Questions about Modding

[Doux]

If more persons have questions, feel free to post them here too.

I have a few:

1. What represents the Knight squad, Knight.UNIT or knight guard.UNIT ? In units.txt, both are units. Is the Marshal actually calculated apart from his surrounding guards or is that obsolete already?
2. Those .UNIT files are partly obsolete and overridden by Units.TXT, is it right that changing the image dir's doesn't work? I changed the castle_guard [town guard] images to that of the heavy archer's, but that didn't work at all.
3. Econst.in2 - does the SquadsNearbyRange represent the reinforcement outer limits?

[Ciaran]

I´ve got one, too, though not a technical one at this point:
I´ve seen (in the mod descriptions) that some people build their mods on the basis or using components of others. Is that generally accepted or frowned upon here? I´m asking because (if I ever come so far) I´ve seen a lot pieces of work in different mods that I´d like to combine and I know that in other forums using other mods for your own is somewhat less than accepted. And I kind of like having my head where Nature put it :wink: so I thought I´d better ask.

[Elvain]

Doux:
1. I don't know, I thght that one represents knight's cavalry unit and the second kinght's town guard unit. But I might be wrong.
2. .UNIT files are needed for "creating" a new unit
3. I think it more probably represents range where the army meets enemy army. Reinforcements are recieved from the entire province, but if there is a possible reinforcement very close, but in the bordering province, there is no chance to get reinforcement

to Ciaran:
we share our work here... and I think I am not speaking only for myslef...
My mapchanges f.i. are offered separately not only for users of my mod, but mostly to other modders to use it.
The same goes with everything I have done. But I personaly try to get inspiration and make at my own balancing changes to make the copied parts work the best with my own changes

[Doux]

Yes, you can of course use other peoples' mods. If it's a very rare or ingeneous idea don't hesitate to thank the creator though, like Elvain, for his very handy mapchanges.
This is due to the nature of modding too - it's only changing a constant here, a thingy there..there are no real *personal* things created (except some images maybe, like my Fortified Watch).

Thanks for the information Elvain!

I immediately found more:

1. religion of provinces is described in realm_religion.ini (maps/europe/map) but also in regions_800/1000/1200 .INI (maps/europe/knights). Which file does actually work?
2. realms_climate does not define the climates of ALL realms. Why is that?

I'm currently completely rewriting all those kingdom/realm/unit training files in aplhabetical and complete/consistent order to make future modding more easy.

[Elvain]

it's easy.
1. realm_religion defines "culture" of a realm=province, that means how does the castle and buildings look like, while regions_XXX defines which religions is there "politicaly" what means: if a province is held by catholic kingdom, it has automaticaly catholic religion, but if you want it to have some other, you can change it here.
2. don't know, have never tried

[Ciaran]

Thanks for the answer.
Now, as always, a new question has arisen, as I´ve taken a look into the trainunit file. I´d like to make units available in certain time periods, for example no Vikings in High or Late and Men at Arms, Crossbows and Halberdiers only from High on etc. I wonder whether that´s possible and if so, how? Dito changing the National units from era to era.
Something else, what about a decrease of Nostalgia/a conversion to another religion over time? If I capture a province, it seems to keep its nostalgia/religion for eternity unless I put a cleric there to assimilate them (which, in case of the religion is deadly for the cleric so far).
Then there is that matter of unit upkeep ( Is that possible to make? That a unit costs money not only to get it in the first place but to keep it as well?), exhaustion due to marching (I seem to be able to march my marshal from Saxony to Greece without a rest in between and he´s still bot top morale :rolleyes: ), the army food consumption... Perhaps I´d better do a forum search, chances are I´ll find most of my questions answered.

[Doux]

Great, thanks!

I think the climates are obsolete then. I'll see if I can change the Sahara to snow or something :P

[Doux]

Ciaran - There are various ways to achieve that. I reckon you understand the file already for a bit.

If you want to do it kingdom specific - you can alter one kingdom's units per "age" such as Sicily is done (and Napoli and many more):

AC Sicily hi italy
B Sicily hi italy

I think that AC refers to 800/1200 and B to 1000, so that it would be possible to make an A-B-C row. This works for kingdoms and realms.

[Ciaran]

So that´s what this abc stuff is for...
I´v glanced at the file, it wasn´t quite what I had expected, and I found fairly tough to work my way through. But now I think I have my lay of the land more or less.

[Laudan]

You know all, if you play long time you have in every town your full garrison(longbowmens and so on), and the AI have with your garrison proplems. I think we give the AI a good cheat. Imagine, in your town you cannot make garrision, but only the AI can make garrision. After the following change you must now have one or two knights more for protect your towns.In the old age have every knight his own provinces.Your knight have only the garrision townguards. I want give the Ai a small change to win.

open defs/Screens/PlayWnd/bottom_wnd_castle_world


filter = garrison

id = 12000

small_w = 31
small_h = 31
small_rows = 0(change this from 2 to 0)
small_cols = 3
small_dx = 5
small_dy = 6
small_x = 0
small_y = 0
[/squads_garrison]

After this change you cannot make garrison, but the AI can. In the moment i am testing this new feature, and i hope the AI take all my towns.

[Elvain]

does this disable the garrison only to the player or also to the AI (coz in my mod AI has strong garisons and withut them, conquersing would be very boring...)

also, is it possible to limit the player´s garison to 3 units and enable AI to have all 6 slots?

great idea indeed :go:

[Elvain]

btw, anybody knows if there is anywhere defined the time before the AI makes heirs?

During my actual testing when I was watching how do the AI kingdoms perform withuot player´s interventions I discovered that one of the biggest problems of AI is discontinuity of his dynasty. During the testing AI was unable to make a male heir for 6 generations in the line and then the dynasty lasted only about 3 generations and then the same problem :sad:

it is caused by the fact that the only way AI makes marriages is a peace treaty - AI doesn´t use option "offer" - "Royal marriage" so he has - most of the time - king withot a wife and if, so quite late he marries "ordinary noble woman" and then he has very limited chance to make enough heirs.

I found 2 ways how to solve this:
1. make AI use the offer of royal marriages (but how?)
2. shorten the time a) before the marriage with noblewomen is done or b) to make children

if anybody has any idea, please share it...

[Laudan]

Only the players garrision disable! With the cheat you cannot see what for units of garrision the AI build. But in the battleview and if you fight self battles you see the garrision units of the AI.The AI used all slots.

I tried it to reduced the garrision slots for 3, but the player can buy all 6 garrision, if they click in row to buy garrision units. If the player stop to buy garrision after 3 units and closed all and if they come back to buy garrision so they cannot buy garrision more. i think, if we can click not in a row to buy units so its work then.

[Elvain]

but I meant, what about erasing only 3 of the 6 slots?

Did I understood it well that you made the garrison invisible in the "town window"? So if you would make invisible only the second half of the garrison, it would mean that you would be able to hire only 3 units for garrison. And if it makes no problems to AI I believe that half disapearing wouldn´t be a problem too...

PS: self-limiting makes no sense, we could do such self-limitation withuot modding, but it´s no fun. I want to use everything I can see. Self-limiting is nice but useless. Then it is ethic codex, not improving a game :wink:

[Laudan]

Once again,not invisible, you cannot more hire garrision, only the AI can.This is only a option. You have right we can selflimited such a thing, but who make this in a game if you lose. Second, the biggest proplem is that all garrision have after combat all units without paying gold. I dont like this and after disabled hire garrision the player must look for another way to win the game. He must hire more knights for protect the town(cost more gold) and he must look more for the diplo-part.And i think this make the game better.For my mods is this option a good idee.

[Elvain]

well, but in my games I often have problem with income in the late stages of game.

but I still don´t understand what is the problem :sad:
could you give me some screenshot how does it look like?

[qorda]

Welcome to the forum Ciaran. Modding is a collective effort and mods evolve by combination of better and better ideas. Their is no harm in combining the ideas that you like the best. No modder is original. We all are modifying the ideas of the developers. It is good though to acknowledge if you are using some one elses ideas in your version; we all need encouragement!

[Doux]

Another question:

In my modified game, all population is shown with pitchforks - as if there were rebellion risks. How come? In fact, there is no rebellion risk. Is there something I did wrong? Or is this just a bug appearing when one mods the game?

[Elvain]

well, I haven't noticed this. But isn't this actualy caused by the fact that you have increased taxes and the rebellion rik is eliminated by some happiness bonuses?

[Doux]

I thought that those forked peasants appeared only when there was a absolute percentage of Rebellion risk (>0) - it looks rather strange this way, -10% risks and still rebellious-looking populace..