Making any faction playable

[Rewinged]

NEW WAYI made this quick video to show how to fix a bug with BoB not building startps files, using Miguel's techniques for Attila. I also go from making a minor nation playable just as an example. Sorry for the cruddy audio and lack of script. Don't have a lot of time these days so had to do it quickly. If there's any demand I'll make a separate video showing just making factions playable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI1q...ature=youtu.be

‹OLD WAY - No longer required to edit script
A huge thanks to Samio who discovered this!

Samio stumbled across something very interested today. If you comment out or delete lines 672 to 751 (the SAVING / LOADING section) in lib_misc_campaign.lua, custom factions seem to work just fine!
Strangely enough, saving and loading seems to work fine too.

The standard faction unlocking procedure is still the same, so you'll need to create the political parties, and change some faction values from false to true. I don't have much time at the moment so I can't expand but tutorials from previous games show you what you need to edit.

There are still limitations such as no cultural features but the only crash I've had is clicking the 'assign provincial governers' pop-up. Assigning governers and estates manually works fine though.

another possible limitation I've come across is a limit in the number you can unlock at once. I can't say for certain as I may have made a mistake but after unlocking all Welsh factions I moved onto vikings, but only half of them appear in the campaign menu. More testing is definitely required.

I've attached below a pack file with all Welsh factions unlocked and some Viking factions. Be sure to thank Samio if you end up making the next 'all factions playable' mod!

[Samio]

You're very welcome, Rewinged. It was purely a fluke with the discovery though I'm sure

[mati_motorloco]

my game crashes when I load this mod

[jupsto]

edit:

Ok so I'm used to db editing with PFM but to do this I need something else to edit the startpos.esf file I suppose.

[Rewinged]

No you can edit the startpos.esf in PFM just fine. You could also look at using ESF editor which has some extra functionality. This whole method will be changing very soon though, the latest beta 2 notes just released from CA state that the assembly kit is now up (looks like it still isn't updated but should be soon)


EDIT: Assembly Kit modding tools were released a few hours ago but I've been unable to get most the tools working, constant crashes and errors unfortunately...

[Rewinged]

Anyone been able to get a startpos built in BoB for ToB? I'm not getting any warnings or failures, it just seems to sit on 'in progress' indefinitely once the game has launched. I've tried all the old tricks but no luck so far. Closest I've come was changing just the starting money of a faction and building the esf only. It built successfully but after testing it the change wasn't apparent in-game.

[Clee23]

Anyone been able to get a startpos built in BoB for ToB? I'm not getting any warnings or failures, it just seems to sit on 'in progress' indefinitely once the game has launched. I've tried all the old tricks but no luck so far. Closest I've come was changing just the starting money of a faction and building the esf only. It built successfully but after testing it the change wasn't apparent in-game.

Yes. Used same method as in attila. Guide somewhere on the attila forums. I also tried switching northymbre with the hidden jorvik faction, but im getting a really wierd ui bar in the top of the screen. Anyone has any idea why that is? help would be much appreciated!

[Rewinged]

Still doesn't work at all for me. There's 3 guides for doing it in Attila all with slight variations. The one that worked for me in Attila was the first one I tried in ToB. I've now tried all different variations of fixes as well as my own fixes but nothing, it just refuses to build or do anything. Guess I'll have to drop my planned mod unfortunately...

[Rewinged]

Okay managed to get it working using Miguel's technique for Attila. I had tried it before but think I was messing up along the way somehow. Made this video for some others over at the steam workshop discussion, sorry for the audio and lack of script at times. Hopefully it helps regardless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI1q...ature=youtu.be

[Archangel565]

You've gotten far closer than I have in making these other factions playable. I have been trying to get a playable Normaunds mod to work and asked for help over on /r/totalwar. I managed recruitment and building, gave them a starting location and enabled all technology nodes. But the government panel crashes me every time.

For fixing the UI this is the response I got - I'm still new to this and couldn't figure out how to implement it:
from SBFms via /r/totalwar sent 5 days ago
Victory objectives tends to be a text file that gets processed into startpos.

As for the UI; it's likely due to the missing panel piece for the culture specific mechanic. Maybe trying to use script to force this piece invisible might work, but it could just also not be fixable. You could also maybe just forcibly move the pieces around via script.

Specifically I think something like

find_uicomponent(cm:ui_root(), "thepathtothatelement"):SetVisible(false)
might solve how the middle bar is massive; it's worked for broken UI in WH2 before.

Family stuff I'm not sure. Have you made sure they have offices properly assigned to them in the tables?

[Rewinged]

Thanks, I just saw your post on the youtube video. I'll definitely check out your fix and post back here if I can get it working. I'll just need to find what the element is actually called and what the path is, as well as figure out where exactly would be best to call the script from.

EDIT: Been testing and trying stuff out for hours but nothing has worked yet. I tried the way mentioned above of hiding UI elements and found the correct element name (think it was "culture_mechanics"). After noticing CA had commented out some code using the same code as above and replaced it with a new way using a hide ui function I tried that too, but nothing. Seems to me at this point that it's a bug. I've spent at least 30 hours all up trying everything I can think of but nothing works. Think I'll be taking a break from it for the time and hope that someone else may find a solution or perhaps it'll get fixed in a future patch.

[dgibbs]

Is building a startpos with BOB now broken? When I start the process in BOB the game launcher starts as normal (I have to click "Play" which just starts the game as normal). Is that normal?

[dgibbs]

My issue was not having the AK installed in the same location as the game. Now everytime I receive;

Startpos file not found after running the game! Failed to restore original game startpos file! The original file is: C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Total War Saga Thrones of Britannia/assembly_kit/binaries/../../data/campaigns/vik_attila/startpos_backup.esf

[djangooo]

Hey guys,
is it possible to make the normans playable as invasion fleet?

[Bedros]

Hi, could you upload directly files edited to unlock factions please?

[edgarroberto]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngjqd2VU5E

Maybe this can be useful...

[CPT Worsham]

You're very welcome, Rewinged. It was purely a fluke with the discovery though I'm sure

Much appreciated Samio