Editing faction building availabilities

[PrincessRielle]

So, this is my first time modding Total War. I'm trying to use Rusted Pack File Manager to add the Hellenic religious building chain to Cappadocia (who, despite having Hellenic culture, normally only has access to Eastern religious buildings).

I created a building_chain_availabilities DB table, and added an entry for Cappadocia, like so:



However, when I actually enter the game, all factions have no building options at all, buildings show the red "convert this building" warning symbol, and there's nothing available to build at all. I've checked the ID to make sure it doesn't conflict with the base game's entries. I'm also using Nordo's Faction Unlocker to actually play as Cappadocia, if that changes anything.

What am I missing? Would really appreciate any help!

[Jake Armitage]

here is a good guide
https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...-with-tutorial
for what I remember it lacks something like the superchains that were added in the last political patch

[PrincessRielle]

Oh, I was following that exact guide actually. I do believe greek_religious is a building chain (not a superchain), but I skipped adding building_chains, building_chain_availability_sets_ids and building_chain_availability sets as I thought those would already be handled in the vanilla game's database.

Here's what my packfile looks like, by the way, since it seems it didn't get added into my original post:



Do I need to include the other three tables in my mod? Or am I missing something else?

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

You should give your building_chain_table a different name like this:

eg. @mib_desert_temples_building_chain_availabilities

If you use the vanilla table name your table will override the vanilla table with just one entry!

Thats probably the reason why no faction has buildings.

[Athanasios55]

@PrincessRielle

Warning This is not going to work...

First of all Cappadocia has Hellenic "religion" and not culture. You should check the table faction_tables to check the subculture (sc_rom_eastern which is a branch of the Eastern culture). The religion is in start_pos_factions (you will need the Assembly Kit for this). The culture of Cappadocia is Eastern.

Also when adding a faction in the faction column of chain availabilities, then the faction will only be able to build the specific chains you added and not the ones provided by the culture. So with your current table configuration Cappadocia will only be able to build greek_religious chains and nothing else. Of course even that is not going to happen since the culture column is wrong. So you should add multiple entries for all the rest chains and link them to Cappadocia.

I will be happy to help with more details, let us know what exactly you are planning. Personally I would just change the religion of Cappadocia to eastern and maybe add some unique eastern and hellenic "syncretism" building branch of the eastern religious chain, via the culture variants table and with a very high priority in cai building constructions, all that specifically for Cappadocia.

Good job with the concept though and welcome to the club


PS: Cappadocia's bugs may also be caused by Nordo's mod. In vanilla I am pretty sure they construct buildings

[PrincessRielle]

Thanks for the warm welcome! I did consider changing Cappadocia to Eastern religion, but I wanted to reflect the fact that Cappadocia at the time was already quite Hellenized.

So, if I want to give Cappadocia the ability to build Greek religious buildings, I do have to include the availability entries for the other buildings, yes? What about the other factions? Would I also have to rename the table as MIB suggested, or would that cause more issues?

[Athanasios55]

There are two kinds of table usage:

1)When you add a table in your mod with its name intact then it will completely override the vanilla table. So only the info/entries in your table will be loaded. That's a bit "dangerous" because you may accidentally delete an important entry but it's a quick way to remove stuff.

2)If you rename the table (then it becomes "fragmented") you safely include only your custom entries, so both the vanilla and your table info will load. Of course your changes load first and replace the entries you want. This method is also the best for mod compatibility. Btw in tables with IDs you should make sure to create new IDs for your new entries, otherwise entries in your table will replace entries of the vanilla table with the same ID.

And no worries about other factions. Only Cappadocia should get the special treatment Just make sure to follow Morticia's suggestion if you want a clean table with only your information inside and not the whole vanilla table.

So, to give greek religious buildings to Cappadocia the table should look something like this:



You can even give them other greek buildings, you can do anything you want. Just make sure to not forget any important building like settlement buildings. The "culture" column can be empty as long as you have filled the "faction" column, but if you decide to fill the culture column or the subculture one, make sure that the value is correct. If Cappadocia is Eastern in your mod and you add Hellenistic in the culture column then it won't work.

You can also give them a few basic hellenistic units or just enrich their roster with with persian hoplites. The table "units_to_exclusive_faction_permissions" is perfect for adding one or two units without changing the whole military group (roster) of the faction, if the roster is shared with other factions. In this case the roster is not shared, you can add units to the "cappadocia" military group in the table "units_to_groupings_military_permissions"

[PrincessRielle]

Thanks again! I do intend to add units and stuff eventually, but that'll be after I figure out the buildings...

So I created a new table, like this:



Did some testing in game, and other factions got their buildings back, but not Cappadocia (can't even build the greek temple that I tried to add, lol). So I tried adding in a few of the Eastern buildings that Cappadocia normally gets, and I could build those, but still couldn't build the Hellenistic religious building.

Any idea why that's happening? Might it be because of technology?

[Athanasios55]

Oh yes, there is one more thing...

You need to go to the table building_culture_variants and make an entry for the greek religious buildings connecting them to Cappadocia. Here is an example for the level 1 temple:



This table gives permission to cultures/factions for every individual building level. For example this is how some factions get their unique level 5 building and others don't while both have the same chain availability. In this case it's a bit different because we are dealing with different cultures and most times different culture buildings are always disabled, but it's easy to do. So with both building chain availabilities and building culture variants you will get the greek temples.

[Athanasios55]

If you do this via PFM you need to spend a lot of time creating the localisation...

Anyway I did it for you to save time. You can edit/modify or just use this in your mod, it's already fragmented. The text table is important otherwise the temples will not have a name

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=2364904622

If you don't have Steam I will upload it somewhere else

[PrincessRielle]

Ahhh, thanks so much >_<

For future reference, how did you do it? Since you said it would take a lot of time with PFM, I assume you used the assembly kit?

[Athanasios55]

Yes the Assembly Kit. And then used PFM to fragment the tables and remove the unecessary entries.

[PrincessRielle]

thank you again!