Happy Birthday WesW!

[Gazablanca]

All the best Wes...

[WesW]

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate this, especially as I have been kind of isolated these last few months. I just found out about this thread from an email Peter sent me, or I would have tried to visit sooner.
As some of you know, I have some rather severe chronic health problems, the most prominent feature of which is chronic and often severe pain. This is why I have so much time to spent on modding these games. I normally don't don't talk about it much in "public" like this, but I guess I ought to explain why I have disappeared from the forums with the modpack unfinished, especially since there are so many people here who care about me personally, and not just about what I helped create.
Modding is something that I can normally do even when I am feeling under the weather, and I have found that I have somewhat of a talent for attracting and organizing other people who want to modify these games, and thus have the Medmod Packs been born. Early this year, though, the stress of trying to stay in school with my health problems finally caused my body to have a kind of nervous breakdown. I didn't know what was happening at first; I just felt exhausted all the time, I started feeling more and more depressed, and then I started developing new kinds of health problems. All this developed from about February to June. Add to this the fact that this summer and fall the new doctors I was seeing for my chronic condition kept prescribing medications whose side effects were very debilitating and/or painful. Let's just say that I have been going through a roughly monthly cycle that has been horrific by most anyone's standards.
I am not sure if my situation has improved all that much since then, but it does seem to have stabilized, and I will keep fighting and making medication adjustments as I always do. Knowing that there are people out there thinking about me means a lot while I am here at my patent's house recovering. It looks like it will be at least a year before I am able to go back to try and finish my degree (only 5 more classes!), so if I get the itch you may run across the Medieval Mod name again somewhere else on the internet.
Edit: Actually, you may see it again very soon, depending upon what you have in your library- see below.

As far as my modding efforts, all this means that it is hard for me to get involved in anything, unless it is a game I am really currently enthused about (writing this email is really sapping me of strength). I may have found such a game, however, called Medieval: Total War. (Isn't it great they named a game after my mod?) I have spent the last six weeks playing the game, and they just released the first patch for it, so I picked this time to make my first thorough study of the settings.
As far as I know, players don't have access to any of the AI files, or even anything like the const.txt, but you never know what may happen.
Getting back on topic, I just have no interest in returning to Ctp2, at least not now. I think the only thing I didn't finish with the Medpack was the building support costs for the new costing method, and this is something that most anyone here could probably do; all it takes is some a good knowledge of how much gold "should" be available if the player conducts his economy properly, and then playing the game a lot and making gradual adjustments until the money flows properly.
To Hex and all the other modmakers out there- you have complete permission to use anything in the Medpack for your own creations. And this includes modifying files and settings to your own tastes as well. Just be courteous and note where the files originally came from, like I did with my acknowledgements page, and also state when you changed things, so that I don't get emails asking me to debug something that I didn't mess up. My aim in creating the Medpacks has always been to give the greatest amount of enjoyment to the greatest number of people. At one time I had visions of multiple versions of the Medpacks posted at my site here, where people had taken the original and added to or otherwise modified it to their own tastes, and released it as "Joe Cool's Medpack for Anarchists" or some such, but people seem to think that this stuff is copyrighted, and that I might look at it as sullying the Medmod name if they did something that I didn't give express permission for. I guess I should take it as a compliment that people hold the Medmods (both I and II) in such high regard, and I do, and I am very proud of what we accomplished, but sometimes I wished more people had tried their hand at putting their own touches on our work. It may well be that their touches would have been an improvement, and would have been incorporated into the "official" version.
Anyway, I guess I got a little off subject again, but thanks once more for the birthday wishes, and best wishes to the guys who I assume are still working on the Cradle mod.
If you see me on any forums in the near future, it will probably be the Total War forums, either the .com or .org sites, though I might stop by here occasionally to check on the MOO3 news.

[Dale]

[Immortal Wombat]

It's great to hear from you Wes, even if its not such great news
I hope you make a swift recovery as well as you can, and complete your degree. We're all thinking of you.

I keep hearing good things about Med: Total War. Maybe I should get it...

[Pedrunn]

WesW, i did not know neither about this dream of yours nor that your site was open to MM2-based mods!
But all my modding used to have your mods as basis. You can even see a unfinished mod in the Hexagonia website that has your medmod as basis.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by WesW
Getting back on topic, I just have no interest in returning to Ctp2, at least not now.

Not even for a democracy game? Take a look in the CTP2 democarcy game forum and join us.
It will be fun for sure!

[child of Thor]

I'll probably see you in the Medieval forums then - hope you get well soon mate

[Alex]

I'm happy to see you, Wes! Hope you get well soon and that you can return to this community in the future, maybe to enjoy the fruits of the work you started with the Medmod.

[WesW]

Thanks for the kind words guys. And partially because of those words........I'm baaaaaaaaaack!!! (though in another game)
See my webpage if you want to join in the fun (and it is some fun). I have *never* seen an AI that performs the way this one does in the patched Total War now out. To make a long story short, I have played the game for about six weeks solid, scoured the websites for tidbits from the strategy guide, and used everything that I have amassed on my own about medieval warfare, and the AI still consistently matches or outperforms me tactically on the battlefield. If I win now, it is generally because I am defending and/or have superior troops. And to this that all the factors that are taken into account on the battlefield make it, in the words of all the reviews I read, by far the most realistic game of its type ever released.

[child of Thor]

I'm having a hard time trying to decide if Med Total War is really great or just great. The real-time battles are(and were in shogun) what really make it unique and fun, say compared to EU2. But after playing shogun and mongol invaision to death(and loving them), there is a part of me finding Medieval slightly unsatisfying in comparison and i can't tell why? It's got more to it, the setting is great, it's a challange(the patch makes the battles much more so), it made me really laugh when i had my first mis-fit heir. Loads of good things and yet it hasn't impacted on me quite like shogun did.
Still i'm only playing it and CTP2 at the momment, so maybe i'll get to appriciate it more(and as more patches come out).
Maybe it's good for you having spent a lot of time and energy in CTP to try something different? How moddable is it do you think - i see the odd thread but it mostly seems to be text file alterations?
Still it's good to see you back and CTP2 seems to go on and on, i'm trying Hex's latest Cradle 1.3b and having a good time

[WesW]

I have started a thread about the mod over at the .com site. Players don't have access to any of the Battle AI, as far as I know, so that means that it is not nearly as moddable as Ctp, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.
I mean, we only need access to those things that are messed up, and in Total War the designers seem to have gotten most of the game right.