Rebel Army Stacks Not Appearing?

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

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I've done quite a few searches for this topic in a couple of TW forums, but have not yet managed to solve this problem.

I've run into a strange problem: for some reason or another, the rebel army stacks that should be spawned (directly into rebel-controlled settlements using the X, Y coordinates) at the start of a new imperial campaign fail to generate. This is seriously puzzling, not only because they are fully coded in descr_strat, but the other factions (excluding rebels) receive their starting army stacks, family members, agents etc.

Here is a sample code entry and a couple of screens to illustrate the problem:

From descr_strat

;Hibernia
character, sub_faction britons,    Brigomaglos,  general, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 20, , x 36, y 142
army
unit        barb infantry slave                exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        barb infantry slave                exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        barb naked fanatics slave        exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        barb naked fanatics slave        exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        barb chariot heavy slave            exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0

Here you can see that their is no garrison present in the Tara settlement, even though the code exists


The army overview scroll illustrates the extent of the problem


I'm not sure what is causing this problem. I've tried a few things to try and solve it, but all have so far been unsuccesful. These included:-

* Adding a basic family tree structure, named characters, traits etc for the rebel faction.
* To test if there were any limits in place regarding the maximum number of units allowed in descr_strat, a significant section of the rebel faction's starting armies was removed.
* Removing faction-specific buildings from export_descr_buildings, in this case buildings that were only constructable by the rebels.

If anyone can provide some advice it would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[Myrddraal]

Very odd. Is it all the rebel stacks, or just some?

[Stuie]

You are using -show_err, right? That usually catches descr_strat.txt problems (well... except some name issues but they cause CTDs). Never seen anything like what you're experiencing.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Very odd. Is it all the rebel stacks, or just some?

It seems to affect every single stack owned by the rebels; its as if the code entries are completely ignored.

You are using -show_err, right? That usually catches descr_strat.txt problems (well... except some name issues but they cause CTDs). Never seen anything like what you're experiencing.

Yeah, I've been using -show_err for a while now, but all the files seem to be OK because an error message isn't generated in relation to this problem.

I've got a feeling that this problem is related to adding religions into RTW. Before this area was undetaken, IIRC the rebel stacks were present on the campaign map. Night battles and Archer's skymod were added before any of the related religious text files were added / modified, and after testing these out, these don't appear to be the problem.

I'll have to work backwards until the cause of the problem is identified. I'm tempted to backup what I've modded so far (that differs from the v0.2 open beta download), then mod back in one file at-a-time to lockdown the problem. I've had to do this several times in the past after encountering some major CTD problems, but in each case eventually managed to work round each problem in turn.

[Stuie]

I've got a feeling that this problem is related to adding religions into RTW. Before this area was undetaken, IIRC the rebel stacks were present on the campaign map.

Glancing at the BI descr_strat.txt file, it looks like ALL named characters and diplomats must have a religion trait assigned. Did you do that for all your named character/diplomat rebels?

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Glancing at the BI descr_strat.txt file, it looks like ALL named characters and diplomats must have a religion trait assigned. Did you do that for all your named character/diplomat rebels?

Yeah, I've given all relevant charaters, agents etc a base religion trait. Also added 4 named characters to the rebel faction (as in BI), set one of these as the leader, added a basic family tree strucure to the rebels. However, religious traits haven't been added to generals (IE captains on the campaign map), as this would be pointless because of the frequent dissolution / creation of captains.

Can the creation of rebel stacks stall if the naming convention is incorrect? In other words, if an invalid character name is used with the wrong culture (EG eastern name is used on a barbarian culture), will this cause a stall in stack generation, or would it lead to a series of CTDs (can these be determined?).

In religious terms, I've only given the Rebels the ability to construct 3 levels of the various Jewish shrines / temples. Taking a step back and looking at it from a different angle, this may be a problem area in itself because attempting to set the rebels as the primary Jewish faction may inevitably cause problems down the line. Incidentally, I've also tried setting the 4 rebel (named) character with the Jewish trait, but to no avail.

I'm probably going to need to rework this and see how things go. Adding in religions (and getting them to work with desired results) has certainly been more complicated than I'd originally expected it to be. If anyone has any input / suggestions I'd be interested to hear them, especially in terms of regional religious build-up

[Stuie]

Can the creation of rebel stacks stall if the naming convention is incorrect? In other words, if an invalid character name is used with the wrong culture (EG eastern name is used on a barbarian culture), will this cause a stall in stack generation, or would it lead to a series of CTDs (can these be determined?).

Yes - that might be it. The name you use for the rebels must be in the faction list of the subfaction you use. So if the subfaction is "britons", the name used must be in the britons list in descr_names.txt. I can't remember how the game reacts to errors in this regard.

[Monkwarrior]

I think that a wrong name-culture assignment gives instant CTD, even without an error message.

But not 100% sure.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Thanks for the repsones guys. Instead of restricting the rebel faction to build the 3 levels of the various Jewish temples, I've now replaced this with various cultures / factions, excluding Parthia and the Carthaginian culture. For some reason or another, the game doesn't like the Carthaginian culture associated with constructing the Jewish temples (I'm not sure whether this represents Carthage, Numidia, or both), and as soon as the new map.rwm is generated, it will CTD. Managed to work this out by testing each faction / culture at-a-time to see where the problem was being generated.

I'm going to have to fine comb the various rebel family members / captains names to make sure that each is of the correct type. The other factions have all their stacks displayed on the campaign map, so there is no need to modify these any further. If the problem still exists after this test, then I'll have to reinstall v0.2 and piece in each of the latest modded text files one at-a-time to see where this problem is being generated.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

I've finally found some time to have a look into this problem. After renaming a few potential problem rebel generals (or captains), all rebel stacks still failed to generate.

I've just finished completely reinstalling RTW, BI and the RTG v0.2 open beta. Ran a new imperial campaign and at last the rebels are back on the campaign map Now each of the latest modded text files will have to be pieced back over the top of v0.2 to see where the potential problem lies.

However, I'm certain that I'll never be able to identify the exact cause of this problem because in order to port BI's religions into RTW, several text files need to contain various religious entries to be present to avoid CTDs on startup or afterwards. What this means is that I can't piece one file in at-a-time; instead multiple files need to be pieced in. Then what will probably happen is that the rebel stacks will fail to generate once again. I'm convinced that there is some sort of incompatibility regarding the rebel faction and religions - the latest tests will reveal this.

[alpaca]

You probably have an error somewhere in your descr_strat.txt above the rebel line. Try finding other stacks that don't appear.
I had this problem once, it was caused by a ´ character in front of a line...

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Its not just one stack that fails to generate mate, its every single rebel stack (all should be spawned directly into rebel-controlled settlements). The end result is 'empty' rebel settlements that other factions simply conquer by moving their army stacks (which generate with no problems) into the settlement. The rebels can still train units, but its the absence of any starting stacks that is the problem.

May be something to do with the fact that the rebels use the Roman culture type, even though they can take advantage of all 6 cultures' building / recruitment rosters. The puzzling thing is, in BI the rebel stacks generate fine.

[Makanyane]

Alpaca could be right, I had something a bit similar so just tried a little experiment

}
`
settlement
{
level large_town
region Caesaromagus_R

An odd ` at this point between settlements in rebel section caused all my rebel stacks to not appear, other symptom for this one is that the settlements below the level of the ` just come up as villages with no buildings:

Basically the rogue character stops the game reading descr_strat from that point down. Check your comments have got ; and not something else, thats the normal culprit.

EDIT: The more I think about this the more likely it seems to be that it is the problem, as i think some of the things you were suggesting to correct problem (rebel family trees etc.) would have been likely to give an error if the game was reading that far down descr_strat. Haven't tested if only specific misplaced symbols / letters give this problem, but '`' is easy to put in by accident instead of 'tab' try an edit, find, search for it as it shouldn't be in descr_strat except for accident..