Lands to Conquer Gold addon

Overview

Lands to Conquer is a mod that is aimed at improving the gameplay of Medieval II: Total War.

For those of you who have played the mod before, Gold is basically a refined version of 4.1, featuring fixes for the few bugs in 4.1, and a redone Campaign AI that i've made from scratch. I've also improved the Battle AI.

The Gold version of the mod uses the Kingdoms expansion to add in new features and other things to improve the mod. Boiling oil, controllable reinforcements, unit balance, new rams and many other things from the expansion are added into LTC. LTC Gold also takes advantage of new modding possibilities available in the expansion to enhance the mods gameplay.

It also features improved Battle and greatly improved Campaign AI that has been redone from sratch to provide better battles and an enhanced campaign experience. The AI is also used in Stainless Steel 5.1.

And also whilst it uses the Kingdoms.exe, it does not modify the Kingdoms campaigns, the mod just uses the .exes to bring over more features to the mod as it has it's own campaigns.

Find previews of the mod here:
Twcenter.net

Features

The big feature in Lands to Conquer is of course it's campaigns. It gets rid of the tutorial and Grand Campaigns from Medieval II: Total War, and instead replaces them with 6 others.

The Early, High and Late Era campaigns based on the Grand Campaign map from Medieval II: Total War are copied from the system in the original Medieval Total War. These provide campaigns starting in 1080, 1210 and 1320 respectively.

There are also The Hundred Years War, Italian City States and Reconquista campaigns featuring blown up parts of the Grand Campaign map. These regional campaigns feature more focused and diverse gameplay, and each one plays out differently and so compliment the campaigns based on the Grand Campaign map.

Installation Instructions:

You must have Medieval II: Kingdoms installed for Lands to Conquer Gold to work.

The installer will automatically find your Medieval II: Kingdoms folder, but if you want to you can change the directory for the mod to be installed into.

You can then run the mod from the desktop shortcut, Medieval II Lauincher, or from the start menu.

If you have Steam you will need to use the Medieval II Launcher to run the mod.

You can also install Lands to Conquer Gold over Lands to Conquer 4.0 or 4.1.

Unfortunately as i have the English version of the game, people with non-English versions may end up with some language problems.

Feature List:

The Campaigns
-Early, Late and High Era campaigns set on the Grand Campaign map. All start at different dates: Early 1080, High 1210, Late 1321. The factions in each campaign have different territories, different alliances and wars at the start. Settlement names also vary from Era to Era.

-Hundred Years War (1337 - 1450) : map featuring England, France and Scotland on an enlarged map focusing on that area. In this campaign it's all about war, and the gameplay of the campaign will be quite fast paced and a challenge to complete on Very Hard. There is little use for diplomacy in this campaign as all the factions hate each other. Finances are also quite tight. So you should have only a few stacks going around fighting battles and assaulting castles because of your low finances, and they will be assaulting probably because you'll be a bit pushed to meet the victory conditions near the end. The campaign is just 75 turns long to take 20 provinces. But it works well, and you can as always play beyond the end date. This campaign will be especially tough as the English, and easiest as the French.

-Reconquista (1146 - 1280) : Has Spain, Moors and Portugal on a blown up map of Spain. This campaign will last longer than the HYW campaign, and you'll have to take fewer provinces so will be slower paced. But there will be more emphasis on religion. With the increased effect of religious unrest in LTC, and this campaign focusing on the wars between the Christians and Moors in Iberia, use of priests/imans to convert the populations in provinces could be key to victory, otherwise the religious unrest could seriously hamper you. The 3 factions in it also have very similar fighting styles with good skirmishing light infantry and cavalry and a core of heavy cavalry and infantry. Once again with the factions not getting on very well with one another diplomacy will not be much use.

-Italian City States (1280 - 1450) : Venice, Milan, HRE, Sicily, Hungary and Papal States(unplayable) fight it out on an enlarged Italy map. The campaign with the most factions and least provinces, it is also the longest. There will be a clear cut superpower at the start, the HRE, but they will be disliked by the Pope so won't have things all their way. The smaller nations(Venice, Milan, Hungary) will be too weak at first to take on the HRE so getting in the Popes good books and using diplomacy well will help them towards victory. In the south Sicily will be large but weak, and will have to pass through Papal lands if it marches up mainland Italy. There will be more emphasis on city troops as those are the Italian factions specialities, and on diplomacy at first and conquest later.

Battlemap
-Improved AI coupled with a completely redone unit balance results in more challenging battles, and battles that feel more like the ones in the original Medieval: Total War.
-Terrain and weather also play more importance in battles.
-Boiling oil.

Battlemap AI
-Improved AI flanking.
-Improved AI in sieges.
-AI more aggressive in certain situations in field battles.
-AI uses skirmishers better.

Campaign AI
-Stronger alliances, and allies which help each other more. This results in alliance blocs forming which also change over the course of the game.
-More logical changes to faction standings. So you and the AI will no longer always end up terrible and untrustworthy.
-More logical diplomacy, so it is now a more useful tool in the campaign.
-Rarer Catholic - Islamic alliances.
-Better AI sense of survivability. AI factions are more likely to want peace/vassal if being beaten/beaten badly.
-Better AI garrisoning settlements, and use of forces to guard it's borders.
-More aggressive AI v Independent Factions(eg the rebels from vanilla), so the AI expands much better early on and so the AI can create powerful nations.
-Better AI invasions. It will now build up more before attacking, and attack with more stacks, and stacks which have more units in them.
-Catholic factions less likely to attack each other, but still plenty of wars going on to give that Total War and Medieval experience.

Campaign map
-Campaign is 1.5 years per turn and so is longer than normal M2TW, and population growth, income and building times/costs have been changed in line with this.
-Increased effect of religious unrest, corruption and other factors mean that religion is more important and taking care of your characters.
-The difference between cities and castles has been more emphasised by increasing the number of recruitment slots in castles and free upkeep slots in cities, making cities make more money but buildings in cities more expensive, and troop producing buildings in castles are cheaper.
-Guilds have been chaged so there is more variety in the Guilds you get offered, and the bonuses they give.
-Fight more diversly named independent factions who replace the rebels.http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=113894
-More historical province names to add more depth to the map.
-Teutonic order family system implemented for Holy Roman Empire and Venice.
-Forts which can have 2 units free of upkeep and cost more but are not permanent.
-New event messages when a faction gets a new leader.

Change List:

Battlemap:
-Unit stats taken from Medieval II: Kingdoms.
-Tweaked and improved ai and ai formations.
-Improved balance of missile units through their accuracy.
-Cavalry units made smaller and so are now more manouverable.
-Cavalry less effective in woods.
-Cavalry made slighty faster.
-Halbers and Pikemen march at same speed as other infantry.
-Increased effect of heat on western units.
-More varied speeds betwen units.
-Battles are slightly slower paced.
-13 new custom battle maps. Twcenter.net

Campaign Map:
-1.5 Year per turn, and dates shown on campaign map again
-Building construction times and cost increased so as to fit in best with 1.5 year per turn campaign.
-Unit recruitment changed. Units now replenish slower and elite units have smaller recruitment pools. Also units no longer recruited from walls or from castle upgrade buildings.
-AI money script added in that scales according to difficulty. Ai only gets money boosts on H and VH difficulties, and then more on VH than on H. The money boost is also subtle and helps make the ai more challenging.
-Tweaks to Guilds which result in more varied Guilds in the campaign. There will no longer be the Thieves Guild spam the ai does in vanilla.
-English Armoured Sergeants, Dismounted Broken Lances, Dismounted Gothic Knights and Dismounted Mongol cavalry units added into the campaign
-AI recruits better armies. They are more balanced and have more higher tier units in them.
-More variance in the date at which the Mongols and Timurids appear.
-Merchants make more money.
-Inquisitors made less powerful.
-Increased movement distance for armies and agents.
-More recruitment slots in castles.
-More free upkeep slots in cities.
-Recruitable generals(including dismounted generals for some western factions).
-Some unused dismounted merc units added into the campaigns
-Pirate and Rebel spawn rates reduced.
-New population levels required for each level of settlement.
-Distance to captial penalty increased slightly.
-Religious Unrest increased.
-Corruption increased.
-Income from trade increased, and population growth from trade decreased.
-Population growth from farms increased.

Graphical:
-37 new loading screens, a new splash screen and menu background.
-New faction selection maps and radar maps all campaigns.
-Castle models from Britannia campaign added for Catholic and Orthodox factions.
-Interface from Crusades campaign given to Muslim factions.
-Menu text brightened a bit to make it stand out more on the new background.
-Several new grass textures from Kingdoms added to mod.
-Flags no longer bounce when unit selected.

Credits:
A big thanks to the following modders who helped with the mod:

Wilddog - for making all the maps for me, a truly amazing mapper.
Jason Turnbull aka Palamedes - for his great help with unit rebalancing.
Unspoken Crusader - for use of parts of his Custom Campaigns and Retrofit mods.
Garnier - with his help providing info from Medieval Total War.
CavalryCmdr - from Total War Heaven for his excellent campaign AI info thread.
alpaca - for his help with my scripting questions.
joerd9 - for help with some historical info.
lawngnome - for helping with the edits to unit recruitment and settlement mechanics.

A big thanks to DrJambo, Klink, Quark, delra and others who helped me to improve the mod with their suggestions and discussions.

Another big thanks to the fans of the mod who through their feedback helped me to constantly refine the mod to make it the best it can be.

Thanks to Wikipedia for some of the historical info.

And of course huge credit to The Creative Assembly for making the Total War series.