What causes the SPQR Greeks?

[Barbarossa82]

Does anyone know why the @~&*%$£ the Senate get two Greek-named family members? I've tried looking through descr_strat.txt, but I couldn't see anything there that could be a cause. The family members named in that file show up fine and I couldn't find any "spare" references to roman early general's cavalry outside the other three Roman factions.

It's a minor bug but it's really getting on my nerves.

[Laman]

I don't know why they are Greeks, but I think they may possibly be created at start to make sure all Senate offices are filled.

[AntiochusIII]

Well, these guys get replenished for the Senate (6 individual generals) once you kill them all, either by assassins' blades or individual battles, unlike the "Maxentius" royal Roman family, which seems to be working like any other families in the game. [/sarcasm]

Methinks they used to be Romans before the 1.5 patch, or 1.3, I'm not sure. Now it's a small(?) bug that make them Greeks -- still with Roman bodyguards, of course. I think they were coded in to give the Senate a cavalry punch in the major battle(s) for Rome.

[Attalus]

There used to be a thread about this at the .com. It's an oversight that was introduced in 1.3 and has been forgotten since.
The bug-fixer patch and the latest all-factions mod both fix it.
I can't remember the cause exactly, but it's something like the AI feels that it doesn't have enough family members to begin with, so it adopts a few from macedon...how, why I don't know.

[player1]

Actually, it's all factions mod that fixes it.

Anyway, the reason why they apprear is that SPQR family has just 3 memeber, but 5 senate offices need to be filled.

So game has some hardcoded mechanic to add 2 more generals of SPQR.
It worked well in 1.2, but some later bug introduced a problem, when those extra generals used Macedon names and culture markings.

I guess it's simple array error, since macedon in next faction after SPQR is sm_faction.txt file (or whatever is its name).


The possible workaround is too introduce 2 extra family memebrs to SPQR faction.


There is another way too.
If you modify descr_senate.txt file so that 4th and 5th office have no prerequisites, then game at start will fill those offices with other roman families.

[Attalus]

I stand well and truly corrected!

What exactly do you need to change in the descr_senate.txt?

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Interesting ideas. The method I used was to 'overlay' the spawn points for these 2 Macedonian / Greek etc generals. IIRC, the 2 spawn points in vanilla are 1 tile North, and also 1 tile North and 1 tile East of Rome itself. Simply relocate Marcus Maxentius (SPQR heir) and Servius Maxentius on the campaign map by changing the appropriate X and Y values after their age in descr_strat. This is what they should look like once you've made the changes:

character    Marcus Maxentius, named character, heir, age 30, , x 95, y 72

character    Servius Maxentius, named character, age 36, , x 96, y 72

You could of course relocate Decius Maxentius (SPQR leader), or Flavius Nepos (diplomat).

This should fix the problem you're encountering, and instead Roman family members should now spawn instead of the Greek ones. I've since relocated Rome, and don't even use the 'overlay' technique, and now all I get is 2 Roman family members, which is good

[player1]

That is very good idea.
Had no idea that it actually works.

P.S.
Seems like something I could implement in bug-fixer...

[player1]

Now if anybody knows how to fix Oliphant appearing for Rebel faction and I would be happy.

[player1]

Nah, it didn't helped.
That just made them spawn at different place but with still greek names and looks (one in Rome and another one tile east).

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

I'm sure that's how I sorted it. Hmmm, must be something else involved then, surely your methods prevent them from being spawned around Rome. Its obviously directing the game to look in the wrong 'pool', IE Greek culture rather than Roman. This would apply for unit names, portraits and so on.

Btw, my descr_strat was originally v1.2, but has been converted to v1.5 - think this is probably it. I tested vanilla v1.5 out, and got the Greek named generals. Must have then replaced vanilla v1.5 with my modded v1.2 and solved that issue. It was so long ago that I've forgotten

Is the oliphaunt issue related to the gladiator uprising event? I've personally never experienced it, so don't know how it occurs. You could try looking in descr_rebel_factions @ data, its under the non-region based events, obviously called gladiator uprising. The first section is region based rebellions, and what slave / rebel / merc unit they spawn. Also if you make changes, you'll need to update rebel_factions_descr_enums @ data & rebel_faction_descr @ text.

[player1]

What's weird that there are no oliphants "cheat oliphants" in those lists.

Then how they appear?
Could be another bug when game doesn't read its data properly?

P.S.
That file wasn't modified from mid2004, so I guess it's not responsable to oliphanut bug.

I personally haven't experienced it neither, but I'm not playing RTW anymore much, especially imperial campaign.

[Balbus]

The answer to this is in the descr_sm_factions.txt file.

For some reason the game seems to use the 5th faction down (Macedon) when assigning the last two senate offices at the beginning of the game.

Simply swap around Macedon's place in the file with one of the other Roman factions (don't move the SPQR faction though, they have to remain 4th), and the two Senate offices will now be assigned to men with Roman names and unit cards.

[player1]

Doesn't that screw up staring senate positions, and makes possible to get real Macedon faction generals in senate.