descr_regions.txt

Rome: Total War

First, descr_regions.txt is one of the most important files and absolutely essential for making a new map.

This is an example of a vanilla Rome: Total War (NOT BI or M2) description of a region. The changes of Barbarian Invasion and Medieval II will be explained below.

Latium    (Province name)
	Rome    (Settlement name)
	romans_julii    (Culture/faction tag)
	Latins    (Rebel tribe)
	52 13 198    (Map RGB value)
	slaves, dogs, pigs, rome, italy    (Comma-separated resources list)
	5    (Triumph point value)
	8    (Base farm level)

The words written in in with '( )' around them are not included in the TXT file but are meant as guidelines and will be explained below.

Province name: Here, you must determine the name that you want your region to have. This is not the name of the settlement. If you have a region that has two words in it (ex: Washington DC) you must devide it with an underscore (ex: Washington_DC).

Settlement name: Here, you must determine the name that your settlement will have. Again, if you have two words for your settlement, they must be divided by an underscore.

Culture/faction tag: The culture tag defines how loyal the people of the settlement will be to the faction that governs them. The people will less likely rebel to the faction that you put there (ex: Rome will less likely rebel against the Romans than against the Barbarians)

Rebel tribe: Here you must put the name of the 'Rebel Tribe' that will be the 'faction' of the people who rebel in this settlement. A list of all the rebel factions can be found in rebel_factions_descr_enums.txt in the 'data' folder.

Map RGB value: The RGB (Red-Green-Blue) value must be exact the same as the RGB value your region has in the map_regions.tga.

Comma-separated resources list: Here, you must put the names of the resources that your region will have. If you don't want any resources you can simply write 'none' there. Any resources used in descr_regions must either be "hidden resources" or "trade resources".

All hidden resources must be listed at the top of export_descr_buildings.txt - new ones may be added to the existing list.

Trade resources are listed in descr_sm_resources.txt

Triumph point value: It is not clear what this does. It doesn't seem to affect your campaign map. Just write down '5' because that seems to be the basic number.

Base farm level: This is how much money your settlement will gain from farming. The higher the number, the higher the income. But than again, it doesn't have a big influence on the balancing of your campaign. Some perfectly balanced mods just use '0'. The Base farm level also affects the population growth rate of a settlement.

NOTE: All region and settlement names must be included in the campaign_name_regions_and_settlement_names.txt file in the data text folder. In earlier versions of RTW it was required to put all region and settlement names in the descr_regions_and_settlement_name_lookup.txt file in the campaign folder - that file is not read and is redundant in RTW 1.5 and BI 1.6.

Changes in Barbarian Invasion:

(Province name)
	legion: Barbaricorum        (Legion name)
        (Settlement name)
	(Culture/faction tag)
	(Rebel tribe)
	(Map RGB value)
	(Comma-separated resources list)
	(Triumph point value)
	(Base farm level)
        pagan 90 christianity 10    (Religion)

Legion name: Here you can write down what name the legions trained in this region will bear (when playing as romans). I'm not familiar with legions but it seems that you have to add their names in both barbarian_invasion_regions_and_settlement_names (located in data/text) and possibly in descr_regions_and_settlement_name_lookup.txt for early patches. NB: the lookup file is redundant in BI patched to 1.6.

Religion: This where you give the starting religion values of your settlement. You have 3 religions in vanilla Barbarian Invasion, namely: christianity, pagan and zoroastrian. Additional religions may be added by modding other files, see Alpaca's tutorial here.

NOTE: You can have all 3 different religions at the same time in one settlement but you have to make sure that the values are '100' together. (ex: pagan 90 + christianity 10 = 100) Exceeding 100 for the combined effect seems to leave the settlement stuck permanently belonging to the default religion.

Changes in Medieval 2: Total War.

In M2TW, everything is basically the same as in RTW. No legions anymore and the religions are slightly different though:

(Province name)
	(Settlement name)
	(Culture/faction tag)
	(Rebel tribe)
	(Map RGB value)
	(Comma-separated resources list)
	(Triumph point value)
	(Base farm level)      
        religions { catholic 0 orthodox 0 islam 0 pagan 100 heretic 0 }

Religion: As you see, it's actually easier this way, with all the religions already described. You can have all 5 religions at the time in your settlement but again, you have to make sure that together, they are 100 (ex: catholic 10 + orthodox 10 + islam 10 + pagan 10 + heretic 60 = 100)

Rebel tribe: The rebel_factions_descr_enums.txt file is unused in M2TW, notice it still has RTW rebel faction names, all rebel factions should be taken from or created in descr_rebel_factions.txt