technology_unit_upgrades, recruitment through building_units_allowed trial and error

[Faridus]

Hey everyone,

I've been tinkering with TWA tables for a few days now (which I tend to do with every TW installment, I just can't play vanilla and I always try to make changes that suit my gameplay!).
Anyway, I've been working on unit recruitment and been having some serious issues making any headway. I've been experimenting with AOR recruitment (thanks to the AOR modpack from Swiss Halberdier, Ahiga and GrudgeNL). Before getting there, I was just trying to make changes to recruitment through buildings. It turned out it was not as simple as it has been (RTW2, ETW, MTW2) in the past. With the tech upgrade system the units are tied in, it's been pretty challenging.

This is what I have tried so far: worked on technology_unit_upgrades, removedall the entries for Roman units.
results: big mess in settlement garrisons. Instead of the few Limitanei Borderguards, Cohors, Sagittarii, Scout Equites (5-6 units at the beginning of the game), I ended up with 20 or more units, from Limitanei, Comitatensis Spears to Cornuti Seniores, including different melee units (2-3 of each!). I went to building_level_armed_citizenry_junctions and removed all entries except for one Limitanei Borderguards. I ended up with 1 Limitanei, 1 Comitatensis Spears, 1 Western Auxilia and 1 Cornuti Seniores. This looks like the way they were supposed to be upgraded from Limitanei to Cornuti.

The way to fix this is to go to: armed_citizenry_units_to_unit_groups_junctions. I removed the entries that looked like unit upgrades: rom_cohors to rom_legio, rom_limitanei to rom_comitatensis_spears...etc.
Caution: double check with building_level_armed_citizenry_junctions before you launch your game. Any unit in it should also be present in armed_citizenry_units_to_unit_groups_junctions.

As far as unit recruitment through buildings, it worked fine. I was able to assign any unit to any building for recruitment.

Now I'm working on AOR recruitment, been having some issues with the region_unit_resources_tables. I just asked Swiss for some more guidance.

If anyone knows anything about recruitment in TWA that might help me, please share your tips/tricks with me...it will save dozens of little changes, then start the game, see if it works, sometimes it crashes and you have to do a PC hard reboot...just tedious.

By the way, which table do I need for in game unit names?

Thank you

[Swiss Halberdier]

I suggest to take a look at the Radious Total War Mod how we handled these issues.

The easiest but most time consuming way is to add all vanilla or custom units to proper own building requirements. That they aren't just related to the vanilla upgrade system. As several Tier 1/2 units can't be recruited anymore if the campaign is too advanced. As these T1/T2 vanilla units don't have any higher buildings assigned. You'll find also some other tables reworked which you mentioned.

I guess you play in English and you'll find the English database text tables here:

data.pack > text/db/*.loc

Only the English texts show up in game by default if you put a *.loc table into your own mod. All other languages need the UPC project which I do since Empire.

[Faridus]

Once Western Roman units were removed from the Tech tree, I was going to assign the units to building, so I only get recruitment through buildings in different AOR.
The main issue with this is that some Western Roman units are shared with the Eastern Roman Empire in the tech tree. It will therefore unbalance the Eastern Roman faction.
I was thinking about linking their units to their buildings and see what happens!

As far as Radious TW Mod, I just took a quick look...it is quite impressive!
All those new units are amazing, great detail and feel very authentic.
I will definitely give it a try as soon as I'm done with my amateurish modding. I did have some experience in RTW, when modding was done with Notepad and there were not nearly as many tables as there are in RTW2 or TWA.

Anyway, I appreciate your help and especially your patience.

Best regards,
Faridus.

[Swiss Halberdier]

Yes it's possible to assign the shared WRE/ERE units to both WRE/ERE buildings. You could check the *buildings_units_allowed tables in the Radious Total Units Mod. I created together with DramaBelli these custom Roman units.

[Faridus]

By the way Swiss,
Do you know if there is a code you add to the game shortcut that allows it to give you why your game crashes?
In RTW, when you right click the game shortcut, then input some code at the end of the line. So whenever, the game crashed, an info box opened and gives you some info about the crash.

[Swiss Halberdier]

By the way Swiss,
Do you know if there is a code you add to the game shortcut that allows it to give you why your game crashes?
In RTW, when you right click the game shortcut, then input some code at the end of the line. So whenever, the game crashed, an info box opened and gives you some info about the crash.

The game creates in this folder below "Attila Crash Dump files". But I don't know with which tool they can be openend. On the official CA forums it is written that if an user uploads a bug/crash post, then he should upload this file too.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\total war attila

[Faridus]

oh yeah, I saw the crash dumps...couldn't figure out how to open them. Plus, I don't think CA will provide any help for modded games anyway.
What I was looking for is something you add to the shortcut's target:

"G:\Steam\SteamApps\common\Total War Attila\Attila.exe" -xxxxxxxxxx

something instead of the xxxxxxx, I used it when I worked on RTW mods.

Edit: Found it, it's -show_err

I'll see if it works on TWA.

Edit 2: didn't work!