Enabling diplomacy for the Pirate faction

[Fewrfreyut]

pretty basic question. I was just wondering how I could enable the diplomacy functions for the pirate faction. It's made playable in several mods, but the faction cannot ever initiate diplomatic discussions with other nations. I'm pretty sure it's a fairly simple thing to change via the esf editor, just need to know which.

[waulen2980]

I am trying to figure this one out myself and can't seem to find much info on it. You can edit treaties and even attitudes via ESF editor however, would be nice (and easier) to be able to be able to engage in dialogue. I'm using the Minor Factions Revenge mod which seems to be best for playing pirates.

[Alwyn]

I don't know how to enable diplomacy for the Pirates faction at the start. When I tried playing as the Pirates, they seemed to get some diplomatic activity after they captured a region for the first time (other factions started offering peace).

My tentative suggestion would be this: take a faction which already has diplomatic relations from the start, rename them and give them ownership of the regions which normally belong to the Pirates at the start. If there is a simple way to edit the existing Pirates faction so that they have diplomacy from the start, then that would clearly be preferable to my idea.

If you would like to try my idea, you would:-
- Choose an emergent faction (or possibly even a cancelled faction); both emergent and cancelled factions are listed here if you scroll down and look in the box under the heading 'Links and information')
- Rename this 'Caribbean Pirates' or something similar; Shokh's USA start in 1700 mod provides an example of a modded startpos which renames a faction (renaming 'Thirteen Colonies' as 'United States of America') if you would like to see an example of a startpos which changes the name of a faction
- To rename the faction and for other startpos editing, you will need an ESF Editor (various versions are available to download from the forum, e.g. ESF Editor 1.4.5). husserlTW's instructions explain how to edit a copy of the startpos, to make your faction playable and assign ownership of the regions which belong to the Pirates at the start to the faction which you have renamed

That should, at least, get you part of the way there. husserlTW's instructions include information on how to edit diplomatic relationships in the startpos, so that your renamed faction can start at war with everyone, if you would like them to. Presumably it should be possible to edit a field in the startpos to tell the game to use the normal Pirates flag for your renamed faction. If you made those changes with a startpos, then you could (I hope) use a mod such as Minor Factions Revenge with this startpos to provide an appropriate roster of units; you would need to edit the mod file so that the units which the mod normally gives to the Pirates are given to your renamed faction instead. You would edit the mod file using a pack file manager (e.g. PFM 1.5.9 or PFM 3.1.6). The most recent version is PFM 3.2.1 but it seems that this version cannot read every table in Empire: Total War, according to PikeStance, the projector manager for Imperial Splendour (link). Alternatively, poa made a great mod adding units for the Pirates (again, you would need to edit using a pack file manager) so you could use that - hopefully poa will be able to provide a link to this mod.

[poa]

i dont know where i uploaded it, but here is a newer version, (hopefully the topic name pirate will give me the hint)
it adds units to pirate & barbary group

[Tanq]

it doesn't seem to be in the pack files or the esf.

Also, cheers, poa. Useful stuff.

Personally, in my tiny mod, I reworked liberated slave troops (maroon rebels and slaver musketeers) plus some basic 12pdr guns and previously dead 8in mortars.

And another thing, a lil omission seems to have disabled the pirates' town-religious chain, fixed by giving them the initial level of the protestant chain in Building/faction variants or whatevs. Not essential maybe, but still...

What I'd like however is a tweaked ESF where the pirates' only province is Nassau/Bahamas, while the leeward islands and Trinidad go to Britain. And on top of that - I'd like the pirate capital to move to Boston, once captured.