Temples don't show up on the battle map!

[Roma_Victrix]

First of all, I just want to thank Rhaymo and others for their hard work in developing this mod for us. I should also congratulate you for making those amazing looking new units for the 1.1 patch. What an achievement!

However, that does not excuse this game mod from valid criticism.

The new patch fixed many things, but what it failed to address was something I noticed almost right away: in most cases, temples aren't displayed on the battle map!

Fiddling with the descr_strat.txt file in the pathway Data --> World --> Maps --> Campaign --> Custom --> worldwide_campaign_FULL, I decided to see if I could fix the problem. I was only halfway successful if that. I first noticed the discrepancy when I played a custom battle with a "Ellenistic" (Greek) large city. All the major buildings were displayed on the map, including the "Awesome Temple" on the acropolis. However, when I actually played the game on the campaign map and started taking rebel (i.e. "Slave" faction) settlements, I immediately noticed that there were no temples to be found.

1) For starters, take an initially rebel (i.e. "Slave" faction) settlement like Athens (in the region of "Attica"), which according to descr_strat has a temple_of_governors_large_temple type building. However, this is proven false on the campaign map if you put a spy in that settlement or take the city through siege. On the campaign map there is no temple, and there's no temple on the battle map either! In fact, once you capture the settlement, you have to choose from a list of shrines to start building up the religious structure in this city from scratch, from the first level.

* Just to be clear, those levels for religious buildings are "shrine" (for towns), "temple" (for large towns), "large_temple" (for cities), "awesome_temple" (for large cities), and "pantheon" (for huge cities, which only the Romani and Mauryan Indians can create, apparently).

2) I figured this might have been a problem with the fact that a "large_temple" was for a minor city, whereas an "awesome_temple" would only show up on the campaign map for a large city, even though Medieval II had huge city level settlements that could display on the battle map any level of religious building (i.e. the small church, church, abbey, cathedral, or the huge cathedral). So, in descr_strat.txt I replaced "temple_of_governors_large_temple" with "temple_of_governors_awesome_temple" to see if this would fix it. The answer: NO!

3) However, that didn't discourage me. I noticed in the "export_descr_buildings.txt" file that various factions can only have certain types of temples. For instance, the Greek faction Koinon t. Achaea (i.e. "Milan") can have temples to stuff like "healing" and "justice" but isn't allowed to build "fun" or "viking" type temples. The only faction that couldn't build temples of any kind, apparently, was the slave faction! Perhaps this is the root of the problem for descr_strat saying these settlements have temples when in fact they don't. I pretty much concluded that with the next step:

4) I tied to see if a settlement owned by a faction other than "slave" could display temples. I besieged the large city of Pella, owned by the Kingdom of Macedon (i.e. Byzantium). The descr_strat.txt says that Pella is supposed to have a "temple_of_violence_large_temple" and indeed it does have it on the campaign map when you open the building browser for that city. However, on the battle map the large temple cannot be seen! In descr_strat.txt, I changed it to "temple_of_violence_awesome_temple" and VOILA! IT WORKED! I started a new campaign and besieged Pella again, and this time the "awesome temple" of "Heracles" finally stood on the acropolis of the city in the battle map, in all its Greek architectural glory.

So to summarize, the rebel "slave" faction cannot display temples on the battle map, whereas all other factions can display temples so long as they correspond with the correct level of the settlement. For instance, only a "large_temple" can be seen in a city settlement, and only an "awesome_temple" can be seen in the large city settlement.

My proposed solution: just do what the guys at Roma Surrectum II did with their settlements! Regardless of whether you have built something or not, or if a particular building is absent in the building browser, who cares? Why does it matter? Why does the battle map have to reflect that at all? Every building should show up on the battle map, maxed out with the most advanced buildings possible, just like the "custom battle" battle map. If a catapult hits a certain building and gives it damage, who cares? Why does that have to be linked to the campaign map? I think the settlements would look so much better, because as they stand, they look pretty barren and unrealistic without temples or an academy crowning the acropolis at least. For a city like Athens, which is supposed to look monumental, it looks like a poor fishing village instead.

In fact, I'd suggest someone do a sub-mod to overhaul the look of the settlements completely, but that's perhaps for another day.

I hope that someone can fix this immediate problem right away, though!

[Nicov55]

The mod isn't finished yet. I also noticed that Alexandria is a roman huge city since the greek_huge_city settlement does not exist as well. There are some changes to be made regarding cultures and settlements and i have good hope it will be done in the future releases.

[Roma_Victrix]

I haven't besieged Alexandria yet, but I've been told by Rhaymo that it actually looks like an Eastern large city on the battle map. Indeed, I hope someone in the near future addresses this issue. The settlements should certainly be heavily reworked.