I need help Creating a Unified Rome, with units from other factions.

[whtdoesitmatta]

I am trying to create, a unified rome under SPQR, and I am not sure what to do with family members, and a few other things, so if someone could show me step by step how to do that, That would be killer.

Another thing is I am trying to make it so as Roman's I can train Carthage's Armoured Elephants, parthia's camel cataphracts, pontus's scythed chariots, and sparta's red coat guys. I have figured out how to get camels and elephants into rome, and can get any other area, as I will, so that isn't the problem.

So far what I have done is this, Created a already perfectly built rome to start, gotten elephants and camels to rome, I have also created armoured elephants to an army, but they show up as peasants on the unit card. But I want to be able to train them, and I some how want SPQR to start with all of italy, and give Messana to the rebels. I also want to take family members from julii, scipii, and brutii, and keep them in spqr...

Please Someone me through this.

[Atilius]

I am trying to create, a unified rome under SPQR, and I am not sure what to do with family members...

Not sure what you mean by this.

...I have also created armoured elephants to an army, but they show up as peasants on the unit card.

You need unit cards (and unit information cards) for these units when owned by your Roman faction. Look at this. The tutorial deals with much more than this but what you want is in there.

As for your other questions, I think you need to spend some time browsing the Scriptorium. Good luck.

[Atilius]

Sorry, I'm not thinking clearly. If you're trying to make Senate playable, DON'T. There is a post from CA in this thread in which Captain Fishpants says: "basically, the game will crash sooner or later."

If you want to have a unified Rome, use one of the other Roman factions - I do it in this tutorial if you want something to follow.

If you're talking about changing lt1956's SPQR mod, contact him.

[whtdoesitmatta]

Basically I have played as the senate, and as long as I don't click senate offices or senate tab, I am good, but Ok, I don't quite know what I am doing at this site either, I am just someone trying to experiment a little with his game.

So just spend hours looking through the scripitorium o boy, I just finished flipping through 2 other forums with no avail.

Like under descr_stat there are family members that belong to each faction, If I just cut and paste them to another family, will it work, or do I have to do something else.

[Atilius]

Basically I have played as the senate, and as long as I don't click senate offices or senate tab, I am good,...

I'll just reiterate that, aside from clicking on the Senate tab, the game will eventually crash if you try to play as the Senate.

Like under descr_stat there are family members that belong to each faction, If I just cut and paste them to another family, will it work, or do I have to do something else.

You can cut and paste starting characters from one Roman faction to another, but:

All starting family members must share the same surname. (There is a way to get around this: if you want your starting characters to have different surnames, see here.) So you must change the surname of any characters you want to transfer from one Roman faction to another.

You also have to add the family member to the family tree of the faction you're moving him to and remove him from the family tree of the faction you're taking him away from. This must be done such that only the faction leader doesn't have a father. Obviously each faction can only have one faction leader, so you'll have to take away the faction leader attribute from a character if you move the faction leader of one faction into another.

There are some gotchas with ages too. Unfortunately, I can't recall what they are. I'd suggest that if you transfer any characters, you make them all sons of the existing faction leader and adjust their ages to reasonable values - at least 16 years younger than the faction leader.

Anyway, moving characters from one faction to another isn't too difficult but you need to be a bit careful. Screw-ups in Data\descr_strat.txt are usually pretty easy to track down if you use the -show_err switch to run the game.

Good luck.

[Makanyane]

Re: family tree, also I think each father can only have four children, to get lots of family members in you'd need faction leader old enough to be grandfather and have some of the other leaders as his sons' sons.

If you do run into problems playing senate there are two ways round it, to make it look like you're playing them but avoid any hardcoding problems (both options result in comprehensive alterations to a lot of files so do make back ups of everything before you attempt either);

a: if you're not using Julii for something else, play as them but change their expanded.txt entries to say Senate, assign Senate logos / flags etc to them, assign Senate units to Julii in export_descr_units.txt, assign Senate skins and sprites to Julii in descr_model_battle.txt, copy Senate unit cards over Julii ones - then it should look as though you're playing Senate but without any harcoded issues.
EDIT: just realised that is what Atilius was refering to in his tutorial:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=63904

b: if you're using all the other factions you could internally rename Senate to something else - I've done this using BI.exe with -mod:my_mod and it works, not sure if it works under RTW.exe though, early versions required senate to be present, so you'd need to be on 1.5 to try it. Apparent result would be same as a. but it leaves the other faction slots available.

[whtdoesitmatta]

Yeah, ok thanks, I just really have a hard time finding my mistakes in descr_stat when I mess up I have no idea what show error is.

Hmm Alright I think make my unified rome, but what about Everything you need to make like Carthaginian elephant cataphracs trainable?

[Makanyane]

To get error messages - right click the desktop shortcut you launch game from - select properties and change the target line to:
"x:\xxxx\Rome - Total War\RomeTW.exe" -show_err
You'll then get error messages for most text editing crashes, for return to menu problems you don't get the message until you exit the program completely. Also it only gives you first error not full list so for descr_strat problems you have to fix first error, delete map.rwm then attempt reload to get next error etc.

To use an existing carthaginian unit for your senate faction:
you need to alter export_descr_buildings.txt - to build out of the same building simply add romans_senate to the recruitment line:

recruit "carthaginian elephant african cataphract" 0 requires factions { carthage, romans_senate, } and resource elephants

In export_descr_units.txt, add romans_senate to the ownership line:

type carthaginian elephant african cataphract
dictionary carthaginian_elephant_african_cataphract ; Armoured Elephants
category cavalry
class heavy
voice_type Heavy_1
soldier carthaginian_big_elephant_crew, 18, 6, 1
mount elephant african cataphract
.................
stat_cost 2, 2780, 590, 280, 420, 2780
ownership carthage, romans_senate

Look up the soldier and mount listed in EDU in descr_model_battle.txt

type				carthaginian_big_elephant_crew
skeleton			fs_big_elephant_rider
indiv_range			40
texture				carthage, data/models_unit/textures/unit_carthage_light_archer_carthage.tga
texture				romans_senate, data/models_unit/textures/unit_carthage_light_archer_carthage.tga
model_flexi		data/models_unit/unit_carthage_archer_high.cas, 15
model_flexi		data/models_unit/unit_carthage_archer_med.cas, 30
model_flexi		data/models_unit/unit_carthage_archer_low.cas, 40
model_flexi		data/models_unit/unit_carthage_archer_lowest.cas, max
model_sprite		carthage, 60.0, data/sprites/carthage_carthaginian_big_elephant_crew_sprite.spr
model_sprite		romans_senate, 60.0, data/sprites/carthage_carthaginian_big_elephant_crew_sprite.spr
model_tri			400, 0.5f, 0.5f, 0.5f

add texture and sprite (if available) lines for the romans_senate using an existing texture / sprite - you can make your own pink versions later if you want.

To find unit cards - and get rid of peasant default symbols you need to have your .pak files unpacked (there's tutorials around for that) find the carthaginian ones you want, make a new folder path to rtw/data/UI/units/romans_senate copy the carthaginian card there and change name to roman_etc and do the same for unit info folder.

Think that's about it, if not try looking for adding new units tutorial and see what you're missing.