how do i enlarge starpos?

[Hross af Guttenburg]

what i mean is how do i alter the game's starting armies and castles etc.
I would like to have most countries start the campaign immedíately with several full armies and citadels/advanced technologies to reflect historical accuracy.
(obviously money will have to reflect and support this too...)

but WHERE and how do i change this? -and if i do change it, will it effect other parts of my game negatively?

i assume that i must change the stats in several different files not just in say startpos?

cheers

[[DnC]]

Well according to your topicname you do seem to know where the file(s) is/are which need to be edited?

Just to make sure you know: Go to -> "Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos\" and open whichever period you want to open, Early, High, Late or Viking.

Now open one of them and scroll all the way down untill you see something like this appear (taken form EARLY.txt):

Code Voorbeeld //============================================================================
// Adding ANY building MUST be done after the regions ATTRIBUTES have been set.
//============================================================================
//Buildings
//place buildings in each country.
//Buildings become controlled by the
//faction controlling the region.
//========================================
MakeBuilding:: ID_ARAGON Castle3
MakeBuilding:: ID_ARAGON Town_watch
MakeBuilding:: ID_ARAGON Bowyer[/QUOTE]

Here you can add and edit buildings.
When adding it's best to copy an existing line and changing it to what you want it to be.
For example:

Copy and paste this line on a new and clean enter:

Code Voorbeeld MakeBuilding:: ID_ARAGON Castle3[/QUOTE]

Now we first change ID_ARAGON to ID_FLANDERS. First you will only select ID_ARAGON and then start typing ID_FLANDERS. Make sure you don't make any typo's.
Look at the following for the results:

Code Voorbeeld MakeBuilding:: ID_FLANDERS Castle3[/QUOTE]

And now we wil change Castle3 to Improved_farmland2, same as above. Select Castle3 and change it to Improved_farmland2:

Code Voorbeeld MakeBuilding:: ID_FLANDERS Improved_farmland2[/QUOTE]

Note: This is just merely an example

The numbers behind the buildings means it's an upgrade, but you must remember that the first version of a building in the line does not have a number behind it. So it's not Castle1, but Castle.

Also, you can select, copy and paste regions (e.g. ID_FLANDERS) and buildings (e.g. Improved_farmland2) from other existing lines somwhere in the MakeBuilding:: area.
For example ID_FLANDERS can be found a little more below. Select ID_FLANDERS, copy it and go to where you've made the new MakeBuildings:: line and paste it over ID_ARAGON of which you've made a copy.

If you don't know the codename of a region then you can go somewhere in the beginning of the startpos file and look for the DeclareLandRegion:: ID_ARAGON or something similar.

If you do not know of the codename of a building then open up the CRUSADER_BUILD_PROD13.txt with Gnome Editor and look at column 3 to see how many buildings there are with for instance Armourer. The first Armourer is just Armourer, Armourer's Workshop is Armourer2 etc etc. This way it will be easier to identify which building you want to give a certain province if you are unaware of the codenames for them.

By the way, try to get the lines of the same region with different buildings together so you can easily trace back where it is.

Off to the units section:

Scroll down even more untill you encounter the following:

Code Voorbeeld //========================================
//Create Unit
//Create a unit in a specified region
//The Faction that controls that region
//then controls the army.
//========================================
//region, unit type, number of men, number of kills

MakeUnit:: ID_ALGERIA BerberCamel 40[/QUOTE]

Again it's the same with the buildings.

To find out the codenames of the units open up CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.txt and look at the first column for their codenames.

The number, in this case with the BerbelCamel it's 40, is the unit's size. Maximum is 200, go above it and MTW will crash.

Also, note: Don't go above 199 men if a unit is also a faction's leader unit (Royal Knights, Swiss Armoured Pikemen, Ghulam Bodyguards), because the king still needs to be added to a unit making it one man bigger, but this only counts for changes in the CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.txt, not the startpos. The unit's leader is added differently. Just a FYI.

First I advise you to just adjust/add first one building or unit and see if it works.

[Hross af Guttenburg]

you sir are a true gent thanks very much i really appreciate the help. it worked a charm, it plays fantastic now...but now, due to my enlarged sizes it leads me to my next issue...
how do i increase the worth of trade and farming? so that they bring in about five to ten times the previous income?
i think i may have to raise the cost of the building production costs too for those buildings.--????

[Kaatar]

I think this line controls the income:


SetAttributes:: ID_ANATOLIA "Anatolia" 0 ORTHODOX_CULTURE ARID AT_EASTERN_EUROPEAN -1 380 "Anatolia Castle_xzy" INLAND MOUNTAIN NO_RIVER TRUE

See the 380? I'm pretty sure that's it. Just search for SetAttributes:: in the text file nd you'll come across one for each region all bundled together.

Good luck :)

[[DnC]]

Yep Kataar that's the right value.

Hross af Guttenburg how big are the starting armies actually? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

You might also try and lower the supportcosts of each unit in the CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.txt.
The equation of the supportcostvalues is the following calculation:

Number of men in the unit (column 8) * (=times) supportcostvalue (column 4) * 0.125 = The actual ingame supportcost for given unit.

So if you have 60 Highland Clansmen, a supportcostvalue of 3, then we get an ingame supportcost for Highland Clansmen of 22. 60 * 3 * 0.125 = 22.5 = 22 because the game does not accept/show anything after the comma (dot in this case, no .1 .5 .03 etc etc so it rounds it off at wholes or whatever it's called in English http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif)

PS. Also try to do a test campaign of some 20~25 quick turns - no fighting to reduce the testing time. If the game hasn't crashed, then I think it will be all in good order.
Sometimes having changed something incorrectly in the startpos file(s) can give some problems that make it crash immediately after the first turn or after some 10~15 turns. So backing up whenever something works is a must

[Nomad]

Quote[/b] (Hross af Guttenburg @ April 22 2004,08:54)]you sir are a true gent thanks very much i really appreciate the help. it worked a charm, it plays fantastic now...but now, due to my enlarged sizes it leads me to my next issue...
how do i increase the worth of trade and farming? so that they bring in about five to ten times the previous income?
i think i may have to raise the cost of the building production costs too for those buildings.--????

Quote[/b] ]how do i increase the worth of trade and farming?
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Hmmmm haven't sussed this quote thing yet. However don't think anyone anwered this one for you, Hross of Guttenburg.
To edit improved farmland income. Open up unitbuildprod13 in the main MTW file. Find the line that begins with improved farmland go to the end of the line where you should find 4 numbers eg 120,150,180,220 (not sure what the original numbers were as I've edited them already) Each number indicates the total farm income after each increase.
not sure about the Merchants. You can edit how much the rescource are valued at though (forgot where at the moment) and of course what province gets what recources and tradable goods, in the Startpos folder in loc.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

[Hross af Guttenburg]

Cheers guys Its a fantastic help. I have concentrated now on improving the trade and making it more financially rewarding to trade. region attributes are also made more realistic, so for example every island has FISH as a tradable item etc. problem is when I change some of this info IN THE STARTPOS campaign file: EXAMPLE:-

//========================================
// Declare the tradable goods for this campaign.
//========================================

DeclareTradegoods:: "GLASSWARE" 40
DeclareTradegoods:: "WOOD" 20
DeclareTradegoods:: "FURS" 40
DeclareTradegoods:: "WINE" 40
DeclareTradegoods:: "WOOL" 30
DeclareTradegoods:: "SILK" 40
DeclareTradegoods:: "COTTON" 30
DeclareTradegoods:: "LINEN" 30
DeclareTradegoods:: "WAX" 20


the campaign just dissappears from the game menu whn i try to test it. any ideas?

I'll let you all know how it plays and works when I get it going. Before I looked at the financial problems I just increased the starting money (which obviously could not sustain even the armies I had so all countries went bankrupt within like 30 years ) however with such large faction armies the campaign plays really well. The factions still rise and fall in proportion as they did before. But now the battles have large numbers of reinforcements which makes you think twice when invading etc. The automatic battles are also impressively uncertain, making strategy a hell of a lot more fun and challenging. Its greatly satisfying to fight with such realistic numbers, even a well equipped army can lose against invaders with basic technology but superior numbers. -This has been perfect for ancient campaigns/mods such as those in Roman times etc. This is great fun....I just need to get it to work out economically http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif