Total Vanilla Beyond 3.3 Release - Once more with feeling and verve

[valy9002]

"-use the appropriate bat file (steam or disc) to start the game"
All of the batch files are sending me to steam, I do not have a steam M2TW, can some one offer a more detailed set of steps please?

[sullivanclan1]

It is best to get steam so that way you would be able to play this mod.

[valy9002]

I tried another mode and as well, redirected me on steam. There is a trend now or something with the steam? Used to play these mods few years ago without any problem. Why would people ruin it?

[Cokjan]

I don't have the steam version and can use medieval2_totalvanilla.bat with no problem whatsoever.

cd ..\..
medieval2.exe @mods\totalvanillab\Configuration2.cfg

^ This is what my .bat file looks like

[blncx]

The mod is VERY buggy for me in general. Crashes constantly when during the starting cutscenes, when loading saves, starting battles, etc. Played as one of the spanish kingdoms after getting through the first wave of crashes just fine, but when I tried to start a campaign as the byzantines, I noticed that their entire building chain is missing all of their icons, with the notable exception of the icons for the Jewish Diaspora. I have no idea what's causing any of this, and I'd appreciate some tips on how to fix this for me

[ØMVЯ]

This is an excellent modification to the native experience. The details show a serious attempt to organize the game world and present a stiff challenge that remains appealing after many hours.
There is one small matter that must be addressed. Namely troop recruitment. The mod categorizes tiers for soldiers first from militia, then levy, and finally professional. This makes sense on paper and can be worked with yet castles loose the ability to recruit militia after access to levy troops which makes no sense, particularly when militia are better troops than levy.

To be specific spear militia are able to withhold a frontal charge from knights because they hold spears with large shields and operate en masse. Slav levy also visually hold spears, yet total war does the funny thing where they are technically club infantry that do spear fighting animations and receive no bonus against cavalry. This means that the early game militia can hold against front cavalry charges yet the mid game levy get slaughtered against frontal cavalry despite holding the same weapon and ostensibly be better troops.

To rectify this, I just edited the exports to include militia as recruitable soldiers in castles for their respective kingdoms and avoid using levies that are not equipped for line duty.

[Dragour]

This is an excellent modification to the native experience. The details show a serious attempt to organize the game world and present a stiff challenge that remains appealing after many hours.
There is one small matter that must be addressed. Namely troop recruitment. The mod categorizes tiers for soldiers first from militia, then levy, and finally professional. This makes sense on paper and can be worked with yet castles loose the ability to recruit militia after access to levy troops which makes no sense, particularly when militia are better troops than levy.

To be specific spear militia are able to withhold a frontal charge from knights because they hold spears with large shields and operate en masse. Slav levy also visually hold spears, yet total war does the funny thing where they are technically club infantry that do spear fighting animations and receive no bonus against cavalry. This means that the early game militia can hold against front cavalry charges yet the mid game levy get slaughtered against frontal cavalry despite holding the same weapon and ostensibly be better troops.

To rectify this, I just edited the exports to include militia as recruitable soldiers in castles for their respective kingdoms and avoid using levies that are not equipped for line duty.

Double edge sword here sadly, I agree that losing certain units can become a problem if you need a specific type, but the game only allows a certain amount of units to be recruitable in a settlement at once and if you have more than the game can handle then it will crash. As a rough example, if the limit is 15 units shown then a unit has to be removed in order for a new unit to added, otherwise as said it will crash the game sadly. For most settlements it won't be a problem but in the holy lands there are a lot of unique units taking up recruitment slots

[ØMVЯ]

Variability in recruitment is besides the issue. The problem is that an already existent troop upgrades into a worse variant.

[jaguarblack1993]

podrias pasar un link para descargar la ultima version a traves de mediafile los que estan caidos y a traves de mega no tengo cuenta premium

[Dragour]

podrias pasar un link para descargar la ultima version a traves de mediafile los que estan caidos y a traves de mega no tengo cuenta premium

I had to use google translate, but the Mega download link does not require premium to download, it is free

[jaguarblack1993]

thanks I was able to download it in the 3.5 forum, excellent mod do you really know if it's still in progress? I know it's late but it would be great to change the cilicians of Armenia for some Hindu faction besides being more relevant but apart from that a fantastic mod I had played before but I wanted to go back

[Macaco]

I keep on trying to get into a battle but run into ctds.

13:23:31.692 [game.script] [always] Germanicu5 ReallyBadAI v5.7 Running. Please upload log and savegames when reporting battle CTDs for SS.
14:59:47.798 [system.rpt] [error] Medieval 2: Total War encountered an unspecified error and will now exit.

any ideas on how I solve this problem?

I am having the same problem. Did anyone experience this or has a fix?

Thank you!

[4zumi]

Is that the whole log? Or is there more?
If so post it and I may have a look.

[4zumi]

Oh, and by the way I have a little surprise for all of you:

Total Vanilla Beyond 3.6 with some bugfixes I do not remember but definitively bug fixes and I decluttered the starting bat situation.
Have fun, and no I am not dead, despite having moved town, catched Covid, new job, new life...

https://mega.nz/file/qMNRGAqY#t9raHr...lTronKGFSPm7iA

Thanks, bye, loveyouall

And I made some progress on Total Coffee - 1299 Heart of Darkness, but it will take much time

[Macaco]

Is that the whole log? Or is there more?
If so post it and I may have a look.

Thank you so much!!!

I have attached my latest system log.

[alpalp1977]

Thanks for the surprise

[4zumi]

@Macaco
Sadly the log does not tell my anything and does not show an error which would lead to a crash I could see.
You might want to try the latest mod version which I posted above, maybe this can resolve the problem.

[TheNipper]

Hi 4zumi

Thanks for creating a brilliant vanilla mod - it is easily the best out there. It has much greater re-playability than any other mod I've played. That said, there are aspects to the mod that can make it even better than it already is.

- Get rid of the Americas. Its location in relation to the rest of the map is absurd. The Carolinas are supposed to be in line with the Strait of Gibraltar, and Fortaleza with the Conga in central Africa. The distance between the Old and New worlds has been massively shortened, and any faction can immediately sail to the Americas. The resource values ($$$) are astronomical, giving the factions closest an unfair advantage. While I know you haven't aimed for historical accuracy, the Americas as you've implemented them just doesn't fit - just as it didn't with the original version. Better to just get rid of it. Same with Iceland. This also affords the opportunity to add in one or two more Old World factions, and to add more regions to the map.
- Get rid of the resurrection mechanic. While innovative, a faction that has died ought to remain dead. It's more of an annoyance than anything.
- A money sink was implemented to clamp down on the hefty income inflation. If you examine the income statement, the bloat mostly comes from trade. I found that adjusting the Settlement Income Factor (SIF) from 1.0 to 0.2 did the trick - much more balanced, and no need for the money sink. I've seen Venice and Constantinople reach incomes of 30k gold per turn from this trade income bloat.
- The Mongols are seriously overpowered. While this fits in with the historical narrative, for this game, it ruins the balance. I found that stripping them of their added money and armies helps to balance things. Also elephants need to be removed, they are simply too powerful and they roll over every other faction. The Mongols still have a very good roster without the elephants.
- Descriptions. This requires quite a bit of editing, whether it be the faction descriptions in the selection screen at the start of the game, or for units or the innovative buildings you've added (I really like the effort you've put into creating these, top work). Some of the descriptions are too short, looks like a rush job.
- The castle part of the building browser needs fixing. For some reason, it displays all the special buildings available for castles across all factions, although the human faction can't build it. The city part of the building browser doesn't seem to have this issue. Again, some of the descriptions needs fixing i.e. "Arh oh god - do not translate!!!"
- The money debt function in campaign.txt needs to be removed. Although it is designed to address the problem of a faction essentially freezing when they are bankrupt, continually bailing them out by wiping out a faction's debt leads to serious army bloat - what income they can accrue after being bailed out is simply spent on more troops, which again leads to bankruptcy, and around it goes. I found a solution to this no one else has been able to: freeze a faction's troop recruitment. But there is no way to target a faction's recruitment directly given the lack of scripting functions. Instead, it has to be done by settlement. Yes... That means 30 factions x 197 settlements = almost 6,000 if statements. But it was easy to replicate in Excel and copy and paste into the campaign.txt, and only 30 monitors, so there is no slowdown due to processing. It comes out to 205,000 lines of code, and it works. If the AI treasury is under 5k gold in the first 30 rounds, their recruitment is frozen until their money rises above that amount, then it is unfrozen. If the AI treasury is under 10k gold after 30 rounds thereafter, it is frozen, then unfrozen once they accrue more than 10k gold. I've also found that increasing the rate of mutiny in AI armies also helps with this, as a full stack can cost 4k per turn, so an occasional mutiny (conversion to brigands) helps. The trick is make the variable min_revolt_chance in descr_campaign_db.xml at least 5 to 10.
- Increasing the variable siege_att_str_modifier to 1.0 makes the AI more responsive to attacking rebel settlements and getting into gear. Changing min_turn_keep_rebel_garrison to 1 frees rebel garrisons to wonder about, rather than staying put. This makes rebel settlements easier for the AI to attack and hence they will develop faster. An interesting side-effect of both increasing the mutiny probability and this variable is that there is a much larger brigand problem in the game, which keeps things interesting.
- Some units that shouldn't be available still are in the late game i.e. peasant archers from castles.
- Tiny factions such as Ireland, Norway and Armenia seem like filler, squeezed into an already packed map. Perhaps better to remove them.
- The Varangian guard need to have its upkeep increased to at least 225 from its current 175. It's too OP to have at this cost.
- Seriously decrease the time for how long Crusades and Jihads can carry on for. The original game had a better balance.
- Protestants can only build their churches up to the cathedral level, not huge cathedral.
- Sometimes Catholic churches remain in cities and castles after a faction has converted to Protestantism.
- Consider putting in the great M2TW soundtracks "Lift Thine Eyes" and "We Are All One" into the mod, just as you did Rome 1 for the Byzantines.
- The Papal States should not be playable. Their Excommunication/Reconciliation mechanic is too powerful in the hands of a human player.
- For some reason, you give Frankfurt a Jewish building at the beginning, and you can also build another, for two buildings in the one city. Perhaps this was leftover code in campaign.txt from testing.
- The Jihad flag is black, rather than the crescent image it needs to be.
- Some of the coastline is jagged, like near Corinth.

Hope this helps make an outstanding mod even better.

[Nickolas "The Lit" Romanov]

Hey Zumi, I don't know if Macaco's error log included this in it or not. But im having this pop-up in my error log (i'm also having the same error with battles as he is): 20:41:23.486 [data.invalid] [error] BATTLE_MAP_AREAS failed to add area shape : See Charlie", already applied the up above download here. it sadly didn't fix it.

[Nickolas "The Lit" Romanov]

system.log.txt

-My full error log of it, if your interested; but it's honestly non-interesting and i'm sure that it won't help either, other then that here, there's nothing really of note.