Byz mod anyone????

[duncan]

Well, I'm king amongst lazies, but I have conceived a great strategy to conquer the wor....ehem...to make a Spartan mod covering the days of Latin Empire, ERE, Almogavers and all this, because I love the setting and it fits perfectly in the Grand Campaign map supplied by Vanilla Spartan+Gates Of Troy game. Let's call the Byz mod.

I'm new at this, you know, modifying .txt and all that ****, but with a little help (big help, in fact) from my friends from the forum, we could make a great mod to make Spartan last longer.

We need everything, from altering the cities' name, new factions, new units (new graphics for them), so it's gonna be a hard work. Anyone willing to volunteer? Sign up NOW!!!.


The overall design would be the following.

a. New factions




- Nicea Empire aka ERE
- Serbia (Northwest, starting in Skodra)
- Bulgaria (north of the map, except Serbia, to Mesembria)
- Ikonia Sultanate (southeast)
- Duchy of Athens (Attica)
- Epirus (south of Serbia, north of Athens
- Tesalonica (Macedonian)
- Venice (The Egean Islands, Rhodes and maybe Dirrachio?)
- Morea (Pelopponesse)
- Latin Empire (Constantinople and a little bit of Asia Minor)
- The Almogavers (Lovely Rebels)
- The mongols (popping up like Romans and Persians from the East and from the north-east)


b.) New units

Tough job here

- Horse archers for eastern empires
- Some Heavy Cataphracts-like for them too
- Heavy Cavalry and infantry in french cities
- Need serious help

This guy is funny






They're not exatcly from the XIII century, but they work.

c.) New leaders


Why not? Roger De Flor, Vatatzes, Balduin and more.

[duncan]

OK, let`s go. The sides.txt in the /data/ folder (Rome and Persian GC scenario) is something like


// Grand Campaign
NumSides 120

MapName 1

StartDate -400

// Name for Name
// this file String ID Music/SFX
AddSideType Greek , 0 , 0
AddSideType Persian , 1 , 1
AddSideType Macedonian , 2 , 0
AddSideType Spartan , 3 , 0
AddSideType Roman , 4 , 2
AddSideType Tribal , 5 , 3
AddSideType Eastern , 6 , 1
AddSideType GreekNaval , 7 , 0
AddSideType GreekCavalry , 8 , 0
AddSideType Pirates , 9 , 3

// Gld Fd Irn BM Hrs Mbl Cop Wd Sil
SETMINPRICES 10 , 2 , 8 , 2 , 8 , 8 , 6 , 6 , 1
SETMAXPRICES 40 , 8 , 32 , 8 , 32 , 32 , 24 , 24 , 1
SETMINBPD 15 , 4 , 9 , 4 , 9 , 9 , 7 , 7 , 1
SETMAXBPD 37 , 11 , 22 , 11 , 22 , 22 , 18 , 18 , 1

/// What % of stockpile made available for this type of purchase per turn
SETUNITWEIGHTS 20 , 20 , 20 , 20 , 20 , 20 , 40 , 20 , 20
SETBUILDWEIGHTS 30 , 20 , 20 , 60 , 20 , 30 , 20 , 20 , 20

// UpperBuffer = baseUpperBuffer * (2 + (numCitiesInEmpire * 50%)) - level above which AI will sell resources
SETUPPERBASEBUFFER 30 , 100 , 40 , 200 , 80 , 40 , 100 , 80 , 1000
// LowerBuffer = baseLowerBuffer * (2 + (numCitiesInEmpire * 50%)) - level below which AI will buy in resources
SETLOWERBASEBUFFER 20 , 75 , 30 , 150 , 60 , 30 , 75 , 60 , 750

// AUTARIATIA
SetSide 0
SetSideType Pirates
SetSideHouseType 0
SetSideNameID 0
SetSideRGB 174 , 144 , 128
// SetSideAsDefault
// SetSideAsPassive
SetSideResources 45 , 424 , 145 , 569 , 244 , 121 , 238 , 214 , 2501
SetSideBonus 0 , 15 , 0 , 20 , 5 , 0 , 5 , 0 , 150
// No
Objective Capture 16
AGGRESSION 59
TRUSTLEVEL 94
// Attrib 5 0
// Attrib 6 0
// Attrib 7 0
// Attrib 8 0
// Attrib 9 0
// Attrib 10 0



So we have to change one or two things.



1.) NumSides 12


2.) Start Date: Let's say 1230


3.) I leave the sidetypes as they are until we manage to decide what units and what characteristics to choose for them



4.) Ok. Let's start including the byzantines (sorry, Efthimios)

// BYZANTINES
SetSide 0 (id number??)
SetSideType Pirates (we'll change that later)
SetSideHouseType 0 (same as above)
SetSideNameID 0
SetSideRGB 174 , 144 , 128 (are this the cities beloning to tha faction?)
// SetSideAsDefault
// SetSideAsPassive
SetSideResources 45 , 424 , 145 , 569 , 244 , 121 , 238 , 214 , 2501
SetSideBonus 0 , 15 , 0 , 20 , 5 , 0 , 5 , 0 , 150
// No
Objective Capture 16 (We'll thought about this objective later, let's leave it like this)
AGGRESSION 59 (this will be fixed while testing the scenario)
TRUSTLEVEL 94 (Same as above)
// Attrib 5 0
// Attrib 6 0
// Attrib 7 0
// Attrib 8 0
// Attrib 9 0
// Attrib 10 0




So I guess the main problem is to give each faction the enormous number of cities that they need


Lot of work...

[IainMcNeil]

Its actually a lot easier to edit the xls file and then save out as a text file. Grab the mods xls zip file with all these in.

[duncan]

Its actually a lot easier to edit the xls file and then save out as a text file. Grab the mods xls zip file with all these in.

Oops, I missed that. I'm having this obsession with editing .txt since I was in University. I never wrote a single program from the scratch...

[duncan]

Ok


I'm having problems



I downloaded the .xls files (so I switched from Openoffice to my hated Microsoft Office, because Openoffice does not a great job exporting .xls files to .txt) and modified cities.xls and sides.txt without problem. I gave each faction a colour in the campaign selection map (expect from the obvious purple Nicea, I chose a rather stupid colours for the others)


Anyway, I started playing this proto-mod and I've got some points

1.) In the campaign selection screen, sides are pictured right, but the name tag is wrong, it doesn't show the real factions, it actually shows the prevoius sides I already modified. Don't know how to change it.

2.) Same for the Campaign map, diplomacy screen et al...Autariates instead of Bulgaria and all that, don't know how to work it out.

3.) I modified the armies.txt to prevent having compatibility issues (because armies belong to nations that don't exist in sides.txt and cities.txt) I thought I did it allright, but when I start a game, no army appears in the cities.



Thank you in advance

[IainMcNeil]

You'll need to edit the localisation.xls and follow the instructions to copy it to the text file, or edit the localisation.txt file directly. You then need to run the small program that converts the text to the game format.

What did you do to the armies.txt file?

[duncan]

You'll need to edit the localisation.xls and follow the instructions to copy it to the text file, or edit the localisation.txt file directly. You then need to run the small program that converts the text to the game format.

Thank You!!!!

What did you do to the armies.txt file?

Err.... .... .... ...I'll have a look at it ASAP !!!!! I think I replaced the original sides with the new sides, following the relations I've made (this side and this side and this side: Serbia, this side and the next one: Latin empire and so on). Anyway, I'm sure it's just a silly error by me. I'll try again.

[IainMcNeil]

Give me an example of the changes and I'll see if I can spot the problem.

[duncan]

Thank for the support, Iain


I edited the .xls Campaign armies file right after editing sides and cities. In that .xls file there is a list of the different cities in the game, nations, and army garrisoned in that city. So I took the nation list and replaced it with the new nations' list. I did not change the rest.

Anyway, don't worry about it, I'll work it out this weekend or next week.

Bye