KOTF mod

[TinCow]

I was the one who modded down the cost of the RBGs for LotR. I'd be happy to do it for KotF as well.

[_Tristan_]

Cool, then there remains only to mod the names...

I've started modifying the files pointed at by Cecil in the OOC thread, almost through with it but a contact with FH hints that I may need to mod the name strings bin file.

Could someone post said file ? I haven't reinstalled M2TW yet...

[Rowan]

Tristan, this guide seems to have everything you need, also check out the utility linked at the bottom.

names.txt from LTC Gold, you don't need the .bin, game creates it automatically from names.txt

[_Tristan_]

Tristan, this guide seems to have everything you need, also check out the utility linked at the bottom.

names.txt from LTC Gold, you don't need the .bin, game creates it automatically from names.txt

Thanks...

There remains only to mod the descr_strat.txt file if someone would kindly upload it...

Can't seem to be able to download the utility... too bad... Scratch that, got it

[AussieGiant]

The age mod seems like a good idea.

As for the ongoing discussion, then any trial run would be excellent as it will more than likely allow me to get a copy of Kingdoms before we start.

Anything modification that we can do once and then leave the game to it's own devices is highly preferred in my opinion.

Anything that reduces admin work or artificial modification of the game also reduces the chance of errors. That's a must.

[econ21]

I vote we give it a trial run (maybe one Chancellowship period) without any additional funds. We'll see how well we're doing and adjust accordingly.

We can only edit the descr_strat before the game starts, so any adjustment later would have to be via the console. That's fine, it's just that editing the file saves a bit of donkey work for Zim.

Is the general consensus that LTC already helps the AI enough? Adding a couple (or more) thousand to the King's Purse is easy enough.

I think it is your call, but personally I dont see any downside to giving the AI cash. AFAIK, we've only lost one PBM to the AI in the throne room and I would be happy to see that increase. In KotR, I ended up giving about 10k to the AI each turn and I don't think we noticed it. I suspect it just stopped the AI lands being barren of units. It was the console spawned AI stacks that people noticed and even then, we mowed them down. Personally, I'd give an extra 5k or whatever to the King's Purse, so you can forget about it for a bit. Then adjust up (or down) via the console as you see fit. If our dozen or so extra RBGs feel like cornered rats at the beginning the game, it would be a plus in my view, but I doubt it will happen. Lusted's good at game balancing, but his mod was not balanced for the player to start off with lots of free RBGs.

[Zim]

5,000 sounds reasonable enough, and this is one of those rare bits of modding I can do on my own.

[_Tristan_]

Zim, once you've edited the descr_strat file, could you send it over to me so that I can make the necessary adjustments to the names of the starting characters ?

So that we don't end up with two mismatched files...

[_Tristan_]

Tristan, this guide seems to have everything you need, also check out the utility linked at the bottom.

names.txt from LTC Gold, you don't need the .bin, game creates it automatically from names.txt

How did you find the LTC names.txt ? All I can find is the names.txt.strings.bin

I'm encountering some slight problems... While doing everything the guide asks me to, I can't seem to have the files match up in the utility...

[Cecil XIX]

I would like to propose an addition to the KotF mod.

During the debate between LTC and DLV, I noticed that the feature people seemed to like most about DLV was 'Zappa's Death Mod', which caused characters to die at any age from 50 to 110.

After looking at some research on twcenter.net, it seems this is done by editing three variables in 'descr_campaign_db.xml'. I haven't been able to look at the file in question yet, but it seems we can just include a modified version of the file with KotF mod and have it overwrite the default file in LTC.

I would like permission to contact Zappa, who pioneered this discovery, and ask for his permission to include his work in our mod, as well as ask him if there could be any problems integrating it into LTC.

Is this acceptable to everyone/Zim?

[GeneralHankerchief]

I'd definitely like that.

[Cecil XIX]

Just to clarify, Zappa was able to deduce the formula for how likely a character is to die once they reach the 'dieable' age.

CDpY = (max_age_before_death - max_age) / (max_age - old_age) * 100%

With the latest numbers that would be:

181-180 / 180 - 40 = 1 / 140 = 0.7% chance of death per year

The default numbers are:

105-90 / 90 - 60 = 15 / 30 = ~50% chance of death per year... In other words, the vast majority will not make it past 62 years old, which is exactly what we have been seeing in the vanilla settings.

There's also some talk that the time scale a mod uses might make a difference. DLV, for which this research was conducted, progresses at 2 turns per year. LTC uses 1.5 turns per year. We could test this ourselves, but it's something I would ask Zappa about if possible.

The thing to remember is that while some, maybe most characters will live longer, some will die sooner than 61. We could use DLV's default range of 50-110, Zappa's preference of 18-100 (Not as bad as it sounds, each character only has a 1.22% of dieing per year) or whatever range we want. I wouldn't want to decide that by committee though, and would prefer DLV's default. Death at fifty would mean 68 turns of playtime if he comes of age at 61, which is pretty good.

Also, fun fact: A character who comes of age at 16 and lives to 110 lives for 188 turns. That's longer than the entirety of WotS, KotR and LotR!

[AussieGiant]

Why do we want this mod?

[Cecil XIX]

Assuming you're refering to my proposal, it's to make the age at which characters die less predictable. Right now the parameters are set up so that once characters reach age 60, they have a 50% chance of dieing each year, which is why you hardly see anyone live to 62.

If we change the three parameters to DLV's standard, this would allow characters to die at any age from 50 to 110.

This allows for some interesting RP scenarios, such as sons dieing of natural causes before their fathers, which historically could happen. Simply put, I think things will be more interesting if we don't know that our characters are going to die at 61, give or take a year.

EDIT: Experimental data from the link I provided is pretty interesting, and I'd be happy to do some tests myself if people think it's necessary.