This pack actually contains around 110 decorative castle-fortresses, compensating for the few which were more variations than unique types of fortifications, as well as for the few basic ones. Thusly, there are 100 unique castle-fortresses.

"Decorative" because more focus was put on aesthetic and realism than game-play practicality.

Nearly all objects are native stuff, but a few objects are retextured (I am not sure this is the correct calling by the way), meaning that the same stone wall texture is assigned to all the castle objects, to all the village walls, small walls, and all the arabian walls and grounds, thus they could be used together and look correct (in my mod). Then also separate objects have been taken from the original native ojects, for example, a set of windows is taken from a town house building, and then is made separate and used as a fake decorative window. Same for many doors, gates, roofs, platforms, floors, barriers, entrances, wall decorations etc.. I included a folder where I regrouped all the resources with these decorative objects, like this you can not only onjoy the scenes such as they are presented on the screenshots, but also make richer scenes of your own thanks to many decorative meshes/props.

As for the foreign material, I use some of the "french castle" props, some of the "italian osp" props (the fine windows seen on most scenes are taken out separately from one of the buildings of this osp), the buttress pack counterpoints, some fire & sword objects (tatar fortifications and euro fortifications), some of the Gondor stuff from the "TLD" mod, several personally edited objects, as well as other small decorative objects from sources I now cannot remember, but the essential of the fortification can be shared, and the missing objects can be individually added using native objects and the mentioned packs/mods which are really superb for fortification-building, as well as the many decorative props included in this pack.

And about the textures used and seen on screenshots, I use what I can find on internet for free, as well as native stuff, or from mods available on this website, and is often slightly modified.



Because it was initially not intented to be shared, nearly all scenes are built on random scene grounds in stead of castle scenes. I was building them on the volley without concern for practicality in case of sharing, but after coming up with plenty of scenes I decided to share some afterall. So I included a screenshot of the location on the map of the scenes. For each location, you have three different scenes appearing, so it will be one of the three. There is a way to get the terrain code for any location, and then use it in a text line for the file "scenes," but I know not how to do any of this. I just know that to get to any location on the map you can use the cheat mode and then CTRL + click on the wanted position.
To edit random grounds, the cheat option "Walk around" is necessary, as well as the edit mode turned on.
For many of the scenes a flora_kinds text file is shared for the purpose of generating the appropriate vegetation for the specific location.

As the scenes are built on random maps, there is no AI mesh. But this should not be discouraging for you, as learning to deal with the AI mesh takes less than five minutes, and it takes an average of five minutes to build it for the small castle-fortresses, and up to 15 for the average ones. It may take longer for the larger scenes though. But it is worth it.

Additionally, since these scenes are taking place on random scenes, the AI will be using its tactics, like advancing pace by pace, or holding a high ground, and this does not fit siege behavior at all. I know it is unfortunate that the scenes were not built on castle scenes to prevent this, but a way to go around this is to play these scenes only against bandits (forest, mountain, steppe, taiga, sea raiders, looters), as these warbands automatically charge without using tactics. There are available tools that allow you to modify which troops and how many of these appear in each of the above-mentioned parties.

Another issue may be the spawn points. There is not a single scene with valid native spawn points. In some scenes you might notice spawn points, in others not, but in any case, these spawn points are made to suit my own spawn point configuration. Check out the next paragraph to find more informations about that.


You may want to know that several scenes have variations of gates open and closed, and all scenes with the drawbridges with beams have a drawbridge up and drawbridge down variant, with their chains and beams. For example, a scene where the drawbridge is up has its corresponding drawbridge down but hidden below the ground, and is in all cases simply positioned at the same height value but at a minus level (if a drawbridge is positioned at 6 meters, its corresponding down variant can be found at -6 meters). Same for some main entrances etc. This was done to make switching faster. Also, in some scenes, hidden below ground level are the corresponding destroyed walls, ladders, fires and smokes etc.

Again, as I wrote, bear in mind that these are "decorative" scenes because more focus is put on aesthetic and realism than game-play practicality. For instance, in several castle-fortresses, a tower, or courtyard or other areas of the scenes are not accessible. But you may still find it very enjoyable to play on them, particularly after editing the spawn points numbers.

As for the seeming inconsistency between some building types that appear on a few scenes (particularly those with towns), they are not always mistakes, since it is sometimes made to look as though a part of the fortication was built or reinforced at a later period, using then different architecture, and-or by a different culture that conquered the castle-fortress. I will explore this category in more depth for the next pack, making an european-like fortification with areas reinforced by a different culture. For one idea you can check images of the fortress Kes Meleda in the folder "preview of the forthcoming pack of 25."

The following castle-fortresses are more variations than unique types of fortifications:
Sumpon & Lensor
Daranok & Sapnar
Fedin & Trovard
Ferdason & Kornederv
Domd & Nemlan

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Link to the thread that includes Al Mansur's fortification kits, some of which are used in this scene pack:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,193272.0.html

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If you are willing to play on these same locations (random scenes as opposed to castle scenes), you will still be abble to enjoy special spawn points for ranged units. To include spawn points for a random map you will need to edit the following file "mission_templates."

Back up the unmodified file, then go at the line "mst_lead_charge."
Under it you will see lines of numbers, such as the example below:
4 1 4160 0 16 12 0
0 4160 0 16 0 0
4 8320 0 16 12 0
4 8320 0 16 0 0

To make a siege-like scene look interesting on a random scene, you may want to have for example 10 spawn points for each side, with an extra 10 spawn points to the defending side, solely for ranged units.
In this setting, I propose that 1 ranged unit spawns on each ranged-unit spawn point, 5 units spawn on each of the 10 defending side spawn, and 10 units spawn on each of the 10 attacking side spawns (I think that attackers should be at least twice more numerous when attempting a siege, that's why). So if you set your battlesize on 30 (minimum in the menu), you will have 100 attackers, and 60 defenders.
Spawns for attackers are: 11 to 20
Spawns for defenders are: 1 to 10
Spawns for ranged-units defenders are: 21 to 30
Lines for this setting is in the following block, which you can copy-paste over the four original lines that I put above:

32 1 4160 0 16 5 0
0 4160 0 1 0 0
11 8320 0 16 10 0
11 8320 0 16 0 0
2 4160 0 16 5 0
3 4160 0 16 5 0
4 4160 0 16 5 0
5 4160 0 16 5 0
6 4160 0 16 5 0
7 4160 0 16 5 0
8 4160 0 16 5 0
9 4160 0 16 5 0
10 4160 0 16 5 0
12 8320 0 16 10 0
13 8320 0 16 10 0
14 8320 0 16 10 0
15 8320 0 16 10 0
16 8320 0 16 10 0
17 8320 0 16 10 0
18 8320 0 16 10 0
19 8320 0 16 10 0
20 8320 0 16 10 0
21 135232 0 16 1 0
22 135232 0 16 1 0
23 135232 0 16 1 0
24 135232 0 16 1 0
25 135232 0 16 1 0
26 135232 0 16 1 0
27 135232 0 16 1 0
28 135232 0 16 1 0
29 135232 0 16 1 0
30 135232 0 16 1 0

You will certainly prefer to customize the spawn points, so I will help you understand what you need to know to make your own personalized spawn points setting, just in case you are not familiar with it.

The first number, 32, is the number of lines in the block. Change this value according to the number of lines you end up having when you finish dealing with spawn values.
The lines bearing the code 4160 are those lines that will spawn defending units.
The lines bearing the code 8320 are those lines that will spawn attacking units.
The lines bearing the code 135232 are those lines that will spawn ranged units on the defending side.
The last value just before the 0 at the end of each line is the number of units that the spawn will generate. If you set your battlesize on 30, the value "1" will spawn 1 unit. Rising the battlesize will of course rise the number of spawned units.
If you have the module, I am sure that you will be abble to further understand how to deal with this. My understanding of it is limited, and yet I enjoy very much what I can do with it. Gameplay can be made enormously more interesting by playing with these values. If you find out how to include ranged-units spawn points for the attacker's side, I sure would love to know it. This would be useful if siege equipement is used in a scene, where attackers would also need special shooting spawn-points, like on the top of a siege tower, or simply behind siege walls, whilst non-ranged units go to the walls..

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I am not sure if you will be abble to display the object spr_castle_battlement_a correctly because I had an issue with it my mod so I needed to make a copy of it. Thus, I pass to you the copy which is in the resource named "editor_missing_castle_battlement."

then add the following line at the end of the file scene_props to count this object in:

spr_castle_battlement_aa 0 0 castle_battlement_aa bo_castle_battlement_a 0

(it may be that you would actually have to replace your own spr_castle_battlement_a line with the above one in order to display correctly, please try both ways, because I am uncertain when it comes to this type of manipulations)




Additionally, I very often use these two objects that are native but not included in the game. Thusly, in order to be abble to display them in the scenes where they are used, you will need to include these two lines in the file scene_props:

spr_castle_courtyard_house_extension_a 0 0 castle_courtyard_house_extension_a bo_castle_courtyard_house_extension_a 0


spr_castle_courtyard_house_extension_b 0 0 castle_courtyard_house_extension_b bo_castle_courtyard_house_extension_b 0

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Because this is what should be considered a beta and definitely not a complete pack, you may experience additional bugs. To inform me about such glitches or ask me something related to what is shared in this pack you can contact me at FT_G at hotmail com
Similarly, if you wish to know precisely which non-native objects are used in any of the scenes, let me know and I will send you screenshots of these props with their names just such as they appear with the edit mod on.

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