Some in-depth questions

[N. Tollus Galicus]

Hello,

I have some questions for the development team about things I do not clearly understand in the mod files:

- what was your goal in swapping cultures? I have no doubt it must have to do with something else than just having to do a colossal work, but I just didn't catch the matter.

- (linked with preceding) where are cultures attributed to factions? didn't find that in any faction-descriptive file.

- how many different ressources can there be? Are hidden ressources managed in the same count as "normal" ressources?

- (linked with preceding) where are hidden ressources described? since they are not in descr_sm_ressources.txt.
-why is there no "ROMAN" directory in \ui ???



PS: please, be tolerant is answers to these question already appear somowhere on the forum, but I already have red many, many topics since I did register and I am really beginning to saturate.....

[edyzmedieval]

Welcome to the forums Tolus Gallicus.
Firstly, I am not a developer of the mod, but I can answer your questions.

1. They swapped cultures to make it a bit easier. This will be definitely fixed in the latest port(I hope)
2. - need to check. I forgot -
3. You can't have new resources. You can only edit the existing resources.
The maximum number of hidden resources allowed is 64.
4. Hidden resources can't be described. Or do you mean something else?
5. Is it really necessary a Roman folder in the UI? UI means User Interface.

Hope it helps.

[tk-421]

I am not a member either, but I can give you an answer for the the culture swap thing.

In RTW 1.2, there are six cultures: roman, greek, eastern, carthaginian, egyptian, and barbarian. Each faction in the same culture must share the same building designs and some other stuff. There is a maximum number of factions that can be a part of each culture. Here are the internal faction names and there cultures:

Roman Culture: romans_julii, romans_brutii, romans_scipii, romans_senate

Greek culture: greek_cities, macedon, thrace, seleucid

Eastern culture: pontus, armenia, parthia

Egyptian Culture: egypt

Carthaginian culture: carthage, numidia

Barbarian culture: gauls, germans, spain, dacia, britons, scythia

The Roman culture makes it difficult to mod factions if you do not want to have multiple Roman factions. Many mods leave brutii, scipii, and senate out. RTR did this with their factions:

Roman Culture: romans_julii (Rome), romans_brutii (empty), romans_scipii (empty), romans_senate (empty)

Greek culture: greek_cities (Greek Cities), macedon (Macedon), thrace (Bactria), seleucid (Seleucid Empire)

Eastern culture: pontus (Pontus), armenia (Armenia), parthia (Parthia)

Egyptian Culture: egypt (Ptolemaic Empire)

Carthaginian culture: carthage (Carthage), numidia (Numidia)

Barbarian culture: gauls (Gauls), germans (Germans), spain (Iberians), dacia (Thrace), britons (Illyrians), scythia (Sarmatians)

In order to maximize the number of factions, the EB team swapped the culture. The roman culture became and eastern greek culture, eastern became steppe, greek became Greek and Roman, Carthaginian became Pontic and Egyptian, the egyptian culture became a Carthaginian culture, and barbarian stayed the same. This is what they did:

Roman Culture (Eastern Greek): romans_julii (Arche Seleukeia), romans_brutii (Baktria), romans_scipii (Hayasdan), romans_senate (empty, not usable with 1.2)

Greek culture (Greek and Roman): greek_cities (Koinon Hellenon), macedon (Makedonia), thrace (Epeiros), seleucid (Romani)

Eastern culture (steppe): pontus (Yuezhi), armenia (Sauromatae), parthia (Pahlava)

Egyptian Culture (Carthaginian): egypt (Karthadast)

Carthaginian culture (other eastern greek): carthage (Pontos), numidia (Ptolemaioi)

Barbarian culture: gauls (Aedui), germans (Sweboz), spain (Iberia), dacia (Getai), britons (Casse), scythia (Arverni)

1.5 allows modder to change a factions culture in the descr_sm_factions.txt file. The team should be able to clear up any problems caused by the culture swap. The romans_senate slot will also become usable and they will create a new faction, but I don't know what it is. The Yuezhi will also be replaced by a new mystery faction because their main enemies for most of the game live east of the edge of the map.

[tk-421]

double post

[Christianus]

Is it correct that in addition to the Yuezhi being replaced by another faction and version 1.5. opening the senate faction slot, v. 1.5. will as well open a completely new faction slot?

=3 new factions minus the Yuezhi faction

[Foot]

No, while the Yeuzhi will be replaced, 1.5 only opens up one new faction slot, the senate faction that could not be used in 1.2. So overall 0.8 will have two new factions.

Foot

[N. Tollus Galicus]

The Roman culture makes it difficult to mod factions if you do not want to have multiple Roman factions.

This is the big good reason I thought must have been leading to this swap... Indeed it could hardly have been a better one....

3. You can't have new resources. You can only edit the existing resources.
The maximum number of hidden resources allowed is 64.
4. Hidden resources can't be described. Or do you mean something else?

Actually I am precisely interested in hidden ressources. Normal (= trade) ressources are "defined" in descr_sm_ressources.txt, but there is no such thing for hidden ones. Does it mean you just put them in descr_regions.txt and EDB.txt and shaazam! it works?

I red that the team is presently having problems with building having too much conditionning. Then, for recruitement geographic partitionning they did set up an 8 HR code wich actually is equivallent to an 8 bit number thus coding for 64 possibilities. The drawback of this system is that you have at least 8 conditions to add to your building only for it (plus any other conditions needed...).
To my opinion, it is possible to drastically reduce this number of conditions by changing the logic of the code (perhaps using a more thematic way), but this would quite certainly induce a slight increase in the number of different HR. That's why I wanted to know the max number of HR and if the "normal" ressources do count against that max (it seams not according what you said...). I will now think at it with all the needed informations...

5. Is it really necessary a Roman folder in the UI? UI means User Interface.

Actually this was quite a part of my question... lol
I know UI is only the interface, but other mods I saw did use a /ui/ROMAN dir, so I just wondered if it was normal and deliberated not to have one in EB, or a "still-to-do" part of the mod...

I really thank you guys for having answered my questions and even more for having doing it so quickly.

[Foot]

The UIs are sorted by culture and so in the 1.2 builds the Roman culture was taken by the Seleukids, Hayasdan and Baktria and they did not have their own, personalised UI. The Romans, as they were part of the Greek culture set, shared its UI with the Greeks. In the final build all cultures will get their own personalised UI, the Romans included.

[Angadil]

I red that the team is presently having problems with building having too much conditionning. Then, for recruitement geographic partitionning they did set up an 8 HR code wich actually is equivallent to an 8 bit number thus coding for 64 possibilities. The drawback of this system is that you have at least 8 conditions to add to your building only for it (plus any other conditions needed...).
To my opinion, it is possible to drastically reduce this number of conditions by changing the logic of the code (perhaps using a more thematic way), but this would quite certainly induce a slight increase in the number of different HR. That's why I wanted to know the max number of HR and if the "normal" ressources do count against that max (it seams not according what you said...).

Conditionals with hidden resources are no problem. It's conditionals with buildings that are a major pain. IIRC, in 1.5, for a given building you can only have 8 units that have another building in their recruitment conditions. Otherwise, right clicking in the building causes a CTD.

[N. Tollus Galicus]

oh... that is indeed a very different kind of problem.... and I bet EB already uses every single building slot available, right???

Edit: afterthought, this lead to other questions:
what are the building limits per faction/culture/whole game?
are these limits by building or by building-line?

[cunctator]

Hello,
- what was your goal in swapping cultures? I have no doubt it must have to do with something else than just having to do a colossal work, but I just didn't catch the matter.

- (linked with preceding) where are cultures attributed to factions? didn't find that in any faction-descriptive file.

-why is there no "ROMAN" directory in \ui ???

In 1.2 factions couldn't be assigned to different cultures, that was hardcoded. The culture swap was necessary to have sane cultures for the new EB factions.
In 0.8 based on R:TW 1.5 that will chnage since faction cultures are now moddable.

-Post R:TW 1.3 cultures are assigned in descr_sm_factions.txt.

-In R:TW the Roman Ui directory is packed by default.