Empire Mod Questions & Recommendations

[IBSXYPNTS]

You mentioned AI factions not accepting peace. You might want to try my More reasonable diplomacy mini-mod.

Sorry if this is not the appropriate place for this.

Thank you very much! + Rep for being so helpful! I am horrible with newer TW games mods however, I downloaded the Zip and have 7zip. However I extracted the file for reduced and it didnt seem to change anything when I copy pasted the extracted file into ETW/data. This is only in a save game mind you, but I am really bad with zip files sometimes. For instance it didnt seem to need to be unzipped only extracted and I am not sure if that is the same thing.

[Alwyn]

You're welcome. People normally ask questions about how particular mod work on mod threads, so I'll reply there (link).

[apostrophefz]

Hey all.

I'd like to ask two things:
is there a mod for character traits? Compared to Medieval 2, the generals and agents are SO uninteresting!
is there a soundtrack overhaul for the campaign? I think half of the time it's that mild choir playing, or the pipes from the Britannia M2TW campaign (I'm playing United Provinces, did the dutch play pipes for god's sake?).
Thanks in advance.

[Bran Mac Born]

There is a soundtrack overhaul I made for Darthmod-try it out.

[apostrophefz]

Me again. I'm playing Darthmod, and I'm 4 years into the Ottoman campaign. Is there a overhaul mod for turkish campaign background music? All those hapsichords playing are fine and dandy but in the long run, I prefer to get into the culture I'm playing. and will be playing for 190 turns more.

[pomse]

Hi guys, I have played La montée de l'Empire as Denmark and taken all europe. Then I heard about the map was bigger in empire total war and I have always thought the map was to small in Napoleon Total war. What mod is the best for Empire total war as Denmark with correct history and correct units and ships ?

[Sirlion]

The map is bigger, yes, but the time frame is different. I think the only mod that currently has a great amount of units and quite correct historical uniforms that is actually complete, to my knowledge, is Imperial Destroyer.

[pomse]

Thanks I will try to learn some more about this mod

[Goutlard]

The map is bigger, yes, but the time frame is different. I think the only mod that currently has a great amount of units and quite correct historical uniforms that is actually complete, to my knowledge, is Imperial Destroyer.

I do most disagree with the historical uniforms part, found so many innacuracies, and oddities (Immortals as a Persian Unit even).
However, I would still agree with it. It's awesome, large, and expansive. Adds tons of new units, improves gameplay and so on.

I would, if you are interested in realistic combat, recommend you Empire Realism, which is difficult, but much closer to reality than vanilla E.T.W.

If you are interested in gameplay, either Darthmod, for the well-balanced and rounded gameplay and units, or Imperial Destroyer, for the sheer scale and awesomeness of some units.

Historically accurate uniform-wise, it was Imperial Splendour that seemed to be doing the best job, as well as in many other domains. However, this great mod seems to have slowed down significantly.

[Sar1n]

Or you can simply patch up your own submod compilation. I have tried all major mods for ETW and found something annoying in every one of them. Currently I'm running Bran's AI with AUM, No Forts mod, all minor factions unlocked, 3TPY, UI and battlefield effect packs ripped from Imperial Destroyer, and a touch of my own editing (cost of all pack units reduced to 100 in custom battle, so I can actually field full armies similar to campaign, unfortunately my attempts to do same for vanilla, and take platoon fire away from them failed so far).

It's easier than it looks...I went from 0 modding ability to this within few hours of reading tutorials and downloading few useful tools.

[PikeStance]

I took the same path as you Sar1n. I had zero modding knowledge and ability. I made a bunch of suggestions on what people should do, someone finally told me to do it myself and I did. I went from annoying people with my questions and problems to solving problems and answering questions.

There aren't any "perfect" mods for ETW, but if we ever complete version 3 for IS, it will certainly be the closets thing to it.

[Vanders]

Is there a mod that restores cut content to the game such as cancelled units?

[Alwyn]

Yes, several mods do that. I'm fairly sure that Hosted Mods such as Darthmod and Imperial Splendour make cancelled units available (they're in the Hosted Mods forum). They also make changes to vanilla game-play.

If you prefer vanilla game-play (or to use your preferred combination of smaller mods), then the Additional Units Mod is a great choice, offering both cancelled units and new units. If you like playing minor and emergent factions, you might want to try my Minor and Emergent Factions Unit Pack. You can find the Additional Units Mod and my unit pack in the 'Unit Packs and Stats' area of the Mod Threads forum.

[skillfultree]

" I have tried all major mods for ETW and found something annoying in every one of them"

This so much. I've only played Darthmod and now Imperial destroyer, but they both have such big positives and negatives for me. I love gameplay options like grenades, platoon fire and fire n' advance. I like using Trade Ships as well, sadly darthmod removes a lot of these things.

Imperial destroyer has amazing Napoleon graphics, aesthetics and NEW REGIONS. But no fire drills, priests or defence barricades (I also miss Quebec, but I'm glad to see Serbia make an appearance). I'm not even sure its historically accurate or not. Both mods have a lot to offer but they have drawbacks.

I think i'll have to go with what you've done Sar1n and start to mod myself.

[Jango40]

" I have tried all major mods for ETW and found something annoying in every one of them"

This so much. I've only played Darthmod and now Imperial destroyer, but they both have such big positives and negatives for me. I love gameplay options like grenades, platoon fire and fire n' advance. I like using Trade Ships as well, sadly darthmod removes a lot of these things.

Imperial destroyer has amazing Napoleon graphics, aesthetics and NEW REGIONS. But no fire drills, priests or defence barricades (I also miss Quebec, but I'm glad to see Serbia make an appearance). I'm not even sure its historically accurate or not. Both mods have a lot to offer but they have drawbacks.

I think i'll have to go with what you've done Sar1n and start to mod myself.

Just mod Darthmod, adding features back in is much, much easier than creating everything from scratch. The .pack files are also neatly organized so it's not too hard to mod. (Btw, you can enable Grenades in the lanucher)

[PikeStance]

There is no better way sometimes, but to go the "a la carte" route. There are also many tutorials and many modders are willing to help you with any questions.

[Vanders]

Alwyn, you're all over the forum being helpful. Speaking of mods by you, I recently downloaded your mod that allows campaign units, such as the French Marines, to be recruited in the Grand Campaign. Do you think this will be compatible with AUM and your emergent factions mod?

Last question regarding the user.empire_script (which I am using because the mod manager wont work properly), if I type in a mod's .pack file below another will that bottom one take priority over the higher one?

[Alwyn]

Hi Vanders, thank you for the kind comment. The New Colonial & Revolutionary Units Pack (which allows French Marines and other Road to Independence units to be recruited in the Grand Campaign) might be compatible with the AUM and my Minor and Emergent Factions Unit Pack - I have not tried combining them. However, I have a couple of warnings:-

- The game has maximum number of units which can be recruitable in any one region. If we use more than one unit pack at once, then we run the risk of exceeding this limit. When the limit is exceeded, the recruitment panel for that region goes blank - you cannot recruit units there. This is most likely to happen fairly late in your campaign, when technology has unlocked units such as grenadiers and light dragoons. In other words, after you have played decades of a campaign, you can suddenly lose the ability to recruit units in important cities, such as your capital.

- I tried creating an expansion pack for my Minor & Emergent Factions Units Pack, to unlock more units. However, when I used the (unreleased, experimental) expansion pack together with my Minor & Emergent Factions Units Pack, the campaign crashed in around 1709. I do not know the cause of this crash, so obviously I have not released the expansion pack. I have not had this problem when using the Minor & Emergent Factions Units Pack together with the optional add-on to the Minor & Emergent Unit Pack which adds ships - those two files can be safely used together, in my experience. In other words, if you use more than one unit pack and the game starts, this does not guarantee that it will keep going without crashing.

For these reasons, I do not recommend combining unit packs, unless each pack only adds one or a few units - or unless you are willing to give up campaigns which become unplayable, so that you can learn which unit packs can be combined safely. (For example, you could safely combine the Expatriate Infantry Unlock mod, which only unlocks one land unit, with a version of the Fourth Rate Frigate Unlock mod which only unlocks one type of ship). Of course, other people might give you different advice - in fact, I would be interested in hearing people's experience of using and combining mods which add units. That might help me to understand why some unit packs can be combined without a problem, while other combinations of unit packs cause the game to crash.

You asked whether the lower files in the user.empire_script file take priority over files listed higher up. I think they do (I am not sure - you could try asking one of the people who mod Imperial Splendour, because Imperial Splendour's mods are activated using a user script file). (Unfortunately, I have not succeeded in activating mods for Empire Total War using a mod manager either. Most of my mods are 'movie'-type mods - this means that they do not need to be activated by a user script file.)

[Vanders]

Thank's for all your information and help Alwyn, I'll be doing some experimentation with unit packs to see what's what.

[Incendio]

Hello,

It's been a long time I haven't played Empire Total War and now I have installed again the game through Steam.

I am interested in 17th century and 18th century mods for this game. Can you recommend me a good mod (the bigger the better) which contains more and detailed units of this era?

Thank you in advance.