Very basic quesitons on light modifications

[DWolfe]

I enjoy playing long drawn out, conquest victory games that usually have me running the entire length of the tech tree. Problem is I kind of rather overrun the world with Camel Archers if I'm Saladin for example, than sweep everyone over with a ridiculous amount of tanks. And that doesn't work very well once people start bringing gunpowder units into battles.

I know I could build a new mod and fix it a billion different ways to how I want it to work, but I'm only looking for a few quick fixes and was wondering if there was an easy way to do that without a ton of time invested in making new mods every time I have a minor tweak, since I'm already playing 8+ hour games as it is. Any chance I can just edit a file somewhere so my German Panzer looks like a swordsman with the same stats? Or any small change I can make to some file so that my leader is Industrious and Imperialistic instead of Expansive and Spiritual? Or would editing those games files without loading a new mod error the game?

If I am stuck having to build new mods, will I not be able to access World Builder? There's a thread floating (Map Making for Mods - thamis) around that I ran across that gave me the impression that using World Builder with mods didn't work very well.

I'm terribly new to this, so excuse me if any of this is obviously available somewhere. I dug through a lot of the threads that are stickied or listed in the Tutorial Thread Index, but so very many of them started with "download this program, then this one, then this other one to make changes I really don't care all that much about". I'm trying to avoid downloading a bunch of things I don't really need for my purposes as much as possible.

Is this: "GUIDE: Adding new units - sovarn" the right tutorial on changing things without having to load a ton of new mods?

 

[Gooblah]

Just root around in the XML files for most of the stuff you need. As long as you copy the files into a mod folder in the same directory (i.e if you modify TechInfos, then your Mod folder should look like Mods/whatever/Assets/XML/Technologies, and then the file) you'll be fine.

 

[Wolfshanze]

What your discussing doing would be better left for CUSTOM ASSETS... if you just have a few minor tweaks you want to do, copy the files you want to change into their identical file-path in the Custom Assets folder.

This would avoid any "mod" loading, and would also avoid the mistake of altering your core files... the game will load-up normally, with whatever minor changes you make, and you will have preserved your base files as they should be so nothing can be messed-up (you always have the base files to fall back on).

For what you're suggesting, I think copying files to the Custom Assets is just best for you... look at the Assets/XML folder, copy the needed files over and alter them... most of them are pretty straight forward... like in the Civilizations folder, you'll find the LeaderHeadInfos XML file and you can change leader traits there... also in the Units folder, you can change the UnitInfos... etc, etc.