*Update* 5-24-12 Sauron in Campaign & Sauron in Siege Battles. Now in single unit general format usable with own Strat Model

[Moneybags14]

Ok, this thread is for those scripters/coders out there who are interested in trying to get a SINGLE UNIT of Sauron into the campaign on Huge settings. I have been working on it myself and have a sort of beta way of doing it but it doesn't work all the time, I am also new to scripting so I'm sure someone else could do better then me.


OLD METHOD, cannot be used on characters!!!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Here is the coding for spawning Sauron in the campaign as a SINGLE model(thanks to Baron Samedi!)

Post of Baron's Regarding the Matter

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

 
monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType england
and I_TurnNumber = 0
create_unit Gorgoroth, Sauron Elephants, num 1, exp 2, arm 0, wep 0
terminate_monitor
end_monitor

Screenshots of Sauron in Siege
And here is the coding in the EDU for Sauron Able to be used in Sieges. (nevermind the stats, I have made him stronger)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

type             Sauron Elephants
dictionary       Sauron_Elephants      ; "**"Sauron Elephants
category         cavalry
class            heavy
voice_type       Heavy
banner faction   main_cavalry
banner holy      crusade_cavalry
soldier          Elephant_Crew4, 6, 1, 1
mounted_engine   elephant_serpentine
mount            sauron
attributes  very_hardy, frighten_foot, frighten_mounted
formation  3, 3, 6, 6, 1, horde
stat_health  15, 15
;stat_pri  0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 0, 1
stat_pri  1, 1, stone, 240, 2, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, none, 0, 1 ; The projectile could be anything, I was just experimenting.
stat_pri_attr  no 
stat_sec  55, 25, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_simple, piercing, sword, 0, 1
stat_sec_attr  launching, bp, ap, area
stat_pri_armour  5, 5, 5, metal
stat_sec_armour  27, 35, metal
stat_heat  0
stat_ground  0, 0, -5, 5
stat_mental  18, disciplined, highly_trained, lock_morale
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food  60, 300
stat_cost  1, 3500, 1000, 500, 500, 3250, 1, 100000
armour_ug_levels 4
armour_ug_models Elephant_Crew4 ; This change prevents CTD from fire ballista
ownership        england
era 0            england
era 1            england
era 2            england

FINAL method!!!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

After a LONG time without doing anything with this, I decided to try and get an actual general into a single unit form on the battlefield. Meaning Sauron could actually have his strat_map model along with being a single soldier in fights. *Also balrog,treebeard etc...

I believe I have finally gotten both to work fluently with each other. Alot of various different tries and many hours of research later, I present to you, the final necessary steps for having Sauron in the campaign for both humans and AI! Also, it is the edition that Sauron is not a ranged unit either so no ugly ammo bar.

Here is the EDU that is necessary for this action, along with what I had in the campaign script to spawn him.

EDU:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

type             Sauron Elephants
dictionary       Sauron_Elephants      ; "**"Sauron Elephants
category         cavalry
class            heavy
voice_type       Heavy
banner faction   main_cavalry
banner holy      crusade_cavalry
soldier          Elephant_Crew4, 100, 1, 1
mount            sauron
attributes	 very_hardy, frighten_foot, frighten_mounted
formation	 3, 3, 6, 6, 1, square
stat_health	 1, 15
stat_pri	 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 0, 1
stat_pri_attr	 no
stat_sec	 55, 25, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_simple, piercing, sword, 0, 1
stat_sec_attr	 launching, bp, ap, area
stat_pri_armour	 5, 5, 5, metal
stat_sec_armour	 27, 35, metal
stat_heat	 0
stat_ground	 0, 0, -5, 5
stat_mental	 18, disciplined, highly_trained, lock_morale
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay	 0
stat_food	 60, 300
stat_cost	 1, 3500, 1000, 500, 500, 3250, 1, 100000
armour_ug_levels 0
armour_ug_models Elephant_Crew3
ownership        england
era 0            england
era 1            england
era 2            england

Script: If you want to test. *This does not have sauron's strat model trait because I have done that in one other version of the mod and I cant find the file, and I don't feel like dealing with it.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType england
if I_TurnNumber = 1 ;note that this wont spawn sauron till turn 2

				spawn_army
				faction england
				character	random_name, named character, age 18, x 262, y 126
				traits LoyaltyStarter 1 , GoodCommander 1 ;doesn't matter if you dont use sauron strat model
					unit		Sauron Elephants	soldiers 1	exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
				end
end_if
end_monitor

*Note: I tested this up in multiple scenario's
Leaving the character in a base for 20 turns, sauron starts with 100 numbers in the campaign card. However it is only 1 in fights. If Sauron gets into a fight and loses numbers(only happens in auto resolve) it raised the campaign numbers up to 77(77 seems to be the max for the mounted_engine line method also...)

All had ONE SINGLE MODEL in actual fights regardless of what the unit card says in campaign. The unit card says 3 in fighting.

The actual way I beat the hardcode was fighting it with another hardcode . So fight the power of hardcodes!


P.S. Hopefully you guys will have fun with this, it's just a huge weight of my back to finally finish this deal

*Note to self*
"monitor_event FactionTurnEnd FactionType slave" is the moment right before replenishing bodyguard unit occurs

[Dustindesrctin]

Hasn't this already been done by Baron and is in his submod and in MOS and released as a seperate submod?

[Moneybags14]

I believe he uses Sauron in the campaign but I'm not sure if he got him down to 1 unit? I could be wrong though.

[Dustindesrctin]

I believe he uses Sauron in the campaign but I'm not sure if he got him down to 1 unit? I could be wrong though.

Im pretty sure he does, and sorry I misread your post. I thought that you just added him to the campaign not attempting to change him to 1 unit also

[Moneybags14]

Im pretty sure he does, and sorry I misread your post. I thought that you just added him to the campaign not attempting to change him to 1 unit also

Haha well I know he uses him in the campaign but he tells the users to play on small settings.

[Adjudant-Major]

In custom battles Sauron is unique, I guess it's because he is not general and he is not faction leader. We already have Sauron as the Dark Lord the Pope, with Baron Samedi we have him as general, he may easily be made faction leader for Mordor, the problem is the number of 'elephants' and the siege battles.

We might perhaps spawn Sauron as battle unit, the one from custom battles, on the world map, under given conditions. Sauron-general in Barad Dûr would not be represented by Sauron's model... we might use for him a unit of Black Numenoreans, and for him personally the Black Numenorean model... in combination with the Sauron unit these two would make the real Sauron, completed by the Dark Lord in SHOULD NOT BE SEEN. We would have a single figure of Sauron on the battlefield, independent from his bodyguard... Not sure what this solution would lead to with the AI, but it could be scripted in a different way for it. We'd change UI icon for the general (we might use the Eye motive for example), keep the Sauron's portrait for the unit... it might work even for huge size units ?

?

And another idea : when the ring gets destroyed and Mordor surrenders it's regions (like in the custom campaign), we might change the religion of the other surviving evil faction to something else, not followers of Melkor, so the Dark Lord wold loose all his influence on them...

[Santeri]

I think some time ago someone made Sauron and Barlog recruitable from building and with original TATW single man settings (custom battles) and even in huge they appeared as single man in campaign.

I haven't tried it myself so I can't say if it really work but you might want to do some investigations on this

Also those who tried this said that the problem was when you script unit to spawn with single man script it wouldn't work and he would appear with multiple man in unit.

[Adjudant-Major]

There is some black magic in that... in custom battle unit selection it says those elephants are 6, in battle they are 3 (one figure), and in campaign they are 9 (3 figures)... huge size for custom and for the campaign.

If we could set the coefficients for small/normal/large/huge size units to 1 for all of them and get the numbers in EDU real for all units, removing the unit size selection effect... but as this is not done, it is probably not possible

If I change the number of soldiers to 5 in EDU, I get two figures and there are 6 soldiers on the unit card... when they are 6 in EDU, there is 1 figure, and the unit card says there are 3 soldiers. This really is some sort of Morgul magic that a mortal man cannot understand...

Edit: it seems there is a conflict between the Sauron Elephants and Germanicu5 script, I get a long list of these in my log :

13:11:37.286 [game.script] [error] Script execution error for <label_unit>, at line 3226, in mods/Third_Age/data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign/campaign_script.txt:
label_unit referenced non-existent unit

ending with 13:11:37.382 [game.script] [error] Script execution error for <set_counter>, at line 3359, in mods/Third_Age/data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign/campaign_script.txt:
Counter label_ready doesn't exist

Edit2 : it seems the script problem is off... with v5.0 beta

[Baron Samedi]

It has been some time since I worked on the Sauron project, but here are some small remarks:

You can use Sauron in different ways in your campaign:

In my submods compilation
How:General = named character
Name:Sauron
Portrait:Sauron
Strat map model:Sauron
Possible to track/edit in campaign via scripts:Yes
Number of units on huge unit settings:>1

Recruitable in campaign
How:General = named character
Name:Random name
Portrait:Random character
Strat map model:Captain
Possible to track/edit in campaign via scripts:no
Number of units on huge unit settings:>1

Recruitable in campaign
How:normal unit
Name:Random captain name
Portrait:None
Strat map model:Captain
Possible to track/edit in campaign via scripts:no
Number of units on huge unit settings:1

Btw: custom battles v.s. campaign are two entirely different things. The engine is unfortunately just not build for 1-man units. For those of you saying: ''but you have him as a single unit for RTW'', I can say the following: not all features from RTW are incorporated into M2TW.

[Adjudant-Major]

Recruitable in campaign as normal unit, that's what I would like to work with. The problem is that I still get 3 figures of Sauron in the unit. For initial testing I've just put him in the descr_strat

Possible to track/edit in campaign via scripts:no

But we should still be able to spawn him and to kill him I think, right ?

[Baron Samedi]

Recruitable in campaign as normal unit, that's what I would like to work with. The problem is that I still get 3 figures of Sauron in the unit. For initial testing I've just put him in the descr_strat

Just add another recruitmentpool-line in EDB (export_descr_buildings.txt in:...\Medieval II Total War\mods\Third_Age\data).

Example: I made Sauron recruitable (for one time) through Barad Dur:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

building barad
{
    levels barad 
    {
        barad castle requires factions { england, }  and hidden_resource barad_dur
        {
            capability
            {
                law_bonus bonus 2
                tower_level 2
                retrain_cost_bonus bonus 2
recruit_pool "Sauron Elephants"  1   0.00001   1  0  requires factions { england, }  and region_religion catholic 15
            }
            material wooden
            construction  15
            cost  16000
            settlement_min large_city
            upgrades
            {
            }
        }
    }
    plugins 
    {
    }
}

Look at the screenshots for proof.

But we should still be able to spawn him and to kill him I think, right ?

As a matter of fact: yes. You can use this command for instance in the campaign script:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

destroy_units england Sauron Elephants

[Adjudant-Major]

Sure... the thing is I don't want to make him recruitable, I want to spawn him when specific conditions are met, and kill him when other conditions are met, and I think it's possible and not difficult. But that's not the point, the point is that even if I add him to my campaign as a normal unit, I get the strenght of the unit (at huge size) 9, and as each of the elephants is ridden by three riders, I see three elephants in battle

You said their number should be 1 in this case, and I see you have the strenght of 3 and 1 figure. What are the stats of your Sauron Elephants than ? If you add those Sauron Elephants of yours to the descr_strat, to an already existing army of a general, so you begin the campaing with them, do you still get the strenght of three ?

[Baron Samedi]

Sure... the thing is I don't want to make him recruitable, I want to spawn him when specific conditions are met, and kill him when other conditions are met, and I think it's possible and not difficult. But that's not the point, the point is that even if I add him to my campaign as a normal unit, I get the strenght of the unit (at huge size) 9, and as each of the elephants is ridden by three riders, I see three elephants in battle

I can confirm this with the following script:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType england
 and I_TurnNumber = 0
 spawn_army 
 faction england
 character Sauron, general, age 28, x 244, y 126
   unit Sauron Elephants  exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
 end
terminate_monitor
end_monitor
 
monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType england
 and I_TurnNumber = 1
 destroy_units england Sauron Elephants
terminate_monitor
end_monitor

See screenshots.

You said their number should be 1 in this case, and I see you have the strenght of 3 and 1 figure. What are the stats of your Sauron Elephants than ? If you add those Sauron Elephants of yours to the descr_strat, to an already existing army of a general, so you begin the campaing with them, do you still get the strenght of three ?

No I clearly explained a recruitable Sauron (through EDB) is a one-man unit not a spawnable Sauron (through script). Reason must be game limitations. EDU-stats of Sauron are the same as vanilla.

[Adjudant-Major]

I see it also now... a recruitable Sauron stays at 3 with 1 figure, a spawned Sauron gets to 6 (with 2 riders and 4 soldiers in the unit) or 9 (with 3 riders and 6 soldiers) both resulting in 3 figures.

What the hell... I don't think this happens to any other unit, we may spawn units at their given strengts or recruit them, there's no difference.

But fine... let's make him recruitable with an event_counter, and we may have another event_counter that will disable his recruitement... I hope so basically, my idea with 3 Saurons in the game might be tested now : 1st Sauron = The Dark Lord, the pope, 2nd Sauron = Faction leader of Mordor with proper portrait and name, with his mace ancillary, etc., locked in Barad Dûr, with his strat model, and with a battle model of a Black Numenorean, 3rd Sauron - recruitable once the Ring is acquired by the 2nd Sauron.

The problem is that we are unable to remove the 2nd Sauron from the map once the 3rd Sauron gets killed. We only may remove the 3rd Sauron, once the 2nd Sauron gets killed. It's still better than nothing... not 100% great, but 75% perhaps ?

[Baron Samedi]

I did some more testing and it seems I can produce a different outcome if I change the script a bit. Here it goes:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

monitor_event PreFactionTurnStart FactionType england
and I_TurnNumber = 0
create_unit Gorgoroth, Sauron Elephants, num 1, exp 2, arm 0, wep 0
terminate_monitor
end_monitor

This will make Sauron spawn in Barad Dur. He turns out to be a one-man unit. Try it. Proof is in screenshots.

[Adjudant-Major]

now THIS is what we needed... I suppose you don't have any better idea how to link the 2nd and the 3rd Sauron to make the 2nd one removed if the 3rd one gets killed...

[Baron Samedi]

now THIS is what we needed... I suppose you don't have any better idea how to link the 2nd and the 3rd Sauron to make the 2nd one removed if the 3rd one gets killed...

I searched docudemon quickly and I found the following condition: ''I_UnitExists''. The only thing we are absolutely sure about regarding the 3rd Sauron, is that it will be always the same unit type that gets spawned (Sauron Elephants). The name on the campaign map will appear randomly as I explained earlier.

So we can let the game search for this specific unit type constantly (after a certain counter --> ring acquired) and once our 3rd Sauron dies, we can use the destroy-script (the one I demonstarted earlier in this thread) to kill the 2nd Sauron. This means you will have to create another unit entry in EDU, so that the two Sauron's don't share the same entry. If it is too complicated for you, I can demonstrate it later in this thread with some screenshots.

[Adjudant-Major]

2nd Sauron is named character, so he can be killed or sent off map, there's no problem... I_UnitExists is exactly what we need to do it ...in combination with other conditions of course.

We don't need any special unit entry in EDU, as the 2nd Sauron is not going to have any elephants

Theoretically I see only one problem for the AI - it won't keep both Saurons (2nd and 3rd) in the same stack. Two solutions : 1) we don't care 2) AI won't have the 2nd Sauron, it's faction leader will be the Witch King... when the AI acquired the One Ring, it would 'only' get the 3rd Sauron... (in a much easier way than a human player... no delivery of the Ring to Barad Dûr, as the AI would not make it I think )

[Rat-tail]

The AI is retarded, plan the use of this MOD for the player and leave the retarded AI to play as it will

[Moneybags14]

wow! I was not expecting 2 scripters to respond so quickly! Especially you Baron

My hope from this thread looks like it will be able to come true(in a certain way) using certain conditions/commands.

Glad you found out that create_unit command only spawns 1 sauron baron good stuff. This definately looks like the legit way to spawn sauron with conditions.

Rep to both of you for contributing to this discussion while I was sleeping