race names in the opening window: open the AoW.exe with an hex-editor (maybe simply notepad), then search for the race name and change it. Only limit is you cannot excede the original length, also insert white space for letters you don't use.
other names: find the file with the translation ( it is in the first folder ) then open it and change the names for a language. Don't excede the length as before. Launch setup and select that language.
shields in opening window: this is a bit hard, cause the aowCGE won't work correctly. Open the shieldM.lib with aowCGE, export the shields, modify them, reimport them.
Now open the new ilb with an hex editor, search for a shield's beginning and ending(it's quite hard), copy it to a text file. Now the white spaces, that aowcge introduces after any line of the bitmap, must be eliminated ( it is a sequence of ... e yyy , 11 in total) .
Paste the result over the original location in ShieldM.ilb.
!!!!use backup, cause it isn't 100% tested!!
I think you must preserve the length of each shield, but at least there're no control codes.
I'll give.
Now I want.
Tell me how to change spell and ability stat.
Smurf-Hero plese tell me how to decode AoW2 gfx.
Moreover Smurf could you modify aowcge to correctly generate the ShieldM.ilb?