Making Edited Troop Trees Work

[Stildawn]

HI All

Im trying to make alternative troop trees...

Instead of making new trees in Morgh tools I just edited the swadian tree... So far Ive just changed the names of the units and their upgrade paths...

However in game nothing has changed... What am I missing?

Thanks

 

[Duh]

Have you started a new game (required) or are you using a savegame?

 

[Stildawn]

Started a new game. What I did is copy the whole Floris mod folder and put it in a new folder under modules called "Floris with trial trees" (cool name I know lol)

And then edited the troop txt with Morgh tools... All I did is replace the names so far of the swadian tree... Although I am using less units, I didnt delete any units but some are no longer reachable through upgrade paths?

 

[effemb]

I have a question on this thread too...
im working on my submod RTT which has its own thread, but am coming up to a brick wall problem right now regarding some kind of crash issue.

last night i went ahead and totally restarted, i put back in the fresh copy of troops.txt and items_kinds1.txt from the FEMP 2.41a bugfix patch and redid ALL of the edits for nord, swadia, and vaegir (so far).

then i went in, started new game, and created all of the troops tier3->7 in a save game, and went into a few battles.
its not crashing right at the start, after 30 secs or so, but...i finally did end up crashing when i stuck around in a battle to look at the troops and make sure they were using the right weapons etc....

im pulling my hair out trying to figure out why its crashing.
what i have done is limited to:
items editing - ive changed alot of items, and added only 1.  the added item worked perfectly fine before and i added it again the exact same way.  same stats.  edits to items are in line with what they originally are, im not changing shields to 1h weapons or anything.  every weapon stays the same, i have not touched its functionality with the exception of a few spears that ive made "cant use on horseback".  other than that i have edited damages, weapon reach, speed, price, weight, and the possible mods it comes with (rusty, balanced, etc.) - though have only added or removed applicable mods for that item type (no lordly spears now...)

troops editing - i have edited skills, stats, weapon proficiencies, level, names, upgrade paths, and equipment loadout.
no troops have been removed or added, though so far i have changed the role of 1 troop (a cavalry to infantry) but have made sure to uncheck things like "horse garauntee" and "mounted" and done everything i can imagine in morgh's tools to make it a proper unit.

here is a link to my savegame with a bunch of troops of each tier in my party as well as the latest version of my troop tree.  if you are a god in fixing and finding bugs i beg you to take a look and help me out so i can finish this tree, as it seems quite a few people like the concept and want to use it.  (me not the least! )

http://www.mediafire.com/?p6y18rlia5qe22j

to use this, fresh install of floris 2.4, patch 2.41a, and then put these 2 files in, load up the save, and thats pretty much identical to how it was made.
can start a new game too and try it but save game saves you the trouble of recruiting all the troops and mashing ctrl+x

to test for the crash, go into a battle....
if you crash during battle, thats what im doing, though it usually doesnt crash for awhile.

 

[imgran]

OK, guys, 3 quick rules of how to not screw up a game by editing a troop tree

1: DO NOT REMOVE STUFF UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT IT DOES!!!!  Remember, NPC's appear in the troop tree, if they aren't there there are going to be problems.

2:  THE POSITION OF EACH TROOP IN THE TROOP TREE MATTERS!!!!  Do not insert units into the middle of the troop tree.  Do not remove units from the middle of the troop tree.  Changing the order in which soldiers appear on the troop tree will screw up the scripts when they call for troop number (randomly) 455, which should be, say, a Ransom Broker, and it turns out to be Firentis instead.  Also you need to have a certain number of Swadians, Vaegirs, Rhodoks, etc in the early section of the trooplist (the one starting with the Swadian Recruit and ending with the Sarranid Cataphract) and if it's off at all, recruitment is toast (for a start -- if you REALLY screw it up, it affects everything from recruiting Prison Guards in villages to random map reassignments  like the Khergits having Praven, Tihr and Ahmerrad!!!).  Basically, pay attention to where things are and don't mess with their positions unless you know what you're doing.

3:  IT'S NOT NATIVE COMPATIBLE UNLESS IT SAYS IT IS!!!!  Even if mods use troops from Native, like Custom Commander, the troop tree is often still heavily edited.  Many modders add NPC's to their mods, such as Diplomacy's Constable, extra Ransom Brokers, etc.  Slap a native troop tree on these mods without being aware of that, and you will get problems out the wazoo, and not always in places you'd look to see them.  Especially if the modder broke Rule 2 because he knew what he was doing and could get away with it.

If you're going to edit a troop tree from a mod, best practice is to take a template from the mod you're editing, and paste Swadians in over Swadians, Khergits over Khergits, etc.  Any faction troops along the bottom of the troop list can USUALLY be safely removed and replaced, all you're screwing up is the upgrade trees, which you'll be fixing anyway.

Also, if one of the things that got edited in the creation of the mod is item-kinds.txt, and you bring in a troop tree from another mod or a Native one, you're going to be reequipping every soldier in every faction, plus all the manhunters, sword sisters, bandits and mercenaries, unless you want them wielding Raw Beef, wearing gloves on their head and riding a Heraldic Mail into battle.  So good luck with that.

 

[Stildawn]

Thanks for the tips...

Basically what I did is I tried to put this troop tree over the swadians in Floris:

This is what Im working towards, eventually this will go in its own mod but someone else is working on that... But I though hey why not edit the troop trees now in Floris so I can test for balance between the factions...

So what I did in Morgh tool is on the troop list (left hand side) I entered swadian in the filter... This gave me all the swadian troops...

All I did first was rename the units... (I did not touch the troop id just the name part) so Swadian Recuit became O'Hagan Peasant, And I moved up from there, just changing the names and upgrade paths nothing more as I planned to get the names and upgrade paths working correctly first before I went in and changed the equipment, skills, stats etc of each troop...

I made sure to only use actual swadian troops (like I didnt use messenger, or any of the other weird ones since I didnt have to cause my tree is less units than the Floris tree)

So I updated and saved each name change...

Started a new game, killed the bandit, got onto the campaign screen cheated myself some money and went off to a swadian village to recuit... They were still Swadian Recuits (even though I changed the name of it in Morgh Tools) and when upgraded nothing had changed at all, it was still using the floris swadian troop tree like my changes didnt do anything at all...

So Im thinking I must be missing something somewhere?

 

[dragonchris]

Was just thinking about something similar that happened to me. Have you checked to make sure that the file actually changed? When this happened to me the file was not changed at all. To get it to work I had to move the mod file out of the warband folder, make my changes and put it back in. You might want to try that.

 

[Stildawn]

Ah really... Yeah that would explain it haha... Ill most certainly have a look at this tonight lol.

 

[Stildawn]

Crap Morgh tools was editing the troops in my actual Floris folder (the one I play lol)

Can I just paste the troop.txt back to over write it?

 

[Stildawn]

Ok all sorted... Now I just a general question

When you guys make new troop trees.. How do you approach the issue of balancing?

I had an idea where I would design a default troop tree giving stats to each unit from Level 1 to Level 7...

I had then thought that each faction would get 10 points to assign over the different diciplines of warfare... So for example If Im making a very cavalry heavy faction with a tad infantry... I would assign the points like:

8 Cavalry
2 Infantry

So then if a Level 3 Footman had the 1h skill of 60... The level 3 footman for my faction would have 1h skill of 60x1.2=72
If the Level 5 Cav had a 1h skill of 160... The level 5 cav of my faction would have 1h skill of 160x1.8=288

Does this make sense... Do you reckon this would be a good way to start to get balancing right.

Also do any of your guys have the items listed from crap to good roughly?

 

[effemb]

OK, guys, 3 quick rules of how to not screw up a game by editing a troop tree

1: DO NOT REMOVE STUFF UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT IT DOES!!!!  Remember, NPC's appear in the troop tree, if they aren't there there are going to be problems.

2:  THE POSITION OF EACH TROOP IN THE TROOP TREE MATTERS!!!!  <clip>

3:  IT'S NOT NATIVE COMPATIBLE UNLESS IT SAYS IT IS!!!!  <clip>

<Clip>

Thanks for the very useful post, but im definitely not the kind that will ask for support on my computer and it ends up i didnt plug it in.
No, im actually a software engineer and game programmer of 12+ years so my problem is actually something to do with how items file or troops file is handled.
As I said in my post - Ive removed or added ZERO troops.  have not touched their IDs, placement, etc.  I have only edited upgrade paths in a very few cases (but mostly left it alone) - whereas I have heavily edited stats/skills/equipment, and the name.  thats all ive edited in troops.  in items i have added 1 item, and heavily edited the stats of others, but have not removed or changed the placement of any items.
still, even after applying my edits to a fresh copy of both troops and items files from 2.41a bugfix patch....practically spending all day yesterday to do it....i still end up with a battle crash from time to time.
ive also used the FAQ method of expanding my userVA but my machine is rather brand new with 6GB XMS3/DDR3 RAM and a 2GB video card....it really hasnt had any problem with M&B before, even with this pack.  have crashed maybe 1 or 2 times, and when i say 1 or 2 times its because I often leave the game running even in the background for 1 or 2 days at a time (sometimes i go to sleep and game is running, wake up and continue playing, go do stuff and leave it on, come back in the evening play some more...has crashed at most 2 times in 2+ months of playing it since I got floris pack).
so, now that its crashing quite often in battles its obviously something due to my edits.
and yes i create a fresh new game to test it, and still crash in battles.

what my question really regards, is the format of items and troops...what is safe to edit, what is not?
are there any specific flags in items or troops that should not be edited via morgh's tools?  if i edit them do i have to edit some other files like the party templates?  really would like some expertise help on the matter from a modder who knows the file formats.  because i dont yet.
an example of my question is something like this:
when editing polearms, dont make them have "cant use on horseback" and "couch as lance"+"primary" in order to be used with shield, because if they can be used with shield then the game wants to also allow them on horseback.  stuff like that.  flags that shouldnt be used in combination.  these are the type of things im trying to find.
also, is there known to be any items included in the floris pack that cause errors?
i am somewhat starting to believe that the swadian elite surcoats might be causing crashing because i equipped the I6 swadian highlander with a choice of the 3 swadian surcoats (Duh's Yellow Surcoat, Swadian Elite Surcoat, Duh's Red Surcoat)....they are 3 variations of the same armor, and i noticed that the game started crashing after I edited in to the troops these types of items.
in fact, the item list of items that might be causing this crashing are (item ID in brackets):
nordic axe 1h (687)
spear1h (2047)
spear2h (1492)
spear1h (2049)
spear2h (2159)
armor(1866): vaegir lamellar
2h blunt(1873): crow hammer
swadian crowned helmet(709)
heraldic mail+surcoat(290)
heraldic mail+tabard(293)
black charger(1806)
2h pole-halbred: swiss halbred(1772)
swadian_elite(1268-1270) (<--- this is duh's red/yellow and swadian elite surcoats)

i know that those items were not being used by any troops prior to me adding them as equipment and editing their stats.
if anybody knows whether or not these items, one or any of them, has issues, please let me know so i can remove it from my troop equipment list.
also is there any way to get a report on whats causing the crash?
my rgl.log doesnt have any errors.
its in battle that i crash.  memory usage sits around 2GB while im testing it, have textures/detail turned all the way down....still crashes.  i usually play with textures/detail maxed and no crashes, so....its gotta be something flawed in these items.

 

[effemb]

Ok all sorted... Now I just a general question

When you guys make new troop trees.. How do you approach the issue of balancing?

I had an idea where I would design a default troop tree giving stats to each unit from Level 1 to Level 7...

I had then thought that each faction would get 10 points to assign over the different diciplines of warfare... So for example If Im making a very cavalry heavy faction with a tad infantry... I would assign the points like:

8 Cavalry
2 Infantry

So then if a Level 3 Footman had the 1h skill of 60... The level 3 footman for my faction would have 1h skill of 60x1.2=72
If the Level 5 Cav had a 1h skill of 160... The level 5 cav of my faction would have 1h skill of 160x1.8=288

Does this make sense... Do you reckon this would be a good way to start to get balancing right.

Also do any of your guys have the items listed from crap to good roughly?

here is my system for RTT:

隐藏

skills baseline:
tier5: 5 / 3 / 2
tier6: 6 / 4 / 3
tier7: 8 / 6 / 4
stats baseline:
tier6: str10, agi10, int9, cha9
tier7: str14, agi12, int9, cha9
wpn skills baseline: (+10 for each level over 34 tier6, over level 40 tier7)
tier6: primary 260 / secondary 200
tier7: primary 310 / secondary 250
level baseline:
tier6: level 36, 34... (primary, others)
tier7: level 42, 40... (primary, others)

some further info on those stats is basically that these are the guideline by which all troops are built.
example: a tier7 unit has 8 in its primary skills, 6 in secondary, and 4 in subskills.  a tier6 has 6/4/3, so for example I6 swadian highlander is a shock infantry, its role is to deal high damage, an aggressive fast moving 2h troop (no shield+1h).  so primary skills are pstrike, ironflesh, athletics.  this troop doesnt really have any secondary or subskills - its a very focused one-role troop.  i put in shield on the tier6 as a subskill (3) and gave him a weak shield for advancing in sieges but the lower tiers dont have that. (tier7 in my tree is supposed to be the elite - very good gear, hard to kill, very strong, and take forever to train up).

another example is ISa5_Swadian Guard.  its a hybrid unit, infantry spearman that is a light archer.  garrison type unit, defensive infantry/anti-cavalry.  so its tier5 skillset becomes: 2 ironflesh, 3 pstrike, 3 pdraw, 3 athletics, 2 shield....because its a hybrid it cannot get any skill levels at "primary" level.  it also gets weapon skills at "secondary" level since it gets 3 of them: pole, bow, 1h.

after that, i decided on a faction specific flavour to give each faction a specific type of bonus.

swadians get:
melee units: +2 to +4 armor depending on which piece it is, +1 shield skill, +20 weapons, horse +10armor/+20charge, knights +40 polearm

nords get:
+1 ironflesh, +1 athletics, +1 pstrike, +1 throwing
tier6 units: +1 skills, +1 stats, +1 level, +20 weapons
tier7 units: +1 skills, +3 stats, +1 level, +40 weapons (so total +2 ironflesh, +2 athletics, etc...)

this is of course just my system.
but imo it makes a very balanced system to design troop tree on.  unfortunately in not only my oppinion but practically everybody that uses floris (havent seen ANYBODY say otherwise yet), the troop tree included in floris sucks ass.  really badly.  its in fact totally bugged out, it has 1h troops with 2h skills and no 1h skills, it has pole arm troops with 1h skills, weapons are inconsistent, equipment loadouts are completely wrong in some cases (some units didnt have a melee weapon at all), and its of course biggest problem is that its way too bulky, too many troops, and 25% of them are obsolete.  hence why so many of us want to make new troop trees, and alternate troop trees are more popular than the included one.

and, dont base skills on a multiplier.  base them on level or tier (or a mix of both).  because tier 3 with 72 weapon skill is very low.
or did you mean LEVEL 3 troop? not tier 3?  i think you are confusing level and tier in your post, its not so clear anyway.

basically you have to understand that its a computer game, and so everything is math.  balancing technically means a formula that is equal on both sides.  x = y.  so ya, you can make a bunch of crappy troops, and that would still be balanced, but the more important thing than balancing imo is creating a flavour for each factions troops that, when used together, create a different style of gameplay that is still "balanced enough" to be functional and...of course...doesnt make the AI totally suck and die from poorly designed troops.

roughly regarding weapon skills though i would say, primary weapon skill should be 7 or 8 * level of the unit.
ie: level 40 unit: 7*40 = 280, or 8*40 = 320....
7.5 maybe is the golden number.
i prefer stronger troops though than weaker ones.  the player character can already get much more powerful than the troops because primarily we have access to the best gear (with better prefixes bonuses too), which makes sense seeing us as a lord or hero, but troops are professional soldiers too.  i want them to be as dangerous opponents as possible, since the AI directing them is rather stupid anyway.

 

[Caba`drin]

items editing - ive changed alot of items, and added only 1.  the added item worked perfectly fine before and i added it again the exact same way.  same stats.

You didn't use the "Black Charger" horse anywhere, did you? It is known to cause crashes (see FAQ).

In general, if you are going to be making extensive edits, I'd recommend you use the source code (particularly since you point to programming experience). Far more flexible and far less likely to cause any issues down the road.

 

[Stildawn]

Thanks effemb...

Ok I might do my multiplier off the level instead of the tier... Im making this tree for a bunch of guys at GSTK... At GSTK we all have our own factions you could say with our own troops so by letting them assign points to diciplines I can make troop trees that reflect how they like it while still be balanced with one another (since everyone gets the same amount of points to distribute)

I think what Ill do is use your system to make my default tree... And then from the default tree Ill assign the points that my mates put into different things... Which should give their factions individual flavour...

Any chance on an item list? Its hard to know what is good and what is not inside Morgh tools...