Rise of Three Kingdoms Version 6.2 (Huangchu) Update news

Greetings once again, everyone.

As had been stated previously by me, version 6.0 (and the subsequent v6.1 update) was fully intended to be the very end of the mod's development cycle and I was totally content with where the mod stood in terms of it's finalized content. In fact, I had rather been enjoying not actively modding anymore, as well as all of the free time I now found myself with. However, with the discovery of a game-breaking bug in the v6.1 Update, I couldn't just let such linger and felt it my obligation to have an official patch to clean up the issue. But while the bug fix itself was easy and small, I decided to put together some more meaningful content for a proper update to the mod. The more I started digging around, the more things I found that could be fixed, cleaned up, polished, or overhauled. In no time at all, me wanting to produce a "meaty" update became a much more in-depth and extensive project than I had originally intended. And so, here we are with the new v6.2 Update.

Throughout the entirety of the mod's existence, there has only been one "culture" amongst all of the factions. Culture is a technical term for Medieval II Total War, specifically regarding the varying of UI elements, portraits, look of settlements on the campaign map, and settlement battle maps for factions of different cultures. For this update I decided to create entirely new cultures, so that the different cultures can have unique-looking settlements on the campaign map. Specifically there is the Korean (Goguryeo), Hundred Yue (Nanman), Mountain Yue (Shanyue), and Hu (Xianbei) in the 194 campaign, and the Qiang (Liangzhou) in the 190 campaign. There are not different UI elements for each culture (because that type of 2D art is not my forte) and there is also not different battle maps for each new cultures' settlements (that is too huge of a project at the moment); all cultures will still use the default Chinese battle maps. With that said, here is a progression of the new Hundred Yue settlements from (L to R) town to huge city and following that is an example of the new huge city model for the Han Chinese

Along with the major changes in campaign settlements and culture, we were also fortunate to be given use of the incredibly awesome trees from the yet-to-be-released 'Princes, Kings and Heroes' mod by makanyane and wilddog. While there is a wide-variety of trees available, many were not suitable for the climates or biomes that this mod covers, and so only specific trees from PKH were selected for our climates, making modifications and changes where needed or necessary. Their work is truly amazing and the trees they produced are indescribably better than anything else that has ever been produced by the M2TW modding community. Honestly, words cannot do justice to the brilliance of mak and wilddog's work, so a screenshot is definitely needed to display their work. For an example of this, below is an image of our existing city-size Han Chinese settlement (with fixed wall textures) nestled up to a small patch of autumn forest, then a screenshot of the deciduous forests of western Jing meeting the tropical jungles of northern Nanzhong in the winter-time months.

While the changes to the campaign map are perhaps the biggest and most obvious, there is a fairly large list of fixes, adjustments, and changes for this update. One of the more tedious was completely overhauling 'heat fatigue' ratings and ground type combat bonuses for all units, so that now units from the north and south of China will have advantages and disadvantages in both the terrain and climate they fight in. Just one example is that northern troops will suffer extra fatigue in the south, while southern units will have combat penalties in the snow. Along with those changes to the battlefield, nearly every terrain texture on the battlefield have been updated, along with the inclusion of new voices for over 30 heroes when selecting their unit in battle. There was also some improvements to the models of a few units, namely the bodyguards and light-tier units of the Shi Clan (Nanyue), giving them improved uniformity and quality matching those of other factions, as well as some minor improvements to the Xiliang Cavalry and Energetic Tiger unique units. As I mentioned before, the changes for this update are fairly extensive, and far too much to explain here, so please check out the complete changelog on the update's download page for a full list of changes. And with that, here is a screenshot of the improved Xiliang Cavalry as they charge into battle.

The Version 6.2 (Huangchu) Update can be downloaded here and has instructions on how to properly install the patch (point installer at Medieval II Total War folder).

IMPORTANT NOTE: You must have the Rise of Three Kingdoms v6.0 Full Release installed prior to installing this update. This update is NOT save-game compatible (will break saves).

Happy gaming!