★ TLR v1.9 Beta 5 - Beta Download & Discussion ★

[tornnight]

TLR version 1.9 Beta 5 available

Updated Feb 26, 11:23 EST

Primary Download Here
Secondary Download Here


Your splash screen should look like this.


There is no installer. Installer will be included in the final
This is just a simple zip file with the files in it.
Just unzip it to C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War
It won't overwrite your current game.
Execute it by running
C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\The_Long_Road_Beta.bat

What's new in Beta 1
- Armor based Era System
- Era System for bigger walls
- Era System for gunpowder
- New Building Scheme for barracks (Option 3 from the poll)
- Portugal Map Fixes
- Improved Battle AI
- Fixed Cardinals
- Population growth lowered
- Biggest Castle at start is a Wooden Castle (Keep style)
- Biggest City is a regular stone wall city.

Whats new in Beta 2
- Fixed Building Tree
- All new Campaign AI and Diplomacy
- Only Militia has free upkeep
- Crossbowmen can fire better from walls
- Improved AI Siege Formations
- Fixes to Cavalry getting stuck on rocks
- Additional minor fixes.

Whats new in Beta 3
- Various new provinces and faction starting situations
- More difficult independent provinces
- Balanced Units!!!
- Tweaked Battle and Siege AI
- Blood, Broads, and Bastards v1.9
- Reduced number of Inquisitors
- Other minor fixes

Whats new in Beta 4
- Adjusted Moorish/Spanish/Egyptian faction starting situation
- Balanced 2 handed axe Units
- Balanced gunpowder Units
- Balanced Byzantium infantry units
- Tweaked/Balanced Pikemen
- Some corrections to the recruitment tree.

Whats new in Beta 5
- Improved Campaign AI. More field battles.
- Campaign AI Fixes. AI no longer attacks just because it has an alliance and slightly dislikes you.
- Global Reputation will normalize a bit quicker.
- Fixes to Map for accessing West Africa Coast with early ships
- Unit cost/upkeep increased
- Adjusted starting situations for Sicily, Byzantium, Venice, Spain
- Diplomats now always recruitable. Town Hall type buildings give diplomat experience.
- Pikemen have weaker secondary attacks
- Elephant crew attacks corrected and cost/upkeep adjusted
- 5 new provinces
-- 2 in Iberia
-- 1 in the British Isles
-- 1 in Italy
-- 1 in Eastern Africa
- Other minor fixes

Whats not in yet
- New Units
- K&K
- New Mercenary Units

Remember, I can't guarantee that the saves for this will be compatible with the final. Please give me plenty of feedback on playability, enjoyability.

Let me know if (Specifics please)
-the difficulty is more/less difficult than 1.8.
-the era system needs balancing
-diplomacy needs balancing
-recruitment needs balancing
-build tree is broken
-battle issues
-unit balance issues

[Lopus]

The secondary download site actually works better than the primary.

[Irishmafia2020]

Exeter, Barcelona and Spolento are all good additions that add a strategic element. One question though, did you tweak the Fatimids at all? They were the one faction that did not expand well in most of the AARs and if not I may just add some $$ to see if use it... They might have been covered in "improved campaign ai" though, so I thought I'd ask. Thanks again for the new beta!
One other note, on the Bigmap there is only one North/south route through the Caucaus mountains(I remember there being 3 in RTW) , and control of that route is probably decisive for an Eastern faction. Is this intentional at this point or was it an accident of Spurius' creation? I'm just asking if you've noticed...

[tornnight]

Yep they have been tweaked.

[Averroës]

Just finished downloading, about to start up.

Tornnight, I've been studying BB&B trying to get a handle on the way the titles work in the hope of being able to add them for the new provinces. There is a lot that is confusing me about various traits and triggers. If I do manage to get a good grasp of it, I'll ask Dearmad and Pnut for permission and see what I can do. I'm lousy at graphics though; so if anyone else has the skill and will to make title heraldry graphics similar to the ones in BB&B for the new provinces it would help keep things nice.

[Irishmafia2020]

I just ran a quick 10 year campaign as Denmark using autoresolve (its bedtime) and I noticed several things. First the a.i. seemed more aggressive - Poland captured Stettin castle before me for example. Next, every faction had captured at least one province, except the papal states. Sicily hadn't expanded, but at the ten year mark they were besieging two cities. Portugal captured Lisbon, the Fatimids expanded into Gaza, etc. Also the slight tweak you gave Denmark -that of moving the faction heir and his army into Sweden served a dual purpose. This hindered my Blitz, as I was unable to focus my forces for an aggresive Baltic expansion, and additionally this would have helped the a.i. because it has a tendency to not attack the easy targets of Scandanavia with its main force. HRE captured Magdeberg as well, so although I was able to expand to six provinces in ten years, I found that the a.i. had been more determined than usual in seeking contested provinces. Of course this was all using autoresolve, but my strategy was the same. On a final note, my Economy was buzzing at the ten year mark, so your unit cost increases haven't destroyed the econ aspect - although I was pumping more money into my provinces since my Blitz was inneffective. I'll check the campaign out at leisure tomorrow night, good job on the Fatimids...

[Irishmafia2020]

Averroes - the Deus le Vult mod 2.0 comes out on March 2 and boasts titles for the extended bigmap provinces. Maybe we could cut and paste the relevant titles into the Long Road files... Just a thought, as I might try to do it on my version anyway...

[Averroës]

@Irishmafia2020

That's an idea. It would save a lot of work. I'm just struggling with all of the various files right now. Modding M1TW was much easier.

@Tornnight

On the mountain pass problem which Irishmafia2020 noted. I remember posting something about it; but not sure if it was here. It's an artifact of BigMap. For the western of the three passes, the river ford in the middle of the pass northeast of Kutais is too close to the mountainside, so troops can't cross it. And in the middle pass, straight north of Tbilisi, the river runs right down the middle of the pass, so units can't move through that pass either. The only pass that is actually passable is the far eastern of the three.

Lopus, I think, mentioned the blocked resources in the HRE. These are also artifacts of BigMap. They're all placed just southwest of rivers, which means merchants can't stop at the northeast corner to start a trade route there. Here's a list of them all (I think I found them all):

Wine northeast of Hohenstaufen
Timber southeast of Hamburg
Timber northwest of Magdeburg
Sheep southwest of Magdeburg

Also, is it intended that the Seljuk starting diplomat and spy start off the game way up by Sinope and the starting imam over by Aleppo? Not a big deal for the diplomat, since it puts him closer to Byzantium; but the spy and the imam have long walks before they become useful.

The new provinces seem to be working out great. The addition of Salamanca and Lugo and shifting Spain should help things in Iberia, and give the Portuguese a needed boost. Same thing with adding Siouah, which might help the Fatimids expand westward, which they never seem to do. Exeter should help the English, especially since France always seems to kick them off the continent early in my games. Italy is going to be interesting, and seeing how Byzantium develops without Nicaea will be too. Looks great!

[borschwanger]

i just got my beta 4 campaign rolling...are they compatable?

and how do heretics come about. do they spawn randomly as well as have random holy men change *in addition to failed denouncements. i had a chosen one priest come from basic theologians guild and the following turn he was nowhere to be found but there was a heretic in the same area with the same level piety. thing is it was a region with like 98% catholic. i dunno found it odd prolly nothing you had to do with?

also. i had a messedupedness with fighting a rebel army. it took additional time to bring up the battle screen and then when i was loading it the screen turned black and i couldnt do anything so i had to restart. ill pm log but i dunno if they are related because timestamp seems off..

^make that 100%

hmm i think ill start over again then heh why not. i just have to figure out what faction i havent been yet and go with them...
596kbs...thats nice

[Averroës]

Beta 4 games aren't compatible with the latest beta 5 because of the new provinces. You can just keep playing beta 4 or start over with a brand new campaign in beta 5.

[Baeksen]

Thanks for uploading beta 5 to filefront, now I will skip my homework and do some gaming .

Thanks again Torn

[Averroës]

After fiddling around with the desc_strat.txt file for a bit, I found better spots for the problem resources in the HRE, moving them away from the rivers.

I changed the following resources:

wine at 229,228 to 229,227 (wine by Hohenstaufen)
timber at 246,274 to 247,275 (timber by Hamburg)
timber at 255,265 to 257,265 (timber by Magdeburg)
wool at 255,262 to 253,262 (wool by Madgeburg)
sugar at 131,131 to 128,131 (thanks, Lopus!)

I also moved the Turkish starting spy, imam and diplomat closer to Baghdad.

Sundak al Hasan to 472,125 (spy)
Kilij Murat to 480,136 (diplomat)
Baraka to 490,130 (imam)

If only the rest of modding M2TW were this easy!

I've attached my new desc_strat.txt with the above changes if anyone wants to use it. Just copy it over the old file in the directory The_Long_Road_Beta/data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign/

[Lopus]

Thanks for the file update Averroës.

Edit 1: Thought you might like a corrected vnv description. Fixed up Jerusalem and the description for the Jedda2.

Edit 2: Also, the sugar resource in the Iberian peninsula (131,131) is inaccessible, you might want to edit that in your file to (128,131) and then repost it above to not waste space on the server.

[tornnight]

@borschwanger
Heretics spawn randomly. Your priests will convert to them.

The log you sent me doesn't show anything out of the ordinary.

@Averroës
@Lopus
Excellent guys. I'll incorporate those changes in the next version.

I'll also attempt to address the mountain pass issue.

Heraldry and Titles are definately things that could use some attention.
Any help is always appreciated.

[onefistedboxer]

Nooooo, ive just finished putting dismounted order knights and burreks new units into beta 4 - have you altered the building edu.

Good work on quick beta releases though.

Now im really anticipating the new units in the building edu!

[tornnight]

Yep there were changes.

[Condottiere SOG]

Tornnight, how about Naples port on the west side?

[tornnight]

Hmm? I don't understand.

[Forral]

The port of the Sicilian city Naples is quite far away from the city itself; to the north of the city, leading up towards the sea northeast of Italy, as opposed to southwest where the city actually is.

-Forral-

[Averroës]

Thanks for the headsup on that sugar, Lopus. I thought I'd found them all. Blame my aging eyes.

New attachment uploaded with the sugar corrected. I'll keep it updated as necessary.

The post with the attached descr_strat.txt file is here.