Aging 1 Year/Turn Mod

[AltarisGreyhawke]

I have uploaded a mod that causes aging to occur once every turn, rather than once every two turns like vanilla.

This mod is perfect for anyone who runs at a timescale of 1.00, and wants realistic aging to occur on that timescale.

I have tested the results, and it works flawlessly in causing 1 year aging every turn without being noticeable to the player.

Below is a link to the mod for anyone interested:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...do=file&id=960

The process works as a variation of Myrrdaal's 4tpy script for RTW. Since aging occurs when a turn ends on a winter season, this mod forces the season to change to winter immediately after the Rebel Factions finishes its turn (last thing in the turn). So, aging immediately occurs after each turn.

On every other turn, the season corrects itself as well, so alternating seasons still exist. To the player, this all occurs without any side effects, and has worked like in a charm in my tests.

Thought this might be of use and/or interest to some of you other modders out there.

[Dawjack]

Hmm, I heard that was impossible, but thankfully not. Good job.

[Fallen.Soldier]

+rep =D

[Garnier]

I assume this will have issues though, as the game is designed for characters to age 1/2 year per turn, now merchants will live half as long, etc..

[AltarisGreyhawke]

That is true, Garnier, but I think that characters only living half as many game turns is actually a good thing. Typically in vanilla, I max out the generals and agents I am using before they've even reached half of their effective age, and then I have a significant advantage over the AI for the remainder of their life. This makes the progression more natural, with only the truly great reaching their full potential, and keeping them from hanging around for too long.

May just be a difference of opinion, but I think it plays out well in the long run.

[scriptor incertus]

This is something that has bothered me from the beginning. I am trying this out with the LTC mod and I don't foresee any conflicts. Thanks for providing this.

[elevenwest]

Thank you

that was the number one gamebreaker for me

well done

[Garnier]

I would just be nervous about merchants, cause if you send them to antioch or timbuktu, they are usualy 35-45 years old when they arrive, and now they would be 45-60 I assume, so they wouldnt have much time to get their money's worth.

[Kaidonni]

Does this work with most mods and the 1.1 patch? Sorry if that's a stupid question. I just don't like mucking things up, so I like clarifying things.

[scriptor incertus]

I can confirm that it works with the latest version of LTC and the 1.1 patch. I have not played the vanilla game with this but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

As far as the merchants dying too quickly, I actually prefer it this way. Of course I'm playing with LTC so merchants actually earn enough to make them worthwhile. It's a lot more realistic than characters that live for 120 years and a lot more challenging.

[Kaidonni]

Hmmm...I'd put this on AFTER LTC, right? (and yes, I'm aware LTC after 1.1...LOL) I just don't want to muck things up at all, whatsoever. If it 'twere any other day than Christmas Day I were getting this game, I perhaps might not be so paranoid, but, meh...

[AltarisGreyhawke]

The mod only contains one file, called "campaign_script.txt", which goes in your "imperial_campaign" folder. The only way it wouldn't be compatible with a mod is if the mod altered this file as well, which most don't do at the time. The only other stuff in that file is the setup scripts for the Mongol and Timurid invasions, and some setup scripts for the first missions assigned by the computer.

I'd be really surprised if this caused any game-breaking issues with other 1 turn/year mods (like LTC). The only thing it might compromise are adjustments made to the Mongol/Timurids to make them weaker, but even then, all this would do is reset them back to their vanilla settings.

Still, I couldn't promise 100% for sure without looking further into the other mods.

[Merino]

I have tested this as Milan on VH/VH in combination with LTC2.1, Shaba 1.4, VnV, fixes and battleformations (loaded through the medmanager).

I encountered some very serious gameplay issues early into the game.
I'll devide them in the three problems:

Priests --> Priests and Cardinals die way to fast. I don't have much problem with the merchants dying quickly but this way I turned impossible for me to maintain a group of priests/cardinals with high piety.
In the vanilla game I ended up with up to 8 Cardinals within the first 100 years of play, which was a real letdown gamewise. But this is the exact opposite. All my high piety Cardinals and Priests die way to young to be of a good influence in the game

Vatican/Cardinals --> I also noticed that with the Cardinals dying fast, the house of Cardinals runs empty real quick. Thing is that the Pope is very slow with promoting Cardinals for some reason. Let me enlighten with an example out of my campaing;

- 1 Pope (from gamestart) issues a Crusade to Jeruzalem. I have an alliance with very good relations with te Papal states.
- I join the Crusade and sail out
- Cardinals all over Europe start dying one by one
- No Cardinals get promoted
- Fleet is near Jeruzalem
- Pope dies, only 6 Cardinals in house of cardinals. Vote turns out for France who would never have won if there where only 6 Cardinals including allianced factions of France.
- my relations with France and it's allianced factions suck so my standing with the papal state sucks aswell
- Pope of France dies, 5 Cardinals in house of cardinals. Vote turns out for my ally Spain.
- Pope promotes first new Cardinal, 6 Cardinals in house of cardinals.

So that's my current standing in gameplay. It's kind of hopeless doing anything this way. Pope's and Cardinals have almost zero gameinfluence this way

and finally;

Family --> my family members barely produces enough baby's to make my family tree grow. The ratio of birth's and deaths is just not right.


I will try this mod in other combinations too see where the problem is at. However it doesn't look like any of these things are caused by the mod combination that I am running...

[AltarisGreyhawke]

I had some similar issues with cardinals not being replaced due to low piety, but that luckily is easy to fix. In the "desc_campaign_db.xml" file under the data directory, there is a line that looks like this:

<min_cardinal_piety uint="4"/>

You can change the 4 to a lower number (I changed my to 1 so ensure that any priest was eligible for the position of cardinal, but 2 or 3 might work as well). This seems to work fine for me, as the pope still prefers higher piety for cardinal-hood when making the selection, and the advantage is that with cardinals dying fairly regularly, it becomes harder for the player to hoard the cardinal positions without focusing heavy effort on the church.

As for family members, that is very dependent on the amount of territory you have, as the game is hard-coded to only have a certain number of family members depending on the amount of land you have. This one doesn't seem broken to me, though. I've played a campaign up through ~1175, and characters live for what feels like an appropriate amount of time. I've usually gotten my heir along the path to greatness when he becomes king, and that seems appropriate to me. Before, my heirs would be fully maxed out well before becoming king, and dominated everything while in rule.

[dearmad]

This is very very nice. THANK YOU for writing that tedious script.

Last thing I did to make this work perfectly is increase movement rates on the strat map by about 50%. Voila! Merchants move great- diplomats get where they're going armies too. Yehaaaa!

[dearmad]

There is one odd side effect I notice: DEVASTATION does NOT go away it seems like when this script is operating...

Anyone else using this script notice it?

I did a test with and without it... seems pretty clear.

[General Sun]

dearmad, could you perhaps send me the savegames you used for your test? I've ran into this problem with my mod as well, if you'll take a look at the latest posts. Thanks mate.

[dearmad]

The savegames won't help you, they are heavily modded...

I have spent the last hour isolating the problem- it IS something to do with the WINTER change coming too often or something. I changed it to the beginning of the slave turn- still had the problem. So I changed them all to change the season to SUMMER- and the problem went away- I think forcing winter like that makes the game not do some housekeeping it needs to do.

I'm experimenting right now with the script to see if I can get it fixed.

[dearmad]

Yep. I've confirmed it at my end- the basic problem is this mod only ever lets turns going from a WINTER season into the process time between the last faction (slave) and the first (player/local). The devestation removal happens when it is processing a summer going into winter turn...

Basically there's no way around this as you can't have it both ways. You NEED to age the characters by processing winter turn, you NEED to process summer so devestation can disappear. Only thing I can think of is:

player ends turn. turn into winter.
PROCESS (+age)
begin player turn
suspend control
force end turn
freeze AI
PROCESS summer turn
release all AI
begin player turn

BUT this might still process the economy and other things... so I'm not going to spend hours programming that.

I can think of NO solution to this dilemma. Anyone with a brilliant idea? Please chime in.

[GrandViZ]

This is bad news, as I liked to use this mod for my 1tpy campaign.