Descr_Strat tutorial

[HouseOfHam]

Trying army bit out on Alexander. I get a KTM with error message saying World Creation Error: Cannot find unit description for unit type "unit name exp 0 weapon 0 armor 0"

It is also for the Slave faction.

Are you doing it with a unit that actually exists for slaves in Alexander? And shouldn't slave armies always be led by named characters?

[Ramashan]

Great find for the army garrison House of Ham.

[Roman_Man#3]

Are you doing it with a unit that actually exists for slaves in Alexander? And shouldn't slave armies always be led by named characters?

I didn't think they needed to be led by named characters, most of the traditional armies I have for slaves are generals.

Also all the units that are being used in the garrisoned army thing are being used in regular armies.

[Quinn Inuit]

That's awesome, HoH. One question: can you use that to define the location of named characters, too, or does that still need to be done in the named characters section?

[HouseOfHam]

That's awesome, HoH. One question: can you use that to define the location of named characters, too, or does that still need to be done in the named characters section?

As far as I can tell, named characters have to be defined separately.

Also, if you want to have a settlement with a garrison led and a named character, they need to be defined together as that character's army. If you give a settlement a garrisoned_army, then add a named character at the same coordinates, they do not merge and the character is left standing atop the settlement.

[Quinn Inuit]

Ah, good to know. Thank you.

[HouseOfHam]

Found something else that might be interesting...

#1: Ambush parameter

unit        rtr caetrati skirmishers                ambush 75 exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0

Tried it in TIC:

character    Ambatorix, named character, leader, age 52, , x 42, y 59
traits Leader_Bonus 1, GoodCommander 1, Energetic 1, Intelligent 1, Drink 1, Pagan 1
ancillaries bard
army
unit        rtr celtiberian warlord                exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        rtr caetrati skirmishers                ambush 75 exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        rtr celtiberian scutarii                exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        rtr celtiberian heavy cavalry                exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0

Doesn't cause a CTD at least, but don't know if it does anything, either. More testing needed...

My guess is that it specifies how close the enemy would have to get to a hiding unit before they can detect it.


#2: Besieging a settlement at campaign start

Put the army next to an enemy settlement, then add sieging after the last unit, like this:

character    Vendirix, named character, age 25, , x 62, y 60 ; north of rebel town
traits Leader_Bonus 1, NaturalMilitarySkill 1, Energetic 1, Drink 1, Bloodthirsty 1, Pagan 1
ancillaries armourer
army
unit        rtr celtiberian warlord                exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        rtr celtiberian scutarii            exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        rtr celtiberian scutarii            exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        rtr celtiberian scutarii            exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        rtr celtiberian scutarii            exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit        rtr celtiberian scutarii            exp 2 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
sieging

You can also give that army various types of siege equipment by appending the line(s) to specify the type and number of siege engines:

siege_equipment     ram 1
siege_equipment     tower 1
siege_equipment     ladder 1
siege_equipment     sap_point 2

[MasterOfNone]

Very interesting, though HB code has intimated your latter find (I could never get the thing to work properly) I knew nothing of the first.

Great work.

[Hister]

Great, thanx!

[Aradan]

Great finds again. We need to start tampering with the .exe more...

[Pat89]

Great finds again HoH!!!

[HouseOfHam]

Very interesting, though HB code has intimated your latter find (I could never get the thing to work properly) I knew nothing of the first.

Great work.

Yeah, I googled it after the fact and found some people tried using it in descr_battle.txt (for historical battles), but had problems getting it to work.

[Squid]

Nicely done, this will be very very helpful!!

[CaesarVincens]

Great finds again HoH.

[Quinn Inuit]

That's a really interesting find. Thanks for sharing it!

[florin80]

The siege part is dynamite! It`s what I needed for a bi timeframe mod and did not realize it existed. The minor inconvenient is that the army doesn`t necessarily faces the settlement at start(mine faced south with the settlement to the west).
The bigger issue for my plans was that the ai doesn`t seem bounded by such a seige to actually execute it. My horde evaporated north to join the rest of the horde instead of executing the siege even though it greatly outnumbered the defenders. Which made me realize I need to start a new thread.
Still, a great find. Especially the fact that you can give them seige engines too. Thanks for sharing this!

Btw, is it possible to start the game with damaged buildings?

[Squid]

The siege part is dynamite! It`s what I needed for a bi timeframe mod and did not realize it existed. The minor inconvenient is that the army doesn`t necessarily faces the settlement at start(mine faced south with the settlement to the west).
The bigger issue for my plans was that the ai doesn`t seem bounded by such a seige to actually execute it. My horde evaporated north to join the rest of the horde instead of executing the siege even though it greatly outnumbered the defenders. Which made me realize I need to start a new thread.
Still, a great find. Especially the fact that you can give them seige engines too. Thanks for sharing this!

Btw, is it possible to start the game with damaged buildings?

Yes it is, this was one of HouseOfHam's earlier discoveries, I quoted the post below, you're probably interested in the first part.

I've made a couple more finds today:

1. It's possible to set the starting building health. For example,

    building
    {
        type defenses stone_wall
        health 75%
    }

2. It's possible to define a garrison for a settlement right when you define it, without having to create a separate army. For example,

settlement
{
    level town
    region Lucania;    Grumentum
    year_founded 0
    population 1480
    plan_set default_set
    faction_creator epirus
    garrisoned_army
    unit        fac rome light infantry                    exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
    unit        aor oscan skirmishers                    exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
    building
    {
        type core_building governors_house
    }
}

[florin80]

Embarrassingly I`ve manged to forget that earlier bit of information... Thank you!

[Ramashan]

Has anyone gotten the tree to load with dead males? I've gotten dead females to load, but as soon as I try to do it to a male it CTD's. Also, it says she was assassinated 25 years before the game start.

Is scripting the only way to control deaths in the family tree?

[HouseOfHam]

I've never been able to get it to work, either, but I'll try to find a bit of time to do a few more experiments. There are a couple messages in the .exe that might be an indication of how it's supposed to be used.

"%s is a live male of age > %i and so must be created as a named character and not just a character record."

"%s can only be a past leader if he is now dead."

So, from that, you could deduce that a dead male of age would be declared with a character_record and that using past_leader implies dead. So, theoretically something like this should work:

character_record        Corpsus Testius,     male, age 76, dead, past_leader

Also, I think you would need to create a wife for him and setup a relative record to tie them to the rest of the family tree.