"Kingdoms.exe doesn't exist" - Fixing that

I see this question asked over and over in the discussions. To save everyone time here's a guide on the easiest fix in the world.

The problem

Nearly every mod out there for Medieval II is made for the disk version which, for 2 years, has been different to the Steam version. As they are mods for Kingdoms expansion, the installer searches for this expansion but doesn't find it and therefore doesn't install the mod.

Fixing it

Go to your Medieval II directory:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Medieval II Total War
Copy and paste "medieval2" and rename the clone "kingdoms". This is all you need, as technically it is kingdoms.exe, even if it has the exact same function. Mods will now install fine.


By the way, the vast majority of mods have a quicklauncher. You don't need to rename one of the other campaigns (such as teutonic or americas). You can have them as seperate mods and it'll work fine.

[Gigantus]

I am guessing you added the 'exe' manually'? Remove it again - the system hides known file extensions by default - 'kingdoms.exe' becomes 'kingdoms' which means if you can see the 'exe' then you have now 'kingdoms.exe.exe' which obviously will not work.

[Flightless]

Did the manual renaming and the installer, nothing.

[Gigantus]

Seriously? If you have problems to find the path then simply use my link, it contains an automated approach (the installer).

[OVERDRIVE1]

this is to confuseing

[Gigantus]

This has an installer that does this automatically:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=859017394

[fiveaxels]

I can't find my Medieval2.exe folder

[Cellulose is bad Starch]

NVM, found someone who helped me a lot to fix it. Seemed I had the wrong mod file in (the mod was nested in a folder called TES something, which I had put in the mods folder. Fixed it by taking it out and leaving it in the mods folder on its own).

[Aquilifer]

Copy and paste them. Sounds dodgy but I think that has worked for me

[Cellulose is bad Starch]

I fixed it by putting the kingdoms.exe file into the "mods" folder. Now it won't let me start because it can't find certain .dll files (mss32, others). I've initialized and played the game prior to this.

[Cellulose is bad Starch]

I did exactly this and as all the tutorials said, and created a clone for medieval2.exe and named it kingdoms.exe
I'm using the elder scrolls total war 2 mod, and it still isn't working. I tried the other fix of putting kingdoms.exe into the folder for the mod as well, but the problem persists.