Save the HRE!

[FatPope]

I'm playing a game as Spain and doing quite well but the Holy Roman Empire are by far the most powerful faction in the game and have been pretty much from the start. They have about 16 provinces and are sitting pretty occupying most of central europe. The trouble is that at the start of the latest turn I get a message telling me that they have been destroyed. Using the console command to remove the fog of war I see this to be true. Clearly they cannot have been wiped out conventionally so I can only conclude that their faction leader died without heirs. This is understandably quite annoying as the largest power in the game is now gone and all I'm left with is loads and loads of rebel settlements in its place. This is pretty much a game ending situation for me as the same thing has already happened to denmark and venice and continuing on from this point in my opinion would not be fun any more.

So I suppose my question is: how do I stop the HRE from being destroyed?

I have a saved game from the turn before but they get seem to expire no matter what I do. Looking at the console/cheat codes I can see that there is a command to change the faction that you control but I can't seem to get it to work(it may just be for RTW, I'm not sure). Even if I could though I'm not entirely sure if I could save them; and besides, I've heard it causes AI problems for the newly computer controlled faction.

So is there any way, through console commands or otherwise that I could stop them from falling apart?

P.S. I thought the whole thing about the HRE was that if the emperor dies they just elect another one, but I may just be thinking about Medieval 1.

P.P.S. I'm using Lusted's Lands to Conquer mod but this seems more of a general question than a mod related one so I'm posting it here.

[Sher Khan]

Sounds serious, and I think cheating with the console might be the only solution. Regardless, I'll move this to Battle Planning and see if that gets results.

[townie33]

i had the same thing happen to Portugal in one of my campaigns and i was in shock because they had no enemies. But doesn't the ai automaticcaly pick up new family members? I'm thinking that the ai gets offers just like you do if you don't have enough family members. Could there me something wrong with how many offers a faction gets? And if there is no heir don't adopted family members become heirs? Sorry I don't have answers but maybe it does lay in the scripting for adopting family members.

[FatPope]

One of the features of Lands to Conquer is recruitable generals. When I removed the fog of war on the turn before they were destroyed all I seemed to find were generals rather than family members. I assume this is what led to the faction's destruction. If I could add in a family member it would probably fix the problem but is this possible?

[townie33]

maybe the recruitable Generals should be removed or turned way down so the ai needs to adopt family members

[FatPope]

Possibly, but that won't help me now!

[pwijnands]

Perhaps another AI faction will take over HRE's lands and become the next great power in the game.

But you'd think that the AI also gets adoption offers for their non-family generals.

To remove/reduce the recruitment of generals, go into export_descr_buildings.txt and do a search ( Ctrl + F ) for "bodyguard" (without the quotes):

recruit_pool "EE Bodyguard" 1 0.05 1 0 requires factions { russia, kievan_rus, lithuania, }

the numbers you want to change are the bold numbers. The first one gives you the starting recruitment pool for a bodyguard unit, change that to 0. The second is the replenish rate, in this case it's 0.05 which equates to 1 recruitable general every 20 turns from this building (seems reasonable). Leave the third number in place, it's the maximum recruitment pool and should be left at 1.

[FatPope]

Hmm, based on the info here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=130402
it seems that the console commands for changing faction do work, but only by means of the hotseat mode. I did everything stated but I still cannot change the player faction. Do you have to start a new game after changing the medieval2.preference.cfg file?

[Samir]

yes it will only work in a new campaign and you have to make the preferences file read only...

[crazyj]

I am having the exact same problem...a giant HRE giving me the fight of my life, but it keeps dying out despite (or more probably, because of) having so many generals who aren't family members per se. Oh it sucks.