Converting castles to cities

[Roma_Victrix]

Hi everyone. I recently brought this up in Leo's 4.8 Alternative Patch sub-mod, but apparently this is an aspect shared by every other TATW sub-mod, including the main mod itself. When playing vanilla TATW, I played a campaign as Gondor, so the issue of upgrading castles was never a concern. Again, I played a Gondor campaign with Leo's sub-mod and once more this was never an issue I put much thought into. However, I am now playing his sub-mod as the High Elves, which I immediately noticed cannot upgrade castles! This kind of stinks, because it could be the year TA 3390 and the Elves could conquer nearly the whole map and upgrade every single town/city settlements to large cities, yet they would still be saddled with castle settlements that were conquered when they were still wooden castles or worse, moat and ing bailey! Ew, disgusting, that's gross and primitive! There's plenty of fortresses and regular castles about, but there's just as many wooden castles, it seems, and sometimes other factions are notorious for failing to upgrade their own castles even when they can.

So, given this dismal fate, I would like to inquire as to how I can mod the game so that the Elven factions can upgrade castles, or at the very least convert them to town/city settlements. Is this impossible given the coding of the game? Am I just wasting my time here?

EDIT: ATTENTION! For anyone who's reading this thread, converting and upgrading castle settlements work for the Elves! You just have to follow the instructions below in regards to editing the "export_descr_buildings.txt" file in your TATW mod data folder.

[Goth]

If I remember correctly( I dont have the file in front of me at the moment) you can upgrade castles and cities by editing the file export_descr_buildings with notepad or notepad ++ and remove the text and hidden_resource_ big_city from each entry for city walls and castles (the entry comes after the factions required). That way you should be able to upgrade cities and castles.
To convert cities to castles and vice versa you edit the same file (export_descr_buildings) but its a little more complex
find the line- building convert to castle and add in the faction you want to have the ability between the empty brackets for each entry

e.g change- wooden_castle_to_village castle requires factions { }
to- wooden_castle_to_village castle requires factions { egypt }
If I remember correctly egypt is the high elves, do it for each building you want to be able to convert (ie castle to city or fortress to large city)

I have written this from memory so sorry if there are any mistakes but as a precaution back up you original file before editing

Best of luck and happy modding
Goth

[Roma_Victrix]

Awesome! Thanks for the instructions and advice! I'll let you know if they work.

[Roma_Victrix]

SUCCESS!

However, there's a few things I need to correct in your post above. In your example below:

e.g change- wooden_castle_to_village castle requires factions { }
to- wooden_castle_to_village castle requires factions { egypt }

...you absolutely have to have a comma after the word "egypt," (i.e. the High Elves faction) in order for it to work. It should look like this: "wooden_castle_to_village castle requires factions { egypt, }" and of course have a blank space between the comma and the bracket. I checked the game and voila, I was able to convert the wooden castle I had in my possession to a town!

As for upgrading castle settlements instead of converting them, I didn't have to remove the text "hidden_resource big_city" at all! I didn't even touch that. All I did was add "egypt," to the list of cultures/factions in each core_castle_building category. For instance: "castle castle requires factions { gondor, northern_european, middle_eastern, southern_european, egypt, } and hidden_resource custom_settlement."

^ The word "egypt," with the comma did not exist in that list before; it was my recent insertion.

So voila! It worked! I used console cheat codes to add_money and then add_population to the wooden castle settlement called "Argond" (in East Cardolan province), did the proceess_cq cheat to immediately upgrade it to a castle (and later, a fortress), removed the garrison of soldiers from the castle and allowed it to revolt against me. Then I took a general with an army and besieged the fortress to check on how it would actually look (since the campaign map settlement scared me at first, being basically an elven large town without the wall around it, I thought the game might crash to desktop). Lo and behold! When the battle map loaded, it was the regular Medieval II Southern European fortress (not the custom Gondor or Arnor fortress in Leo's mod). However, I immediately noticed a few differences. The stones of all the walls looked much whiter and whitewashed compared to original vanilla Medieval II stone walls and some things were noticeably different, like farmhouses and windmills missing outside the walls yet there was a windmill inside the walls along with a little fountain that never existed in the original Medieval II version. This must be the TATW custom settlement, or perhaps Leo's custom settlement for the Dale faction, then? I'm not quite sure, but nevertheless it looks just fine.

I'm so happy! I'm playing as the High Elves, and I can finally upgrade castle settlements! Cheers.

[Steward Denethor II]

You should also add the Mongols so Silvian Elves can upgrade.

[ElvenKind]

Awesome! Thanks for the instructions and advice! I'll let you know if they work.

Was this question regarding Leo's submod? Or vanilla TATW 3.2? I've played countless HE and SE campaigns in vanilla TATW, and can't remember now were they able to upgrade castles.. Most of castles I've had were conquered as already fully upgraded later in the game.

[Roma_Victrix]

Was this question regarding Leo's submod? Or vanilla TATW 3.2? I've played countless HE and SE campaigns in vanilla TATW, and can't remember now were they able to upgrade castles.. Most of castles I've had were conquered as already fully upgraded later in the game.

I'm playing Leo's submod, although he has claimed (via a PM response to me) that the issue of the Elven factions not being able to upgrade castle settlements was an inherited feature from vanilla TATW. For anyone who's interested in giving the Elves a fair shake and better ability to defend their provinces, I would advise they follow the instructions above.

You should also add the Mongols so Silvian Elves can upgrade.

That's a good point! Or maybe, just maybe, I'll leave them at a disadvantage and deny them upgrading ability for when I eventually get around to conquering them.



You're right, though, this should be applied to all the Elves, Silvan Elves included.

[ElvenKind]

Thanks for the info R_V.

Does anyone know why the TATW Creators haven't included Elves in a list of factions capable of upgrading castles?

[Roma_Victrix]

Thanks for the info R_V.

Does anyone know why the TATW Creators haven't included Elves in a list of factions capable of upgrading castles?

I would assume it has something to do with the idea that the Elves are more graceful, peaceful, more tied to nature? That kind of thing? Perhaps LOTR lore and evidence from Tolkien's novels show that the Elves never built such structures (only towns and cities like Rivendell), only men did? Well, men plus Orcs and Dwarves built castles (or did the Dwarves only build mines and cavernous dwellings?). Or perhaps it's because their units are so powerful that defensive castles were considered overkill in terms of giving the Elves an advantage over other factions? Surely there's some sort of practical reason why they were excluded, but I found it more annoying than anything else once I started playing with them.

[Steward Denethor II]

It's not that way in vanilla TATW, but Leo's submod changed that and many submods followed suit. I personally dislike the change and don't think it really makes sense but it's easy to fix.

[Ngugi]

It's not that way in vanilla TATW, but Leo's submod changed that and many submods followed suit.

This.
It is argued from lore reasons, but that do not actually hold for scrutiny, I say. Thranduil's halls was a fortress built in the Third Age, and in ingame logic HE can still muster armies so this limitation make little sense to me.

I personally dislike the change and don't think it really makes sense but it's easy to fix.

Yup, adding the Elven factions to the castle wall(s) in export_description_buildings.txt and you should be game

[Goth]

Well done Roma_Victrix, glad you got it working, I have done the above for every mod I play with TATW (Mos, Dac etc), sorry for my errors though as I wasnt at home and didnt have the files to work with.
Thanks for the rep
Goth

[Withwnar]

Be careful of converting cities -> castles and vice versa: if it is a custom settlement then I think you'll break it. e.g. Minas Tirith will turn into one of the Osgiliaths (?) on the battle map. It would change the campaign map model as well, I expect.

EDIT: hmm, probably not one of the Osgiliaths but anyway: some other model.

[Roma_Victrix]

Well done Roma_Victrix, glad you got it working, I have done the above for every mod I play with TATW (Mos, Dac etc), sorry for my errors though as I wasnt at home and didnt have the files to work with.
Thanks for the rep
Goth

Cheers.

Be careful of converting cities -> castles and vice versa: if it is a custom settlement then I think you'll break it. e.g. Minas Tirith will turn into one of the Osgiliaths (?) on the battle map. It would change the campaign map model as well, I expect.

EDIT: hmm, probably not one of the Osgiliaths but anyway: some other model.

Agreed! Someone could easily make that mistake. For that matter, I won't be converting any castle settlements to cities now that I have easily solved the issue of upgrading castles.

[ElvenKind]

It's not that way in vanilla TATW, but Leo's submod changed that and many submods followed suit. I personally dislike the change and don't think it really makes sense but it's easy to fix.

OK, so in vanilla TATW 3.2 Elves are still able to upgrade their castles ? I've never bothered with that cause in all my Elven campaigns when I would capture some fortress/citadel, it would've already been upgraded to the highest possible level ( due to my initial turtling style ). I haven't been able to test this or check ingame due to RL stuff, but soon will. Gotta take Dain's Halls first before those silly Dwarves do.

[doomdude1]

This thread is amazing and I can finally keep my HE war machine rolling.

[riuk881]

i'm playing the DaC submod. will adding egypt and mongols allow the galadhrim to build stone castles?

[Roma_Victrix]

i'm playing the DaC submod. will adding egypt and mongols allow the galadhrim to build stone castles?

I've never played that submod. You definitely need to check first if those are the names factions related to the factions you want to change in the export_descr_buildings.txt file found in the data folder. One way to find this out is to open export_descr_units.txt and try to figure out the names allotted to each faction by inspecting the "ownership" of each unit in the game. For instance, in this extract below from that text file for Leo's alternative patch submod for TATW, we can see that the faction who owns the "Axemen of Lossarnach" is called "Sicily," and since we already know that this unit is exclusively held by Gondor, it becomes obvious that "Sicily" is Gondor.

type Axemen of Lossarnach
dictionary Axemen_of_Lossarnach ; Axemen of Lossarnach
category infantry
class heavy
voice_type Heavy
banner faction main_infantry
banner holy crusade
soldier Varangian_Guard, 60, 0, 1
officer gondor_captain_early_flag
officer gondor_captain_early_flag
mount_effect horse +1, camel +1, elephant -4
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, hardy, can_withdraw, free_upkeep_unit
formation 1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 4, square
stat_health 1, 3
stat_pri 8, 6, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, slashing, axe, 50, 1
stat_pri_attr ap
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, melee_simple, blunt, none, 0, 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 6, 4, 0, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 0, -1, 0, -2
stat_mental 13, normal, trained
stat_charge_dist 15
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 470, 200, 75, 75, 470, 3, 150
armour_ug_levels 1, 2
armour_ug_models lossarnach, lossarnach_ug1
ownership sicily
era 0 sicily
era 1 sicily
era 2 sicily
recruit_priority_offset 5

Check the same text file in your DaC submod and find out which faction represents the Galadhrim. It could very well be the same names, but you shouldn't take chances with something like that. You should know what you're doing before you do it.

[doomdude1]

So, for some reason Hollin Gate seems to be unable to be upgraded, even though the fix successfully allows me to upgrade castles willy-nilly.

[Withwnar]

One way to find this out is to open export_descr_units.txt and try to figure out the names allotted to each faction

expanded.txt has the mappings of game names to internal names.

{SICILY}Gondor

Gondor = sicily.