ones.

[Boyar of Translavia]

I really enjoy this mod, but since it's no longer being developed and doesn't allow submods I've been tinkering a little bit with my own game (strictly for personal use). To that end, I had a few questions I wanted to pose and also provide a space for others who might have questions as well.

1. Do factions care about their win conditions? I started adjusting all of them to better suit my desires. For example, I changed the Reich's victory conditions from outlive Valiente, Kukulcan, and Povos to outlive Kukulcan, Royaume, and Privs. I think I can also mess with the faction standings to encourage war between factions, but I haven't tried that too much - I'm not sure how it works. Some factions - Tahar, Valhalla - tend to grow on their own and I'd like them to see more action/resistance.
2. How difficult is it to create a new faction - even a copy of an existing one? There's only 21 factions in Thera so I imagine that leaves some room for a few more. I would only be using existing factions or mercenary units to build it out. Off the top of my head, I'd like to break out Tahar into a Moorish side and an African/Indian Kesh faction; split out an Italian style Medici faction on the east of Ibellica using those mercenary units; and collect the Jotunn units into a small faction up north. I don't mind having factions be very similar, but if it's not hugely complicated I would prefer breaking up some of the big ones.

Yes, we can find many places for new factions, a Hesperos city-state (maybe Sparta or Troy), the exiles of Mondas, a Sumari Horde, a Varia faction rival with Dracules, Aztlan, or on Gul peninsula

[Ogmios]

I have no idea how to do it, but flipping (mirroring?) the islands of Tethra, Slavia, and Europa would make lots of sense to me: the Vashta holdings would be closer to each other, and Dracule would be closer to the northern factions (Wotan, Valhalla, Teuton).

I do agree that adding in independent factions as stand alones, essentially minor factions, would help the blobbing aspect of my Thera campaigns. IMO, they wouldn't even need to be playable, but just add more flavor to early-mid game intra-continent conquest.

[Torvus]

I added land bridges to several of the continents, just to mix things up a bit. However, there is a hardcoded limit to factions in Medieval II, and I believe Thera has reached that limit. At least, that's what TFON always said.

As for mirroring some of the islands, that would take some doing. You'd have to edit all six (I think it's six, it's been forever since I messed around with modding) map image files and make sure they match up, and who knows what that would do to the scripts. My land bridges took a hell of a lot of work and that's pretty simple by comparison. None of this is to discourage you, just know it's a bigger undertaking than it looks. There are tons of great tutorials in the workshop and if you're serious about making edits, I highly recommend poking around there.

EDIT: This is the tutorial I used to learn how to make/edit a map. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...g-from-scratch