Nomad Culture- Sarmatians

**dvk901** · July 25, 2007, 09:33 AM

I've been doing a little brainstorming with Cherry about this, and have decided to try and add the 'Nomad' culture to RS. I found an excellent tutorial on Wikipedia, and have been studying how EB did it in my immense amount of spare time (*cough*choke*). It actually looks like it may be easier than I thought.

What would be nice about doing this is that I could then limit the city size for the Sarmatians to just 'city'.....not allowing any large or huge cities or buildings..... Graphically speaking, I wouldn't be able to change much aside from some of the building cards and the descriptions. But it would definitely allow more leeway in describing the nomadic way of life, as well as tailoring their culture and settings in a way that makes them more realistic....and kindof evens the playing field.

What I will do once this is done....or at at least 'in the process'....is move the Sarmatian unit structure down the chain of buildings so they get their best units earlier. The current recruitment system doesn't really reflect their culture very well (or at all). And, their have been ideas floating around on TWC about how to configure a 'horse culture' faction that take our ideas a little further. These include having more 'infantry-like' horsemen, cavalry and infantry that have the same numbers and the same costs. Thus, an infantry unit of theirs would be a dismounted cavalry unit (like Tone has been doing), with the same number of warriors and cost. This ensures that the AI will recruit both in some combination, because their will be no appreciable difference between them cost or stat-wise. It will also ensure that they have very small amounts of infantry, because the cav units will only have 30-35 units, and so will the infantry. The idea is to have them be more cavalry oriented, but not to make it so easy for the player by providing huge amounts of cavalry that can just swarm an opponent.

**dvk901** · July 27, 2007, 11:02 AM

I've succeeded in adding the 'Nomad' culture to RS for the Sarmatians. There are a few small issues I gotta fix, but by and large it works. I think the traits will have to be changed to reflect this.

Also, I'm in the process of converting BI to RTW...heehee, well, seriously, I'm working on getting the buildings to all work on the battlemap..already got many and the large\huge cities to show up as they should. BIG difference.

Some of them are being a bugger, but once I got into the files I just HAD to know how this worked, and why it wasn't working.

**Squid** · July 27, 2007, 11:17 AM

There will be one potential problem which I'm not sure I'll be able to address with traits/ancillaries. For any new culture I might not be able to implement the hates/fears traits, and the turncoat ancillary. The problem is one of attributes, these traits/ancillaries rely on Combat_V_culture attribute for the appropriate culture. While BI engine has a valid Combat_V_Nomad attribute, I do not yet know if this attribute also exists within the RTW engine.

**dvk901** · July 27, 2007, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by SquidSK

There will be one potential problem which I'm not sure I'll be able to address with traits/ancillaries. For any new culture I might not be able to implement the hates/fears traits, and the turncoat ancillary. The problem is one of attributes, these traits/ancillaries rely on Combat_V_culture attribute for the appropriate culture. While BI engine has a valid Combat_V_Nomad attribute, I do not yet know if this attribute also exists within the RTW engine.

I checked EB's Ancil. and it doesn't look like they added it either. Just Barbarian. Maybe it isn't necessary? You could have a look at their files.

**dvk901** · August 07, 2007, 01:32 PM

This has turned out to be a nightmare, and I have given up. I wreck more things than I fix trying to do this. So, until I understand the inner workings of this stuff, the Nomad culture thing is on hold.

**Roman_Man#3** · August 07, 2007, 03:25 PM

Originally Posted by dvk901

This has turned out to be a nightmare, and I have given up. I wreck more things than I fix trying to do this. So, until I understand the inner workings of this stuff, the Nomad culture thing is on hold.

The nomad culture....were you trying to copy BI's nomad culture information into RTW, possibly overwriting Egypt culture? And earlier when you said Wikipedia, was it Dol Guldor/MasterofNone's guide for adding a new culture to BI/RTW?

Cheers,
RM3

**Squid** · August 07, 2007, 03:28 PM

He was trying to add a new culture, not overwrite an existing one.

**dvk901** · August 07, 2007, 03:48 PM

Yes. I was trying to add the 'nomad' culture.

**Roman_Man#3** · August 07, 2007, 03:50 PM

Ah, OK.

**dvk901** · August 07, 2007, 06:03 PM

I can get the game to recognize the Nomad culture fine...with all the buildings uniquely 'nomad'. Problem is, when you fight a battle or do a 'city view' there's nothing in the city except the 'ambient' buildings.

OK, so I gotta get the game to recognize them, right? Well, problem is that in adding the BI buildings to RS, many of the BI buildings do show either...so I have to fix that before I can fix the other. THERE'S the issue. I'm missing something in SOME 'blankety-blank' file somewhere, 'cause the game just CTD's when I get all the building .cas files in the right place.

I'll keep fiddling with it, most likely, because it pisses me off that I don't know how it works. My 'handicap', you might say....I HAVE to know how it works.