Three Questions (origin of music, retraining, and remove_trait)

[Aemilius Paulus]

Hello, I just recently started playing BC, and I have to say, this is the EB of M2TW. Love this mod. Even its scope - at first I thought the fact there are few Western nations to play would be a detriment, but then I realised it only added to the fun of the mod, since there is too much focus on the West anyhow, and I already have SS for that.

However, I have three questions. Now, I made sure I meticulously searched the BC Forums here for the answers, but so far, I could not find any.

First, most importantly, how can I retrain my troops reliably? I have been getting this bug, playing as KoJ, where I have the barracks building and the armoury giving me the +1 experience and +1 weapons bonus. However, the units I train (at Acre, my primary production centre) come out with the experience bonus only about ~30% of the time. I mean the infantry, which are supposed to get the xp bonus. So I retrain them, and sometimes they get the xp bonus, but it all appears to be random. All of the infantry units get the bonus, but it is hard to get them to do so. Gah, I am really quite OCD about this, so I would appreciate if anyone knew the solution.

Secondly, Where did the music come from? I mean, the artists - I know the location of the music folder. I found the Janissary Mehter group, as well as Anouar Brahem but most of the other music does not indicate the origin. Is it anywhere in the credits? Mentioned in release threads? Does anyone know?? I am going to mod the Mehter and Brahem music into the game, but I would love to know the artists of the other marvellous pieces that BC is so full of.

Finally,how does the remove_trait cheat work in BC? Does it work at all? I have a few rather contradictory traits I wanted to get rid of in my FMs. (Such as Ignorant and Smart together - yah, I know it is somewhat possible IRL, but still; also, the Iron Fisted and Kind Chivalrous Ruler; etc combinations)

Thank you for any responses

[Spider1110]

to your first point: this is a general M2TW problem afaik. i don't know every detail but from personal experience i'd say everytime your seeing a loading screen (i.e you fight a tactical battle or switch to the desktop) the ep gain of troops in a recruitment queue gets reset. moving them out of and back into the queue sets it right again. going through your recruitment queues before you hit end turn takes care of this although it's somewhat of a hassle.

can't say much about the music as i'm not a mod dev. but a like some of the tracks very much and wouldn't mind knowing their songnames + artists too.

for character traits move your family member on an empty space and select him (so you can see a green circle on the groung around him) and open the console. the type "remove_trait this 'traitname'" (without the ' and "). with the traitname being the one found in the export_descr_character_traits.txt file. sometimes it's enough to replace space characters of the ingame name with underscores but nor always. you can also replace 'this' with the characters name so you don't have to select him (or which would be neccessary if it wasn't your character) i couldn't always get it to works with the name which is displayed so i found it easier to use 'this'.

[Aemilius Paulus]

to your first point: this is a general M2TW problem afaik. i don't know every detail but from personal experience i'd say everytime your seeing a loading screen (i.e you fight a tactical battle or switch to the desktop) the ep gain of troops in a recruitment queue gets reset. moving them out of and back into the queue sets it right again. going through your recruitment queues before you hit end turn takes care of this although it's somewhat of a hassle.

THANK YOU!!! Gah, that problem was sapping my desire to play BC at times... Quite annoying. Yeah, I figured that was a vanilla problem, as this does not seem like something modding would affect, but then again, I never encountered this in either vanilla or SS

(+rep )

can't say much about the music as i'm not a mod dev. but a like some of the tracks very much and wouldn't mind knowing their songnames + artists too.

Yeah. Like I said, two of them were Mehter and Anouar Brahem - you can find their songs online quite easily, mainly the last artist though.

for character traits move your family member on an empty space and select him (so you can see a green circle on the groung around him) and open the console. the type "remove_trait this 'traitname'" (without the ' and "). with the traitname being the one found in the export_descr_character_traits.txt file. sometimes it's enough to replace space characters of the ingame name with underscores but nor always. you can also replace 'this' with the characters name so you don't have to select him (or which would be neccessary if it wasn't your character) i couldn't always get it to works with the name which is displayed so i found it easier to use 'this'.

Mmm, I will try it, but that is what I already did *shrugs*. But hey, at least this is not like the EB Romani, where it is practically impossible to mess with traits using the console. Really, I have never successfully changed traits via cheats, neither in MiNO or RTW.

[TechStrider]

Regarding your first question only:

This used to drive me crazy. It is a M2:TW problem in general and not specific to any one mod. The issue comes up when you have placed any recruitment units in the queue and then perform any full cycle of save and reload. If you do a reload, the extra experience bonus will not take effect.

There are a few more notes that play into this.

If the units in question already have some level of experience and are being retrained, they do not lose their existing experience (see below for a caveat). The work around is easy but gets progressively more painful the further into the game you get. Always - always - go through your entire map and deselect any queued units and reselect them before ending the turn.

You can perform the workaround and requeue all unit recruitment actions and then save and then do an end of turn and everything will work. You do not have to perform an end-of-turn operation immediately following this queue refresh, but, IF you reload for any reason, you will have to do the queue refresh again.

You can easily prove this process by queuing up several units in a settlement where they are due an experience bonus. If you look at the queued unit detail, it will show, for example, 1 for experience. Save the game and then reload. Look at the same unit and the experience field will be 0. Deselect it and then reselect it - the 1 will be back and will take effect when you end turn.

This issue prevents some elegant resource conservation when you have a series of settlements with good unit building options. In a current game, I have a rather good general with excellent discounts on training based in Jerusalem. He can reach many settlements from Gaza to Antioch. When I want to recruit a lot of units, he can make a run along the coast and queue up quite a bit at a sizeable savings. I have to be very sure that I do this ONLY just before EOT because it is not repeatable if I reload since he will not have the movement points available to retrace his steps. A similar example is waiting to queue units with a "unit discount general" type at the beginning of a movement process in one settlement with the intention to finish the turn some distance away and no longer able to requeue the original units when the EOT moment comes quite some time away.

Other retraining note: There are conditions where you may not be able to retain experience chevrons on retraining a unit. I have played vanilla-Kingdoms-BC-ThirdAge extensively and been bit more than a few times. Issues with the levels of structures in the settlement can make things dicey. What I have found that is always consistent is that you can verify what will happen by inspecting the individual unit details in the queues just before performing the EOT. Be sure that the value for experience is what you want it to be. If not, remove the unit from the queue. If putting it back in still does not show what you want, leave it out and save the money because it just isn't going to happen.

I have learned to be v thoughtful before queuing units, last movements, and EOT. At the very least, I now know to remove retraining units from queues when it is obvious they will not get any benefit and the money will have been wasted. And, for new recruitment units, if I really need them I do make my choices knowing which will or will not get an actual bonus.

[BesoC]

Secondly, Where did the music come from? I mean, the artists - I know the location of the music folder. I found the Janissary Mehter group, as well as Anouar Brahem but most of the other music does not indicate the origin. Is it anywhere in the credits? Mentioned in release threads? Does anyone know?? I am going to mod the Mehter and Brahem music into the game, but I would love to know the artists of the other marvellous pieces that BC is so full of.

At least one of artists is Dead Can Dance. Overall, music is great and it will be great, if someone (from BC group perhaps) publishes a list of tracks

[Marcion]

There's a track called H_battle_1 which I recognize as being lifted from a game called Homeworld 2...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6JZhaNWA9s

[Lupu]

There's a track called H_battle_1 which I recognize as being lifted from a game called Homeworld 2...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6JZhaNWA9s

Then one of the marching tracks is from that game too. It's the same music style, and the same voices, too similar to not be from the same source.

[merlinuscdxx]

You can copy the music tracks from the mod into a separate folder and then import it into your Windows Media Player (or other media player that links up with song/ album info, ie Winamp.) and get artist/album info that way (at least on some of the tracks).

[Aemilius Paulus]

You can copy the music tracks from the mod into a separate folder and then import it into your Windows Media Player (or other media player that links up with song/ album info, ie Winamp.) and get artist/album info that way (at least on some of the tracks).

Yeah, or just click the 'Properties' AFAIK.

Some of the music is also from the composer Harry-Gregson Williams, his music was also int Kingdom of Heaven....

Really? I modded selected tracks from Kingdom of Heaven Soundtrack into BC. Along with Mehter and Anouar Brahem. The only problem is, it is not working - I am not hearing the music when I play BC . Gah, I wonder why. I used TextPad to edit the .txt desc_music file, and not regular MS Notepad, yet the music is still not recognised.

Worse yet, I remember that when I made a small mistake when modding music into EB, the campaign refused to load, so I knew I screwed up. I fixed it, and I am playing EB with tons of Musica Romana and Synaulia tracks - the most authentic Roman music one can get. Yet the BC campaign loads just fine - but without the music I added. This only makes it more confusing. I never had any problems I could not overcome while modding any RTW files, but M2TW is not availing .

[BeingOwned:)SPQR]

Some of the music is also from the composer Harry-Gregson Williams, his music was also int Kingdom of Heaven....

[cenkiss]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgawyEH-5bQ

Menu song is wings of gabriel from Arcana.

[Quirl]

Hey Aemilius. Remember me from the .Org (my name is much longer there)?

• A number of the campaign map music is from Hossein Alizadeh, a great Iranian classical musician/composer.
• One song on the campaign map is from the Anouar Brahem Trio--mostly from their Astrakhan Cafe album--also great.
• A few songs are from Homeworld 2, Hitman: Blood Money, and Kingdom of Heaven.
• Some of the songs are from the Kingdom's Crusades campaign, composed by Richard Vaughan.
• Some songs are from Jeremy Soule--the exquisite composer behind Morrowind and Oblivion.
• One song is from Black & White 2.
• Most of the Indian songs are a mystery to me, though I know a few of them were found in random tourist sites online (probably lost in cyberspace by now, unfortunately).

[Aemilius Paulus]

Ahh, thank you. I will see how my music modding goes. So far, no luck with the remove_character either. Has anyone actually succeeded using it in BC?

[tibu17]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btXnl...eature=related

[damnmap]

I agree OP this mod is special... the only one that can truly compete with the monster that is Third Age.

The music and atmosphere in BC is godly

I do not understand how SS can have such a large following I find it lacking