Some strange effects of hording and emerging factions

At Imperium:TW we've noticed some strange stuff when playing with the hording and with emerging factions.

The first experiment:
Step 1: copy the bi directory;
Step 2: copy the RTW files (those in \data, not \bi\data) into the corresponding folders, overwritting almost every bi file except the skeletons and the files needed to have night battles.
Result: we can play RTW using the bi.exe (Rome Total War-BI.exe). BI.exe has even the Senate inside.

Not so surprising after all, but wait, there's more!

The second experiment: the Scythians were moded in order to be able to horde. Then we've noticed the first 2 strange things:
a) The left side of the city scroll, that which has the horde button, was missing and instead there was some strange vertical band.
b) If the Scythian army was taking any city, clicking on the sacking option was resulting in a CTD.

The cure for those two problems proved to be simple: we've replaced the strat3.rsd, shared2.rsd and battle3.rsd of rtw with the bi one (those files are in \bi\data\ui). So now the Scythians were hording nicely and they were also sacking cities like any decent barbarian should do.

Then we had another idea: to spawn the Scythians like the Slavs are spawned in BI. We changed the descr_strat.txt, descr_sm_factions.txt, descr_events.txt and historic_events.txt accordingly. To our surprise we were getting the event announced but no actual spawning was taking place. The Scythians remain dead without being ever resurrected. Any idea why, Jerome?

The third experiment was done on a clean copy of the BI folder. The idea was to test if spawning was in any way related to the internal names of the BI factions.

First part of the experiment, we made several factions whith horde ability to spawn like the Slavs do. Then we gave the horde ability to the Alemanni and then spawned them on event.

For the second part of the experiment we've changed the internal name of one faction, the Slavs, from Slavs to Scythians. By internal name I mean the faction name used in export_descr_buildings.txt So no tricks like the classical extended_bi.txt editing "{SLAVS} Scythians" but "{SCYTHIANS} Scythians" instead. I also want to point out that {SCYTHIANS} is not an RTW internal name (the RTW faction is called {SCYTHIA}).
Here are all the files in which we've replaced the string "slavs" with "scythians":
In bi\data\text:
- historic_events.txt
- expanded_bi.txt
- campaign_descriptions.txt
In bi\data:
- export_descr_unit.txt
- export_descr_ancillaries.txt
- export_decr_buildings.txt
- export_descr_advice.txt
- descr_sm_factions.txt
- descr_names.txt
- descr_offmap_models.txt
- descr_models_strat.txt
- descr_model_battle.txt
- descr_lbc_db.txt
- descr_formations_ai.txt
- descr_character.txt
- descr_building_battle.txt
- descr_banners.txt
In bi\data\world\maps\campaign\barbarian_invasion:
- descr_win_conditions.txt
- descr_strat.txt
- descr_events.txt
We've also changed the names of the folders bi\data\ui\unit_info\slavs and bi\data\ui\units and replaced the word "slavs" with "scythians" in the names of the files in bi\data\models_strat. Actually we didn't replace the names of the files or folders but instead we've created duplicates with "scythians". We did copying instead of replacing in order to give the game the possibility to fall back on something in case we'd miss out replacing all the references.

After making all those changes we saw the game loads, the campaign also loads (a new map.rwm is generated) and the campaign can be played as a normal one. But the game CTDs without any message when it's the time for the Scythians to emerge. However that was not the strangest thing. After all, we could expect a CTD since we've fiddled with the internal name, couldn't we?

However, the most bizarre thing is once we've changed the internal name of the Slavs, nobody else can spawn on event anymore without a CTD (again, no error message). It is like the change SLAVS -> SCYTHIANS has also affected the ability of the Lombardi, Burgundii, Huns etc. to emerge/spawn_on_event. And it's not like before, when the message "The Scythians Emerge" shows up but the faction is not resurrected. This time is CTD without the message. Jerome, any idea why this is happening?

Did anybody else manage to make a non-BI faction spawn_on_event (emergent_faction)?

Edit: the proces of changing the internal name can be used in RTW to get rid of the Senate and use it like a normal faction. There are no known side effects discovered till now because hording and emerging factions don't work anyway in RTW 1.3/1.5.

We have been working on similar problems, using -mod:my_mod to run BI.exe with RTW units. Numidians horde / sack OK but can't get them to emerge - just get event announced message. Tried your idea in reverse and renamed
NUMIDIA > SLAVS but that still gives same result (although I still might have missed something, will try putting 'slavs' back into start of game incase I've somehow disabled them).

Also as cross check tried to get Franks to emerge on event in straight BI with same message/no spawn result. Did all factions work for you in BI, and did you find any obscure conditions? I'm basically copying slavs set up in desc_strat.txt, descr_sm_factions.txt, descr_events.txt and historic_events.txt.


Also an incidental problem came up with using the BI shared2.rsd file. We imported th BI
data\UI\faction\interface\sharedpage_01.tga
to give us the swimming and berserk status icons and pasted over the RTW faction logos. This works except that the .rsd file now reads the swimming logo in place of the small Dacian logo. This may have been an unnoticed bug in BI as the Dacian logo takes the place of the generally unused Iazyges logo.

Does anyone know anything about the .rsd files?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Makanyane

We have been working on similar problems, using -mod:my_mod to run BI.exe with RTW units. Numidians horde / sack OK but can't get them to emerge - just get event announced message. Tried your idea in reverse and renamed
NUMIDIA > SLAVS but that still gives same result (although I still might have missed something, will try putting 'slavs' back into start of game incase I've somehow disabled them).

---

Yeah, playing RTW as a BI mod (with -mod:my_mod) works up to the point of spawning factions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Makanyane

Also as cross check tried to get Franks to emerge on event in straight BI with same message/no spawn result. Did all factions work for you in BI, and did you find any obscure conditions? I'm basically copying slavs set up in desc_strat.txt, descr_sm_factions.txt, descr_events.txt and historic_events.txt.

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Well, we managed to spawn the Alemanni in 2 instances:
- without giving them horde units, which results in a message "faction destroyed". Therefore unlike the Romano-Brits they can't survive without a settlement if they're not a horde.
- giving them horde units, in which case they spawned like the Slavs.
We've also spawned the Roxolani.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Makanyane

Also an incidental problem came up with using the BI shared2.rsd file. We imported th BI
data\UI\faction\interface\sharedpage_01.tga
to give us the swimming and berserk status icons and pasted over the RTW faction logos. This works except that the .rsd file now reads the swimming logo in place of the small Dacian logo. This may have been an unnoticed bug in BI as the Dacian logo takes the place of the generally unused Iazyges logo.

Does anyone know anything about the .rsd files?

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It works better by keeping the BI sharedpage_01.tga and replacing the factions' icons from BI with the RTW ones.

Have tested slavs as start up faction in amongst RTW units, and that works, so not the problem.

Will try Alemanni / roxolani in BI to make sure I can duplicate your result.

Quote (sorry haven't worked out how to do this in a box) "It works better by keeping the BI sharedpage_01.tga and replacing the factions' icons from BI with the RTW ones."

It was the BI sharepage.tga_01.tga we were using & replacing icons as suggested but that was what got us the Dacian problem. Is sort of liveable with as swimming units still work but Dacians in diplomacy/graph screens come up with swimming unit logo, it doesn't crash the game but is obviously not optimal!
Are you using the last icon, Bottom row, farthest right, in sharedpage_01.tga for any factions?

Do you mean the image circled in red?
https://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8606...yaziges4bm.jpg
If you use the BI's rsd files, then you should know that the correct icons are fetched from stratpage_00.tga and stratpage_03.tga

Hi, yes the position circled in red is the one we're having problems with.
This is our sharedpage_01.tga

https://img61.imageshack.us/img61/74...dpage017mr.jpg

which was the one from BI but with the RTW icons cut and pasted in.
Using the BI shared2.rsd gives this result:

https://img81.imageshack.us/img81/71...gscreen1bs.jpg

Opening the BI .rsd in word shows that the swimming icon is listed amongst the faction logos,
"....SMALL_FACTION_LOGO_SLAVS C b SMALL_FACTION_LOGO_MOORS " A C b SMALL_FACTION_LOGO_BERBERS C b C b SMALL_FACTION_LOGO_SLAVES d ƒ C b % SMALL_FACTION_LOGO_EMPIRE_WEST_REBELS … ¤ C b % SMALL_FACTION_LOGO_EMPIRE_EAST_REBELS ¦ Å C b SWIMMING_STATUS_ICON ! 0 » Ê SMALL_FACTION_LOGO_IAZYGES...."
which is probably cause of problem but I have no idea how to solve!

Sorry, forget about Dacian/swimming Icon thing have found way to correct it: In descr_sm_factions.txt if you change small logo index value from 263 to 264 it finds the right thing.

With emerging factions have discovered what I was doing wrong, was trying to get factions to emerge in 'internal' regions. Franks under BI and Numidians renamed to Slavs under -mod:my_mod work using emergent_faction in descr_events.txt if region borders edge of map (Internal regions give the message but no unit syndrome). Haven't got any further with RTW factions though.

Have just discovered that using -mod:my_mod to run RTW units under BI, after one faction (Numidians) was renamed to Slavs (as your instructions for re-naming Scythians), I could then get Spain - without re-naming to emerge either before or after them.

Bravo!

You've discovered some very interesting things for the modding community:
1) The meaning and the use of the indexes in descr_sm_factions.txt
2) The importance of the provinces near the edge of the map. I was testing every BI faction's emergence in Locus_Barbaricum (an edge province) while trying to emerge the RTW factions in internal provinces.
3) The influence of the "Slavs" name: not only changing that internal name results in nobody being able to emerge anymore without CTD, but if that name is present, the other RTW factions emerge as well.

My question is did Spain emerge inside an internal province or only in an edge province?

Thanks,

Wilddog actually found the small logo index in descr_sm_factions.txt.

Spain only came on in an edge province (tried Britannia_Inferior & Sahara). Internal ones (Numidia & Hispania) still give the message but no spawning result.

Haven't tested very many faction / region combinations but it seems that:

Regardless of whether slavs are in or not trying to emerge from descr_events.txt trigger in an internal province with either BI or RTW factions just gives message but no actual spawning.

If slavs are in as a faction, BI and RTW units, will spawn in edge province.

If slavs are not included attempting to spawn in edge province will CTD when trigger is reached.


Additionally have tested to see if it matters how Slavs (my internally renamed Numidians) are set up. I deleted their trigger from descr_events.txt so that effectively they would never emerge - Spain still spawned OK. Also placed Slavs on map as a playable, non horde faction with cities at start up - Spain still spawned OK. So it really does seem to be just the name!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Makanyane

Thanks,

Wilddog actually found the small logo index in descr_sm_factions.txt.

Spain only came on in an edge province (tried Britannia_Inferior & Sahara). Internal ones (Numidia & Hispania) still give the message but no spawning result.

Haven't tested very many faction / region combinations but it seems that:

Regardless of whether slavs are in or not trying to emerge from descr_events.txt trigger in an internal province with either BI or RTW factions just gives message but no actual spawning.

If slavs are in as a faction, BI and RTW units, will spawn in edge province.

If slavs are not included attempting to spawn in edge province will CTD when trigger is reached.


Additionally have tested to see if it matters how Slavs (my internally renamed Numidians) are set up. I deleted their trigger from descr_events.txt so that effectively they would never emerge - Spain still spawned OK. Also placed Slavs on map as a playable, non horde faction with cities at start up - Spain still spawned OK. So it really does seem to be just the name!

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Well done! I can confirm your results because I ran several new tests today (BI, BI with RTW as a mod, BI with RTW as a mod and a RTW faction replaced with the Slavs).

It seems indeed that a faction with the internal name {SLAVS} needs to be present in order for other factions to emerge in provinces that have the edge of the map as border/borders. Just bordering with the sea won't do.

Frankly I'm a bit disappointed to find out that only "edge provinces" are good for emerging factions and that {SLAVS} have to be in. Also disappointed that only the Romano-British can "survive" without being a horde and that the conditions for their emergence can't be modded other than through that hidden resource britain.

I wanted to get deeper into the "emerging only in provinces on the edge of the map" issue so I did several tests.

Test1
In map_regions.tga I made a "discontinous" province by putting on the edge of the map a pixel of the color of an interior province.

The faction emerged on that tile. Since when a faction emerges there are several armies and a diplomat, of course they could not all fit onto a single tile. So the faction leader's army was on the isolated tile and all the others were in the surrounding province.

Test2
I thought of putting an impassable forest on that tile, hoping that the game would look for a free tile in the central province.

The message "Faction Emerges" showed up but the armies didn't. The emergent faction didn't show up in the "alive" factions list either.

Test3
I tried another approach: to make a contiguous link between the edge of the map and the central province, like an one-tile-wide corridor.

The armies of the emergent faction showed up both in the corridor and in the neighboring province, but with the faction leader's stack on the tile of the corridor belonging to the corridor.

Test4
I kept the corridor but put a single tile of impassable forest on the edge. so the second tile from the edge was part of the province and was free. The idea was to test how many tiles away from the edge can an emergent faction's leader's stack show up.

Again the message "faction emerges" appeared but no armies.

Conclusion: factions can only emerge in the tiles on the edge. Maybe CA would fix that in a next patch or maybe there's an undocumented workaround. Jeorme, could you bring some light into the issue?

Hello, did anybody tried to give a faction horde ability when using the command "-mod:" and not "-mod:my_mod" ?

I did all the necessary changes in my RTW folder, i.e. create a horde unit for the scythians, change descr_sm_faction.txt to give the scythia horde ability and dacia the correct shield, put in ui\ the .rsd files of BI and delete RTW ones from the packs .pak (because they have priority on the ui folder), put the #horde_symbol.tga in textures folder, edit descr_standards.txt, and edit and repack all the interfaces. But it doesn't work...

My scythians can leave their last settlement as a horde (with correct symbol on their banners), i can occupy a new community, but when I try to sack the result is a CTD crash :furious3:

I don't understand where is the problem because it is said on this thread and on other threads that this problem is resolved when putting the .rsd files in ui folder (and I did it! :wall: ).

Since I use the command -mod:, this permit me to run RTW with RTW-BI.exe version 1.6

I precise that swimming, shieldwall, bersekers icons, and other BI features works correctly. And I don't want to make a faction emerge so I've not done all the long changes replacing scythia by slavs in every .txt files.

Any suggestions about my problem?

N.B. : Sorry for my poor english, I'm french, and if you can read french here is the original french thread about my problem.

I do not think you can make sacking work in RTW.

Why? What is the problem? I use RomeTW-BI.exe to run RTW.

The original crash mentioned here I think was due to not having the .rsd files and also the BI version of stratpage_03.tga (the BI version has the tent like horde / sack symbol you use from within your settlement screen to leave your last city),
if you are using that to leave your last settlement then it seems like you've got that bit working - only thing I can think of is that under -mod:my_mod we ended up putting the BI stratpage_03.tga (and other xxxpage.tga's) in each my_mod/data/ui/culture/interface folder. That interface folder only seems to exist for the roman culture in the rtw packs, so might you need to add that for the other cultures?

Sorry don't understand enough about the difference between running -mod and -mod:my_mod to be any more help!

I've already put every interface in each culture folder of ui and repack them. I'm using -mod: and not -mod:my_mod, because I don't modify my_mod\data\ directory, but the original Data directory of RTW. Could the error come from that? I've seen that you first copy bi into your new my_mod folder and then copy Data folder of RTW in it. Is it possible that it exist a file of bi\data\ that doesn't exist in Data\ and that is needed to make sacking work ? That could explain why it works for you and not for me.

I'm going to test what happen if I create a my_mod\ folder and copy in it Data\ of RTW.

I did the test with a my_mod folder, the result is the same CTD when trying sacking.:dizzy2:

I have really no idea where can be the error... :help:

Ok, I think I've found basis of problem, it is to do with the information text and graphics the game is trying to call when you sack settlement, these files exist in both BI and RTW but in RTW you are missing settlement_razed event.

In data/descr_event_enums.txt you are missing "settlement_razed" and in data/descr_images.txt you are missing

Quote:

---

settlement_razed
icon disaster
heading_items 3
format
{
title center verdana black
string center verdana_med khaki
title_image center
spacer 8
bodystring left verdana_sml khaki left
spacer 8
condition ;; was anyone hurt
{
true
{
condition ;; If any settlements are affected
{
true
{
string left verdana_sml black characters_affected
list 1 verdana_sml khaki
}
}
condition ;; If any characters are affected
{
true
{
string left verdana_sml black buildings_affected
list 1 verdana_sml khaki
}
}
spacer 8
group left 4
{
string left verdana_sml khaki your_citizens_killed
integer left verdana_sml khaki
}
group left 4
{
string left verdana_sml khaki your_soldiers_killed
integer left verdana_sml khaki
}
}
}
}

---

These files end up as BI version with my_mod but presumably not -mod.
event_strings and event_titles in RTW work OK because they added the BI stuff to some of the later RTW release text files.

Hope that is it, coz it was bugging me too and I really would like to go to sleep now!

Yeah!!!

Bravo! I replaced descr_event_images.txt and descr_event_enums.txt by BI ones and it works!!! I'm very happy! THANKS YOU A LOT!! :2thumbsup:

Hey, so I've followed your instructions and I've gotten a Parthia to horde as AI, but I get a CTD when I try to play with them. Any ideas?
Also, I'm working off a base of EB (entirely for personal use, not looking to distribute and plagiarize).

EDIT: nvm, just re-added the UI stuff. Thanks