Modding the turns/years

[Barbarossa82]

Someone over at TWCenter reports that M2TW's descr_strat.txt has an option to show dates as turns, that can presumably be turned off (a la RTW Alexander). Which makes me wonder, would it be possible through simple editing to remove the phenomenon of characters aging 1 year every 4 years?

Ideally, I'd imagine that the descr_strat file tells the game how many years the campaign spans, and how many turns that has to take, and then the game works out how many turns make up a year. So we could just mod descr_strat to bring characters' aging back into line with the actual progression of dates? I sure hope so, even if it means reducing the number of years spanned by 225 turns.

[Polemists]

I just prefer to see my turns as years for purely aesthic reasons. Still I'm sure if you give the modders some time they can keep the same number of turns and make generals aging more realistic.

[econ21]

Modding questions belong in the modding forum.

[alpaca]

Since the game wasn't released yet and I didn't get it yet I can't tell you that ;) But I guess so.

[Barbarossa82]

Modding questions belong in the modding forum.

Whoops, thanks econ21

[[DnC]]

Alright I might not completely understand you, but there's an option called "timescale 2.00" (<- default). 2.00 means 1 turn equals 2 years and by putting it at 1.00 you'll get; 1 turn = 1 year. If you go any lower it might crash the game. But putting it at 0.50 or 0.25 might give you 2 turns a year or 4 respectively. However I fear this will not work. 1.00 definitely works!

By deleting the line "show_date_as_turns" it might revert back to showing years.

I'm going to check a couple of things out and report back later.

Note: Changing the descr_strat.txt means you'll have to restart your game. Just incase you weren't aware of that.

First edit: Deleting the line "show_date_as_turns" works! It shows the years!
Now I'm going to try out setting the "timescale 2.00" to "timescale 0.50".

Second edit: Setting timescale at 0.50 works to!!! 2 turns for 1 year.

Characters age properly. 2 turns are needed for the characters to age by 1 year.

Last edit: Setting timescale at 0.25 doesn't work properly. No crashes or anything, but characters age each 2 turns, but the years are 4 turns a year. Plus you'll get summer and winter twice. Inadvisable.

[PROMETHEUS]

have you tried may be 0.3 or 0.2? There was a script for four turns a year may be it could be tweaked for MTW2....

[Epistolary Richard]

Second edit: Setting timescale at 0.50 works to!!! 2 turns for 1 year.

Characters age properly. 2 turns are needed for the characters to age by 1 year.

Last edit: Setting timescale at 0.25 doesn't work properly. No crashes or anything, but characters age each 2 turns, but the years are 4 turns a year. Plus you'll get summer and winter twice. Inadvisable.

Some good work there. What I think you'll probably find is that character aging & seasons and the number of years per turn are completely separate.

- Years per turn are softcoded and able to be set in the timescale line in descr_strat so we could have a 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 50 whatever years per turn.

- Character aging & seasons, however, are instead treated as they were in Rome - with a summer/winter/summer/winter/summer etc. order and the characters aging every winter (as they did in Rome).

This means that if you set timescale to 0.5 you have essentially restored it back to the way it was in Rome.

To change the order of the seasons (to something like summer/summer/summer/winter for a proper 4 turns per year- and therefore also the character aging - you're going to have to use Myrddraal's scripts in the campaign_script file. But before you do that, test to make sure the date and season console commands still work.

If they do, have a look at Myrddraal's releases and see if they still work, but place the script in the campaign_script file rather than in the advice folder:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=52168
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=44648

[[DnC]]

I used 1.00 but I just found out on the TWC fora that 1.00 means two turns are needed for a character to age by one, which I hadn't checked out. I was under the impression characters aged every turn by two years at the default. But apparently I was wrong Should have put two and two together. Doh!

Now I'm going to use 0.50.

4 turns per year might be a bit too much. Myrddraal's scripts might be a really good thing if there were a high and late era alá MTW1. Which I don't think would be all too complicated to make. Just two new provincial campaigns are needed with updated territory holdings, characters, armies and such.

[repman]

the 4tpy script with 3/1 seasons works fine with MTW II
but 2000 turns ...

repman

[shifty157]

the 4tpy script with 3/1 seasons works fine with MTW II
but 2000 turns ...

repman

Really? You just used the exact copy from RTW and placed it in MTW2? I didnt think it would be so easy.

[vaultdweller]

- Character aging & seasons, however, are instead treated as they were in Rome - with a summer/winter/summer/winter/summer etc. order and the characters aging every winter (as they did in Rome).

That is correct. I have my timescale set to 1.0, and characters still age every two turns, thus, I am 10 years into the campaign, but my leader has aged only 5 years.

[AlJabberwock]

In relation to a question that was brought up at TWC and was brought to full fruition in my mind when someone here at the org asked an innocent question about merchants...

I find the ratio an interesting dimension for levelling, but it also has the power to be destabilizing if all aspects of it are not taken into account. Further, there are some most entertaining possibilities and also pitfalls if one is not wary of what can of wormholes they are opening... to wit:

1) The TWC thread discusses as this one does that tweaking the number of turns can correct the Lazarus-like aging quirk because aging is tied to TURNS, not DATE...however, you can also increase or invert the aging process by changing the ratio...
2) As it has been made quite clear, the game can be forshortened or telescoped in number of turns because the game end is determined by DATE not TURNS.
3) While events will still happen on the right DATE because they are DATE determined, not TURN determined, building rates are TURN determined, not DATE determined! This means that buildings are finished "faster" relative to the date they are begun and in relation to the end of the game where the new ratio is < vanilla. This could have a deep impact on the play balance of the game especially at .50

This is the tip of the iceberg.

4) I have been thinking about the manner in which other items are fixed by TURN instead of DATE. Not only would buildings need to be looked at for balance if there were a manipulation of the year/turn ratio, but so too would the impact of more unit production, and also money surpluses. Since a surplus is based on the end of a turn and unit production is also, increasing the number of turns significantly ups the quantity of these two resources in relation to the end of the game and given dates. While your merchantmen will now die more often, you will also be earning cash faster per year and build up experience more than once and rather quickly. While it will still be the same number of TURNS to get somewhere on foot or by boat, this will also happen faster in terms of historical dates and the end of the game...

A .50 game would mean 900 game turns compared to 225, and surely there are other things that fall in category 4 such as the impact of more crusades or jihads, more conversions and so forth I have not thought of...

Al Jabberwock

[Turpitudo]

This is the tip of the iceberg.

4) I have been thinking about the manner in which other items are fixed by TURN instead of DATE. Not only would buildings need to be looked at for balance if there were a manipulation of the year/turn ratio, but so too would the impact of more unit production, and also money surpluses. Since a surplus is based on the end of a turn and unit production is also, increasing the number of turns significantly ups the quantity of these two resources in relation to the end of the game and given dates. While your merchantmen will now die more often, you will also be earning cash faster per year and build up experience more than once and rather quickly. While it will still be the same number of TURNS to get somewhere on foot or by boat, this will also happen faster in terms of historical dates and the end of the game...

A .50 game would mean 900 game turns compared to 225, and surely there are other things that fall in category 4 such as the impact of more crusades or jihads, more conversions and so forth I have not thought of...

The biggest problem occuring here is, that you can have your best units at about 1140 (or even earlier, if you really want to) if you are using the .50 time scale, making it 120 played turns and still 780 left. As it is no problem to change the descr_events.txt in order to get the events earlier (e.g. black powder invention, I don't want to wait for the next 400 following turns while running around in full plated soldiers) by halfing the counters it would not make sense doing this, because than you could leave everything as it were before.
As M2TW does not have its descr_*.txt (beside the campaign files) in its data folder or elsewhere (like in RTW), I wanted to ask if anyone knows how to extract the .pack files in the packs folder as I guess these files are included there. Just renaming the extensions in order to extract them with a commen extractor does not work. So you could change the building times for buildings for having a more realistic and longer game experience.

[ihategamespy]

So far theres building times for:

units
buildings

that have to be changed. Im guesssing multiplying the building time by 4 in a .50 game would make the most sense. anything else?

Should the amount of money received per turn from buildings be reduced by x4 in a .50 game also? Is that possible to change? Is money received per turn or per year? Also, what other forms of income are there and can they also be reduced by x4 if they are received per turn. Im guessing there is a base tax rate
from each province. is there upkeep costs for units or buildings? those also will have to be reduced x4.

And lastly, could someone explain again the diff between a 1.00 game and a .50 game. thanx.

edit: just thought of another one: movement rates. although maybe that one could be modded to have a more historical feel rather than pure division by 4.

Im thinking of civ 4 and the options they have of making shorter or longer games with fewer or more corresponding turns, with discoveries , etc being balanced for each one. Too bad a similar system couldnt be worked out, although at least we can do it by hand here.

[[DnC]]

I wouldn't touch the finances as they are balanced as it is. Increasing the number of turns does not change how much money you receive, because you still get the same amount of money and have the same amount of costs each turn. If you reduce it by 4x as said above, you'd be deadbroke within a few turns unless you disband enough units that you get a positive cashflow and your armies will be even smaller then they already are. You'll get a very sluggish campaign. Lots of 'end turn' 'end turn' 'end turn' 'end turn' until you can do something.

[Turpitudo]

.50 : 2 turns = 1 year; characters age normaly
1 : 1 turn = 1 year; characters age 1 life year per two turns

I agree on not changing income, so can still have a lot of troops. I would not change movement rate too as this would slow the game to much down. Imagine that your troops need a full year just to get half way over the alps is too much. Increasing the building times of roads also to factor 4 would also seam a little to much. 2 times should be sufficent. Maybe a longer waiting time for jihads and crusades would make sense. There were 4 in the historical 13. century, it seems the possibility of 20 per century in the game is a little bit to high.

[ihategamespy]

for the 1.00 game, is there any way of making characters age 1 year for each turn/year (for a 450 turn game, 1 year summer, next year winter) or is that not possible.

[Turpitudo]

No, it is not possible to do this. The aging is hard coded and can not be changed.

[big_boss120]

SO which setting is the best??

0.5 year/turn or the default??

[SirRethcir]

Of course the default. ;)
Else you have to rework the hole campaign, thus making a complete mod.

[troymclure]

Just like to note that even though i prefer the actual aging achieved by changing to .5 the game plays better at 2.
Leave it on .5 and i doubt you'll see gunpowder before you take over the world. Still nice too have seasons though...

[GeWee]

I've never liked having cannons in these types of games which is why I restarded campaigns in both Shogun and Medieval once I got access to gunpowder.
I've changed to 2 turns per year and now I'm worried that gunpowder will come a lot sooner.. Or is the access to gunpowder based on an event a certain year?

[Turpitudo]

Blackpowder comes between 1240 and 1250, but you can change or delete it in the descr_events.txt. The numbers by date indicate not turn number but ingame date, e.g. for blackpowder invention "date 160 170" would mean 1080 +160 or 170 years making it 1240 to 1250. You can deactivate it by putting a ; in front of the three lines of this event.
As you can see the events are assigned to the actual game date, not the turn number.

[GeWee]

Great, thanks. I don't want to deactivate it completely, just be able to play without gunpowder for a long time. :)

[Lord Condormanius]

[QUOTE='[DnC]']
[b] Deleting the line "show_date_as_turns" works! It shows the years!
Now I'm going to try out setting the "timescale 2.00" to "timescale 0.50".

Second edit: Setting timescale at 0.50 works to!!! 2 turns for 1 year.

Characters age properly. 2 turns are needed for the characters to age by 1 year.
[QUOTE]
Yes. This is awesome. It works great.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

has anyone noticed any problems with events?

event	historic 	first_windmill
date	50

event	historic	earthquake_in_aleppo
date	58
position	257, 73

event	historic	science_alchemy_book
date	64

when checking out the event files i noticed that the 'date' is set to turns rather than an actual date... with the 'two turns per year' thing going on, i was wondering if anyone got the events earlier than they should be... and if that is so then the scripts might also have to be changed or we'll be getting early mongol invasions/eras...

[Turpitudo]

Well, you get the events always at the same date, but on different turn numbers if you change the turn-date relation. E.g. First Windmill always happens on 1130, so with 2 ypt you get it after 25 turns and with 0,5 ypt you get it after 100 turns and so on.

The code makes it clear with a disclaimer in the beginning:

event descriptions are followed by a date (year as offset from starting date) or a date range and either a list of positions, or list of regions

[GiantMonkeyMan]

yeh silly me.... i was looking at it again after i posted and realised my mistake i really should read all those disclaimers but i'm too lazy

thanks
GMM

[zarkis]

The problem with changing turns is that you will reach the end of the tech tree much earlier (with the exception of gunpowder units, which are tied to an historic event), because population growth is based on turns, not years. So you will have a metropolis after 100 years (just an estimation) if you go with the 1 turn/one year approach instead of having one after 200 years. Doubling build times will not help that much; you will face overpopulated cities with no way to control unrest/squalor. You will have to lower population growth for each region, which may lead to other problems (draining your population when recruiting huge units, if unit strength still gets deducted from your population count in MTW2).