Start year-End year Question

[Mikebloke]

Hi guys, got Rome Gold a little while back, love the game, yet to try any of the other mods yet but I'll make sure I do once I've played Vanilla to death.

From forum lurking a long time ago (before I had the chance to play Rome at all, reading AAR's and the like) I read about possible problems with editing the starting or ending year in Rome. I was wondering whether anyone could explain it to me.

I have tried editing the starting date, I've noticed that editing it earlier, without modding anything else makes the AI go on a war spree with about 5-6 wars breaking out straight away. I've also noticed if you goto the extreme of setting the year to "1" it makes all the nations force a truce with each other which is listed to "expire" at 6.1.1 (6th of Jan, 1st year) but it doesn't happen and I don't think it does expire naturally.

Is there anything I can do to stop this, any other files that I need to edit? Any other things I need to lookout for? (I know there is a separate file for alliances).

 

[Cheexsta]

Descartes did some research regarding start dates for his Imperium mod, you might be able to find some info there.

Basically, the game doesn't like doing stuff too close to 1AUC. Also note that the 'end date' in defines.txt isn't the date that the game ends; it's the last possible date for the game to start. The game still has its hardcoded end date as normal.

 

[y1kdcb5au9rqw]

You should probably not go further back than year 80 because you risk getting characters etc. with negative start/birth dates which the game is unable to handle, leading to characters with eternal life and other stuff not working, much like you describe with the eternal truce.

basically you need to change all dates in the relevant history files if you want characters etc. to be in the game with a new start date since everything has an "activation" date and will only be in the game if that date is further back than the year you start the game.

 

[Mikebloke]

Thanks guys for your help.

 

[Mikebloke]

Also note that the 'end date' in defines.txt isn't the date that the game ends; it's the last possible date for the game to start. The game still has its hardcoded end date as normal.

Really? I'm playing Rome Gold with the beta patch (although I was unable to install the .2 update as the patch file thinks the game doesn't exist on my drive, a problem a lot of people were having) and yesterday I tried editing the end date in the defines file and it seems to work (both starting after the vanilla game's end date and starting earlier and going past it) unless certain things break past that point.

 

[y1kdcb5au9rqw]

There is a hard coded kill screen in the early 730s which ends the game and takes you back to the opening screen.

If you set the end date in defines to 750 it will show the moment you start a game on a date after the hard coded limit, in case you want to see it

 

[Mikebloke]

There is a hard coded kill screen in the early 730s which ends the game and takes you back to the opening screen.

If you set the end date in defines to 750 it will show the moment you start a game on a date after the hard coded limit, in case you want to see it

Bah! That's sneaky! Just tried it, I obviously didn't test it late enough before.