This mod overhauls the main game by changing the balance, adding removed content and introducing some QOL changes.
Balance: the general idea is to make platoon combat more viable for evil gods and good city planning more important for good gods.
Content: old voice lines, quests, and a scrapped aztec land based on an existing mod by boxhead (http://www.bwfiles.com/forum/index.php?topic=8089.0) has been added back into the game. also allows to choose gorilla and tiger as pets.
QOL wise: makes several tribute challenges less tedious; also adds the ability to draw perfect circle or square shaped roads.

I originally wanted to change much more, but i ended up stopping with this. I never actually uploaded it because of that, but now that someone seems to have a similar idea, i thought i might as well upload what i have. Maybe some ideas or parts of this mod can be used in there.

For a complete list of changes, look below.


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// INSTALLATION //
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0: BACK UP YOUR FILES BEFORE OVERWRITING THEM. IF YOU OVERWRITE THEM, YOU WILL NEED TO REINSTALL THE GAME TO GET THE OLD VERSIONS BACK
1: Copy all the files and folders in the Bw2Root folder into your Black and White 2 installation folder.
1.1: Data/Balance to get the changes described balance changes below
1.2: Data/landscape and Data/scripts/bw2 to get the individual land changes described in land changes. note that only copying one of these folders might cause some bugs
1.3: BW2Mod.dll is required for the modded exe to work
2: create the modded exe
2.1: make sure you updated bw2 to 1.3 (the community patch thing)
2.2: copy white.exe into the folder called "Patcher"
2.3: doubleclick on patcher.bat. this should create a new file called whitemod.exe
3: copy whitemod.exe into your original bw2 folder, next to where BW2Mod.dll was copied. This will enable all the changes marked with [EXE].

Any individual step might be skipped, if you e.g dont trust the exe or dont want the balance changes.

Note: all the exe patch does is add the BW2Mod.dll to the dlls that the exe loads on startup. i did that with a program called CFF Explorer. just in case you were curious.




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// CHANGES //
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// General Features //
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Quick overview about the general and drastic changes. Note that changes prefixed with [EXE] only apply when using the modified executable.

- [EXE] buying the "bring the last 100 soldiers/archers/catapult" will now increase the default level with which these troops are recruited instead.
    - note that the mod determines the platoon level by looking at the tribute price of this upgrade; if you change this to where the tribute cost doesnt increase anymore, this will stop working
- [EXE] holding shift while drawing streets or walls enters a special draw mode that makes it easier to draw certain shapes
    - pressing 4 will switch between the following modes: straight line, V shape, U shape, half circle
    - pressing 2 and 3 will move the tip of the V or U shape up and down
    - pressing 1 will flip the shape or mirror it
- you can now choose any of the 6 creatures, including tiger and gorilla
- land 10 (second aztec level) has been inserted back into the game, using a modified version of boxheads land 10 script
- some unused dialogue has been reactivated
- some unused quests have been reactivated
- the level of enemies platoons has been changed to steadily increase over the lands instead of making a huge leap at the aztecs

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// BALANCE CHANGES //
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Unless otherwise noted, these changes are made by copying the txt files within the balance-folder

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// Impressiveness //
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Impressiveness was a weird way to win. Since population barely mattered and hapiness didnt matter at all, you could easily impress every land by spamming impressive buildings - preferably ones that give a huge bang for their buck, such as epics. You wouldnt even have to build them completely if you lack the ore; just building the wood-part gave plenty of impressiveness.
These changes are supposed to shift the focus away from spamming buildings and more towards producing a town with a large and happy population. Buildings still remain a good source of Impressiveness however, to prevent them from feeling useless.

- impressiveness of almost all buildings has been reduced heavily. the impressiveness value is roughly based on its ore value
    - buildings with more initial impressiveness have a higher repetition decay
    - the minimum impressiveness multiplier has been decreased to 0.3 (from 0.55)
- impressiveness bonus of locations has been heavily decreased to 10 (from 200)
- population impressiveness has been heavily increased
- security impressivness has been increased
- [EXE] population impressiveness is now based on adult population instead of town capacity
- [EXE] town happiness now acts as a bonus or malus to the town population impressiveness
- [EXE] fixed a bug where impressiveness decay actually started with the third building of a type, even though other parts of the game displayed it starting at the second

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// War //
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Not much was changed to this part of the game; mostly because the interesting parts, such as creature resistence to melee platoons or its fire wonder range were simply not exposed. However, hopefully the ability to change platoons initial level will make it possible to keep up with the enemies in late game, where NPC platoons would previously heavily outlevel the player, making platoon vs platoon combat unviable.

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// Buildings //
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Some cheaper buildings had their cost increased to better reflect their difference in size or use through their resource cost. A few influence bubble changes are supposed to increase the QOL of building a town.
The Happiness modifiers of houses have also been changed to be more punishing but have a smaller reach. This is supposed to make good gods give their houses more space, increasing the required build space for this playstile, without affecting evil gods.

- most buildings had their cost changed, usually becoming more expensive
- the radius around houses that decreases happiness of other buildings has been reduced. The happiness malus has been increased.
- the influence given by houses has been heavily increased to make it possible to build bigger buildings behind houses that were built at the edge of influence
- the influence given by granaries has been increased to make it easier to build fields around it
- skyscrapers now only cost ore, though their orce cost is quite high; this makes it possible to godbuild them more quickly

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// Miracles //
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Miracles are extremely strong. A fire mircale can incinerate hundres of soldiers at once, making any fights within reach of it impossible to lose. Pouring out a lightning wonder can pick up many soldiers that are spread around your town. Shield wonders stop siege catapults dead in its tracks, and while they stop you from using rocks, you can still use other wonders to kill anything below it.
These powerful miracles are a large part of the appeal of this game, but are too powerfull to be able to throw them around like candy. Therefor, the cost of all of them has been increased - some more than others.
Slight changes to some wonders have been made to make them more viable.

- the mana cost of all miracles has been increased
- the aoe of meteor wonders has been heavily increased to make it more viable
- the pour-out duration of fire wonders has been heavily increased

Epics cost up to 1.000.000 tribute and are truly devestating. That is, SOME of them are. Others are just crap.
To make them a little bit more even, and to justify the lower tribute cost in this mod, the recharge times have been changed depending on the miracle. The earthquake miracle is now considered weaker than the hurricane miracle.
Another odd thing were the efficiency boni. Placing an Altar next to an epic could give anywhere from 40% to 160% efficiency bonus; by strategically placing Altars around the epic, you could get anywhere from 800% to 900%. These boni are added to the mana generated by each praying villager - a bonus of 900% means each villager produces 1000% of the usual mana, which reduces the recharge time of the epic from 15 minutes with 100 villagers to 1.5 minutes with 100 villagers. The rapid fire volcanos one could produce with this were just rediculous. Therefor, these boni have been heavily nerfed. However, other epics still give a 100% efficiency bonus, so if you dont care about resources and want a rapid fire volcano, you can still archieve this by building a circle (or 2) of epics around your epic.

- the recharge rates of epic wonders have been changed; a sirene takes 10 minutes to charge with 100 people, a volcano wonder 20 minutes. Earthquake and Hurricane are inbetween.
- the recharge rate bonus given by altars has been drastically reduced
    - the bonus given by other epics however remained unchanged

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// Tribute //
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The cost of epics has been reduced so you can buy a volcano relatively early in the game and actually put it to use without having to not buy anything else before land 6. This also makes buying an epic for the 100.000 tribute quests a more attractive thing over rushing the opponents town to be able to build his miracle instead.
Evil upgrades have gotten a small discount as they have a new way to spend their trbiute in the form of platoon level upgrades.

- many tribute costs have been changed
    - houses are now unlocked by default. villas have to be unlocked using tribute.
    - the costs of epic wonders have been reduced to make them more affordable without buying absolutely nothing before jap1
    - generally, the cost of expensive impressive buildings have been slightly reduced and the cost of inexpensive buildings slightly increased
    - the cost of the amphitheatre has been heavily decreased
    - the cost of rather weak upgrades, such as creature building upgrades, have been reduced
    - the cost of strong upgrades, such as the creature fire wonder, have been increased
    - all wonders, especially meteor wonders, have been reduced in cost, as they are pretty mandatory and a large part of what makes the game fun
    - the cost of all the backstory books have been set to 1

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// LAND CHANGES //
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These changes are inside the map files or map script files. They mostly restore unused content or change the balance on tribute challenges to make them more difficult or less tedious.

Land 1:
- creature selection now includes tiger (regardless of whether it is unlocked or not) and the aztec gorilla
- when clicking the gold scroll do leave the land (but not when skipping it using esc -> skip land), the tribute from all undone quests will be awarded anyway
- killing the man during the rock man quest will now award tribute as well

Land 2: no changes. there is an easter egg in there though which i never heared of anywhere yet. the code calls it speshul bench

Land 3:
- the beginning tutorials up until, but not including, the creature tutorial can now be skipped by clicking on a new silver scroll. skipping tutorials this way will still award all the tribute awarded by the tutorials and will still unlock the temple and armory
- a previously unused quest has been activated
- some unused dialouge has been activated

Land 4:
- some unused dialouge about houses has been activated
- a previously unused quest has been activated
- disabled merging for the ghost platoon from the silver scroll quest
- in nutoil, every island has to be passed in a maximum of 2 throws now
- fixed a bug in nutoil that skipped a success speech because the creator thought x % 4 would return values in [1,4]

Land 6 (jap 1):
- the running speed of both the spy and the raiders in the labyrinth quest on the island have been increased to make it less of a chore
- fixed a bug in the sheep birth quest where the time between the ejections was 9 instead of 5 seconds. also reduced the time to a random number between 3 and 5 seconds and made the sheep fly out at slightly altering speeds
- note: the ending dialog that changes depending on the win method of this and the last land is not actually bugged; the german localisation however is

Land 7:
- the hurricane of the NPC now destroys buildings in the same way the player hurricane does
- disabled merging for the seven samurai platoon from the silver scroll quest

Land 8:
- a previously unused quest has been activated

Land 9:
- the intro has been changed to make more sense (there was clearly a good advisor animation missing)

Land 10:
- this land was previously skipped by the game as it was unfinished by the developers. it still is a little bit rought looking. the version in this mod is based on boxheads land 10 (http://www.bwfiles.com/forum/index.php?topic=8089.0)
    - the spirits tell you to restart the land a few times in the beginning. i do not know how to fix this. please ignore them.
- the intro sequence has been changed to make it more clear that the player has to rescue the women
- the time the player has to save the women has been increased to 15 minutes
    - the way to save the women has been drastically changed, making it a lot more interactive and difficult
- reworked and added an unused quest about smoke signals
- the aztec general now comments on buildings the player and he himself builds

Land 11:
- added an earthquake and a hurricane epic to the aztecs, which they use once at the very start of the game
- increased platoon sizes to be slightly larger than they were in vanillas hard mode (- did you know there was a hard mode in this one? now its always on)
- heavily increased the size of the second attack to give a sense of urgency
- repurposed unused voicelines as taunts
- attacks start more quickly now instead of having exorbitantly high wait times that make it seem like the game bugged out (which it sometimes did)


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This archive also contains the source of all the things that make up this mod in case you want to edit it yourself.
This contains:
- The Source-Code for the BW2Mod.dll and the visual studio solution it was created with
- All the game scripts, both modified and not modified. The original game files can be found here: https://github.com/HandsomeMatt/bw2-modding/tree/master/lhvm/scripts
    - A bat file that calls the script compiler in the correct way to compile a certain land by number
- two python scripts, one to copy changes in the placement.xml to non-greek buildings, one to extract strings from the string database to find unused game text