Unlocking Sahara

[EatYerGreens]

I used AddBuilding:: in the startpos, to place a fort and port, just to see where the positions are. Looks like they picked Casablanca as the port location but I could find no significant towns where the castle is and I named it after a town much further east.

The Atlas mountain range actually goes far deeper inland than the campain map portrays. The choice of battle map type in the border crossing settings seems to have been based more on the painting than the real world. I'm sorely tempted to change mine so all attacks on Sahara are heading into mountains, to give the Almos a fighting chance of staying alive well into the late stages of the game.

I left the port and fort in place as a gift to the Almos and carried on playing. I also gave them hides as export goods and salt as a resource, just to nudge up their income. They have a ship permanently stationed in the Atlantic Coast sea region, maintaining the trade links well but this may have had something to do with me severing the land bridges to Granada and Cordoba! Keeping troop-movement lanes open helps preserve the trade links, it seems.

I also set a farm income level, using the same figure as in the thread in the Repository. Not that I think a zero setting would be enough to cause a crash, or anything, but the AI will dutifully build its farm upgrades on the province and get nothing in return.

Sahara does make a significant strategic change in the game. The Almos are no longer stuck in the pipe down which Spain's crusades run. They now have a bolt-hole, where they can let the things go past, then conquer back any temporarily lost lands.

I got through nearly 200 game turns (-ian command line switch and bursts of autoplay, with AI in command of all factions) before picking up a ship piece finally triggered a CTD, so I reckon the Sahara code is pretty solid. Both Spain and the Almos are still slugging it out, well into the High era. Sahara itself has quite some level of culture to it, as well.

edyz, I should add that I hand-typed all the changes, using the thread instructions as a guide and did NOT cut and paste from the thread to my modded file. If you have a backup version from before you made the Sahara changes, use that and retype everything again.

I've items which the writer of the guide either omitted to mention or never bothered with at all, yet Sahara worked okay for him. I've only done this to be thourough and hoping others will find these posts useful. I don't see it as being the reason why mine worked and yours didn't.

Let us know if you get yours working.