modding military production capability of captured settlements

[none314]

It works,
both the "cultural assimilation" line of buildings +generic barracks (solution 1, little hassle), as well as the "all-new-barracks" line of buildings (solution 2, many entries needed...)

I have made the following observations.

1) The AI destroys nothing, even if it penalises it heavily (tried "happiness_bonus bonus -10" on a few buildings, major penalty, AI kept the building indefinitely...)

2) The AI can be tempted to build the "cultural assimilation" buildings by assigning happiness bonuses to them, which is, by the way, realistic.

3) The following entries were needed to make the cultural assimilation buildings 'feel' right (this is an example that works):

happiness_bonus bonus 4 requires factions { roman, }
happiness_bonus bonus -4 requires not factions { roman, }

Actually, no penalty is needed, but I thought it rather realistic and a good example of using the "not" operator in a way not found in the original files. Of course, if happiness bonuses from other buildings don't exist, then the penalty won't be effective- I don't know of a way to apply real penalties, just negative bonuses, which is not the same...
Still, as I said in point 1, the AI doesn't destroy the foreign assimilation buildings and just lives with the penalty.

4) So, though it does work for both player and AI, the solution feels artificial because the AI doesn't respond convincingly... Besides, making the cultural building prerequisite for unit training at the barracks results in a ugly looking description like:

Barracks
Allows the training of:
Town WatchRoman Citizenship

where "Roman Citizenship" was the name of the requisite assimilation building. That put me off completely.

5)
Solution 2, on the other hand, works like a charm. It took a lot of new entries but it worked. And the existence of any 'relic barracks' of previous city owners doesn't feel artificial, since they can't train anything and I must build my own anyway. I can accept the notion of 'relick barracks' better than the notion of 'relic citizenship'.

For backward compatibility I'll keep the original barracks/ stables/ practice range series in the file but I'll disable them with something like:

barracks requires not factions { all, }

file description_strat.txt? (I don't recall the name very well as I am typing now, sorry), has to be changed also for the factions to start with the new barracks infrastructure.

I'll post the modified .txt files once I've finalised the changes, in case someone finds them helpful.


My only gripe now is the generic barracks icon I get on the building browser. I'd like to assign proper ones, probably recycling existing ones. I know someone must have solved this- any links?

[Epistolary Richard]

It's similar to unit cards, if you unpack your pak files you'll find a folder called UI which has all the user interface graphics, inside there is one called something like Construction or Buildings or something similar. Then you just have to duplicate the folder structure beneath you Data folder (for example for unit cards, you have to add a folder called Data\UI\units\gauls\) and put the graphics with the corresponding names in there.

[Monkwarrior]

Solution 2, on the other hand, works like a charm. It took a lot of new entries but it worked. And the existence of any 'relic barracks' of previous city owners doesn't feel artificial, since they can't train anything and I must build my own anyway. I can accept the notion of 'relick barracks' better than the notion of 'relic citizenship'.

I used those "relic barracks" in Iberia Total War for the training of general auxillia troops from the original culture of the region (based on hidden resources). For example, the romans capture a gaul settlement with barracks and stables, then they can train gallic auxillia and gallic auxillia cavalry. These are weak troops good for garrison and, as their name shows, for auxilliary troops in the invading army. This system tries to simulate the recruitment of local troops by the invasor.

I haven't full tested this system yet, and I don't know the AI behaviour.