Buildings showing up as default (but wrong) culture

I'm pretty used to export_descr_buildings.txt and export_buildings.txt by now, but this has given me absolute fits.

For some reason totally unknown to me, with some building complexes, when I try to place the building at the start of the game in descr_strat.txt, it shows up as the default culture type instead of the proper culture type. This can cause "Warning! This text should not appear..." descriptions, incorrect titles, incorrect graphics, etc. So as you can see it's a nasty problem. This *only* happens with buildings that are placed before the start of the game though. It *never* *ever* happens with building built once the game starts.

We got around this problem a few times by placing the problem buildings with campaign_script.txt using this command:

console_command create_building Sidon threeone

(where threeone is the building name and Sidon is the city).

But now that is having the same problems too. Again, I'm 100% sure the coding is fine, because once the game is started, you can build the building and it has the proper faction variant in title, description, graphics, etc. Here are the clues as to what is causing this problem:

1. The market complex was doing ok, but then I added a new level in between the trader and market levels. This new level was working fine when I had it added at the bottom of the complex (as the "highest" level), but when I moved it to the trader and market level, even though I didn't touch anything at all having anything to do with the market level itself, the market level suddenly started having this problem.

2. I'm currently having the problem in a complex where all variants of the buildings that start off in faction-controlled-territories are correct, but those that start in rebel-controlled-territories are showing the default (incorrect).

3. Once we had the problem with a port level, and eadingas tried using "all" instead of listing all the factions individually, and the problem stopped with that level. This hasn't worked for all instances of the problem elsewhere though, and sometimes it just isn't possible to use "all" if we want to limit who can construct the building.

This is giving me fits and just makes me want to cry. I've been working with this problem for more than a year now, and I don't even know if other mods have seen it, but it's causing me a lot of problems. If anyone has any ideas or has run into it before, I'd love to hear how you might have resolved it. Any thoughts at all?

I have not come across this problem in my modding (BI 1.6).

Have you considered how the following elements may play a part:

- descr_ui_buildings.txt

- faction-specific text (and its listing order relative to the parent culture entry)

- listing new buildings in the building enums file


I'd really need to look at .81 to see what's going on and I'm not sure I'd have time :wall:

Is there anything good on the buildings enum file anywhere (like your EDB guide - or even much less)? I don't know as much about it, so our problem could be coming from there.

Here is one example. First the EDB.txt level:

Code:

---

building uniques1
{
    levels oneone onetwo onethree onefour onefive onesix oneseven oneeight
    {
        oneone requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource not_here
;        1 Worth 20,000 each for destroying
;        oneone barbarian =
;        oneone greeks = Akropolis Athenaia - ATTIKE Athenai
;        oneone egyptian = Artemision Ephesou - LYDIA Sardis
;        oneone carthaginian = Ba'al Complex - ZEUGITANA Kart-Hadast
;        oneone nomad
;        oneone eastern
;        oneone roman = Capitoline - LATIUM2 Rome
        {
            capability
            {
;            Akropolis Athenaia bonuses:
                law_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource variantgr
                happiness_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource variantgr
                recruits_morale_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { greek_cities, thrace, numidia, romans_julii, romans_brutii, } and hidden_resource variantgr
                law_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { greek_cities, } and hidden_resource variantgr
;            Artemesion Ephesou bonuses:
                recruits_morale_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource varianteg
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource varianteg
;            Ba'al Complex bonuses:
                recruits_morale_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource variantca
                trade_base_income_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource variantca
                happiness_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { egypt, } and hidden_resource variantca
                recruits_exp_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { egypt, } and hidden_resource variantca
;            Capitoline bonuses:
                trade_level_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource variantro
                happiness_bonus bonus 1 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource variantro
                recruits_morale_bonus bonus 2 requires factions { seleucid, } and hidden_resource variantro
            }
            construction  1
            cost  60000
            settlement_min town
            upgrades
            {
              onetwo
            }
        }

---

Then the export_buildings.txt entries for that one level:

Code:

---

{oneone}        oneone
{oneone_desc}
WARNING! This baseline description should never appear on screen!
{oneone_desc_short}
WARNING! This baseline short description should never appear on screen!

{oneone_greek}        Akropolis Athenaia\n(The Athenian Akropolis)
{oneone_greek_desc}
The importance of the Athenian Akropolis is hard to underestimate. The Parthenon, a temple dedicated to the patron goddess of the city Athena, is one of the most recognizable buildings in all of history. It was also considered the pinnacle of Greek craftsmanship and art. The even holier Erechtheion with the ancient statue of Athena also sat on the Akropolis, as did the Temple of Athena Nike and the massive and grand Propylaia. On one slope of the Athenian Akropolis sits the Theater of Dionysos, the birthplace of tragedy and comedy and the showplace of Athenian cult and festival, while on the other is found the world's most famous and earliest democracy, centered in the Athenians' Agora.
{oneone_greek_desc_short}
You have repaired the destruction on the famed Athenian Akropolis. Athena herself smiles down upon you!

{oneone_egyptian}        Artemision Ephesou\n(Temple of Artemis at Ephesos)
{oneone_egyptian_desc}
The people of Ephesos built a magnificently beautiful temple to honor Artemis, goddess of hunting, nature, and fertility. They built it upon the foundations of a previous temple to Artemis sponsored by King Kroisos of Lydia, whose wealth was vast enough to be considered proverbial. The original temple burned to the ground in 356 BC, on the very night of Megas Alexandros’ birth. The arsonist Herostratos claimed he wanted his own name to be remembered for all time. Plutarchos would later declare the goddess was too busy watching over Alexandros to look after her own temple!\n\nIt was eventually restored in 323 BC, after the death of Alexandros. The sculptors Pheidias, Polykleitos, Kresilas, and Phradmon contributed great works to the temple. Filled with precious treasures and works of art, it continued to attract thousands of visitors and pilgrims from across the ancient world.
{oneone_egyptian_desc_short}
You have repaired the destruction at the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos.

{oneone_carthaginian}        Ba'al Temple Complex
{oneone_carthaginian_desc}
Four huge and powerful structures in the magnificent city of Karthadast stood as examples of Karthadastim might: the temple districts of Ba’al and Astarte, the harbor, and the triple wall.\n\nThe temple of Ba’al was famed for its cyclopean architecture that blended Greek and Phoenician styles. A massive academy was connected to the temple itself. The learned citizens of Karthadast attended what was essentially one of the first universities of antiquity. The priesthood of Ba’al-Hammon was based in this district, where it directly supported the élite fighting force known as the Sacred Band.\n\nThe district of Astarte, as well as the training grounds outside the city, was equally magnificent in both Carthage and its northern neighbor, Utica. Though her temple was less impressive than that of Ba’al, the massive estates controlled by the priesthood allowed a special division of cavalry: Astarte's own Sacred Band.\n\nThe circular harbor was a wonder in and of itself. This marvel of engineering allowed Carthaginian fleets to better prepare and equip themselves than the harbors of their rivals.\n\nThe final wonder was Carthage’s massive triple wall. According to many ancient historians, this defense system could comfortably house 19,000 troops, several thousand horses, and over seventy elephants within its massive structure.\n\nSTRATEGY: The Temple Complex provides additional happiness and troop experience bonuses when possessed by the Qarthadastim.
{oneone_carthaginian_desc_short}
You have repaired the destruction at ...

{oneone_roman}        Capitolinvm Templvm Iovis Optimi Maximi\n(Capitoline Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus)
{oneone_roman_desc}
This temple was the most magnificent in all of Roma. According to tradition it was dedicated in the first year of the Republic's formation and housed the Sibylline Books, the chief oracle of the Roman state. This collection of oracular responses given by the Cumaean Sibyl was the most important and holy set of documents possessed by the Republic. Legend has it that the early Etruscan king Tarquinius Priscus bought the three books from the Sibyl and placed them in the care of a priestly college, where they were to be consulted only at the command of the Senate. The books were lost in 83 BC during a fire on the Capitoline.\n\nSTRATEGY: Public order bonus due to loyalty: 5% (Romani only)\nMorale bonus to troops trained here: +1 (Romani only)
{oneone_roman_desc_short}
You have repaired the destruction at the Capitoline Temple of Jupiter.

---

Finally the edb enums entries:

Code:

---

oneone
oneone_desc
oneone_desc_short
oneone_greek
oneone_greek_desc
oneone_greek_desc_short
oneone_egyptian
oneone_egyptian_desc
oneone_egyptian_desc_short
oneone_carthaginian
oneone_carthaginian_desc
oneone_carthaginian_desc_short
oneone_roman
oneone_roman_desc
oneone_roman_desc_short

---

But while in a regular carthaginian city if I put a "oneone" building there in descr_strat.txt and it shows up correctly as the Ba'al Complex, if I put the same entry into a carthaginian rebel city, it shows up as (Western Greek) and gives the title/description/images of the Acropolis instead. Western Greek being the slave default culture. If I change that to Roman, then the building shows up as the Capitoline Temple. This is a province that is very clearly carthaginian in culture/creator/owner though, and the other buildings show up as carthie variants.

Can you give me an in-game (0.81) example so I can start a campaign and check the problem out? I'm a little unfamiliar with all the faction/culture/building name on-screen/internals at present :)

I believe in 0.81 we had the problem with the level called "nomadism" when it was found in rebel settlements. Again, *only* when placed by descr_strat.txt or campaign_script.txt, and never a problem when it is built after the game starts (by AI or human). In the settlement of Bin-Kath north of Baktria the problem was occurring. We got around it by just making a default title/description/image for the western greek culture (our default one) so that the problem wouldn't be noticeable even though it still existed. As you will see, half the buildings in that town show up as (Nomad) and half show up as (Western Greek). We have no idea why. That's our big problem.

There is something I don't understand that Makanyane posted here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...75&postcount=8
that seems like it might pertain to the issue. Mak said that one variant was showing up in start buildings, but another would show up once you built it in the game. That is pretty much what is happening with us, but I'm not sure what the parallel is.

edit: sad to link to this, but here is my poor attempt to explain the problem nearly two years ago ~:mecry: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=826064

I had this problem, where if I put a building into descr_stat it would show up with (Roman) as the culture even if it wasn't built by a roman faction (and oddly enough even if it was). For me the problem turned out to be related to the ingame images the building I'd added was using. I'd incorrected named the Constructed subdirectory in all my ui/culture folders as Contructed and this was causing all the problems. So it could be an image naming error of some sort. As for what happened if it was built . . . my example won't say since the building was designed not to be buildable, but the error caused it to be buildable everywhere.

The graphics do show up properly if you build the building in the game (i.e., once you get the game started), but they show up wrong (as whatever the default culture is) if you place the building by descr_strat.txt or campaign_strat.txt. This makes me think it has to be something else, though it makes me feel a little better to hear someone else has the problem even under different circumstances. :laugh4:

BTW, when I change the default culture to roman again, it just shows whatever the roman variant of the building is - the problem remains, it is just transferred to a new culture.

Oh dear you quoted me :embarassed:

I did at one stage manage to get churches at start of game which game thought of as being built by different culture to pull the culture specific building description and buildings thought of as built by the controlling faction or built later in game to use the faction specific building description. Getting that working at that stage did seem to be related to the enums file - hence post.
At that stage I also had a lot of things which were pre-built in strat that game seemed to be assigning random culture to. Also at one point in that phase I had churches placed in strat that refused to appear on campaign map if I launched campaign with the auto-manage settlements option! :inquisitive:

By the time I'd finished sorting strat file and adding some other buildings with their descriptions and probably a few other changes, the random culture problem had sorted itself, and so did the non-appearance of placed buildings. However game had also stopped giving the culture specific building description when building was built by different culture and gave last faction one from relevant culture instead.

I rather gave up on working out what was going on as got to generally working stage, and couldn't get back to earlier stage by reversing the file changes I thought might have given odd behaviour. One I always suspected was that I was then using "and not hidden_resource not_here" to break the church ownership tree - I gave that up as it was having other funny effects, but I think I did try re-testing with that and don't think it re-produced earlier behaviour.

Shorter answer... "sorry I can't help" :embarassed:

Hmm..this is a tough nut to crack. I have not been able to track it down.

I did manage to get the minimumbuilding minbuild tga and desc sorted by deleting the construction conditional (line 3603) - this for the sweboz starting settlement. Perhaps this will give you some clues.

I checked out Bin-kath (Bin-kanath?) and the 3 DS buildings display Nomad whilst the 4 campaign_script.txt-placed buildings display Western Greek. I shifted one of the latter over but it made no difference. A comparison as of yet also had drawn a blank.

I will try and get time to look into this further, but I cannot promise.

It's ok. I appreciate any advice or anything on the matter, but don't worry over it much DG. It's just very puzzling. Granted, we don't keep our eb.txt faction building descriptions in a specific (faction) order so it's a little messy at times, but all descriptions for a given level are together and they are generally grouped in a pattern.

OK, I'm not going to get much more time to look into this so I'll report what I have...

I took the caravan and uniqueroad1 building in Bin-kath, the former (correctly) displaying Nomad culture and the latter displaying (incorrectly) Western Greek.

I moved the caravan from script-generated to the DS file. Still no change when testing. I compared the two buildings in terms of tgas, EB entries and enum entries and all seemed OK (no real difference).

Then I looked to EDB and commented out the conditional in line 2330 for the caravan level:

Code:

---

caravan requires factions { pontus, armenia, saba, parthia, } ;and not hidden_resource not_here

---

This resulted in the Trade Caravan tooltip correcting itself to Nomad - but only when DS-generated (script-generated produced the Western Greek; that may be a scripting issue though?).

I then did the same with the warlord's court building:

Code:

---

warlordc requires factions { pontus, armenia, } ;and building_present_min_level nomadcamp warlordm

---

and the correct 'Nomad' displayed when ds-generated.

I then added the warlordm building prior to the warlordc building in the DS entry for Kangha region and uncommented the above line.

The warlordc building then generated with the correct Nomad tooltip/description..

Conclusion

Not conditionals (even if true) are breaking the culture/faction somehow, as are positive conditionals that result false.

Script-generated buildings are being assigned wrong culture/faction - possibly scripting issues connected with local faction or default culture assumed when adding buildings this way? (I'm no scripter!)

You might also be pointed to this recent discovery by Nero666 which may or may not have some bearing on cultural redirects for your mod:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=86651


I hope this information (basic though it is) can help and give you some leads and means to improve EB.

Best,

Test Version: 0.81a with team internal build temporary hotfix patch and latest EDB file to date.

Wow, thanks mate. I would never have thought that it could be a conditional. Gah. We'll have to try and think of ways around this, but at least you've got something that appears to be causing it and we know what it is now. Very much appreciated.

NP - but if you can work out more then please let me know so I can update the EDB Guide more confidently . Thx ;)

I can confirm that one of our problems was not knowing that if the not conditions are included that you can't place the building by campaign_script, but that you must use descr_strat.txt. I might add that this seems particularly troublesome in rebel cities though as opposed to faction controlled cities. Not as much of a problem in the latter.

I'll post more as I go through and fix our problems with this new information.

I just want to echo again that your two conclusions noted in post 12 are accurate DG. I don't have anything further that I can add now, but your discovery of what the problem was exactly really has helped me a great deal. I looked at the problem a lot, over almost two years, and I just never looked at that way of trying to figure it out - I was mostly thinking it had to do with the way factions were arranged in the 'factions required' list, or how images or descriptions were listed. I might also add though (so yes, I add one thing) that the problem with this statement:


Not conditionals (even if true) are breaking the culture/faction somehow, as are positive conditionals that result false.

Really only applies to rebel cities/provinces in what I've seen. Hope that helps a little. Thanks again!

Ah, yes, thanks - and no problem!

Complete EDB Guide updated!
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=50439