Guide to negate USA immigration bonus

[unmerged(18537)]

There're complaints among some Victoria fans that hardcoded immigration bonus of USA is too strong. If you're too annoyed by it, you can negate it by yourself by replacing USA tag with another one.

This is a DIY-sort of guide how to negate USA-specific bonuses. You can achieve the goal either patching program file or editing/renaming various files.
As it's historical fact that USA attracted many immigrants, it'll be better to increase USA's initial plurarity value to recover some portion of USA's lost bonus.

Method 1.Binary Patch

This is much easier way compared to the other one. But there is a possibility some unexpected trouble might be caused.(I'm not sure)

1) Back up your Victoria.exe in advance.
2) Open Victoria.exe with a binary editor.
3) Exchange USA tag with an unused user defined nation tag in the country tag list which begins at 0x248820h and ends at 0x248B7Fh. If you'd like to give USA bonus to an existing nation, use that nation's tag instead. I'll use U19 in the following example.
3-1) Jump to 0x298948h and overwrite 3 bytes from 55 53 41 (USA) to 55 31 39 (U19)
3-2) Jump to 0x248824h and overwrite 3 bytes from 55 31 39 (U19) to 55 53 41 (USA)
4) Save the changes and quit the binary editor.

WARNING: THE GIVEN ADDRESSES ARE VALID IF THE EXE IS UNRESIZED VER. 1.03c. IF YOU'RE USING THE OTHER VERSION, YOU MUST SEEK RIGHT ONES.


Method 2.Scenario Edit

This classical method is safer but demands fair amount of work. Some tools which enable you to replace texts within every file under a given directory will greatly help the modding.
As you don't have to patch any binary files, it might be easier to be implemented in MODs like VIP.

If you are not familiar with modding, you had better read cool Even More Dumber's Guide to Make Your Own Country by pimparel for details.

1) Rename one of unused user defined countries to USA at .\Victoria\config\worldnames.csv
2) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in every ai file in .\Victoria\AI\

3) Edit the following line at .\Victoria\db\country.csv

USA;DarkBlue;USA;MIN;Blue;Light_Blue;6;0;X

to

Uxx;DarkBlue;USA;MIN;Blue;Light_Blue;6;0;X

where Uxx is new USA tag.
4) Replace USA tag with new USA tag in .\Victoria\db\revolt.txt
5) Rename .\Victoria\db\parties\USA_party.csv to Uxx_party.csv, where Uxx is new USA tag
6) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in .\Victoria\db\unitnames.csv
7) Rename every bmp file which name begins with USA or usa to refer new USA tag in .\Victoria\gfx\map\flags\, .\Victoria\gfx\map\shields\
8) Rename .\Victoria\db\map\palette\counter_usa.bmp to counter_Uxx.bmp, where Uxx is new USA tag
9) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in every event file in .\Victoria\db\events
10) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in every inc file in .\Victoria\scenarios\Scenario Folder\ (eg. usa.inc, uk.inc)
11) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in every scenario file in .\Victoria\scenarios\ (eg. 1836.eug)


Some notes
IMO, this approach isn't the best because
a)other USA-specific bonuses(eg. very fast assimilation rate) are also negated.
b)one unused nation tag must be wasted.

If we can specify the addresses which define the value of various bonuses, the better.

 

[OHgamer]

One issue I see with this -

Have you tested to see if the removal of the USA emigration bonus intensifies the bonus that other countries in the Americas receive for immigration. That is, when using this modification, do you end up having, say, Uruguay becoming a nation of say 60 million because Europe's huddled masses calculate Uruguay to be the most lucrative destination. In essence, by removing the bonus to the USA, do other nations with lower bonuses than the USA get what the USA used to get.

 

[unmerged(18537)]

In essence, by removing the bonus to the USA, do other nations with lower bonuses than the USA get what the USA used to get.

I've not tested if the removal of USA results in less emigration trend in Europe. But I can say your estimation on destination is right. Nations which used to get immigrants will get more, and nations which used to get no immigrants will have a small chance to get some.

If you don't increase USA's initial plurarity, even an asian monarchy w/ least attractiveness (residence, moralism, no social reforms) will get a few hundreds of emmigrants once or twice a year in 1830's. (btw, I wonder if European(culture) might have hardcoded emigration bonus while they're in Europe)

For those who wants to get immigrants depending on relative attractiveness, this is the only solution now. IMO USA's hardcoded bonus is too strong.

And for modders like you, it might provide new area of modding. By controlling USA's plurarity, you can either flood USA with immigrants or make USA mere 'one of attracting nations in America'.

 

[Marcus]

For the truly stupid among us, is there any chance that this could be made into some kind of auto-installing thingie (for VIP), as I have no clue whatsoever where to begin doing this.

 

[jdrou]

An easier way to do this would be to swap the tags in the victoria.exe. Then you don't need to change any of the text files.

 

[ConcordantNexus]

One issue I see with this -

Have you tested to see if the removal of the USA emigration bonus intensifies the bonus that other countries in the Americas receive for immigration. That is, when using this modification, do you end up having, say, Uruguay becoming a nation of say 60 million because Europe's huddled masses calculate Uruguay to be the most lucrative destination. In essence, by removing the bonus to the USA, do other nations with lower bonuses than the USA get what the USA used to get.

OHGamer: if this trick (I'd earlier opined about it but was too freaking lazy to test it http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=175997 ) works - ie USA still gets decent immigration but other worthy candidates do too... d'ya think VIP might incorporate it?

That being said VIP immigration seems much better than vanilla to begin with - how did you people manage that?

 

[tyrel68]

That being said VIP immigration seems much better than vanilla to begin with - how did you people manage that?

Lots of hard work and mainly events

 

[unmerged(18537)]

An easier way to do this would be to swap the tags in the victoria.exe.

Thank you for reminding me of my failed attempts months ago. I tried the only case left last night. And hell, it worked. So the first post was revised.

You can find 4 USA tags in EXE file. The first one is part of arrangement definition of all available country tags. The latter 3 are all found in a list which I didn't know how/where it was used. (Now it seems to be garbages from HoI. CHN must be Chinese Nationalist)
I didn't imagine element number of the arrangement is used to specify USA, and jumped to the conclusion the latter tags had to have special meanings. Damn me.

As I wrote in the revised first post, I'm not satisfied with the current approach. If we can specify the addresses which define the value of various bonuses, the better. Then we can negate paticular bonus and no tag is needed to be wasted.

Thanks again, jdrou.

 

[jdrou]

You can find 4 USA tags in EXE file. The first one is part of arrangement definition of all available country tags. The latter 3 are all found in a list which I didn't know how/where it was used. (Now it seems to be garbages from HoI. CHN must be Chinese Nationalist)

The lists that contain CHN are probably languages. Probably stuff included automatically by the compiler. There's no CHN tag in HoI; Nat. China is CHI and Comm. China is CHC. I used this tag-switching method in HoI to swap hard-coded effects to create an expansionist China instead of Japan.

 

[ConcordantNexus]

If you don't increase USA's initial plurarity, even an asian monarchy w/ least attractiveness (residence, moralism, no social reforms) will get a few hundreds of emmigrants once or twice a year in 1830's. (btw, I wonder if European(culture) might have hardcoded emigration bonus while they're in Europe)

For those who wants to get immigrants depending on relative attractiveness, this is the only solution now. IMO USA's hardcoded bonus is too strong.

And for modders like you, it might provide new area of modding. By controlling USA's plurarity, you can either flood USA with immigrants or make USA mere 'one of attracting nations in America'.

Dear Sir: Would you be so kind to tell us what exact effect Plurality has on Immigration, and how you figured this out?

*switches to avid student of Vicky mode and takes notes*

 

[unmerged(18537)]

Dear Sir: Would you be so kind to tell us what exact effect Plurality has on Immigration, and how you figured this out?

You're lazy, boy. Open your text book(1.03c update log) and read the following line again.

- Reforms/Democratic quality of a country is now modified by that nations plurality when an immigrant selects country.

It means 'The higher plurality a nation has, the more immigrants it'll attract'.

But still, Hardcorded immigration modifiers dominates the world.
FYI, I wrote down the result of my experiments.

General Conditions
Version: 1.03c
Scnenario: A War to End all Wars (1914)
Country: USA
Start Date: 1914/8/5
End Date: 1914/8/30
Start Population: 96,035K

Results
USA Bonus/Plurality/End Population
---------------------------------
active / 10% / 96,159K
inactive / 10% / 96,035K
inactive / 50% / 96,035K
inactive / 100% / 96,042K
inactive / 300% / 96,100K
inactive / 500% / 96,163K

 

[doublezero]

1) Rename one of unused user defined countries to USA at .\Victoria\config\worldnames.csv
2) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in every ai file in .\Victoria\AI\

3) Edit the following line at .\Victoria\db\country.csv

to

where Uxx is new USA tag.
4) Replace USA tag with new USA tag in .\Victoria\db\revolt.txt
5) Rename .\Victoria\db\parties\USA_party.csv to Uxx_party.csv, where Uxx is new USA tag
6) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in .\Victoria\db\unitnames.csv
7) Rename every bmp file which name begins with USA or usa to refer new USA tag in .\Victoria\gfx\map\flags\, .\Victoria\gfx\map\shields\
8) Rename .\Victoria\db\map\palette\counter_usa.bmp to counter_Uxx.bmp, where Uxx is new USA tag
9) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in every event file in .\Victoria\db\events
10) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in every inc file in .\Victoria\scenarios\Scenario Folder\ (eg. usa.inc, uk.inc)
11) Replace every USA tag with new USA tag in every scenario file in .\Victoria\scenarios\ (eg. 1836.eug)


Some notes
IMO, this approach isn't the best because
a)other USA-specific bonuses(eg. very fast assimilation rate) are also negated.
b)one unused nation tag must be wasted.

If we can specify the addresses which define the value of various bonuses, the better.

I have a question about replacing the USA tag with U19 or some other unused tag. There are a ton of files in this game, spread across a bunch of folders. I have 10 folders in the Victoria directory. Out of these 10, one of them, db, has another 6 sub-folders plus several files. in the db subfolder, there is a sub-sub-folder called events, which has around 150 files, some of which contain the tag USA. How many files would I have to edit to erase the USA's massive immigration bonus? Do you have to edit all of them, or just some of them? I can easily see myself missing a couple of USA tags during the editing of around 1000 files, which would take weeks, and then the game would crash because I missed one or two of them.

Could you recommend a good free bin hex editor? I tried downloading and using a couple of them but they didn't work.

 

[King Tiger]

not sure if it was mentioned but replacing a tag....say USA with U19 is not as hard as one would think......i do name replacements like this all the time with other works......notepad has a funtion called replace.....all you have to do is type in USA as the orginal and U19 as the new.....that effectly reduces the amout of work to just how ever many event files and other files with tags in them.

there are ofcourse downsides to this....words like usable will become U19ble
so it won't be as useful in files with alot of regular text

 

[jdrou]

not sure if it was mentioned but replacing a tag....say USA with U19 is not as hard as one would think......i do name replacements like this all the time with other works......notepad has a funtion called replace.....all you have to do is type in USA as the orginal and U19 as the new.....that effectly reduces the amout of work to just how ever many event files and other files with tags in them.

there are ofcourse downsides to this....words like usable will become U19ble
so it won't be as useful in files with alot of regular text

If you do a case-sensative search you will have fewer problems. While I'm not sure if the tags are actually case-sensative, in practice I believe they are all upper-case in the files. Unfortunately there are quite a large number of files to be searched. The binary-editing method is far easier and less likely to make a mistake by missing a file. And if you do make a mistake there's only one file to fix or restore from backup. The tags are even pretty easy to find in the .exe.

 

[doublezero]

Method 1.Binary Patch

This is much easier way compared to the other one. But there is a possibility some unexpected trouble might be caused.(I'm not sure)

1) Back up your Victoria.exe in advance.
2) Open Victoria.exe with a binary editor.
3) Exchange USA tag with an unused user defined nation tag in the country tag list which begins at 0x248820h and ends at 0x248B7Fh. If you'd like to give USA bonus to an existing nation, use that nation's tag instead. I'll use U19 in the following example.
3-1) Jump to 0x298948h and overwrite 3 bytes from 55 53 41 (USA) to 55 31 39 (U19)
3-2) Jump to 0x248824h and overwrite 3 bytes from 55 31 39 (U19) to 55 53 41 (USA)
4) Save the changes and quit the binary editor.

WARNING: THE GIVEN ADDRESSES ARE VALID IF THE EXE IS UNRESIZED VER. 1.03c. IF YOU'RE USING THE OTHER VERSION, YOU MUST SEEK RIGHT ONES.

I am trying to do this right now, but I need some assistance.
The version of Victoria I am using is 1.03c VIP0.4b. Therefore, I think that the binary line number you have indicated is not the same. There is no line number 0x298948h. The Victoria.exe file I have only goes up to 0026dfe0.
There are several instances in which the three numbers 55 31 41 occur. I am not sure which one is the right one. What context am I looking for, besides the text USA? My guess is that the correct line is 00248940, because it is in the section where all the country tags are defined. In the same section, I found 55 31 39, which only occurs once. It is at line 00248820.
One more question.. When I do this, what will happen to the USA events? Will they be transferred automatically to U19 and work seamlessly with the related events from all the other countries?

...No need for assistance. I just edited the file and it seems to be working as hoped. In this game, there seems to be little, if any immigration to the USA - I've been checking it regularly. There is a lot of immigration to Ecuador and Uruguay, as well as to the UK; especially its South African territories. As of February 1852, the population of the USA has grown by only around 4 million, most of that through conquest, as far as I can tell. USA is in 8th place. 3-province Uruguay has around 3.75 million people, which is half the population of Brazil, which is getting no immigration so far.

 

[OldManDubya]

What really annoys me is how dificult it is to get Japan to have immigrants, i know that would be realistic for real life, but once, i got Japan to have a party that supported free citizenship and to have full social reforms.

All i got were about 2,000 lousy polish farmers.

 

[palmus]

couldn't someone just upload the *.exe file with that immigrantthingy in it?

 

[OriginalRafiki]

No.

Distributing modified exe's is not allowed.

 

[unmerged(36763)]

No.

Distributing modified exe's is not allowed.

For those of use who really don't know much about modding, how is that different than simply editing files?

 

[OriginalRafiki]

I'm not familiar with the background and reasons for Paradox' policy concerning this, but they are pretty clear about it; no mods are allowed to distribute the .exe; neither the original nor any modified version of it.