A superior converter

[unmerged(45754)]

Hrm. I wish that Chaos program would get finished, and we could somehow tie it in with this mod. But I think that's out of the current scope of the project atm. Oh well.

What I'd say is just do the simplest solution for everything FIRST to get a bare minimum of a converter. Then we can add bells and whistles and edit things in softcode per individual preference if need be.

 

[Sterkarm]

I keep getting the same bug when trying to convert the latest MTT save. It reads as such:

Reading culture-conversion table
...
...
...
Reading CK countries
There was a problem reading the file MTT1335June27p. Aborting.
java.io.FileNotFoundException: MTT1335June27p
         at java.io.FileInputStream.open<Unknown Source>
         at java.io.FileInputStream.<init><Unknown Source>
         at java.io.FileInputStream.<init><Unknown Source>
         at java.io.FileReader.<init><Unknown Source>

The "..."s stand for all the stuff that it read between those two.

 

[King of Men]

That's rather interesting. Let's start with basics : You are sure that you have given the correct filename, including the .eug extension? (From the error message, it seems you didn't include the .eug.) And you are sure that the save file does in fact reside in the same directory as the converter program? I'm not sure what else could cause a FileNotFound exception, they should really be quite, um, exceptional.

 

[Sterkarm]

That was it, I forgot the .eug, thanks KOM.

EDIT: Gah, a second error.

Reading province-conversion information.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
There is no province numbered 1 as requested in line
 1;Vestisland;1;1466
Aborting.
           at CKprovince.setProperties<Unknown Source>
           at Converter.main<Unknown Source>

Second EDIT: Oh, and it keeps doing that if I delete Vestisland from the province file, it will then go to Austisland and then Tir Connail.

 

[King of Men]

OK, I found the problem. My code assumes that savegames are nicely formatted, like this :

province = { 
    id = 0 
    religion = catholic 
    culture = "none" 
    loyalty = { 
        peasants = 1.000 
        burghers = 1.000 
        clergy = 1.000 
        nobles = 1.000 
        } 
    privileges = { 
        peasants = 0.250 
        burghers =  (...)

Unfortunately, Trav's zipper utility has removed all the newlines, so now the file looks like this :

province = { id = 3 religion = catholic culture = "irish" loyalty = {
peasants = 0.898 burghers = 1.000 clergy = 0.733 nobles = 1.000 } privileges 
= { peasants = 0.000 burghers = 0.258 clergy = (...)

which is a bit less readable, as I'm sure you'll agree. However, I think there is an easy workaround : Load up the game in CK, then save it again. This will give you a savegame with nice formatting.

Now, you'll probably dislike what the converter does to Poland's borders in this savegame, and truthfully, I don't understand it myself. Hungary should clearly not get all the provinces it does. Being worked on.

 

[King of Men]

Ah, I found out what's going on with the Polish border. The Hungarian AI DOWed you at some point, and is occupying a lot of your southern provinces. Since the converter looks at control, not ownership, a bunch of stuff ends up being Hungarian. Something to change, quite possibly; although control is a lot easier to extract from save files. Bleh. But anyway, you can fix it easily by ending the war with Hungary.

 

[King of Men]

Now, what should I do with alliances and wars? The personal alliances of the CK era don't really carry over into the state diplomacy of EU2, and besides, people might well want to ally with a bunch of their vassals. Indeed, perhaps I should auto-ally people to some of their more powerful vassals? Then maybe a relations boost for a CK alliance. Ideally, you'd get a RM if you were married to someone of the same surname as a different ruler, or maybe it should be restricted to close relations, but that would require a lot of change in my character-reading code, and slow it down quite a bit; and it's the slowest part anyway. Hmm.

Also, you should get a relations boost with your vassals, and with co-religious people. And negative relations with people you have claims on.

Other thoughts?

 

[unmerged(45754)]

I'd think even more negative relations with people who have claims on you. But yea, I'd say that personal alliance shouldn't carry over, rather you should get a rather large boost in relations. Plus the average is to start out with +125 for everyone of your same religion, no?

 

[SecondReich]

I'd think even more negative relations with people who have claims on you. But yea, I'd say that personal alliance shouldn't carry over, rather you should get a rather large boost in relations. Plus the average is to start out with +125 for everyone of your same religion, no?

Yeah, a boost in relations for personal alliances sounds like it makes the most sense.

 

[King of Men]

I'd think even more negative relations with people who have claims on you. But yea, I'd say that personal alliance shouldn't carry over, rather you should get a rather large boost in relations. Plus the average is to start out with +125 for everyone of your same religion, no?

Well, yes, but that's in EU2 where you don't have any other information; I think we can do a bit better here. I would think 50-100 should be a good average for same-religion nations, with pluses for alliances and, if possible, for marriages. And of course a good boost for vassalisations, possible modulated by loyalty - I think this is a good use for that stat.

 

[GrimPagan]

About the AI, could it be an idea to assign AI's to different regions, like a france AI, Italy AI, Iberian AI, British AI, Scandinavian AI, German AI, etc. In the real world, nations in the same regions often share the same targets, which is basicly control in that region.

In Iberia, the AI would focus on gaining control in Iberia and establishing coloninies, since this was both portugal and spain aims

Scandinavian countries would focus on contolling Iberia and expanding eastwards into Finland, Karlern and Baltic states, which would be reasonable for Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Scotland, England and Ireland would try to gain power on the british islands and colonice North-America.

Italian states would go for Italy and gain economic supremacy in the mediterian sea.

What I am really thinking on is that you could make arrays to check what would be the best AI for that nation, to avoid the problems you worried about when it came to Denmark suddenly developing an interest in Spain.

If the arrays should consist of the tags for nations in a region, or the arrrays should contain the provinces so that one could check against where the capital, is something that I'm not sure of. Both would have it's pros and cons.

 

[King of Men]

That could possibly be done, although someone would have to write the regional AIs. But really, you could get much the same effect with just softcoding - give Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and their vassals 'baltic.ai', presupposing that someone wished to write such a thing.

 

[SecondReich]

Is there any chance of a few randomly generated military leaders for your country? Perhaps using the country's main culture to generate the name?

 

[King of Men]

Well, since I'm already generating monarchs, I don't see why not. I'll add it to my TODO list. Any ideas for what should influence how often you get them, and how good they are?

 

[wilcoxchar]

I just converted my first game as Croatia, and for some reason the country came into EU2 as Cuman. Not sure why, but another thing is that my capital is in Veneto (yes I own it, but King of Croatia is my primary title) and the capital of the Papal States is in Morbihan (once again, they own it). Also at first glance, it seems like there are way too many vassals in the game. Also the vassals are in weird places. For instance, England's vassal Cornwall owns Anglia forcing the English capital to be in Caux. Also, my vassals are Sicily, Aragon, Catalunya, Tripoli, Napolia, Siena, and Modena. I can send you the CK and EU2 saves if you want, but IMHO the vassals are weirdly chosen.

 

[SecondReich]

Well, since I'm already generating monarchs, I don't see why not. I'll add it to my TODO list. Any ideas for what should influence how often you get them, and how good they are?

Thats really hard. Because any obvious things that would determine the quality and quantity of Generals don't really jibe (Quality of the army : Terrible armies often have great leaders; Monarch Military skill: It is perfectly possible to have a terrible monarch and a great military leader)

I think it should either be totally random, or somehow tied to how powerful the country is. The more powerful, the more likely to have good leaders.

It would also be interesting to have maybe a few Monarch military leaders early in the game.

 

[King of Men]

OK, the Cuman is due to a line in tagInfo.txt reading

CROA;CUM;Cuman

which plainly should not be there, and I don't understand why it is. (I copied this over from Johan, so any errors are all his fault. I take full credit for the stuff it gets right. ) Remove that line, and you should convert to CRO as intended.

About Venice, you get as your capital the richest province of your first state culture. Have you, by any chance, been taking a lot of rich Italian provinces into your demesne, and perhaps been converting to occitan culture with your kings? If not, I'd like to take a look at the savegame, indeed.

About vassals, this is (yay! I get to use the phrase for the first time!) WAD. CK kingdoms are extremely de-centralised by EU standards. Hence, you get your demesne and a bunch of vassals. If you dislike it strongly, you could try disabling the strong-vassals effect by changing the third line in misc.txt from 1;1 to 0;0. That should make the vassals a lot smaller.

About Cornwall and the Papal States, it's probably an effect of the Duchy of Cornwall owning a province or two in what becomes Anglia, and the Pope owning a part of Morbihan and being French. For Cornwall this is WAD - you're going to get weird land distributions on occasion. For the Pope I might want to think about hardcoding Rome as capital if it is owned, it's true. Could you check your save to see that these things are true? If not, then yes, I'd like to see the save.

 

[SecondReich]

Given a bit more time to think about it:

There should be a 1/3 chance that the Monarch is generated as a leader before 1600, probably about 1/5 after that. His skills should be based on his Military score.

As for non-Monarch leaders... I think the best idea would be to have their quantity determined by the power of the country, and their skills pretty much randomized, although influenced positively by Quality and the Offensive slider.

There should also be the chance (a large enough chance that it would happen two or three times a game in different countries) that a superleader will appear every now and then with the 6/6 stats (Napoleon, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick) etc etc.

Of course, this is all strictly ideal. I know next to nothing about coding and don't know if it is even feasible.

 

[wilcoxchar]

I haven't looked at state cultures yet, but my line of kings is now Italian, and I do have Genoa and Venice in my demesne, but another thing is an English vassal owns one of the three provs in the EU2 prov of Sicily and for some reason England got it in EU2. The province they owned is Palermo, so that may hace something to do with it, but it's quite annoying that Sicily doesn't actually own all of Sicily in EU2 (they were the Duchy of Sicily, Slavonia, and Murcia in CK. Anyway, thanks for clearing that up for me. I'll try to get some feedback on religion and culture soon.

 

[King of Men]

Looking at my code, it's not actually the first state culture, but the culture of your king. Italian people prefer to live in Italy. If it's any consolation, I originally coded this because in one of my own savegames, where Spain happened to own Egypt, the capital of Castille ended up in Alexandria, that being the richest city in that King's demesne. (Which could still happen if that dynasty becomes Arab, sure, but at least then it would make some kind of sense.) Now, I could softcode preferred capitals for primary titles, and only use the richest-city algorithm if the nation doesn't own that province; but really, I don't think the current system is unreasonable. I'd pick Venice over the hills of Croatia any day of the week, and I'm not even Italian. Besides, that would be a large amount of softcoding that I couldn't steal from Johan.

About Sicily, well, as a general rule, you shouldn't let foreign scum own the richest cities in your provinces; Palermo, in particular, has (base) income 8, while the other two that go into EU province 396 have only 3 and 2, respectively. So even if we assume even infrastructure development, which is unlikely, Palermo will dominate. The province conversion doesn't look at titles, on the theory that possession of the richest cities is nine-tenths of the law. So what happened is that the English vassal got province 396, and then there wasn't a free EU tag for it (the British Isles don't get very many) so it got absorbed into England. Again, this looks fairly reasonable to me.