2012 was the last year...

[Radioman]

2012 marks the the last time I played MTW2 with all the mod specs at full potential. Reason being is that was the year my game crashed due to some unknown reason. However I just came into a fix and have been able to play it again even a saved game from 2012...It's been so amazing I just had to share with as many people who still play and enjoy this game. This mod had a full world map, as well as, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian Empires to name a few.

[sullivanclan1]

What mod are you playing?

[Radioman]

It's mainly Kingdoms Grand Campaign 3.0, combined with elements of various other mods and games...

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

The full world map is an unfortunate reminder of the diminishing returns mods give for scale. You can only go so large before detail begins to suffer badly.

[Radioman]

I actually deleted a lot of game elements prior to adding the world map, the game is still as detailed as before if not more. But like CommodusIV intimated detail and especially game change over time can become crippling with most mods available. Fortunately, I learned under some of the greatest modders in TW history, however I will never spend the time or patience it took to make this masterpiece.

[Gigantus]

Correct, the appeal of the mod suffers greatly from it's lack of strat map details. The 'round house' use of beach texture on every pixel of beach lends itself to the weird look of the Japanese Islands for instance.

Game play itself shouldn't suffer much, usually, on this map however the large sea area will prevent contact between the Americas and the rest of the continents.

The lack of a background for the event messages takes some getting used to, especially as the buttons now appear to be floating and not connected.

[Radioman]

Hey Gigantus, thanks for posting, it's been a long time...I do have trade lanes open via the Atlantic and seem to have troop crossings. As far as the background text plates go, it's cause I applied those from a mod other than The Kingdoms 3.0 and it only applies to the Japanese faction. The other factions are like the first photo I posted up top which is what Scareface had done in his Kingdoms 3.0.

[Gigantus]

One way to tempt AI movement across the sea is to put one pixel of a region's color on the other side plus the naval preference setting in descr_sm_factions.
Sea trade distance can be increased in descr_campaign_db, that will help, too.
The message background is in interface\sharedpage_00 - copying a suitable background from another file or creating your own should be fairly easy.

[Radioman]

I haven't been inside of any of the files you noted on since 2012...My main mode of study dealt with unit creation, all the various other nuances where done in a fast and sloppy fashion. However, I will look at the AI movement suggestion you made. As well, I'll look to see if the ship with units came from one continent to the other in my recent games at turn 36. Thanks

[Radioman]

Here they go several French ships traveled across the North Atlantic and landed on northern France where Spanish armies had barricaded a French castle...

[Radioman]

Now that I went in and pulled those photos, I can say that I did all the points you said back in 2012...The descr_campaign_db, descr_sm_factions, and interface where already done and they were easy as you said. The Background page was left this way for the Japanese, I just move over to the dark ocean backgrounds to read them.

[Radioman]

Welp I must say that this map I've gone on about is from the Eras Mod...I was lucky to have found it again cause when I first found it the moderator had already turned his efforts to newer TW games, after I had trouble with it in the years after I thought it was from the Big Maps mod so I've been totally lost until now. Anyways, I've started to try and see if I could add a unit under the complex mod setup he has created. So far it works great I have a lot of testing to do, and it seems he added a lot of what I call unnecessary sub-modular additions to his mod. I'll have to make a lot of changes, but I think that it will be easier to make additions to this Eras as opposed to adding the map to another mod again. We'll have to see...I took a few Pics with my unit added, all looks well. Like I said he used a lot of weather and dirt additive which makes my unit look like they are wearing snow camo suits. He did go far enough to give these Asian nations building cards and a few nationalized comment cards. I'm not sure what they're trading but you would think you were looking at modern day US southern border trade activity. I have to erase the FOW to see how much activity is going on, but the game seems to flow pretty well so far realizing I haven't gone past six turns yet. All in all the Map on this game is awesome and if it works it will be the best mod creation anyone has done in this community ever.

[Radioman]

They made it!!! A large Group of soldiers and a merchant made it from south America to south Africa...
In my previous unsaved game the same setup occurred, and they took over the settlement north of their landing.
That's all I need to know for me to go ahead and re mod this game. Other than crashing at some point its perfection...Everyone who has played it seemed to like it if not loved it. It's official I'm gonna re-modify this game and go on a major diet. So I guess I should say farewell to the Grand Campaign Mod, I was unable to get the MAP to work in that mod, oddly enough it seemed to crash once the fleet arrived in France from the Americas...

[Radioman]

Thus far I've added four units to the Japanese faction...Everything is working fine. As for the weapons categories, the various ones used by my units worked fine. Which means I don't have any problems dropping in my 350 unites or whatever I had. And that will work cause I was looking on keeping some of his units too. Actually I had created a Korean faction that could replace his Jocean Faction...I think it's spelled something like that, But their army was made up of Korean Warriors. The Chinese as well, it looks like I'll be able to fill all of his factions...Once I 'm done with that I'll move on to flags and little character written and imagery fixes. None of that should be hard as he has carefully organized all the file particulars.

[Gigantus]

The picture with the red samuri (why not samurai?) looks awesome, keep up the good work.

As to the recruitment report pic - the text contrast is very low. You can change that by replacing the default value (khaki) in descr_event_images with a RBG code in the bodystring line:

bodystring  left verdana_sml 40 40 40 left

[Radioman]

Thanks Gigantus, Those two were remodeled from my originals back in the day...You can see the added perfection on the Arrows, nonetheless, I had already made several other samurai so I just added the word red to the misspelled samuri, and the difference made it all come together. Mind you that I had just finished a 379 unit list to complete my mod. All in all you have to keep in mind that I was probably without all the necessary tools to create units fully. I at the moment have no tools on this hard drive, today I started putting I think 12 units in the Japan Faction, and unbeknownst to me there is a crash 10 or so turns into the empire mod...I have to correct that issue before I go any further.[COLOR=bodystring left verdana_sml 40 40 40 left][/COLOR][COLOR=bodystring left verdana_sml 40 40 40 left][/COLOR]

[paleologos]

Nice to see people are still coming back to this game.

[Radioman]

Ok, I've just spent most of the day playing japan vs Joseon Dynasty and china...The same track I took in my 12 unit modded version of the game. There were no crashes, I took over half of china, three or more live battles...All I did was install a new 2.3.6 version of the game unmodded, However I did add_money and toggle_fow...

With all that said, this game is the bomb, great factions, great units, great models, and all around greatness. I've underestimated it since I wasn't playing it at release, and honestly all I have to do is upgrade some of the Japanese units rerun that previous battle track and if no crashes than I'm done...So give me a few minutes than I'll know how flawless this game is.

[Radioman]

Welp I just got done with the play ... It's safe to say this is the best Kingdoms mod ever made. If you don't care for mods with fairies and monsters and all that other stuff, you'll love this. It does however add some mythical characters the creator had made for another mod he created...
Anyways, here's where I'm at now. The photos show the destruction of the Chinese rebels. I'll also show some map changes that the creator made via the alps making for a good thorough way for armies located at the top of the map.

[Radioman]

From the get go this mod is slow as are all mods...but it can be made faster by cutting back on how many agents factions can have, how much money each faction generates through it's king's purse, how much trade is going on, and reducing or adding to that at pickup points.

Since all is well with my base game I'll start piece mailing it together, maybe one or two units and a test run before I do any more. I also might do some of those so called extra things before I start with unit additions, those of the Dirt, turn scale, model scale, rebel scale, and monies.