Historical Regions

[Ichon]

This topic applies to how we divide AOR regions and a bit of historical background in a broader context.

Currently there is a limit of 64 hidden resource regions which are how the Area of Recruitment groups of regions are defined for roster recruitment. We have reserved some hidden resource regions for scripting reasons such as capitols, rivers, slavemarkets, wonders (for Hagia Sophia and such special buildings) and possibly other things we might decide in the future to use if we can get reasonably realistic recruitment AOR's in smaller numbers that make sense.

At minimum we have the 31 core regions defined, 1 per faction then the additional resources for scripting/recruitment such capital, rivers, silk road, caravan, norse bodyguard (to allow Norway to have infantry generals at campaign start) and some other stuff that I'll list later.

Mercenary recruitment we can define separately by region and include different regions in larger or smaller groups

Many of the regions are fairly obviously divided- France, Germany, England, Egypt, etc but there are many regions more open to interpretation such as caravan, no pirates (so pirates won't spawn on interior lakes though it is different file to stop faction AI recruiting mercenary navy in lakes and more difficult to stop because if we stop mercenary navy in Jerusalem for example then no ships can be recruited in Mediterranean as differentiating for AI between Mediterranean and the Dead Sea is impossible.)

Realistically we have only a handful of hidden resource regions open to change and we have discussed giving up something like Ireland, Prussia(we already have HRE and hanse), and Constable (only used for a couple unique Crusader units which we can define in another way in files) to make much broader cultural AOR.

Maybe define a wider European, Mediterranean, Eastern, and Steppe cultural AORs for example that allow certain base units to be recruited everywhere in those groups. This would not only clean up files in EDB but allow factions to recruit basic units anywhere within a specified AOR or retrain even without a specific barracks building.

I'm curious to hear proposals about how to define larger cultural groups and also any scripting ideas that are worth using some hidden resources for as they are limited and I see only about 4-5 that we could currently redeploy.

[Lifthrasir]

So, if I understood it correctly, we can define 1 hidden_resource (HR) per "culture" or "area" instead of 1 per faction.
For example, we can define 1 HR for Iberia instead one for Portugal, 1 for Spain, 1 for Aragon and 1 for Moors.

In that case, we just need to divide the map in a certain amount of areas. So based on the list of settlement & regions made by Fair Prince, instead 31 HR we can only have 16 HR as per below for example:

- british_isles - for Caernavon, Dublin, Edinburgh, Inverness, London, Nottingham, York and Bristol.
- scandinavia - for Bergen, Calmar, Lund, Oslo, Roskilde, Skara, Visby, Ribe and Sigtuna.
- iberia - for Barcelona, Burgos, Cordoba, Granada, Leon, Lisbon, Murcia, Palma, Pamplona, Badajos, Silves, Toledo, Valencia, Zaragoza, Coimbra, Guimaraes, Santiago de Compostela and Seville.
- western_europe - for Angers, Bordeaux, Caen, Clermont, Dijon, Lyon, Paris, Rennes, Reims, Toulouse, Arles, Arras (replaced by Rouen in the futur), Ghent, Leuven, Orleans, Poitiers and Toyes.

... and so on.

If we add also another HR per religions, that means 4 HR more (catholic, muslim, orthodox, pagan).

That means 20 HR instead 31.
20 areas HR + 4 religions HR + all possible combinations (1 HR associated or not with another - "and" & "and not" in the EDB) = at least 11 free HR for other uses.

Not bad, isn't it?

[Ichon]

That means 20 HR instead 31.
20 areas HR + 4 religions HR + all possible combinations (1 HR associated or not with another - "and" & "and not" in the EDB) = at least 11 free HR for other uses.

Not bad, isn't it?

Yes, something like what you suggested is possible. There are a few different ways to do it though for scripting I believe we have to have each faction have its own AOR so re-emerge script works and so we can define core regions and also rebellions work correctly.

I was thinking in a more limited way just to use the 3-4 regions we can more easily make useful. Now if we create such broader resource regions we could use them for a few different things. Rebel spawns, movement, recruitment, etc.

[Lifthrasir]

3-4 regions, that's quite a high goal. I see at least 5 regions: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Middle East and let's say Steppes. But in that case, it doesn't take in consideration the specificity of some areas like Scandinavia or Turkey for example.

I'm not sure how to use only a very limited amount of regions as HR without adding quite a lot of "special" HR beside them. At the end, we might have the 64 HR used anyway. Or I miss something?

[Ichon]

I'm not sure how to use only a very limited amount of regions as HR without adding quite a lot of "special" HR beside them. At the end, we might have the 64 HR used anyway. Or I miss something?

I'm suggesting to leave most of the resource regions as we need then but can probably free up 3-4 without much problems. How best to use that less than handful of resources regions is what I wanted suggestions about. My proposal is broader cultural groups as outlined above but there are other things we could use them for such as more special buildingwonders, specific areas of the map to represent factions not on the map and spawn rebels there like Bulgaria, Tunisia, Volga Bulgarian, Obdorites. etc.

[Andytheplatypus]

I am assuming you guys have seen this right? Would solve your dilemma.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Memory-Editing

[Ichon]

When I read that thread it does not look like they have released anything yet. They are still exploring what they can do and will eventually release a version for other modders so for now we don't know what that will look like and it is much easier to work with what we have and can always expand it later if tools become available.

[Giorgios]

A "Byzantine" cultural area would IMO include all provinces bordering on the Aegean plus those on the north coast of Anatolia. But I may be misunderstanding how these cultural areas actually work!

[Ichon]

A "Byzantine" cultural area would IMO include all provinces bordering on the Aegean plus those on the north coast of Anatolia. But I may be misunderstanding how these cultural areas actually work!

Yes- if we have enough hidden resources free we can do something like that but more likely we won't have enough free hidden resources so the cultural areas would need to be larger than Byzantine sphere. We could do Orthodox, Muslim, Pagan, Catholic cultural areas but I think other alternatives are better.