Storms at Sea

[Kull]

Perhaps theres a bug somewhere else in the game. The Sons_of_Mars does seem to have proper storm activity, and the entries are exactly the same. Maybe the campaign 'script' doesn't do a lookup to this disaster file, so it doesnt show up.

So the problem might not be modding the settings, but getting the imperial campaign to read the settings it has already.

I'm beginning to think so. therother reports that he changed these setting without any noticeable effect, and I'm currently running a test in which ALL disasters have been reduced to "frequency = 1". I also changed all disasters so the "Warning = True", which will confirm whether changes to this file actually do anything.

Hmmmmm. Come to think of it, the only disaster I had ever experienced in my earlier Campaign Games was a volcanic eruption at Etna. And I'm pretty sure (though memory could be faulty) there was no warning. However, of the 8 disasters listed in the unmodded "descr_disasters.txt" file, Volcano is the ONLY that has warnings toggled "true", so I SHOULD have been warned!

So. Has anyone out there ever gotten a 1-turn warning prior to experiencing a volcano event? If the answer is "No", then we've conclusively proven that this file has no effect.

To follow up on Ghostcamel's thoughts, there is one other test we could perform - make changes to the sons_of_mars "descr_disasters.txt" file and see if that has any impact on the Prologue campaign. If there ARE changes, than we'll know the file is used, but somehow the Campaing link is broken. If nothing changes (just toggle all warnings to true, and look for warnings prior to storms and floods), then we've confirmed that this file has no utility whatsoever, and that disasters are handled in some other fashion (which, sadly, may not be moddable)

[Red Harvest]

Kull,

The "base" disaster file does work in the campaign, at least for awhile. For some reason it doesn't work with defaults but the frequency of "3" combined with no limit on season works. It seems to stop working if you change it again and possibly if there is any combat, etc. Yet it does work repeatedly at times.

The other disaster file you mention is actually a misnamed event script. Obviously, CA didn't have time to clean up any of this.

I'm not sure why the warning doesn't show up... If I were laying out the working rules, I wouldn't allow a warning for storms or floods. Volcanoes, probably since they usually start rumbling and smoking well ahead of a major eruption; major quakes perhaps, although major quakes often follow long periods of zero tremors--the build up to a major one. It might be that the warning text, graphics, or dialogue was just never implemented so it doesn't appear.

Etna's eruption is predetermined in another event file (as are some others such as plague in Macedon.) I'm not sure that it always happens though. I could have sworn I've seen it erupt both in 263 and in 261 (but not both in the same campaign.)

[Kull]

Kull,

The "base" disaster file does work in the campaign, at least for awhile. For some reason it doesn't work with defaults but the frequency of "3" combined with no limit on season works. It seems to stop working if you change it again and possibly if there is any combat, etc. Yet it does work repeatedly at times..........Etna's eruption is predetermined in another event file (as are some others such as plague in Macedon.) I'm not sure that it always happens though. I could have sworn I've seen it erupt both in 263 and in 261 (but not both in the same campaign.)

Well, I played my "test campaign" thru 259 BC and had only one disaster - the Etna event in 261. Two lessons from that:

1) There was no warning message, so it definitely wasn't generated by the altered "descr_disasters.txt" file.

2) As you suggest, the eruption was probably generated by a scripted event file, which in fact DOES exist! ("descr_events.txt" in the "Rome - Total War\Data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign" folder)

3) The language for the Etna event is as follows:

event eruption_at_etna
date 9 winter
position 104, 49

That would seem to eliminate any possibility of randomness, and put this event in 261 BC for every campaign. But here's a test I'll run, just for grins;

4) Vesuvius: Let's see what happens if the "eruption_at_etna" is changed to the location of vesuvius and set to erupt in, say 269 BC? Stand by......

[Kull]

That would seem to eliminate any possibility of randomness, and put this event in 261 BC for every campaign. But here's a test I'll run, just for grins;

4) Vesuvius: Let's see what happens if the "eruption_at_etna" is changed to the location of vesuvius and set to erupt in, say 269 BC? Stand by......

I ran three separate tests:

1) Etna Event - Date Change only: I set it to erupt in 269 BC ("year = 1"), and it did! So there's no question that the scripting file does work.

2) Etna Event - Location and Date Change: Set to erupt in 269 at the location of vesuvius, and it did!

3) Vesuvius Event - Date Change only: Turns out there is an event called "eruption_at_vesuvius". I changed the date to 269, and it erupted on schedule. One caveat - the text for this event also refers to a "flood" rolling across the bay and striking "Messina" (sic), but Messana suffered no damage. The original Vesuvius event is set for year 99 - and there's no concurrent flood event at that time, so either the event is partially broken or else CA just forgot to add the flood.

Soooo.....what have we learned? With the exception of an occasional storm, it looks like random events in this game are SERIOUSLY bugged. Case-in-point: I'd be willing to bet that if people kept track of where and when their plague events occurred, you could trace the origins to a scripted event from this file, not something random.

Personally I had found the appearance of storms and floods to be one of the most breathtakingly unique visual aspects of RTW (based on experience with the Prologue), so it's DEEPLY disappointing to see them almost completely absent from the main campaign.

[ghostcamel]

Personally I had found the appearance of storms and floods to be one of the most breathtakingly unique visual aspects of RTW (based on experience with the Prologue), so it's DEEPLY disappointing to see them almost completely absent from the main campaign.

Ditto.

This is how storms, and volcanoes should be exposed to the player, not through text ala STW/MTW. I never got a chance to try to navigate my fleet around a storm or hope that they can batten down the hatches quickly and securely enough to survive if they get caught in one.

How sad its broken.....


O.K. enough tears in my coffee.

Have you tried adding a storm event into the descr_events file? I see you added and edited volcano events, could you make a storm appear over Mt Etna while its erupting?

[Tyburn JIG]

Personally I had found the appearance of storms and floods to be one of the most breathtakingly unique visual aspects of RTW (based on experience with the Prologue), so it's DEEPLY disappointing to see them almost completely absent from the main campaign.

Indeed...this is a real shame.

On another simular note i think its a shame the walls don't work properly on the battle map.For some reason the egyptian and greek walls are not activated(egypt get eastern walls while greek cultures get roman...also for greek cultures i've noticed that even though the campagne map says they have large/epic stone walls,when you enter the battle map they have normal stone walls.)

Really hope CA are wise too these issues and have em patched....fingers crossed.

[Red Harvest]

I'm relatively confident that the storm disaster feature is not making it past save games. I don't ever recall seeing a "non-scheduled" storm disaster event after loading a save, and I've tried. It also doesn't work with certain frequencies and periods.

I did however, see my first earthquake in the game recently, it was pretty cool. Funny, I've been through a number of earthquakes in real life, yet never seen one in thousands of "game years" until now. Oddly enough it does not appear to have been scripted and was from a save game.