I'll try to make this as simple as possible - I love this game, but it would appear that something has gone terribly wrong with my game and I'm not able to play it anymore. A mod that I was making now causes the game to crash around the turn 30 mark, every time I try to play. Because of AOWIII limitations in memory usage, no matter how good my PC is - it's not a matter of the hardware, basically. This PC is specifically built to custom specifications to play potentially memory intensive games like 4x ones with the graphics on "acceptable", with a GFX card that is still rather advanced, in order to maximize the processing power to (try lol) and handle the game when the game goes into later turns and the AI is really chonking out decision trees.

I humbly admit that my haphazard mod probably broke the game, but I'm not sure. I ran the game in debug mode and I'd love to share the logs with anyone knowledgeable. I'm going to try to run the game to turn 30 with my mod entirely disabled to see if it's the main culprit as well. But I wanna invest time in trying to fix my mod with some backup from a real modding chad =)

So yeah basically I am looking for someone who is knowledgeable, and has good formal skills at modding to help me unbreak my game and potentially re-create this mod.

I have good ideas when it comes to mods, but I'm not tremendously skilled at using the editor. I also changed way too much stuff in one mod, just messing around and despite my good ideas, I accept that fact that I screwed up and I have to kind of start over. The basic stuff I was doing included -

1. Adding a new specialization intended for the AI only, which basically adds many of the pre-existing specialization perks into one super class. Here is the theory - reduce the processing power at all costs. For a challenge most lets players play against many Emporer AI. I play a larger map, against 3-5 emperor AI who can be give all the base perks such as Expander, Explorer etc. all rolled into one spec, but also access to hybrid builds made up perks/abilities from various classes. Picture an AI with the Sorcerer's extra magic, Warlord's economic bonuses and potentially unit bonuses. Theocrat is great here too - I let this AI begin the game with the Order of Healing perk which, like most perks I give has multiplicative effects. Support units can help the AI do the neutral sites each with their healer abilities. Any random units, support or otherwise the AI builds will become inevitably useful and the player now MUST scout, and actively punish the AI's movements because in large scale battles the AI is just a beast! Combined with a mod which adjusts the AI's unit building script just facing a few is enough of a challenge, and lets you generate a nice big world to explore and build up in first before you face an incredibly diverse and powerful army.

2. Speaking of perks from various specializations, you can also use them to target specific weaknesses in the AI and shore them up. I didn't like how underleveled the AI's heroes and leaders were, and how they would often loses their leaders rather stupidly. I simply added the trait Fast Learner to the AIs heroes and leader, and gave the AIs the Necromancer perk Phylactery from turn 1. This change made cheesing them alot harder, and when their leader dies they will simply respawn very quickly in the Throne city, ready to defend it and pick up a fresh army.

3. I was able to find at one point the logic behind AI city settling - I reduced the minimum space they have to have between their cities. This way, the AI was settling all the resource and other sites better, and making more efficient cities that were closer together, easier to reinforce etc. Really a nice snowball effect from just that, but I don't remember how to do it, like most things I changed... it's been quite a few years since I played and I've been very busy what can I say lol

4. I removed the flanking damage bonus bc I felt like it was too overpowered and broke the game. I was also in the process of trying to modify literally every unit in the game to gain a couple more cool abilities as they leveled up - in particular support units.

So yeah, I would appreciate any advice or help with trying to figure out why my game crashes, or remaking a mod or mods that do what I'm trying to do. Or if you want to just talk about what mods you are using, problems you had with them in the past, suggestions for mods or really anything, I'm cool with any kind of discussion because again, I'm just thinking about getting back into this game after many years but it would begin with having to sort out technical difficulties lmao