Extended Grand Campaign

[JonR]

Extended Grand Campaign
Requires Kingdoms

This mod adds many content from the Kingdoms campaigns into the grand campaign.
The installer will automatically check if you have Kingdoms installed and then install all necessary files.

Download links:
Version 0.5 full installer (Beta)


The mod at a glance:

• 5 new factions added to the Grand Campaign:
  
• Gatehouses now have boiling oil.
• Controllable AI reinforcements
• Hotseat Campaigns
• Kingdoms rebalancing
• Music from kingdoms added to the Grand Campaign
• Added in many units from Kingdoms

Full list of changes:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Campaigns
------------------------

Main
-------

- 4 new playable factions: Novgorod, Ireland, Lithuania and Norway (Teutonic Order not yet included)
- Hotseat Grand Campaign available under “Multiplayer”
- AI Reinforcements are now controllable
- Music from the various Kingdoms campaigns included
- New resources: weapons, honey and glassware
- Rework of the ground types and rivers in the Baltic
- New regions included for game balance: Cork, Stavanger, Kalmar, Lund, Visby, Twangste, Siauliai, Minsk, Velikeyi Luki

Events
-------

- Both Denmark and Norway can now form the Kalmar Union after the year 1250. This requires the key settlements of Kalmar, Stockholm, Visby and Helsinki. When either faction controls all of these settlements, all they have to do is kill the king of the opposing faction to annex the entire opposing faction and form the Kalmar Union
- Lithuania gets the option to convert to catholicism, and gain new technology with the sacrifice of their pagan temples, in the later half of the campaign
- Hanseatic League headquarters can be constructed in the key northern settlements of London, Antwerp, Novgorod, Visby, Riga and Hamburg. This oppurtunity will be given to the faction who holds more of these key settlements, after the year 1250, then the other factions
- Added in some fmv/events from the Crusades Campaign: Jerusalem Captured, Jihad Called and First Great Mosque



Historical, Custom and Campaign Battles
-----------------------------------------------

- New skies from Kingdoms added in
- A new custom battle from every kingdoms campaign to the main game selection: Flat Crusade, Beach Landing, Black Forest and Tikal Valley
- The Teutonic Order now replaces the Holy Roman Empire in the historical battle of Tannenberg
- NOTE: The battle of Hastings is now removed.

Tech Tree Rebalancing/Changes
-------------------------

- Kingdoms statistic rebalancing included (1.5 patch compliant)
- Irish Muire and Norwegian/Danish Sami Axemen are now availabe one tier later
- Lithuanian Bajorija are now recruitable from the third tier stables, rather then second tier shrines
- Aztecs now have the native building tree from the Americas campaign



Leader Campaign/Battle Models
-------------------------------

- Faction Leaders now have different campaign models to generals, making them easier to differentiate in campaign.
- Moorish, Turkish, Egyptian, Mongolian and Timurid Faction Leaders have a different battle model to generals aswell.



New Units
-------------------------------

- New World Cuirassers (England, France)
- Spanish Dragoons (Spain)
- Mangonel (Teutonic Order, Moors, Egypt, Turks)
- Greek Firethrower (Byzantium, Mercs, Rebels)
- Archontopoulai (Byzantium)
- Alamanoi (Byzantium, Mercs, Rebels)
- Pronoia Infantry (Byzantium)
- Byzantine Gunners (Byzantium)
- Ghulams (Egypt, Mercs, Rebels)
- Dismounted Ghulams (Egypt, Mercs, Rebels)
- Khassaki (Egypt)
- Sibyan al Khass (Egypt)
- Al Haqa Infantry (Egypt)
- Abid al Shira (Egypt)
- Mamluk Handgunners (Egypt)
- Hasham (Turks)
- Dismounted Hasham (Turks)
- Iqta'dar (Turks)
- Turkish Crossbowmen (Turks)
- Armenians of Cilicia (Mercs)
- Frankish Axemen (Mercs)
- Frankish Swordsmen (Mercs)
- Burgher Pikemen (Mercs)
- Prussian Archers (Mercs)
- Samogitian Axemen (Mercs)
- Sudovian Tribesmen (Mercs)
- Hornet Throwers (Mercs)
- Knights of Antioch (Catholic factions)
- Dismounted Knights of Antioch (Catholic factions)
- Seljuk Auxilliary (Catholic factions)
- Great Cross of Antioch (Catholic factions)
- Knights of Jerusalem (Catholic factions)
- Dismounted Knights of Jerusalem (Catholic factions)
- Maronites of Lebanon (Catholic factions)
- Great Cross of Jerusalem (Catholic factions)

Reassigned units:

- Knights Templar (Norway, Ireland, Hre)
- Knights Hospitaller (Norway, Hre)
- NOTE: Teutonic Knights removed from Hre

Screenshots:
Note: the mod is still in beta and these screenshots are definetly not final.


Custom battles:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Campaign map view:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Progress and updates:

I am currently looking for beta testers. If you're interested, please contact me through a private message.
This mod is a work in progress. I am still planning to add more kingdoms features to the Grand Campaign, so stay tuned!

[Balmung]

Lol I learn modding to make my own Ireland mod and then you come along the day I release my mod with something, that has everything I would ever want in a mod. Nice work man.

[edders]

Fantastic. I've been waiting for a 'vanilla' Grand Campaign mod for ages. I have a pretty good computer but all those giant maps that evreyone uses slows down the game quite a bit. No annoying supply traits and faux-civil war addons either Looking foward to this

Shame there's no Jerusalem/Antioch though. I guess it's a timeline thing?

[JonR]

I didn't add Antioch and Jerusalem because of stability.
When to many factions get added, menu crashes and the like start happening. I'm trying to avoid these.

But, I might allow some Antioch and Jerusalem units to be recruited by catholic factions that hold certain regions around antioch and jerusalem.
A lot like the system in the grand unit addon, I guess.

Edit:I'm putting a question mark behind Wales as a faction. Game stability seems to suffer. Other updates have been added to the first post aswell.

[Balmung]

When I added Wales to my Mod JonR it made no difference to the stability. The same with the BigMap version. Perhaps its your computer JohnR. if indeed it is a top of the range one then perhaps its BigMap itself or some other addition slowing down the game.

[JonR]

It's a known issue AFAIK.
After a certain amount of used faction slots, stability decreases.

But, I've just done some tweaking. Hopefully, this will improve stability!
...back to the testing!

[Balmung]

Ahh probaly why I did'nt notice this. Only added two factions. hehe thanks for the heads up.

[edders]

Oh, I see. Shame Out of interest, did you go down the route of replacing Saxons/Normans with the first two new factions?

[sinople]

you don't use the Grand Unit Addon mod ?

[JonR]

Nope, I'm basing it of the original unit addon, by Madrono.

Oh, I see. Shame Out of interest, did you go down the route of replacing Saxons/Normans with the first two new factions?

Yep.

[The Vandal Returns]

nice work, do you need any help with coding/scripting?

[JonR]

Nope. Everything is pretty much done there.
I'm currently working on the campaign map and fixing bugs.

[edders]

Bump for encouragement

[JonR]

Updated first post with a list of units that have been added.

I *have* been thinking about removing the ability to place wooden forts from generals and instead placing some stone forts on key strategic points. Perhaps an optional addon?

[Balmung]

Would'nt just changing the wooden fort strat map and battle models to Stone forts be better? or do you have some reservations about this?

[JonR]

That can't be done. It's a hardcoded problem that is supposed to be fixed in the upcoming Kingdoms patch.

[Balmung]

The strat map models can be changed though.

[asoiaf]

I've been waiting for a mod like this since Kingdoms was released. Keep up the good work.

[Dictator Crom]

Campaign map changes:

• Added new regions: 5 in the baltic area, 3 in scandinavia, 3 in the british isles.

Has anyone suggested changing the map in other areas?
including (based off the vanilla M2TW campaign):
-the Balkans: (I've always thought the Zabreb/Ragusa/Sofia/Budapest areas were poorly set up, including the lack of Belgrade [aka Beograd or many other pronunciations])
-Iberia: It took Spain (Castille&Leon) and Portugal how many hundred years to reconquer those TWO regions from the Almohads(Moors)? Also: Portugal NEVER EVER owned Pamplona, the region where the heart of the Basque culture is that not even Spain dominated till the 1500's(ish). Also: Toledo was the major city (Castle) in the area of Madrid; Madrid wasn't much more than a village till much later than 1080 (vanilla startdate). Maybe add the Azores as a region; Muslim raiders used the islands as a base to raid Iberia and France's southern coastline. (Malta would be cool too, but thats probably stretching it )
-Arabia/North Africa (maybe): the Jedda region owns ALL that land? Yes it is mostly desert, but it controls all the way up to the Euphrates River, which oddly enough has zero cities situated on it...
The same for Tripoli; its one settlement with a whole lot of land to keep an eye on. Maybe even Egypt and the areas the Moors start with could use another region added in to shrink some of those large regions.
-France (maybe) the northern 1/3rd of France has 6 settlements in it (if you include Bruges, while the southern 2/3rds has 4.

I'm a history major and the Total War series of games continue to intrigue me, and those are a some of the things that stuck out to me while playing Medieval 2. When I saw that you were editing the map, I couldn't resist throwing this in here.

[JonR]

Good question and suggestions!

I have been thinking about adding some more settlements in other areas aswell, but haven't done so.

I've definitely thought about splitting up the Jedda region. The various desert villages in the crusades campaign could be added in for that purpose.

I was also thinking about splitting up the Tripoli region and adding in Siwa (to the west of Cairo). Perhaps I'll add some more regions around the african settlements of the Moors aswell, as those are indeed very, very empty in comparison with the rest of the map.

As for Belgrade; I did indeed think about adding that city in to fill up some of the empty areas in the balkans, but I'm not 100% sure as I might have to add in another settlement in Greece for game balance.

You can definitely expect some new regions in some of those areas, but I'm trying to stay close to vanilla, so don't expect huge changes.