ProblemFixer Pure V1.0

[Carl]

This is the Same thing as my Old BugFixer, it's just under a diffrent name.

I decided to change the name after learning that a well known RTW was present under this name, i didn't want to cause any confusion by making anyone belve I had anything to do with that mod or the team behind it. Indeed until I was told of it I was unaware of said mod. However In the intrestes of not causing confusion or offending the origional members of that RTW mod team i've changed the name to:

Carl's ProblemFixer


As a result of this and the old thread once again becoming over long i've decided to create a new thread.

Where now at V1.13, Links Below:

FileFront Link (http://files.filefront.com//;6801822;;/)

FileFactory Link (http://www.filefactory.com/file/2cba3e/)

SaveFile Link (http://fedtm.com/files/509954)


You only need to Download the contents of ONE of the links, each link contains the same file, i've simply mirriored them so that if one download site goes down, people can still get this.


README below:


CHANGES

Below is a list of the various things done in each version of this fix.


1.00

All animation bugged 2-Handers eithier use the Halberd-Militia, (Bills and DEK/DPK only), or Voulgier, (all others), animation set now. No units have been re-priced so a few units, (mostly Bills and DEK/DPK), are underpriced ATM.

The Pike fix simply removes all Pike units secondery weapons.

The Sheild fix is the same as Foz's, and move the sheild value into the armour, then zeros the sheild.

2-Handed Swords have been found to be weak with their Vanillia stats once the Bugged 2-Handers where fixed, (in relation to the price diffrances between the two), so the Changes listed in the next line have been applied/

2-Handed Swords have been given +4 Attack, increased to 8 Charge Stat, and have been given the AP attribute.



1.01

Dismounted French Noble Knights, (DFNK), have now had the 2-Hander animation Fix applied to them. I missed them the first time round

All 2-Handed Swords have had their extra attack raised from +4 to +6 as DEK/DPK/DFNK where still beating them too hard considering their reletive prices.

JHI have now had the 2-Handed Sword Fix applied to them as they, like 2-handed Swords, they where proving underpowered vs. Animation Fixed 2-Handers of a similar or lower price.



1.02

Sheild Fix updated to the same as that used in the 1.2 version of "THE_FOZ_4's Sheild Fix".



1.10

Animation Bugged 2-Handers have had their animation changed to that of ME_Halberd_Militia as apposed to the old Halberd_Militia animation. This produces more natural looking animations that the origonal fix.

2-Handed Swords have had their animation changed to the ME_Halberd_Militia animation as it looks as good as their defualt animation, and raises their animation speed to the same as the bugged Animation 2-Handers.

2-Handed Swords have had the re-balancing fix applied to them changed to the following, AP attribute added, +10 attack added, Charge Stat increased to 8, they where fopund to still be wanting in terms of opower for price.

All Eastern Halberds, (those Halberds that lack the Spear Wall ability), have also had the 2-Handed Sword Fix listed above applied to them, (with the exception of the AP attribute as they allready had this), as they where found to be underperforming.

All Western Halberd units, (those with the Spear Wall ability), where found to be underperforming for their price in relation to every unit in the game now as they where also balanced against the Bugged 2-Handers/Pikes, (which they are a Hybrid of),

Western Halberds have had their unit size increased to 60, have gained +5 attack, have had the Spear attribute Aapplied to their primiary "pike" weapon, and the Light_Spear attribute applied to their secondery weapon. Due to the nature of the "Pike" part of their weapon, and the Light_Spear attribute they suffer no penalties when fighting infantry.



1.11

Furthar Formation tweaking has taken place to improve the defualt formation performance of units, and thus the AI.

An Eastern Halberd unit, (Transylvanian Peasants), was omitted from the 1.1 changes to Eastern Halberds. This error has been corrected.

Cav Charge distances have been tweeked to make formed cav charges easier for the player.

Infantry cav charge distances have ben tweaked to increase AI countercharge response sucsess rates.

The spears of Spear Units have had their Skeleton oCmponsation Factor tweaked to raise cav charge resistance to a level matching that implied in the advisor descriptions.

The changes to Skeleton Componsation factor should also aid them vs. peseants.


1.12

Western Halberds and Pikes have had their attack reduced by 2 points when compared to V1.11. This should hopefully reduce their kill rates somewhat and make them somewhat more vulnrable to attack by non-pike units.

Western Halberds Have had their secondery Weapon removed, thus transforming them into AP Pikemen. They have also had their animation changed to the same one used by Pikes. The result of these changes is that they can now compete on an even footing with Pikemen, who, before, where quite soundly beating Western halberds in-spite of the better supiriour stats and highier cost of Western Halberds in general.

A modified "Descr_Pathfinding" file has been included, changes to this should somewhat help with formation keeping for all units.


1.13

Orientis's Vices & Virtues Fix v1.2 for Medieval 2: Total War have been included.

See the "TRAIT README" file for more info, this is a slightly modified verison of Orientis's own README.



INSTALLATION

To install copy the SEGA Folder into C:/Program Files:

If it asks you if you want to Overwrite, click "yes to all". Then Copy the Medievil 2 Total War Mod Shortcut to your desktop and use that to play the game with the fixes in place. No data is overwritten, it mearly places the contents of the SEGA folder into the existing SEGA folder in Program Files automaticly.



MEDMANAGER INSTALLATION

For the purposes of MedManager, the only file that has been modified is the "export_descr_unit" file.


COMMENTS AND BUG REPORTING

You can Find my online thread relating to this fix at the following web address:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=78069


CREDITS

CARL BARRASS (me)

THE_FOZ_4 (For the Sheild Fix)

DOPP (For the Pike Fix)

LUSTED (For charge distance changes)

STLAIND (For help with testing)

ORIENTIS (Trait and Ancillary Fixes)

AND EVERYONE ELSE AT THE GUILD (For the 2-Hander Fix and Support)




Also the TRAIT README


Orientis's Vices & Virtues Fix v1.2 for Medieval 2: Total War

--------------------------------------v1.2------------------------------------------------

==NEW FEATURES==

Two new versions of the ancillaries files, for those mods/players which set the game at a different number of years per turn. This ensures many ancillaries will appear at the correct times in modded games.
To check and use:
Go to medieval2/data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign
Open descr_strat.txt
Read the value for "timescale" near the top of file.
If timescale 1.0 RENAME the enclosed file export_descr_ancillaries[TURN=1.0].txt to export_descr_ancillaries.txt and place it in your medieval2/data/ folder (or modswitch /data folder)
If timescale 0.50 RENAME the enclosed file export_descr_ancillaries[TURN=0.50].txt to export_descr_ancillaries.txt and place it in your medieval2/data/ folder (or modswitch /data folder)
NOTE: the standard export_descr_ancillaries.txt file included with the mod is set for a timescale of 2.0

==TRAITS==

Added hereditary triggers for wives as well as generals (ie if general marries a beautiful princess, his children are more likely to be beautiful)
Stopped Faction Leaders being loyal / disloyal to, er, themselves.
Lots of little adjustments to previous fixes (including: BadDisciplinarian again (bloody autoresolve), princesses ageing & becoming desperate less quickly, etc)
Removed antitraits for StrategyChivalry and StrategyDread - this is a hotfix, but will stop the two traits being constantly wiped out. You will get them both at the same time, sorry, there are too many triggers for these two to do by hand. There is a better fix on the way...
Added non-existant triggers for Hates N Fears vs religions
Fixed all hates n fears copy & paste errors, they all have the same effects now (with one deliberate exception)

==MARRIAGES==

Fixed princesses tended to give many more positive traits than negative. To rebalance, I've developed and linked some ancilliaries and traits to make an 'unhappy marriage' function over time. This includes:
Cuckold trait now based more on princess traits
Changed adultress ancilliary triggers: the more charming a general's wife, the less likely he is to wander. Of course, if he's looking for Narnia, finding himself unexcited by such a desirable wife may hasten his journey out of the closet.
Cuckolded generals more likely to look for adultresses
Generals with adultresses more likely to become cuckolded
Self-perpetuating relationship between the above
Shouldn't be game-changing (but the probabilities are very low) just take a little edge off your uber-general as he ages; but the possibility is there for things to get quite nasty, so I would check the traits of eligible princesses carefully, charm alone might not tell the whole story.

==ANCILLARIES==

Re-wrote armour ancillary triggers
Fixed broken condition for adultress triggers
Created trigger for Taticius (byzantine military ancillary)
Fixed trigger for Copernicus to give him to agents instead of generals, as his effects suggest
Checked complete ancillary file for errors & corrected minor fluff errors (text etc)

==BROKEN==

Many relic triggers won't work because the hardcode conditions seem to be broken:

Characters cannot inherit relics when their father dies
Characters cannot take relics from generals who die in a battle where they were present

Sorry, tried many alternative solutions for quite some time, no luck. Ask CA to fix their code ;)


--------------------------------------v1.1a-----------------------------------------------

Fixes / rebalance for some of the previous alterations
1/3 of ancillary file fixed

==TRAIT FIXES==

BadDisciplinarian coming up too much from autoresolve - raised % of soldiers routed to trigger, and disabled trigger if battle was won
Balanced Good/Bad Disciplinarian traits from activity / inactivity
Fixed GoodCommander / BadCommander antitraits like GoodAssassin/BadAssassin and agents etc. Who knows how I missed that, perhaps I win too much.
FactionKiller trait not working. Seems to be problem with hardcode event condition 'LeaderDestroyedFaction' - does anyone know where I can find the event triggers which define this? Or are they hardcoded and unalterable?
Tried making FactionKiller work with other conditions (ie taking faction capital when factionsettlements = 1, linking trait to message Faction Destroyed appearing), but no luck. Annoying.
Restored original Factionleader / Factionheir changeover triggers. They don't actually make sense, but my amended triggers somehow allowed characters to have both Factionheir and Factionleader. Will try again in 1.2
Activated AdoredByPope trait rewards for papal missions (incomplete triggers in original)
Deleted duplicate Berserker trigger, upped thresholds a little
Deleted governing9 trigger - this was a 'moral corruption' trigger that meant no generals could keep Fair In Rule / Noble In Rule traitline for more than a few turns when treasury > 50000. Those traits have plenty balanced against them as it is, this was stupid imo.

==GENERAL ANCILLARY FIXES==

Checked all standard ancillaries to make sure they work etc.
Making many more standard ancilliaries transferable: my tests were this: 1) Is it a family member? 2) Is it linked or specific to the character? 3) Is it unique enough to control its own destiny? 4) Does the owner have reason to hide/disown it (ie criminal)? If the answer to any of those were YES, then it's not transferable. The transferable questions were: 1) Is it an item? 2) Is it professional military or servant & thus under orders? If the answer was YES, then they were transferable (aside from some unique relics etc). Most historical/fictional figures left alone & non-transferable. In the end, it is YOUR CHOICE to use transferability or not (ie don't bitch at me about changing it, just don't transfer them!). Some ancillaries have been kept non-transferable for balance reasons (ie priest ancillaries mostly non-transferable as they can seriously influence chance of becoming Pope).
Made common ancillaries slightly less common, rare ancillaries slightly less rare - you should now see more variety, instead of 100s of artists, alchemists, etc and nothing else. Unique / named ancillaries still v rare, but you will see a larger range of standard ancillaries.
Removed some odd trigger conditions (ie triggers which rewarded for winning battles when slightly outnumbered, but not when more outnumbered)
Removed some bizarre blocks to northern_european cultures having some basic ancillaries

==SPECIFIC ANCILLARY FIXES==

Apothecary trigger now gives apothecary instead of alchemist
Added triggers for two armour ancillaries: characters coming of age may recieve a gift of armour from their father, if the father has an ancillary skilled enough for the job.
Biographers now only pay attention to slightly more accomplished generals
Added black stallion triggers for assassins and dreaded generals
Added bodyguard triggers for assassination attempts
Counterfeiter now appears for merchants created in settlement with alchemists lab OR BETTER
Added trigger for eunuch for Islamic generals in cities with advanced administration
Changed trigger for explosives, so they appear only after the gunpowder discovered event, instead of based on turn (which will be wrong if you or a mod have altered the number of years per turn)
Added faithful servant trigger - princesses coming of age with a noble or charming mother now may gain a loyal family servant from her
Fixed knight reward imbalance from crusades: previously hre, spain, portugal only got 1 knight (santiago or teutonic) and everyone else got 2 (templar + stjohn). Now France & England only get 1 Templar, and everyone else gets 1 StJohn.
Removed anti-ancillary condition from 'master' ancillaries (no logical reason you can't have more than one)
Added triggers for FactionLeaders with guild HQ in kingdom, they have a small chance to get the appropriate master ancillary as an advisor
Inappropriate ancillaries no longer given to princesses (ie mentors, tutors)
Added trigger for nun on priest creation from Abbey or above (Same for orthodox)
Fixed trigger for pet bloodhound, now can be given to spies and assassins on creation
Added triggers for royal escort for princesses
Made siege and military engineers mutually exclusive (they double up too much and waste space)
Added trigger for slaver for Byzantine & middle eastern cultures (because they don't get much unique to themselves)
Added triggers for smothering bodyguard for princesses

===BROKEN===

Not my area, but if you look in descr_missions.txt and descr_faction_standings.txt you will find that faction standing rewards for regicide missions don't exist. Might be of some interest to diplomacy modders (or heaven forbid CA actually fix something in a patch)

--------------------------------------V1.1------------------------------------------------

This version has now (hopefully) fixed 99% of the traits file. Ancilliaries & fluff (typos etc) to come in v1.2

==MAJOR FIXES==

Added many fixes I missed from KOBAL2's traits fix, so big thanks to KOBAL at www.totalwar.org. Find his mod at: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=1356309#post1356309
Ambush triggers created.
Added missing/eliminated DiscontentGeneral triggers: renowned generals in charge of great cities in far off lands might start entertaining thoughts of independence, unless they are very loyal...on the other hand, less skilled generals might be happy that you gifted them with walls. PLAYTEST & FEEDBACK PLEASE!
Crusader/Jihad levels now harder to get. Becoming a Grand Crusader/Holy Warrior now requires generals to do more than simply win one crusade.
Added new self-perpetuating "education" triggers for some traits which were near impossible to reach top levels: characters who ALREADY possess academic / culture traits who spend time in settlements with appropriate academic / cultural buildings may spend some time educating themselves.
Fixed Sobriety / Prim trigger thresholds to a) make them appear correctly on birth / marriage, b) eliminate anti-traits (Drink and Arse/Girls/Feck/etc) as intended on marriage / fatherhood. NEEDS PLAYTESTING
BETAing a new gain/loss code for GoodDenouncer/BadDenouncer, please see how your priests move up and down the scale from Good/Bad on killing heretics/witches. This should work better than the current gain/loss code for other agents, but I don't want to risk breaking those until this has been thorougly tested. NEEDS PLAYTESTING

==GENERAL FIXES==

Added new Berserker battle trigger.
Changed 'HatesX' birth triggers to see them appear a little more often. Hates'n'fears a little more common.
Insane and Angry generals can now become Berserkers
Left corruption alone (though severely tempted to remove doubling up of traits such as Epicurean from having theatres etc & large treasury)
Castles now REALLY don't give BadTaxman
Added 10% chance for Sane on birth to make mad traits a little less common
Added 10% chance on birth for Objective/Subjective and assigned various anti-traits to them. Effect should be to ensure random births don't produce too many characters with conflicting traits. If this works, will expand these traits further in v1.2. PLAYTEST!
Added trigger to GloriousFool, generals who narrowly lose a battle where the odds are against them may get this trait.
Made adultresses slightly less common, especially for men with charming wives.
Added HasAdultress trait. Doesn't have any extra effects than the ancilliary, just for sake of completion.
Removed Ignorance as anti-trait to tactical & logistical skill (plenty of great generals with no education in medieval times). Increased chance of trait appearing in military generals to balance.
Added trigger for non-faction leaders to get PoliticsSkill
Generals whose troops rout often are liable to be blamed for bad discipline. (general note about Disciplinarian & BadDisciplinarian: generals who keep their troops active will gain the former, generals who leave them idle will get the latter)
AssassinMaster slightly harder to get (in line with SpyMaster).
Last level of AssassinCatcher slighty easier to get (in line with CounterSpy)
Checked & fixed all trait thresholds in triggers - should see more coming of age traits
Many more trait and trigger fixes

==AGENTS==

Princesses now convert their traits into General traits on marriage correctly.
Fixed merchants gaining / losing GoodMerchant/Badmerchant
Lowered thresholds for Monopolist (because I've never seen it in higher levels)
Created trigger for ExoticTastes for merchants trading exotic goods
Priests who become heretics should now base their hereticskill level on their previous piety rating. NEEDS PLAYTESTING
InquisitorFailure will now activate when intended (if this was meant to be the patch fix for inquisitors, well they bugged the fix too...)


--------------------------------------V1.0------------------------------------------------

==MAJOR FIXES==

Assasssins / Princesses / Diplomats losing all Good- traits instead of one point on unsuccessful mission: Now working as intended, failed missions now only reduce trait by one point.
Princesses completely fixed, see below.
All generals/family start with base Piety of 3 (ReligionStarter trait now fixed)
Many traits assigned to incorrect character types have been corrected or replaced (ie triggers trying to give family members SmoothTalker trait, a diplomat trait, have been replaced with RhetoricSkill).
Many trait errors giving incorrect values fixed.
Restored trait triggers for generals who are active & leading armies to balance traits triggered by sitting around in cities

==PRINCESSES==

All now spawn with default Charm 3 (neutral traits to character on marriage)
Princesses now get random traits at coming-of-age like characters
Appropriate Princess traits now self-perpetuating
Secret Love ancillary slightly less common
Inital Princessess on starting a new campaign WILL have +2 Charm too much. To change this I would have to alter the descr_strat.txt file, which would then conflict with most other mods.
(Princesses may in fact now have too much charm, feedback welcome for v1.1)

==GENERAL FIXES==

Non-family generals can now get traits for administration / tax etc while governor. Since non-family generals only seem to exist at the start of the game, it hardly matters. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Good / Bad Taxman trait now linked tax level of city that general is governing. Castles unaffected (since tax level unalterable).
GoodAdministrator trait now linked to being an active governor
BadAdministrator trait now linked to having an unneccessarily unhappy population. Trait now is opposite of GoodAdministrator, instead of opposite of GoodTrader...
Being an InspiringSpeaker once again inspires your soldiers as well as your population (possibly this wasn't a mistake by CA, please complain if you want this removed from the fix mod)
Being a BoringSpeaker now actually has consequences
No more 20 yr old 'Scarface's, BattleScarred trait now takes considerably longer to max
FertileWife trait now given to family members on marriage (if appropriate to Princess married) instead of, er, admirals...
Radically reduced likelyhood of brothels or above to give Drink/Feck/Girls traits
Fixed threshold for Prim trait so it works correctly with triggers
PublicAtheism trait now working, generals who wander too long among heretics or slaughter innocent co-religionists beware...
Balanced ExpensiveTastes trait thresholds (Extravagent, Royally Extravagent etc) to be more in line with similar traits & antitraits.
Balanced Ignorance trait to be more in line with Intelligence anti-trait.
GoodDiplomacy and BadDiplomacy traits now active in limited way, more to come.
VictorVirtue trait triggers fixed, generals can now develop the Victor line of traits correctly.
Admirals now gain command stars more reliably, and gain retinues from winning battles.
Admirals no longer gain command stars or retinue on creation (no more 1star fleets appearing from training and being unable to merge)

==UNFIXABLE==

Good/BadArtilleryCommander and Good/BadGunpowderCommander seem to be unfixable, as there are no unittype parameters for those units. Please PM me (site details below) if you know otherwise.


==v1.3 (FINAL) COMING SOON==

Bug-fixing for current versions
Hopefully a permanent solution to the anti-traits problem - no more traits being wiped out by earning one point in an antitrait!


==QUESTIONS for fellow modders==

Some things I haven't worked out yet which would really help. If you can help, please PM me (Orientis) at www.twcenter.net, or post in this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=74566

Is there any code / condition to find out whether character married within family?
Anyone know where MissionID & PaybackID parameters can be found? (not in docudemon_conditions files from CA)
Is there any code / condition which defines a character's age?
Something very strange: character leading army outside settlement getting Corrupt trait regularly...tested to see if this is from corruption triggers, it's not. No idea what is was happening. Please bug report if you see this occurring (no general without Corrupt trait (first level: Dubious) should ever get the trait without being in a city)


==BUGS & FEEDBACK==

Please post feedback & bugs in this thread at www.tw-center.net forums: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=74566
Tell me what I have missed or what you think needs fixing so I can include it in future versions.






I'm going to do furthar experimenting with the Pikes to try and get them to be less Uber for the next release. Lusted has given me some ideas, many thanks to him for those.

Now Download, Enjoy, and tell me what i've got wrong:smash:.

[Foz]

Carl has requested that this thread be locked so that further discussion will be in a new thread he has opened.
Could ya try not to make them keep doing that, Carl? I don't know about anyone else, but it's pretty annoying to me to have threads really start to get off the ground... and then get them locked up, replaced with new empty threads. Really makes it difficult to keep the train of thought rolling or have anything resembling continuity in discussions on here.

That said, I think I'll have a look at your recent work on keeping the units in formation better. Maybe it'll prompt some comments. If not, then hopefully something will get this thread rolling...

[sapi]

@Carl - :bow:

@Foz - locking of threads like this doesn't really make a difference - if you've ever visited the official oblivion forums you'll know that they've got a 200post limit per thread, and posts flow quite nicely over multiple threads.

To be honest, doing so can focus discussion on the real issues (if you can't get a new discussion started on a topic it may not have continued for long anyway)

[Carl]

@Foz, I had intended to leave that one open longer TBH, but with the renaming and my inability to change my thread titles for some reason I decided to start a new one.

I'll still do it from time to time, but i'll wait till their are a lot more posts in it in future, (6+pages probably, more if the discussion is still going along strong and on topic), as, (as Sapi mentioned), it was just for the purposes of clearing dead wood the first time, It just got done sooner than was perhap best this time round, their wasn't too much dead wood really.

Let me know how you get on with the changes BTW, i'd be intrested, I've found that with a formation of the right width and Guard Mode on I can even get cav to charge uphill in castles, so it sounds like an improvment to me as i couldn't even get them to stay in formation before.

[Carl]

Right, I was wnating to include fixed trait/ancillary/guild file in this release but somone didn't get back to me, (can't spell the name), so i'm going to make my own files.

But I need a bit of help, Whilst i've heard of a lot of bugs with these files and noticed a few myself i'd like a comprahensive list.

Thus could people please list all the stuff thats not working right (e.g. Bishops from Huge_Cathedral's).

Traits that don't have triggers or have incomplete Triggers (this is really hard to check manually).

Anything thats really bugging you, E.G. I know lot of people are fed up with the Pagan Magian, and Secret Love ancillarys. Stuff for this category should be specificlly marked as stuff thats bugging you (:laugh4:) as apposed to actual bugs, as I will only include stuff from this category if a lot of people ask for it.

[dzzirt]

Want to get more benefits from explorers guild to the city + ability to build horse breeder guild in castles. Or atleast 100% chance to get guild after you reach points required for getting it or upgrading.

[afp]

I understood what you say, but it is not a normal behaviour, that my unit being inside the tower, which shoot at it, remotelly controled from outside by a horse. Of course it helps you when on the other side, but I guess you have already some advantages.

I really need a fix from this, can someone?

[Carl]

As far as I know the distance is Hardcoded, so I can't do anything about that, sorry.

[Foz]

Let me know how you get on with the changes BTW, i'd be intrested, I've found that with a formation of the right width and Guard Mode on I can even get cav to charge uphill in castles, so it sounds like an improvment to me as i couldn't even get them to stay in formation before.
Yeah it appears to help charging quite a bit: I fought a battle recently with 6 squads of knights against some Spaniards in a forrest. The cavalry didn't fail to charge correctly even once during the battle, in spite of trees typically passing through the unit at regular intervals. They appear to get back in formation much more quickly when disrupted by obstacles. While the formations don't always look perfect still, they seem to count as "good enough" for charges very much more often than they had been. The effect on the unit formation doesn't appear (visually) to be that profound, but in practice it makes quite a few things work a lot better. I too had noticed troops of all sorts keeping much better formations in those narrow city streets, which is another breath of fresh air as it was painful before.

Of course I may just have hit some luck with these experiences... so it would be nice to have some other people give feedback so we know the change has actually done something substantial.

[Carl]

Of course I may just have hit some luck with these experiences... so it would be nice to have some other people give feedback so we know the change has actually done something substantial.

Yeah, i'd like feedback from other too, I also felt that units became less strung out when turning, they actually turned as one mass of men as apposed to those at the far edge lagging like mad.

Glad you found it helped with charges, also had a similar situation myslef, had a triangle of rocks around a Schiltrom unit of spears, they where on a hill and it got shallower in angle just before them and the enemy cav conducted perfect charges into them every time in my expiriance. On the other hand the AI is quite good at formed charges so...

[stealingjoy]

Can this be used with 1.61? I looked and didn't notice any reference to it so I'm hoping that it can be.

[stealingjoy]

Oh gosh, ignore me. I bought Civ4 and MTW2 on the same day... hehe. Sorry.

[Jambo]

What were the formation changes again Carl/Foz? Was it the pathfinding change only?

[Carl]

Yeah, just the Pathfinding File Change, If you want a copy of the file I used just download my mod and grab the Descr_Pathfinding File from in it, you don't need anything else.

[Carl]

So, any comments anyone, what are you making of it, is it fun are you enjoying it?

[Foz]

With the pathfinding change, my units seem to have a sudden propensity for running directly away from a unit I've ordered them to engage. Don't know why it would go like that, but I'll play a little more with the number - I think it's making the unit wig out because it updates formation too often. Something like 1 m might be good enough.

[Carl]

hmm, I never got that, but then, I tend to like getting the enemy to charge me so...

Thanks for the warning though, is anyone else getting this while using my mod?

[Carl]

V1.13 Now up guys, includes Trait/Ancillary fixes.

As ever, tell me what you think, (I really need the feedback guys, I know theirs lots of you downloading it:smash:).

[Foz]

Huzzah! They (cavalry) chase routers better now (for me at least). Instead of dispersing in every direction, they seem to regroup now and move toward the routers en masse (even after wading into them, killing most, and having some escape, they will tighten up and move on them again). They will sometimes stop cold and look like they're refusing to obey the order... but a little patience usually yields the unit forming up more or less cleanly, and riding straight into the hapless cowards you've targeted. End result seems to be that they take longer getting there due to adjusting the formation, but correctly engage the routing unit and therefore are actually effective once they get there. It's far from perfect, but what I'm noticing is markedly better than it was.

[Carl]

Thanks for the update, i though chasing routers felt better but I wasn't sure TBH.

Thanks for the update.

[Carl]

Double-Post, sorry.

[R'as al Ghul]

Nice work Carl. It's appreciated. :bow:

I've one problem so far. DFK are severely beaten my DPK, a unit that is cheaper and fights without shield and has less armour. I agree that they have a powerful weapon and DFK should take losses but I don't agree that they should loose.
I guess it's a deliberate design descision. Could you give your reasons, please?

R'as

[Carl]

No specific reason at all, I simply kept the basic stats for these units, the balance in this games seems to run something like this, (with all the fixes in place):

S&S are missile resistant and resistant to light and medium Cav charges, so they make good all rounders with specific benefits vs. infantry.

Spears: Highly Cav resistant for their price and somewhat missile resistant, however they are very weak in melee vs. other infantry and thus S&S beat them.

2-Handers: They tend to have reversed stats compared to S&S units and also have AP attacks, thus they tend to beat S&S units. Their low defense makes them VERY vulnerable to missiles/Cav however with even Mailed knights able to inflict substantial losses with a frontal charge.

Cav: Fast maneuverable and very powerful on the charge, very vulnerable to units with the Spear attribute and the lighter kinds can have severe issues with S&S units too. Very effective vs. both missile units and 2-Handers though, also good at flank attacks.

The basic rules are:

S&S beat spears, 2-Handers beat S&S, Cav bat 2-Handers, Spears beat Cav.


Fairly basic RPS balance, although missiles, missile Cav, and Pikes throw Spanners into the works with Pike being utterly unbeatable from the front, but vulnerable to flank/rear attacks as well as missiles, and missiles being effective vs 2-Handers/Pikes but vulnerable to S&S/Cav.

Thus I don't worry too much about DFK being beaten by DPK/DNK/DEK, (they are all identical except in name BTW), as thats exactly what these units are supposed to do, although like many I think the speed at witch they beat S&S is a bit high.

A few last points:

1. They have one of the highest upkeep values in the game so their is plenty of arguments for them to be good, (bearing in mind that CA have decided to use upkeep as part of the primary balance mechanism, something i don't agree with as it messes up custom/quick battle balance).

2. After the effects of AP are factored in the DFK only have 15 defense, so they are only 1 point of defense better than the DPK and the DPK has 8 points better attack so it's hardly surprising the DPK are winning so easily.

TO SUMMARIZE

The reason boils down mostly to me liking the RPS balance that emerged after all the bug-fixing, coupled with the fact that DPK have severe disadvantages in some areas compared to DFK and thus having the DFK beat the DPK in melee would probably be IMBA. Lastly the stats difference isn't as big as it looks like and neither is the cost difference, AP negates much of the DFK's good defense whilst CA have, (stupidly IMHO), chosen to factor upkeep into the balancing act and as a result they only look right in the campaign where it becomes much more difficult to get large numbers of them.

In custom However it's quite possible for Portugal to bring along 4 unit of them, and 4 units of Dismounted Conquistadors and 4 units of Pikes on top of Missile Cav and Foot missiles, so I agree it probably looks a bit OTT as Portugal is getting some seriously powerful combinations there.

Hope that explanation Helps, and thanks for the appreciation, let me know of anything else you spot that worries you though, and tell me what you think of the above, (sure you will though:smash:).

[Carl]

I've just updated the links again as some of them had gone down for some reason, not sure why. The FileFactory one WAS working though so I think I must have copyed the links wrongly when putting them in. Sorry for the inconviniance.

EDIT: Just to make sure no one thinks i'm being dismissive of the 2-Hander concerns, i'd like to add that R'as al Ghul is mearly the latest in a line of worriers and it's beginning to make me worry that so many people are concerened. So please, keep giving feedback, i might be a stubbourn young fool :laugh4:, but if i get a lot of people expressing concern then WILL change things, i'm just hard to convince~;p.

[HoreTore]

Carl, regarding my campaign as the moors with thieves guild changes, the result was as following(drumsolo):

It failed. Horribly. It did change what I as the player got offered, but every AI city still had a thieves guild. I've checked Italy, germany and france, and all of them had thieves guilds...

It seems the problem comes from the AI mass producing, as opposed to mass using spies.

However, I'll have another go with a new campaign now. I'll halve the spytraining trigger down to 5, and the "ended in settlement" down to 1.

And I'll cross my fingers on this one....

[Carl]

Thanks HoreTore. i'm also going to have a look at Foz's free Upkeep fix so that might make the next version too.

[HoreTore]

Free upkeep fix? For castles, ie. tourney fields?

[Carl]

Yeah...

[Foz]

It seems the problem comes from the AI mass producing, as opposed to mass using spies.
I doubt it. I think the problem is with the AI mass of everything-to-do-with-spies. They make so freaking many, and send them on missions, and all sorts of crap, that you'll probably have to make spy recruitment AND use entirely non-related to the guilds in order to make the AI have other guilds at all. At the least you probably have to nerf everything really hard - and possibly tweak with the thresholds for getting the thief's guild.

Just had another thought though. I think we're approaching the problem poorly. Maybe we can check each settlement at turn start to see if it has at least 150 thief's guild points, and if it does then it could severely hammer the points of all other settlements. Or maybe hammer the other settlements based on whether this one has any level thief's guild. That way once the first one is erected, the other settlements are immediately slammed, and thus prevented every turn from gaining enough points to get the guild. If that settlement with the guild was then lost, you'd gain your points normally again (because the trigger trying to find a thief's guild house of any kind would then fail to find one). Come to think of it, maybe thief's guild can be set to exclude itself! Since this mechanic seems to mean that as soon as you have one of that kind of guild the excluded kind cannot be built, it may actually be possible to turn the mechanic on itself and use it to restrict thief's guilds to one per empire. This would be the absolute best solution, as the settlements presumably gain the guild points normally, but are just prevented from recruiting one if one already exists!

[R'as al Ghul]

I'm also going to have a look at Foz's free Upkeep fix so that might make the next version too.

Foz has this great program in his signature. The beauty of it is that it can automatically add the required changes to the unit_prod file, any unit_prod file no matter what you changed before.
However, that's not all that needs to be done. You still need to edit the building file. I've done that and could send you the file but it's easy to do yourself, too.

R'as

[Carl]

Thanks, hadn't got round to looking at it yet TBH, so thanks for the info, just a case of not enough time, spent the last two days working on another PC and comingback here for breaks:smash:.

[Foz]

Well I've got an update on the thieves guild stuff I was talking about. First off, you in fact cannot set the thiefs_guild to exclude itself - it won't compile correctly on game startup, and yelled at me for trying to make something exclude itself :embarassed:

The next option in line was to try to test for a thiefs_guild building each time a turn starts, and if one is found then to beat down the thiefs_guild points of all the other settlements. What I tried looked like this:


;------------------------------------------
Trigger Whatever
WhenToTest SettlementTurnStart

Condition SettlementBuildingExists >= thieves_guild

Guild thiefs_guild o -500

Basically, when a settlement is processed for its faction's turn starting, this will fire. If a thieves_guild or higher is found (yes thieves_guild is correct, the building name is from the EDB and different than the guild name in this file) then it should subtract 500 from the thiefs_guild points of all other settlements in this faction.

So, I fired up a new English campaign to see what would happen. I got offered a Thieves Guild in Rennes as my first offer anywhere, which isn't that surprising given how much I was using the spy you initially start with - if he does 10 missions, you've earned 100 thieves guild points everywhere. I took it there, to see how it would play out once my trigger was hopefully firing every turn in Rennes. I didn't get offered any other guilds for a while. London where I was trying to build for Mason's Guild got offered a guild next: a Merchant's Guild, also not surprising, I prioritize economics pretty highly. Then came the stumper - London got offered a Thieves Guild on the turn after I declined the Merchant's Guild. I declined that and got the Masons I was looking for on the next turn, but if the trigger was working like I thought, I wouldn't have been offered a Thieves Guild at all in London.

So, what happened? I couldn't have built up 100 points in London in a single turn - I produced no spies anywhere, nor any brothels, so it could at most have gained maybe 25 points from my one active spy and if say London upgraded that very turn.

Here's what I consider as possibilities:

- The settlements lost no points from their thiefs_guild totals because I set the malus too high. It's possible that the modifier is just not applied if there are not as many points to lose as are required, in which case the trigger I tried would only affect anything if a settlement had 500 points built up already.
- The changes to the file do not stick. We've found a couple settings in the EDU that just do not take changes at all... but in this case I think it's unlikely, since triggers have never shown this behavior to date.
- Some as yet unknown item(s) gained London tons of thieves guild points all in the same turn. This seems quite unlikely, as the reason for the txt file is to lay out the guild behavior, and I see nothing in it that should do this.

So currently I'm running with the first idea, that the malus is too high and therefore not affecting any settlements. I think next I'll try -100, as it represents the exact amount needed to build the first guild level. I'm not sure whether it belongs at turn start or turn end though. It depends when guild points are updated for a settlement, and when the event to offer a guild springs. Thinking about it for a moment, I'm guessing triggers from the same file are checked in the order they appear in that file... so if I make sure to put the new trigger at the very bottom of the guild file, then all guild points should be gained first (from the building-related triggers in the guild file), and then 100 removed if the total is high enough for thiefs_guild and any settlement has a Thieves Guild building already. As some guild points trigger on turn start though, I think I should actually duplicate it for the beginning and the end of the turn. I'll post results when I get 'em.

[todorp]

Carl, it is great. Can you request an own sub forum as a mod in the Mods forums?

[Carl]

Carl, it is great. Can you request an own sub forum as a mod in the Mods forums?

~:eek:

Errr, can you can do that...

:scared:

I'm not really sure that this mod is big enough for that yet, if the mods feel otherwise that fine, i'm just worried of sounding like my mods bigger than it is...

[Carl]

Also, a few bis of extra info i forgot in my suprise:

Fisrtm, regarding guild, i've seen reports of people getting offered guilds hat they could not possibbly have built up enough points for no matter what, thus it's quite clear that somthing besides points can also trigger guld offers.

Second, whilst expermineting I noticed somthing regarding missile units. All missile unitas have a hold animation, for Archers it';s when they've got their bows pulled back, fo crossbows it's winding the windlass, for Muskets it's stuffing stuff down the barrel. Regardless of what it is, the delay period is responsioble for how long they stand doing that. I also noticed that individual shooters will not start their reload animation UNTIL their missile has finished it's flight, so it is possibbile to increase Arrow Fire rates somewhat by increasing projectile velocities. Intrestinglly enough, it also lowers the arc of the projectile, this increases the power of long range archary as flat trajectories are best.

[Foz]

Also, a few bis of extra info i forgot in my suprise:

Fisrtm, regarding guild, i've seen reports of people getting offered guilds hat they could not possibbly have built up enough points for no matter what, thus it's quite clear that somthing besides points can also trigger guld offers.
I actually haven't heard of or experienced any such thing. I tend to think such reports are A. grossly exaggerated and B. likely from people who in fact do not realize everything responsible for getting a given guild house. If you have not studied the guild file extensively, it's easy to think you shouldn't have been offered a given guild. For instance you could get a woodsman's guild just from having a high chivalry general in a settlement, or a thieves guild just from running around a single spy doing missions with him. I attribute reports of guilds being offered when not earned to such less-than-obvious triggers, at least until I see any good evidence of that myself. I may have just had it happen - but then again I may have written a bad piece of code, and am more likely to believe that I wrote something that didn't work how I thought. If I see anything that appears definite, though, I'll let you know.

[HoreTore]

Doesn't look like you need such big measures to takle the thieves guild, Foz.

I'm well into my new campaign, and I have yet to see a thieves guild, nor being offered one!

The results as of now:

- None of my own cities offered thieves guild
- No guild in AI Lisbon, Pamplona or Leon
- Swordsmith Guild in AI Toledo, a castle
- THEOLOGIANS guild in Portugese Zaragoza!

I myself have not gotten round to building up an agent network, only trained 3 spies, which I've only used semi-active. However, the fact that Portugal built a theologians guild instead of a thieves guild in Zaragoza is very promising!

I'll know for sure soon, I'm about to enter war with the Milanese who have taken over all of France, and I finally have enough cash to train a bunch of spies.

[Ciaran]

[...] All missile unitas have a hold animation, for Archers it';s when they've got their bows pulled back, fo crossbows it's winding the windlass, for Muskets it's stuffing stuff down the barrel. Regardless of what it is, the delay period is responsioble for how long they stand doing that. I also noticed that individual shooters will not start their reload animation UNTIL their missile has finished it's flight, so it is possibbile to increase Arrow Fire rates somewhat by increasing projectile velocities. Intrestinglly enough, it also lowers the arc of the projectile, this increases the power of long range archary as flat trajectories are best.

Interesting find. However, I don´t suppose it would fix the Crossbows arching their fire (who ever heard of that, by the way?), or would it?

[Carl]

@Ciran: Probably not, they will still use arcing fire if they can't point straight at somthing, and whilst I CAN remove it, that just meens they sit their in seiges once the enemy gets close and do nothing, GRRRR.

@Foz: A couple of links for you:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75649

AND

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1359444&postcount=16

The second, is simply a link to a post within the thread linked to in the first post. He gives a bit more info furthar down, overall it defintlly reads like a situation where he shouldn't have got an offer. I've heard of other similar things and had similar things myself actually (getting offered theives guild within just 5 turns when i havn't trained a single new spy). It's not common, but I have seen it happen once or twice, with the english at that. Of course, on possibility is that all factions start with some points towards each guild and Theives Guilds, that would actually explain things nicely.

@HoreTore: Many thanks for that, sounds very promising.

[Foz]

@Foz: A couple of links for you:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75649

AND

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1359444&postcount=16

The second, is simply a link to a post within the thread linked to in the first post. He gives a bit more info furthar down, overall it defintlly reads like a situation where he shouldn't have got an offer. I've heard of other similar things and had similar things myself actually (getting offered theives guild within just 5 turns when i havn't trained a single new spy). It's not common, but I have seen it happen once or twice, with the english at that. Of course, on possibility is that all factions start with some points towards each guild and Theives Guilds, that would actually explain things nicely.

@HoreTore: Many thanks for that, sounds very promising.
Well my own attempts to make it so only one city will have a thieves guild have met with no success thus far. I believe that the event that triggers the guild is locked in once the city makes it to 100 points - i.e. a city unable to upgrade yet keeps a running list of guilds that it should pop once it becomes a high enough level to do so. Thus by the time one of my cities gets a thieves guild, several others have already decided they too should pop one. The only other reason I would keep seeing offers is if the negative points don't work at all, which doesn't seem to be the case because destroying guild buildings does prevent them from getting offered again usually.

Though I have no success, I do have a few more ideas on things. One is along the lines of Carl's idea that guilds may start with base levels of points. I'm thinking perhaps points are generated for the buildings that exist already in all of your cities when the game starts. It would certainly help explain why it's so easy to pop a guild in the biggest settlement you start the game with - if it gets GPs for all of its buildings (and the precursor levels I'd imagine) you start with. Especially when this is several levels worth of walls, the city will have built up a huge amount of points for EVERY guild type (10 to all for each city level upgrade, don't forget). It's even possible that the regions your initial agents start in are credited with producing those agents, which would further speed along the guild-earning process.

Another thing I have to note is that guild offers do not just "happen." It's based on the points and tiers in the file somehow. I recently emptied the file except for the top part that sets the guild thresholds, and ran 50 turns as England with the resulting file. No guilds were ever offered, in any city, period. So it looks like you don't gain points through any mechanism that isn't in the file - thank God for that. It does still look like either there's a base level things start at, or you otherwise begin with some points toward each guild (like the building thing I suggested earlier maybe), as they do sometimes seem too easy to get, but I think that's the extent of the influence we can't directly see in the file - some basic amount before we start having turns.


Doesn't look like you need such big measures to takle the thieves guild, Foz.

I'm well into my new campaign, and I have yet to see a thieves guild, nor being offered one!

The results as of now:

- None of my own cities offered thieves guild
- No guild in AI Lisbon, Pamplona or Leon
- Swordsmith Guild in AI Toledo, a castle
- THEOLOGIANS guild in Portugese Zaragoza!

I myself have not gotten round to building up an agent network, only trained 3 spies, which I've only used semi-active. However, the fact that Portugal built a theologians guild instead of a thieves guild in Zaragoza is very promising!

I'll know for sure soon, I'm about to enter war with the Milanese who have taken over all of France, and I finally have enough cash to train a bunch of spies.
Good, glad it's going pretty well. What changes are you using to get those results? The discussion is so stretched out that I'm having trouble tracking down the progression of ideas...

[HoreTore]

Good, glad it's going pretty well. What changes are you using to get those results? The discussion is so stretched out that I'm having trouble tracking down the progression of ideas...

training spy trigger down to 5, ending in settlement and spymission down to 1.

[todorp]

~:eek:

Errr, can you can do that...

:scared:

I'm not really sure that this mod is big enough for that yet, if the mods feel otherwise that fine, i'm just worried of sounding like my mods bigger than it is...

Yes, you can ask. I read a post from the moderators. All you need to do is to send a personal message to the moderatos.

Your Problem Fixer fixes more and more problems :smash: it is worth having an own sub forum.

[Carl]

Does anyone else have any veiws on this matter then, it feel a bit too much to me, but that could just be me underestimating things. I'd like advise and opinions from other members of the forum on the matter.

Thanks.

Carl.

[Tezel]

Just DLed your problem fixer and installed it and started a new game as russia, after taking smolensk with 2 merc speamen, peasant archer and a general my general got 2 retuines added, when I put my cursor over the 2 pictures, no words appear, just a small sliver of a box where the words with their bonuses or abilities would be. Bug? or I install something wrong?

thanks for your help and all your hard work...

[Carl]

What where the ancillarys? I didn't re-write the Ancillarys for this release so if theirs a bug it's not my fault with them~;p, however I should be able to correct them, I just need to know what they are.

[Tezel]

well, I guess I dont honestly know..havnt played all that much, the one looks like the "tutor" old guy with fancy learnin hat, the other one looks like a young guy in full plate, maybe "shield barer"? guess I havnt really noticed if any of my other generals have retuine problems or have any at all, have to pay closer attention.

also I noticed a lack of traits for some of the marriage suitors for my princess, they seem pretty blah, maybe thats all part of the fix but seemed weird to me. Or maybe I jsut had some bad pulls, lol.

thanks for the help.

Franz

[Carl]

Right, when you got those extra ancillarys it should have given you alert messages, what did those say, or where they blank, (if you can't remeber, put the character in a stack with another character and transfer them across, if that dosen't work, let me know as it narrows down the possibbile ancillaries).

[Tezel]

I got the alert messages, but both were blank, just said his name and nothing underneath (like what he got as normal), will try to move them when I get home if I get a chance....)

[Carl]

Thanks, it would give me a clue as to witch they might be. Check you copied the Text folder across too BTW, that could cause this problem.

[Tezel]

is BTW a subfile in SEGA? I did like the instructions said and copied the SEGA ffile in the programs: folder, and clicked "yes to all" when prompted....thnks for the help, new at all of this modding to make the game work right,hehe...

and when a new patch comes out will I have to reinstall the game or will it overwrite what your "mod" does?

[Foz]

Well I finished up some testing with the guilds. You can read the results here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1418568&postcount=38).

As for the game being patched, when that happens all of your mod files that have had any changes applied in the patch become out-of-date. You will, however, be able to apply any and all patches without doing anything to the game, modded or not. The patches will only affect the versions of the file that are still packed in the .pack files, as well as any executable code they've changed. We unpack those .pack files to get the text versions that we can edit... but since no one modifies the original pack files that the official updates will affect, you have no conflict at all between mods and patches. To run the updated game, though, you'll have to use the original shortcut and executable the game comes with, disabling any io.file_first or mod usage that you're currently doing. Presumably the modders will work quickly to apply their work to the newly released files, and you should have patch-compatible mod versions in short order after any patch.

[Carl]

BTW=By the Way, it's an abbriviattion.

What I meant is that in the Data folder within the SEGA Folder their is a folder marked "Text" makes sure it has been copied, it should have been, but if it hasn't, it could well result in some odd moments like that. Has anyone else had this?

@Foz, Thanks.

[rrdew]

Carl,
Sorry for the Newbie question, but once I download your bugfixer, will I still be able to play vanilla by using the original M2TW shortcut on my desktop?

Thanks,

[Carl]

Carl,
Sorry for the Newbie question, but once I download your bugfixer, will I still be able to play vanilla by using the original M2TW shortcut on my desktop?

Thanks,

That's okay, not everyone would know the anwser.

The anwser is yes you can, no issues their, it will be ordinary vanillia 1.1 with the ordinary shortcut.

[rrdew]

Thank you for the quick response, and I look forward to trying out your "fixed" version.

[Tezel]

ok Carl, I have no traits for any of my generals, and all of their retuine comes up blank....I started a new game as venice, same thing, their retuines are blank, even when there are picutres there of the retuine members, and they have no traits...I looked and the "text" folder is there with all the subfolders underneath it. very frustraiting since it seems I am the only one with the problem, lol...I have version 1.1 of the vanilla game, so the one patch is installed and I have changed the year to .5 instead of 2 if that would make a diff, though I dont see why it would....thanks for any help in advance....

[Tezel]

ok Carl, I have no traits for any of my generals, and all of their retuine comes up blank....I started a new game as venice, same thing, their retuines are blank, even when there are picutres there of the retuine members, and they have no traits...I looked and the "text" folder is there with all the subfolders underneath it. very frustraiting since it seems I am the only one with the problem, lol...I have version 1.1 of the vanilla game, so the one patch is installed and I have changed the year to .5 instead of 2 if that would make a diff, though I dont see why it would....thanks for any help in advance....

[Tezel]

sorry for the dbl post...dont know how that happend....ok, went to the normal icon to start the game, loaded it, and my generals had traits and retuins...but then noticed I was still playing 1.0, swore I had updated the game...so I dled the patch, patched the game and now the modded version loads with my generals having their proper retuine and all.....weird....well, thanks for the help, guess I solved my own problem, lol...

[redpatch]

I'll download and post results in a minute.

[Carl]

@Tezel: Easy mistake to make, no worries, will have to add that to the README, thanks for the info.

@redpatch: looking forward to it~:).

[redpatch]

@Tezel: Easy mistake to make, no worries, will have to add that to the README, thanks for the info.

@redpatch: looking forward to it~:).

So far, I love this! The only noticeable problem I've had is that my assassin gains skills when failing missions. Still playing as Venice (grand campaign) with hard game/VH battle.

[Carl]

So far, I love this! The only noticeable problem I've had is that my assassin gains skills when failing missions. Still playing as Venice (grand campaign) with hard game/VH battle.

Glad you enjoy it, and thanks for the heads up about assassins.

[Carl]

All right, just thought i'd update you guys and let you know that V1.14 is in the works, for now it's mostly tweaks to the AI, Diplomacy, Inquisitors, Merchants, Assasins and other littile things. Unfortunatly I'm struggling to get a lot of testing done, thus I could do with some BETA testers, i';ve got a couple allready, but I could do with a few more ATM.

So if your intrested in getting some testing done for me, drop a rely in this thread.

Thanks to anyone who voulnteers.

Carl.

[King Bob VI]

Great job Carl, I'm really enjoying all of the fixes.

The only noticeable problem I've had is that my assassin gains skills when failing missions.

I've noticed the same with Imams when they fail to denounce a heretic.

[Carl]

hmm, keep the bugs coming, couldn't find anything in the file that would cause the assasin problem, but i'll re-check and do the same on Imam's. Anyone else seeing these littile bugs?

[Foz]

So far, I love this! The only noticeable problem I've had is that my assassin gains skills when failing missions. Still playing as Venice (grand campaign) with hard game/VH battle.


Great job Carl, I'm really enjoying all of the fixes.

The only noticeable problem I've had is that my assassin gains skills when failing missions.

I've noticed the same with Imams when they fail to denounce a heretic.
It's not a bug, it's a quirk of the anti-trait workaround that I made. What happens is the guy gains a point in the bad agent trait like he's supposed to when he fails. This always makes him lose 1 point of agent ability, as lvl 1 of the bad trait applies -1 skill. Then the trigger kicks in to cancel that point with 1 of the points in the positive trait. This makes the -1 from the bad trait go away, and he instead loses 1 point of the good trait, which causes 1 of the following:

1. He stays dropped down a level in skill b/c losing a good trait point dropped him down a level. The game says nothing.
2. He goes back up to his previous level. This happens if he has say 3 levels of goodspy, and an extra 2 points that don't currently do anything because they don't make a complete level. So the bad trait point makes him lose 1 agent skill, but he gets it back when the points cancel out b/c he has spare points of good trait and will go back up to his previous level as a result. The game says he gained a skill point.

So to make a long story short, when the game informs you he's gone up a level for failing, it really means he had spare good trait points - and if you watch your agents carefully, you'll see that it really is the case. They're not gaining stats for failures, the game is just confused :smile:

[Carl]

Alright two things:

First, I've updated the links again as FileFactory had deleted the file and Uploadline now wanted you to register. the FilFactory link now works.

However I could do with more places to mirror it free of charge, anyone who knows of anymore should drop a link to it in this thread.

Second, I still need volunteers for BETA testing as my chief Beta testers are still unable to do anything. Stirland seems to have disappeared, and HoreTore has a Virus so he's struggling to get his machine working.

@Foz: don't know if this is what other have seen, but I had a situation where a diplomat with no points of GoodDiplomat gained a point when he failed a negotiation attempt, i couldn't spot anything to cause this in the files, but...

Also, no amount of successful negotiations seem to give any GoodDiplomat points.

[Jagger]

I downloaded the file from filefactory but it is very small. It only contains 3 files-two readmes and a shortcut. Is something wrong or I just don't know what I am doing?

[Carl]

Their should also be a Folder marked SEGA i it, I just checked and their was in the version I got of filefactory so it sounds like it hasn't downloaded properly or your unzipper isn't working right, and yes, it's very small BTW.

[Jagger]

Thanks Carl, got it!! Will be able to play tomorrow! :yes:

[Callahan9119]

just got this, i'll let you know if i like it later :yes:

gotta make sure your changes will work when i launch ultimate ai mod.

your instructions in the readme dont work :thumbsdown: or your assuming someone knows to do something that isnt stated in your directions..but unfortunatly it looks as though your mod doesnt change the main file, so i dont think i can run your mod and the UAI mod at the same time, without some trechnical skills i dont have ~:mecry:

[Carl]

but unfortunatly it looks as though your mod doesnt change the main file, so i dont think i can run your mod and the UAI mod at the same time, without some trechnical skills i dont have


I don't understand that sorry, if it dosen't change anything, why is their an issue? I admit I know nothing of the Ultimate AI mod beyond the fact that it's an AI mod (Duh!), however since it's an AI mod their is no reason it should have touched the Trait/Ancillary/EDU/pathfinding files. So you shpould just be able to paste it over the top.

What exactly is the problem with the installation instructions BTW?

[Callahan9119]

what i mean is that both mods require a seperate launch to work correctly, if i launch your mod the other isnt loaded and vise versa

and about it not working, i did what your instructions said, nothing was overwritten i just get a sega file wherever i extract it to, if i just extract/copy to program files, or sega folder, or m2tw folder or data folder, nothing works

i am not computer savvy, i used to do all the simple tw modding myself, but i dont know anything about using extractor etc, i just learned by screwing up my old mtw1 game 1000 times till i figured everything out, not that patient anymore

[Carl]

Ahh, i think I know whats happening, the Ultimate Ai mod is using a Mod folder. Go into M2TW, (but not data), folder on your PC, (the actual one, not the unzipped one in my mod), and look at the folders, their should be one marked AIMod or UltimateAIMod or somthing similar. This will be the Mod folder for the Ultimate AI mod.

Into this copy the contents of the data folder from my ProblemFixer. Then use the UltimateAIod shortcut to launch it. If it's working DGK sould have 24 attack, so thats the easy way to check.

[Gingivitis]

So far, I love this! The only noticeable problem I've had is that my assassin gains skills when failing missions. Still playing as Venice (grand campaign) with hard game/VH battle.
I could swear that I get the message that he gets a trait increase even though his skill goes down when he fails a mission. Like it will go from a +4 to a +3 in the assassin skill, but still come up as a gain, I'll look closer though next time.

[Foz]

I could swear that I get the message that he gets a trait increase even though his skill goes down when he fails a mission. Like it will go from a +4 to a +3 in the assassin skill, but still come up as a gain, I'll look closer though next time.
Read my post earlier this page, #66. They do in fact lose skill, or sometimes not, and the message about them gaining it does in fact sometimes come up (erroneously). It has to do with the timing of things now, and the fact that a point of bad trait is often more detrimental than a minus point of good trait. All will be made clear... (in post 66, that is)

[SMZ]

thnx Carl for putting this together... i'ma give the game another shot now

[Carl]

I havn't fixed the AI yet so be warned, it still acts dumb, the next version if I can get some Beta testers should include down powered inquisitors, up-powered assasins and merchants, and improved AI.

However, it still fixes many other bugs so it should help your expiriance significantly IMHO.

[SMZ]

Question - I just re-installed the game, updated it to the 1.1 patch, ran the unpacker - then installed your ProblemFixer...

... when I click on the handy dandy Mod Shortcut however the game opens up with the first background screen, then crashes back to desktop... me confused - what am I doing wrong?

EDIT: oh, I also made a few small personal tinkers with the unit and building file - primarily just making the various knightly orders have some flavor (gave Santiago's a ship bonus and their knights a stamina bonus; Templars a trade bonus and their knights a slight boost to attack; Teutons a boost to conversion)

[Carl]

Sounds like one of your bits of tinkering messed somthing up. re-install my ProblemFixer again like you did the first time and check see if it fires up, if it does then it's the changes you made. otherwise, try looking in the system.log and copy the contents here, and ill try and see if I can't figure out whats wrong.

[SMZ]

it was my doofus tinkering - thnx, i figured it out

[Carl]

Fair enough, thanks for the heads up, wanted to check one of the links wasn't corruppt, that was all.

p.s. we where all doofus's once:smash:.

[Gingivitis]

For some reason it seems I can't get a skill gain in command from battles. I get retinue from them and I get command skill from other traits, just not the command skill line from battles. Maybe it's just me though.

[Gingivitis]

Well started a new campaign and now I get them, weird.

[grapedog]

is the cmd prompt window supposed to close on it's own...? i used your .bat file to start it up and it leaves a cmd prompt window running in the background while the game is on and even after i turn it off.

i'm guessing i don't need to leave it running, it's only needed for the startup, but just wanted to ask how it's supposed to work before i futz with it.

[Carl]

It should shut down about 10 secobnds after the game does, i'd advise leaving it running, allthough I suspect it isn't necessery. I don't know enough to say for sure though.

Anyone else know for sure?

[SMZ]

it runs in the background of mine too, i don't think it affects anything... mine shuts down when I exit game

-------
Feedback: everything's working beautifully so far, no complaints yet - i'll go ahead and drop some small changes i did myself, you can decide whether they seem worthwhile or not

1. Several people noticed that the Russian Dismounted Druzhina and Dismounted Boyar Sons are basically the same exact unit. Same stats, same cost, same everything... one suggested fix was to change the DBS to a heavy javilin/axe troop (sorta like a roman legionare because the mounted version carries javilins) - but that will require animation work to make it look right...

What I did instead is change both the Druzhina and Dismounted Druzhina to 2hp, half-size units. They are after all described as bodyguards, and have the flavor of a kinda primal, ancient style of warfare which is becoming out-dated.

2. HRE's Forlorn Hope are supposed to be 2hp units, CA made a booboo. (they're half-sized, and described as being 2hp style units)

3. Somebody else posted about this, and it's seemed to be working for me too... so lemme pass it on:

In the descr_campaign_ai_db.xml file, there are some suggested parameters for the ai to follow mentioned at the top. Scrolling down slightly you see "GLOBAL AI PARAMS", there's a note saying it's disabled currently - but it seems to be working to me at least. Right now the values are at "999.999" or something - if you place the suggested numbers you saw at the top into those values, diplomacy suddenly seems to work. (Those numbers describe how you can become a "trusted ally" - currently, it's impossible because you can't get to 999. Trusted allies don't get attacked randomly, etc)

4. After running the string.bin converter, I switched England's Sherwood Archer info to say they have 'expert woodscraft' and are 'expert woodsmen', instead of the current description that they can 'hide anywhere', which they can't.

5. Demi Lancers are described as foregoing the more usual heavy armor of the time for greater speed. So I switched their mount to 'fast_pony'. That might just be personal taste, but it seemed to match the description better, and made them worthwhile considering their cost, and the effort taken to get them.

6. Spain's Tercio Pikemen are described as being 'well armoured', despite having no armor initially. I changed the description on them to thus read, 'often refitted with armor' instead, and in the short version I just clipped out the couple offending words.

I think that's it... the other tinkerings I did are really more personal taste than in line with CA's vanilla.

Oh, one final thing... I mentioned it already - but I like it, and I think it helps, so I'll see if you do too. The Knight Orders. Right now, Templars and Knights of St. John are the same exact thing, except St. John is easier to get and offers a health bonus. Well that stunk to me. Then I noticed that the Knights of Santiago weren't any different either, other than being restricted to Spain and Portugal. The Teutons were at least different and had flavor, as they were likely to come from battling pagans and they carried maces.

Well, what I did - is instead set St. Johns as the basic model so to speak. Left them alone. Templars are described as being very involved with business, so I gave their Guild Houses a trade bonus. Santiagos are described as training in naval warfare also, unlike the other orders, so I gave their Guild Houses a ship bonus. Teutons are described as being very effective at forceful conversion, so I gave their Guild Houses a religion bonus. So now, the orders have different uses - instead of one just standing out as being good and the others useless except for those who were roleplaying.

Secondly, I wanted to change the Knights themselves just slightly. The Teutons already have their maces, so I left them alone. The Templars are described as being renowned for their ferocity, but their stats are the exact same as the St. Johns except the St. Johns don't ignore orders. Well that had to be balanced, so I gave the Templars 1 point in attack, charge and secondary attack. So now my St. Johns follow orders, but Templars woop butt.... as things should be. Lastly, to give the Santiagos some flavor - and up to this point I just followed the descriptions, but on this one I stretched just a wee little bit - I gave them very_hardy stamina, instead of just hardy. Spain is sposed to be known for their horses anyway I figured. So now on my game the Guilds and the Knights all have a little variance and some niches. Makes the choices a little more meaningful.



EDIT: All those tinkers were easy to do... (obviously, cause even I figured em out) But if you like any of those changes, and think they fit in line with the intent of your ProblemFixer, but it'd be quicker to just copy paste, or you're having trouble implementing one of them or whatever... PM, and I'll copy the code to you.

[CountMRVHS]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just bad luck, but my Venetians haven't had any new family members for quite some time. I'm on around turn 40, playing H/VH. My family tree shows, at the top level, my first faction leader (now dead); at the second level there are the original 2 or 3 family members, and at the third level each of those 2nd-level family members has 1 child -- all males, btw. Everyone's married, but no one's having kids. And the ones who *did* have kids stopped at one.

I installed your fix over the original unpatched game; I'm not sure if that would have an effect? You mentioned in another thread that I wouldn't get text for traits or ancillaries because of this (and I don't see that text, as you said), so I'm wondering if this is another issue, or simply the result of a paticularly infertile family.

As a side note, how big is the patch 1.1? I dled your fix very quickly on my dialup connection, so I wonder if it would be worth it to try the patch as well, and if so, would I be able to install it *over* your fix?

Thanks for any advice and for a great fix,

CountMRVHS

[Carl]

It depends on how many provinces you hold, but it IS also possibbile it's bad luck, and I have noticed that ceartin combinations of changes produce the result as well as I found out when playing with some stuff.

So I can't say for sure what the cause is, but it could be any of the ideas you've suggested.

The Patch is a few MB I belive, But I deleted the compressed bit after downloading it so i'm not 100% sure how big it is. it's about 80mb decompressed though so i'd geuss about 8-16Mb, but don't quote me on that, about 30-60 minutes at dialup as thats what my connection runs at most of the time~:(.

[CountMRVHS]

Thanks for the reply -- my luck did change of course, a few turns later, after I got some AI cities through diplomacy and the game decided my family members could start making kids again.

Think I'm going to look into the patch, as I'm seeing some cool-looking ancillaries that I've never had before your fix, and I'm curious about their descriptions. I can handle a 30-60 minute download; it's the 5-6 hour ones that I'm not so crazy about :beam: .

[Carl]

it's the 5-6 hour ones that I'm not so crazy about .

I don't blame you, If I have to download anything like that though, I tend to leave it running overnight, allthough that might be expensive with dialup.

[chickenhawk]

:help:
Hello, I am playing this mod so I thought I would start by asking the questions here. I am playing England and am ~120 turns into the game. It has been absolutely problem free so far but now I am stuck on a CTD problem. I have a large stack outside of Hamburg and it keeps crashing the whole game every time I try to attack this one particular city. It is held by the Danes, I really need to finish them off, they have broken alliances and or cease-fires several times and are just being irritating. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Separate question, the black death is completely wrecking my empire, it may be historical but it is not fun, not even a little bit, is there any easy way to turn it off?

[chickenhawk]

I would happily try 1.14 if you can tell me how to download.:2thumbsup:

[Carl]

Hello, I am playing this mod so I thought I would start by asking the questions here. I am playing England and am ~120 turns into the game. It has been absolutely problem free so far but now I am stuck on a CTD problem. I have a large stack outside of Hamburg and it keeps crashing the whole game every time I try to attack this one particular city. It is held by the Danes, I really need to finish them off, they have broken alliances and or cease-fires several times and are just being irritating. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Could you list the units in your army and the units in the danish army and the building in the castle for me please? Their shouldn't be any issues with any of them, but i'd like to check it to be sure.

[CountMRVHS]

Another positive note for your fix: before I installed it, I experienced frequent crashes associated with the movies, to the point where I turned off the spy & assassin movies. I'd still crash whenever a Crusade, marriage, or event movie came up, requiring me to reload the game to get the movie to play correctly (if at all).

But since I installed the fix, the movies have been working. Makes it much nicer when a Papal Election comes up. :2thumbsup:

[chickenhawk]

Could you list the units in your army and the units in the danish army and the building in the castle for me please? Their shouldn't be any issues with any of them, but i'd like to check it to be sure.

Carl, many thanks again for the excellent mod. The problem is almost certainly with the Danish generals body-guard unit. It is the only one that I have not faced or used before. It should not have been the citadel since I was attacking an army outside the walls. The citadels troops were in as reinforcements since they were in range. I was hoping to break the army so badly their wold not be anything left to retreat into the Citadel. The full list is as follows
English
Gen Cav
DEK
SHER FOR
RET LB
ARM SWORD

DANISH
PEASANTS
NORSE ARCHERS
CATAPULT
BALLISTA
SWORD STAFF MILITIA
GENERALS BODYGUARD
CROSSBOWMEN
MER PAV XB
CROSSBOW MILITIA
TOWN MILITIA

[Carl]

Hmm, thanks for that. Has anyone else expirianced this issue at all? It sounds strange as the Danish bodygaurd is exactly the same as the English one so I can't see why their should be a problem...

[Razor1952]

Carl

I'm playing Lusted's L to C 2.1 , should or can I install your fixer over this or can I install it as a seperate mod(so I can still have the options to play vanilla, LtoC or your bugfixer)?

Thank you for your hard work.!

[chickenhawk]

It is somewhat funny that your tech support is better than CA's, but it is much appreciated.

Carl could you check Halbred militia, I think it may be the common theme between the crash I was discussing above, and another one I had today. This was with a German rebel stack not the Danes.

I would like to try 1.14 while I am at it by the way, or am I just missing the download instructions above?

[Carl]

@Razor: You could paste my mod over the top in theory, but both me a Lusted modify some of the same files. This means you'd end up messing up all lusteds hard work with regards to units. in addition, Lusted uses Higher mass values for most Cav and some hidden modification outside the EDU which drastically increases the fighting power of Spears and 2-Handers. that why Lusted is able to get away with lower Skeleton Comp factors and/or attack values for his spears/2-Handers and still get equal or better kill rates against some target types than they do in my mod. I wish I knew what he's done LOL:smash:.

You can run them side by side however with no issue at all as my default installation method puts the modified files in a different folder to that of Lusted LTC2.1

@Chickenwire: Right now I'm mostly interested in modders doing the testing as something that I changed between V1.13 and V1.14 is causing a crash around turn 30. I thought I had it nailed at one point, but it's looking like I didn't get it wrong and I'm not sure which file is the problem ATM. However once I get a bug free V1.14 BETA I'll defiantly remember your name.

p.s. theirs no download link your missing no, I'm sending that by PM to the relevant individual. However if any other modders want to throw their oar in an help I'd be glad of it as I'm not sure exactly what the issue is ATM.

[Foz]

@Chickenwire: Right now I'm mostly interested in modders doing the testing as something that I changed between V1.13 and V1.14 is causing a crash around turn 30. I thought I had it nailed at one point, but it's looking like I didn't get it wrong and I'm not sure which file is the problem ATM. However once I get a bug free V1.14 BETA I'll defiantly remember your name.
Turn 30 is when the first disaster seems to happen, and also IIRC when the AI more or less comes out of auto pilot and begins playing for real. Are you speculating it's one of those things? If you wanna discuss further here, or drop me a PM, feel free to do so.

[Dexter]

Hy ... sorry to say but i cant dowload the fix ... :(( from neither link
And is it possible to give the links to all the fixes that were made or which ones are the reccomended ones ???
I have the game the firts patch - is there a second ? - and some fixes / changes ... sorry to make this request but my time is limited ... got to work to .. thanx ... iff possible pm me :help:

[Carl]

@Dexter: the Savefile link should now be working for you, FileFactory looks like it's just vetry Busy.

@Foz: Thanks i'll PM you about it and i'll check the date, as tuirn 30 was a rough geuss TBH, (I can use continue campaign to go back to the turn of the crash~:)).

[Dexter]

[QUOTE=Carl]@Dexter: the Savefile link should now be working for you, FileFactory looks like it's just vetry Busy.

Yes it worked !!! Thanx

[Carl]

Your welcome.

[Carl]

V1.13 FileFront Link added.

V1.14 is getting along nicely guys, i just need to edit a few more things and then get it tested and it should be ready.

[SMZ]

sounds good

I suppose you'll continue and encorporate the second patch in your ProblemFixer next? *hopes so*

[Carl]

Yep, you think i'd let all that hard work go to waste:laugh4:.

[Rilder]

Will installing this cause any problems when the second patch for M2 comes out?"

edit: nvm got unspecified errors when i try custom battle so oh well wasn't keen on doing any modding to m2 anyways

[Foz]

Will installing this cause any problems when the second patch for M2 comes out?"
That depends what you mean. On the one hand no, if you mean to the vanilla game. You can play vanilla M2TW (including any patched version of it) until the cows come home no matter what mods you've installed, provided you just double-click the default game icon :smile:

If, though, you mean Carl's fixer might interfere with things 1.2 corrects if you try to run the problemfixer mod, then yes it might (and in fact almost certainly would). I anticipate any of the fixer mods will need some time to re-modify the 1.2 files to include any still-needed changes. Basically 1.2 looks to be big enough that we'll all run vanilla 1.2 for a bit to see what's in and what's not, and then you'll get new versions of all the fixers: versions that include the 1.2 official fixes, plus whatever else. Until those versions are out, you probably shouldn't run mods w/ 1.2 as the mod files would have old data that may be undoing the corrections of 1.2.

[Carl]

edit: nvm got unspecified errors when i try custom battle so oh well wasn't keen on doing any modding to m2 anyways

What units and map where you using, I can't think of anything that should cause crashes in custom and have never expirianced one myself so i'm a bit stuck.


As to your question, exactly what Foz said, i'll ait till the patch comes out then look at how things are working in vanillia, then alter as necessery to make my problem fixer V1.2 compatabile.

[Foz]

What units and map where you using, I can't think of anything that should cause crashes in custom and have never expirianced one myself so i'm a bit stuck.


As to your question, exactly what Foz said, i'll ait till the patch comes out then look at how things are working in vanillia, then alter as necessery to make my problem fixer V1.2 compatabile.


Will installing this cause any problems when the second patch for M2 comes out?"

edit: nvm got unspecified errors when i try custom battle so oh well wasn't keen on doing any modding to m2 anyways
I was having some kind of problem like this. The only remedy ended up being to copy my entire data directory (partially unpacked) into the mod folder. I know there are guides everywhere that tell you exactly what you have to have in a mod folder... but I had that stuff covered already. I never did figure out exactly what it was from my data folder that the game was looking for in the mod/data folder, but something in there did make the game run right again. Note that I've never unpacked the works: I have no interest (yet at least) in messing with models or textures. So, IIRC I had unpacked txt files and xml files (using the unpacker's filter). I really don't think it was any of the unpacked stuff that fixed it though, I think it was some of the normal game stuff that resides in the data folder. Why the game was looking for them in the mod folder, I'll never know...

[Carl]

@Foz: well my instillation method just puts m mod in the normal Data folder, it dosen't have it's own Mod folder, so I can't understand the issue TBH.

[yezhanquan85]

Carl, when the second patch comes out, will you be doing a visual scan to see if CA has fixed all the trait probs?

[Carl]

Yeah, I can check it out but I doubt they will have got them all as some are subjective rather than definte bugs.

[Carl]

ProblemFixer Pure is exactly the same as the old "Carl'sProblemFixer V1.13", It's simply received a name change now that Rebuild-ProblemFixer V1.21 exists.

This thread is in fact the old V1.13 thread moved from the Citadel forum and given a new name.