The Complete EDB Guide - discussion

[Dol Guldur]

I have just posted a new guide at:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=50439

This thread has been created to discuss this Guide. If you have anything to add, correct, suggest etc. then please do so. Let's make this the best source, the complete source, of "everything EDB" so that none of us need ever go searching around every forum's archives ad nauseum!

The Guide does not seek to define ways in which the information can be used, only to provide that information. So, although we might use certain aspects of it to create a ZoR system (for example) those implications and applications are beyond the scope of this Guide. This file provides only the raw data.

Your input is much appreciated and anticipated.

[Epistolary Richard]

Excellent, Dol Guldur. If you haven't already, this is another thread talking about some of the limitations of bonuses and recruitment conditionals in edh, you may want to pull the pertinent info out of that and incorporate it into your guide.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=43442
.

[Dol Guldur]

Thanks Epistolary,

Yes, I have read that one - I will think about it; problem is I seem to get conflicting results and I wonder if the patch 1.2 was installed in these tests? Core buildings certainly can have building_present_min_level requirements when I try...the only thing I don't like when you use this requirement for recruits is that the building scroll adds the building level to the end of the text for the effect.

Has anyone found a way around that? More testing needed on both these counts I think.

I will need to test negative "bonuses" as well, I've also noticed that some effects work when the word "bonus" (the second occurence) is removed and will need to work out how it alters the benefit (if it does).

[Dol Guldur]

Quote:
Building Blocks - Requirements

The first line states the requirements necessary to be satisfied in order for the building to be available for construction. All factions reside within the 6 hard-coded cultures, and so this particular building can be built by all factions. Any combination of factions/cultures can be listed. Both visible and hidden resources can be used as requirements as may "building_present_min_level x y" where x is the building type and y the level of that building type. This latter simply requires a certain building to be present in that settlement before the practice_field can become available for construction. The connector "and" can be used to compound requirements, for example:


But strangely enough I cannot specify individual factions (in the requirements section) and get differing descriptions/names for those buildings *within* a single culture *specifically* for buildings present at the start of the game. If you want to build them after the start of the game, it will recognize those different variations, but not for those present at the start (it also loses their graphics). Instead it shows the generic "warning" message and I get (ROMAN) listed in the tooltip. This problem can be solved by just listing the culture (instead of the individual factions) for the the 'required factions' but then that means all factions in that culture can build it. I've had this happen in multiple complexes.

I might also add that negative capabilities vary in effect. Some trade ones do work (in the negative) and some others work in that they reduce positives, but won't carry over into the negative (happiness, loyalty, etc.), but others don't appear to work in the negative at all as far as I have seen (construction cost and time ones at least).

I've taken the liberty of transferring your words to the right place :)

Did you look at the tutorial on making building names/factions specific? I did not notice the effect you bring up, but I well may have tested it under the culture and nto the faction as far as the edb building requirement line is concerned. Has anyone else noticed this? I will see if I can get time to test it and look into it soon.

Regarding your latter point - no, I cannot get negatives to work here but I guess the workaround on this is to set the actual construction times and costs as per the lowest faction/culture and then apply bonuses to all factions in possession of higher costs/buildtimes through an effect stated in all their core_buildings.

Dol Guldur.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I will need to test negative "bonuses" as well, I've also noticed that some effects work when the word "bonus" (the second occurence) is removed and will need to work out how it alters the benefit (if it does).

Which ones have you had success with in removing the second 'bonus'? I'd be very interested in knowing.
I *think* I've gotten negative population growth to work only as far as reducing positive population growth bonuses. But at least it's something.

[Dol Guldur]

I've made no tests yet on removing the stand-alone "bonus"; some time ago I know it accepted it and produced a result, but mroe recently I got an error on another effect by doing this. It seems some may accept it and others not.

Ah, more testing...

[Dol Guldur]

After some basic testing I've added this to the Guide...

==============

Notes on format...

Effects should be coded with a stand-alone "bonus" added before the integer even when there is a "bonus" in the effect's name itself. E.G. population_growth_bonus bonus 1. However, population_growth_bonus bonus +1 also works. Sometimes omitting the "bonus" does work but can cause problems - for example, the building scroll may not display the actual bonus (even though it works), and no negative number can be introduced because the engine looks for either an integer (not a number with a "+" or "-" before it in this case) or the word "bonus".

Negative effects...

population_growth_bonus bonus -5 displayed the expected -2.5 in the building scroll but seemed not to affect the settlement population growth indicator on the settlement scroll.

==========

Bottom line: use bonus; but it does make you wonder why it's there at all? Was there a "penalty" at one time or abandoned?

UPDATE: I meant effects with the "_bonus" element in their name take the stand-alone bonus too. I've added this to explain the other effects...


Farming_level and the armour and various weapon effects sometimes carry the stand-alone "bonus" and sometimes do not.

Trade_fleet, mine_resource, road_level, and the games, races and the four defensive effects carry no stand-alone "bonus" in the EDB file.

[Simetrical]

Nice compilation. Most of it I knew, some I didn't (like the faction_capability thing). A few points (well, okay, at least nine):

1) I've heard it said that farming_level bonuses on non-farm buildings don't work unless a farm exists with that level or higher. So a +1 farming_level bonus on a temple does nothing until you build Land Clearance. Interestingly, the farms have their bonuses stated without the "bonus" tag, while the farming temples have it. Could this be related somehow? And what triggers the visible farming development you can see on the strategic map?

2) What does building_factions do? What's the syntax for building_present?

3) Are the limits you state for capabilities the actual limits, or just the limits used in the vanilla files?

4) Have you discovered that the races/games number means anything? I don't think races 1 is any different from races 3, but I'm not totally sure.

5) Negative values, in general, work only to reduce an existing bonus, not to create a new penalty. For instance, a negative law bonus will offset a positive law bonus, but not result in a law penalty to public order or income. A negative trade bonus, however, will reduce income by itself, since there's practically always a trade bonus present on the settlement screen (I think). Likewise tax. I don't know if this is always true, but it holds at least some of the time, AFAIK.

6) The factions { slave, } requirement appears to never be true, as far as I can tell. Rebels use their subfaction to fulfill EDB.txt requirements.

7) The functions of some of the bonuses might be useful to explain:

• Each point in law gives +3% to gross income (farming + trade + taxes + mines), but that bonus is limited to the amount of corruption (see here).
• Each point in farming_level increases the base farming level of the region by one, which increases growth by 0.5% (IIRC) plus income by either 0 or 80 at normal difficulty with normal harvests (see here).
• I've heard that taxable_income_bonus and trade_level_bonus increase taxes and trade by 1% per point.

8) Are you going to incorporate anything from Quietus' guide?

9) I think the max number of hidden resources is 63, not 64.

-Simetrical

[Dol Guldur]

Thank you for that useful post.

It is much appreciated.

I've discovered a couple more things myself too - but I cannot update or attend to this just yet as I am too busy :(

The ranges shown are r:tw vanilla ranges.


I will get back to this when I can. Once again, thank you - these are the kind of responses we need!

[Dol Guldur]

I've yet to update the Guide, but here are some more things I've been testing...

modifications to buildings' construction times and costs:

The "other" category *does* extend past civil buildings because it includes recruitment buildings. It does not extend to religious buildings (temples) but it seems to include *all* others. What purpose then does the "construction_time_bonus_military" (and its cost counterpart) fulfil? It seems to have no effect.

I also noticed that an odd extra "10%" bonus to construction cost occured when setting the construction *time* bonus high. It occured when setting the time bonus to over 100, but also on 25%. Most weird. This changed when I changed the bonuses so I don't think it was an external effect.

[dark]

Hi, im new to the org, and want first to thank dol gur for making this tutorial, it really helped me a lot.
I think i found something today while messing with the files:
the faction_capability thing, while very useful, apparently has some setbacks.
i tried to no avail add building conditionals to it but it always ctd on the turn the building with the faction_capability is finished. For example:
trying to do a building that will enable the training of a certain unit in all faction settlements

faction_capability
{
recruit "roman legionary cohort i" 0 requires factions { roman, } and building_present_min_level barracks_roman militia_barracks
}

(this is for rtr by the way)

i may have misunderstood how the faction_capability works, but since the game loads fine and dont accuse any syntax error, i think im right

dark89

[Dol Guldur]

I am not sure if I have tested recruitment in the faction-wide section; nor do I see a need for it. What you are doing can be done through building the appropriate level of building in each settlement, and would only take one line of code under the normal (settlement-wide) capability.

If you want to make a certain unit available in all regions when you capture a certain building in a specific region then there is no need to place any further requirements. The unit should become available regardless of the buildings in any settlement - and, besides, telling the game to look for a certain level of building may be causing the CTD : where does it look, after all?

Perhaps you could let me know what you are trying to acheive?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Do we know exactly what the loyalty bonus does for buildings? I think public order benefits are assumed, but I don't suppose anyone has done much testing of this, have they?

[Dol Guldur]

I have tested it under a number of basic conditions and although it reports a public order bonus (with no "due to" qualifier) it does absolutely nothing to the stats or displays in the settlement scroll details.

It does nto affect public order at all. It does not lessen corruption. It doesn't do anything! (tested under BI 1.6)

Kali: I've never had 24 building threads for a single faction so I cannot tel you of any limits. Sorry. I've had about 16 I think. That works.

[Kali]

Kali: I've never had 24 building threads for a single faction so I cannot tel you of any limits. Sorry. I've had about 16 I think. That works.[/QUOTE]


Cheers Dol Guldur,
I've made a mod that adds nine new buildings to any RTW game, But I've been testing it on RTR6.3 with DMC which has a lot of extra building threads (and is probably bugged as i've had some strange issues with whited out UI cards) However the limit seems to be 24, as after that they disappear of the browser but reappear if a building is destroyed. Might be a useful bit of info for your guide or maybe not... Excellent guide BTW

[LestaT]

 dockyard requires factions { carthaginian, eastern, parthia, greek, egypt, } and hidden_resource major_port or factions { romans_julii, } and building_present_min_level barracks_roman muster_field and hidden_resource major_port 

Just would like to check. Are these lines correct ? It didn't caused CTD, but haven't tested it yet.

Base on RTR Gold, I wanted to make for roman to have that level must need another building built.

[nikolai1962]

Those kind of conditions have never worked for me. The only kind that have, have been of the form:

requires factions { a, b, c, } or factions { x, y, z, } and a_condition

i.e the first set of factions has no other conditions other than the factions.

[alpaca]

I don't know if I remember correctly but when I once tested this I think the game took all that's to the right of the "or" as one statement and the condition directly on the left of the "or" as the other statement.

[LestaT]

Those kind of conditions have never worked for me. The only kind that have, have been of the form:

requires factions { a, b, c, } or factions { x, y, z, } and a_condition

i.e the first set of factions has no other conditions other than the factions.

So, if doing that only factions x, y, z, have the condition ? I guess I have to do other means, by making the x, y, z, still be able to build but not having the intended bonus.

Something like what we call here , a white elephant project.

Thanks.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Just in case this was missed or not mentioned elsewhere, it can possibly help a situation that I haven't seen many folks mention. nikolai1962 (magnificent bastard) figured out a way to get around this nasty error in 1.5:


(typed out for search engine catching):
Script Error in data/export_descr_buildings.txt

Building DB error - faction X has gap in building prior to X (unavailable at level zero)

Here is his explanation - you may chuckle at how he fixed it - edited a little by me for use by a non-EB audience and a few other clarifications (he hasn't been on the site in a few days - hope he forgives my meddling ):

This error message is the annoying 1.5 thing where the parser doesn't like breaks in faction requirements across building levels.

for example: levels b1 b2 b3

b1 require greek, roman
b2 requires greek
b3 requires roman

Even if b2 and b3 are set up as optional upgrades from b1 (which works in game, and worked without error in 1.2) the initial parser doesn't get it and throws an error message, stopping the game from successfully loading.

You can suppress the error by having a "not" condition somewhere as that throws an error too but it isn't caught by the show_err mechanism so it cancels the other one out (no idea why).

In limited cases where the a *break* building level has no conditions you can get round it with:

b1 require greek, roman
b2 requires greek or roman and not_here (not_here being a hidden resource we have in EB when we don't want buildings to be buildable - as it never appears in a province)
b3 requires roman

So he has a way to stop the error message from occurring, basically by introducing another "mistake" (as EDB doesn't like "and not" requirements - they mess up the building browser and it won't read the building). In this case, two wrongs certainly do make a right.

[Makanyane]

Lots of brownie points if anyone can explain this one. Based on tutorial we thought using:

academy requires factions { eastern, roman, } and hidden_resource sughdian

etc. should disable academy buildings - as sughdian isn't in our regions.txt

two of us were at different stage of modding text files, one found above line worked in EDB other one using same line found it didn't disable building. After many hours copy'ing and pasting sections of working / non-working EDB have found:

Within mod (without changing any other files) EDB line;

academy requires factions { eastern, roman, } and hidden_resource sughdian

works to disable academy buildings if line

city_plumbing requires factions { barbarian, roman, }

is not modded within EDB,

if the above line is ammended to;

city_plumbing requires factions { barbarian, x, roman, }

and here 'x,' can be literally 'x,' or 'faction,' or 'culture,' then the and hidden_resource requirement for the academy is disabled and the roman cultures can build them in any province again.

These appear to be from entirely different building trees and I can't think of anything that would link them. Help!!!

[Renaissance37]

The romans have the great advantage of the highways. I wanted to mod the game so as to start with highways in every single province. I figure this should not be too complicated. Can someone point me in the right direction as to how to do this (I think it is in the descr_strat.txt file). Thanks.

[Charge]

	{
		type defenses wooden_pallisade
	}
	building
	{
		type hinterland_roads highways
	}
	building
	{

add/retype in each city

they will be of roman culture though, unless you'll change edb and ui..a bit more complicated :)

[Renaissance37]

	{
		type defenses wooden_pallisade
	}
	building
	{
		type hinterland_roads highways
	}
	building
	{

add/retype in each city

they will be of roman culture though, unless you'll change edb and ui..a bit more complicated :)

..And this is done in the descr strat file under maps/imperial campaign? Does it need to be changed in any other files also? I did this first (for Arretrium) and it still displayed the "roads" on the map, not "highways".

[Squid]

Did you alse remove the entry for the roads?

[Renaissance37]

Did you alse remove the entry for the roads?

So what should the code look like?

[Red Spot]

are there any sort of negative effects DG, something to look after ..

I've got an interest in this .. er .. feature though somewhere I wont use it untill some proper testing or confirmation its perfectly safe to use as something tells me this has its side-effects, though thats just "a feeling" ...


G

[Aradan]

No side-effects spotted so far in FATW (we have been using this since summer and added an extra 'layer' of complexity two-three months ago). And I can assure you DG *tests* stuff really well. ;) What does your "feeling" tell you the problem might be?

[Red Spot]

somehow the AI tripping over the fact that the building allows recruitment of X unit though it effectivly doesnt .... basicly you're fooling the AI (and player) in a way, wich could say for instance prevent them recruiting as much men as they would if the units that is available is available ...
An other would be it might screw up armour/weapon-lvl's in a way you'd have to "mod around" those issues, didnt really have any realistic doubts its a problem though I felt like *testing* once I first read about it in the guide.

Thanks for the reply and I hope you dont mind if I do have a looksee at some of FATW's features when I get around to certain tweaks ... ;)


G

[Squid]

I was digging around in exe with a hex editor, and found reference to a conditional port. I've tested port and it returns true in any coastal region. It works for both building conditions (i.e. to determine if a building can be built) and as a capability condition.

EDIT: The only thing I haven't tested is if it will return true in a coastal region that doesn't have a white pixel for a port in map_regions.tga.