Start with Hannibal?

[theroyalwe]

I'm kind of obsessed with Hannibal right now and the Carthiginian history. Is there a way to mod the game to make is possible to start with Hannibal at the beggining of the Karthadast campaign? Or atleast change the name of one of the starting generals to Hannibal? I'd like to try and march Hannibal into Northern Italy just like in real history..

I know this has been mentioned several times in other forums, and the answer is usually "it's a small possiblity that he will show up, and you can make him a great general". But it would be really cool if I could start with him as one of my generals..

[QwertyMIDX]

You'd be having him as a general 30 years before he was born...

[theroyalwe]

You'd be having him as a general 30 years before he was born...

Yeah, I just started to realize that when I realized how realistic and historically correct EB really is... Why would I want to mess that up by having Hannibal march into Rome when he was just a twinkle in his fathers eye? Thanks for the reply.. If I really want to play as Hannibal, I should look into a whole seperate mod.. I'll post this in a different forum, but does anyone by any chance know of one? Thanks.

[Eduorius]

why u dont wait until 214 bc, like I did? Name was different, but he was a son of Hamilcar Barca anyway. That was my greatest campaign.

[theroyalwe]

why u dont wait until 214 bc, like I did? Name was different, but he was a son of Hamilcar Barca anyway. That was my greatest campaign.

Yeah, that's a good idea.. His name doesn't have to be Hannibal.. I mean heck, what if Hamilcar decided to name him Marca or something.. Marca Barca... lol

I think I'll do that.. I wouldn't want a whole seperate mod anyway, because it doesn't get any more realistic then EB.

[alatar]

Why not just script him in?

[Foot]

because the events that led up to his birth and rise to power were not decided in 272, and we don't railroad the player into a history. What if his father dies before he could have fathered hannibal, it would just be silly.

Basically it is a policy of eb not to spawn historical generals in who were not alive in some form in 272

Foot

[theroyalwe]

Why not just script him in?

I perfectly understand why the EB team wouldn't script him in because of their policy, but is it possible to script him in through a mini-mod of EB?

[bovi]

Yes.

[theroyalwe]

Yes.

Alright, well maybe I'll do the research and make my own.. Or if someone else is nice enough to make one for me.. Maybe to have Hannibal spawn in a certain year when he started his military career or something..

[theroyalwe]

I did some research, and it looks like scripting is a little more complicated than I thought.. Atleast with a modded version of RTW.. All the tutorials I have read are used with Vanilla RTW and I can't get those to work with EB..

Any advice from you scripting experts? Maybe someone can atleast point me in the right direction?

[Jarardo]

It wouldn't be accurate. But if you want to do it, who's to say you shouldn't?

This will make Hannibal one of your starting generals. Hannibal should already be one of the names assigned to the faction. So you need to go into your descr_strat file, which is in data/worlds/imperial campaign???... I can't remember, and I don't have any RTW install on my comp right now... Anyway look for it around there somewhere.

First off backup that desc_strat file. Now open it, you'll have to find which faction is actually the carthaginians, since EB changed some of them around...I would do a search for that(egypt maybe?). Anyway, under the carthaginian section, there will be an area with some family members names, find one that you want to be Hannibal, and change the name to Hannibal. There will be some other stats next to his name: his age, and some traits for instance, you can change those there too, to make him into a badass.

You may want to do some reading of the traits file to understand the ICE and...STL ratings, along with the other new traits you may want to give him.

I hope this doesn't seem too vague, as I said before, I don't have an install right now, so this is all from memory, if I had an install, I wouldn't mind helping you out more.

Hope it works!

-Jarardo

[bovi]

Maybe you'll get some help from this (non-tested and probably gamebreaking code).

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal
and I_TurnNumber = <number>
spawn_army
faction egypt
character Hannibal Barca, named character, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 16, x <coordinate>, y <coordinate>
console_command give_trait "Hannibal Barca" some_trait
console_command give_trait "Hannibal Barca" another_trait
...
end_monitor

[theroyalwe]

Thanks everyone for the replies.. I'll give those a shot.