Barbarian Invasion Faction Tests

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Received BI yesterday through pre-order. After making ALL 20 factions playable by updating the new descr_strat text file @ C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\data\world\maps\campaign\barbarian_invasion, discovered the following.

CTDs (Crash To Desktop)

From the Main Campaign screen, if you click on any of the following factions, you will receive a CTD:

* Eastern Roman Rebels
* Western Roman Rebels
* Slaves and Rebels
* Roxolani
* Burgundii

Blank/Empty Campaign/Strategy Map

You can start a new campaign with any of the following factions, but all you will receive is an empty/blank campaign/strategy map, and won't be able to do anything:

* Ostrogoths
* Romano-British
* Slavs

Skimmed through the manual and apparently these 3 are 'Splinter' factions. This means they may or may not appear during any campaign at any time, basically a random event. Might be different though if they are given starting provinces, armies, family members etc.

Other BI Factions

The other 'Unplayable' factions work fine after some tests, these are:

* Celts
* Berbers

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

After making ALL 20 factions playable by updating the new descr_strat text file @ C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\data\world\maps\campaign\barbarian_invasion...

21 factions in total, if you count rebels / slaves as one. Also, you need to put slave under the Unplayable section if you want the Lombardi faction to appear on the main campaign screen.


CTDs (Crash To Desktop)

From the Main Campaign screen, if you click on any of the following factions, you will receive a CTD:

* Eastern Roman Rebels
* Western Roman Rebels
* Slaves and Rebels
* Roxolani
* Burgundii
The Lombardi faction go under this category. Looks like the descr_strat and other text files need some work to make these factions bug-free and then playable :book:

[Tyrac]

Anything new on this front?

[Tricky Lady]

Check this link (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=942024&postcount=1): professorspatula has posted a downloadable file that will allow you to play most of the "unlockable" factions. It works.

The full thread can be found here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=54943).

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Anything new on this front?

Yes as Tricky Lady says, PS' mod does a good job of bringing BI upto speed, what it should have been like on release tbh. Also check out the work done by player1, he and others have done some good testing on BI, their results are posted here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=54690).


Unlocking Burgundii, Lombardi, Roxolani Factions

AFAIK, all you need to do to unlock the Burgundii, Lombardi and Roxolani is to create new campaign descriptions for each @ C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\data\text in the campaign_descriptions text file. You can literally create your own custom descriptions, but I used Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) for mine.

If you're feeling creative, you can also update these 3 factions' main menu and in-game maps, which are found here:-

* C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\data\world\maps\campaign\barbarian_invasion

* C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\data\world\maps\campaign\barbarian_invasion\ingame_maps

This is not a requirement, but helps illustrate your campaign objectives on the strategy map - note the goals for your faction already exist so these do not need to be created.