[question] How to change a faction's starting provinces?

**Anaxamander** · September 07, 2013, 05:58 PM

I was wondering where to look to edit which provinces a faction starts with. I want to start by experimenting with CPU-controlled Carthage. I'd like to give them the Nova Carthago settlements to see if it would make them a bit more formidable.

**Greve Af Göteborg** · September 07, 2013, 06:32 PM

I'm also interested in this. Changing the region ownership in startpos file does not seem to do anything at all.

**Antiokhos Euergetes** · September 08, 2013, 02:44 AM

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...al-War-Rome-II
I asked a similar question here

**yukishiro1** · September 09, 2013, 10:02 PM

Link doesn't lead to a real post.

I've tried changing the region ownership in startpos both places it appears. That does nothing I can tell. I've also tried changing a field in the "region manager" sub-field a few fields below campaign_env ----> world. That also seems to do nothing. I have been poking around but I can't find anywhere else that seems likely to control ownership.

**yukishiro1** · September 09, 2013, 10:37 PM

Update: I gave Carthage all of Libya's cities, so the Carthage starts with full control of Africa. It seems to work fine, EXCEPT that I can't use an edict because the game says I don't control all the provinces, even though I do. I do not know what is causing this. I tried changing the region_ownerships_by_theatre settings (both of them), and neither fixed the problem.

The problem is almost certainly with world -> province manager. I can see entries in there that delineate ownership. The problem is figuring out how to change them. I went to province 26, which is africa, and deleted the entry that clearly corresponded to ownership for Libya. The problem is that now the came crashes on starting a new campaign.

I think I could fix that if I could edit the SystemByte field of Province Manager - > Province Array - > Province Array 26 - > Province - > Faction Province Manager Array -> faction province manager array 0 -> Faction Province Manager. But if I try to change the interger from SystemByte[1] to [4], which ought to harmonize the entry with other provinces owned by a single entity, editsf crashes every time. It doesn't seem possible to edit systembyte entries using editsf without the crash, so I don't think I can fix the problem.

edit: The same problem comes up when you try to recruit a new army from one of these provinces. It doesn't let you do that either. The game is obviously just not recognizing you own the province even though you have all the settlements there.

**Juboboman** · September 10, 2013, 05:00 AM

Originally Posted by yukishiro1

Update: I gave Carthage all of Libya's cities, so the Carthage starts with full control of Africa. It seems to work fine, EXCEPT that I can't use an edict because the game says I don't control all the provinces, even though I do. I do not know what is causing this. I tried changing the region_ownerships_by_theatre settings (both of them), and neither fixed the problem.

The problem is almost certainly with world -> province manager. I can see entries in there that delineate ownership. The problem is figuring out how to change them. I went to province 26, which is africa, and deleted the entry that clearly corresponded to ownership for Libya. The problem is that now the came crashes on starting a new campaign.

I think I could fix that if I could edit the SystemByte field of Province Manager - > Province Array - > Province Array 26 - > Province - > Faction Province Manager Array -> faction province manager array 0 -> Faction Province Manager. But if I try to change the interger from SystemByte[1] to [4], which ought to harmonize the entry with other provinces owned by a single entity, editsf crashes every time. It doesn't seem possible to edit systembyte entries using editsf without the crash, so I don't think I can fix the problem.

edit: The same problem comes up when you try to recruit a new army from one of these provinces. It doesn't let you do that either. The game is obviously just not recognizing you own the province even though you have all the settlements there.

I think your problem is that you said you deleted the entry corresponding to Libya instead of changing it to 3 for carthage. I was just doing a random experiment and gave Lilybaum to Sparta. I did everything up to that stage, and like you I was able to gain control of the province but not recruit in it. Then I changed the value in faction_province_manager to 7 (sparta) and now I can recruit in that province. At least if I'm reading right, it's 4 am lol. But regardless I was able to change the faction and recruit units in the province from the new faction. I'll go change an entire province now instead of one region and test if I can set edicts.

PS: Also in your first step in the post above the one I'm quoting, make sure you go deeper and change region the slot value. So go to region array>region>region slot manager>region slot array>region slot array (this one has a number corresponding to the specific settlement)>region slot

12 rows down from the top is the faction number. So in your case you would want that to be 3.

**Anaxamander** · September 10, 2013, 10:01 AM

Originally Posted by Juboboman

PS: Also in your first step in the post above the one I'm quoting, make sure you go deeper and change region the slot value. So go to region array>region>region slot manager>region slot array>region slot array (this one has a number corresponding to the specific settlement)>region slot

12 rows down from the top is the faction number. So in your case you would want that to be 3.

This is the one thing that's trowing me off. What are the "region slots"--are those building slots? You would want to change all of those to the same faction ID, correct?

**yukishiro1** · September 10, 2013, 10:32 AM

Originally Posted by Juboboman

I think your problem is that you said you deleted the entry corresponding to Libya instead of changing it to 3 for carthage. I was just doing a random experiment and gave Lilybaum to Sparta. I did everything up to that stage, and like you I was able to gain control of the province but not recruit in it. Then I changed the value in faction_province_manager to 7 (sparta) and now I can recruit in that province. At least if I'm reading right, it's 4 am lol. But regardless I was able to change the faction and recruit units in the province from the new faction. I'll go change an entire province now instead of one region and test if I can set edicts. PS: Also in your first step in the post above the one I'm quoting, make sure you go deeper and change region the slot value. So go to region array>region>region slot manager>region slot array>region slot array (this one has a number corresponding to the specific settlement)>region slot12 rows down from the top is the faction number. So in your case you would want that to be 3.

Ooh - you are CLEVER!I deleted the entry because there was already an entry pertaining to ownership for Carthage - because Carthage starts owning one of the 4 regions by default. But I can't edit the integer there, so it crashes. If you are right, maybe I can just set both ownership entries to Carthage - so one entry will show Carthage owning 1, and the other entry will show Carthage owning the other 3. That would avoid having to edit the systembyte integer we can't currently edit. You have me excited. I will try it when I get home, unfortunately about 12 hours from now.That said, I still have no clue how faction_province_manager figures out which regions it's talking about. In the entry for carthage, there's an ownership entry for carthage with a byte[1] which obviously corresponds to the city of Carthage, and there's an ownership entry for Libya with a byte[3] which clearly corresponds to the 3 provinces Libya owns...but there's nothing to indicate how the game determines that the byte[1] is carthage in particular and the byte[3] is the other 3. There don't seem to be individual entries for each Libya region; it's just all done together. Which means that switching ownership is all or nothing - I couldn't, for example, switch it so that Carthage owned 3 out of the 4 but not all 4. More work will have to be done to figure out how the game designates what particular regions are owned by which faction, rather than just the ratio in the province as a whole. If that makes sense.

**andreas e** · January 21, 2014, 01:27 AM

Originally Posted by yukishiro1

Update: I gave Carthage all of Libya's cities, so the Carthage starts with full control of Africa. It seems to work fine, EXCEPT that I can't use an edict because the game says I don't control all the provinces, even though I do. I do not know what is causing this. I tried changing the region_ownerships_by_theatre settings (both of them), and neither fixed the problem.

The problem is almost certainly with world -> province manager. I can see entries in there that delineate ownership. The problem is figuring out how to change them. I went to province 26, which is africa, and deleted the entry that clearly corresponded to ownership for Libya. The problem is that now the came crashes on starting a new campaign.

I think I could fix that if I could edit the SystemByte field of Province Manager - > Province Array - > Province Array 26 - > Province - > Faction Province Manager Array -> faction province manager array 0 -> Faction Province Manager. But if I try to change the interger from SystemByte[1] to [4], which ought to harmonize the entry with other provinces owned by a single entity, editsf crashes every time. It doesn't seem possible to edit systembyte entries using editsf without the crash, so I don't think I can fix the problem.

edit: The same problem comes up when you try to recruit a new army from one of these provinces. It doesn't let you do that either. The game is obviously just not recognizing you own the province even though you have all the settlements there.

I did what you said and it does nothing i really want to know how to do that PLEASE help

**andreas e** · January 21, 2014, 01:50 AM

@dresen it seems you know a lot of these stuff and i want help please accept my friend request on steam i wont bother you mush i just want to know some things

**yukishiro1** · September 09, 2013, 10:20 PM

Update - HAHA, the sweet taste of victory!

The ownership is controlled by the following field in the following portion of startpos:

Compressed data -> campaign env -> world -> region manager -> region array -> region array #. Go to the region you want - for example, to change ownership for Macomedes to Carthage, go to region # 96. Click on the sub-heading "region" and a long list of values comes up. About halfway down, you will see "rom_libya."

Aha, you think - change that to rom_carthage and I'm golden! But you are wrong. Changing that does nothing. Or, at least, nothing that is immediately obvious.

Instead, it is the setting right ABOVE that that controls ownership - in this case, it says "85." On a hunch, I cross-referenced this number with Libya's faction number in Compressed data -> campaign env -> world -> faction array. And voila, if you go to faction array # 83, you will find the listing for Libya!

But wait - 85 and 83 arn't the same, right? No, but in the listing for faction array 83, see the first field? It says 85! That is libya's faction #.

So, the listing in region_array above the faction name is the one that controls ownership. Carthage is faction array 2, Id # 3. So if you replace the 85 in region array 96 with 3, and load up the game...

Yes, Carthage now has control over Macomedes! Victory!*

*I also changed the rom_libya to rom_Carthage. On its own, this did nothing. I did not test what happens if you only change the faction ID without changing this value. It may be necessary to change both. More posts to follow once I figure it out.

**Antiokhos Euergetes** · September 10, 2013, 12:46 AM

But your on the right track. .PM one of the CA members, perhaps they'll be willing to answer a couple of questions

**ts10** · September 10, 2013, 01:58 AM

great findings,hopefully it will get us somewhere.

**Anaxamander** · September 10, 2013, 07:26 AM

Amazing progress guys! So now we know it is indeed possible. Now that I know where to look, I'm going to do some experimenting of my own.

**Antiokhos Euergetes** · September 10, 2013, 08:52 AM

Great stuff, now I will have a little experiment also.

**omzdog** · September 10, 2013, 09:01 AM

And voila, if you go to faction array # 83, you will find the listing for Libya!

But wait - 85 and 83 arn't the same, right?

This had me in tears.

**alhoon** · September 10, 2013, 10:20 AM

OK, can someone put those in a tutorial please?

**shane32ie** · September 10, 2013, 10:39 AM

Weird question but say you modded it so Carthage had all of Spain and Africa as an AI rival on a new campaign for example, would that work and then you could capture them from Carthage easily. It would also trim down turn times massively wouldn't it, as your taking away like 20 factions from the turn(all the little factions in Spain and west Africa) from the get go?

**yukishiro1** · September 10, 2013, 10:43 AM

Not sure I'm understanding. Why would it be easy to take a bunch of regions from a beefed up Carthage? Or do you mean set it so Carthage has all of Spain and Africa but not edit the ownership, so that Carthage has the provinces but can't recruit any armies from them?

**shane32ie** · September 10, 2013, 11:28 AM

Not even to take them easy, It would just be great to have an 'empire' of a faction to fight (and wipe out a dozen smaller turn time slowing factions in the process), and I thought you said you could give the areas to a faction but the game doesn't see them as having them, so cant recruit armies or do edicts in them?