Originally Posted by
afootcrawdad
I didn't want to spam the thread with this question, but could you perhaps point the way towards some of the folders and files I would need to look into for this project? I guess I could switch the character and army starting points, as well as the settlement ownership, but other things like recruitment and governments are bit beyond my knowledge. There are other things as well, such as traits that require the character to be in a specific location, such as the "Eligible for Tribal Education" trait which requires the character to be in Streuinta (the Boii Capitial). Any help you could provide would be much appreciated. Also, apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you, I have no experience with modding.
Responding to this here, because it's a general question that could be applied to migrating any faction. I've been "migrating" factions since EB1, so it's something I've had quite a bit of practise with. I'll give the various options for achieving this.
Non-modding options
These are the means to achieve a basic migration, without having to edit any files.
Option 1a: Horde migration
This is the simplest method of all, that requires no modding. However, it assumes that you're playing a faction that can horde (Boii can) and that they're going somewhere that they'll have useful options in terms of governments and recruitment when they arrive (that is the case for Boii in Galatia).
Abandon your starting settlements, destroy your government buildings (leave the rest as they are, it's cheesy and unnecessary to clear out everything), ramp the taxes up to Very High and within a turn or two they should revolt, which will spawn horde-stacks for you to take on the move. Then you walk the remnant of your faction to your desired destination. Don't take any settlements, though, as that will end your horde-ing.
Option 1b: Console manipulation
This is a sub-option that can be used with the first one, but is more appropriate to non-hording factions who don't have the option of abandoning everything and walking there. You need to have the console working, press the ` key on most setups to get it to open. Enter "toggle_fow" (without the quotation marks) to remove the Fog of War so you can see your destination. Mouse over the spot and type "show_cursorstat" to give you the co-ordinates you need. Then click on the character you want to move and enter "move_character this [x],[y]" where x and y come from the output of the second command.
When your armies are where they need to be, take your new home, make it your capital, then abandon your old holdings. You can normally have yourself settled by turn 3. If necessary, build up your infrastructure in the new home with some applications of add_money and process_cq (at the least to get yourself a functional government building).
Modding options
Now we move on to actual modding. Before you attempt any of these, you need to download and install Notepad++, which is a proper editor. Windows Notepad will corrupt the game's files at random, by inserting invisible, invalid characters. I'd also recommend getting GeoMod and setting that up with EBII's source files (instructions are all contained in the packet). It's invaluable for all sorts of things, but for our purposes here it's mostly for finding valid map tiles, without having to run the game.
Always back up a copy of the files before you start editing. Also make sure your error log works, you may end up doing a lot of correcting and re-running the game to make sure. That means you need working logs and get familiar with diagnosing them yourself.
Option 2a: Starting location adjustment
This is the most basic option, and involves just editing the descr_strat (which is located in data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign). This is relatively forgiving of errors, it "crashes" back to the main menu when you try to start a new campaign, and the error log always tells you what's wrong. Find the section with your faction in it (search all caps BOII in this case). Open a "working tab" in a second tab, and cut and paste out the entry for all the starting settlements here (just Streuinta in this case), from settlement to the closing curly bracket.
In your working tab, cut out the line with the government building on it:
Code:
building
{
type govboii boii_confed
}
Put that to one side so you can re-paste it later. Replace it with the Rebel government:
Code:
building
{
type govslave freecity
}
Then find the ELEUTHEROI section and paste that in under the settlement entry for Ubioidunon. You'll need to find Alkimoennos' settlement entry and repeat the process.
Then find your new starting home (Galatia in this case), cut it out of the Rebel section into your working tab. Replace the govslave freecity line with the boii_confed code you put aside before, and past that into the top of the BOII section.
Next we need to move starting armies around. First we need a new garrison in Galatia. Move the FH:
Code:
character Brennos of_boii, named character, male, heir, age 40, x 151, y 216
By changing the red text to x 238, y 158. Using GeoMod, find some suitable spots to place your other three FMs (using x 235, y 159 that the other Galatian stack was in is a good bet, but you'll need two others - only one FM can start in a settlement).
In the garrisons section of the Rebel area, find Galatia (search for "region_103"). Cut the whole section into your working tab. These are already the right sub-faction for what we intend, so it's a minimal change. For the garrison commander:
Code:
character sub_faction f_boii, Cacumattos, named character, male, age 20, x 238, y 158
Put him in Streuinta, which we already know is x 151, y 216. Put the roving stack in x 140, y 218. We're going to need to change the composition of those two armies so they're not out of place. Change the bodyguard units (celtic cavalry galatian) for Boii ones (celtic cavalry general bodyguard boii), and replace the Galatian units with eastern Celtic ones (Galatian retainers for celtic infantry drutonedammoi boii; Celtic raiders for celtic infantry botroas). Change the title to region_054 Boiotergion, and slot it into the right chronological place in the list of Rebel garrisons.
We also need to do something about Alkimoennos, which doesn't currently have anything in it. Copy the entry you made for Streuinta into your working tab. Change the location of the garrison to x 129, y 212 and the rover to x 137, y 209. Now we need to fix their names - duplicates will spawn with no name and no character record. Change the commander to Boduognatos and the rover to Matugenos (if you're doing this for another faction, you need to find a name from the descr_names that isn't already in use in the descr_strat - use Notepad++'s count feature on the search to check). Then slot that as region_051 Herukunion in the relevant place.
Nearly done, there's just one last thing to edit. Open the data\world\maps\base\descr_regions. You need to swap region_054 and region_103 around - this tells the game what a faction's starting capital is. 054 goes into the numerical listing, 103 takes it's place in the faction-order listing at the top.
It's a good idea to also go into data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign\campaign_script.txt and delete the Galatian Independence and Galatian Shakedown sections. Highlight them with the mouse, then press delete. The less editing you do in that file, the less likely you are to crash it (I do all my edits in a working tab, then paste them in). It's too large to be edited directly.
Delete your data\world\maps\base\map.rwm.
That's it for your minimal modding, which will give you a new starting location. You don't need to do anything with recruitment, because Galatia is already a "homeland" region for the Boii, and will give you the proper roster.
Option 2b: Add cosmetic adjustments
If you're comfortable doing some text editing, next port of call is the data\text\expanded.txt. Find F_BOII and change all the Boii-related bits after the brackets to Galatians.
You can do the same in the data\text\campaign_descriptions.txt, so that on the faction-selection screen it says the right thing.
Lastly, in the data\text\menu_english.txt, find change the first entry to EBII-VAR or something else that tells you when you load up that you've successfully edited the game.
Delete the three strings.bin files that correspond to those files, so that the game will regenerate them with your new text.
That's enough to be getting on with. If you want to start playing with recruitment (necessary if you're taking a faction out of their normal "zone" - like with Epeiros-as-Syrakousai), that's a more involved process.