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Thread: How to remove city forts from the startpos

  1. #1
    Alwyn's Avatar Frothy Goodness
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    Default How to remove city forts from the startpos

    How to remove city forts from a startpos

    You will need an ESF Editor (I used ESF Editor 1.4.5) and a copy of the startpos file.

    Open your startpos file to the following folder:
    campaign_startpos/campaign_env/campaign_model/world/region_manager/regions_array/[name of region]/[name of region]/region_slot_manager/Settlement: [name]/Settlement_Fortifications Building Manager/Settlement_Fortifications Building

    Right click on Settlement_Fortifications Building and delete it (in ESF Editor 1.4.5, it will turn red instead of disappearing when you delete it)
    Then click on Settlement_Fortifications Building Manager. On the right hand side of the screen you will see two Boolean entries. The first Boolean entry will be True and the second entry will be False. Change the first entry to False.

    Repeat this procedure for each region which starts the game with fortifications in the region capital. (Of course, you can start a game as any faction and simply look at the map for each theatre to find these regions). I recommend that, after you have removed the fort for about 5 regions, saving the startpos, putting the startpos in your data/campaigns/main folder and starting the game to test your edited startpos. To work, your edited startpos will need to be called startpos.esf.

    (In case anyone accidentally deletes their vanilla startpos file, you can get another copy by verifying the integrity of your game files on Steam. On Steam, right-click on Empire Total War; select Properties, then Local Files, then Verify Integrity of Game Cache. Steam should detect that you don’t have this file and will then put the vanilla startpos in the correct folder for you.)

    I used this procedure to remove the fortifications from the capitals of the following regions:
    Americas: Cuba and Florida
    India: Bijapur, Carnatica, Hindustan and Hyderabad
    Europe: Alsace, Austria, Central Italy (called Papal_States in the startpos), East Prussia (called Prussia in the startpos), Estonia & Livonia, Galicia & Podolia (called Galicia in the startpos), Hungary, Malta, Netherlands, Palestine, Rumelia, Scotland, Sweden, Spain and Tripolitania (called Tripoli in the startpos).

    I made a 'no city forts' version of the vanilla startpos available on p. 2 of the thread for the Shokh Hates Sieges! mod, here. If you like to play as the United States, you can download Early American Revolution startpos files in which there are no city forts (there's a link in my signature).

    These changes will only prevent region capitals from having forts at the start of the game. These changes will not prevent factions from fortifying cities. If you would like to prevent factions from building city forts, you will need to use a mod such as Shokh Hates Sieges!.

    How to remove city forts from a saved game

    It is possible to remove city forts from a saved game using the same procedure, since ESF Editor can edit saved games and since saved games include a regions_array. To remove city forts from a saved game, you would:-

    - copy and paste your saved game to another folder; your saved games should be in C:/Users/[your user name]/AppData/Roaming/The Creative Assembly/Empire/save_games
    - open your saved game using an ESF Editor
    - follow the procedure that I explained above to remove city forts from the saved game
    - when you have finished removing city forts, copy and paste (or cut and paste) your edited saved game back into C:/Users/[your user name]/AppData/Roaming/The Creative Assembly/Empire/save_games, replacing the original saved game (or using a different file name if you want to keep the original saved game)
    - start the game and load your saved game normally

    I have not fully tested the removal of city forts from a saved game. I simply started a game, saved it, followed the procedure above to remove the city fort from St Augustine, Florida and loaded the modified saved game. On the campaign map, St Augustine no longer had a city fort. I ended the turn, just to confirm that the game would not crash (it did not crash). I haven't played that campaign any further, so I do not know if there would be a risk of crashes because of editing the saved game. (I did not edit the startpos which I used, just the saved game).

    Credits: Thanks to taw for the instructions on how to remove city forts from the startpos and Erasmus777 (and others) for the ESF Editor.

    Warning: I experienced a problem in one campaign which could have been caused by using a 'no city forts' startpos. I explain the problem here. If anyone knows what causes the problem and whether the problem was linked to using a 'no city forts' startpos, I'd really like to know.

    My other basic guides to modding ETW are listed here.
    Last edited by Alwyn; September 06, 2015 at 02:14 AM.

  2. #2

    Default Re: How to remove city forts from the startpos

    Hey, Alwyn!

    Thank you very much for your guide.

    There is also a Fort in Silesia in the Darthmod startpos file.

    To finally prevent the AI from constructing walls I also edited the ESF file and set the "turns to build" of each FORT entry to 5000 and I lowered the cost to 1 gold so that the AI doesn't loose a high amount of money for no effect ingame.

    I hope it will finally kill the terrible MONSTROSITY of FORT LAG.

    Best regards,
    Haubitzentaucher

  3. #3

    Default Re: How to remove city forts from the startpos

    As a little extra service and to make editing way easier for you I will include the STARTPOS entries in order of appearance in the ESF-file:

    Carnatica
    Galicia
    Tripoli
    Cuba
    Sweden
    Austria
    Prussia
    Rumelia
    Silesia
    Spain
    Bijapur
    Hungary
    Hyderabad
    Netherlands
    The_Papal_States (Central Italy)
    Estonia_And_Livonia
    Hindustan
    Malta
    Palestine
    Alsace
    Florida
    Scotland


    Thanks again and thumbs up to Alwyn, Master of Noforts!

  4. #4
    Alwyn's Avatar Frothy Goodness
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    Default Re: How to remove city forts from the startpos

    You're welcome, Haubitzentaucher and thank you for the helpful information (+rep).

    I agree that fort lag is really annoying. I hope that your edits to the ESF file are working well - fixing the cost at 1 and the time at 5000 turns sounds like an effective fix.

    To give credit where it's due, the true Masters of Noforts are taw (in the 'how-to' guide above, I simply aimed to explain what taw did - I'm not claiming to have discovered anything new) and Shokh (creator of the excellent no-forts mod Shokh Hates Sieges!)

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