Internal faction names and the 66BC bug

[Caesar Augustus]

Hi everyone,

I've been having a little bit of a think and bit of research about this issue, and have come to a couple of conclusions:

1) The 66BC bug appears to be caused by the game looking for the start of the civil war between the 4 Roman factions in the vanilla game. Is that right?

2) The game does this through checking to see if any of the factions that could trigger the civil war are still alive, using the internal names, as opposed to the modded faction names.

Now, does the BI exe use the same internal names as Rome? I'm thinking that as ExRM 4.0 will not be compatible with vanilla anyway, we don't need to worry about stopping RTW 1.5 users being able to play. If the internal names are different then we can change them over (provided there are the same number of factions in BI, never bothered to check this?), and then there will be no more 66BC bug?

If this doesn't work, then why not situate the 4 Roman factions close together on the campaign map, so that it's likely that one of the factions will prevail over the rest long before 66BC, therefore dramatically reducing the probability of the crash occuring?

A further thought, we could use the internally Roman factions for factions that aren't necessarily ideal for a human to play as? I'm thinking the superfactions here, though that would leave us with one left over. My logic here is that I think 66BC is only an issue if the player is one of the Roman factions, because in vanilla I don't remember there being a civil war between the Romans if you were to play as, for example, Gaul.

Admittedly, this could require quite a bit of work going back through and changing things in the game files to see if it would make any difference. I recommend Carados

[Tony83]

I'm not an expert on the 66BC Bug, but the impression that I've gained over the years is that it probably occurs because there is a hard coded reference to the Senate faction, at that date, causing a crash for mods that have done away with that faction.

Some mods, like RS, have even changed the format of the dating, to avoid 66BC from ever occurring and appearing on the screen, but I don't know how effective that has been.

[Caesar Augustus]

Bah humbug

Well I guess it was a good (if useless) idea

[Tony83]

Don't take what I say as gospel, CA. As I said, I'm not an expert of the Bug and I'm probably not up with the latest thinking on it.

[Caesar Augustus]

Ok man. I might chuck a link into the Rome workshop and see what the folk there think

[florin80]

It appears(based on what people reported) that it only happens if you play with one of the roman factions(the internal names would be the one that count). An ai test for example(Marcus Camillus made one a long time ago) will not trigger the crash it seems. Removing the roman factions completely or keeping them all in(but with different cultures and no longer in the vanilla connection - senate and three factions) as other factions will make no difference. The CTD will still happen afaik. To my knowledge it makes no difference either in this regard what engine/exe you are using. RS and some other mods have "fixed" this by using positive numbers as the starting year. Which makes the game think it is in AD instead of BC and so the 66 (-66 internally I`d imagine) never happens technically. That`s why they`re using the AUC(Ab Urbe Condita) concept because it goes well with the count increasing(the game thinks it is in the AD period) instead of decreasing as would happen if you`d have the BC period. Other than this you`ll not be able to do anything about it most likely.

[Pat89]

I've also heard of tricks with a 4tpy script to use 65 BC twice and then go directly to 67 BC. No idea if that actually works though...

[florin80]

From what people playing RTR 6 Gold(which was for RTW v1.2) said you could use RomeSage(?) successfully to skip a year once you got that CTD and this would get you past it. Though I remember Brusilov stating the he had to do it a few more times afterwords. Perhaps the game`s engine checks a few more times later. In RTRPE this couldn`t be done because RomeSage didn`t work well with RTW v1.5.

[Caesar Augustus]

Hmm, when 4.0 is finished up I guess I could test changing the dating system to AUC and see how that goes. What files would I need to change? I'm sure I've asked this before but I forgot to note it down.

[Pat89]

Just change the number in descr_strat to fit with the date in AUC. Then go to Data\text\menu_english.txt and change "{UI_AD}AD" to "{UI_AD}AUC"

Obviously you should also change all things that work with the date... Like events and scripts

[Caesar Augustus]

Cheers Pat! Who knows, if it works I may release it as a mod of a mod of a mod of a mod

[Quinn Inuit]

It's too bad you can't write a macro that adds an amount to numbers. That would make regenerating the 4tpy script a lot easier.

I have to admit, though, that I'm O.K. with the bug. I know people like playing long games, but I just can't warrant the accuracy of the mod past that time. We don't have enough factions.

Edit: I'm certainly not against it being done, though. C.A., if you do it, I'll make sure it gets posted prominently here.

[Caesar Augustus]

I guess it really is only a valid issue for long campaigns, though I freely admit I wish there was a way to kick this one out. I meant to do it for 3.5 but forgot about it until the other day, and I figured I may as well wait for 4.0 now

[Carados]

Sorry, I'm on strike until Vista behaves itself...

[Caesar Augustus]

Tough

[Carados]

Purple

[Metaluis90]

What if you destroy in-game the other factions with thhe roman internal name (including the senate)?
I think that way it would prevent the game from CTD

[Caesar Augustus]

Yeah, that probably would work. Hence why I suggested moving them so they're all close to each other so it's likely you'll triumph over them in a relatively short space of time.

I don't know how much work it would be to do though

[Mogan]

Well, there's no faction left with the internal senate name. As for the other theories, I've been testing RS2, and they only kept the romans_brutii as the standard Romans. All the others are renamed totally.

[Carados]

Pfft.
People shouldn't be playing that long
(and if they still want to then I would advise them to have a look at other mods that might be able to better cater for their needs. Nor is Rome the only power, therefore I think it's incorrect to use the AUC method)