Editing the map

[Lamba]

Hey.

So I'm not really a fan of the mods I've tried (Stainless Steel and Europe on Flames), but I like ONE aspect of both; more castles and towns on the map.

Does anyone know of a mod, or how to edit the maps, so I could for example get the vanilla game as it is, but with an improved map with more castles and towns?

I don't want the families changed (like in Europe on Flames) and I really like how the Vanilla game plays out, I just think it's sort of too small in the sense that no matter who I play as, it just seems like it's the same things that happens with the different factions and such.

Anyone? :)

[Damavikoff]

Something general here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?275-Mapping

Something not general:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?208570-Creating-a-World-%96-Basic-mapping-from-scratch

But it's controversial question. Balance, you know, such delicate thing.

[Lamba]

Thanks for the reply, even though it didn't help at all.

I'm not super technical and I'm not going to spend my weekend fooling around with a 13 page tutorial and learning GIMP for this. I'm simply asking if there is a way of doing it. And if that's the only way, then I'm not interested.

[Damavikoff]

There is no one-click way to do this.

[HazardHawk]

For myself, I have ported the Rome Terrae Expugnandae map to Medieval 2 with its 199 provinces and map that even partially includes India. Remind me once it gets cold outside and the farm work here is caught up and I will work it out to upload only the files you need somewhere if you are interested. You can find screenshots of it in my screenshots.

[Lamba]

Originally posted by HazardHawk:

For myself, I have ported the Rome Terrae Expugnandae map to Medieval 2 with its 199 provinces and map that even partially includes India. Remind me once it gets cold outside and the farm work here is caught up and I will work it out to upload only the files you need somewhere if you are interested. You can find screenshots of it in my screenshots.

That sounds interesting!

I think I own, but have never played, the Rome game. Maybe I should give it a whirl. :-)

Also, don't get me wrong. I don't mind doing some work to learn to edit the map, but if the easy way is learning GIMP and what not, just to add some castles and towns to the map as is, then it's not going to happen. If I could just load the basic map, plot in new holdings and edit the borders and such, that'd be perfect. :-)

[Lamba]

@HH: added you for ♥♥♥♥'n'giggles. You being 'murican proberbly means we won't get to see eachother online all too much, but I wouldn't mind having a chat with you if you can find the time.

[HazardHawk]

Accepted. I am just getting back after being tied up building a farm and new home and now working it. So I am intermittant.

You can learn Gimp easily enough as there are many tutorials.

If you mean replace the visual castles and towns, that is easily enough done but you can find people that have already done it for mods over at TWCenter.

If you want to cut in provinces with new cities or castles, there is a tool called geomod you can get through TWCenter forums as well that makes it easy. It sets the paremeters and records them in all the proper files simultaneously so you dont leave one out or make a typo that takes forever to track down. I have only grabbed it and tried it out once because I do all of mine the hard way.

Just remember, each time you make changes, it is best to delete the map.wpm before you try starting up as that is a cache from befpre the modification that helps it load faster later. It will generate a new one in starting up after faction selection.

[OblivionRanger]

Before you begin editing the map, have you ran the unpacker in the tools folder.
If you want to edit by hand, there are 6 or 7 files you have to individually modify.
Geomod is the best tool I've found for editing the map. I have run across one bug with Geomod.
And this is rule #1 for any modding: Keep a backup.

[Lamba]

Originally posted by j.stenberg1280:

Before you begin editing the map, have you ran the unpacker in the tools folder.
If you want to edit by hand, there are 6 or 7 files you have to individually modify.
Geomod is the best tool I've found for editing the map. I have run across one bug with Geomod.
And this is rule #1 for any modding: Keep a backup.

I haven't yet found out how to edit the map, so I haven't done anything.

If someone with the experience in map editing could simply get the map from Europe on Flames and apply it to the base game with new commanders in the new holdings' garrison, that would be awesome!

The only reason I'm not playing Europe on Flames is that it burns my eyes as a dynasty-first player. There's maybe 3 factions total where you aren't relying on random adoption, a brother or your ruler to be 75+.

[Surtha Ek the Everchariot]

Yeah I get what you mean. Theres a province in Africa that is the size of western Europe.