Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms Windows game

Hello everybody,

Now it is time to wrap it up. I have been working on Game of Thrones Enhanced and the subsequent Retro Mod for over four years now. It has been an incredible journey, and I am proud to see how far away the mod has gone. We have gone through different releases and I am glad you guys liked them, the mod has been consistently on the top 100 most popular mods here in moddb.

Unlike the previous releases, this one won’t bring as much new content. The aim was to polish the existing material and make the campaign more enjoyable. Finally I have been able to do a lot of playtesting myself and also got some feedback from different sources. Therefore I could balance it better. But of course, there is some new content:

1. All Westerosi vassal houses (bannermen) got their own unique banner carriers now. I’m talking about the units of House Umber, Karstark, Bracken, Tarly etc. From now on, battlefields should be more colourful.

There are a few new units as well, mainly mercenaries like the ones from the Brotherhood without Banners (more on them below). They are outlaws and irregulars, they don’t really have an armour, but the models are unique on their own, and have good variations between them.

Moreover, the stats of various units have been reviewed further, mainly to enhance infantry, especially heavy infantry compared to missile units. These are small changes, the battles should still look the same as before.

And before we finish with the units, there are some changes on a few models, like Loras Tyrell getting a new armour, and also the Dornish got Obara Sand as a new hero, with her unique model. She becomes the 6th female general on the battlefield.

2. Let's go toward the scripts and events now. In version 2.0, we introduced the new victory conditions. The downside of it, was that the player could see them only at the start of the game.

Not anymore. A script has been introduced in order to display the victory conditions whenever you like. Go on the construction tab of any of your settlements and click: Ask advisor for the victory conditions of your faction.

And voila! Not only can you check them whenever you like, but also they are explained in detail now.

3. There are new events called Valar Morghulis! Basically it informs the player whenever a major character dies from a faction controlled by the AI. It doesn’t matter if you kill him in battle, another faction does, or he dies from other causes. You will get a notification, same as when a faction leader dies.

Since Game of Thrones was about killing off most characters, I believe this is very appropriate. Couldn’t add some important characters like Ned Stark or Jon Snow because of the other scripts related to them. But there are over 60 characters from the TV show in this script, from all 16 playable factions. Also there’s a downside to this script, only for the spawning characters. If the faction gets destroyed before the character spawn at the given turn, or the conditions are not met, the script will look for that character and if not found, it will display the Valar Morghulis event. Let's say, the character was killed off screen.

It is useful for factions like House Martell, they have to kill Tywin Lannister and Gregor Clegane on their victory conditions. Or somebody else can kill them, it is the same, their vengeance will be fulfilled.

And most important of all, if you kill the Night King, the Others/White Walker faction will be destroyed. His generals will go rebel but with a normal rebel bodyguard and no army. In my experience, the Night King remains inside his starting settlement far north, on the Lands of Always Winter. You do not have to take all of his settlements, just go for him with a powerful army and you might get him, despite that settlement having a strong garrison script and the Night King himself has great stats.

4. Valar Morghulis is traditionally answered with Valar Dohaeris. This is a script available only to the Starks. If or better say when, the Others capture the three castles at the Wall, this script will kick in, with the Lord of Light sending his warriors: Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr, to fight against the Lord of Darkness. Both generals have good attributes and command bonuses against White Walkers.

5. And we are back to the Brotherhood without Banners. Besides having their own units now, the script for Beric and Thoros coming back after being killed has been fixed now. Also, this version introduces more characters from the Brotherhood. All of them belong to the rebel/slave faction and will randomly attack settlements in the Riverlands, regardless of who holds them, with the exception of House Tully. Also in Essos, the rebels will attack House Targaryen. These are corsairs and pirates from the Basilisk Isles. Therefore, the rebels will be more active now, but in both cases, these attacks are more of a nuisance than a proper threat.

6. Besides the Brotherhood, the role of the Second Sons and the Golden Company has changed completely. Now they show up throughout scripts, only if the player decides to hire them. The Golden Company is available only to the noble houses in Westeros (besides Joffrey) later in the game if you own over 20k gold dragons in your treasury.

If you accept, you will get a powerful army on the Disputed Lands in Essos, including War Elephants. As for House Targaryen, they get a similar script about the Second Sons but the faction still gets Daario Naharis later on, whatever the player decides about this script. House Baratheon of King’s Landing will get, for free, a contingent of the Golden Company, this time led by Harry Strickland, after turn 80. All of these scripts are available just to the human player, not the AI.

7. Besides these scripts, there have been small updates on other scripts, mainly the reinforcement ones and the Targaryen invasion of Westeros (for AI only ) has been further improved. The Others/White Walkers also got slightly stronger now. Also there are several smaller scripts available to specific factions, or other events who explain some sort of bonus that specific faction gets.

8. The unique TV-show voice pack has been enhanced and expanded. Now, the voices are louder and 16-17 new characters get their unique lines from the TV show.

Last, I improved a little the geography of the map and fixed 4-5 bugs I found. In general, the gameplay should be better now. Inside the GoT folder, I included the files for the music mod, in case you own the first 3 albums of Game of Thrones. I hope you download it, play it and enjoy it. This will be the last update for the Retro Mod, but I might bring fixes in case they are warranted. Also if Peaman from Fire & Blood fixes a few issues we found about the custom settlements, I might release an update.

That's all, if you have any questions please write us on Discord.gg

Download link: Moddb.com

Credits

- Westeros: Total War for the old mod that started it all and for the custom settlements, some strat models and many buildings from the 1.0 release.

-Game of Thrones: Fire & Blood mod for many great strat and battle models, custom settlements, set of voices and more. The creator allowed me to use everything from his 2.5 version. Check out this mod by Peaman, it is great. The last release to date is 2.5.

- Warhammer Alt-Cut for the Warhammer animations, the dragon models and the mammoths

-A Game of Ice and Fire mod for Attila Total War, the leader of it, the Scouse Sicario created most of the heads on the custom generals.

-Westeros: Age of Petty Kings and Age of Petty Kings: Ice and Fire for many of the buildings on the teach tree.

-Vltima Ratio who brought me into this mod by creating his amazing TV-show based models, without him wouldn’t be much interested in Westeros mods for Medieval 2 Total War. And of course, wouldn’t have worked on this submod.

-Franky317, one of the modders for A Song of Ice and Fire and many other mods. He;s quite good at scripting, most of the new scripts on 1.2 were originally created by him, many years ago.

-Mr.Nygren for helping me out during the long process of creating the Retro mod for GoT Enhanced.

Hopefully I didn't forget anybody.