A Guide for Missions

**Jadli** · April 04, 2020, 07:46 AM

Steam, thanks a lot!

The other unpackers works relatively fine, just this one...

**Gigantus** · April 04, 2020, 07:49 AM

Corrupt mod pack file - remove and do a file verification.

**Jadli** · April 04, 2020, 01:04 PM

It will still not work... and I realized I ask for wrong txt file. Could you actually send me missions.txt? Apologies... Thanks a lot

**Gigantus** · April 04, 2020, 10:46 PM

See the template of mine in the other thread as well - it contains the related text entries for that mission.

jadli2.zip

**Jadli** · April 05, 2020, 01:34 AM

This one thanks you...

**leo.civil.uefs** · October 22, 2020, 11:04 PM

Is it possible to have:

The game triggering assassinate missions even if the player has no assassin in strat map?

The game triggering blockade port missions even if the player has no ship in strat map?

In case the answer is no, can we force this to happen by triggering these missions via campaign_script?

EDIT: I tried for assassination and the answer is no. I've the assassination missions to happen frequently. They trigger as long as there is one assassin of my faction in stratmap. When he is not there, no assassination mission is triggered.

I suppose the same goes to blockade port missions and ships.

**Gigantus** · October 23, 2020, 12:55 AM

That actually makes sense, just imagine a land locked faction having to do a blockade mission.

**leo.civil.uefs** · October 23, 2020, 02:02 PM

Originally Posted by Gigantus

That actually makes sense, just imagine a land locked faction having to do a blockade mission.

Nope.

Armies can block ports too. Just walk with one army over a port and you'll see.

**Gigantus** · October 24, 2020, 09:40 PM

yes, of course

**Jadli** · November 27, 2020, 11:29 AM

Does anyone know, what exactly is the "guild_score_modifier" doing? (its used within the hashashin guild missions for example) Is it somehow connected, to how many guild points you have?

BTW to have any missions of assassinate_general type, you must have an assassin, eventhough you its "killed_by_any_means"

Spent some time today figuring out why dont I get such missions...

**Jadli** · November 28, 2020, 04:43 AM

Alright, I did a significant bunch of testing, and came upon some conclusions regarding guild_score_modifer and how are missions assigned in general from a kind of different angle than Dark Knight did.

As he said, what missions you get is firstly evaluated within the the group of missions of the same type (such as COUNCIL_MISSION or MERCHANT_GUILD_MISSION I guess), and the one with the highest score is the one you are more likely to get. He didnt fully touch what decides which type of mission you are more likely to get. The type of missions seems to be fully equal to each other, assuming all score_modifers are equal (but it also seems significantly influenced by the amount of missions you have within each type - the more missions the type has, the more likely it is you get a mission of that type), though not entirely sure on that. While that equality may be also disrupted by increasing/decreasing score_modifer (which multiplies the score) it seems. But as Dark Knight said, its based on probabilities (which is good), you can get the ones with lower score as well, but with lower probability...

I however tested two guild against each other (and their missions had similar scores), so also two types against each other, and when you have just one guild building of each, it seems to be 50-50 that you receive a mission from either. When I increased number of guild buildings of one of the guilds, than mission were being received from the guild with more guild buildings way more often (the rank of the guild might also influence it). It seems to simply be 2x times more if you have two more times of the guild buildings...

I was hoping guild_score_modifier had something to do with guild points, as I wanted to connect some leveled missions to the rank of the guild you have, which is impossible it seems (unless you sccript it) , thus I wanted to connect it at least to the amount of guild points, as thats kinda connected to the guild rank. The purpose of this modifier definitely is, that it increases score of a guild mission towards other guild missions of the same type, and it definitely doesnt increase its score towards missions of other type. So I suppose its purpose is to make certain missions within a guild more likely than others. That probably also makes sense with the only case it was used in vanilla for hashashin missions. The hashashin guild has 4 missions, 3 of them (assassinate_general type) has it, while the other one (guild_recruit_agent) doesnt have it, so I assume they simply wanted to make assassinate_general type more likely to be given. (btw, seems that guild_score_modifer works only with assassinate_general, doesnt work with other guild missions, the games crashes). Though, Im pretty sure the guild_score_modifer doesnt multiply the whole score, it just adds to it. As only for very high differences (like 100 vs 10), I was being given the "100" one almost all the time, for 10 vs 1 it was hard to make a solid statistic out of it...
And also, it seems you can get a guild mission even if you have zero/negative guild points, so guild points dont seem to affect the missions at all (except the rewards/penalties ofc).

Anyway, was also testing other stuff, like paybacks... As you guys said on the first page, "best_exotic_unit" definitely gives you a unit, that is availible to you via EDU, but you are not able to recruit it yet. Its actually pretty useful, especially if you imagine mods like TATW when you have to spend real lot of time upgrading your settlement to be able to get elite units, so this way you could easily give access to such units time from time, as a unique reward...

Also, assassination chance is being explained in the OP, but not sure if it makes it clear what exactly it does, as I thought it means something different. Its meant to be used as a penalty (from assassins guild for example) and it kills your generals to punish you for failing a missions. If you write to a payback "assassination_chance 0.5" for example, half of your generals die

(or to be precise, for each of them there is a 50% that they die, obviously).
And I was trying to get "income" payback (the one Dark knight says its supposed to multiply your income next turn) working, but didnt manage to do so, always got a crash... Has anybody got it working? (I tried writting "income 2.0", "income 1 2.0", etc...). I also looked it up in the .exe, its there, so it should work somehow... The strat.txt says this

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

And as I said in the other thread, "guild_take_settlement" surprisingly works with both, trade resources and hidden resources. You dont receive it if the settlement is held by allied/neutral faction, and you receive it, if its held by rebels/enemies. And also seems you must be bordering a settlement with the resource. (and if you are giving it via script, you must have its guild buildings, otherwise it crashes). So this mission is pretty useful and kind of smart, you could use it to replace (or add to) the usual council missions, if you want to to limit it only to the ownerships of guild. Of course, assuming you use a resource that is in every/most of regions. The best is prob to make to a hidden resource that would be in all regions specifically for this. The mission is still not perfect, as you cant target specific factions/religions tho...

EDIT

And btw, do you think the difference between paybacks "money" and "guild_money" that gives you the usual money reward for completing missions is purely a cosmetic thing, so the reward would be saying that "The Thielfs Guild will give you money" instead the usual "You will receive 2500 for completing the mission". Or does it perhaps suggest, that the guild has some finances of their own?

**Jadli** · November 28, 2020, 08:58 AM

BTW, I suposse this thread should include all mission types, so I will post the remaining ones (the guide doesnt seem to include kingdoms stuff in general)

There is the adventurous crusader from teutonic dlc. A very interesting one

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

You need to connect this to a script that spawns you a crusader with a label (tho, you ofc dont have to spawn him, could be a starting general with a label, etc). The second mission is not a new type, its the usual assassinate_general type, but this variation can be given only via script (hence, it has "event_mission". There is also one other possiblity, which I mention further below) and is given to the opposing faction, tasking it to kill the crusader. The lines in teutonic CS are this (the whole script is longer, prob look it up if you are interested)

"create_mission adventure_crusader crusading_faction_name crusaderlabel"
"create_mission kill_crusader target_faction_name crusaderlabel"

As rafmc mentioned, teutonic also has "teututonic_capture_convert" and "teutonic_convert", but those are just a a variation of "council_take_settlement" and "convert" (papal mission) subtype. Though they include some new parameters, which may have not been used in vanilla. Such as that "teututonic_capture_convert" has target_faction and target_religion and "link_mission_id teutonic_convert". The last one serves as a trigger for the later mission. So once you take the settlement, you will consequently receive the convert mission. teutonic_convert is event mission again, so the you cant just randomly receive it. You can receive it only via succesfuly passing the first mission.

Then there is also an interesting mission in britania DLC, when Baron's alliance tasks you take a settlement from Egland and give it to Barons alliance subsequently (you get some money as a reward). The mission entry is below

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

This one is pretty interesting as well. I assume it can work for any couple of factions, not just shadow factions. I assuem this one would be useful to have in every mod for some factions that hate each other. The first is again just subtype of council_take_settlement. But with significantly expanded paramatres, such as "source_faction". Tho, not sure what exactly does "only_dead_source_factions" mean, and why is the requirement for relations with source_faction required to -1.0.
The other mission is the one that is truly a new type, and it is indeed very different. I believe what it does (havent played the DLC for a long time) is that immediately once you take the settlement, this mission happen, but it probably doesnt even show up to you, and it just gives the settlement you took to Barons Alliance.

All the other missions in the DLCs are just a variation of the known types I believe, some of them with expanded parametres as shown above (and for example also the hashashin guild via what I talked about in the previous post). Though, the number of new variations is not small, so definitely worth checking out...

**Callistonian** · November 28, 2020, 11:27 AM

@Jadli - Thanks for posting your findings. This is very interesting stuff.

Originally Posted by Jadli

BTW to have any missions of assassinate_general type, you must have an assassin...

You can create the assassinate_general mission in campaign_script without the faction having any assassins or even any availability to train assassins. Are you saying that this mission type will only be given randomly (using descr_missions and not campaign_script) if you have an assassin agent on the map belonging to the faction?

Originally Posted by Jadli

If you write to a payback "assassination_chance 0.5" for example, half of your generals die

(or to be precise, for each of them there is a 50% that they die, obviously).

This is pretty interesting. Does it give the player a message for each general that gets assassinated? If you have ~20 generals and you trigger a payback with 50% assassination chance for all of them, do you get ~10 messages saying that the generals were assassinated or something?

What exactly does the adventure_crusader mission type do? From the parameters I'm guessing it's asking you to send a specific general to capture a region from a particular faction that has a particular religion. If so, how would this be different than council_take_settlement? The last part of your last post indicates that it's possible to use target_faction (and presumably target_religion) with a regular ol' council_take_settlement mission. This is a significant discovery in its own right.

These missions from the Britannia DLC are very interesting indeed. The expanded parameters for council_take_settlement nearly make it possible to do what you were trying to do in the other thread - create a mission targeting a particular settlement. I wonder, have you tried creating the mission in campaign_script and simply specifying the target settlement similarly to an assassinate_general mission? The assassinate_general mission would look like this in CS:

Code:

create_mission mission_name faction_name target_name_or_label

And so for settlements it could be something like:

Code:

create_mission mission_name faction_name target_settlement_name

Edit: I just tested this and it doesn't work. The campaign_script seems to be ignoring the target_settlement_name part and creating the mission with a random target.

The give_settlement mission type seems to open the door for not only a simplified region-transfer script but also a way to force horde factions to settle. This is very promising especially if it works the way you described.

Where is this part coming from?

Code:

chance of ai accepting = 20 + (faction_standing_to_sent_faction * 80) + (global_standing_of_sent_faction * 20) + (num_settlements_owned * 1.1)

Is that actual code or is it a comment? If it's a comment, what is it referring to? I don't see any of those numbers in either of the Britannia missions you posted, but this snippet implies very strongly that it's possible to set how likely the AI is to accept a mission. It we could set it to 100% then we could force the AI to accept missions which opens up tons of doors for scripting.

**Callistonian** · November 28, 2020, 12:46 PM

I can't get the target_faction parameter to work with the council_take_settlement mission type. When I try to create the mission in CS the log says it couldn't create the mission. Same result for the only_dead_source_factions parameter, although I was testing with a source faction that's very much alive, so that could be the issue there.

I also get a crash when taking the settlement and using the linked mission type give_settlement with unspecified error in the log.

I tried using BARONS_ALLIANCE as the source but, as expected, this makes no difference.

**Jadli** · November 28, 2020, 01:36 PM

Originally Posted by Callistonian

You can create the assassinate_general mission in campaign_script without the faction having any assassins or even any availability to train assassins. Are you saying that this mission type will only be given randomly (using descr_missions and not campaign_script) if you have an assassin agent on the map belonging to the faction?

Yes, of course, its not supposed to work via script primarily (tho it can)

. Heh, "random", I see what you did there

Originally Posted by Callistonian

This is pretty interesting. Does it give the player a message for each general that gets assassinated? If you have ~20 generals and you trigger a payback with 50% assassination chance for all of them, do you get ~10 messages saying that the generals were assassinated or something?

I believe it didnt, though I got message for both, a new leader and heir...

. If it doesnt do a message, one could easily by made via script.

Originally Posted by Callistonian

What exactly does the adventure_crusader mission type do? From the parameters I'm guessing it's asking you to send a specific general to capture a region from a particular faction that has a particular religion. If so, how would this be different than council_take_settlement? The last part of your last post indicates that it's possible to use target_faction (and presumably target_religion) with a regular ol' council_take_settlement mission. This is a significant discovery in its own right.

Not like council_take_settlement at all. It literally just wants to kill as many as you can. The money amounts in the parameters give you money depending if you win or loose battles (500 for ground battle, 1000 for a siege, etc). When one is not sure, its always best to look the decriptions in the missions.txt

Its not a discovery, it has been used in teutonic, and perhaps other DLCs as well. I just wanted to remind ppl it exists

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Originally Posted by Callistonian

These missions from the Britannia DLC are very interesting indeed. The expanded parameters for council_take_settlement nearly make it possible to do what you were trying to do in the other thread - create a mission targeting a particular settlement. I wonder, have you tried creating the mission in campaign_script and simply specifying the target settlement similarly to an assassinate_general mission? The assassinate_general mission would look like this in CS:

Code:

create_mission mission_name faction_name target_name_or_label

And so for settlements it could be something like:

Code:

create_mission mission_name faction_name target_settlement_name

Edit: I just tested this and it doesn't work. The campaign_script seems to be ignoring the target_settlement_name part and creating the mission with a random target.

The give_settlement mission type seems to open the door for not only a simplified region-transfer script but also a way to force horde factions to settle. This is very promising especially if it works the way you described.

You got the assassinate_general type command line right. For council_take_settlement, council_take_rebel_settlement and guild_take_settlement I believe you cant specify a settlement. The game pics the target itselfs, based on parameters

Originally Posted by Callistonian

Where is this part coming from?

Code:

chance of ai accepting = 20 + (faction_standing_to_sent_faction * 80) + (global_standing_of_sent_faction * 20) + (num_settlements_owned * 1.1)

Is that actual code or is it a comment? If it's a comment, what is it referring to? I don't see any of those numbers in either of the Britannia missions you posted, but this snippet implies very strongly that it's possible to set how likely the AI is to accept a mission. It we could set it to 100% then we could force the AI to accept missions which opens up tons of doors for scripting.

Its a comment from devs, they leave a lot of them around

Originally Posted by Callistonian

I can't get the target_faction parameter to work with the council_take_settlement mission type. When I try to create the mission in CS the log says it couldn't create the mission. Same result for the only_dead_source_factions parameter, although I was testing with a source faction that's very much alive, so that could be the issue there.

I also get a crash when taking the settlement and using the linked mission type give_settlement with unspecified error in the log.

I tried using BARONS_ALLIANCE as the source but, as expected, this makes no difference.

Well, its not that simple. Lot of stuff is hardcoded, so some lines must be present etc. Also the paybacks must be correct, text entries in missions.txt.

Its best to take the working entries from kingdoms and go from there.

My council_take_settlement variation (+convert)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

And more regular example

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

For barons alliance missions, have you tried with shadow factions? Its possible it works only for them.

As I said, I dont remember exactly how it worked in the dlc, as I played it a long time ago, but Im pretty sure Barons alliance is alive when tasking their allies with this. The only dead_source_faction is BS I think. Not exactly sure what its meant to be doing, but it definitely cant require the source faction to be dead (perhaps it actually requires the opposite)... I suppose the devs just gave the paramater a wrong name

And do you have correct txt entires? If you created a new subtype of the mission, you need to create new txt lines for the subtypes name. If you kept BARONS_ALLIANCE as the source, did you also make an entry for the source in the missions.txt? Im pretty sure mission type (this thing) you can actually always change to anything, assmuning you have the entries

**Jadli** · November 28, 2020, 04:11 PM

I have just tested the barons alliance mission in my mod (with different factions) and it works with no problem

Its actually the most advanced of them all. When you take the target settlement, you get a yes/no choice if you want to give up the settlement you took to the source faction

Also, Im pretty sure you cant use this give_settlement mission type anything else, than being a linked mission to the previous one (when barons ask you to take it), as it doesnt have almost any visible parameters, while it doest a lot things. It somehow knows what settlement was taken through the previous mission, somehow it does the yes/no. It doesnt say thats its event_mission (so you dont get it randomly) eventhough it apparently is, etc

Well, I mean, you can use it for lot of interesting things, but only of a similar character (a faction A taking you to take a settlement from B and then having an option to hand it over)

Going back to your intention, only mission type through which you can target a specific settlement is guide_take_settlement, if you use a hidden resource or trade_resource, which is only in one region. However, the region must be bordering you, and if its not it and you are giving it via script, it may cause a crash, so not safe to script it, unless you make a condition that you own one of the neighboring settlements

. By the way, this mission was variant was used in crusaders DLC, when the knight orders may task you to retae Jerusale, Antinoch, etc

Though, actually, there is return papal_settlement (thats in vanilla, you can check it out), which has a settlement name parameter, so perhaps we can get it to work as something usefull... Though it had a big scary note that its "NOT SUITABLE FOR VARIANTS"

Honestly, the most interesting ones are actually the papal ones, but it seems you need a papal faction for them

**Callistonian** · November 28, 2020, 04:26 PM

Originally Posted by Jadli

Its not a discovery, it has been used in teutonic, and perhaps other DLCs as well. I just wanted to remind ppl it exists

I've never seen these mission types and parameters before. They're not even listed in this guide (possibly because this guide was published 8 months before the Americas expansion was even released). So I'm counting them as discoveries in my book.

I like how you're just casually throwing in a 'factions' parameter which is also completely new to me and only seems to work for council_take_settlement missions. What we really need is a comprehensive list of which parameters can be used with which mission types as well as how to create these missions in campaign_script.

Originally Posted by Jadli

For council_take_settlement, council_take_rebel_settlement and guild_take_settlement I believe you cant specify a settlement. The game pics the target itselfs, based on parameters

Yes, but if you can specify a target faction and target religion then it's the next best thing. The problem is that I cannot get a council_take_settlement mission to be created with either of these parameters (target_faction, target_religion). Perhaps you're right - it only works if the target is a shadow faction.

I should have checked before asking, that comment about ai_accept_base_chance is in my own descr_missions file. But it does refer to an actual parameter being used by return_papal_settlement. Can this parameter be used by any other mission types? If so, it seems we have a clear path to a region transfer script by setting this to 100 for a give_settlement mission (although I also haven't been able to get give_settlement missions to fire either).

Edit: just read your reply. If the give_settlement mission is a yes/no event, then maybe it won't work for the AI.

**Jadli** · November 28, 2020, 04:35 PM

The Three ones I listed council_take_settlement, council_take_rebel_settlement and guild_take_settlement definitely dont need a shadow faction, they work for any types of factions, and are also one of the most variable, as they have many variants. Just use the ones I shown, it must work. If it doesnt, it must be the other issues I mentioned.... creating correct txt entries, etc (talking about council_take_settlement now, it wouldnt work with the other two). I meant that shadow thingy is required for give_settlement

Yea, council_take_settlement is the best one, as with the faction parameters you can make lot of interesting faction missions.

The most perfect would be, if guild_take_settlement and council_take_settlement could be combined. As in council_take_settlement you can target factions/religions, while in guild_take you can target settlements/regions and also make it availible only via guild

**Jadli** · November 28, 2020, 04:46 PM

Originally Posted by Callistonian

I should have checked before asking, that comment about ai_accept_base_chance is in my own descr_missions file. But it does refer to an actual parameter being used by return_papal_settlement. Can this parameter be used by any other mission types? If so, it seems we have a clear path to a region transfer script by setting this to 100 for a give_settlement mission (although I also haven't been able to get give_settlement missions to fire either).

Well, as I said iny my post (also didnt see your reply), the papal stuff is likely hardcoded and most of its parameters dont seem to work elsewhere... But perhaps it can be forced via scripts even without a papal faction, its worth testing. BTW, for example convert mission (which was originally a papal mission) was used as variant in teutonic, as teutonic_convert, and one of the parameters is saying (I showed this one in my post before)
"non_pope_mission ; this conversion mission does not rely on the pope being a valid faction"
(as papal_states are not in teutonic), so perhaps that could work for some other ones as well?

BTW, the only instance that someone used a papal mission I know is that they used give_ancillary type in TATW I believe (also originally papal mission), though they also have a papal faction in TATW, so...

Though, good thing is about descr_mission is, that whenever some error is made, like an incompatible parameter, it tells you right away and doesnt let you start a game, so one can test parameters kinda easily....
DarkKnight links really a lot of them, didnt see most of them in action, and kingdoms are adding at least a dozen more, so yea...

Originally Posted by Callistonian

Edit: just read your reply. If the give_settlement mission is a yes/no event, then maybe it won't work for the AI.

the big question is, whether AI actually gets missions...

(except the papal states and the scripted one

Anyway, it seems peopel should be checking out the kingdoms more, especially the modders

EDIT

Quickly checked which papal missions works with non_pope_mission, and surprisingly several of them (tho, ofc the less cool ones)
papal_build_church, and two unlikely candidates - break_alliance and assassinate_witch heretic.

papal_build_church would be pretty cool (it even has the script command), if we could taks players with building stuff (I originallly thought, that guild_build is doing that, but its actually just building buildings for you as a gift...)

break_alliance... well if that could be used by any factions, would be cool as well

**Jadli** · November 29, 2020, 02:30 AM

To kinda complete our conversation about "cool missions", I suppose the last most remarkable thing to mention is "assassinate_general" type, as thats the most modifiable of them all in my opinion. It has lot of parameters, that can be used, but are not required. You can use it to kill any character/agent type (including leaders and heirs specifically. I suppose you could also pick admirals, so you would have to sink a navy), based on any attribute of theirs, by using lines "character_type", "attribute_type" , "attribute_min_threshold" (you can use the attribute line more than once), based on target faction, religion, ownership of guild. Useful parametrs are "killed_by_any_means" and "expire_on_hide_disabled". Can be given "randomly" or via script (and shouldnt be able to cause crashes like the _take_settlement missions), so all in one.. The only of the important parameters that doesnt seem to work with it is "link_mission_id"

Using your imagination, you can use this for pretty much everything. If you make sure a general stays inside a settlement, you can use it to target settlements (I believe thats what you wanted to do originally). I for example also use this for my dungeon mission of variuos levels, based on on unused attributes (like Magic). So based on the value of "Magic" of specific generals, the guild picks target for you to hunt down, and gives you a respective reward based on what level the target had... and so on

And as DarkKnight emphasized strongly, the paybacks can be extremely powerful indeed, if used well... as you can tie lot of stuff to it.

Regarding testing what parameters works for what missions, there is not really that much to test. The sad truth is, that in like 95% they work only with the missions they were used with in vanilla/kingdoms. But even like that the missions can be ofc very useful, if used wisely.

BTW, since lot of people has issues with accessing kingdoms mission files (and all files in general), thought it would be a good idea to provide them to everyone in this thread (thanks to Gigantus, who helped me gather them

, as my unpacker wasnt working)

Thus, to help people mod missions, there you go: