If you ever want to remove a trade route from a faction in the startpos.esf, I seem to have found a way to do this.
Please note - for me, this is a new, experimental technique. I cannot guarantee that it will work or that it won't cause CTDs. I strongly recommend making a back-up copy of any startpos file which you edit before trying this technique. Any feedback or suggestions for improving the technique are welcome. I seem to have found an area of the startpos (campaign_startpos/campaign_env/campaign_model/campaign_trade_manager/international_trade_routes) which has not received a lot of attention from modders (I may be wrong), so people may want to experiment to see what effects can be achieved by modifying the values for trade routes.
You will need:-
- an ESF Editor (I used ESF Editor 1.4.5)
- the region ID codes, from the startpos which you are editing, of the regions which the trade route(s) connect to. It should be possible to find the region ID code for a region in the campaign_startpos/campaign_env/campaign_model/world/region_manager/regions_array (click on the + by a region and then click on the region name;on the right hand side, you should be able to see a 9-digit Region ID number. Make a note of this number. For example, in a startpos for the Early American Revolution mini-mod collection, I wanted to remove trade routes from the United States at the start. US trade routes all connect with New England, which (in this startpos) has a region ID code of 815107704. Please note that region ID codes probably vary - in other words, in a different startpos, New England probably has a different region ID number
- (optional) something to read while you wait (see instructions below). If you're used to editing relatively mods with a pack file manager or database editor and if you are not used to editing startpos.esf, bear in mind that a startpos is about 50 to 60 megabyte file, so the software tends to work slowly and stop responding at times (it's sometimes necessary to wait a minute or two for the software to start responding again)
Instructions
- Start ESF Editor
- Open the startpos which you would like to edit to campaign_startpos/campaign_env/campaign_model/campaign_trade_manager/international_trade_routes.
- In ESF Editor 1.4.5, when I first opened campaign_startpos/campaign_env/campaign_model/campaign_trade_manager/, the ESF Editor stopped working for about a minute - then it unfroze and, after another delay, I could open campaign_trade_manager/international_trade_routes. So you might want to have something to read while you wait for the ESF Editor to open these parts of the startpos!
Spoiler for two screenshots showing the international_trade_routes part of the startpos:
- The international trade routes are organised by faction. When you open up a trade route in ESF Editor, a list of numbers appears on the right hand side. It appears that the 2nd and 7th entries are normally region ID numbers - I think that these are the region ID numbers for the two ends of the trade route, e.g. if the trade route is between Boston and London, then they will be the region ID numbers for New England and England. (However, for some trade routes it seems that the 14th entry contains the region ID number for one of the regions where the trade route ends, as in the second image in the spoiler above). When you have identified the trade route which you want to delete, you can simply right-click on campaign_startpos/campaign_env/campaign_model/campaign_trade_manager/international_trade_routes/[faction name]/faction_international_trade_routes_array/faction_international_trade_routes_array and select Delete. The deleted trade route will not disappear from the startpos file immediately, instead it will turn red. (This means that it has been successfully deleted. If you save the startpos and open it again, that trade route should no longer appear in the international_trade_routes/[faction name]/faction_international_trade_routes_array part of the startpos).
Spoiler for Deleting a trade route:
- Each trade route appear in the lists of trade routes for both countries. For example, if you want to remove a trade route between Boston and London, you will need to find (and delete) the trade route in both the US/Thirteen Colonies lists of trade routes and the Britain list of trade routes. If you only delete the trade route for one of the factions, then when you start a campaign using this startpos, the line on the campaign map will still be visible (with only one faction's name on it); if you delete the trade route for both factions, then the line showing the trade route will no longer appear on the campaign map (and, as far as I can tell, the trade route has been removed from the game.)
I used this technique in an attempt to fix a problem with trade routes in the Early American Revolution mini-mod collection (there's a link below in my signature). My latest post on the Early American Revolution thread includes a zipped startpos which uses this fix. If anyone would like to try using it and provide feedback, please do so.
My other basic guides to modding ETW are listed here.