MTW2: Kingdoms Grand Campaign MOD

[Monte Carlo]

Despite loving the Total War series, the only mods I've ever really used are Rome: Total Realism and the Retrofit Mod for MTW2.

 

I'm now using the MTW2: Kingdoms Grand Campaign Mod (hereafter referred to as "The Mod" for brevity). This is by a chap called BossDave, and kudos to him because is really is rather good. In fact, it's better than that... it's the game I really wanted MTW2 to be after Kingdoms came out. Although Kingdoms is good, it's really four large mods bundled together. Not allowing the improvements to convert into the vanilla game seemed a bit, well, crap. As a Creative Assembly fanboy I was upset.

 

In a nutshell, the creator has decided to apply the best bits of Kingdoms to the vanilla MTW2 Grand Campaign without unbalancing or spoiling the spirit of the original. In this he has done extremely well. All the units from Kingdoms are there, plus new banners / titles for your generals (a la MTW1) as well as new regions and factions with the "big map" modification. The mod starts in 1180, is about 600 turns long and allows you to play as the Teutonic Knights, Jerusalem, Antioch as well as Ireland and Lithuania. The Papacy doesn't like making allies with you, the diplomacy is much tougher.

 

I've started a game as England (Hard/Hard) and I'm immediately plunged into a battle of survival with the Irish and Scots invading and trying to make an alliance with France. It's very tough, but in a fun way. Ireland has four or five regions, Wales is now two (Cardiff / Canearvon) and Scotland is bigger. The pace of the game is slower and more considered.

 

In all, it rocks and is very stable. No crashes or obvious bugs yet - just follow the instructions carefully.

 

You can find it HERE.

 

Cheers

 

MC

[Pidesco]

Sounds good. I might just give it a go in a few weeks. Does the mod change Portugal in any way?

[Rosbjerg]

I was looking for a good mod for quite some time, but I gave up.. This covers some of the ground.

 

Thanks for the find MC!

[Monte Carlo]

I don't know about Portugal TBH, the readme is pretty sketchy. There's almost certainly more regions than before (I just bumped into Utrecht, for Chrissakes, en route to Lithuania on a Crusade).

 

As England, on H/H it's going to take easily 70+ turns to take out the Scots & Irish. There's a "rush to the walls" feature whereby civilians form ersatz milita to defend their city. For example, I put a full stack army on Edinburgh, garrisoned by a few units of highlanders and archers. Suddenly, there's a full stack of one and two chevron pikemen etc. Hmmm.

 

It's realistic, i.e. to win a siege you need 2:1 manpower advantage. I've decided to give myself a break and try out some Medium Campaign / Hard Battles options instead!

 

It's very addictive, like playing a new game in fact. It does for MTW2 what Total Realism did for Rome in my humble, and then some.

 

Cheers

MC

[Pidesco]

Would you mind starting the game with Portugal and checking out the differences to vanilla? Or perhaps take some screenies.

[Rosbjerg]

I'll be trying it in the morning, if MC haven't responded by then, I'll post some screenies for ya Pidesco.

[Pidesco]

Thanks, Rosbjerg!

[Rosbjerg]

just tried it actually..

 

I never played Portugal, but here are some screenshots - you can make out for yourself if there is any difference.. I've noticed that there are some more towns and provinces (based on the avaiable targets in the crusade section). But I didn't try it out further.

 

The map is very different though and not so pretty imo. It's bigger sure, but the Alps look wierd for instance.. minor annoyances though and the added content surely outweighs it (I hope)

 

if you want some specific shots just write it here and I'll post it tomorrow.

[Pidesco]

It seems like the provinces were fixed. Portugal no longer controls the province of Aragon.

 

Have the names of the generals been changed?

 

Thanks again!

[Rosbjerg]

They all looked very Iberian.. Like J

[Pidesco]

Well you know my real name, so you should know that's not the right spelling.

[Monte Carlo]

OK, here is the Portuguese order of battle / situation at Turn One (1180 AD). Note that this is for a game on Medium / Medium difficulty settings, it might well be different if you play at harder levels.

 

REGIONS:

 

Lisbon (Capital)

 

King Afonso* (complete with The Crown of Galicia and Portugal - +1 Command / +2 Defence / +3 Authority / +2 Law)

 

Garrison: Some spears and crossbow units and a squadron of feudal knights

 

Oporto

 

Johao Enriques

 

Garrison: Some spears and crossbow units, another captain is lurking nearby with some Jinettes

 

Other Units

 

Prince Sancho (faction heir) with three milita spear untis and two corssbow units

 

Princess Maria Henriques (three hearts)

 

One spy, one Cardinal but I couldn't see a diplomat!

 

Of note is that resource-wise, Portugal only has three tin mines and some marble. It's also flanked by Spain and the Moors, both in a more favourable strategic position!

 

Hope that is of some help.

 

* Bearing in mind that we are dealing with ruthless Medieval tyrants, all of the monarchs in the mod seem to start with pretty impressive stats and are accomplished warriors.

 

Cheers

MC

[Pidesco]

Johao? The little forkers.

 

 

Well, thanks MC That was just what I wanted to know. I'm guessing that that mod which changes leader's names works with this mod.

 

Edit: Is Kingdoms required for this to work?

[Monte Carlo]

Yes, it ports all those features across. You also need the Retrofit mod.

 

Kingdoms is already bargain bin and worth it for the new material, especially The Crusdades campaign and the Americas (which is awesome). This mod greatly expands the New World section of the vanilla game too. Am looking forward to storming the Americas with the Royal Navy in the late 1400's!

 

I'm not very technical but I followed the instructions and it took me five minutes and worked first time out of the box. One of the things I'm most impressed about is mod stability and lack of bugs - I've found one minor one that mucks up a character name on floating text - very small beer given the scope of this piece of work.

[Bartimaeus]

This is really what I was looking for before, thank you very much,

[Tigranes]

Hrm. My copy of MTW2 is gathering dust and I never got Kingdoms - mainly due to the fact that I didn't think they would ever be able to fix the two gamekilling (for me) issues of fragmented stacks running haywire and generally poor AI in diplomacy/combat. It's sad because in all TW games there are great mods like this one that improve on almost everything, but usually can't touch AI. Is that true in this case again?

[Moatilliatta]

Stainless Steel and Deus Lo Vult are two mods which I'm quite sure has some AI modification and are quite good if you can get past the difficulty (made by hardcore people who make mods specifically for hardcore people = really hardcore mods). I've played both but had to mod DLV so that it was playable by me who really suck at managing economies.

 

I wasn't attacked by the AI only to get a peaceoffer the next day last time I played DLV so it could be what you need.

[Bartimaeus]

Is it me, or is this mod laggy as heck? My original versions run absolutely fine on medium graphics, 60-80FPS.

 

However, when running this, loading times take up to at least twenty five times as much time, it's really laggy, and when I try to move a character, it gets stuck.

[Tigranes]

I don't mind 'hardcoreness', what I hate is when I can tell the AI is making things easier for me, or they are so stupid it doesn't make sense. I'd rather it be so difficult that I cheat my resources up, then go up against superior tactics, than the other way round.

 

DLV looks pretty nice, really got to check on some of these mods again when I have a better PC.

[Moatilliatta]

DLV has some aspects like how generals in the field cost money for being outside a castle or city and how it costs a set amount of money to besiege cities or castles each day that I personally don't find working very well and I disabled them. I also disabled the ahistorical events of the invasion fo the americas.

 

It isn't particularly hard to change and the mod works quite well without those aspects.

 

The AI has to have been changed in some way since I've noticed that the crusades targets are actually defended properly in this mod and together with the garrison changes (low tier troops spawn when AI attack AI city/castle or when player attack AI city/castle) it usually takes the AI at least two armies (from the same country) to conquer Cairo or Jerusalem. The AI would always abandon cruades targets in vanilla leaving it to the first army to get there.

 

Edit: Yay, managed not to do a double post when the board screwed up.

Edited June 22, 2008 by Moatilliatta