Simple M&B mods without an editor.

[Burnov]

I have questions regarding modifying M&B. Specifically doing so without an editor, as I refuse to install .net on any of my machines. Both of them are still reasonably useful enough that I don't want either of them hamstrung by it.

... anyhow. I would like to know what I should look for when attempting to edit things like recruitment cost for units. Does editing values like this effectively ruin saved games?

I would try some of the newer mods. However I'm quite reluctant to update my version of M&B... save for the very rare crash. 701 rarely gives me any trouble. Yet I read things about 704 not working at all... so... yeah.

 

[-GandalfTheGrey]

You can keep your 0.701 in a folder and install 0.704 in a new directory to play both.

About hiring costs, I think it's not possible, it just changes depending on the level of the unit or something like that.
You can mod parts of the game without tools, but it'll be such a pain... It's very hard to edit the .txt files because you have to change all of them when you modify one.

 

[Burnov]

You can keep your 0.701 in a folder and install 0.704 in a new directory to play both.

What exactly needs to be swapped so I can switch between multiple versions? That's awesome!

About hiring costs, I think it's not possible, it just changes depending on the level of the unit or something like that.

Blah. That sucks. Because I really have a hankering to hire a ton of cheap peasants and send them to their deaths.

 

[-GandalfTheGrey]

You can keep your 0.701 in a folder and install 0.704 in a new directory to play both.

What exactly needs to be swapped so I can switch between multiple versions? That's awesome!

Just choose another path when the installer asks where you want to install M&B 0.704. It's not really switching, rather like if you have 2 different programs.

 

[Effidian]

I have questions regarding modifying M&B. Specifically doing so without an editor, as I refuse to install .net on any of my machines. Both of them are still reasonably useful enough that I don't want either of them hamstrung by it.

... anyhow. I would like to know what I should look for when attempting to edit things like recruitment cost for units. Does editing values like this effectively ruin saved games?

I would try some of the newer mods. However I'm quite reluctant to update my version of M&B... save for the very rare crash. 701 rarely gives me any trouble. Yet I read things about 704 not working at all... so... yeah.

Have you looked at the Module System? It uses Python scripts and would allow you to edit things without an editor. Even if you didn't want to install Python, you can use the scripts to figure out the format of the .txt files.

 

[Burnov]

I would assume that would be the real challenge. Trying to figure out what each value corresponds to ingame.

As an absolute last resort, would the unofficial editor be able to change values such as recruitment cost for any hirable npcs?

 

[Effidian]

I would assume that would be the real challenge. Trying to figure out what each value corresponds to ingame.

It isn't too bad with the python scripts. Back in the good ole days we just had the txt files.

As an absolute last resort, would the unofficial editor be able to change values such as recruitment cost for any hirable npcs?

As mentioned above it might not be possible. I haven't look at all the operation blocks yet so I'm not positive it isn't handled somewhere in there, but I think it might be internal based on level of the npc being recruited. And you can't modify operation blocks yet in the editor, so even if it were it won't help you with that yet.