Noob question: How to determine the culture of a settlement at game start?

[es157]

I know the answer is supposed to be obvious. You just go to descr_strat and change the faction_creator to one that has the culture you want the settlement to have. However, I'm having trouble doing that to a particular settlement.

The settlement in question is Volantis, from a submod I'm making based on the Fire and Blood mod. The original faction_creator is turks, which has the culture greek. However, in my submod I have to change the culture of turks to middle-eastern, which resulted in Volantis no longer having its customised strat model that it had before. I want the model back but I don't want turks to have greek culture. So what I did instead was set the faction_creator of Volantis to timurids, which is a faction that has its culture set to greek in my mod. But I found to my frustration that Volantis still does not have the appearence of the custom model after I do this. The only way to give it the custom model is making turks the faction_creator and setting the turks culture to greek.

My question is, why is that happening? Shouldn't any faction with greek culture work to get the strat model back? I'm really confused.

[Gigantus]

While I think it's not required, delete map.rwm to rule out any issues there. I am also assuming that you checked by starting a new campaign, otherwise your approach is correct - you may however need to trace from the settlement entry in descr_cultures of the other culture (ME) if it does indeed have a custom model for that settlement level. While that will very likely be the case (timurids having the same culture as turks previously), you may also need to check if there is a \data\models_strat\residences\faction_variants\[faction_name] directory - any elements in there will override the faction's default elements. Like if timurids have such a directory. On the other hand you could create a turks directory there and copy the relevant greek models (and their textures in a sub directory) over. Be aware that this will be applied globally, not just for that one settlement.

[es157]

While I think it's not required, delete map.rwm to rule out any issues there. I am also assuming that you checked by starting a new campaign, otherwise your approach is correct - you may however need to trace from the settlement entry in descr_cultures of the other culture (ME) if it does indeed have a custom model for that settlement level. While that will very likely be the case (timurids having the same culture as turks previously), you may also need to check if there is a \data\models_strat\residences\faction_variants\[faction_name] directory - any elements in there will override the faction's default elements. Like if timurids have such a directory. On the other hand you could create a turks directory there and copy the relevant greek models (and their textures in a sub directory) over. Be aware that this will be applied globally, not just for that one settlement.

Thanks, Gigantus. I don't know a whole lot about custom settlements so I'll need to do a bit of experimentation. If I fail, I'll get back here to post the results.

Update: Going to models_strat\residences\faction_variants I found a couple of interesting things. There is a folder called timurids, but it contains a semi-comma before the faction name. Does that make the folder completely useless? Also, when I open the turks folder, there is a file inside that is called "southern_european_huge_city - Volantis" even though turks never had southern_european culture, neither in the original mod nor in mine. Does that file still serve a purpose? Where do I check whether it is being used?

[Gigantus]

For the faction variant folders to work they need to a) have the exact faction name and b) the models used must have the exact same name as in descr_cultures.txt for the current culture of the faction.

Which means both of what you describe (semi colon and addendum to file name) will prevent their use, eg default models will be used. I can only assume the mod devs were experimenting with various settings\models.
Adjusting folder name and model name should enable you to use the model in that directory.

[es157]

I've added a folder called timurids inside the faction_variants folder, then copied and pasted into it the files from the turks folder. It still didn't work.

Geez, what could I be doing wrong this time? I made sure to change the files names according to the new culture.

Update: It works if I keep the files names as they were in the turks folder. That is, with an oddly placed "southern_european" prefix. I won't complain since it works, but I wonder why it stops working if I change the prefix to the right culture.

[Gigantus]

Have you checked in descr_cultures in the timurid's culture section what the name of the CAS model is that is used for that settlement level? Odds are it has that southern_european prefix.

[es157]

Have you checked in descr_cultures in the timurid's culture section what the name of the CAS model is that is used for that settlement level? Odds are it has that southern_european prefix.

I have. I can swear that the prefix there is middle_eastern (not greek either).

This game keeps surprising me.