first time trying to unify Roman factions.

**lsteve** · November 14, 2006, 06:22 PM

Its the first time I'm trying to mod the game decently. I wanted to unite the three roman factions and create a new one.
I followed Atilius tutorial that is posted on the .org, http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=63904 , but in step one already it goes wrong.

I need to remove some instances from the senate, but I can't find this part in the descr_strat.txt. file.
Code:
superfaction romans_senate
which occurs under each of the lines
Code:
faction romans_brutii, balanced stalin
faction romans_julii, comfortable caesar
faction romans_scipii, bureaucrat napoleon

So I skip this and follow his text further: I give Latium to the Julii, remove all the senate's armies and following his tutorial the game should work. The game starts, even gives the intro movies of the factions, and then CTD. Every time again.

Anyone knows what I do wrong? Is this the correct way to get a free faction slot?

And I can't get the show_err functioning either, so I don't have a clue why I get CTD. I put -show_err in the shortcut on my desktop, but it doest give an error.

**Aleric** · November 15, 2006, 04:28 PM

The superfactions_roman senate is under the name of the faction. For instance.

faction romans_julii, trader caesar
superfaction romans_senate
denari 5000

**makanyane** · November 15, 2006, 05:21 PM

If you didn't have the
superfaction romans_senate
bit in your descr_strat, it could be because you're on an earlier version (patch 1.2 or below) of the game than that tutorial is written for.

If you are on 1.2 you can't remove senate entirely from strat that would give ctd on loading - I think what you had to do for that version is leave in
faction romans_senate, comfortable napoleon
denari 5000
settlement
give all their settlements to another faction, and leave in one or more armies including the faction leader, remembering to change co-ordinates so they are not located in cities!
That should then kill the faction when you start the game as they have no cities.

-show_err doesn't work for some errors, including some stuff to do with senate in earlier versions and having misspelt /invalid leader names in descr_strat.

If you're on 1.5 etc Removing the senate from descr_strat still doesn't give you a free faction slot as they are still one of the 21 factions in sm_factions and loads of the other text files. Senate has a load of hard coded stuff activated by their internal name so you can't re-use them without internally re-naming them so a different name is used in sm_factions etc.etc.etc...... I've only done that for a 1.5 mod running under BI.exe so can't say what other versions it may work for (though not 1.2 as you can't remove senate see above)

If you've also removing / moving the Brutii and or Scipii you can re-use them. To do that you'd actually leave them in descr_strat - give them provinces you want for your 'new' faction, and use expanded.txt style editing to make them appear as new faction...
{EMT_ROMAN_JULII_TOWN} New Factions Town
etc.

**lsteve** · November 15, 2006, 08:31 PM

You hit the point, makanyane. I still was on version 1.2, so I patched up today. I changed omething in a descr_strat, and I got an CTD, but I forgot to make a back_up. Then I reinstalled and I forgot to patch.

I've just patched, and still I don't get the text superfaction under each of the roman family's. Maybe its because of my descr_strat file is altered yesterday ( to unlock all factions). So it won't copy an older file over it??? I don't know.

If so, someone can give an unmodded, clean descr_strat.txt. My back-up is also an all-factions-unlocked txt.

edit: I've reinstalled RTW again, and now I have the right file.

**lsteve** · November 17, 2006, 07:44 PM

Ok, I've done it. I excluded the senate, and moved the Scipii to Sicily.
They 've got two cities there and it works. The Julii have 4 cities, not yet all garisoned.
Even the tga files looks good (in my opinion).
The culture change is also ok, I've made them Carthaginian, and those sicilians are looking / building carthaginian now.

I'm not editing the recruitable units yet. Thats for later on.

I've got some "faults" I want to correct first, if possible.

1: when you point at a city, the tag says: Roman (sicilian) city ......
Its the same as their former collegues: roman (julii) , roman (brutii). Is this possible to remove?

2: I want to give other names, but when I copy the carthaginian text to the scipii text and change the name in descr_strat I get still a CTD. The only time I managed to alter it was when I placed "Hannibal" in all sections of Scipii, and changed Cornelius Scipio to Hannibal. My faction leader was Hannibal then, but all my '3 adopted sons' were Scipio's. I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure it out.

3: I've removed all recruitable units from the Sicilians and not yet added new ones. When I adopt someone, he dies inmediatly. Is this because there is no bodygguard unit available?

Thanks.
Lsteve

**makanyane** · November 18, 2006, 12:16 AM

1: when you point at a city, the tag says: Roman (sicilian) city ......
Its the same as their former collegues: roman (julii) , roman (brutii). Is this possible to remove?

That looks like it must be coming from expanded.txt / expanded_bi.txt
Normal line is:
{EMT_ROMANS_SCIPII_CITY} Roman (Scipii) City
you can change any of the text that isn't in the {} so you should be able to have
{EMT_ROMANS_SCIPII_CITY} Sicilian City

2: I want to give other names, but when I copy the carthaginian text to the scipii text and change the name in descr_strat I get still a CTD. The only time I managed to alter it was when I placed "Hannibal" in all sections of Scipii, and changed Cornelius Scipio to Hannibal. My faction leader was Hannibal then, but all my '3 adopted sons' were Scipio's. I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure it out.

You ought to be able to copy the Carthaginian names in descr_names.txt over the Scipii section and change all the Scipii factions names in descr_strat to Carthaginian. (Check you changed the surnames section as well) You need to make sure you've changed each instance of a particular scipii name to the same carthaginian one, including wherever they appear in the relative & character record sections and that you're not trying to re-use the same name for more than one named character. If it doesn't work when you try it again post the scipii sections of the strat file and descr_names.txt here.

3: I've removed all recruitable units from the Sicilians and not yet added new ones. When I adopt someone, he dies inmediatly. Is this because there is no bodygguard unit available?

Pass, give them one unit back with the general_unit attribute and see what happens.

**lsteve** · November 18, 2006, 07:04 PM

This is the part in descr_names.txt

Code:

faction: romans_scipii

	characters
		André
		Bart
		Eric
		Frederik
		Geert
		Johan
		Joren
		Jos
		Luk
		Mark
		Peter
		Pieter
		Robbe
		Stefaan
		Stief
		Stijn
			
	surnames
		Bienstmen
		Banens
		Dekelber
		Guns
		Jens
		Loenis
		Pot
		Rombet
		Direz
		Vanbal		
		Vanmael
		Virtum
		
	women
		Anne
		Annemie
		Carina
		Carine
		Chris
		Christine
		Hilde
		Huguette
		Isa
		Isabelle
		Karin
		Kris
		Leen
		Liesbeth
		Lieve		
		Lydia
		Marie
		Marina
		Marleen
		Martine
		Myriam
		Petra
		Sabine
		Tine

And this is the part of my character in descr_stra.txt:

Code:

character	Loenis, named character, leader, age 45, , x 82, y 45 
traits NaturalMilitarySkill 3 , GoodDefender 1 , Intelligent 1 , Energetic 1 , GoodAmbusher 2 
ancillaries Herald
army
unit		carthaginian general's cavalry early				exp 1 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0

character_record		Hilde, 	female, command 0, influence 0, management 0, subterfuge 0, age 50, alive, never_a_leader

relative 	Leunis, 	Hilde,		end

These are my settings in the two files concerning the names. I still get a CTD, whatever I do. I copied the whole part of Carthago and placed it in Scipii. I changed the charater names and the relatives, but still no. Then I tried it with own names, maybe its easier to find it out for me, but no...

**makanyane** · November 19, 2006, 01:15 AM

You're using Loenis for your generals name, which is from the surnames section - you need to use a name from the first (characters) section, it is then optional if you add a surname as well.

You've spelt 'Loenis', Leunis, on the relatives line - all the names have to be spelt exactly as in descr_names.txt including upper / lower case.

You wouldn't have had to do this for using carthage's names but when you added your own names did you also remember to add them to data/text/names.txt and data/descr_names_lookup.txt? I'm not sure if the lookup file is strictly required but the file in the text folder definitely is! Again spelling has to be exactly the same between files so its better to copy and paste each name from one file to the other if you're prone to typos.