Medieval II: Total War - I Fixed the Two-handed bug! (Kinda)
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- čas přidán 17. 02. 2022
- Hey viewers, this is my first real video uploaded onto CZcams, so I'd appreciate any feedback you have. If you do decide to try out the animations, let me know what you think!
ModDB Link: www.moddb.com/mods/medieval-i...
TWCenter link to animations: www.twcenter.net/forums/showth...
File editing steps:
1. Go to the above link and download the animations and put them in your data folder. Backup and then delete your .dat and .idx files, both pack and skeleton. Make certain to put the lines:
[io]
file_first = 1
in your medieval2.preference.cfg (be sure to make it read only so that opening the game doesn’t revert the change), or create a custom config (create a new file called mymod.cfg, copy all the lines from the medieval2.cfg, and put the above and below lines in it, then create a new text file and rename it to mymod.bat, with the line
medieval2.exe @mymod.cfg
To run using a custom config). The command ensures that your game will run using edited files. Make sure that the line:
[util]
no_animdb = true
Is in your config, otherwise the game won’t rebuild the animation packs. (NOTE: I didn't notice this until finishing the video, but I don't have this line in my config and the game still rebuilds the packs, so it may not be necessary)
2. Backup, then open your descr_skeleton.txt file with your preferred text editor, and press ctrl-F to open the find window. If you have a ‘find and replace’ function go to step 4, otherwise go to step 3.
3. Type the word “Attacks” in and it’ll take you straight to the first list of attacks (in this case knife), then find the lines that say
anim eager_attack_centre_mid_a_push_fail
anim eager_attack_centre_mid_a_push_success
And comment them out by typing a semicolon in front, like so:
;anim eager_attack_centre_mid_a_push_fail
;anim eager_attack_centre_mid_a_push_success
And do this for every subsequent group. There should be Eight pairs in total. Save and close your descr_skeleton file. Go to step 5.
4. Find-and-replace simplifies the process a lot. In the Find line simply type or copy:
anim eager_attack_centre_mid_a_push
And in the replace line, put:
;anim eager_attack_centre_mid_a_push
Then hit replace all and that’s it, it’s done. Save and close your descr_skeleton file.
5. Open Medieval 2 using either your custom .bat file or just steam if you edited the vanilla cfg, and the game should rebuild the animation packs.
if CA ever were to decide to make a medieval 2 remastered, removing push animatons and the swords from pikemen would elevate the game immediatly.
Holy shit you literally fixed the game for me and many others, very much appreciated work.
Now's the time to put another 100 hours in this game again, cheers.
If you ever played stainless steel, the bug was fixed in the same way
The two handed bug was fixed many years ago with Retrofit mod, which is essential when playing vanilla. Another great mod for vanilla is Real Combat Mod.
real combat mod is great indeed
Honestly I always felt the shields bash was annoying because of how many times it was used and ended up doing nothing so finding out that removing it not only made certain units work better but made the whole game much more enjoyable is a nice thing to find out about. Thank you so much for making this video and helping to keep this game alive.
Bravo sir. I had drastically changed the anims on a overhaul mod I made already to address these non-attack nerfs but your scheme is wonderfully straight forward and has got me interested in how I can utilise it as well. Cheers!
Awesome! Not only fixes the issues but also speeds up the terribly slow pace of battles. Thanks!
My left ear appreciated this commentary.
Some years ago I gave the halberd units the pikemen's behavior and formation, including French voulge . It made halberds viable.
how you did that? please tell me
@@mizfarm6103 If halberds are used exclusively as pikes, and if you somehow manage to make them to just use stab animation, they could do a lot of damage.
However, I never had luck in ironing it out, game can crash if you mess with those formations in EDU file.
@@user-by6ri3cu4y I also tried but had the same crashes when they got into combat
@@mizfarm6103 Yep, it isn't easy... Maybe messing with unit models in battle_models.modeldb file could produce useable halberd unit that has only pikemen animation... I might even try to do that.
I just implemented this and ran a trial of Scottish Highland Nobles vs French Armoured Sargents and for the first time playing this game I absolutely destroyed the Armoured Sargents!!! Normally they are a huge pain to dislodge but the Highland Nobles just kept cutting through them. Thank you so much for this fix.
After implementing this fix and the Pike fix from "To Nerd is to Human TNH" my Scottish campaign is going to be absolutely epic!!!! Thanks again :) !!!!
Glad to help, hope you have fun!
@@Aleolex I actually just spent the afternoon lowering the cost of ships and Denmark's unit costs. So satisfying to balance this out.
You MIA boss? Still working on M2TW or are you pausing o sending out YT videos?
@@Vaessen13 For a while I was helping out the Third Age Reforged folks with animations, so that took a lot of my time, but my main struggle has just been deciding on a video topic. Like, I have ideas, but they either go nowhere or turn out to be much more work than I anticipated.
@@Aleolex makes sense, and you gotta work and live as well. Looking forward to your next M2TW content video 😀. Take care
Pike fix as in "none" as secondary weapon.
Scots rule the entire Europe.
Now go try for mounted highland archers that shoot onager flaming rocks. ;)
This is excellent work.
What other mods are you working on?
I created a lot of personal mods back in the day that I lost when I upgraded my hardware, so I'm trying to recreate those. I'm planning on adding more units, more unit upgrade models, and such like.
@@Aleolex On Med2 only or also other games?
@@TimmacTR for now. I made a bunch of mods for Shogun 2, and have one published on steam, though I'm thinking of rebranding it. Those are my two most played games.
I s2g this is going to be essential if I ever get back into this game and play as Holy Roman Empire, fantastic work.
Hey thanks! I uploaded a version that improves halberds, too, so it really helps out the HRE.
this is why i use them purely as flanking units
umm could you make a video about how to set up the config file since i am totally confused by the description you made besides that nice job
You are amazing
Amazing!
thks for the mod this really help me :)
Great video and thanks for explaining your research and working. What does it mean if after extracting the folder in data, that when I go back to data, as you do at 9:33, that my data folder is just composed of 5 folders and no loose files, so there is no descr_skeleton to replace there?
It means that you haven't unpacked your medieval 2 files. That's fine though, I believe the animations folder as it is has the four files that you need to replace. You can just place them in and the game will still use them.
@@Aleolex thanks for your reply, and yeah theres the 4 files to replace. What do I do with descr_skeleton then tho
@@battlez9577 It was mostly included in case you wanted it, but as long as the 4 files are there, you can just ignore the descr_skeleton file.
@@Aleolex ah thank you very much
I can't add this for the life of me, however I can't add any mod without serious handholding, not sure where to put io]
file_first = 1 and [util]
no_animdb = true
So I add in the idx and dat files and replace the old ones in the animation folder and thats good to go? I don't mess with the pre-existing descr?
Should be good to go with that, yeah. The game uses those files for its animations and won't rebuild them unless they aren't there.
From my experience in the Crusaders DLC two-handed units perform well against other infantries (on par with their cost) and do not seem to spam pushes/bashes. Have you looked into that?
I checked and they do. For the most part it's their absurdly high stats that make them good.
@@Aleolex Also the fact they are armor piercing which combined with their high charge and attack allows them to shred through other infantry. I think two handed swords never really suffered from a glitch, more just underwhelming stats.
@@rorschach1985ify Two handed axe units did. They got stuck in a loop of the useless animation from the video. Their stats are good, but they still need to be able to attack.
@@Aleolex I know I was just saying that two handed sword units had more issues with their stats than with their animations. Axes and Halberd units definitely suffered from a glitch.
My game crashes when the Animation packs are not in the animation folder, i have both the filefirst and no_animedb lines written in my cfg file. any tips?
how does this change the balance between infantry and cavalry? im interested but worried it might make cavalry underpowered in anything but the charge
That's a fair question. Really it doesn't affect the balance between them. The game uses a different animation set against cavalry (labelled "overhead" as opposed to "mid")
Great video! Thank you. Something is wrong with the audio tho. It is fine on my phone but if I connect to my car radio I can barely hear you. It’s not a big deal tbh just thought I’d lyk. When I first clicked it was extremely off putting, thinking this was like a video from 2002 with terrible audio but when I unplugged I heard the magic.
I wonder if Stainless Steel, Tsardoms and other overhaul mods are using this.
is it not possible to fix the animations instead? Like make the push animation deal the base damage?
I was hoping someone can answer this question; a long time ago, I attempted modding my Medieval 2 but I messed up somewhere and may have screwed up the running speeds in the game (some units began to run unnaturally slow whilst others would run unnaturally fast on the battlefield). I own the game on steam btw. I have attempted to uninstall and reinstall the game many times but I kept on having the same recurring issue of the unit running speeds being wonky. (There’s a chance I might be tripping though and that in the base game, units do unnaturally run very fast and very slow.) Any of y’all have any tips on how to get a fresh new clean install of M2TW from steam?
Have you deleted the entire folder after uninstalling? Sometimes config files and save games don't get removed by the uninstall process.
@@dashsocur I have done this. Thank you by the way.
Do you think it would be possible to make 2 sepparate push animations named push_oh and push_th , and allow one handed units to keep their original move pool but change it for two handed ones only? Just a tought 😅
You can totally do that, and I did that at first. It made 2h axe units very strong. I might actually do that again
old vid, but would this work with dlc or other mods? Theres a mod i use that adds kingdoms content to base so I wanna know if this would work with it
I have a version on moddb that's kingdoms compatible. I forgot to do it originally
Cool informative video! Check on the audio settings, could only hear you on the left ear while the gameplay is fine on both.
Oh man, thanks for letting me know. It's a little too late for this video I think but in the future I'll watch out for that.
Does this work with the Amaricas expansion?
Is this compatible with the Kingdoms Grand Campaign mod?
Question: I did quite a few tests with 2 handers against chivalric knights and while they do beat the crap out of them, they still use the push animation albeit to a lesser extent. Is this supposed to be happening or is it a different animation that's just similar to the push animation but actually does damage?
Also what's the difference between the punch and the push animations?
Sorry if it's too much of a bother to answer all the questions.
For the 2h-Sword units, the push and punch look similar but the punch can actually do damage. The push animation is when a soldier uses both hands and pushes the weapon out from their center, and the punch is when it looks like the soldier is hitting the enemy with the pommel of their sword.
@@Aleolex By that description I was refering to the push then, huh, strange. It could be that my game is just weird though, I don't see any other reason why the push animation would still show but actually deal damage when applying your mod.
@@wr0ng569 if you downloaded the packs, make sure you put them in the right folder. They all go in the animations folder in data
@@AleolexAye I did it the correct way, could just be my game being wonky, anyway, sorry for the bother, have a good night/day!
this and the pikes sucking really turned me off from medieval 2 initially -seeing that fixes are possible are making me excited for my second foray into the game
Honestly, I saw that all over the place when I tried to look up how to use pikes, so I stubbornly decided to figure them out for myself. I might make a video about it, but it is a 16 year old game lol
@@Aleolex Please make a video about it. :)
czcams.com/video/ecosXlvcwl0/video.html This video shows how to fix pikes :)
@@dominikpesut7498 Hey, I went ahead and made that tutorial video, hope it helps!
@@Aleolex Thanks, it was interesting to watch, the battles looked great!
CA should have fixed the two-handed and pike issues 15 years ago. God I DESPISE videogame developers.
Bro do you realize how old this game is?
Most of the unit balance issues in this game stem from the fact that shields where bugged at the games launch. The shield stat wasn't being taken into account in melee combat. The whole game was balanced around that bug, they eventually fixed the bug but never rebalanced the base game. Basically units with a shield dominate all other units now. That's why your elite cav like Lancers, gothic knights etc suck compared to chivlrics. Pikes don't suck, it's just that they don't do enough damage against units like DFK to resist their charge. Pikes work perfectly fine against 2 handed units. If you want to rebalance the game you pretty much need to lower the defense of units like DFK etc and up the defense of your 2 handed, pike, non shield cav etc.
I deleted all the secondary weapons from the pike units (no more dropping of the pike when enemy is in range) and gave them 3, 5 or 6 attack (ealry, mid, late campaign) to balance them
Did the same to halberd units as well but gave them 5, 8 and 10 to balance them, since they have shorter reach and the weapon should have more "oomph" than a pike
Also increased the minimum attack time beween animations for them from 25 to 100, since they would just spam the attack otherwise and perma stun lock the enemys in front of them
(if i didnt do these balance changes, ealry game pikes could beat dismounted knights when in wide pike formation)
After that did the same to all other units who could use the pike formation and balanced them based on how long reaching their weopon is
now these units perform as they should do:
beat same era units that attack them from the front, but get slaughtered by missile fire and rear attacks
im curios how these awesome changes in your video will affect this, probably it will work out even better, since the other units will attack them more efficient from the sides and rear and not only bash them
from the front they still should have a hard time since they wont reach the pikeman easily
gonna keep you updated
I'm not the biggest fan of that balance change (removing pike secondary weapons) but if that works for you, then go for it.
@@Aleolex why not?
They dont drop their pikes any more when the enemy is literally only in front of them and hold the line way better
Without that change you just got worse swordmen after the first charge and contact
@@lucky-lu6tc Because, and I say this without judgement towards anybody else, I'm able to make them work very well without doing that.
I'm not going to say much more than that, because I've gotten into a bunch of heated arguments about it online.
@@Aleolex 🤷🏼♂️
If it works for you
Thought you could share your method
Your Two Hand/Push/Shield Bash fix works perfectly with what i did btw, thanks for that!
now surrounded pikes get absolutely massacred, but are still viable for holding the enemy back and slowly grinding them down while range and cav support does the fatal blow :)
Like how i love it in Rome 2 DEI
Also enemy AI uses them quite good as well in my case and engages with my frontline, absolutely scary when you just have some early game spear militia and no ranged options
Dont know why you had problems with that, like what you said in your video
@@lucky-lu6tc I sure can share! I've made a video about it but wasn't happy with it so it's unlisted.
I use pikemen actively and aggressively. the best method for getting pikemen to use their pikes is by right click attacking. They'll sometimes break formation, especially if they're in a huge melee, but at that point you don't really need the pikes there, you can move them to a different part of the battle.
The way I've always like to describe them is like a cavalry charge in slow motion from behind your infantry. You really don't want pikes to be the first units charged by infantry, because the infantry on a charge can actually kill pikemen even if they're attacked at the end of the pike, and that includes when they're behind other units. For infantry, attack behind your other units.
For cavalry, pikemen are absurdly effective, you can just right-click attack them and they'll go to town.
TL;DR: Use pikemen aggressively, not passively.
Now the game just crashes 😢
How do I rebuild the pack.dat and skeleton.dat?
Make sure you downloaded the unpacked animations from the link in the description, otherwise the game can't rebuild them.
I know this is an older video, just curious. I started a new campaign game last week and I would like to try this. Do I need to start a new game to fix this bug? thanks!
Not really. This is a direct change to the animations, it shouldn't affect your campaign at all.
@@Aleolex Thanks man! wow! just tried it and the battles feel much smoother, and more like those Rome Total war battles I always loved more. Just subbed and if You upload more I'd 100% be a regular viewer! I love learning more about coding from these all games but I never have the time to learn how to mess with them on my own
Haven't they already been fixed in kingdoms expansion?
No, they just raised their stats by quite a bit. The animations still remain.
Well,....If every unit in the game shares the bug then it's perfectly balanced...lol... Digging around in the TW files is like gold mining, Thanx i did find this very informative. I'll be archiving it :)
I think (How in the video said) the only purpose of that animation was to make the battles between units last longer.
I also suspect It was an unfinished feature: As it was called "push" the animation (When enabled) could by chance make the other unit fall or get staggered, making it possible to be followed by a cool execution.
@@Shinirkrog tbh in terms of gameplay and simulation, i kinda like that if applied to high armor/defense ability unit. it would allow them to hold a line well while you flank, even if they dont get a bunch of kills.
This doesnt seem like a blatant error in the same sense as the pike swordsmen
Was the glitch fixed in the DLCs? Canons of the Holy Sepulchre is the best infantry ever.
How a do it in the mobile
I don't think you can mod the mobile version, sorry.
You can’t seriously be asking this question
ok now fix spear_bonus_2 lol
probably hard coded but this is a big bummer for me in stainless steel which would be OP with spear_bonus_4 but without any spear bonus the spearmen feel awful against cavalry
I'm not exactly a fan of stainless steel, It's a little too poorly balanced for me. Spearmen can take a charge, but in melee they always felt useless.
no_animdb = true, game doesnt even read that. Just FYI
TATW having this fix since the beginning explains why the combat always felt better ^^
(NOTE: I didn't notice this until finishing the video, but I don't have this line in my config and the game still rebuilds the packs, so it may not be necessary)
Hi, im not sure but,
Putting Heavy billmen on guard mode makes them superior to armoured sergeants.
This is not a fix, this is a major gameplay change. Stainless Steel has custom animation for 2H uints, it turns out. So I am now looking how to import that into the vanilla game.
Those "custom" are most likely just unused animations that were originally planned to be in the game but were cut or not finished in release. If you look at teasers, previews, and trailers of the game you can see how they looked like.
Nope, this not a bug.
Most people get two handed units in battles wrong and what their job is. Its completly right that 2 Handed troops in close formation lose against 1H+Shield Units in close formation on a head to head confrontation. This is the normal rock paper scissors principle.
A 2h weapon needs space to work, otherwise the weapon is pretty useless. You always try to push the guy with mace/sword and schield away from you, but for him its easy to close the gap again with the schield. This is why 2H units often times work better in lose formation, if they stuck in melee. 2 Handed-units are Shock/Flanking/Support troops. They are not made for a stuck close 1vs1 combat or combat on walls.
2 Handed units in medieval 2 are just poorly balanced, thats all. They are just overpriced, have most of the time a too low melee defence and to low charge attack values.
That would be true if the push animations actually pushed other units away. But like I say in the video , the animation is literally useless. It does no damage, doesn't push enemies back, and just uses up frames.
Two handed units need new faster animations and sword and board units need nerfing. Another thing is to make so that knightly units have smaller numbers
Nah, "fixing" the bug this way dissuades you from buying the high defense heavy infantry simply because they will now take significant casualities against town militia, which is completely nonsensical not only from a pratical standpoint (whatever the fuck can a peasant with little to no armor do against a highly trained, fit, disciplined dude in plate armor?) and from an economic standpoint, since the elite units are harder to replenish. It makes the campaign an even more cavalry spam fest as you will always get severe infantry casualities as the lines clash. And if you are on board with realism, infantry battles were more about pushing and breaking the other infantry line rather than hacking each other to pieces, which would often only happen when the rout starts.
High defense heavy infantry still wrecks light infantry/spears, the stat difference is just too stark. They'll take a few casualties now, maybe, but not significant. Just don't use ladders on walls
I have the mobile version and it seems like the same problem, puts me off playing as some factions