Editing Start Year

[Leatherneck918]

Hello, my fellow gamers. I have a question I hope can be answered. I recently changed my game files to start my games at 1500 instead of 1700. To my dismay I have played the game to now about 1607. I have been taking notes on what the AI is doing and how it manages its Territories. I have found the AI is not using any money or it seems all factions are bankrupt. Example. I have a prestige rate of over 5000+ Britain is next with a whooping 300, yes that’s 3-0-0. As I scan the map every theater has undeveloped towns and sea ports. The AI factions can only have small Army’s or Navies. I have tried to give the AI Factions Tech and money, but nothing happens. Example, Demark in my game all its cities and ports are damaged since turn 10. I gave them 200,000 per turn for 20 years. Still has a small Army cannot find any Navy units for this faction. All cities and ports are still damaged. So I think I found some sort of major bug, were the scripts in ETW, You cannot change the Start Date before a said date or the AI will not know what to do. So can anyone point me in the right direction on how to fix this? What I’m trying to do is have a really long campaign with increases Tech builds times. I want to expand the Tech build time so instead of being able to go from plugs to full bonnets in less than 15 turns; I want to make it so it takes longer to research all Tech. So you can have a period of say 50 yrs before you can go from muskets to Plugs to another 30 to 50 yrs before you can upgrade again. Thanks any help will be appreciated.

[husserlTW]

I have not met such a problem before but I know that here are other facts related to starting date in startpos.esf file and need to be changed, but it's a huge work. These are in [...]campaign_model/world/faction_array/faction:

1. Dates in victory conditions.
2. Dates of birth of FAMILY, CHARACTERS and units of the starting armies and fleets.

[Leatherneck918]

Well thanks for the info, but I don’t see why I would need to change the Victory Conditions. Do to I still want the vanilla conditions, unless there is a start date for this. In my game I have all ready been told I meet the condition at year 1637. I’m still playing do to I want to see if the game starts to CTD or any other problems up to year 1800... Now with the Family, Characters, Generals, and Admirals. I did notice on Turn 2 every one of them died, but by next turn my Government got new people, I got new characters, and I hired new Generals and Admirals. Everything seems to be working fine. If I get a general at age 55, he normal lives in tell his 70 to 80. So I’m not too worried about revamping this part if I’m not having any problems with it. Yes all members die at the same time at year 2 is a slight problem, but since it does not ctd the game I can live with that... I just need to find out how the AI uses its money or why it’s not building up its provinces. I’m going to see what happens when I get to the year 1700, if at that year I see the AI start building up, I will know there is something hard coded, if not. Then I have no clue why this is happening...

[Tan Zhi Han]

... Things that affect the game... If you change the date to 1500... The AI won't act accordingly until it is once again the year 1700. You need to change everything to 1500. It is pretty time consuming and... mindless labor. Good luck mate!