How to port the RTW map to BI?

[Turbo]

As the title says, what is the easiest way to port the RTW map to BI? I want to use the BI mechanics but use the RTW map.

Thanks for your Help!

[makanyane]

depends what you mean by BI mechanics:

if you want the RTW factions on the RTW map but running under BI.exe you can leave everything as it is and launch game from BI.exe shortcut with -mod in the properties target line i.e.
"X:\blahblah\Rome - Total War\RomeTW-BI.exe" -mod
that will launch RTW campaign under BI engine - you can then also make changes to a few files mainly sm_factions, EDU, and UI's, to activate hording, swimming etc

if however you want to place BI factions and units on RTW map, you've got to make lots of text changes to descr_strat & descr_regions etc, etc,

[Turbo]

depends what you mean by BI mechanics:

if you want the RTW factions on the RTW map but running under BI.exe you can leave everything as it is and launch game from BI.exe shortcut with -mod in the properties target line i.e.
"X:\blahblah\Rome - Total War\RomeTW-BI.exe" -mod
that will launch RTW campaign under BI engine - you can then also make changes to a few files mainly sm_factions, EDU, and UI's, to activate hording, swimming etc

if however you want to place BI factions and units on RTW map, you've got to make lots of text changes to descr_strat & descr_regions etc, etc,

I am looking for option 2 - place bi factions on the RTW map. Basically copying the RTW map into the BI folder and playing regular BI however using the RTW map.

[makanyane]

Umm. not entirely sure the effort is worth it, they are both basically the same shape! Anyway...

I'd set it up as a provincial campaign folder so you can still get in to BI main campaign to compare starting positions etc..

Make sure you've worked out how to get BI maps etc to work as provincial campaign, then import RTW bits, to do that you'll have to also copy and paste rtw/data/text/imperial_campaign_regions_and_settlements.txt into bi/data/text and rename to
your_provincial_campaign_folder_regions_and_settlements.txt, move the RTW regions and settlement lookup into BI and either rename or delete any references in mercenaries and win_conditions files that refer to BI regions.

You'll need to change the RTW descr_regions.txt so every default faction and default rebel lines 3 and 4 per region) are valid ones for BI - initially I'd just try changing them all to same thing.. Descr_strat you need to use BI version but change every region name to the ones from RTW, but use BI faction creators - to get it to load initially under BI 1.6 you can load map without all regions being present in descr_strat , so I'd delete all settlements apart from possibly 1 each for first two factions which should be renamed to something valid from RTW regions. To launch that you'd probably need to go in as one of factions with remaining valid province, and you'll prossibly get lots of factions that come up as destroyed for not owning any province.

If that works you can then slowly add RTW regions back to descr_strat for factions you think they should belong to, and at the same time go back andrevise descr_regions so creators and rebels relate properly, this map for BI may help for comparisom;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:R...ampaignmap.png

You probably also need to ammend a lot of the army co-ordinates, I'm not sure how closely those tie up between RTW/BI locations... umm good luck...

[Turbo]

Thank you for your excellent help my friend!

One last question - is there a guide on how to add or delete map provinces.

[SPARTAN VI]

Glanced through this really quickly, so not sure if that was already said. First thing you want to do when messing with game files is make a copy of RTW. Common sense, right? Well, I forgot to when I was tinkering with SPQR and had to reinstall everything. Now I have 4 copies of RTW.

[makanyane]

Good advice Spartan VI, I should have said that too. Turbo I'm not sure if I made it clear enough but when I was talking about altering the RTW files etc I meant copies of those files that you should have pasted into your new provincial campaign folder...

Guide to add regions is here:
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=51387

To delete one paint out all of its colour in map_regions (after making back up of file ) with an adjacent regions colour, making sure you go over its city and port pixel as well (in paint shop pro you can use 'count colour' function to make sure you have one less colour than in previous map to check you got it all). Then delete the section for that region in descr_regions and descr_strat. Also use find command to see if its region name appears in the mercenaries, win_conditions and events file, delete it from mercenaries, replace it with other region in other two. You don't need to touch the lookup files they can happily have 'redundant' names left in...

Talking of events file (which I forgot to mention in last post) reminds me if you want your slavs to emerge you have to make sure you give their event in descr_events the name of a region that borders the edge of the map.