How can I make a new faction?

[Lonck]

in either R:TW or BI
how can I make a new faction, give it 2 slave settlements and make the merc units in the area to be recuited by the new faction.

[Gaius Drakan]

This may have to be answered by someone more knowledgable than me, as I haven't played and TW games for over a year.
I'm pretty sure however, that you can't create new factions, only edit existing ones. I may be wrong though.

[Hader]

You can only edit existing ones because the game is hardcoded. So you will have to eliminate one faction as use/mod it to be your new faction. Most people take the Brutii ad Scipii slots for this, and take out the Senate to make Julii the united Roman faction.

[makanyane]

there is a hard coded limit of 21 factions including slaves, count those listed in descr_sm_factions but I'm sure both vanilla games have 21 - so you need to adapt an existing one. Units that are bought as mercenaries can be bought by any faction, these units have mercenary_unit description in EDU, and slave ownership:

type merc bosphoran infantry
dictionary merc_bosphoran_infantry ; Bosphoran Mercenaries
category infantry
class spearmen
voice_type Heavy_1
soldier merc_bosphoran_infantry, 40, 0, 1.1
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, can_sap, hardy, mercenary_unit
formation 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 9, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, piercing, spear, 25 ,0.67
stat_pri_attr spear, spear_bonus_8
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,0.9
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 8, 8, 6, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 3
stat_ground 1,0,1,1
stat_mental 12, disciplined, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 729, 240, 60, 90, 600
ownership slave

to give these units to other factions I think you have to copy and paste their equivalent of this section in EDU, give a new name to 'type', remove mercenary_unit attribute and add faction to ownership line.
Sorry can't remember if this means you have to do anything to unit enums /text /unit cards.

EDIT: Hader posted whilst I was writing this, he's right on factions to use in RTW, in BI there's quite a few 'spare non-playable ones', ie. slavs, romano_brits, empire_east/west_rebels, ostrogoths, but you need to know how to disable the triggers / relationships that would normally bring them on.

[Lonck]

well thnx very helpful.

[brymht]

What exactly is involved in modding the Western Roman Rebel faction to be a playable faction? Creating a Justinian era minimod, and want to use it as the Ghassanid faction. I know how to change the name. That part is not an issue. However, when I make the W Roman Rebel faction playable, give them an identical family tree as another faction, give them usable charcter names, and give them 2 settlements in descr_strat, the game crashes. Aer there any files I'm missing? Anythign I'm doing wrong?


Thanks

[Stuie]

Did you edit descr_sm_factions.txt and remove the "shadowed_by empire_west_rebels" and "shadowing empire_west" statements?

[makanyane]

To use empire_west_rebels for a different playable faction and prevent any weird behaviour later you need to remove
dead_until_resurrected &
re_emergent
lines for them in descr_strat;
and 'shadowed by' & 'shadowing' bits in sm_factions for them and empire_west.

Can you explain in more detail EXACTLY when your game crashes, is it a CTD or return to menu and have you got -show_err on your shortcut, if so any message?

When you assigned character names where they existing EWR names from their section in descr_names.txt or have you added a new section for them? if so did you also add any new names to data/text/names.txt? When you gave settlements to them in descr_strat did you move the positions of the original owners armies?

EDIT: note to self - when leaving reply half finished whilst eating dinner - check if someone else has replied before submitting own reply!

[brymht]

removed dead_until_resurrected & re_emergent. Did NOT change the faction_sm file at all. will make a go of that this weekend. Thanks.