Total War: ROME REMASTERED F.A.Q. and useful tips about how to play Chivalry Remastered (and other mods)

1. A Note Of Complaint

These pieces of advice have been explained many times here in the comments, on the Chivalry discord, on our dedicated channel in the RTW Community discord (and on those of other Rome Remastered mods) .

Having to repeat them again and again is quite disappointing. Not because one doesn't want to help (we have spent hundreds of hours making the mod and providing support for it, as a team, so altruism is not a virtue we lack), but because many of these tips would be accessible simply scrolling down the comments for five minutes.

So, we are happy to help when we have free time (for info about this, go to Part 5), but since this is a community project it would be great if even players would help each other, through one of the platforms listed above.

Now, let's go to the proper FAQ.

2. Before You Play The Mod

a) The most important step: before playing ANY mod, you must launch the base game.

No choice, you must. Run it at least once, elsewhere some fundamental files won't be generated. No matter if you played it before: when you install Rome Remastered (=RR) again, you need to do this.

If you do not, no mod will work.

b) Subscribe to Chivalry (the base mod; if you plan to play its submod by Kirsi and Atromb, you need to subscribe to it too, later).

Chivalry is a very large mod, so its download may require a good amount of time. Wait until it ends: if you launch the mod too early, it doesn't work.

Tipical error message: invalid manifest etc.

c) other important note: the mod needs RR to be set to English language. Other versions are not currently supported.

Tipical error message: can't find Armenian culture etc.

d) Enable Chivalry in the mod manager provided by the Feral Launcher.

If you have subscribed to the submod too, every submod must be enabled and put on top of the base mod (this is a general rule).

Currently, at the time of this guide, the only actively supported submods are the expanded map by Kirsi and Atromb and the Medieval 2 portraits.

3. General Information About The Mod In Its Current State

The latest version at the time of this guide is dated December 13th 2023.

It includes four campaigns:

- Early Era - 1080 AD

- High Era - 1212 AD

- Late Era - 1311 AD

- Crusades provincial map

Additionally, there is the Kirsi-Atromb's expanded map, set in 1080 AD.

The Early campaign is the most polished experience, the High Era is somehow less complete than the previous one, the Late still needs a lot of work but it's playable.

The Early Campaign has a big issue however, that often prevents save games to load properly. A hotfix for this has been prepared but it needs manual installation by the player: the file and its instructions are available both on our Discord and on the Chivalry channel in the Rome Total War Community Discord.

I could provide a direct link later here too (if Steam as a platform allows to add external links... I don't remember at the moment).

The Atromb-Kirsi's Campaign is not affected by that issue, so no fix is required there.

4. What To Do If The Mod Doesn't Work

4.1 during the first launch of the mod

Assuming you have followed all guidelines at Part 2, the mod should launch. Hundreds of people have played it, we see it working on our machines, some bugs and crashes still happen but the mod works.

If it doesn't work, the first step is checking again that list, in particular the loading order into the mod manager.

Sometimes not everything goes well, during the download phase (its a very large mod, after all), so you could try uninstalling Chivalry.

To uninstall the mod, unsubscribe it from its workshop page and wait until anything is removed. This may take several minutes.

When Steam has finished, subscribe the mod again and wait for it to be downloaded.

If the mod still doesn't work, go to Part 5 of this guide to read how to receive support.

4.2 when the mod stops working after a while

- Are you trying to resume an ongoing campaign and the savegame does not load?

Check if the mod has received an update; some kind of updates are not savegame compatible. In this case, you can only resume your game when you previously made a local copy of the mod, as explained for example in another guide of mine:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2817188723

- The mod used to work but suddenly you experience random CTDs (crash to desktop) during campaign, when entering a battle, in the middle of a battle, etcetera?

You can try these steps:

a) look for the Feral Interactive folder into the following path:

C:\Users\-your user name-\AppData\Local\Feral Interactive

b) - IMPORTANT - this folder contains some files you may want to preserve from deletion, for example savegames and your local mods (not those installed through the workshop, don't worry).

To backup savegames, move from the main Feral Interactive folder to Total War ROME REMASTERED\VFS\Local\Rome and backup the saves folder.

Savegames for Barbarian Invasion and Alexander are stored one step before, into their own directories.

(If you prefer to go safe, backup the whole VFS folder and you are ok).

Local copies of mods and mods you are working on are into Feral Interactive\Total War ROME REMASTERED\Mods. Backup them, if you have any.

(Elsewhere, every mod you have stored there will be lost).

c) once you have backed-up everything, delete the Feral Interactive folder. Now, launch Rome Remastered (the base game! Not the mod!); this is needed to regenerate those directories.

d) You can now try playing Chivalry again. Usually, this method fixes the largest part of reported problems.

- Still not working?

Some users who reported CTDs have solved them moving back to a previous version of their graphics drivers or doing a clean installation of the latest update received by their graphics cards. It may deserves an attempt.

If your machine has more than one graphics device (for example that of your processor + a dedicated card), moving the game management from one to the other may be a useful test.

Reducing some settings levels (especially the graphical ones, like the maximum fps to display) may help too.

For additional support, read the next Part of this guide.

5. How To Get Help / Support

This section is mainly dedicated to how to signal issues and bugs you encounter playing the mod.

Steam Workshop has a comment section for the mod, but this isn't the best place to find support. The devs are usually active on the Chivalry discord or on the channel dedicated to this mod on the RTW Community discord.

If you don't have a Discord account, you can start a discussion here on Steam, in the mod's workshop page, or resume an existing one. Support through Discord is easier, however.

- how to provide details about your CTDs

You need to enable logging from the game launcher, in the Advanced Options section.

a) activate the advanced options bar

b) type the following instruction: enable_logging

c) launch the mod normally; some txt files are going to be created in background, while you play.

d) when the mod/game crashes, look for the following path:

C:\Users\-your user name-\AppData\Local\Feral Interactive\Total War ROME REMASTERED\VFS\Local\Rome\logs

e) now you can post your logs on the Chivalry discord or on the channel dedicated to this mod on the RTW Community discord, attaching them to your message.

Sometimes these logs allow to discover critical bugs in the mod, that could be fixed in future updates.

6. How To Help Yourself On Your Own

Despite good will and advice that others could provide you, there may be occasions in which nobody can help you except yourself.

Computers aren't game consoles like Xbox and Playstation. What works perfectly on a specific PC may not work on another the same way.

So, playing mods you often need to find yourself a solution: changing your system settings, testing different drivers versions etc.

Mods aren't made by professional workers, their functioning is not guaranteed, modders can't help beyond their own limits. They don't own the same, exactly identical machine you have, so it's impossible for them or other users of the mod to investigate your issue when that doesn't happen on their devices.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3228068776

F.A.Q. and useful tips about how to play Chivalry Remastered (and other mods)