Modding disasters

[Dol Guldur]

Yes, interesting - keep us informed.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

He just posted some terrific stuff over there, though storms are dead it seems for sure. Getting earthquakes to work will be nice. He has clearly done more than anyone else with these files and has the best answers we could hope for. Enjoy!

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...25#post1839425

[The Border Reiver]

Thanks for the PM Teleklos. I've done a lot of work on this disaster file in RTW & BI, and now MTW2....literally until it drove me mad. I tried modifying all files such as event titles, event strings, descr_event images none have any effect:(

In RTW1.5 & BI1.6 disasters are bugged as below:

storms - no longer work
floods - yes
earthquakes - yes
volcanoes - yes
plagues - yes
fires - 1/2 work - triggers smoke but has no negative effect
famines - do not work
hordes - do not work
locusts - never implemented
dustbowl - never implemented
brigands - does not work from here

I would suggest not using climates (you'll never see them due to the map size, and don't look for your disasters with toggle_fow, you'll never see them. Minimum event time is 2, 1 does not work. Can work in both seasons. Warning does not work. The descr_disaters txt file in the data folder is redundant and does not work. The disasters.tga file, is redundant and has no bearing.

In MTW 2 Storms work again, very well:thumbsup2

Floods - works either by region name, climate or strat coords. Min scale is better at 5, max scale should never be more than 10 (10 is a 2 region size flood). Does not work in descr_events file. It takes a while, but it is better to name by region. Don't forget the Nile Delta and swampy areas. Does not look good on islands (alaria, sardinia, crete etc)

Volcanoes-works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. Works better and is more dynamic set to an odd number for some reason....19 works really well. I found by actually naming the regions (Campania and Sicilia_Romanus) it is better. By setting at 19 years, sometimes it puffs away with smoke and does not kill or destroy, and sometimes you have a large eruption. Minimum should be 5 and maximum should be 10.

Earthquakes - works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. I actually created a file and never released which drew from earthquake websites based on historical accounts and modern accounts and straart coorded prime earthquake zones (gave up it was a huge job). I did this for the Arthurian Total War mod though. Minimum event here should be 2 for a tremor and 10 maximum. Realistically think of this as the Rictor scale, 1 for small and 10 for huge. Every two years is good, that means if your mod is 400 years, and depending on your region amount (198) each region will have this event twice.

B]Plagues[/B]- works either by region name, climate or strat coords or descr_events file. I cannot stress underusing this. Set it to 2 years, but make the minimum 2 and the maximum 10. Works without summer or winter tags.

I hope this helps, if I remember anything else I'll let you know. Also please please correct me if I have got something wrong.

Also if there is a mod out there that needs a hand let me know!

cheers
BR

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Thanks for posting it here too BR!

I have heard some members say that when floods occur in RTW that they screw up the province - that roads remain, but movement is affected so that it seems like they aren't there, even well after the floods are gone. And no watchtowers can be built. Is this the case with these now? Has anyone else got a definite answer on this in 1.5?

[Dol Guldur]

I am told that it still occurs in BI 1.6, but I have not personally looked into it.

[I of the Storm]

This is still the case in RTW 1.5, I observe it quite regularly. But I read of one case that save & reload fixed the province again. Then again I don't know if save&reload will fix that in all cases. Due to the rare occurance and randomness of the flash flood it's hard to do test runs.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

You can set them to only occur in one province (choose a flat one!) at a certain set of coordinates, and then make them happen every two years. Easy to test that way. (floods I mean). I had some seemingly mixed results. I just posted over in the twc thread on this same topic, so I'll put the posts here too now:

I would add that floods are still bugged from what I see now testing (RTW 1.5 -mod folder build). That stinks. They look cool after all, and I had already researched where they needed to occur on our map: lots of coordinates.

Anyway, they do make it impossible to build watchtowers or forts anywhere in a province that has had a flood at any time in the past. Plus they negate movement bonuses roads give you it appears. For the entire province. Seems like the benefits aren't quite good enough considering the problems. BUT upon exiting the game and reloading it, those problems do go away. I can build the towers and forts and get movement bonuses back upon reloading the campaign (*after* the flood still).

edit: After trying it a second time, the problems don't go away. Gah. This thing is crazy. Would really like to add them, but if this is the case then I'll probably drop them.

And on plagues:

Ok, another post on the matter.

Plagues can be historically set - I get that. But when it comes to them happening in any given city, does this "random" plague that can be set here by region/coordinates/terraintype work *in addition* to the types of plagues that can just "naturally" occur in a city if it is overcrowded? If plagues here are set to 'false', then would they not ever occur in overcrowded and unsanitary cities? It seems odd not to be able to just make them occur occasionally in overcrowded and unsanitary places instead of this random type of plague, which is set by region/coordinates/terraintype.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Thought I'd post it over here too - just posted this over on the TWC thread:

Finally...it looks like the reason that floods are causing these problems is this: they damage the roads structures in the province. These are hinterland buildings, so they should not be damaged, but they get hurt most times there are floods. If you delete map.rwm, then repair the roads, or if you repair the roads, and delete map.rwm, then you will have the movement benefits back, and you will also be able to build forts/towers again in the province. So you could probably play with floods and every few decades delete your map.rwm and "wipe" the bugs out of the provinces that have had floods.

I can understand the movement stuff, but not why building forts/towers is dependent upon that. Oh well. But I tried reloading a few times after floods - that alone isn't doing the trick. It takes deleting map.rwm, and repairing the damage. Before that action you couldn't build forts/towers, but afterwards you can. That's all I can figure out.

edit: Oh, by the way, for volcanoes - you can have "inactive" ones if you want. Just put the red dots on your features map, and they will appear, but then don't put their coordinates or regions into the descr_disasters.txt file. They will just sit there and not erupt, which is nice if you are wanting extinct volcanoes (there are some huge ones in Iran and Ethiopia and Turkey and the Sahara that are extinct, but look nice when included on the map).