Q: I am experiencing frequent crashes, freezes, glitches, and/or runtime errors.

A: Install Warband Script Enhancer 2 (WSE2) and run the mod through it's launcher. The reason why mods for this game have so much trouble is because Mount & Blade: Warband's engine is outdated and fundamentally flawed, and therefore is not capable of handling what large mods like this one are adding to the game. WSE2 is a program that enhances the Warband engine by adding operations, scripts, triggers, changing hardcoded game mechanics, and fixes some engine bugs. WSE2 also allows for optimized and more efficient rendering along with maximizing the graphics card's advanced graphical settings and power with the outdated Warband engine. WSE2 makes a massive difference and is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet for eliminating crashes, memory leak issues and runtime errors.

When using WSE2, make sure to run Native once through the WSE2 launcher before trying to use it with the mod, and turn off FXAA and post processing, otherwise the screen will be black.

Here is a link to the WSE2 forum: Warband Script Enhancer 2 (v1.1.1.9) [forums.taleworlds.com]

Here is a YouTube tutorial on how to install WSE2:

Mount and Blade: Warband - Crash Fix With WSE2 - Works With "A World of Ice and Fire" and More!


Additional solutions:

• You must use a legitimate copy of the game that is bought through Steam, TaleWorlds, etc. PIRATED COPIES WILL NOT WORK AND ARE NOT SUPPORTED.
  
  
• You must have the latest version of M&B: Warband.
  
  
• Enable "Load textures on demand" in the launcher options.
  
  
• Disable "Sound variation" in the game's settings.
  
  
• Ensure cheat mode is disabled.
  
  
• Ensure Edit mode is disabled in the game's settings.
  
  
• Decrease the graphical options you are running the game at, especially decreasing texture details, lowering the shadow quality, shader quality, anti-aliasing, etc.
  
  
• Decrease battle size to 150 - 250. Anything more than 300 max can cause instability. (Note: Native Warband's battle size is limited to 150.)
  
  
• Lower the number of corpses and ragdolls. Ragdolls especially can be a big drain on performance.
  
  
• Do not run any unnecessary background programs while playing the mod. You can go into your task manager and end any other programs that are running. (Optionally, you can use a program like Smart Game Booster to do this for you every time you start the game, and this program also includes a function for cleaning junk files and updating your drivers.)
  
  
• Make sure the graphics card driver is fully up to date with the latest version.
  
  
• Clean up junk files, and don't have a lot of other big mods, games, programs, files, etc. on your computer. M&B is notoriously memory hungry, so you will want to give it as much available resources as you can.
  
  
• Make sure your computer is not overheating.
  
  
• Quit Warband and exit to the desktop, then restart Warband and load your saved game. Optimally do this every 1 - 3 hours. This helps to reset memory leak issues by clearing your memory being used by the game.
  
  
• I do not suggest anyone run out to buy a new computer just to use this mod, however having a good quality computer that is built for gaming will certainly help you to run this as well as other M&B mods in general. Outdated or low quality systems, as well as laptops, will struggle to run this game, if they can even run it at all. If you decide for yourself that you want to purchase a new computer or upgrade your current system's components, make sure you are doing good research and making choices that are optimized for gaming. That being said, even with a fully optimized computer, there are inherent issues with bottle necking and limitations of the outdated, fickle Warband engine.
  
  
• In light of this issue with crashes, it is STRONGLY recommended that you save your game often.
  
  
  
  Q: The mod crashes when trying to load into the main menu.
  
  A: This is usually a result of a mistake made during the installation process, whether for the mod, or the game itself. You should first verify the integrity of your game's files through Steam to see if there are any missing or corrupted files. If you still fail to load into the main menu, then you should delete all of the game's files and make a fresh installation. Make sure to follow all of the instructions carefully, do not skip anything or attempt to make your own changes.
  
  
  
  Q: Help, my save has become corrupted!
  
  A: Whenever the mod is updated, old saves become corrupted and you will have to start a new game. I apologize for this inconvenience, but please be aware that this is an issue with how M&B itself works, and is therefore out of my control. I do my best to avoid making frequent updates that only change a few small things so that you don't have to constantly delete your progress and start over. For reference, you can always check the date and time of the last update to confirm if your save is outdated.
  
  
  
  Q: How does artillery work?
  
  A: You can recruit artillery from the foundry in the marketplace menu, and you must ensure that your artillery crews are always at the very top of your party list. Do not give them any orders, make sure they are assigned to the artillery group, and always check after battles if you have lost crews or guns. If you have lost any, you will need to recruit more crews/guns from the foundries in the cities.
  
  Update 3/22/24: Although the above information remains true, after more thorough testing, it has been confirmed that the artillery does not work when assisting another general in battle, and after making a siege assault, the artillery will stop working for the player entirely. I did not create the artillery system or set it up in this mod, so I don't know how to fix it.
  
  A potential workaround for this issue is to kill the soldier or artillery crew member that is in the way when you notice the crews leave their cannons and run across the map, and when the soldiers themselves are bugging around the cannons. You can also disband the cannons at the foundry and then recruit them again whenever you start having trouble, such as after sieges, or whenever you start to encounter problems with the artillery in general.
  
  
  
  Q: How do I know what type of ammunition each weapon uses?
  
  A: All of the ammunition is interchangeable, except for carbines and pistols. They do different amounts of damage, and use different bullet models that can be seen flying through the air in battles, but that's it.
  
  If you want to use the correct ammo for fun, then Minie balls go with rifle muskets, round balls go with smoothbore muskets, and buck & ball is used with the smoothbore muskets that are scripted to fire buck & ball (The weapon's name will tell you if it fires buck & ball or not). The carbines use ringtails (be mindful that there is a rifle version and a carbine version of this ammo type), and the revolvers use conical ball.
  
  All of the ammo tells you in it's name whether it is meant to be used with rifles, muskets, carbines, or revolvers. For example, ".58 Caliber Minie Ball Rifle Cartridges", ".69 Caliber Round Ball Musket Cartridges", ".52 Caliber Ringtail Carbine Cartridges", ".44 Caliber Conical Ball Revolver Cartridges", etc.
  
  
  
  Q: Are there any language translations available for this mod?
  
  A: Unfortunately there are no language translations for this mod currently. Someone would have to go through all of the mod's files and translate them by hand. It's not a quick, easy, or enjoyable task.
  
  However, it is still possible create a translation to your language, if you want. It will just be tedious and you need to make sure that the game's font has all of your glyphs.
  
  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/warband-translation-tutorial-and-translate-m-b-tool.453463/
  
  Keep in mind that your translations will become outdated with future updates to the mod.
  
  
  
  Q: Can you add crouching to the mod?
  
  A: No, soldiers in the American Civil War did not kneel when in line of battle. Skirmishers and dismounted cavalry would, but there is no way to have only those specific types of units kneel in the mod, nor to enable the ability to crouch exclusively for the player. You can only enable or disable crouching, and this will effect all troops in the mod.
  
  Another issue with it is that because you are frequently moving your troops around the map, it slows down your troops to have the front rank constantly kneeling and standing up every time you issue a movement order. Every time a soldier is killed, the lines will also jumble around, with guys kneeling and standing up. Constantly having your troops changing stances ruins the cohesion of your lines, and doesn't look good in the game.
  
  There is also the problem that on siege maps, you are often behind walls, fences, earthworks, trenches, etc., and if your troops are kneeling, they will not be able to see and shoot above the cover that they are behind. It simply makes more sense historically and from a technical standpoint to have troops remain standing in the mod.
  
  
  
  Q: Will you be adding new units to the mod?
  
  A: Yes, I do have plans to add at least two more new units. Although I originally did not intend to add new units, I have freed up a large amount of resources in the mod, some spots in the Area of Recruitment system have space to fit in new units, and in some areas I can move the recruitment locations of existing units around and add a few new villages/forts to accommodate new units.
  
  
  Q: Can you add a troop tree to the mod?
  
  A: With the current area of recruitment system, the need for a troop tree has become obsolete. You can refer to the troop guides included in the mod package as PDF files to see all of the units available in the mod, their recruitment locations, their weapons, and which general(s) they are assigned to. Steam users will need to download the mod package from Moddb to access the troop guide PDF's until I get around to setting up a Google Drive link to the two documents.
  
  
  
  Q: Can you add a feature to the mod that I want?
  
  A: I'm open to hearing your suggestions, but I can't make any promises.
  
  
  
  Q: Between Empires has a feature that I want in this mod. Why can't you do the same thing as them?
  
  A: You shouldn't compare other mods to Between Empires. They have very skilled and experienced coders working on their team, and wrote most of their code themselves from scratch. There is no point of reference for it, and it is very complex. Many of the things Between Empires accomplished are unprecedented in the M&B modding sphere. One would have to be as skilled as them to figure it out, or have the developers walk you through it themselves.
  
  
  
  Q: Will you be making a version of this mod for Bannerlord?
  
  A: No, I know nothing about modding Bannerlord, and my computer can't run it anyway. I'm also not going to learn an entirely new system of modding; learning how to mod M&B: Warband was already an enormous enough task, and I still don't know everything. Another big issue is that Bannerlord is continuously being updated, so any mods for it are constantly becoming outdated and will only function on the specific version of the game that it was built on.
  
  This mod works best on Warband because it is much more inexpensive and accessible to new players; the game itself doesn't cost that much, many people already own Warband due to it's age and popularity, and you don't need a good computer to run it. Likewise Warband had firearms already built into the game from the beginning, so it is much easier to create firearms based mods than it is in Bannerlord.
  
  
  
  Q: Will you be adding new factions to the mod?
  
  A: No, this would be an absolutely enormous amount of work and it would present a number of technical and balancing issues. There is so much content and room to explore within the American Civil War theme of the mod, there is no need for extra factions anyway.
  
  
  
  
  Q: Is this mod compatible with Mac?
  
  A: The mod itself will work on Mac, however WSE2 does not work on Mac, as it was specifically designed for Windows. Since WSE2 is virtually a requirement for this mod, it is not possible for Mac users to run the mod through that program.
  
  
  
  
  Q: Will you be adding multiplayer to the mod?
  
  A: No, this mod is singleplayer only. Everything in the code that has to do with multiplayer has already been removed a long time ago, and I wouldn't know how to add it all back in, even if I wanted to. Enabling multiplayer would also mean that players would need to have the Napoleonic Wars DLC to play this mod instead of only needing M&B: Warband. There is already a multiplayer American Civil War mod called, "North & South: First Manassas", if you are looking for that kind of experience in M&B, but I don't know if anyone still plays it.
  
  
  
  
  Q: Will you make another mod for a different war/time period?
  
  A: No, this mod is enough work as it is and the American Civil War is my primary area of interest.