Any Army, Any Time - Instructions

[Damask]

This thread details a way to get any army at any time. If you're like me then you've found that the replayability of Armored Princess is greatly reduced because every game follows the same general unit progression. Moreover you can't even get a number of units until you're almost to the last boss. Since there isn't a randomization mod, the only way around this right now is to map kite. I'm not willing to spend the 5-6 hours (every game!) that this requires though so I went searching for another method and this is what I came up with. It's nothing earth shattering, just a quick switch to developer mode and then an in-game code for customizing an army. If this sounds like something you're interested in, please read on.

Any Army, Any Time
______________________

Step 1.

Start Armored Princess in developer mode by adding -dev to the .exe shortcut. If what I just said makes sense to you then do it and go on to Step 2. If this is your first time modifying a shortcut however here's a step-by-step breakdown:

1a. Find your Armored Princess shortcut and make a copy of it.
1b. Rename this copy to something that makes clear what it is, ex. Armored Princess Developer Mode.
1c. Right click on this new shortcut and go to Properties.
1d. In the resulting window make sure you're on the Shortcut tab and you will see a field called Target. Do NOT delete anything in this field. Instead go to the end, add a space and then type -dev. For example, after doing this with my Target it reads:

"C:\Program Files\1C\King's Bounty Armored Princess\kb.exe" -dev

1e. Now hit Okay to close the shortcut properties window. Congratulations! You've just enabled developer mode. Go ahead and click on your new shortcut to start the game.

Step 2.

Okay, so now you've launched Armored Princess in developer mode. This is just like normal except there are a whole bunch of shortcut keys that do really powerful stuff like give you 1000 mana or instantly kill a unit. Because of this you need to be careful what you press and obviously do not want to continue your game in this mode. It's alright though because you'll only be here for as long as it takes to build an army.

To do that, load up a saved game. If you're starting a new play through with this method then I recommend waiting until after you beat the tutorial to use it because having at least one friendly castle in which to garrison troops is a big help and also your army gets automatically reset to your class's default at the end of the tutorial dungeon. Anyway, what you do after your game is loaded is press CTRL and a number from 1-9. When you do this your army will immediately be REPLACED by a fixed troop set. These sets contain all the units in the game and each CTRL number has a few different types through which it will cycle. For example, press CTRL 1 to get set 1a, press CTRL 1 again for set 1b and so on until you get back to set 1a. When you find the unit you want put them in your garrison and keep going until you're finished and your new army is either waiting in a garrison or mixed in with your active troop set. Now that you're done Save your game and exit the program.

Step 3.

From here start up the regular non-developer mode Armored Princess. When you load the game you just saved everything is back to normal except you also have your new troops. Nice! Now make the army you want. At this point you probably have either more or less troops than your leadership can handle. To fix this you can either delete excess troops or use the doublearmy code to max them out. To use the doublearmy code you need to enable the code window by pressing ~ while holding down Shift. Note that you must be on the regular overworld screen to do this. A small window will then appear and you can type in the word doublearmy followed by nothing or a number from 1 to 5 and then hit Enter. If you do not type a number then all your troops will be doubled. If you type in a number then only the troops in that slot will be doubled.

And that's all there is to it. Now you have a fully customized army and you can use the doublearmy code to increase it whenever you gain leadership or until you can buy the units regularly. One thing to note is that accoding to the Armored Princess homepage: "The use of codes is recorded in savegame files, but they do not affect the final rating statistics." Basically then, if you're like me and just want to make the game more interesting you can use this method without worrying. If, however, you're playing Armored Princess competitively and trying for the highest score \ lowest time \ beat-the-entire-game-naked (Amelie, not you) then probably you want to forget about this thread because when you post your save game file people will be able to tell that you pulled troops out of thin air. But if that's not a worry then you should be fine.

As a final note, the money code is great if you want to give Amelie troops and "pay" for them at the same time. What you can do is spawn your units with doublearmy and then deduct the cost of those units from Amelie's gold. So let's say you spawn 5 units that cost 100 gold each. That's 500 gold so just open the code window and type:

money -500

and that amount will be deducted (and if you don't have enough money then make yourself wait until you do). By sticking to this you can ensure that Amelie doesn't end up overpowered, with too much gold at the end of the game. It's completely optional however so use it or not, as you will.

[digman]

With spamm's army shop mod, you can refill your units much easier, but they do cost double the price, which i think is reasonable, and adds to the challenge.

[ender]

Originally Posted by digman

With spamm's army shop mod, you can refill your units much easier, but they do cost double the price, which i think is reasonable, and adds to the challenge.

I don't find spamm's army shop mod - is only in russian?



Good to know about those developer codes after finishing game.

[Tiagop]

What do you mean by "1d. In the resulting window you will see a Target field. Do NOT delete anything in this field. Instead go to the end, add a space and then type -dev. For example, after doing this with my shortcut it reads:" ?

cant find anything to do that

you mean by a target field that place when you can right -dev? because i cant write on many places

[Zechnophobe]

There may be multiple tabs to this view, you will want the tab that says 'shortcut' (At least it is called this in Vista, I do not recall older/newer OS).

[Tiagop]

Was doing it wrong, thanks anyawy

[Damask]

Hey Tiagop, Zechnophobe is totally right: you need to be on the Shortcut tab and I've updated the instructions to make that clear. Sounds like you've got it now anyway but definitely post again if you have any other issues with this.

Cheers.

[digman]

You say "any army" how about imps and archmages, somehow i cant get them using the method.

[rancor26]

Originally Posted by Damask

This thread details a way to get any army at any time. If you're like me then you've found that the replayability of Armored Princess is greatly reduced because every game follows the same general unit progression. Moreover you can't even get a number of units until you're almost to the last boss. Since there isn't a randomization mod, the only way around this right now is to map kite. I'm not willing to spend the 5-6 hours (every game!) that this requires though so I went searching for another method and this is what I came up with. It's nothing earth shattering, just a quick switch to developer mode and then an in-game code for customizing an army. If this sounds like something you're interested in, please read on.

Any Army, Any Time
______________________

Step 1.

Start Armored Princess in developer mode by adding -dev to the .exe shortcut. If what I just said makes sense to you then do it and go on to Step 2. If this is your first time modifying a shortcut however here's a step-by-step breakdown:

1a. Find your Armored Princess shortcut and make a copy of it.
1b. Rename this copy to something that makes clear what it is, ex. Armored Princess Developer Mode.
1c. Right click on this new shortcut and go to Properties.
1d. In the resulting window make sure you're on the Shortcut tab and you will see a field called Target. Do NOT delete anything in this field. Instead go to the end, add a space and then type -dev. For example, after doing this with my Target it reads:

"C:\Program Files\1C\King's Bounty Armored Princess\kb.exe" -dev

1e. Now hit Okay to close the shortcut properties window. Congratulations! You've just enabled developer mode. Go ahead and click on your new shortcut to start the game.

Step 2.

Okay, so now you've launched Armored Princess in developer mode. This is just like normal except there are a whole bunch of shortcut keys that do really powerful stuff like give you 1000 mana or instantly kill a unit. Because of this you need to be careful what you press and obviously do not want to continue your game in this mode. It's alright though because you'll only be here for as long as it takes to build an army.

To do that, load up a saved game. If you're starting a new play through with this method then I recommend waiting until after you beat the tutorial to use it because having at least one friendly castle in which to garrison troops is a big help and also your army gets automatically reset to your class's default at the end of the tutorial dungeon. Anyway, what you do after your game is loaded is press CTRL and a number from 1-9. When you do this your army will immediately be REPLACED by a fixed troop set. These sets contain all the units in the game and each CTRL number has a few different types through which it will cycle. For example, press CTRL 1 to get set 1a, press CTRL 1 again for set 1b and so on until you get back to set 1a. When you find the unit you want put them in your garrison and keep going until you're finished and your new army is either waiting in a garrison or mixed in with your active troop set. Now that you're done Save your game and exit the program.

Step 3.

From here start up the regular non-developer mode Armored Princess. When you load the game you just saved everything is back to normal except you also have your new troops. Nice! Now make the army you want. At this point you probably have either more or less troops than your leadership can handle. To fix this you can either delete excess troops or use the doublearmy code to max them out. To use the doublearmy code you need to enable the code window by pressing ~ while holding down Shift. Note that you must be on the regular overworld screen to do this. A small window will then appear and you can type in the word doublearmy followed by nothing or a number from 1 to 5 and then hit Enter. If you do not type a number then all your troops will be doubled. If you type in a number then only the troops in that slot will be doubled.

And that's all there is to it. Now you have a fully customized army and you can use the doublearmy code to increase it whenever you gain leadership or until you can buy the units regularly. One thing to note is that accoding to the Armored Princess homepage: "The use of codes is recorded in savegame files, but they do not affect the final rating statistics." Basically then, if you're like me and just want to make the game more interesting you can use this method without worrying. If, however, you're playing Armored Princess competitively and trying for the highest score \ lowest time \ beat-the-entire-game-naked (Amelie, not you) then probably you want to forget about this thread because when you post your save game file people will be able to tell that you pulled troops out of thin air. But if that's not a worry then you should be fine.

As a final note, the money code is great if you want to give Amelie troops and "pay" for them at the same time. What you can do is spawn your units with doublearmy and then deduct the cost of those units from Amelie's gold. So let's say you spawn 5 units that cost 100 gold each. That's 500 gold so just open the code window and type:

money -500

and that amount will be deducted (and if you don't have enough money then make yourself wait until you do). By sticking to this you can ensure that Amelie doesn't end up overpowered, with too much gold at the end of the game. It's completely optional however so use it or not, as you will.

I could actually make a mod that makes every unit on every shop completely randomized, there's only one thing that prevents me doing it unless it gets lot of requests... the fact that it takes some time to make this mod (it takes propably few days to change all the values and it's boring...)

[rancor26]

Originally Posted by digman

You say "any army" how about imps and archmages, somehow i cant get them using the method.

Yep u can't get those units unless you edit the files but you can find all the units that the dev-mode creates when you press specific button combination on the file called troops.txt you can find that file in ses.kfs. When you open that file you'll see numbers from 1 to 9 and unit names for example to be able to get archmages or imps replace some unit with the "archmage" or with "imp". Unfortunately you have to replace something which means you'll have to for example remove knights and horseman from those commands and add imp and archmage.