Post your "must-know" modding questions here!

[JeromeGrasdyke]

Since the number of questions is not too large I've decided (in a fit of enthusiasm) to answer all of them, so here they are:

Assuming there are individual unit speeds, where are they found?

The unit speeds are affected by a number of factors. The main one is the animations; you may already have noticed that the 'fast' skeletons contain many of the same animations as the none-fast ones, just different, sped-up locomotion anims. A second factor is the ground type modifier - these are stored in the descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt file, but will cause the soldiers to 'slide' around when applied, so it's best to keep their influence to the minimum required. So, there are no individual unit speeds as such, but it is possible to create their appearance by adding new animations.

Where can we find the Marian Reform trigger (and can it be changed from the Imperial Palace)? Can we change the population limits for settlements so that they happen later?

The Marian Reforms are triggered by the first non-Senate faction to build an Imperial Palace, and this is hard-coded. We are planning to add a date limit as well in the v1.2 patch to make sure it does not occur too early. The population limits are also hard-coded, although you could attempt to decrease the rate of population growth by reducing farming and other growth bonusses (this will have substantial knock-on effects for the game balance, so watch out).

Is it possible to create a new faction/rename an existing one, and if so how?

It is possible, but it will be a lot of work. There are many things which go into the look of a coherent faction: names lists, banners, tech tree entries and their descriptions, unit lists, correctly-coloured unit models, and so on. Covering all of this in detail is beyond the scope of a simple question, but all the conversions from a faction tag into the code's internal identifiers run through the same code, and so if you wanted to change the Julian Romans into something else, you could do a search for 'romans_julii' and be reasonably certain that you've caught all instances where the faction is directly referred to. You'll see these faction tags all over the text files, so I won't list them here. Unfortunately, there may be places where it is implicit; none come to mind, but any sequences of numbers or properties in sets of 21 would be suspicious. There will be some trial-and-error involved...

Is there a way to turn off the Fog of War so that playtesting sweeping mod changes is easier?

Yes. Open up your preferences.txt file and change the FOG_OF_WAR setting to FALSE. Alternatively, there is a 'toggle_fow' command available as a cheat through RomeShell.

With a tool already out to allow us to poke around in the files, it looks like the unit data stuff and the textures are straight-forward enough..but what about the 3D files ? Is there going to be a way to mod them?

We're still considering various ways to approach this - no decision has yet been made.

Can new units be added to increase the number of unit choices available, or are there limits as there were with the MTW ones?

The game supports a maximum of 300 units.

Is the campaign map a full 3D object or a 2D image of one? What about .rwm files?

The campaign map is a full 3D object, and is mostly built out of geographical heightfield data, with models merged into the map at the places where there are mountains to give the visual appeal a bit of extra 'oomph'. The RWM file contains this data and quite a few other 'layers' such as a climate map, a ground type map, a region map and a feature map.

Could you give us an idea of what kind of modding support CA are planning? Really just an outline ie. are they going to release a modding guide or will there be a set of tools available too? I'm interested in creating a Japanese/fantasy mod but it would require model editing ability (rather than simple texture adjusting).

We will be releasing a battle editor (which also includes an integrated terrain editor) for generating stand-alone battles with a future patch, and also a rough modding guide which may be added to over time as people run into problems. Other tools, such as the sprite generator or some of the Excel spreadsheets, may be released after a while; again, no decision has yet been made on this.

Can we mod individual (turning) speeds?

No. They are hard-coded.

Is there a list of console commands / command-line options available anywhere?

Not as yet. These will probably be included in the modding guide.

How does the Academy bonus work?

The Academy generates ancillaries for characters which are inside a settlement which contains an Academy. If you examine export_descr_ancillaries.txt you will be able to spot them, together with a lot of other ancillaries which are linked to the presence of buildings.

Can we add new campaigns without adding a new installation of Rome?

There is a mechanism for this, however it is not yet ready for prime time. It will be exposed in a future patch and detailed in the guide.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Thank you for answering all the questions. Looks like many things are undecided at the minute but at least we have plenty of things to be going on with for the time being. (goes off to try adding a faction or province)

[Duke John]

Thank your very much for your answers, JeromeGrasdyke

Although we're still a bit left in the dark considering the tools, I can completely understand that just releasing company made tools isn't always the obvious thing to do. Still I would like to add that mods do sell games. Not all people might be interested in buying a roman game, but if there are fantasy, medieval or napoleonic mods with a large modding community behind it then it's a different story. At the moment we're limited to tweaking the original game and IMO that is waste of the huge potential that the engine has.

Still many thanks

[AstroCat]

First off thank you for taking the time to help us with answering our questions. Truly appreciated. :)

Now, on to my question:

Many, many of us have been desperately and intensely trying to slow down the "kill rate" or rate in which combat happens. So many of us feel combat is over way too quickly and there should be more time for the fight to commence thus allowing more tactics not to mention a more "epic" feel to the battles.

We have tried in desperation everything we can think of, or find.

1. Kill - rate modifier (last one on the line)
2. boosting hp's
3. boosting defensive skill and other skills

... and every combination of the above we can all think of and test.
So far everything has been a dead end because some part of what we change ends up disrupting something else in a way we can not figure out how to rebalance.

So, I (we) ask of you, please, can you help us?

What is the way in which we can prolong the melee combat experience without or with minimal disruption of the balance of the units and the game itself?

Several of us are also using this in combination with a 10-20% decrease in the descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt file.

Thank you very much for your time.

Best Regards,
Jordan Trais "AstroCat"

[khelvan]

Since the number of questions is not too large I've decided (in a fit of enthusiasm) to answer all of them, so here they are:

Assuming there are individual unit speeds, where are they found?

The unit speeds are affected by a number of factors. The main one is the animations; you may already have noticed that the 'fast' skeletons contain many of the same animations as the none-fast ones, just different, sped-up locomotion anims. A second factor is the ground type modifier - these are stored in the descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt file, but will cause the soldiers to 'slide' around when applied, so it's best to keep their influence to the minimum required. So, there are no individual unit speeds as such, but it is possible to create their appearance by adding new animations.

Thank you for your answers!

So, if I am reading this correctly, you are saying that the unit animations can actually increase or decrease not how quickly the unit -appears- to move, but rather how quickly the unit -actually- moves? By "move" I do not mean the movement of limbs, but rather the actual distance travelled over the same amount of time.

Thanks,

-khel

[Steppe Merc]

The game supports a maximum of 300 units.

Noo....

[vladthewallachian]

I might be speaking out of school, but I was wondering how I can change the unit sizes. Even at Huge 160 men will not do it. At least 200 men per unit max would be feasable to me. How could that unit size number be changed? I tried to do it in preferences file, but it changes back to 160. I guess it won't work. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

[Red Harvest]

Thanks for the responses! Don't know if there will be an opportunity for future questions, but I'm curious about the following:

1. Spears/pikes vs. cav. We are seeing some odd effects where spear units don't seem to do that well vs. cav. (compared to sword infantry), and horses jump over phalangites, etc. Where should this be adjusted (file and stat), and is it working as intended by CA?

2. Missile stats and units. Is there some factor for reducing missile effectiveness at extreme range? I'm not seeing much loss of accuracy/killing power at range and would like to tone it down for the "elite" units. I realize the missile attack rating can be lowered, but what about accuracy/penetration vs. distance?

Thanks again.

[Thoros of Myr]

Thank you for your time and responses Jerome.

[JeromeGrasdyke]

Although we're still a bit left in the dark considering the tools, I can completely understand that just releasing company made tools isn't always the obvious thing to do. Still I would like to add that mods do sell games.

Yes, totally true. But it's one thing to have a tool for internal use, and another to release it to the public at large. There are some legal issues, and business ones as well, which need to be thought through and dealt with.

Many, many of us have been desperately and intensely trying to slow down the "kill rate" or rate in which combat happens. So many of us feel combat is over way too quickly and there should be more time for the fight to commence thus allowing more tactics not to mention a more "epic" feel to the battles.

Increasing the number of hit points is probably the best way to go, as long as you multiply all of the hit point numbers by a small amount (x2 or x3). There are a few problems: for one, the engine only supports a maximum of 15 hp, and hence you will need to increase the armour of those troops which are already near the limit in order to compensate. The elephant units are the only ones that come to mind, although the individual general and officer soldiers will also become more vulnerable relative to the other soldiers, and there's not much that can be done about that. Combined with a decrease in the movement modifiers, as you mentioned, this should do most of what you want. Then there may be too much fatigue resulting from the longer battles; it this turns out to be a problem, it could be resolved by adding the 'hardy' attribute to all units (this gives a boost to fatigue resistance). It will also be necessary to increase the amounts of ammo for all missile troops, since it will take at least two hits to kill a soldier, and also the attack strength of all 'precursor' weapons (such as the Roman pilum), since they function as one-shot weapons prior to engagement and their impact will be considerably weakened.

So, if I am reading this correctly, you are saying that the unit animations can actually increase or decrease not how quickly the unit -appears- to move, but rather how quickly the unit -actually- moves? By "move" I do not mean the movement of limbs, but rather the actual distance travelled over the same amount of time.

That is correct. The mocap-derived animations drive the distance travelled as well as impact points of weapons, sound events and the movement of the limbs and even the cloaks. The ground type modifier, on the other hand, only modifies the actual distance travelled, and hence the men appear to 'slide' a little when it is large.

I might be speaking out of school, but I was wondering how I can change the unit sizes. Even at Huge 160 men will not do it. At least 200 men per unit max would be feasable to me. How could that unit size number be changed?

The preferences file sets a general scale modifier for units in general, from x0.25 to x4 in size, relative to a default average of 40 men per unit. Hence the multipliers of 20,40,80,120,160. The reason for the this is that parts of the engine only support a maximum of 256 men per unit; hence x4 means that a 60-man unit can scale to 240, while a 40-man unit scales to 160. You could create a mod in which most of the units were 60 men in size and run that at x4 to get units of mostly 240 men, but it would run that much slower.

Spears/pikes vs. cav. We are seeing some odd effects where spear units don't seem to do that well vs. cav. (compared to sword infantry), and horses jump over phalangites, etc. Where should this be adjusted (file and stat), and is it working as intended by CA?

The default spear vs cavalry bonusses are hardcoded. It may be a balancing issue - I'll ask someone to investigate. Alternatively, you could use the 'mount_effect' entries in the unit database to boost the combat performance of specific units against mount categories or individual mount types. These are applied on top of the default bonus.