alpaca's Script-O-Rama

Maybe you have some more ingenious idea's Alpaca, I'm "thinking" about adding some sort of "check up starting factions capital and spawn reinforcements if under siege/lost settlement"

but the lack in at least seeing a decent method is preventing me from putting much effort into it.

I'd like to check up on a siege, but thats lacking as spies/siege-engines can prevent any turns on siege, I mean the player has the ability to take settlements within the same turn as he/she started the siege.

Doing it with settlementcaptured has the problem (afaik!) of needing the other 2 commands as well (sacked/exterminated) in order to be truely able to tell if a settlement is taken.

Last would possibly be to just have an event+monitor to check up on the ownership of a settlement, this would imo be the way to go, but than again the method I'd favour least as it could mean I'm just spawning a "late army" (I'd rather have them spawn in before the settlement is lost and than prevent a second spawning untill at least no earlier than next siege, terminating the monitor if the settlement is ever lost)

any thoughts or suggestions?


G

I'm not exactly sure what you'd like to do. The "canonical" way to make a garrison script is using monitor_conditions I_SettlementUnderSiege

was assuming that that might be bypassed by using like a spy and have hime open the gates within the turn you start the siege, guess I'll have to play a bit more with the commands ..:)


G

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Red Spot

was assuming that that might be bypassed by using like a spy and have hime open the gates within the turn you start the siege, guess I'll have to play a bit more with the commands ..:)


G

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No, monitor_conditions are "real-time", i.e. they have a kind of heartbeat which calls them every so and so often (some fraction of a second usually). So it'll trigger immediately when you initiate the siege, spy or no spy.

have started an effort in making some sort of garrison-script, but stumbled upon a few problems ..

-settlementturnstart/end doesnt just trigger once per turn it seems, more like 5 times a turn (rather annoying, but can be avoided)

more of a problem;
-create unit is rather bugged, in that if you spawn more units than the settlement can hold it no longer works, but there is no way (that I know of) to check up on the existing garrisons size or free slots


do you by any chance have encountered this as well Alpaca, perhaps have a solution for it
I know the AI generally has few enough units in a settlement to easilly be able to spawn a few units but without checking up on it knowing it can bugger up my game I'd rather not do it at all ...


edit;
I've created a bit of a work around that also doesnt make my campaign-script less .. er .. "spawn-ish" .. :)

It simply sets an event counter if a faction is under siege somewhere and than give them some additional recruitment pools when the event is triggered, hopefully making it look more as if a faction rallies additional troops in defence of the besieged settlement.
You'll see the player also gets this ability the first time he/she is besieged for a single turn, this is just cause I like to terminate unused monitors instead of leaving them idle :)

Code:

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        monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType england
                and I_EventCounter faction_england_besieged == 0
                and I_FactionBesieged england

                set_event_counter faction_england_besieged 1

                if I_LocalFaction england
                        terminate_monitor
                end_if
        end_monitor

        monitor_event FactionTurnEnd FactionType england
                and I_EventCounter faction_england_besieged == 1
                and not I_FactionBesieged england

                set_event_counter faction_england_besieged 0

                if I_LocalFaction england
                        terminate_monitor
                end_if
        end_monitor

---

G

Why do you want to spawn more than a full garrison? That's a bit much if you ask me :inquisitive:
Checking the number of units in a garrison won't work well unfortunately as you'd have to check every unit type in each settlement separately.

SettlementTurnEnd triggers once for each settlement, when it ends its turn (which is just before the FactionTurnEnd).

A new challenge has been called:


Scripting Challenge #2: Attrition
issued on August, 30th 2007

This one is a very open challenge. I think a large part of the community is looking for the best way to simulate the effect that prolonged campaigns and diseases have on an army (especially a medieval one which would certainly live off the land in a very ruinous fashion). So, let's hear your suggestions! The best propositions will be put in here and if it makes sense I'll write a how-to or an article about it, combining them in some way.

just spawning 3 units, but was testing "what would happen if .." scenario's.

figured there might always be the odd chance of somehow you overspawning a bit, of if 1 unit/turn is spawned in a sieged settlement but the siege takes 8-ish turns ... etc etc ...


turns out, as fas as I've tested, that that specific monitor adjusts the spawning to a number of units it can spawn.
so if you set a monitor to spawn a full 20 unit army at an empty settlement it would fully spawn, but with 10 units garrisoned it will only spawn 10 units, if you now would remove all 20 units (10 + 10spawned), the monitor adjusted the command and will now even though it can spawn 20 units only spawn 10 units
leave like 15 units and the monitor wont only spawn only 5 units but again adjust itself to max 5 units, it will go down but wont go back up!!

Edit;
in reply to your challange, I've set up a chain of plague event throughout my campaign, not like the mayor one in vanilla but a sweaping sort of plague that every 5-6 years (10-12turns) causes one in a settlement like 3 regions away from the previous outbreak, causing mayor powerswings and such
Imo does somewhat what your asking for, but has little to do with scripting.


G

That so?

Anyways, if you don't want the player to get the thing at all, you can use the terminate_monitor before executing any code. On termination, the monitor will immediately break and not finish to execute iirc.

Edit:

Quote:

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in reply to your challange, I've set up a chain of plague event throughout my campaign, not like the mayor one in vanilla but a sweaping sort of plague that every 5-6 years (10-12turns) causes one in a settlement like 3 regions away from the previous outbreak, causing mayor powerswings and such
Imo does somewhat what your asking for, but has little to do with scripting.

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I wouldn't exactly call that an attrition script. It doesn't specifically affect armies and in fact does quite the opposite: encourage the player to stay outside the settlement.

Edit2: Funny discovery about the create_unit. In that case you probably want to use a number of different create_unit commands which only spawn one unit each.

I've tried that, got the impression you where saying that a create unit command with amount "1" wouldnt be adjusted downward, but that doesnt seem the case.

I've thought about making a monitor for each of my "armour era's" (in my game every level of armour has to be invented like gunpowder) but all that means is that after 20-ish turns in a new era the reinforcements may spawn again..

Anyway I've got some other way of working slightly around the situation and have also found out that reloading the campaign(save) "fixes" the monitor again ...


G

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Red Spot

I've tried that, got the impression you where saying that a create unit command with amount "1" wouldnt be adjusted downward, but that doesnt seem the case.

I've thought about making a monitor for each of my "armour era's" (in my game every level of armour has to be invented like gunpowder) but all that means is that after 20-ish turns in a new era the reinforcements may spawn again..

Anyway I've got some other way of working slightly around the situation and have also found out that reloading the campaign(save) "fixes" the monitor again ...


G

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Yeah I was thinking just that. Weird stuff. Maybe the console_command create_unit works better? I think it uses almost the same syntax (but probably also the same code).

create_unit <settlement/character_name> <unit_id> <opt:how_many> <opt:exp/armour/weapon>

so basicly just add "console_command" in front of it ..??

from;
create_unit London, Armored Sergeants, num 2, exp 0, arm 0, wep 0

to;
console_command create_unit London, Armored Sergeants, num 2
(to start without armour/weapon upgrades)

will try, thanks ;)

ps; something that might be interesting, nothing special may just save others the time to test it, a little code for being able to set a flag in EDB when crusades are active;

Code:

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        monitor_event CrusadeCalled IsCrusade

                set_event_counter crusade_active 1
        end_monitor

        monitor_event CrusadeEnds IsCrusade

                set_event_counter crusade_active 0
        end_monitor

---

(change "IsCrusade" to "IsJihad" for Jihads ...)


Edit;
just tried the console command thingy, worked like a charm!!

the formatting is diffirent;
console_command create_unit London "Feudal Knights" 8 1 1 1

numbers represent the same as with the regular command, though the number of units, in the example 8, is capped at 5 units
the good thing is that it does not adjust itself downwards, it spawns what it can and than when it can again the full number (of max 5 units)


G

Ok good, one problem less.

As for the current challenge: Don't try anything with reduce_unit_strength. Unfortunately it freezes the game.

The only idea I recall being mooted to represent Attrition was to make every unit a general's bodyguard (i.e. add the general_unit attribute to them in edu) as the size of bodyguards can be controlled in the trait files.

The drawbacks to such an idea though are heavy as you would lose the unit picture, and as soon as each unit 'captain' died the entire unit would be gone. Might work for a small scale mod with not many units, but a lot of 'character', but certainly not suitable for the standard, larger scale mods people make.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Epistolary Richard

The only idea I recall being mooted to represent Attrition was to make every unit a general's bodyguard (i.e. add the general_unit attribute to them in edu) as the size of bodyguards can be controlled in the trait files.

The drawbacks to such an idea though are heavy as you would lose the unit picture, and as soon as each unit 'captain' died the entire unit would be gone. Might work for a small scale mod with not many units, but a lot of 'character', but certainly not suitable for the standard, larger scale mods people make.

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Hey ER, nice of you to stop by

Aye, I pondered the option, too. In addition to what you mentioned I imagine it would seriously slow the game down because triggers like CharacterTurnEnd would have to be checked for each unit on the map (which is about the number of characters times 20)

The current "canonical" way of doing it is like in EB to limit movement rates and morale.

I had a quite nice idea what could be done but what I mentioned above kind of ruined it. You could still randomly kill off whole units but that's not a very attractive option, either.

ER said that there is a destroy_unit command in Kingdoms, maybe now the problem will become trivial.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BozosLiveHere

ER said that there is a destroy_unit command in Kingdoms, maybe now the problem will become trivial.

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Which problem? Being able to destroy buildings doesn't help us in the least with attrition :inquisitive:

destroy_unit - but as you mentioned that takes out an entire unit rather than reducing the number of men in a unit (which would be the desired result).

Whoops sorry I was overjoyed at the prospect of being able to destroy buildings so I misread it :laugh4:

Quote:

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Re-Emergent factions

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I realize this thread (on this site at least) is pretty much dead, but I figured I'd still put this out there.

A problem (depending on the intentions of the script writer of course) with your solution is that a random horde will spawn when the last city is captured if any family member still lives.

If you only want your scripted army to appear at your designated time change

Quote:

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horde_min_units 10
horde_max_units 20
horde_max_units_reduction_every_horde 10
horde_min_named_characters 2

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to

Quote:

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horde_min_units 0
horde_max_units 0
horde_max_units_reduction_every_horde 0
horde_min_named_characters 0

---

I'm not sure if they all have to be 0, but I know this works.
This way the faction will die normally, but still remain in the code to be revived at a later date.

This will record as an error in the log

Quote:

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14:56:45.739 [script.err] [error] Script Error in medimod/data/descr_sm_factions.txt, at line 22, column 32
file: "descr_sm_factions.txt": horde_min_units should be nonzero!

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but otherwise causes no problems.

It is also a good idea to script in neutrality with all factions at the point of death as, because they are still present, thier relations (stance and faction standing) prior to death is still remembered by other AI factions. Thus, if you kill a factions you will always be considered 'AtWar' with them even though they are dead. This also causes some complications on re-birth as the horde AI is uncontrolable and will not consider previous relations until a setlment is occupied.

Just in case it is useful for somebody, I report here a method to start the campaign in the middle of the initial year, instead of at the beginning.

Let's say we want a 12 turns per year campaign, but it must start in September of 1212.

We use alpaca's script modified in this way:

Code:

---

declare_counter season_counter
                set_counter season_counter 9

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal
        inc_counter season_counter 1
       
        ; 0 equals winter
        if I_CompareCounter season_counter == 0
                console_command season winter
        end_if
        if I_CompareCounter season_counter > 0
                console_command season summer
        end_if
        ; Reset the counter on the autumn turn so that it'll be 0 next turn
        if I_CompareCounter season_counter == 11
                set_counter season_counter -1
        end_if
end_monitor

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But the year (seen using show_hud_date = true configuration option) will change in turn 12, not in turn 4. For this purpose we must add new options:

Code:

---

declare_counter season_counter
                set_counter season_counter 9
declare_counter year_counter
                set_counter year_counter 0

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal
        inc_counter season_counter 1
       
        ; 0 equals winter
        if I_CompareCounter season_counter == 0
                console_command season winter
        end_if
        if I_CompareCounter season_counter > 0
                console_command season summer
        end_if
        ; Reset the counter on the autumn turn so that it'll be 0 next turn
        if I_CompareCounter season_counter == 11
                set_counter season_counter -1
        end_if

                if I_CompareCounter season_counter == 0
                        inc_counter year_counter 1
                end_if

                if I_CompareCounter year_counter == 1
                        console_command date 1213
                end_if

                if I_CompareCounter year_counter == 2
                        console_command date 1214
                end_if
; more lines are needed depending on the duration of the campaign.

end_monitor

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I've used this system in the first tests of a campaign with 50 turns per year, beginning in the 34 turn of the first year, and it works (only tested the first "New Year Event").

I'd like to set a script similar to the very first script in this thread, i.e. adding money to a faction that captures a settlement. However, I want to add a different set of conditions:

For example, consider Jerusalem:
If a Catholic faction captures Jerusalem from a Muslim faction, it gets bonus money.
Otherwise, it doesn't.
If a Muslim faction captures Jerusalem from a Christian faction, it gets bonus money.
Otherwise, it doesn't.

So I need to check the faction that owned the settlement before its capture. Also, would I need to repeat this script for every faction, i.e. Moors, Egypt & Turks for the Muslims, and England, etc. for the Catholic?