CTD's, Rebels, Ancillaries. Put To Bed.

[Smarmy]

I, for one, have had my fill of CTD's on this mod. As I'm sure everyone else is, yet, I am still in love with this mod.

I keep looking over the descr_strat, and campaign_script txt's of TLR and other mods I've tried, and I think I have the problem pinned down. Due in large part to Condo's revisions,
(I never would have touched such files had Condo not done so, I was only willing to tweak his tweaks ),
to the many CTD and bugs posts I've seen,
(and would like to see more, well... for a more comprehensive analysis of the problem anyway),
I think we have our two main issues isolated.
While I'm not a professional modder, what I do-do is tweak, tweak games, tweak mods, tweak tweaks , to coax behaviour that I like.

Our two problems are simply the traits and ancillaries script (which condo solved, though I really need to play a good 100 turns to feel the affects of the removal) and the rebels! Those darn slaves. While as far as I can see, Condo's edits do solve the CTD's associated with the slave_faction, they create a few undesirables of their own. In Condo's revisions, he solves the rebel problem by throwing money at it. (Not speaking negatively .)
Raising their bank and purse so that they never run out of money, and have us run into the CTD. This works, but it 'turns on' the rebels. They start building things, and I don't think they have a tell when to stop. They really start acting like a player, just like another one of the factions. Showing strategic behaviour but not really following through. Ex. Taking all but one or a few units out of garrison and keeping them just outside to get a field battle out of any attacker. (if that's a good idea? depends)

I, for one, prefer my rebels to sit in their cities and wait for me to come and siege them. As that seems to be the only thing they can do well enough.
Normally, having them build structures for you in a city you plan to take later would be considered a good thing, but, they tend to prefer to build units. Lots and lots and lots of units. Resulting in multiple full stacks that just sit outside the settlement. (Ex. Malta).

The balance, it seems, is to keep the rebel faction from going bankrupt, but never let them have enough money to do anything. I've looked at Torn's (also known as default) descr_strat, and he allocates sufficiently less money to the rebels than does Condo in bank and king's purse. I lean more towards Torn's version, keeping their bank and purse low. The best way to keep them from going bankrupt, and that offers the most options for fine tuning, is the Slave Treasury manager in the campaign script.

Condo has made his own edits to this, too, which I've yet to test with a poorer rebel faction. I have my own questions and issues with this script, of which I'd like to ask Condo about (Hope he gives feedback), and Torn. Though he's not here, and if he was I don't think we'd have to worry about this. He'd whisk us all away to happy bug free TLR 2.1.0.

I think, with enough testing, I can find better values for the treasury manager, keeping the rebels alive, passive, and no CTD until they are completely eliminated by the player and AI factions.
Then perhaps, we can reach turn 800 and find the white rhino of CTD bugs that no one has ever seen! (Also, if anyone has reached turn 800... PLEASE send pics and/or tell us about it.)

To rap up, I would LOVE feedback from other modders and tweakers here for TLR. As well, I BEG that you all, when ever you encounter a CTD, check your TLR log to see what went wrong. (If it's there.) If there's any other CTD's besides these two causes I must have a hammer at fixing.

[headsh0ts]

Excellent!

I myself have never found the time or energy to delve into the realm of CTDs, but can still appreciate the work you are doing.

Ive said it a couple of times, but with people, like yourself, willing to put an effort in, 2.1.0 will only be a stone throw away

Hopefully Condo finds this thread and can input, ive only got about 40 turns (maybe not even that) into a campaign with the changes he's made, and so far no CTD.

This has always been a huge thorn in TLRs side, but maybe for not much longer

[Smarmy]

Feedback from your campaign will be very helpful, and try to make note of what the rebel faction is doing. Check Malta on occasion, if they move their garrison's at all, and any changes in the rebel faction's behaviour as they come down to their last few settlements.
Though if you're playing with Condo's purse revisions, I don't think there will be any variance. I personally had to change those, having a king's purse of 30,000 seemed like a 'Deathmatch Mode'.

I hope to get his feedback soon, as there are specifics to the Slave Treasury Manager that I need to ask him, hopefully he will know what I need to know. I can always ballpark it to try and fix the CTD for rebels, but I would be much more confident if I knew when and how much.

When the Rebels hit bankrupt, when the CTD occurs because of this (how far into the red), how much do the rebels make in a turn, how much is spent, how many provinces do they control exactly. The most precise way for me to find the perfect values for the treasury manager would be to see their budget tab in a game. I could then fine tune a value to keep above the CTD point, the bankruptcy point, whatever margin is necessary.

Though that method has me worried, how much lag would be produced from 15 lines of code. If that's what I went for, anyway. Scaling down from how many provinces they have at start. (150?) and adjusting the value they receive per 10 provinces lost based on how much money they make in a turn with that many provinces. Again it comes down to the margin.

I just really need to know exactly when that CTD occurs, as soon as they hit bankrupt or how far into the negative they have to be. If I have a good margin for error I can keep them bankrupt but not CTD so they wont build anything.

[Americanus Supremus]

I agree about your saying that throwing money at the rebels is the only way to fix that specific ctd. When I heard it was a problem I myself went and edited there starting purse and treasury. And I got exactly what you described super rebel territories. Some in Africa would have up to ten full stack armies as well as a garrisoned city. So to deal with that I just removed there starting armies so they atleast had to build them up first instead of starting with a helping hand. Though Im having trouble finding a happy medium. Ive given all factions more land to control from the begininng, but then the rebels have no chance. So its back to the drawing board, just have to keep the rebels with enough money not to crash and not enough to build up 50k man armies in every province they own.

HC

[headsh0ts]

Is there a way to make them send small armies into enemy lands?

Just thinking at the other end of the scale, rather than worrying about the money they have, changing the way they use their armies...

then again, ive never even looked at the file, so i have no idea what im talking about

[Smarmy]

Is there a way to make them send small armies into enemy lands?

Just thinking at the other end of the scale, rather than worrying about the money they have, changing the way they use their armies...

then again, ive never even looked at the file, so i have no idea what im talking about

Well, that's what they do. Sortof...
The simplest way to solve this problem is to just turn the rebel faction 'off'. But then you wouldn't have the FUN feature of brigands spawning and then attacking your cities, or camping on your watch towers. On the higher difficulty settings anyway, but who doesn't play on those?

Then again, if they were turned off completely, would they sally against your sieges if you.. eh.. attacked them with a unit of peasants?
Hell, I could go over many ways this little problem could have never existed. Say, turn off the rebel faction's unit upkeep, like it does for crusades.
Though this is a problem that only seems to happen in mods that use bigmap, and/or have many more provinces than in the vanilla.

[Smarmy]

This is just vexing me more and more, hopefully I'll get a PM back from Condo soon. Hoping he knows something.
I've tried and failed to recreate the CTD again and again, manually bankrupting the Slave faction to a spectacular degree, and it continues. They exhibit the "active" behaviour after the second turn every time, despite my pushes and shoves on the campaign script. It is my assumption that they become "active" when they have excess money, but I could be wrong.
I'm basing their activity solely on whether or not they move their garrisons, all I have to go on.

My best bet would be to play as the rebel faction, (which I've seen done on another mod, one of the devs for M2 made an unofficial mod that allowed it), so I could see exactly what their bankroll was, assuming that since they have these 100+ provinces, they get taxes and trade from them. If indeed the CTD is that they hit an obscene negative in their bank, then I should have been able to recreate it. Removing their king's purse, initial bank, and even editing the treasury manager to take money away from them when they have a positive bank, that and manually removing gross amounts of money from the faction in game.

I'm beginning to doubt this is the actual CTD. Never saw a log file from this particular CTD, that would clear things up. Strangely enough, though, on my own game breaking CTD it would always crash on the rebel faction's turn, but in my log it said that it was trying to apply an ancillary to a dead character. Perhaps it was just the ancillary script all along and was only confused with a Rebel CTD because the rebel faction has the last turn in sequence. The script for applying the ancillary would happen in that brief pause in between the rebel turn, and the start of your own.

So far, that's what I'm going to have to go with. I'm going to restore the defaults for TLR and simply keep Condo's removal of the ancillary script. I'll just try playing through a campaign with that.

[Xeno_cws]

It is possible that the ctd for rebels is not because of money but because their family members traits and ancillaries. Because most people are able to put it (ctd) off longer when they manually change its starting cash probably means that the trait causing all the problems has to do with economy.

Apparently Condo found this problem so he would be able to tell you more about it.

Its good to know that the problem isn't likely caused by the slave faction going bankrupt.

[Smarmy]

Eh, well there are traits associated with the economy, yeah.
Seen one frequently, if your faction has a huge treasury your faction leader has a chance to get the "hoarder of wealth" trait. That could be it, because the CTD seems to happen far in game, when the rebels are down to just a few provinces. They aren't paying for all the garrisons of the other cities, and their king's purse must put them way over.
Though, why don't they start building things then? They never produced huge stacks on the default, but if you saturate them with money (as was tried to stop the CTD), they go crazy.

Atleast, with this new campaign I'm playing through.. if I encounter another CTD, I can be sure it's not the ancillary.

[Irishmafia2020]

If you want to play as the rebels, just make them playable on the desc_strat - I don't know how stable that is though. I have played as the rebels on this mod before, but it is time consuming and labor intensive.

[headsh0ts]

not sure about campaign, but doesnt work for custom battles.

tried it for new rebel info cards.

[Divinehammer]

Maybe I am not grasping the problem but DLV has some scripting that detects when a faction drops below 0 money and automatically gives them money to get back above 0 plus some. Wouldnt this solve one of the problems. Then you just need to determine the amount of starting cash so that the Rebels give you a bit of trouble at the begining of the map then as they are conquered Their money will drop but will never go negative. Should also keep the ancillaries away if they dont have tons of money correct? Just a thought but I know there is scripting to solve this.

[Smarmy]

Yes, that's the AI assistance script, which this also has. That's all the Slave Treasury Manager is, really. Though I'm not so sure that bankruptcy is the problem anymore. I'm only about 30 or so turns through a new campaign with the removal of the ancillaries, but I have high hopes.

[Freedom]

I've made extensive modifications to my own version- everything from making javelin units worth the while to giving EVERY province in the game a decent starting economy (i.e making everything above villages start with a corn exchange etc), mainly because I was sick and tired of being able to roll over the AI factions without much resistance due to their horrid economies treasuries, plus, restarting campaigns (something I do a lot <_< >_>) was like torture. Granted, I haven't gotten past 1150 or so w/ these mods (as I restart campaigns so much to add new stuff or rather, tweak...). I have included condo's AI tweaks etc now (excluding the diplo relations, ancillaries stuff, crazy treasury as I made the base econ better, rebel garrisons that leave their castle and expanding papal states). I'd post up the modification but don't know where to get a host for such a large file (nor do I feel like making a complete change compilation XD).

And, this may sound strange, but it works: I used to have tons of problems with CTDs, black screens, the whole kit and kaboodle, but what I did was I opened my computer case and pointed a sizeable floor fan at the naked PC to cool down the whole unit and now I rarely have any sort of insurmountable problem.

[Smarmy]

Ah ha! Yes, the guts of my machine are exposed to the gentle blow of a standing fan too. Though, about your mods, which now have me intrigued...
Filefront? Condo has his edits hosted there, but I don't know/doubt it's free?
How big is the compilation? Exactly? I mean, txt's don't make up most of this mods phatness.

[Condottiere SOG]

You can still use your own descr_script file and my campaign_script file-just up everybodies' purse 3-5000 or so.

I just like having as epic a battle as possible and there are many facets to these modifications I made that supplement others I have also made. Forum interest seems to have gone against an embellished campaign so I haven't released the full gambit of my modifications.

However, I can release a more toned-down descr_script if you all would like.

Sorry for all the trouble in giving you more active rebels.

@Smarmy-

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........you can get the files for free. I have only release five text files in my mod

campaign_script
descr_strat
diplomacy.xml
battle.xml
battle_ai.xml

That's it.

[terralax]

Never had a problem with the traits and ancillaries, after adjusting the resources file and money I rarely have a CTD...that is discounting when I do some tinkering.