Articles - Empire II mod for Empire: Total War

Editors Choice

Welcome to the Editor's Choice awards for the 2023 Mod of the Year Awards, where we show recognition to the mods from the past year that we've found to be personally deserving of attention. We've chosen a series of award categories which range from best singleplayer mod, to multiplayer, to most anticipated and to several more unique and theme related categories.

It feels right, that in the same year Half-Life celebrates its 25th anniversary - a game that makes the most recent installment to it's single-player campaign playable by all is our selection. HL Alyx NoVR does exactly what it states, and for everyone who doesn't own a VR headset, we're thankful.

This mod really has done it all, and won a ton of accolades from us and the players throughout its journey. You could easily excuse the team for slowing down, but for the 6th year straight they've released a major update for all RTS fans to enjoy and delve deeper into Middle Earth than ever before.

Few games were more influential when they first launched, than the original Resident Evil, way back in 1996. So 27+ years on, its incredible that HD overhauls are coming out so players can relive the terrors in all their HD glory.

This mod stealth dropped a demo on us, and we've been eagerly following it's progress ever since. A complete overhaul of the default HL1 story, characters, weapons, locations and mechanics. Travel through time and explore unique locations - ranging from medieval castles to ancient underground temples, to sci-fi laboratories, futuristic cities and more. We can't wait to wreak havoc using the vast array of weapons on offer.

It's a mod not many will have encountered, but for those who play it - the tireless work from this team to bring all of the latest rosters and tournaments into FIFA Manager 14 has been going on for 9+ years straight. Serious commitment.

In 2023 v4 of this mod landed, and it now features a staggering 4500+ Units, 48 playable factions, 27 new cultures, and reworked and playable campaigns. It's polished and only getting better, and a must own for all Empire: Total War fans.

This mod is a faithful revival of an older M&B: Warband mod called "A House Divided" which seeks to revamp and bring all details in line with the civil war period. Featuring advanced formations and fire orders this mod is made for love of the game, for the history, and for the gaming community.

We're a sucker for anything featuring zombies - and this team has been updating this mod faster than the infected can take over the streets of New York City. Can't wait to see it continue to take shape and play as police forces, different military branches through the BlackWatch fictional story faction and usual survivors in main story campaign and additional missions.

When the year started, seeing Basketball being played in Doom was not on my bingo card, and yet here we are. The modding community never ceases to surprize and amaze, and we're thankful for it as this is one of those head scratches that must be played to be believed.

It feels odd to be eagerly anticipating a mod for a 17 year old game, and yet the team behind Dark Messiah: Co-op have managed to do that. I guess nostalgia is a powerful force when you're running a mod community like ModDB for 21+ years now. We're a sucker for the classic games, and love to see them remastered and have multiplayer / coop elements added in to heighten the experience. Looking forward to further updates!

The 2023 awards are proudly supported by mod.io. Launch an official mod community for your game with powerful moderation, discovery, events, marketplace and metrics systems, using our cross-platform mod SDKs and plugins for Unity and Unreal Engine. Interested in adding mods to your game and finding out more? Reach out for a demonstration.

What mods would you have picked given the chance? Let us know in the comments and get ready for the next announcement in a few days, the most anticipated mods and then the big one soon after that, the Top 10 Mods of 2023!

The 2023 Mod of the Year has just kicked off, so join us in celebrating some of the amazing creations released in the last 12 months and major modding news. Whether it was an amazing update to a long running total conversion mod, or a whole new overhaul for a classic game. This article is breaking down the biggest headlines for July, August, and September.

What mods did you enjoy the most and who will be getting your vote this year? Are there any other mods that did a major release in Q3 this year that we missed? Let us know in the comments! Otherwise - now is the time to get your votes in for the 2023 Mod of the Year.

Empire II 4.2: The Nine Years' War is out!

Now also available on MacOS and Linux

Hello everyone!

Today, the team is delighted to present to you the major 4.2 update of the mod.

The developers have completed an incredibly complex job, and not a single aspect of the mod was left without major bug fixes, rebalancing and overhauls. The complete changelog since version 4.0 is too long to present here in any sufficient manner. Anyone willing to read it, can find it provided in the archives or in our Discord channel.

1690 Campaign

The default campaign now starts in the year 1690 AD. Europe is torn apart once again by the Nine Years’ War, where Louis XIV of France, in a bold decision, began an invasion of the Rhineland territories. The invasion catalysed a chain of dramatic events which provoked a conflict involving every major European power of the time. All while the Ottomans - an informal ally of Louis - began their own grand offensive on Austrian soil, uniting against themselves The Holy League of states, unifying the military efforts of the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Republic of Venice and the ambitious Russian Empire. Now, it is up to you to decide the outcome of events, which have set the stage for the further developments of the dawning Age of Enlightenment.

The rosters, especially early and mid-early, underwent a major rework and clean-up to provide the best playing experience for the new starting era of gradual switch from pike and shot, relying on massed arquebus and cannon fire from the checker-board formations, to linear warfare with modern flintlock muskets, bayonets and standardised artillery.

In the startpos, Britain now starts allied to Savoy, and Austria is immediately at war with the Ottomans. All major startpos issues have been addressed, leading to a much-awaited increase in stability. The 1690 startpos is in an early phase of development, having little changes from vanilla, and is going to be improved further, building on the ongoing research of startpos modding led by Flavis of Pirates Über Alles, Ludde96 of PUA and Empire II and Erzya of Foothold in India.

Take note: the old 1700 startpos is presented as an option for those who wish to have a more vanilla-like campaign experience.

Improved unit rosters and battle mechanics

The rosters of all factions present in the game received a whole lot of balancing of stats, abilities and morale. Most important were the efforts undertaken towards trimming clutter - the work was greatly directed towards making sure the recruitment page would feel less overpacked, excessive and sometimes outright illogical. The mod in this field has taken great steps towards representing the strengths and fighting styles of each faction in a unique manner, while preserving a reasonable amount of historical detail. Ert and Massena777 did most of the heavy lifting on refactoring and rebalancing as well as cleaning up areas of recruitment, removing duplicates and in general bringing the huge variety of ETW II's units into a more uniform and usable state.

Expanding on unit stats and battle mechanics, these two also received a significant analysis and overhaul: the units are less prone to premature panic and would give more of a fight before running from overwhelming fire. The wide disbalance between some of the units has been toned down to make for a more equal fight. Era progression now plays an even more important role, with later muskets and rifles having increased range, accuracy and firepower in comparison to the early arquebuses and matchlocks. The factor of field artillery too will become more and more deadly over the length of a campaign, reflecting the real evolutions made in military technology and organisation, with certain units playing an increasingly more pivotal role on the battlefield.

BERTZ - The new campaign AI

The Grand Campaign now features BERTZ: The Bran-Ert-Erzya Campaign AI. Picking up from the works of Bran, the team was able to create a more dynamic, less predictable and boring AI, which brings a so-needed freshness and sense of action to every new campaign. The factions are more willing to make peace and start wars than they used to be in the previous versions of Empire II. Alliances are more likely to re-align, with the decision to help an ally in war becoming a more complex multi-factor choice that considers the current political situation, individual factions' profiles and balance of power, rather than simple faction strengths. Faction profiles also matter when making diplomatic decisions - maritime factions don’t mind fighting far away from home, while native Americans are hard-pressed to wage longer wars. The enemy fleets are more likely to launch naval invasions, especially on the short distances in the European-MENA theatre. Cultural unrest has also been toned down, and the AI’s invasion behaviour increased to make the major powers more aggressive and willing to expand.

Vétuste, our tester, describes one of his playthroughs as follows:

Playing as Great Britain.

In the year 1717, after beating the pirates into submission, and securing my North American territories, I looked to India, to gain a foothold and thus a naval network next to the East Indies trading theatre. Having taken Carnatica from a group of rebels, and establishing sovereignty over a portion of Southern India and Sri Lanka, I was attacked by a Mysore seeking to expel me from the subcontinent and secure the riches of the Tamil legacy for their own. Interestingly, the United Provinces refused to help me fight this invading Mysore and our alliance was broken. In the face of this betrayal, and on good terms already with the Catholic powers in Europe, a new alliance was formed (British, French and Spanish) against the new Dutch hegemony taking over the southern Half of the American theatre (the Dutch even controlled everything up to New Mexico).

Did I have to ally with the French and Spanish to beat the Dutch? Probably not; but the Dutch did take over basically all of South America, so I had a good excuse to just practice some good old-fashioned British containment procedures :^)

Take note: BERTZ is a completely open-source effort and is free to download and use by anyone in any way, with the only requirement being crediting Bran Mac Born, Ert, Erzya and Empire II testers.

MacOS and Linux compatibility and rollout model change

The mod is finally available for MacOS and Linux. The archive should be downloaded separately from ModDB files page. Most of the features in the Linux/MacOS versions of the mod are fully functional, except for VDM, which is designed to work with Windows.

Multiplayer campaign is not yet tested for MacOS/Linux and will probably only function when both players are using the same game version, with MacOS, Linux and Windows versions of the game - all considered different. For more information and further updates on multiplayer compatibility, please visit Ludde's Discord on Empire Total War multiplayer campaigns.

Moreover, from now on, the mod's rolling updates are going to be uploaded to the ModDB page rather than to one drive, to allow all subscribed users receive notifications about the new rolling updates and to reduce the effort to search for them outside ModDB.

What's next?

Much has been done - and much is going to be done further! The team is set to keep improving the campaigns and unit rosters, as well as balancing the core Paradox-style mechanics, such as Empire 2's eras system and related tech tree, and more will be done with regards to cultures and balancing any discrepancies with these ambitious new mechanics. The 1690 campaign will likely receive further diplomacy tweaks, region ownership changes and cosmetic fixes to give a more immersive and authentic feeling of stepping through one of the most important centuries of world history.

So stay tuned and, as always, have an enjoyable game!

Kudos to Vétuste for editing the article and to Ert, preacher and Tonnes for providing screenshots.

Known issues:

• The new regions in early campaign had to be scrapped: the startpos with added regions was inherently unstable, and there was no capacity to fix it. In distant future, a re-implementation of a stable version is possible.

DOWNLOAD

Total War: Warhammer 3, the threequel in the successful spin-off series based off of Games Workshop's fantasy line-up, has another DLC coming in April. Hot off the heels of another DLC, Immortal Empires, there's plenty of time to reacquaint yourself with Total War gameplay alongside these five awesome mods!

Empire Total War II - Extended

By ETWII_ModdingTeam

Years in the making, after the initial success of Empire Total War, players were presented Empire Total War II! Featuring thousands of new units, 39+ playable factions, in addition to reworks to existing factions, as well as new AI, a new projectile system deepening strategic choices, and new navy units for players to wage ocean combat.

The Elder Scrolls: Total War

By The Elder Scrolls: Total War mod team

"The Elder Scrolls: Total War" is a total conversion of Medieval 2 Total War - Kingdoms. It gives you a glimpse into the world of The Elder Sсrolls, as the head of one of the 20 factions fighting for dominance over Tamriel. The whole map of Tamriel is in your hands, and how you choose to fight for supremacy is up to you - whether to negotiate and use diplomacy towards victory, or take it by force.

DarthMod: Shogun II

By DarthMod Productions

The DarthMod series of mods continues to improve the AI and gameplay of Total War games. As always, the mod’s main scope is to destroy the “weak” arcade factors and replace them with realistic features. It is compatible with any DLC and campaign (Sengoku Period, Rise of the Samurai, Fall of the Samurai). Generally it improves every crucial gameplay factor while it stays close to the feel of the original game. It does not affect your game installation as you can enable and disable it via a special launcher application. An oldie at this point, but still worth a look for vanilla-favouring players!

The Fall of Yuan Empire - Total War

By xomatij551122

"The Fall of Yuan Empire - Total War" is a Chinese mod based on the Medieval 2 Total War engine. This mod is created by the Fengyun production group and is set in the late Yuan Dynasty. Players can choose to play as the faltering Mongol Empire (Yuan Dynasty) or establish the Ming Dynasty or play as any other historical figures to unify the country. The starting positions are filled with difficulties. Who can unify China and restore the realm?

Napoleonic Total War 3

By The Lordz Modding Collective

Napoleonic Total War III is the latest Napoleonic modification developed by The Lordz Modding Collective (LMC), based on Creative Assembly’s latest title Napoleon: Total War. NTW3 is an in-depth modification and the result of 4 years of development (since 2010), bringing players, as always, a highly historically accurate and breathtaking multiplayer experience.

Sounding The Horn

Total War: Warhammer 3 is the third in Creative Assembly's series of successful spinoff titles which feature Games Workshop's fantasy universe. This time visiting the impact of the Chaos Gods on the world and those whose sworn duty it is to safeguard against such evil, it steps things up a notch compared to its predecessors. Two DLC packs - Immortal Empires and Champions of Chaos - have launched already, each expanding the potential for warfare in the game. Game Director Rich Aldrich recently took to Twitter, though, and announced even more new content on the way for April.

Striking The Anvil

Warhammer 3 is another runaway success for Creative Assembly so far, and its dedicated fans have been foaming at the mouth for new content - especially as dataminer Mamba King found evidence of Chaos Dwarfs mentioned within the game's narrative. Whether they're the big surprise of April or not remains to be seen, but for Warhammer Fantasy fans, it's looking like a good spring.