Adding generals into families

[TheSilverKnight]

For my 363 AD in Barbarian Invasion, I've added a named character, Maximus Decimus, as a general in Hispania. I want to make him an adopted son of Emperor Valentinianus. Is there any way I can do this? Do I have to add a daughter to Valentinianus, and then have Maximus married to this daughter or what?

[Atilius]

In RTW I've added "adopted" sons, but the surname always changes to the family name. For example:

If I try make Marcus Aemilius an adopted son of Flavius Julius, in the game he will always be Marcus Julius, even if he's specified as Marcus Aemilius everywhere in descr_strat.txt.

I've also tried to start the game with a character married to a daughter of the faction leader, but I've never gotten it to work.

[Dromikaites]

A named character (general) that is spawned through code would not show in the family tree. However if he has beeen victorious in several battles then there is a high probability he will be adopted.

As for descr_strat.txt, indeed the initial family tree seems to accept only males as originators of the branches.

[Atilius]

...I've added a named character, Maximus Decimus, as a general in Hispania. I want to make him an adopted son of Emperor Valentinianus. Is there any way I can do this?

Silver Knight,

Here is a way to start the game with named characters who don't have the same surname. I don't think it's a very good scheme, but perhaps its advantages are worth its drawbacks. You be the judge:

I haven't done any modding with BI so I'm going to use RTW examples. There shouldn't be any differences in substance. We'll change the names of the starting members of the Julii faction from

Flavius Julius, Lucius Julius, Quintus Julius, and Vibius Julius

to

Marcus Fulvius, Appius Claudius, Cnaeus Cornelius, and Maximus Decimus.

(I'm assuming that it's necessary to keep Data\descr_names_lookup.txt in synch with Data\descr_names.txt here; that may no longer be true, but it can't hurt)

(1) At the bottom of Data\descr_names_lookup.txt, add

MarcusFulvius
AppiusClaudius
CnaeusCornelius
MaximusDecimus
SextusAntio
DeciusCurtius
OppiusClausus
AmuliusCornelius
ManiusDecimus
DeciusClaudius
MarcusClaudius

(2) In Data\descr_names.txt, remove all character names from the romans_julii section. Also remove all surnames except Julius. Add all the names above so that you have:

faction: romans_julii

        characters
                MarcusFulvius
                AppiusClaudius
                CnaeusCornelius
                MaximusDecimus
                SextusAntio
                DeciusCurtius
                OppiusClausus
                AmuliusCornelius
                ManiusDecimus
                DeciusClaudius
                MarcusClaudius

        surnames
                Julius

        women
                Metella
                Domitia
                .....

(3) In Data\text\names.txt, add these lines to the bottom:

{MarcusFulvius}        Marcus Fulvius
{AppiusClaudius}       Appius Claudius
{CnaeusCornelius}     Cnaeus Cornelius
{MaximusDecimus}     Maximus Decimus
{SextusAntio}           Sextus Antio
{DeciusCurtius}         Decius Curtius
{OppiusClausus}        Oppius Clausus
{AmuliusCornelius}     Amulius Cornelius
{ManiusDecimus}       Manius Decimus
{DeciusClaudius}       Decius Claudius
{MarcusClaudius}      Marcus Claudius

(It's probably best to be careful with the tabs here.)

(4) Finally, in the romans_julii section of descr_strat.txt, make the following substitutions:

Flavius -> MarcusFulvius
Lucius -> AppiusClaudius
Quintus -> CnaeusCornelius
Vibius -> MaximusDecimus
Sextus Antio -> SextusAntio Julius
Decius Curtius -> DeciusCurtius Julius
Oppius Clausus -> OppiusClausus Julius
Amulius -> AmuliusCornelius
Manius -> ManiusDecimus
Decius -> DeciusClaudius
Marcus -> MarcusClaudius

==========================

What we've done is to make the last name invisible for all the characters in the Julii faction - it's now just a space (" "). (BTW, I tried just putting a carriage return after the tab first, but this causes a crash when you try to save the game.) All the name information has been placed into the first name. Since we created new "tags" for the names we used and because the surname Julius isn't used by the other Roman factions, what we've done doesn't affect them.

(With what we've done so far, we have only 11 names to give the Julii faction members. Obviously we'd have to add more for this to be useful. More about that later.)

This lets you name your starting characters what ever you wish. It also has the advantage (IMO), of displaying the full names of all captains and admirals: Admiral Oppius is now displayed as Admiral Oppius Clausus.

Now for the drawbacks:

In order to retain all the possible Julii names in the vanilla game, you need to add (ahem) about 18,000 lines to Data\text\names.txt, Data\descr_names.txt and Data\descr_names_lookup.txt. However, it shouldn't be too hard to write a program or a perl script to do this. If this is of interest to anyone, I'll look into doing it. It's possible the game might have trouble with files of that size, but Data\descr_names.txt is already over 6000 lines long, so that seems unlikely. If you don't think that you need all the names you could probably even do this by hand.

The other problem is that any child not listed in descr_strat.txt will be unlikely to have an apparent surname that matches his father's. This is because we've packed both first name and surname into the first name field, and because the game thinks everyone in your faction is surnamed " ".

If you want to interpret the children as "proteges" instead, this would be fine. However, if you want to take the family structure seriously, a man named Servius Camillus with a father named Titus Livius and sons named Decimus Mus and Cassius Longinus is a bit hard to take.

If this isn't satisfactory, perhaps it will at least stimulate a little more thinking about the subject and someone will come up with a better idea. I'll continue to think about this as well.

[Atilius]

Silver Knight,

If you're still interested, I think I've come up with a good way to do this:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=62388