Tsardoms Campaign Release news

After more than 12 years of development the team of Tsardoms Total War is proudly presenting the first full Campaign Beta v1.0

The campaign includes factions which have been painstakingly modeled to recreate the historical reality of the period 1345 to 1530. Many of the units have been made and remade several times by several of our members. We have tried to stay as close to historical reality as possible within game limitations and also gameplay considerations. Huge amounts of time and research have gone into creating the units, factions, unit descriptions and faction descriptions. We would like our mod to be used as a reference for the time period and be a fully playable historical simulation. That being said we are always open to criticism and will endeavour to fix any inaccuracies or any issues raised.

Installation

- Download the mod from the following link: Twcenter.net

- Unpack the mod in the Mods folder of your Medieval 2 Total War folder using the installer. PLEASE ENSURE YOU UNPACK IN THE MODS FOLDER NOT THE MAIN MEDIEVAL 2 FOLDER

- IMPORTANT: also add this hotfix which fixes the crashes with Bavaria

- Steam installation: follow the same instructions as above, than go into Steam right click on the Medieval 2 Kingdoms game, go to Properties, then go to Set Launch Options and replace what is there with the following --features.mod=mods/Tsardoms_beta-1.4
Basically for Steam the actual name of the Tsardoms folder and executable file must be there

Mod Features

Factions:

Catholic factions:
01. Duchy of Austria
02. Kingdom of Hungary
03. Republic of Ragusa
04. Republic of Venice
05. Republic of Florence
06. Republic of Genoa
07. Kingdom of Sicily (Naples)
08. Kingdom of Trinacria (Sicily)
09. Signoria (Duchy) of Milan
10. Swiss Confederacy
11. Duchy of Athens and Neopatria
12. Knights of Rhodes (Knights of St.John)
13. Duchy of Bavaria

Orthodox factions:
14. Tsardom of Bulgaria
15. Tsardom of Serbia
16. Princedom of Albania
17. Roman Empire - Imperial Regency of the Roman Empire
18. Principality of Wallachia
19. Principality of Moldova

Kristjani/Catholic factions:
20. Banate of Bosnia

Muslim factions:
21. Ottoman Empire
22. Karaman Beylik
23. Aydin Beylik
24. Golden Horde

Emergent/Non Playable factions:
25. Papacy
26. Timurids
27. Shadow Hungary
28. Shadow Serbia

Campaigns:

- Tsardoms historical campaign - starts 1345 and ends 1530 with all scripts activated
- Free campaign - sandbox campaign that starts in 1345 but with less scripts and with Papal States playable

Strategic Map Features:

- Completely new map of the Balkans, Anatolia and Italy with new textures, settlements and ports placed using satellite data, mountain passes, roads and rivers that will follow their real-life course, Danube river separates the map
- New strat map settlement models for all cultures
- New character models (captain, heir, leader as well as agents, diplomats, priests, bishops, assassins, princesses, heretics) for all factions
- New resource models
- Unique strat map models for important cities (Constantinopole, Turnovo, Buda, Vienna, Kronstadt, Cetatea Alba, Smyrna, Rhodes, Palermo, Rome, Florence, Milan, Genoa, Venice, Naples, Konya)
- New event pictures for all of the cultures
- New generic character images for all cultures
- Unique characters on the map at start date (Dusan IV of Serbia, Lajos the Great of Hungary, Basarab I of Wallachia, Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria and more)
- Unique character portraits for unique characters and heroes
- Unique landmark buildings in settlements with powerful effects (Tower of Galata, Fort Lovrijenac of Ragusa etc.)
- New building chains (Danube trade, feudal estates, mercenary barracks, agricultural improvements, jewish quarter etc.)
- New religion (krstjani of Bosnia with their own unique building chains and effects) as well as split between Avignon Papacy Catholics and Rome Papacy Catholics
- Permanent Stone Forts that will represent real fortified cities in the game map
- New ships for various factions (chaika, galea sottile, galea grossa etc) as well as new 3D ship models for each culture/faction group
- Biographies for a lot of the starting characters (hover mouse over the Biography trait of various rulers)
- New music for each culture or faction group specific to the period (optional)
- Native speech for Italian, German, Spanish and French factions (optional)

Battle Map Features:

- Unique battle map model of Turnovo (capital of Bulgaria) - preview here Moddb.com
- Reskinned and redone battle map models for the Greek, Italian and Central European/Germanic factions
- Brand new modelled and skinned units for all factions (no vanilla units exist in the mod)
- Historical upgrade system which follows the historical development of armour (Transitional, Churburg, Milanese/Gothic, Maximilian/Avant)
- Brand new officers, banner carriers, handheld banners, floating banners and flags for all factions
- Animated bow strings and crossbow strings
- New animations, gunpowder smoke effects, improved water and sky
- RR/RC system for all unit stats and abilities


Scripting Features:

- emerging Timurids in Anatolia at the right historical time
- emerging shadow factions for Serbia and Hungary when they become too large or too unstable
- Unification of the Roman Empire
- Fully scripted Black Plague ravaging through Europe (option to turn it off)
- Noble houses - each faction has 4 houses, the ruling house and 3 other noble houses
- Guelph vs Ghibelline traits in Genoa, Milan and Florence
- Supply script which adds cost to armies campaigning in foreign territories and to armies besieging settlements (option to turn it off)
- Garrison script for all faction capitals and major cities
- Fully developed AOR for local unit recruitment and mercenary system
- New administration system with provinces split between Core provinces (home regions) and Foreign provinces (choice between Integration or Autonomy) which will impact the recruitment, happiness and income of a province
- Over 100 ancillaries for noble titles linked to settlements ranging from minor (Prince of Achea, Ban of Croatia, Voivode of Transilvania), to major (King of Hungary, King of Croatia, King of Bosnia etc.) and imperial (Holy Roman Emperor, Roman Emperor etc.) with various bonuses and all linked through a complex system
- Coronation scripts and events linked to the above title system for all of the major crowns (King of Naples, King of Hungary, King of Croatia etc.)
- Historical mercenary companies available for recruitment (Catalan Company and many others)
- Scripted invasions and rebellions at historical dates (1354 Ottoman conquest of Gallipoli, 1358 Karl Thopia rebellion in Albania, 1366 Savoyard Crusade in Bulgaria etc.)
- Emerging heroes that appear at various historical dates (Vlad the Impaler, Janos Hunyadi, Skanderbeg, Mehmed the Conqueror, Bayezid the Thunderbolt and many more)
- Dozens of historical events which will unlock units (for example Lazarevic Decree unlocks Hussars, Hussite wars unlock hussite mercenaries, reform of Maximilian unlocks Landsknechts and so on) or make units obsolete (Cuman assimilation locks recruitment of Cumans)
- Dozens of historical event announcements which follow the real life events as they unfolded in history (inventions, disasters, wars and much more )
- Naval scripts such as pirate raids, blockades and port raids which will either result in a loss or gain of money

Tutorials and Guides

Guide and explanation of the Settlement Administration Policy and recruitment: Twcenter.net
Explanation of the ancillary title system and the various crowns: Twcenter.net
Explanation of unit AOR and availability dates/events: in progress

Known issues and things to be aware of:

- Merchants can only be trained by the merchant republics - Venice, Genoa, Ragusa and Florence
- Bavaria was added at the last minute to fill in an empty part of the map, it is not fully developed and may have some issues
- The vanilla mercenary recruitment from the strat map is now used for the AOR recruitment of local units (for example Albanians, Vlachs, Szekely, Cossacks etc), mercenaries are recruited through the mercenary barracks and are also specific to certain factions and map areas
- The starting script for the Naples civil war is not finalised and is not working correctly yet
- There are quite long turn times, we are looking into ways to reduce this
- There is an issue with certain campaign map sounds missing (we need assistance to fix the sound)
- Venice and sometimes the Romans die off really quickly, this will need to be fixed in future versions

Please make sure you report any bugs or CTDs in this thread:

Credits

A full list of credits can be found here below.

If you have contributed to the mod or your materials were used and you are not listed in the credits please contact us. The mod has been in development for over a decade and there have been dozens of people working on it so it is possible that it might have been omitted or the team member that used the materials left the mod without letting us know.

Permission to use materials

We have a fairly open policy in regards to permission to use materials. First and foremost we will give permission to use our materials to any mod team that has given us help or that have given us their materials. After that we are happy to trade our units and materials to anyone that will be happy to share their materials with us. If your mod has nothing we need we can still give permission to use the materials. Historical mods will get permission first and only later we will give permission to fantasy mods as we would like to encourage the creation of historical simulations first and foremost. We will deny permission to use materials if we believe your mod is either purposefully not historical or has other issues. Also, permission to use, modify or take parts of our units is given on a faction by faction basis depending on the original creator. Also, some factions or units (such as the Magyar infantry units) come from other mods and as such permission is not ours to give and you must contact the original creators. Please ask Wallachian for permission to use and he will confirm whether it is given or not.

If no member of the team has been active in the forum for more than 6 months and has not replied for more than 6 months we give permission to anyone to use our mod and materials.

Future Plans

The mod is by no means ready. We have a lot of plans to improve all of the aspects, add more unique buildings, add more building chains (education, religious buildings, cathedrals, sanitation, hopsitals, economic buidlings), add more scripts and historical events (hussite invasions, tatar raids, aragonese invasions, burgundian invasions, french invasions, mamluk invasions etc.), add more emerging heroes (the plan is for each faction to have its own set of emerging heroes), further refine the ancillary title system, further work on the administration system and the feudal system and much much more.

We also would love to have a late era campaign to feature the fall of Constantinopole, showcase all of the late era units without having to wait 150 turns to see them and role play with heroes of the age such as Vlad the Impaler, Mehmed the Conqueror, Janos Hunyadi or Skanderbeg. Another idea is to have a 1400 campaign and have the Timurids playable.

However, for all of this to happen we badly need assistance as we are a very small team. We are looking for coders and scripters mainly to help with adding all of the above and do things such as change the starting position, the settlement ownership, the family trees. If you are passionate about history and interested in the period please do not hesitate to contact us.