Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Hello my fellow Total Warriors,
1.0 This is a tutorial to change and or edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals, what we will need to use is ESF editor which can be found here:
2.0 And a file named "mp_eur_napoleon" which is found in your data/campaigns/ folder.
(the data folder is in C:/program files/steam/steamApps/common/napoleon total war/data/campaigns/mp_eur_napoleon)
3.0 Now you will need to use ESF editor and open the file mentioned above.
once open you will see a tree of strings with + and - and you click + to expand these strings. You need to expand
+campaign|startpos
.+campaign|env
..+campaign|model
...+world|faction
....+array|faction
.....+(your nation) array|faction
......+character|array
.......+(your character)character|array
........+character|details
4.0 Now you will see FOUR strings pertaining to your character and they will ALL be under the Charcter|Details expandable menu. What you need to go into is:
+traits
and
+agent|ancillaries
and
+agent|attributes
and
+agent|abilities
These are the the four strings that you can edit to change your character from a mickey mouse to a powerful leader or general.
4.1 As for TRAITS and ANCILLARIES: 4.1.1 A list of traits and ancillaries can be viewed in data/data.pack file which can be opened with the PFM (pack file manager- searchable and downloadable in google) OR 4.1.2 you can just copy traits and ancillaries from really successful leaders and generals and paste them to the leader or general you want. If you do want to copy and paste, then the way to do it is to highlight the trait or ancillary that you want (which must be done one at a time) then right click, left click on copy from the drop down menu, then highlight the TRAITS expandable menu (if you are copying a trait) or highlight the AGENT|ANCILLARIES expandable menu (if you are copying an ancillary) then right click, and left click paste. DO NOT paste into the expanded list, you MUST highlight the header itself and paste into it. Once you paste (for example in traits) you will see that in both the copied location and pasted location that it will just say trait instead of the actual name of the trait you pasted. That's ok, if you close the expandable menu and reopen it, you will see that this has been fixed. To delete a bad trait, simply highlight and hit delete.
4.2 As for AGENT|ATTRIBUTES and AGENT|ABILITIES
These are on/off items; they don't work by adding anything like traits, these already have preset attributes and abilities and they are either turned on or off for your current character. Seeing -1 for each attribute or ability indicates that it is turned off for the current character, seeing a 1 indicates that the attribute or ability is turned on for the current character.
And that is how you can edit your characters Traits, Ancillaries, Attributes, and Abilities. If you have any questions or comments please ask them and i will answer the best i can.
Thank you,
Ramesses.
Last edited by Ramesses II The Great; October 19, 2014 at 03:08 AM.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
About agents:
I have tried to edit them to make a gentlemen (for example) able to convert.
It doesn't work.
It seems only an agent that was initially designed to convert, such as a catholic missionary, can convert.
If you find a way to make another agent convert I'd be very interested as it would allow a very nice addition to Masters of Europe mod, which I can only partially do so far.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Originally Posted by Steph
About agents:
I have tried to edit them to make a gentlemen (for example) able to convert.
It doesn't work.
It seems only an agent that was initially designed to convert, such as a catholic missionary, can convert.
If you find a way to make another agent convert I'd be very interested as it would allow a very nice addition to Masters of Europe mod, which I can only partially do so far.
I've asked and researched about this before and from what i gathered is that in Napoleon: total war religion is made irrelevant as it was never part of the Napoleonic conflict (although it is a stat of each settlement) religion conversion is disabled because the religion distribution stats in each region (ex: 90% catholic 10% orthodox) are just numbers just cosmetics and do not actually have a mechanism to be increased or decreased, which is also why the conversion ability is disabled as it is not connected to any functional mechanism in the game. I will research further, however, and share my findings with you.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
This is not correct. Religion is working since that's what is used to support the "anti French", "pro French" in the peninsular campaign, with the propagandist.
I have checked that you can for example modify the religion distribution in Britanny to be 10% protestant and 90% catholic (or 10% pro British and 90% pro French if you just rename it), and an agent would really slowly modify the distribution (or a building). And the "religion" will have an effect on the revolt risk. And also on the diplomatic relationship.
However, only an agent such as the catholic_missionary can actually convert: just giving the zeal attribute and can_convert to a gentleman is not sufficient (even if you remove the research attribute to the gentleman). And makign a "clone" of the catholic_missionary (like "MyNewConverterAgent") doesn't seem to be sufficient, even when I copied all the entries I could from the DB and the startpos.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Originally Posted by Steph
This is not correct. Religion is working since that's what is used to support the "anti French", "pro French" in the peninsular campaign, with the propagandist.
I have checked that you can for example modify the religion distribution in Britanny to be 10% protestant and 90% catholic (or 10% pro British and 90% pro French if you just rename it), and an agent would really slowly modify the distribution (or a building). And the "religion" will have an effect on the revolt risk. And also on the diplomatic relationship.
However, only an agent such as the catholic_missionary can actually convert: just giving the zeal attribute and can_convert to a gentleman is not sufficient (even if you remove the research attribute to the gentleman). And makign a "clone" of the catholic_missionary (like "MyNewConverterAgent") doesn't seem to be sufficient, even when I copied all the entries I could from the DB and the startpos.
But maybe I missed one somewhere?
Yes i've heard that the peninsular campaign is different in that aspect. But i do hope it works in the regular napoleon that would be fun!!
Ok so...
1) how do you know that it failed? does the game crash? or is it just that the agent doesn't actually change the religion composition of the settlement? note: the reason for the gentlemen not becoming a converter could be the same reason as a general not becoming a leader. i experienced this failure in the form of a game crash at the start of a campaign, which indicates conflicting commands when compiling to start a new campaign, if the game is crashing with you as well, then we know that your issue is that of conflicting commands, which also means that there is another entry elsewhere that needs to be edited.
2) Have u tried making ur conversion edits in peninsular?? having a successful change in peninsular can shed some light on the edits that DO affect the success of your moding. If you are able to make successful edits in peninsular (an environment which you know allows conversion) using the edits you are doing now then that means that religion in the grand campaign is only cosmetic as i was saying. If you are unable to make successful edits in peninsular using just the edits you are doing now, then that tells us that you did miss another edit that needs to be changed, and so we can start looking for what you missed. Its a process of elimination.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Religion does work in the ntw vanilla campaign ( I was mucking around with it some time ago) but I found the changes far too coarse for my needs so dropped it.
Last edited by The Hedge Knight; February 15, 2013 at 11:10 AM.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
My tests:
- Edited the religion in Brittany to 90% Pro French, 10% Pro British (these are just rename of the catholic religion)
- Test 1: Change the gentleman close to Brittany to be Catholic_missionary instead of a gentleman, and move him to Brittany. When looking at Brittany information windows, it shows 90% pro French, and on the right of it there is a small arrow showing how much it will change each turn --> the conversion is working
- Test 2: instead of changing the gentleman to a Catholic_missionary, I edited the stats / traits to give it zeal, can_convert, etc. Exactly as the Catholic_missionary. I did that in the db and the startpos. When looking at Britanny, there is not religion change --> the conversion is not working
- Test 3: I added a new spawning agent, copy of the catholic_missrionary in everything (except the name of course). The agent spawns, but when I move it to Brittany, it doesn't convert.
Conversion does work, but I couldn't make it work with any other agent than the one originally supposed to convert. I tried adding religion, it works also. Except I'm limited to 5 religions which can actually convert (since the other religion would require a new agent and I can't make him convert)
Last edited by Steph; February 15, 2013 at 10:45 AM.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Originally Posted by Steph
My tests:
- Edited the religion in Brittany to 90% Pro French, 10% Pro British (these are just rename of the catholic religion)
- Test 1: Change the gentleman close to Brittany to be Catholic_missionary instead of a gentleman, and move him to Brittany. When looking at Brittany information windows, it shows 90% pro French, and on the right of it there is a small arrow showing how much it will change each turn --> the conversion is working
But before you said:
"About agents:
I have tried to edit them to make a gentlemen (for example) able to convert.
It doesn't work. "
Forgive me if i missed something but if you already have conversion working then what is the issue? i am confused now. Because initially you said that you can't edit gentlemen to conduct conversions, then in your last post according to your test results you were able to make a gentleman into a missionary at which point he was able to conduct conversions.
Last edited by Ramesses II The Great; February 15, 2013 at 03:09 PM.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
In the campaign map there is a pre placed gentleman just south of Brittany. If I edit the startpos to make it a missionary (and so he is NOT a gentleman anymore at all, it's just a trick to start with a missionary at this position), then when I move him to Brittany I can see he starts to convert. This prove that the conversion for a missionary is working.
But if instead of replacing the gentleman completly with the missionary, I keep the gentleman type of agent, but I replace all the traits and attributes to make it similar to a missionary (so it has zeal, it has can_convert, etc, except the name is still gentleman), then he doesn't convert.
To sum up: I have the impression an agent can convert only if his "name" is missionary, not if it has zeal, can_convert...
Is that clear now?
My problem is conversion is working ONLY with the 5 missionary already included by CA, and I cannot make any other agent convert. When I'd need more than 5 converting agent.
Last edited by Steph; February 15, 2013 at 05:50 PM.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
We have also tried to add new missionary agent to ETW to spread "Republic" ideals and we have had the same problem as Steph with NTW.
New religion work and can be spread through building
Only "missionary" agent can convert and adding "zeal" to any other agent doesn't work.
New "missionary" agents are unable to convert, only vanilla ones can do it.
Then, we stopped any further testings.
I think that CA had tied agent's abilities to agent's category.
But I don't understand why a new missionary agent is unable to convert, I hope CA didn't hardcoded some parameters...
My questions are :
Is a new gentlemen able to research ?
Is a new spy able to spy/assassin/sabotage ?
In other words, is an other new agent (gentleman/spy/general) able to use its abilities or is this problem limited to missionary ?
Last edited by wangrin; February 16, 2013 at 02:37 AM.
« Le courage, c’est de ne pas subir la loi du mensonge triomphant qui passe, et de ne pas faire écho de notre âme, de notre bouche et de nos mains aux applaudissements imbéciles et aux huées fanatiques.. » Jean JAURES
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Originally Posted by wangrin
We have also tried to add new missionary agent to ETW to spread "Republic" ideals and we have had the same problem as Steph with NTW.
New religion work and can be spread through building
Only "missionary" agent can convert and adding "zeal" to any other agent doesn't work.
New "missionary" agents are unable to convert, only vanilla ones can do it.
Then, we stopped any further testings.
I think that CA had tied agent's abilities to agent's category.
But I don't understand why a new missionary agent is unable to convert, I hope CA didn't hardcoded some parameters...
My questions are :
Is a new gentlemen able to research ?
Is a new spy able to spy/assassin/sabotage ?
In other words, is an other new agent (gentleman/spy/general) able to use its abilities or is this problem limited to missionary ?
I think Steph would be best to answer this but I can try to run some tests myself and tell u what I found
Last edited by wangrin; February 17, 2013 at 02:52 AM.
« Le courage, c’est de ne pas subir la loi du mensonge triomphant qui passe, et de ne pas faire écho de notre âme, de notre bouche et de nos mains aux applaudissements imbéciles et aux huées fanatiques.. » Jean JAURES
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Not yet!! I can't get them to convert but I am thinking i know now why!! there's an attribute that must be added... i will post it when i get back home and look at the files again.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Thanks for your effort and your guide, DinoMight. Still, I have the subtle feeling that the process you're describing doesn't work. Having edited my faction leader (adding a few traits) I can see the traits in my leader's character-description, but they've no effect on his stats. The changes are visible, but not effective.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Vaguely related to this tutorial (and thank you for sharing), I was considering upping all of the AI generals to really exceptional stats in order to possibly improve their influence on their army discipline and maneuvers on the battlefield.
I have tweaked my campaign battle performance considerably by mixing elements of Darthmod, Radious, and others efforts in different areas. I have experienced battle AI that has entirely outfoxed me, by deploying in waves, feinting maneuvers, negating my initial strategies, etc.. But at other times the AI performances were not half as clever.
I am wondering if the AI generals attributes (stars, ancillaries) are a main cause for these differences. Is there a thread where this topic was investigated?
If that affect is known to be true, then using these instructions here can help me to top-off the challenge level for my campaign-battle experiences.
I hope someone is still watching this thread and can comment further. TWcenter search functions aren't what they used to be, and I can't seem to find that related topic if it exists.
Re: Change/Edit traits, ancillary, attributes, and abilities of faction leaders and generals
Now that it is possible via modding to include multiple armies on a campaign battle-map, the need for competent generals on the map has become more urgent to me. So I'm double checking this topic for anyone with understanding of how General Traits might impact AI behavior on the battlefield during a campaign. IF using this guide can help make any and all potential enemy and allied forces behave more 'rationally' and 'tactically', then it is worth editing ALL General entries for every faction to ensure good battles.