Storms at Sea

**therother** · 11-22-2004, 01:56

I know of this thread over at the TWC, which principally discusses battle weather, but they briefly touch on campaign storms.

Midway down, DrJambo says:

I may be wrong, but I think that when modifying files that are included in the same folder as the campaign text files (e.g. disasters, terrain, etc), the effects may only take effect when a new campaign is started. I.e. changes will not affect saved games.

Also, can I suggest using the toggle_fow RomeShell command - it will make monitoring for storms much easier, as it removes the fog of war, allowing you to monitor the whole map.

HTH.

**Red Harvest** · 11-22-2004, 03:43

therother,

Yes, I started a new campaign each time, because I suspected that the effect would only apply to new campaigns. I had forgotten about the fog of war tweak. I did however, have at ~25% of the total Med. within my field of view and ~50% locally. I never witnessed a storm. I did see Etna erupt in 263 B.C. once.

I suspect that either the "at sea" syntax is incorrect in CA's file (or unsupported and instead hardcoded or scripted), or that the max frequency is 1 per year and is applied/distributed to ALL sea tiles. I haven't counted them, but this could make the probability of an individual tile or region ever getting a storm as being rather rare. That was why I tried 0.01. It is also limited to winter, with Floods on land limited to summer. It is still clear though that storms are rarer than hen's teeth and about as relevant in the game mechanics.

There was another file or two that has events listed, like an Etna eruption, an earthquake, and a flood all on specific tiles.

My fix right now is to eliminate all Roman ships from the descrip_strat file at the start of the campaign since Rome had no navy in 270 B.C. I also got rid of Gaul's boat. I've also made all ships two turn builds or greater (just made the 1's into 2's, and left 2's as 2's, 3's as 3's.) That should slow down the silly naval buildup.

**therother** · 11-22-2004, 07:56

Just completed a few tests, and I couldn't get a naturally occurring storm to appear either. I fiddled with the descr_disasters.txt file, even going as far as deliberately corrupting and removing it, but it made no difference to the game, so far as I could tell.

The RTR guys claim to have:

Increased the probability of some natural disasters occurring. Storms can now happen over land as well as sea.

I've not played with the mod, so I can't testify if they've been successful or not. Perhaps someone who has been playing with it could let us know?

Edit: This is the RTR 3.2 entry for storm in the descr_disasters.txt file:

Code:

event		storm
frequency	3
winter		false
summer		false
warning		false
region		the sea
min_scale	2
max_scale	5

Only changes that I can see are that winter is now false, and frequency has been changed to 3 instead of 4.

End of Edit.

Originally Posted by Red Harvest

I've also made all ships two turn builds or greater (just made the 1's into 2's, and left 2's as 2's, 3's as 3's.) That should slow down the silly naval buildup.

My concern with this mod would be if the AI is still trying to build as many boats as before, i.e. its build priorities haven't changed. If it is, it would mean that the Ai is even more crippled as a result of the added build times. Have you noticed the AI compensating for the added build times by training more land units?

Ideally, we would like a solution that either results in the AI concentrating more on land armies or the AI using its naval superiority to better effect, or indeed both.

**therother** · 11-22-2004, 08:44

Well, I bit the bullet and installed v3.2 of Rome Total Realism. And I got a storm on turn 7! Don't know what made the difference. Perhaps it's because they rebuilt the campaign map?

**Red Harvest** · 11-23-2004, 00:55

Originally Posted by therother

Well, I bit the bullet and installed v3.2 of Rome Total Realism. And I got a storm on turn 7! Don't know what made the difference. Perhaps it's because they rebuilt the campaign map?

Check the descr_events file as well. You can script storms and eruptions. They might have just scripted them.