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Thread: TTT - Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies: A Character Mod Overhaul v.1.6 (Updated Oct. 29th) - (Eastern/Greek/Egyptian Ancillary Overhaul + New Trait Portraits) - Patch 5/Nomad DLC Compatible

  1. #21

    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    For triggering traits and ancillaries all you need to do is to set them up and add a function in the respective lua files.

    I am pretty shure that the number I put in bold below is a percentage chance, so lowering it should stop the ancillary inflation in the campaign.

    effect.ancillary("r2_sp_anc_all_army_hero_berber", 10, context)

    Traits have a second number in front which corresponds to the level of the trait. I used new traits in TROM3, so I may be able to help if you encounter any roadblocks.

  2. #22

    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Great mod, thanks for this.

  3. #23
    Johan217's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Quote Originally Posted by Yarkis de Bodemloze View Post
    I am pretty shure that the number I put in bold below is a percentage chance, so lowering it should stop the ancillary inflation in the campaign.

    effect.ancillary("r2_sp_anc_all_army_hero_berber", 10, context)
    You're probably right

    In any case, it seems the most common ancillaries simply have a 1% chance of appearing every turn, with no other conditions set. The .lua does not appear to accept decimal values nor the old conditions.RandomPercentCampaign condition (makes the game crash on start). So it will be a labour of love to add new conditions for all of them.
    Last edited by Johan217; September 19, 2013 at 03:06 AM.
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  4. #24
    Hellbent's Avatar Semisalis
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Thanks for all the feedback guys. I haven't much time this week due to college stuff, but I should be able to continue work on this during the weekend. I'm also waiting for patch 3 a bit to see if anything changes on the campaign side of things.

    Here's a couple of ideas that I've been playing around for a while:

    1. An option to limit the flooding of ancillaries is to add more of the 'turn x triggers' so that certain ancillaries will only show up in the early, mid, or late game (apart from the normal triggers). Downside would be predictability during the early game, though I suppose more specific triggers can offset this. Any thoughts on this suggestion?

    2. Due to the (currently what I assume to be) hardcoded limit of 2 traits + political rank, would it be better to create 'traits' that are under 'skills?' This would open up the skill tree a bit instead of the generic +1 to each attribute, although it does take away triggers for traits and gives the player the choice of gaining traits.

    3. For those of you that have tested this, how do the increased ancillary values fare during mid-late game when you can stack them with army and general traits?

    4. I'd also love some ideas on new traits/skills (both for generals and armies/navies).

    Thanks guys!


  5. #25
    Johan217's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    You may want to have a look at the trigger_events table, there are a lot of useful events that can be used as conditions for triggering the traits/ancillaries. Limiting the period for ancillaries is another interesting possibility (e.g. the "Hastatus/Triarius" ancillaries (early) and the "Preatorian" (late), but I believe these are actually generic ancillaries that are shared with other factions for whom en early/late division might not make sense).

    Perhaps it would be best to look at the existing Skills and see if they can be renamed or reworked. For example I find the distinction between "Commander" and "General" or "Warrior" and "Soldier" redundant. Also, lowering the tresholds for the advanced skills while adding more levels should result in more diversity. I find the Rome2 character menus extremely unhandy, so I would hate to see it cluttered by even more skills cards. But I am very conservative in such matters, so others may disagree
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  6. #26
    Pnutmaster's Avatar Dominus Qualitatium
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Preface: I loathe the make-a-general skill cards. Most of this blandness that our generals exude stems from them and how they are gained.

    A player knows he can advance his generals by marching them into hapless AI stacks. After each of these "engagements", the general will gain experience points (how much exp is gained? Is it predetermined?) and gradually level up. Regardless of how many causalties were sustained, or how many men the general killed in his battles, he is given the choice of "Warrior", "Strategist", or "Commander". This is an example of giving players too much autonomy, so much so that they are reminded they're playing a game--a game that makes no effort to humanize its characters other than arbitraryl making them all unhinged and insane (which I guess they would be after seeing some of these battlefields).

    The thought then, of this somewhat disinterested and disgruntled modder of Total Wars past, is to salvage the skill cards in one of two ways.

    1) Give the general real choices that he would make in his growth as a military leader. Perhaps by leveling, he himself is not levelling, but his personal military counsel is. Who does he promote to Evocati? His finest soldier of pleb origin, or the son of Patrician origin? If he promotes the pleb, his hastati and principes will respect him more (higher morale knowing their general is witnessing their feats), or conversely, his bodyguard, owing to the gratitude of a wealthy pater, will be equipped with finer swords and shields (increasing their stats in the same increment as a chevron). All this will be storied in your general's retinue until that one ambush he only barely survives, killing his prized Evocati and removing the skill from the game. Consider this the more dynamic system.

    2) If we were to echo RTW and M2TW traits of old: Upon leveling, a general could choose between advancing himself logistically or combatively. Logistic advancements would reflect a general's expertise of terrain, his ability to march his men, and the sophistication of his supply lines (in game terms, movement per turn, maybe an attrition rate if one ever appears). Combative advancements would reflect the general's eye for his own soldiers, who to appoint as centurion, who to lead the cavalry, etc. Here you would be keeping closer to Rome II's design philosophy, if I may deign to speak such a word.

    Those are some of my thoughts thus far. Feed off them as you will I'm refraining from any messy LUA modding myself until I see definitive proof from CA that the campaign map will be patched to completion.

    Also, it's worth noting that I was modding M2TW with Dearmad in my Freshman year of College. LOL. Two years later I was having a conversation with a guy on campus about Rome and Medieval II. In the course of the conversation, he asked me if I played with any mods, then began raving about this Stainless Steel mod that allowed you to track your royal bloodline. Greatest reply ever, "Oh yeah? I wrote that."
    Last edited by Pnutmaster; September 19, 2013 at 05:05 PM.
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  7. #27
    Hellbent's Avatar Semisalis
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    As always, thanks for the feedback. I hear you both on the skill cards and I'm trying my hand at streamlining them as well as giving the player more access to most of the skills earlier. I think this should help avoid the redundancy of having each general follow the same path. It also creates a far better variety of mixing and matching skills which in turn should help the role playing aspects as well.

    In any case, after struggling with the code, I'm almost done with the next iteration of this mod focusing on an overhauled skill tree for generals.

    Here's a quick preview of what I'm up to:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    Those are level 3 skills and I tried to be creative with the combination of effects for each skill. My goal is to help players specialize their generals - one could be great at sieges and night battles, while another is better off playing governor and protecting the home front.

    Also, it's worth noting that I was modding M2TW with Dearmad in my Freshman year of College. LOL. Two years later I was having a conversation with a guy on campus about Rome and Medieval II. In the course of the conversation, he asked me if I played with any mods, then began raving about this Stainless Steel mod that allowed you to track your royal bloodline. Greatest reply ever, "Oh yeah? I wrote that."
    LOL, that is both hilarious and cool at the same time.


  8. #28

    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    I look forward to the update. I think the old versions are creating blank boxes where text should be, fix will be needed.

    edit: nvm, turns out i forgot to eliminate a few Radious mods from my data folder.
    Last edited by Mr. Os; September 22, 2013 at 06:55 PM.
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  9. #29
    Johan217's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Looking forward to the new version, it should be a massive improvement over vanilla!

    Looking at the screenshot, I noticed "+ 3 gravitas per turn (local province)". Is this an error or is it just the game's way of saying the effect applies to 1 character?

    Meanwhile, here are a few random thoughts/observations:
    - Zowrath has made a mod that "stops all generals from getting insane unless there really is some genetic thing wrong (inbred), phobias, paranoia and general madness about them amongst some things.": http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ng-the-madness
    - How about setting more ancillaries as non-transferrable and unique? This could be another way to stop the spamming of ancillaries.
    - To further reduce the spamming of ancillaries, some of the trait triggers may be recycled as triggers for the ancillaries, or the ancillaries could be tied to a particular skill or trait, or character level.
    - Is there a way to reduce the cost of marriages in the game? I am wondering if this could encourage AI subfactions to use the option, as I haven't seen them do it.
    Last edited by Johan217; September 24, 2013 at 08:08 AM.
    Rock 'n' roll is the only religion that will never let you down

  10. #30

    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Traits def need modding but I too am worried about upping the percentages too much with stacking. Has anyone run into problems with this?

  11. #31
    Hellbent's Avatar Semisalis
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Quote Originally Posted by Johan217 View Post
    Looking forward to the new version, it should be a massive improvement over vanilla!

    Looking at the screenshot, I noticed "+ 3 gravitas per turn (local province)". Is this an error or is it just the game's way of saying the effect applies to 1 character?

    Meanwhile, here are a few random thoughts/observations:
    - Zowrath has made a mod that "stops all generals from getting insane unless there really is some genetic thing wrong (inbred), phobias, paranoia and general madness about them amongst some things.": http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ng-the-madness
    - How about setting more ancillaries as non-transferrable and unique? This could be another way to stop the spamming of ancillaries.
    - To further reduce the spamming of ancillaries, some of the trait triggers may be recycled as triggers for the ancillaries, or the ancillaries could be tied to a particular skill or trait, or character level.
    - Is there a way to reduce the cost of marriages in the game? I am wondering if this could encourage AI subfactions to use the option, as I haven't seen them do it.
    *Yup, it was just a typo on the effects file. I'll have it fixed by the time of the next update (hopefully this weekend).
    *Interesting, I always thought the issue was that the chance for the trait was too high (75% in the files) but I see Zowrath hasn't changed the chance values so he must have found another way to fix it. Have you tested his mod? Does it work?
    *I'm only learning through trial and error so I am not entirely sure, but I have not noticed an option modding-wise to make specific ancillaries non-transferable although the game checks for uniqueness so that the player never gets two of the same retinues. I'd really like to do this as I was hoping to include historical characters as ancillaries, and it'd be great if I could recreate in game terms how loyal they were to their respective generals (e.g. Agrippa and Octavian, Aristotle and Alexander, etc.).
    *I'll keep that in mind and see how it works. Thanks for the suggestion!
    *Interesting note on the marriages, that might certainly prompt the AI to offer marriages to players, but even in late-game, the AI never does. I think at this point, it's a bug that CA themselves need to address, but I'll try to look for the marriage cost values (if they exist to be moddable) and set it to zero to see how the AI reacts then.

    Quote Originally Posted by auboy View Post
    Traits def need modding but I too am worried about upping the percentages too much with stacking. Has anyone run into problems with this?
    It's one of the things that I'm actively monitoring, but it's also one of the easier things to change about this mod. So I'll be very open to feedback on this based on testing and such. Thanks for letting me know!

    As always, thanks for the suggestion. I feel really bad that I have not released the next version of this mod, but (once again) I'll cite college midterms as the reason. The good news is that I've pretty much learned the full basics of ancillary and skill files (still working on traits, but they seem to be fairly similar) so from this point on, it's more of actually creating stuff rather than a seemingly endless trial-and-error process to see which file does what.


  12. #32
    crzyrndm's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Quote Originally Posted by Hellbent View Post
    *Interesting, I always thought the issue was that the chance for the trait was too high (75% in the files) but I see Zowrath hasn't changed the chance values so he must have found another way to fix it. Have you tested his mod? Does it work?
    I'd guess he's just removed the 10+ triggers that were just random bad traits, leaving only the genetic ones. Because less traits can lead to madness (and traits you can't earn, but get created with), you have less mad generals (not actually at my computer so I can't check that assumption).

    Some things that may be helpful:
    The descriptions and titles come from the first loc pack (localisation) under character_trait_levels
    traits_to_antitraits table looks like its been used to set which traits exclude each other (you can have mutually, or just single sided exclusions)
    trigger conditions in export_triggers.lua can use preset combinations detailed in lib_export_triggers (one example that I use a lot is char_is_general(context:character()))
    It’s better to excite some and offend others than be bland and acceptable to all
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  13. #33

    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Great job! Am looking forward to seeing how your mod develops. + rep

  14. #34

    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Nice mod, love the more pronounced effects.

    One tiny bug I noticed was the "administrative expert" trait for dignitaries has +10 upkeep, which I assume is a typo?

  15. #35
    CenturiO-LuciuS-VorenuS's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    fantastic work...looking forward to a update of your mod .


    + rep

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  16. #36

    Default Re: Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    I like it. Keep it comin' +rep

  17. #37
    Hellbent's Avatar Semisalis
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    Default Re: (UPDATED 09/28 - Complete Skill Tree Overhaul!l) Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    1.2 is out!

    I've updated the original post with the specifics, which you'll also find below:

    It's been a lot of work, but I hope you guys enjoy! Also, might be best to start a new campaign with this one.

    Feedback and suggestions are always appreciated.

    *NEW (v1.2)* Completely overhauled the skill tree for generals.


    • Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    • Color-coded and unique skill cards for ease of use
    • Increased skills per general level from 1 to 2
    • Streamlined most skills and combined similar skill effects
    • A separate skill tree dedicated to city management and politics
    • Took out boring and redundant skills
    • More RPG and immersion options!


  18. #38

    Default Re: (UPDATED 09/28 - Complete Skill Tree Overhaul!l) Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    So what happens exactly to existing general skills?

  19. #39
    Hellbent's Avatar Semisalis
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    Default Re: (UPDATED 09/28 - Complete Skill Tree Overhaul!l) Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaporsnake View Post
    So what happens exactly to existing general skills?
    I've completely replaced them with this overhaul.

    I'm currently trying to write up a short explanation, but basically, the idea was to give the player more options and branches from the outset. I hated vanilla's 2 skill options per tier system; I felt it was too limited and led to redundant characters that felt all the same.


  20. #40

    Default Re: (UPDATED 09/28 - Complete Skill Tree Overhaul!l) Hellbent's Traits, Talents, and Toadies (TTT) - A Character Mod Overhaul

    Ah I guess I should have worded my question a bit better. What happens to my general's current skills? Are they converted to your new skills or is this not save compatible at all?

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