Have you actually managed to change the environment textures. I can change their name but the texture won't change for some reason. Is it locked or I'm I doing something wrong?
I have not run into any problem modding the textures. Are you modding the core file? That's usually a good idea when dealing with the terrains.
You can modifify the terrain graphics. I've done it a lot.
In addition, the raceconfigs or some other XML specifies what type of environment that faction spreads.
The main limitation is RAM.
Personally, I'd love the idea of one faction spreading arctic, another desert, another swamp, and so on.
I'm not explaining myself properly, so here we go.
Each tile has two main variables - terrain and environment. Terrain is the underlying variable that decides what the function of the terrain is - you'll find here oceans, mountains, chasms, rivers. The environment is what decides the visual identity based on what is going on in the world. In other words, a tile of Forest terrain may be dark and gloomy if it is in Fallen environment, and it may be green and lush if in Kingdom environment. When you settle a city, you often see the land changing graphics around you - that is the environment changing, based on your faction.
We can add new types of terrains, although they may not always function as you wish for. What we CANNOT add is new environments, those are 100% hardcoded and NOT accepted by the game when modded into the installation directory. Yes, it is true that we can specify what terrain is spread in each raceconfig, but that does not change the fact that we cannot add new types of environments to the game.
PS. There is also something in FE called terrain subtypes, but I won't get into that much. Subtypes are basically a way for a terrain tile to look like one type, but functionally be another type. It has no impact on this matter discussed, because those subtypes cannot be spread automatically like the desired environment effects.
In E:Wom, there were more environments in the game: in addition to the barren look, the kingdom grasslands, the fallen dead lands, we also had desert and arctic environments. In FE, arctic environment and desert environment have been removed and re-added as terrain types instead, so we are now down to 3 types of environments. This is why I was able to add factions spreading Arctic environment and Desert environment in E:Wom, but we can no longer do so in FE.
It has been a (very) long-standing request of mine (and others) to allow us modders to add new types of environments to the game.
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