Hi! I'm a modder that focuses on scripting (this mod is a script), and I've recently been contributing to AI General II with Hambango's and Decomposed's permission. @pfairweather01 asked what that means for the future of Spectator Mode II. It's a good question. I'll try to answer that here. Feel free to follow up if you have additional questions.


Short answer: It's easier to add and test new features using just one mod. AI General II had more current subscribers so it made sense to focus on developing that one.

Longer answer: These mods were both originally made by Hambango and are very similar. From my understanding, they originally split because some people wanted different features and others wanted the mod to stay the same. Spectator Mode was the mod for those who liked the original and wanted it to stay mostly stable. While I do my best to test my new changes before Decomposed and I release them, it's never a guarantee that the changes will work as expected in all situations. Some of the changes I made affected core functionality. Based on the history of these two mods, I figured that the user base of AI General II would be more open to change. Also, I saw AI General II as being more versatile and there were more current subscribers to that mod.


Yes. :) AI General II could always control your whole army if you wanted it to, but it used to be a little cumbersome if you had reinforcements. I've made two key updates that make bigger battles better with AI General II:

1. Do you like Spectator Mode? Now if you give all of your current units to the AI General by either using Shift+F10 when no units are selected, or by selecting all units and then pressing Shift+F9, the mod will now assume that you want all reinforcements and summoned units to be controlled as well. This makes it equivalent to Spectator Mode. (This is the default in AI General II, but you can turn this feature off in the config file if you don't like it.)
   
   
2. Do you like Lord Mode or Reinforcement Mode? AI General II
   now has a config file where you can set various options. If you set extend_control_if_reverse_selected = true in that file, then you can get Shift+F10 to work like Lord Mode or Reinforcement Mode. Just select anything you *don't* want the AI to control before you use the hotkey, and then the AI will control everything else (including future reinforcements and summoned units). This is not on by default because I didn't want to confuse people who were already using the mod, but it's easy to edit the config file if you follow the instructions.

Yes. Just be sure that you don't have both mods enabled at the same time. Since these are battle mods, they don't affect saved games, so you should be able to freely start or stop using them at any time. (If you try to load a saved game and the game complains that you don't have a mod you used to have, un-check and re-check the "Enable All Saves" checkbox, and it should let you load the game just fine.)


Yes. I do my best to keep AI General II's change notes accurate and up to date.

Besides bug fixes and configuration, the biggest news is that AI General II is now also compatible with quest battles. This is experimental but it seems to be working fairly well so far. AI General II is also more compatible with other battle mods, like the Find Idle Units mod.


That's ultimately up to Decomposed. For reasons discussed above, I'm not planning to actively develop Spectator Mode II, but that doesn't mean it can't be maintained in its current state. I think most of the updates Decomposed has been releasing each DLC are just to keep the game from giving you a warning because it thinks the mod is out of date. Most of the time the script won't change from DLC to DLC. As long as CA doesn't meaningfully change the underlying script functions that this mod relies on, Spectator Mode II should continue to work as it does now even if we don't do anything to update the mod and the game warns you that it's out of date. That means it should be relatively easy if Decomposed wants to post the minor updates for each DLC as long as Decomposed has the time and interest.

That covers most cases, but what if CA does post a major change to their scripts that breaks Spectator Mode II? In that case, it's likely that change would affect AI General II also, so whomever was maintaining AI General II's script at the time would need to know about it. In most cases, it should be easy enough to fix Spectator Mode II at the same time that we are fixing AI General II. (And if not, you can switch which mod you are using at that time.)


Yes. I've done my best to answer questions like that in the AI General II FAQs discussion.


I've done my best to familiarize myself with the history of these mods by reading past discussions here and on forums.totalwar.com. That said, some of you have been using this mod much longer than I have, so let me know if I'm mistaken about something. And feel free to ask if you have other questions.