Landbridges?

[ULC]

I seem to be having a seriously hard time making landbridges. Is there a guide to this, or can someone give some instructions?

[macsen rufus]

Don't know how far you've got, so I'll assume you've got two provinces separated by water - these will need to be defined in each other's "SetNeighbours" entry in your startpos, then the "BorderInfo" needs to be set further down, for each direction, just like any other border. As far as I'm aware, that should be all there is to it.

[ULC]

I still seem to be having a serious problem with it. The game locks up when I try to run it. Does the data need to be in a specific order for neighbors?
I am currently trying to put a landbridge between:

Ireland/Scotland
Rhodes/Nicaea
Malta/Sicily
Crete/Greece
Cyprus/Antioch
Sweden/Finland

[Sensei Warrior]

I remember that about a year ago Caravel told me how to erase landbridges. I thought that might help you out, but I can't find the thread at all. It's too bad really, it was very informative.

Maybe if Caravel is cruising the threads he will be able to point you in the right direction, its been so long since I messed with landbridges I cant really remember the pitfalls.

[macsen rufus]

Hi YLC,

First of all, I'd suggest you try with just one, get that working, then cut'n'paste what you've learned for the rest!

So, say Ireland to Scotland, as the example.

You will need to declare neighbouring provinces: what can go wrong here is you must define land neighbours before sea-neighbours, ie: (I don't have a startpos file to refer to here - don't trust my province names )

SetNeighbours:: ID_IRELAND ID_SCOTLAND ID_IRISH_SEA ID_NORTH_ATLANTIC
SetNeighbours:: ID_SCOTLAND ID_NORTH_UMBRIA ID_IRELAND ID_NORTH_SEA ID_IRISH_SEA ID_NORTH_ATLANTIC


then the border attrbutes need to be done. You will need to define every border that occurs in your neighbours declarations. These can be done in any order. The first two numbers (border coordinates) aren't used, so can be anything.

So for this example, you now need to add in:

SetBorderInfo:: ID_IRELAND ID_SCOTLAND ...... (fill in your details - just copy another border for testing purposes)
SetBorderInfo:: ID_SCOTLAND ID_IRELAND ...... (fill in your details)

These declarations can go in any order, so you may as well add them at the bottom of the list where you can find them again

The other thing to watch out for is to ensure that all the border types you define actually correspond to map types you have (this is one reason I suggest copying an existing border's info to get it working first, then edit it to what you want later). The game doesn't care about geography as such, so if you define the Ireland - Scotland border as SAND_DESERT it will still work, you can change it to "cold, wet and miserable" later

Hope that helps

[Noir]

It is as Mascen Rufus says YLAC. This is the example from the vanilla starpos for the land bridge between Naples and Sicily (the ones of interest in Italics). The land bridge (effectively a neighbouring like any other as far as the MTW/VI exe. is concerned) must be declared in the set neighbours and in the SetBorderInfo of the startpos.txt file that is related to the "era" you have set for the mod, otherwise you'll crash. Some advice: do one landbridge first and then test it in-game. That is attempt to cross armies both ways on a game. Then after you know it works, do the next one and test it and so on. If you do them all together it might be difficult to locate any mistake that causes you to crash.

SetNeighbours:: ID_NAPLES ID_ROME ID_SICILY ID_PAPAL_STATES ID_ADRIATIC_OCEAN ID_TYRRHENIAN_SEA ID_STRAITS_SICILY ID_IONIAN_SEA

SetNeighbours:: ID_MALTA ID_MALTESE_CHANNEL

SetNeighbours:: ID_SICILY ID_NAPLES ID_STRAITS_SICILY

SetBorderInfo:: ID_NAPLES ID_ROME 14824 16472 0 ARID AT_SOUTHERN_EUROPEAN INLAND HILLY NO_RIVER
SetBorderInfo:: ID_PAPAL_STATES ID_ROME 14248 15984 0 ARID AT_SOUTHERN_EUROPEAN INLAND HILLY NO_RIVER
SetBorderInfo:: ID_TUSCANY ID_ROME 13904 15808 0 ARID AT_SOUTHERN_EUROPEAN INLAND HILLY NO_RIVER
SetBorderInfo:: ID_TYRRHENIAN_SEA ID_ROME 14128 16400 0 ARID AT_SOUTHERN_EUROPEAN COAST HILLY NO_RIVER
SetBorderInfo:: ID_ROME ID_NAPLES 15064 16456 0 ARID AT_SOUTHERN_EUROPEAN INLAND HILLY NO_RIVER
SetBorderInfo:: ID_SICILY ID_NAPLES 16456 19576 0 ARID AT_SOUTHERN_EUROPEAN COAST HILLY NO_RIVER

To save time you can copy similar "map" lines for the set border info information. My strategy was as follows: say you want to do Rhodes to Nicaea. Reproduce the line from Agean Sea to Nicaea (by copy pasting) and substitute the Agean Sea with Rhodes. For the Nicaea to Rhodes one similarly reproduce (with copy-paste) the SetBorderInfo line from the Sea of Dodecanese to Rhodes and Substitute Sea of Dodecanese with Nicaea. You'll get the coastal map that befits the landbridge battle. Now all you need to do is add Nicaea to Rhodes' declared neighbours and then add Rhodes to Nicaea's declared neigbours. Land bridge completed.

Conversely if you want to remove land bridges you need to remove each province from the other's neibghours and then delete the two SetBorderInfo lines that describe the invasion from each to the other.

If you do not set validly one direction of a Land Bridge the game will play until someone (player or AI faction) invades from the direction that you haven't properly done; at that point the game will crash to the desktop.

Hope this helps

Noir