Mod: Raiders Of Cyrodiil Update 2_0 Semi-Abandoned Beta WIP
Game: TES IV Oblivion
Requires: CM Partners 1.8 or higher:http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7819
Author: Bloodhonor
Editor: David Brasher
Date: 1-16-11

Intro/Description
--------------------------
This mod adds hundreds of NPCs to the game in new factions which are engaged in wars
with other factions. You can take sides, jump in, and change the outcome of the battles.

Over 300 new NPCs and five new factions are added to the World.The NPCs
have been added to all the cities and some other places. They range from knights to
thieves to priests to anything else that would logically be in the game.

I have added militia to Chorrol, Bruma, and Skingrad to defend against three of the
new factions.

The first joinable faction, The Dark Legion, is composed of Dark Elves who have
rallied to a Dremora Lord and have all have sold their souls to him. The Dark Legion attacks
the Chorrol Castle great hall every Morndas at noon. Find the recruiter outside the Chorrol
south gate. To do the four quests, go talk to a Dark Elf in the Dark Legion Lair near Chorrol.

The second joinable faction can be encountered near Bruma. The Battle of Skyrim comes
to Tamriel as Orc soldiers from Orsinium have come to take land from the Nords. The Orsinium
Orcs assault the back gate of Bruma every Morndas at noon. (You will see the militia there.)
Find the recruiter at a road fork near Bruma by the main quest Battle of Bruma location. To
do the two quests, visit the Orc leader in the Bruma Refuge.

The third joinable faction is the Fallen Scar, which is a line of High Elves that have
been exiled from Summerset Isle. They are on very bad terms with the people of Skingrad, and the
Skingrad Militia raids Cursed Mine every Morndas at noon. Also, there is an extension to Cursed
Mine. Look for a new door inside. Beyond the door you will find the Fallen Scars in the Cursed
Temple. Cursed Mine is right outside Skingrad's west gate. Just follow the road. Find the
Fallen Scar recruiter on the road to the east of the Anvil city wall. To start the two quests,
go to the Ancient Bravil ruins near modern Bravil.

The fourth faction is the Scourge. They are undead skeletons who are bloodied from the
horrors of their past life. For an unknown reason, they have started an offensive across
Cyrodiil. The area they spawned from is rumored to be in the Nibenean Basin. Do not underestimate
them. They are a tough foe.

The fifth faction is the Knights of the Half Moon which is a righteous group of knights
devoted to fighting against the evil factions added by this mod. They guard Cyrodiil and help
raid several Scourge locations. They have a few outposts and can be found in places where people
need help. If the enemies are too powerful for you, run to where they are so they can help you.

There are about ten new dungeons and several other locations added to Tamriel and the
three new worldspaces. I cannot tell you where all the Dungeons are as it would spoil the game.
They tend to be near cities and very easy to find. Some of the new locations are automatically
shown on your map when you install the mod. Others will be found as you travel or play the
game and receive information on their locations.

There are a great many new NPCs you can recruit as your companions using the CM partners
engine. You will meet people like Witchers (monster-slayers who are very powerful and rare,)
Blackwood Company members, dock workers and sailors in Anvil, mercenaries, vampire hunters,
mages, warriors, thieves, priests, monks and others.

Evil factions attack every Morndas at noon. Depending on how you are playing, you may
want to be in position and ready to fight off an attack at this time or else help force an
attack through to victory.

The Dungeons are spread out throughout Cyrodiil. The locations tend to come in pairs.
If you find one of the map markers, then another will be likely be nearby. (Example - the Knights
of the Half Moon Cabin is close to the Dark Legion Enclave.) You are guaranteed to have epic
battles. If you don't, then you have conflicts with another mod. If you play as a vampire, watch
out! This mod might be tough on you even though you have those special abilities.

Enjoy the mod and go do some raiding!


Version History
--------------------------
2.0 1-16-11 Major editing and debugging by David Brasher. Proofreading and correction of text,
object placement fixes, less cloning, item stat fixes, raid scheduling changes, PlaceAtMe
command elimination. Mod-cleaning. Path-gridding. Overlapping light radii elimination.
Numerous other changes.

1.5 FIXFixed the last Dark Legion quest and removed a lot of the CM partner scripts from
everybody but recruits. (This change reversed in V 2.0)Note: Version 1.5 and lower
use PlaceAtMe. Be sure not to overextend your bloat. You might use Wyre Bash to remove
bloat.

1.5 Completed Dark Legion Quest line. Fixed quest lines. Fixed mesh problems. Added map markers.
Added the two towers in Dark Oblivion. Fixed Orsinium quests. Added one more Orsinium Quest.
Added Fallen Quests. Added new armor - Dark Lord armor by Zhemoc. Fixed a bunch of AI/NPC
problems. Added CM partners script to most of the NPCs. Made questlines more stable. Added
many more minor details such as fallen Potions, spellmaking station etc.

1.45New quests for each new faction and added a new worldspace. A lot of quest fixes with dialogue.
Deleted another shield. Added the most-needed meshes for the blood skeleton. If you are
upgrading, I advise you to do a clean save. Added Inner Keep to Ancient Bravil. Added on to
the Orsinium Refuge near Bruma. I am hoping the 1.5 Release will be the final release as the
last two updates were designed to fix bugs and add missing stuff.

1.4Quests and new things await. This is still a beta for the final release. You can Join the
Dark Legion, Fallen Scar, and Orsinium Factions. Dark legion, Orsinium Orcs, and Fallen
Scar have quests. I added merchants to Orsinium Refuge. Added Armor to Scourge with helms.
Added Knights HQ and fixed some of their AI. Added Dark Legion's own Oblivion World with a
cave (towers not usable yet). For hints on quests, look in journal. They can be a little
tricky. Added ability to recruit Dark legion and Fallen Soldiers. Added at least four
dungeons or so. I removed some shields to fix the download and remove some problems.
Removed helm. Added sword and helm meshes and textures. I might remove shields in last
release. Not sure. Fixed factions relations. they will now attack or not attack as
appropriate. Added on to Orsinium Refuge. Fixed Champion Scourge Weapon to scale to level.
Fixed Scourge difficulty and made recruits more durable overall. Fixed the second Dark
Legion quest and added Orsinium Quest.

1.3There are seven dungeons total. NPCs eat and sleep and wander. Knights of the Half Moon guard
Cyrodiil and help raid several Scourge locations. They have a few outposts and can be found
in places where people need help. For more info, read the book in their cabin near a bridge.
(It is marked on the map. The Evil Scourge are quite a number of undead skeletons who are
bloodied from the horrors of their past life. They have minds of their own and have started
an offensive across Cyrodiil. Where they spawned from is rumored to be in the Nibenean Basin.
Do not underestimate them. They are a tough foe. The Orsinium Orcs have to started to Raid
the surrounded IC area and the Dark Legion formed an enclave somewhere, but the knights have
little info. Knights can be used to help against the Major Scourge Offensive. They are near
several war-torn areas. If you are near them or talk to them, they will start the battle
with the Scourge. (Does not work this way in V 2.0.) Remember: look for the Knights! They
are your key to survival.


Installation
--------------------------
Like any other mod, install the contents of the downloaded "data" file to to your
Oblivion\data folder. The default location is:
C:\Program Files\Besthesda Softworks\Oblivion\data
Then check the box in your mod manager.

Install CM Partners 1.8 or higher:http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7819


Compatibility
--------------------------
Works with Frans and OOO. I haven't tested with MMM. I haven't edited anything in vanilla
Oblivion that would hurt the game. Compatible with Better Cities.

Minor conflicts with the mod "Roads and Bridges."

It was stated elsewhere that all the Shivering Isles content was removed so that this mod is
not dependent on it. That was not accurate, because I have found and removed more since the author
made that statement. So my guess is that this mod still requires Shivering Isles. If that is the
case, this mod could prevent Oblivion from running if you do not use Shivering Isles.

There are minor Conflicts with UL-Bravil Barrowfields. Or rather, I should say that UL -
Bravil Barrowfields conflicts with all mods in that area of Tamriel and can override and damage the
function of this mod. The basic problem is that the UL mod wantonly and gratuitously changes land
contour when there are no structures present and no practical reasons to make a change. This mod
generally conforms to vanilla Oblivion land contour to prevent land conflicts with normal clean mods.
So additional architectural objects have been placed underground to act as foundations if UL -
Bravil Barrowfield drops the ground out from under you. This mod works better if placed after UL-
Bravil Barrowfields in your load order, but will survive if placed before it.

If you change the landscape where I place the NPCs, that might be a problem, just as it
is with any mod that places NPCs or objects.


Bugs/Issues
--------------------------
Don't download and play this mod. If you do, you will be sorry.

Requires the CM Partners mod. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7819
If Oblivion will not start and run after installing this mod, maybe you should see if you have
the CM partners .esm installed and activated.

This is not my mod. I just did some debugging. It is basically so buggy that it is
beyond fixing if preserving the author's intent. It therefore cannot be brought up to average
reliability standards.

You should delete any old versions of this mod that you may have because they will most
certainly cause a large amount of PlaceAtMe savegame filesize bloat. The new version does not do
that.

I recommend a powerful PC for this as it adds a large number of NPCs in exterior and
interior cells. So you may encounter lag. I have gone through and edited all the interior cells
to optimize them and improve performance, but I couldn't go all the way without destroying what the
author envisioned. So I have deleted all but 40 actors in the most crowded cells and have majorly
overhauled lighting to eliminate overlapping light radii. But I fear that for some computers, it
will still not be enough.

Expect lots of CTDs because the mod is too resource-intensive for the computers to handle
well with all those many many actors in one place. Save often.

You should have about five savegames you use to play this mod for a single character. You
should rotate through them, when you make recent saves, so if one savegame becomes corrupted, you can
continue on with a good one which is a bit older and came from the time before the game glitched.

Do not exceed your follower limit when playing. When you start getting on-screen error
messages while playing, dismiss enough of your followers to make the messages stop. Otherwise
you are headed for a CTD. The follower limit matter can be a real problem when CM partners
glitches and suddenly doubles the amount of followers you have by creating twins.

CM Partners, while generally reliable, can exhibit some pretty quirky and bizarre behaviors.
These things can be seen at random times while using CM Partners:

(1) Voluntary companions. People just walk up to you and become your companions. You can't give
them orders or dismiss them from your party. You are just stuck with them, unless you formally
recruit them and then dismiss them.

(2) AWOL companions. There have been several companions that I have given up for dead and mourned
over, only to meet them again and see that they were alive and well in another town. They were
still part of my party, but not following orders.

(3) "You have too many followers" bug. Associated with the AWOL companion bug. I sometimes get this
message when I only have five companions. I think the Oblivion follower limit is around eight.
(I have not changed the .ini.) So my guess is that I have three AWOL companions if I get this error
message when I have five companions that I can see.

(4) Hammer of God. I walk out a door of a dungeon and two or three companions will fall down dead
and I don't know why. If I reload and walk out the door again, nobody will die.

(5) Pack Mules. Your companions start having more and more junk they are carrying around. They can
end up with like three sets of armor in their inventory.

(6) Identical Twins Bug. This serious bug can cause CTDs if I don't handle the crisis properly.
I will be playing along, when I suddenly notice that I have two copies of one of my companions
following me around. One of them takes orders, the other does not. If one of them dies, I think
the system is still stable, but when the second one dies, I have a 100% chance of getting a CTD.
I have found a multi-step way to avoid the CTD. First I dismiss the partner that will take orders
from my party. The other one, of course, will not take orders. But I can recruit him. After I
recruit him, then I dismiss him too. So far, I have not found a way to keep one of them in my
party because that causes crashes. I will have to try to go back to where I first met him and
recruit him again and see what happens. It is sort of disruptive suddenly having to dismiss a
companion in the middle of a dungeon in order to avoid crashing the game.

(7) Mass desertion. If I give the whole party the wait command, then they may all run away home, to
where I first met them.


There is not much clutter in the new cells. There is not much custom silent dialog. Actor
idle-time AI is not highly wrought.

The difficulty level is such that this mod may almost force you to have companions instead of
being a lone adventurer.

The third Dark Legion quest is very very unstable and crashes at random moments. The root
cause has not been determined though contributing causes have been diagnosed and worked with. You may
wish to stop playing after the second quest. Autosave points have been inserted into the code so that
if it crashes, you will automatically have a really recent save. If you wish to play Dark Legion
quests three and four, try quest three with few companions and save often.

Some of the custom weapon and armor items do not have custom icons and use vanilla Oblivion
icons.

There are quite a few clones in this game. You might be fighting enemies and encounter some
twins or triplets. I have increased the numbers of NPCs on leveled creature lists to try to avoid
this, but it still will happen, just like it does in vanilla Oblivion.

Due to raids, there may be extensive casualties among the civilians of Chorrol.

Although many dozens of labor hours have so far been spent on play-testing and debugging, it
has not been sufficient and more work is needed.

I picked up this mod and did debugging work on it, but I realize now it is not really my
kind of mod. The three joinable factions are evil and I don't usually play characters who are evil.
So I will support the mod and fix bugs that gamers locate, but as of now, I am not planning on adding
additional quests and dungeons.

IF YOU RUN INTO A GAME-BREAKING BUG IN THE MOD, CONTACT DAVID BRASHER ON TES NEXUS RIGHT
AWAY SO THAT MAYBE THE PROBLEM CAN BE FIXED, AND A NEW VERSION UPLOADED.


Credits
---------------------------
-Mickthemage for the Shields.
-PJ for his armors, helm, and robe.
-JazzJR for the Sword.
-Zhemoc for Dark Lord armor.
-KOTOR 2 for Nihilus

Copy Status
--------------------------
Bloodhonor has retired from modding. He has given permission to edit, upload, and distribute
this mod so long as proper attribution is given to him in your credits. The editing done by David
Brasher is public domain. It may be modded, used in whole or part in other mods, and distributed as
long as proper credit is given.