Hello welcome to my tutorial on the basics of the descr_strat. We will work down from the top and i will show all the functions. First is the factions list. This is very straight forward the most straight forward thing in modding. Playable factions, end unlockable factions and non playable factions. Non playable factions are best not to tamper with as their campaigns may be glitchy or may not start at all. After it states the starting years of the campaign in vanilla thats 1080 and the ending years. The timescale is how long each year is. Vanilla's time scale is 2.0 which means there are 2 turns a year. If you change it to 1.0 it becomes 1 turn every year. 0.5 2 turns a year and so on.
Its best not to change these because some are brought in from RTW and are needless. The last two brigand and pirate spawn value state the amount of that type which can be on the map at one time.
Resources:
Next is the resources section it states the resource the x co ordinate and then the y co ordinate. To find out the co ordinates of a place put your cursor in the co ordinate you want to find out press ` your medieval total war shell and type in show_cursorstat. Let us study one
Code:
resource coal, 69, 107
resource means the resource
coal is the actual resource
69 the x co ordinate
107 the y co ordinate
This part of the descr_strat is the main bulk of it which shows all the factions there regions, ai status, money to start and king's purse.
Here is the starting part of the English entry.
Code:
faction england, balanced smith
ai_label catholic
denari 10000
denari_kings_purse 2500
the faction is england . the part after states the faction charactaristics. The charactaristics are these(from TWC wiki)
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Characteristics
These control a set of AI production personalities, which contribute a bias towards building and training (but not retraining or repairing)
. This bias is fairly small compared to game-generated factors such as "the enemy is attacking me with lots of cavalry, build me some spearmen". Explaining the weighting system which drives the production AI in full is beyond the scope of this document as it would take several days to write. So in short, the building construction personalities are these: (ranked highest to lowest - therother)
* balanced - biases towards growth, taxable income, trade level bonuses (roads), walls and xp bonus buildings
* religious - biases towards growth, loyalty, taxable income, farming, walls and law
* trader - biases towards growth, trade level, trade base, weapon upgrades, games, races and xp bonus buildings
* comfort - biases towards growth, farming, games, races, xp bonus and happiness
* bureaucrat - biases towards taxable income, growth, pop health, trade, walls, improved bodyguards and law
* craftsman - biases towards walls, races, taxable income, weapon upgrades, xp bonuses, mines, health and growth
* fortified - biases towards walls, taxable income, growth, loyalty, defenses, bodyguards and law
These biases are towards building properties, rather than buildings themselves. The game does not know what a
"Blacksmith" is, for example, it only knows that it is a building which provides a weapon upgrade, and hence a Craftsman
AI would be more likely to build it than another AI personality type.
These are then combined with a troop production personality, as follows:
* smith - exactly level
* mao - biased towards mass troops, light infantry
* genghis - biased towards missile cavalry and light cavalry
* stalin - biased towards heavy infantry, mass troops and artillery
* napoleon - biased towards a mix of light and heavy infantry, light cavalry
* henry - biased towards heavy and light cavalry, missile infantry
* Caesar - biased towards heavy infantry, light cavalry, siege artillery
The same system as for the buildings applies. Troop category and class are combined at the time the unit database is loaded to give a unit production type, and the likelihood of the AI choosing to produce a given unit type which can be produced is then modified by the unit type weighting. There is also a random element in the choosing of which building or troop type to produce next, so the effect of the bias is a statistical thing. Another factor that is applied over the top which may obscure the bias is a tendency towards producing troop mixtures (according to what is already in the garrison) and a weighting according to unit strength.
Next is the ai label i dont know much about this there seems to be two default and catholic. The next line is the denari part
denari 10000
is the starting amount of money
denari_kings_purse 2500
every turn a faction receives a set amount of income. It is called the Kings Purse. For England it is 2500 for other factions it can be more or less. In Kingdoms by script it can be changes however we will not go into that.
Settlement:
After the faction part of the descr_strat it comes with their settlements and the settlement details.
Code:
settlement castle
{
level large_town
region Nottingham_Province
year_founded 0
population 3000
plan_set default_set
faction_creator england
building
{
type core_castle_building castle
}
building
{
type castle_barracks mustering_hall
}
}
As you can see Nottingham is a castle as above it says settlement castle if it wasnt it would just say settlement. It shows then the region name
and the status, eg: large town, village. It has the year founded(ignore) and the population . The next bit plan_set default set just ignore. Then it says faction_creator england. This signifies which faction made the city oringinaly so the culture of the buildings is shown. Aswell as the strat model. (i think).
It then has the building, the building and thats it.
Characters:
This part shows the characters of the faction
Code:
character William, named character, male, leader, age 50, x 109, y 147
traits Factionleader 1 , GoodCommander 1 , Intelligent 2 , VictorVirtue 3 , PublicFaith 2 , BattleDread 2 , StrategyDread 2 , ReligionStarter 1
army
unit NE Bodyguard exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Spear Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Town Militia exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Peasants exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
here is the faction leader
the character is William. He is a named character since he is in the family. He is a male as all are. He is the faction leader thus it states leader. His then shows his age and the co ordinates he is at. The traits is on the line below with the faction leader trait it makes him faction leader. The rest of the traits are identified with a number after, that is the level of that trait they are at. Below is the army entry for the chracter this is his army with him at the co ordinates. There is his NE bodyguard and then there exp armour level and weapon level.
Here is the character entries for a general and a heir.
A general:
Code:
character Robin, general, male, age 20, x 99, y 131
And the faction heir:
Code:
character Rufus, named character, male, heir, age 26, x 109, y 158
traits Factionheir 1 , LoyaltyStarter 1 , NaturalMilitarySkill 1 , GoodCommander 1 , ReligionStarter 1
Agents are quite the same however can not have an army:
Code:
character Richard, spy, male, age 20, x 107, y 160
traits GoodSpy 2
character Samuel Blacke, merchant, male, age 25, x 110, y 134
traits GoodMerchant 1
character Laurence Bidell, diplomat, male, age 29, x 107, y 130
traits GoodDiplomat 2
there is the spy a merhcnat and a diplomat.
A princess is a bit different as you can see here
Code:
character Cecilia, princess, female, age 25, x 111, y 151
traits IAmPrincess 1 , NaturalPrincess 2 , GoodPrincess 1
Family Relations:
Below all of the character entries there is a part which says character_record. This is for characters which arnt on map ever young relatives or married women or just old women.
Below that there is the family bit this generates the family tree. 2 names next to each other mean they are married. 2 tab means there children. 1 tab means brothers or sisters.
Other Entries:
The Mongol and Timurid entries say dead_until_ressurected. This means the faction is dead until they are ressurected by an event or by a script.
Factions can be killed just by adding this to them and removing there character entries and the settlement entries.
Yeah well you are supposed too. For new modders seen them post questions on this next part will be diplomacy section below, just need to experiment big time with some mad stuff like if i enable marian_reforms what happens and stuff like that.-----------
In Kingdoms there is this
Here's a Kingdoms entry that can be put in the top section of the descr_strat.txt:
Code:
free_upkeep_forts x
where x is the number of free upkeep slots that forts will have.
thanks to abuelist
Last edited by Nakharar; October 21, 2008 at 02:24 PM.
Q: how important is the faction creator line? What difference does it make in practice.
Reason I ask is I'm looking at the stainless steel descr_strat and a lot of the scandinavian and western european slave towns have england as faction creator.
I know that is the faction to which it will join if there is a loyalists revolt so should the faction creator be the nearest AI faction at the start - will changing scandinavian towns from england to denmark or norway make much difference?
will go through the faction creators and see if there's any that I need to adjust.
and one final question - I've noticed that some settlements have been given faction creators that are emergent factions - that would seem to be problematic to me if there is a loyalist revolt before the faction emerges?
The last two brigand and pirate spawn value state the amount of that type which can be on the map at one time.
Are you sure about that? It's long been said that the way to reduce the spawning of rebels and pirates is to increase these numbers, which would seem to indicate that the meaning of these values is other than stated. Your definition would seem to indicate that lowering the numbers would reduce the spawns. Can you (or anyone else) shed some light on this? Thanks!
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." H. L. Mencken
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down." Frederick Douglass
well this is presuming lol i did experiments on most bit experiment with it yourself and you find out and post here please
sorry
No problem, just trying to figure out if I'd been "doing it backwards" all this time.
From my own experimentation over time, it seems to hold true that raising these numbers reduces spawning. That doesn't give us a definition of what the numbers mean, only an indication of what the effects of changing them are.
For example, here are the values from descr_strat.txt in PDER 1.0.
Code:
brigand_spawn_value 666
pirate_spawn_value 9999
Haven't tried drastically lowering the numbers yet. Sounds like a good project for my weekend.
Oh, +rep for your work organizing this information for folks like me trying to figure out "the meaning of it all".
Edit: Here's a Kingdoms entry that can be put in the top section of the descr_strat.txt:
Code:
free_upkeep_forts x
where x is the number of free upkeep slots that forts will have.
Last edited by aduellist; October 21, 2008 at 12:26 PM.
Reason: Additional info
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." H. L. Mencken
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down." Frederick Douglass
Nakharar's Basics: Descr_strat
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Also seen the resources one??
:
im going to do a tutorial on cultures in the basics series then it gets complicated
Originally Posted by Nakharar
AI really isnt basic
