Some strange effects of hording and emerging factions

[Dromikaites]

Bravo!

You've discovered some very interesting things for the modding community:
1) The meaning and the use of the indexes in descr_sm_factions.txt
2) The importance of the provinces near the edge of the map. I was testing every BI faction's emergence in Locus_Barbaricum (an edge province) while trying to emerge the RTW factions in internal provinces.
3) The influence of the "Slavs" name: not only changing that internal name results in nobody being able to emerge anymore without CTD, but if that name is present, the other RTW factions emerge as well.

My question is did Spain emerge inside an internal province or only in an edge province?

[Makanyane]

Thanks,

Wilddog actually found the small logo index in descr_sm_factions.txt.

Spain only came on in an edge province (tried Britannia_Inferior & Sahara). Internal ones (Numidia & Hispania) still give the message but no spawning result.

Haven't tested very many faction / region combinations but it seems that:

Regardless of whether slavs are in or not trying to emerge from descr_events.txt trigger in an internal province with either BI or RTW factions just gives message but no actual spawning.

If slavs are in as a faction, BI and RTW units, will spawn in edge province.

If slavs are not included attempting to spawn in edge province will CTD when trigger is reached.


Additionally have tested to see if it matters how Slavs (my internally renamed Numidians) are set up. I deleted their trigger from descr_events.txt so that effectively they would never emerge - Spain still spawned OK. Also placed Slavs on map as a playable, non horde faction with cities at start up - Spain still spawned OK. So it really does seem to be just the name!

[Dromikaites]

Thanks,

Wilddog actually found the small logo index in descr_sm_factions.txt.

Spain only came on in an edge province (tried Britannia_Inferior & Sahara). Internal ones (Numidia & Hispania) still give the message but no spawning result.

Haven't tested very many faction / region combinations but it seems that:

Regardless of whether slavs are in or not trying to emerge from descr_events.txt trigger in an internal province with either BI or RTW factions just gives message but no actual spawning.

If slavs are in as a faction, BI and RTW units, will spawn in edge province.

If slavs are not included attempting to spawn in edge province will CTD when trigger is reached.


Additionally have tested to see if it matters how Slavs (my internally renamed Numidians) are set up. I deleted their trigger from descr_events.txt so that effectively they would never emerge - Spain still spawned OK. Also placed Slavs on map as a playable, non horde faction with cities at start up - Spain still spawned OK. So it really does seem to be just the name!

Well done! I can confirm your results because I ran several new tests today (BI, BI with RTW as a mod, BI with RTW as a mod and a RTW faction replaced with the Slavs).

It seems indeed that a faction with the internal name {SLAVS} needs to be present in order for other factions to emerge in provinces that have the edge of the map as border/borders. Just bordering with the sea won't do.

Frankly I'm a bit disappointed to find out that only "edge provinces" are good for emerging factions and that {SLAVS} have to be in. Also disappointed that only the Romano-British can "survive" without being a horde and that the conditions for their emergence can't be modded other than through that hidden resource britain.

[Dromikaites]

I wanted to get deeper into the "emerging only in provinces on the edge of the map" issue so I did several tests.

Test1
In map_regions.tga I made a "discontinous" province by putting on the edge of the map a pixel of the color of an interior province.

The faction emerged on that tile. Since when a faction emerges there are several armies and a diplomat, of course they could not all fit onto a single tile. So the faction leader's army was on the isolated tile and all the others were in the surrounding province.

Test2
I thought of putting an impassable forest on that tile, hoping that the game would look for a free tile in the central province.

The message "Faction Emerges" showed up but the armies didn't. The emergent faction didn't show up in the "alive" factions list either.

Test3
I tried another approach: to make a contiguous link between the edge of the map and the central province, like an one-tile-wide corridor.

The armies of the emergent faction showed up both in the corridor and in the neighboring province, but with the faction leader's stack on the tile of the corridor belonging to the corridor.

Test4
I kept the corridor but put a single tile of impassable forest on the edge. so the second tile from the edge was part of the province and was free. The idea was to test how many tiles away from the edge can an emergent faction's leader's stack show up.

Again the message "faction emerges" appeared but no armies.

Conclusion: factions can only emerge in the tiles on the edge. Maybe CA would fix that in a next patch or maybe there's an undocumented workaround. Jeorme, could you bring some light into the issue?

[Octavianus]

Hello, did anybody tried to give a faction horde ability when using the command "-mod:" and not "-mod:my_mod" ?

I did all the necessary changes in my RTW folder, i.e. create a horde unit for the scythians, change descr_sm_faction.txt to give the scythia horde ability and dacia the correct shield, put in ui\ the .rsd files of BI and delete RTW ones from the packs .pak (because they have priority on the ui folder), put the #horde_symbol.tga in textures folder, edit descr_standards.txt, and edit and repack all the interfaces. But it doesn't work...

My scythians can leave their last settlement as a horde (with correct symbol on their banners), i can occupy a new community, but when I try to sack the result is a CTD crash

I don't understand where is the problem because it is said on this thread and on other threads that this problem is resolved when putting the .rsd files in ui folder (and I did it! ).

Since I use the command -mod:, this permit me to run RTW with RTW-BI.exe version 1.6

I precise that swimming, shieldwall, bersekers icons, and other BI features works correctly. And I don't want to make a faction emerge so I've not done all the long changes replacing scythia by slavs in every .txt files.

Any suggestions about my problem?

N.B. : Sorry for my poor english, I'm french, and if you can read french here is the original french thread about my problem.

[Lusted]

I do not think you can make sacking work in RTW.

[Octavianus]

Why? What is the problem? I use RomeTW-BI.exe to run RTW.