Creating a World – Adding detailed Regions

[Withwnar]

To use a vanilla Kingdoms example, York_Province is assigned to these factions: england normans denmark scotland hre saxons france.

York starts as slave. The developers knew this and the game does too. So to put York_Province in this pool was incorrect (as are other examples) if this file does mean "starting owner" .... which I strongly suspect it does not.

dominant culture: by that you mean "religion". Yes it's possible but I doubt it: why bother making the modder list factions instead of religions directly?

[Gigantus]

I think with slave it will use the faction creator line of either descr_regions or descr_strat, more likely the former as you can omit settlement entries in descr_strat (which then get generated as minimum villages belonging to slaves)

[twmatador]

For vanilla m2tw, I'm looking at York_Province in the descr_regions.txt file and I see one assignment of faction = England.
I understand this to be assigned at startup. _{(Please correct me if I'm wrong with any of this. I'm quite noobish on a few things. Just spent a fair bit of time with this music assignment though.)}
England's underlying culture type could then lead the m2tw hard-code to look up the corresponding battlefield music for that region in descr_sounds_music.txt, where music is sorted by culture types.
So when i see that, i still think startup regions could be used.

Yes it is correct that Religion is the variable for each settlement.
I will admit, I was already thinking further ahead to the end result of how it could impact the culture.
How so? If we go based on basic settlement ownership, then it's a binary test: 1 or 0.
But religion would add a second measure to the flowchart to test. Religion <50% (as an example) ownership stays with original owner. >=50% and there's a new owner flagged for that region.

How could that work? Well, if Modor took over a Dale settlement. The algortithm could check the religion value of Mordor and if is >50% or whatever number, then it is re-flagged as a Mordor owned province, and the battle music plays accordingly.
In the case of same religions, like Dale and Rohan, but different culture types, perhaps they still use the same formula? Religion >x% but Dale owns now, so their culture type determines music_type.

I think most helpful would be if i test one of these days. I want to revamp the battlefield music a bit more anyway.

[Withwnar]

I think with slave it will use the faction creator line of either descr_regions or descr_strat

Unless I misunderstand, this means that "slave" is not needed in this file. But it is present.

For vanilla m2tw, I'm looking at York_Province in the descr_regions.txt file and I see one assignment of faction = England.

No, that "england" is just a comment, ignored by the game. The region lists have been separated into different factions for some reason (readability?).

music_type northern_european
	; england faction (see world\maps\base\descr_regions.txt)
   	regions Dublin_Province York_Province Caernarvon_Province Nottingham_Province London_Province

	; denmark
	regions Oslo_Province Stockholm_Province Helsinki_Province Arhus_Province

	; scotland
	regions Inverness_Province Edinburgh_Province

	; hre
	regions Stettin_Province Hamburg_Province Antwerp_Province Magdeburg_Province Frankfurt_Province
	regions Metz_Province Prague_Province Nuremburg_Province Hohenstauffen_Province Vienna_Province
	regions Bern_Province Innsbruck_Province

	; france
	regions Bruges_Province Caen_Province Rheims_Province Rennes_Province Paris_Province
	regions Angers_Province Dijon_Province Bordeaux_Province Toulouse_Province Marseille_Province

	factions england normans denmark scotland hre saxons france

All of those 8 region lines are assigned to all of the factions in the "factions" line.

England's underlying culture type could then lead the m2tw hard-code to look up the corresponding battlefield music for that region in descr_sounds_music.txt, where music is sorted by culture types.

If so then why the need to specify regions at all in this file? It would be enough to just list the factions - the game could then lookup which regions that faction starts with and assign the music type accordingly.

It seems to me that there is no hard-coded culture stuff going on here, hence the very purpose of this file: to define rules of "if faction X in region Y then play music from music_type Z". What does "faction X in" mean exactly ... that's the question.

Yes, I think that some testing is in order, unless somebody else comes along who already knows the answer. If I have a chance I will test, sometime.

[Gigantus]

Unless I misunderstand, this means that "slave" is not needed in this file. But it is present.

slave is not permitted as faction creator, neither in descr_regions, nor in descr_strat
slave as entry in descr_sounds_music_types - I still think this file is a variable, entries here overwriting default values. In vanilla the faction entries in this file equal the culture they have anyhow. Setting england to mesoamerican woudl be worth a try to see what happens.

Edit: the defeat sound track was meso - the rest was still the old stuff

[Withwnar]

slave as entry in descr_sounds_music_types - I still think this file is a variable, entries here overwriting default values.

No argument here. I just suspect that it applies to slave regions as well, that the "slave" regions in this file would overwrite the default music choice like other factions do.

From what I can see "music_type" is used in only two files: descr_sounds_music_types.txt (DSMT) and descr_sounds_music.txt (DSM). DSM contains more than just battle map music, so if DSMT is assigning battle music to faction types (and regions) then where do we assign campaign music to faction types?

Wait a minute... could it simply be that this is what the "factions" line is in DSMT? That the "regions" and "factions" lines are not related at all, they're just two independent settings:

regions = what type of music to play for battles in those regions (regardless of the factions involved in the battle and region ownership)
factions = what type of music to play for these factions, for campaign map etc. (and maybe the default battle music too, unless DSMT says otherwise for the battle's region)

That makes a whole lot of sense to me. It also answers another nagging question: why is each region only mentioned once in DSMT, only associated with one set of factions? (The answer being, if I'm right, the regions lines have nothing to do with the factions lines).

[twmatador]

LOL! I see now why I wasn't understanding your questioning of re-listing of "regions" in this file.
In MOS 1.62 submod, the one i worked with, there are zero regions listed ; It's all assigned by culture type in that file.
Doing a search I found DSMT in vanilla>maps\base.
Ahhhh......

I think you may have just solved the mystery about region and culture. Good detective work
I knew I was hanging out in this thread for a good reason

Edit: Just changed Middle-eastern region music (Rhun regions) for my game. I didn't actually add any music files this time. Just changed descr_sounds_music.txt. Had to regen .idx's and dat's to get region battlefield music change.

[Withwnar]

I'm confident but not certain. e.g. Why is "slave" listed in vanilla's? They are unplayable so it is irrelevant what set of music they have.

I seem to recall reading that music_type can be renamed to whatever, and new ones added if desired. It just so happens that in vanilla they are named the same as the cultures (as Gigantus said). So if the music_type used by a faction is indeed dictated by this file, not automatically assigned based on their culture, then factions of the same culture do not have to have the same campaign etc. music.

EDIT: more discussion and tests here. It would seem that when a battle happens it looks for that region in this file: whichever music_type it is listed under is the type it will play. ("factions" line has nothing to do with it.) If that region is listed under more than one music_type then only one of them is used - the first one I'd guess, or maybe the last, it wasn't tested enough to say. But it is pointless having the same region under more than one music_type.

[epicjonny155]

I created a new region for the slaves/rebels but theirs no garrison

[epicjonny155]

I created a new region for the slaves/rebels but theirs no garrison

[Gigantus]

You have to create an entry in descr_strat in the slave section for an army - it needs to have the co-ordinates of your settlement. To check the co-ordinates, place your cursor over the settlement during game play. Then pull down the console by pressing the tilde ( ~ ) button and type show_cursorstat to get the co-ordinates.

[leo.civil.uefs]

Line four: Rebel type (see data\descr_rebel_factions.txt).

Are those files related only to revolts inside settlements or also to eventual rebel army spawn in the region's lands?

[Gigantus]

As I said in the other thread - that entry will define the regional rebel spawn, settlement revolt spawns appear to be drawn from a different criteria.

[SirKeeper]

Hello!
I see that the guide doesn't cover the part about adding the region borders. I am currently trying to edit region borders for a submod (I have already asked about unit importing on another thread) and can't seem to do it using this guide here.
What could I be doing wrong?

[Gigantus]

No, this tutorial does not cover the graphical part.

There are a number of problems that can arise, one of them being a 'bleeding' of colors if the wrong brush is used.
Invalid placement of the settlement (impassable terrain, rivers, resources) is another.

[SirKeeper]

Well, it seems that I can't properly read instructions and forgot to delete the map.wrm...
I have that part figured, now I have to deal with the hardcoded limits. How do I verify the amount of water regions?

[Gigantus]

It's a bit cumbersome to verify the count of water regions, but I believe in Photoshop you can somehow count the number of RGB values in a graphic (map_regions), from that deduct two for ports and settlements which will give you the total RGB values used for regions. Now check in descr_regions how many entries you got, easily done with Notepad++ by searching for religion and pressing the count button. The balance will be water RGB.

The alternative would be to select all 'water' RGB in map_regions with the magicwand (select all instances of specific RGB) and delete\replace it - which should give you the number of RGB used for water bodies.

[SirKeeper]

Thank you!!
I used the last method of colour selection (I am using GIMP) and it worked perfectly. It is weird however: Thera has lakes, but they share a single region with the entire ocean.
The notepad count for the regions is a nice tip indeed.
Again, thank you very much!

[Gigantus]

I usually fill in smaller lakes with the region's color, it may confuse the AI's attack calculations if a lake in Scotland has the same RGB value as a lake in China, eg sharing a common water body.

[SirKeeper]

That could explain some occasions of stuck AI armies. Will filling in the lakes in that manner demand changes to any region files or the like?