GeneralDevastatesTile and other questions

[redxavier]

I have searched both workshops and haven't found an answer to this one.

The event GeneralDevastatesTile:
How does this event work - how is it activated and what are its parameters? Is it as simple as a general of one faction being on/near a tile belonging to another faction who is at war?

And whilst I'm here:

Is there a way of viewing the family trees of AI controlled factions during a campaign? I am curious about whether princesses that are married into the royal line of other factions really are childless (as shown on your family tree) or if they do have children but simply aren't shown. That you can see the husband in the tree sort of discounts the thinking that your family tree can only show members of your own family.

What do you think the feasibility is for scripting a "slipping away in the dark of night" for a General (plus units) from a settlement that is under siege?

And lastly, a noob question. Does a withdrawal from the battle map count as a 'lost' in the faction summary panel?

[Augustus Lucifer]

It seems to work like that for the GeneralDevastatesTile event. The thing is, all of the events and such we know some about based on their usage, but everything is just speculation from there, as to my knowledge there isn't a file which describes this facet of events, just as there isn't a detailed description anywhere of what each VnV actually does in terms of statistical impact on a character's abilities(and there sort of doesn't need to be since we can't edit the battle system or settlement system, not talking about mechanics, etc.). So yeah it seems to trigger based on percentile and amount of turns the army isn't moving, as well as how big the army is. I will look later tonight, at the moment all my files are on a different computer from where I have internet access.

The best way to determine the princess event is to force the AI to marry their princess into your faction, and then if you have children, they should too. I wouldn't know off the top of my head if this is possible and what the Condition and Event should be to make it occur. That being said, I seem to recall when this happened to me randomly a couple times during play, they produced children, so it doesn't make sense for the AI not to. Similarly, it doesn't make realistic sense for a Prince to marry without the ability to produce heirs. You could use a hotseat script also to view the other faction's family tree, that's the only way I can think of.

There might be a way to slip a general out of a settlement, but it wouldn't be the same general. You'd have to run an event with the condition the settlement is under siege, and have it remove the character(and the units if you wanted to add that) from the settlement, and then re-spawn a character of the same name and units outside the settlement. You'd need to make a separate script for every settlement because the spawn point would have to be adjusted in terms of coordinates. It also wouldn't be the same general and units, not sure how you'd go about that, pretty sure there's no ability to check all stats on a general and put them in a queue to be added. I also seem to remember a console command that let you move generals around in RTW, but forgot what it was or if it was just hot air, and if it would work in this situation.

Yes, a withdrawal counts as a loss, just like clicking Exit Battle even if no units have fought counts as a loss plus a bad autosim of your casualties.

Cheers,
Augustus

[redxavier]

Thanks for replying Augustus. I will try to investigate the trigger(s) and the effect(s) of the GeneralDevastatesTile event over the weekend (and of course return with any findings).

There doesn't appear to be a marriage-related script command to force a marriage so I guess it's going to be an in-game experiment involving paying lots of money to get an AI faction to let me have their daughter. It's a shame because I really want to make marriages useful - specifically to have a system in place where your faction heir is also the heir to another faction, thus inheriting two kingdoms (with a friendly smile and a few stabs).

Regarding the escape from siege mechanic, I was thinking that the "move character to x y" would work but as you say there's the problem of the specific character and perhaps most importantly, the units with him. Providing the character is selected and is activated during a turn, I suppose it could be made to work (fortunately my mod is based on Britannia so the number of settlements won't mean a hundred or so lines of code).

The units... arggh... It's not all bad though, I could probably take advantage of this to trigger a negative trait (e.g. command, authority, morale) as the general slips away and leaves his men to perish. To really complicate it, the negative effects could be reversed if the general comes back and relieves the siege within x turns.