Quick question: is my campaign boned?

[Rex Bellator]

Started a campaign as the French, I chose a short victory (have to hold 20 territories including Savoy, Liguria and Corsica).

However, I forgot and took my time with the campaign until I got a "You Lose" screen in 1750. That's it, right? I am no longer allowed to win the campaign even if, say, I conquer all territories?

[Insaniac]

Yeah. You can't win at this point.

[Rex Bellator]

Poop. I had a feeling. Oh well. It was still fun

Thanks for the confirmation!

[The Blind One]

lmao, all you really get is a 1 minute ending video for winning the game.

I had 2/3 of Europe as Prussia in short campaign. Only needed to hold 14 provinces while I held ~55. 2 turns before winning the game in 1750, I forgot to check my clamour for reform and gained like 3 enlightenment techs at the same time + my amazing justice minister died and as such Westphalia and Wurtemberg got rebellions and I had zero armies stationed to quell them ... so guess what? Yup, they took the cities and became independent again and next turn ''You lose!''. Nothing I could do except reload back 4 turns (thank god I keep a lot of different saves around). So I gave them tax holidays to keep them happy, replayed till 1750 end turn and got the ''You Win!'' video ... was hugely disappointed haha.

Can anyone tell me how to mod the campaign win requirements? I had to take denmark in my campaign to win the game as Prussia but it was held by sweden (my long time ally) and it sucked that I had to declare war on them to get the region under my control. I really did not like that, they even traded me Hannover for Karelia, the swell blokes that they are, which would have been awesome if that was all I needed to win but I had to get fricken denmark too ... which just made me sad because I really loved Sweden as my Allies. Oh well, I took them over completely to stop the heartbreak haha.

Imho, you should set a target for yourself and make that your goal rather then the victory conditions of the game since they are a bit ... dumb as you can see from my first loss with Prussia.

[Alwyn]

TheBlindOne, you can edit the victory requirements in the startpos.esf file using an ESF edtior. Two good places to start are:-

- For guidance on modding the startpos: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?272139-STARTPOS-ESF-analysis-and-modifications-HYBRID-startpos-esf (editing victory conditions is number 6 in the list of 'Level 1' changes)

- The Empire Total War Modding Workshop: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?651-Empire-Total-War-Mod-Workshop , this provides tutorials and tools. I used ESF Editor 1.4.5 mainly, if I remember correctly

A few tips:

- As far as I know, the startpos only creates the world at the start of the campaign in Empire Total War. This means that I don't think that modding the startpos would change the victory conditions for a campaign which is in progress. You might be able to edit the victory conditions for an ongoing campaign by editing the saved game using an ESF Editor (I don't know whether this would work and whether it would cause side-effects).

- The ESF Editor can take a long time to open and save files (a minute or two isn't unusual in my experience). This doesn't mean that it has crashed.

- Follow the tutorials exactly. A single full stop in the wrong place or a hyphen instead of a full stop could crash the game and (if you are unlucky) might even cause you to need to reinstall the game.

- If you modify the startpos using one version of an editor, it doesn't work and you carefully repeat the process (in case of errors the first time) and it doesn't work again, then try a different version of the ESF Editor. If I remember correctly, some versions work better for some tasks than others, trial and error is needed.

- husserlTW (an expert startpos modder who created the Empire Total Factions mod) warned against experimenting with the startpos. I wouldn't have expected a modded file to be capable of harming my hardware, but once when using a startpos which I had edited I heard a worrying noise from my computer, which stopped when I ended the game (very quickly) and I never heard again, when not using that test startpos. Of course, I don't know for sure that the test startpos caused the horrible sound, but it was a remarkable coincidence.

Sorry for the long post. If you need help, I suggest posting in the Empire Total War Modding Workshop. Good luck!

[Charlemagne]

The worse thas has happened to me is to not notice during set up that the game defaults to short. I was playing leisurely thinking that it was a long campaign when... 1750- Bam! You lose.