The Fixing Thread

[irishron]

If a campaign has to be continued in such a matter, I do not consider it cheating.

[loseless]

Got that right.

Is this mod suppose to increase the heretics spawning rates? They've been driving me nuts, dealing with 6/7 at a time is kind of hard...

[irishron]

I don't think so. there is a line in one of the xmls dealing with heretics and witches spawning but right now I don't remember which one. It's a random chance number.

One campaign I had three priests go heretic in the same region in three turns. The next campaign I couldn't get that priest to die or go heretic.

[Gigantus]

descr_campaign_db.xml, the first two marked lines are the most important.:

<religion>
<max_witches_per_region uint="1"/>
<max_witches uint="10"/>
<max_heretics_per_region uint="1"/> ; max number of heretics per region
<max_heretics uint="25"/> ; maximum total number of heretics
<max_heretics_conversion_modifier float="1.0"/>
<max_inquisitors_per_region uint="1"/>
<max_inquisitors uint="12"/>
<heretic_conversion_rate_modifier float="0.0075"/>
<heretic_conversion_rate_offset float="0.025"/>
<witch_conversion_rate_modifier float="0.0"/>
<witch_conversion_rate_offset float="0.02"/>
<inquisitor_conversion_rate_modifier float="0.010"/>
<inquisitor_conversion_rate_offset float="0.04"/>
<priest_conversion_rate_modifier float="0.004"/>
<priest_conversion_rate_offset float="0.015"/>
<witch_creation_modifier float="1.0"/>
<heretic_creation_modifier float="0.4"/>
<inquisitor_creation_modifier float="0.3"/>
<min_cardinal_piety uint="5"/>
<convert_to_heretic_base_modifier float="10.0"/>
<convert_to_heretic_unorthodox_modifier float="0.7"/>
<inquisitor_turn_start uint="20"/>
<inquisitor_target_crusades bool="false"/>
</religion>

[loseless]

Wish I had realized that earlier

All those heretics are driving me nuts, they piss me off more than the Turks (they grow armies on trees or something).


But now, I have another problem. The game crashes after I take over the last Cuman settlement (Bulgar). As soon as I click on "Bang Some Heads", capput (I've tried the other two options too). I can't see the error either, as the error window disappears as soon as the game crashes.

Edit: After using a record software, I was able to see the error message:

"Uh oh. This isn't good. No idea why, but exiting now. Sorry pal."


Here is the log of the crash:


13:31:14.546 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <Kingmaker1>
: FactionwideAncillaryExists needs a living character.

when testing <FactionwideAncillaryExists> condition
13:31:14.546 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <Kingmaker2>
: FactionwideAncillaryExists needs a living character.

when testing <FactionwideAncillaryExists> condition
13:31:15.500 [system.rpt] [error] Uh oh. This isn't good. No idea why, but exiting now. Sorry pal.

[irishron]

Are you playing with version 3.68?

Imoved that trigger. If you are using the latest version, it will have to be deleted. It got me in Georgia when I was playing England.

[Gigantus]

"Uh oh. This isn't good. No idea why, but exiting now. Sorry pal."

Welcome to my wonderful sense of humor - that is the generic error message modified by me.

Not sure if that could be because the Cumans (and the other new factions) are not in the descr_faction_movies file. Me thinks the game wants to play a movie but doesn't know which - anyone?

To test, enter the following lines (before the last line </faction_movies> and after the slave section) :

    <faction>
        <name>cumans</name>
        <intro>faction/minor_intro.bik</intro>
        <victory>faction/minor_win.bik</victory>
        <defeat>faction/minor_lose.bik</defeat>
        <death>faction/minor_lose.bik</death>
    </faction>

and then try again by taking that last settlement.

[irishron]

@Gigantus:

Take a look at the his last message before your humor, and compare it to the thread I had in the Workshop. It's a traits/ ancliiary thing and it's a campaign killer.

[Gigantus]

It appears as if the killing of the last family member still triggers the condition "BecomesFactionLeader" without a living family member in place.

Changing it a bit to this might help:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Kingmaker1
WhenToTest CharacterTurnStart
Condition I_TurnNumber > 0
and IsFactionLeader
and not FactionwideAncillaryExists kingmaker2
and not FatherTrait Factionleader >= 1
AcquireAncillary kingmaker1 chance 25
;------------------------------------------
Trigger Kingmaker2
WhenToTest CharacterTurnStart
Condition I_TurnNumber > 0
and IsFactionLeader
and not FactionwideAncillaryExists kingmaker1
and not FatherTrait Factionleader >= 1
AcquireAncillary kingmaker2 chance 40

That way the character has to exist and start his turn so that the conditions can be tested.

[loseless]

I managed to overcome it. Apparently, it could have been related to the Cumans general or family member inside. When I won the settlement by starving him to death, the game didn't crash. So, it could have been because of that particular turn, the garrisoned general, or the siege simply goes around the problem.

I'm almost at the end of my English campaign and there are somethings I wanted to say. I've played in Hard/Hard

I changed the events, as the Mongols, and powder were coming way too soon, even before half of the cities were equipped with the latest builds to recruit the best troops. I've played tree campaigns with the mod (this was the only one that went until the end, as the others I gave up at half, because of the powder and the mongols coming too soon).

The game has WAY too much money. In 1215 (2 turns per year), I have 25 armies and about 15 Million florins... That's way too much... The game generates too much money from the beginning. A good idea should be to raise the troops cost and upkeep, but that way we can always use the fortresses, because of the 5 free upkeeps (and 2 or 3 troops usually cost more per turn than the fortress). So, raising the fortresses cost would also be a good idea, to prevent cheap tricks like creating 4 fortresses and putting an army there for free.

Now, the thing I hated the most (and It made me curse the generals A LOT). The loyalty issue. Loyalty drops so fast that even commanders with 6 or 7 stars ends "going rogue" in a few turns. That makes them move only 1 or 2 tiles per turn and if they have a army, that's a problem. I ended up delaying my incursions A LOT because of this, as I had to always keep moving generals from all over the map, who would also go rogue themselves on the way sometimes. When they go rogue in a settlement, it revolts. Some generals can't be taken out of the settlements because of the move limitations. When this happens, the settlement ends up revolting, and it happens too much for my tastes...

I liked the idea of training generals in fortresses, but they usually come with so little loyalty that they are only useful for the first 10 ou 20 turns... Like disposable generals...

The problem of having 25 entire armies is that I spent half of the game shipping generals. I'll give up using them for the rest of the game, it's not worth the waiting. I can always try to get one during a battle, but those don't last long either... Normally, 5 or 10 turns...

The other half of the game, is spent dealing with the heretics. At the beginning they are fun, yeah, but after 100 turns they get annoying. I must have spent 100 000 florins on watch towers, I have all my territories visible because of them. I don't think that they were such a big deal in vanilla, and I played vanilla for some months a while ago. Reducing their spawn rate would be helpful. They are also more resilient to priests. Sometimes I needed about 10 priests and 30 tries to get one (and I'm not even counting with the ones who turned to the "dark side").


This mod is great in many aspects, but overall, it's too easy. What delays the game is the heresy and the rogue generals (and I don't mean delay in a good way... It's more stalling).



About the ne factions. I don't have anything to say about the Irish, as I destroyed them early. They managed to hold all 4 settlements of Ireland, but that's all. The Swedish weren't aggressive towards the Danish, they never got more that 4 settlements, and this for 100 turns. They had no enemies nor allies. Must have a stand alone complex

Georgians... They were destroyed by the Turks before I arrived to them. The Turks are really good. They're armies suck, but they have the numbers to compensate, and I don't see a single Turkish army. I see 2 or 3 all the time.

The Arabs, well, they stood still in they're tittle corner. I haven't got there yet, but they don't seem to think about expanding.


I guess this is all I have to say. Hope it helps you guys improving the game.

If there's anything more I can do, please, don't hesitate to ask me.


I thank you all for your help and for this mod.


PS: I played the versions 3.67

[irishron]

It appears as if the killing of the last family member still triggers the condition "BecomesFactionLeader" without a living family member in place.

Changing it a bit to this might help:



That way the character has to exist and start his turn so that the conditions can be tested.

3.67 is the one I changed for 3.68.

I moved the trigger kingmaker2 to the ancillaries as was suggested by one in the Workshop forum. The one
in 3.67 is in the chatracter_traits and that is the one that crashed on me. I did not try starving them out as I had three family members, and no faction heir, with armies between Tbilisi and the rest of my units.

Maybe it works, then, in 3.68.

[irishron]

I have only seen 1215 once. It crashed three turns later.

Have you noticed that some family members can get greedy and your building costs go up with it? I had one increase 20%. There are money scripts that can be used to slow down the growth. What I hate is the ai being able to spam everything 3 times for the price of one. I don't think these added factions have many of the capabilities as the original 20 as noone has gone through and added everything in the charater_traits, ancillaries, the campaign xml files, or even the campaign script. Billydilly did a great job when he added the BBB 4.0 but I am still finding things that do get overlooked. XAI can still be tweaked some for this mod's abnormalities, also.

It's still a work in progress and all input helps. I hope some of the changes already made make a positive difference from what I inherited in version 2.4.

[loseless]

Yes irishron, I did noticed that, and it is realistic.

In RTW the AI had significant bonus too, I guess it was their way of making things harder for us, and It did work, as even with those bonus they'd kicked in 50 years in vanilla on Very Hard...


One thing I found awkward was the 6 months per turn you guys did on Regions and Provinces. The game can be easily beaten in 1/3 of the total turns. I think 1 year per turn would make more sense in terms of gameplay. ~400 turns is more than enough to conquer all map, even in Very Hard.

If the objective of creating a 800 plus turn campaign is slow gaming, then you HAVE to reduce the income and/or raise the outcome. I like waiting, calculating games, where we have to think well instead of rushing. IMO, a 2 turns per year campaign should have even slower constructions, slower troop training (2 per turn, max), and a lot less more money.

One thing that I always hated in all total wars, having armies in foreign countries didn't mattered. In reality, the supplies and moral should change based on their positions on homelands, enemy lands or allies lands, based on the relations. That way troops would be better in defending settlements, giving the defender a edge in the battles. I don't know if this is possible in the game, at least the moral I think it might be.

About the upkeep cost, think about it, shipping supplies thousands of miles away, costs a great deal of money, more than having the troops right around the block. This way, having a lot of armies abroad would be harder, making those incursions of 30 armies impossible. TW was never realistic in terms of troops maintenance. For example, in RTW we can conquer the whole world in 50 years, only Alexander came close to that (he was smart enough to stay away from barbarians). And he practically did it all with the same army (and a lot of mercenaries).

[irishron]

If there is a way, and I have not researched it, to keep the ai from trying to overrun me while the human player has to play tortoise, I would love it. I have found by even keeping the rebel units small at at start of campaign, they will build infrastructure as the rest of the ai. If they are willing build rather than recruit, it would be more fun.

You make a very good case for this. Gigantus did add to the build times while I was trying to put out other fires. I would say eliminating or at least reducing the free upkeep slots would eat up income. I don't want to increase the costs because large cities can be hard enough to biuld now.

I have never got far enough but right now starting with a seacoast village with a fishing village with say England, how many turns would it take to go from this ti a huge city with all the buildings and upgrades built?

[loseless]

I have never got far enough but right now starting with a seacoast village with a fishing village with say England, how many turns would it take to go from this ti a huge city with all the buildings and upgrades built?

Well, that depends on several factors, let's assume that there's a constant growth of 1%, it would take between 150/200 turns to turn that village into a huge city. I also noticed that many cities with all upgrades for the large city, can't grow by themselves into huge cities, not even with low tax, they stay at 0% growth rate. 1/4 of the cities only evolve into huge cities with the help of a governor.

In the worst scenario, 250 turns to max a city. In a 800 plus turn game, in which you have all the cities in the game by the end of 300 turns (in a slow game), it does seem a little fast.

I don't know much about modding. I only modded certain details of RTW to match what I intended (settlements ownership, troops, buildings, costs, turns to build, etc), but it was easy to change the income. Lower the revenues of resources, reduce the bonus from trading buildings and farms, etc. It might sound strange, but by turn 100 I changed all tax to low, and I didn't even noticed the monetary values. By the time I had 15 settlements I had already 100 000 florins. That's just not right, and free upkeeps don't do that... Nor they save 15 Million in 270 turns... And I don't use merchants...

Now imagine what would be like playing with Venice, with they're banks that raise income even more...

There's just something not right with the amount of money currently on the mod. Even if the player is a newbie, he just needs to keep the cities and castles pumping troops, eventually he'll overrun the AI with troops, even if they're weak and badly organized.


If you want to edit some things, I can help you test the betas, I've been playing total wars for too long now. But first you got to think about what you want to do, and then delemitate what needs to be changed

[irishron]

I do like your thinking.

I have been playing TW since medieval1 and tried to break it. When RTW came along, I had too much real life going on to learn to mod short of what you have done. I finally settled into playing Terrae Expugnandae. and tried to help Lusted a little even though he wanted none.

When Medieval2 was released I was too busy to mod but tried many including Ganeral Sun's mod way back when. This one I liked the feel of and when Sb2ean disappeared I have tried to keep it alive and fix the bugs that have come with it.

Now, since it seems stable enough not to crash every other turn, it's time for me to formulate a mod plan and how to execute it.

Thank you for your support.

[REDrake]

Some factions get a bonus to their trade and income. Mostly from location, resources and plenty of ports early on. Also, reducing the number of castles further contributed to more funds being gained. Free upkeep should stay, but only for certain units suited for garrison duty. Militia units for example.
However, I do not find the game seriously unbalanced when it comes to revenues. Unless you play a game Civilization-like with minimum armies, your income is going to suffer. Especially when the hordes arrive. Large income is required to counter the cheating AI with his no upkeep troops.
There are however ways to reduce the income. Editing King's purse is one (it can also be used to add funds to rebels). Another is about merchants, they can be reduced in efficiency, either by traits or by reducing their speed. Make them move like a turtle, they will be almost immobile.
Farming also I find it to be an income that makes little sense. It should affect health and growth not income. Also certain farm upgrades should only be available where wheat resources are present. I really hate the way in M2TW in mid game the map is crowded with farmed fields making it look like a desert.

Other mods like DLV use scripts to reduce the income. From time to time certain events show up (banquets and alike) that ask for money. They provide various bonuses in exchange of money.

As for city growth, it should stay as it is. It is one of the aspects that I like in M2TW over RTW. In M2TW getting a 3% growth is high. In RTW that went to 8-9%. I hated when I had to let a city rebel so I can exterminate it later to deal with overpopulation.

Also, as far as ideas go, I would try to find a way to introduce events that affect the factions and the economy. Medieval times were constantly ravaged by floods (no dams), famine, plagues and civil riots. Famine especially should be included. Bad years and good years should affect the growth, health and income.

[loseless]

In terms of events, you could reduce some regions trades when there's plague (trade = 0 revenue). Etc.

I don't quite agree with your theory about civilization games. 6 armies on the 30th turn isn't simcity playing, and I had 100 00 florins by that time...

So, cut the farming income, reduce the income of cities under plague, and you can also make the factions spend money when there's earthquakes and floods, as to compensate for the damage (like 5% of max money). That way it would always cost and wouldn't be to pricy or to low. Just enough to hurt a little.

And as I said, merchants aren't the problem, I didn't used them.

[irishron]

The descr_events, I reworked the Black Death from across Europe from Bulgar to Fara. I left out Visby, Sardinia, and Corsica as it's all ship movement there. I als left out the Islamic coutries but if someome can come up with proof the Plague went through tere ,too, I'll make sure they get hit.

It should take the steam out of the European factions.

Floods in Medieval2 are as bad as Rome in two ways, movements points tank and the ability to build forts and watchtowers disappear for that region until the next flood. Other than taking out a building or two once in a while, it does nothing to slow growth or income.

If you want serious earthquake zones, Italy, Turkey, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, Levant, and maybe Balkans.

I want to add buildings to factions in the mod. To me, about any building should be available to a faction. Maybe do the balancing through traits and ancillaries. I am sure if it were researched ther is a way everytime a faction heir becomes faction leader, the faction has to pay for the party as an event. It would be a heck of a note that new biulding dad started went on hold to pay for the coronation because of not enough gold in the coffers to pay for both.

[REDrake]

The descr_events, I reworked the Black Death from across Europe from Bulgar to Fara. I left out Visby, Sardinia, and Corsica as it's all ship movement there. I als left out the Islamic coutries but if someome can come up with proof the Plague went through tere ,too, I'll make sure they get hit.

Islamic countries did got hit. The plague came from central Asia on the pilgrim trade routes.
Link
The only relatively safe zone was Poland and parts of Germany near Magdeburg.
I think I accurately fixed that when I made the fix for descr_events. I went at long length checking various books I have in my library and some web sites on the subject.

I am sure if it were researched ther is a way everytime a faction heir becomes faction leader, the faction has to pay for the party as an event. It would be a heck of a note that new biulding dad started went on hold to pay for the coronation because of not enough gold in the coffers to pay for both.

True that. In France towards the end of the Capet dynasty, 4 kings were changed in just a few years. Each had to give a party on his coronation. That affected seriously their income.

Earthquakes as random events. I like that idea.