[READ IT ALL FROM TOP TO BOTTOM]

Firstly, make sure you have a working install of Medieval II: Total War with the Kingdoms expansion. Also make sure none of your kingdoms expansions have been changed in any way(so if you run a mod by renaming say the Americas campaign you will have issues) Both Steam and retail versions work. If you have a pirated version or cracked version of the game, go and purchase medieval 2 with the kingdoms expansions.

Step 1: Download the latest version of Beginning of The End Times on this page (the 1.5 Beta).

Step 2: Unrar the mod using either WinRar, 7zip, or an equivalent extraction program able to handle .rar files. You should end up with a folder named BOTET containing more folders and the files warhammer.bat and configuration.cfg. If it contains another folder called BOTET, use the one that contains the warhammer.bat and configuration.cfg files.

Step 3: Drag that folder into your Medieval II Total War/mods folder, so it ends up Medieval II Total War/mods/BOTET.

Step 4: (Steam only) If you don't have a kingdoms.exe in your medieval 2 folder, copy medieval2.exe and rename the copy kingdoms.exe(do not put .exe in the name, the files are already an executable)

Step 5: Open the 4GB Patch (you have the link to download the file below this own message, simply scroll down the installation video) and direct it to your medieval2.exe in your Medieval II: Total War folder. If it patches correctly it will create a backup file in the same folder. Do the same thing for kingdoms.exe. Make sure you run the program as administrator.(right click on the patch, properties, compatibility and at the bottom you will see "run this program as an administrator" If you get an error trying to launch the game, delete the .exe files and rename the backup files to medieval2.exe and kingdoms.exe, then try "Large Address Aware" instead. It's the same as the 4gb patch, but might not cause that error.

Step 6: Run the game by double clicking warhammer.bat(it will just be called warhammer) in the BOTET folder. If you want, you can right click on warhammer.bat and make a shortcut to put anywhere you want, so you don't have to navigate to the mod folder everytime.

Excessive campaign map lag: Some with older system might find the campaign map very laggy now, if you find it is far worse then before we have a fix for you to try. In the mods folder you will see a configuration.txt. open in notepad. find the line that says

disable_file_cache = true (make it like this, look down)

;disable_file_cache = true (the ; makes the game ignore the line)

next you will need to rebuild the map.rwm. The game does this on its own but you have to delete the old one and start a new campaign to get it to rebuild. So, go to the BOTET folder. navigate to data/world/maps/base and you will see the map.rwm (delete this or drag to desktop(just in case)

then reload the mod start a campaign and the map.rwm will rebuild. might take a while dont worry this is normal the first time. See if that helps your excessive lag issues scrolling around the campaign map.

Advice: Play only Long campaigns, not Short ones.

Advice: To play sieges in Custom Battles first select fort, then the culture level, then the settlement level.

Advice: If you find old totalwar games give you poor fps for your system this might be why, go to your medieval2.exe and kingdoms.exe right click and go to properties/compatibility you will see a check box for "disable display scaling for high DPI settings" Make sure this is checked(or try it to see if you get an FPS gain) made a huge difference for me with ALL totalwar games.

Possible issues: Many settings that affect the game are found in the configuration.cfg file, which can be edited like a text file. If you want banners on or off, change show_banners = false to true, or true to false. Also make sure the log line looks like this: [log]

to = logs/M2TW.system.log.txt

#level = * trace

level = * error

#level=*script* trace

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Installation video tutorial thanks to Stan (WarhammerWeekendTimes):

4GB Patch Link: Ntcore.com

Advice: If you get an error 0xc000142 while applying the patch, that means you must update your .Net Framework. If you still can't apply, then use LARGE ADDRESS AWARE: Techpowerup.com