Skirmish with Pike and Shot army list

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PanCalvus
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Skirmish with Pike and Shot army list

Post by PanCalvus »

There seem to be two types of campaigns in the complete game, and with that two kinds of army lists. Half of them can be used in historical campaigns and in skirmish mode, the other half can be used in campaign more. Among these is the "all armies" Pike and Shot list. I'd like to be able to use this list for skirmishes. So I start by copying the whole campaign over to My Games/PSCAMP/CAMPAIGNS. This creates a second data set with all the same properties as the first. From there on, is there any good way to mod this campaign into fitting in with the historical campaigns? It's fine that there are no historical missions for it (although it would be cool if the game doesn't crash when you try to find them anyway), but it would be fun to make some new combinations in skirmish mode.

So, does anyone know how to do this, or has someone already published something like this, an "all armies" list for skirmish mode?

EDIT: Oh wait. It actually seems to mostly work if you copy any of the original Skirmish-able campaigns, like the 30 Years War, and then paste the army list of the Pike and Shot campaign into it. It just doesn't know the names of the armies, even if you paste over Text1.txt and all of its buddies as well. If i find an answers before someone else can hand me one I'll post it in this thread as well.

Thank you very much,

Pan Calvus

P.S. Yes, I know I'm a bit late to the party on this title, I hope there are people reading this anyway.
CaptainSpire
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Re: Skirmish with Pike and Shot army list

Post by CaptainSpire »

PanCalvus wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 11:12 pm

P.S. Yes, I know I'm a bit late to the party on this title, I hope there are people reading this anyway.
It's never too late 8)
PanCalvus
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Re: Skirmish with Pike and Shot army list

Post by PanCalvus »

It's now years later, and I took another stab at this idea. It turns out that the solution is almost embarrassingly simple. Below is a complete and simple to follow step by step guide on how to run singleplayer skirmishes between any two armies from any two time periods. I publish this as a set of instructions so that I don't open up a possibility for piracy. As such, you will need to have the Pike and Shot Campaigns version of the game to make the instructions below work.

I also could use a volunteer to try and see if this can be made to work in multiplayer. See the last bit of this post for that.

These are the steps:

1 Find your folder called 5PikeandShotCampaigns, this will probably be in your Program Files under Steam/steamapps/common/Pike & Shot Campaigns/. This is a folder of original game files.
2 Find your My Games/PSCAMP/CAMPAIGNS folder. The My Games folder I found it in is located in My Documents, but I've also seen games use one that exists parallel to My Documents. This is a folder for mods to your game.
3 Copy your whole 5PikeandShotCampaigns folder (the folder itself, not just the contents) into the PSCAMP/CAMPAIGNS folder. (You can rename this folder to something like "All Armies" to make it easier to rediscover why you have that folder later, it does not affect the gameplay.)
4 Go into the copied folder, and open the file CAMPAIGN file. It will open with a text editor like Notepad. If it does not do this automatically, open it with a text editor like Notepad yourself.
5 The second line of the document says NO SKIRMISH. Delete that line. Just remove it completely. Line 3 is the new line 2. Now save the file.

That was it. Now you have created a version of the Campaigns army list containing all armies that can be used for skirmishes, and all the army names are shown correctly, which was the main issue with my previous setup. But it will look even better if we follow two more steps:

6 While still inside the folder with the modded CAMPAIGN file, open the text5 file, also with a text editor.
7 The second, third and fourth line in this file tell the game what name and description to show for this army set inside the game. To avoid confusing yourself, replace these lines with something like this:
IDS_CAMPAIGN_NAME,"All Armies",
IDS_CAMPAIGN_NAME_LONG,"All Armies Skirmish Mod",
IDS_CAMPAIGN_TEXT,"Army set for having skirmish battles between any 2 opponents.",
Save this file as well.

(Normally I would advise you to make a backup of any file you edit before you make changes, but we still have a backup in the original folder, so we're good to just save over these files.)

You're done now. You've got Pan Calvus' All Armies Skirmish Mod. You can use it by opening your game and selecting the All Armies army list in the skirmish menu. If you want to have two armies fight that are both listed as Pro-Imperial or Anti-Imperial select the side both are on as the player side and toggle Filter Army List to Off. You will also need to toggle Filter Army List to off if you want to have opponents from different era's go at it at all.

"All Armies" will also show up as an option in the Campaigns menu. For all intents and purposes this is a duplicate of the Pike and Shot Army list which will also still be there.

Not that this change does not let you conduct skirmishes between any two armies in multiplayer. And this is where I need a volunteer to try the following steps:

8 Copy the folder you've made the modifications to from the PSCAMP/CAMPAIGNS folder to the PSCAMP/MULTIPLAYER folder.
9 Make sure the new folder in MULTIPLAYER is called ALLARMIES, that the NO SKIRMISH line has been deleted from the Campaign file and that the changes to text5 are copied exactly from step 7. Do not change anything else. I don't know to what extend it matter that you have the exact same folder and files, but let's just be sure.
10 Go the the multiplayer and except my challenge. I've set up an Open Battle game of Spanish 1494-1502 (me) vs Anglo-Dutch 1689-1697 (you) as a fairly random example of a game now possible. The password for the game is Test. If this game is not available anymore someone else was faster than you, but shoot me a message and I'll gladly have a battle with you as well.

Setting up this multiplayer challenge I did notice a weird bug: after setting up a challenge using this mod the game assumes you're trying to start a campaign. But you can just exit that.

(If this doesn't work I would like to try it a second time, because with all the experimenting I might have created an error on my side.)



Thanks for using Pan Calvus' All Armies mod. You have to do a bit of typing, but it's hopefully worth it.



Also, I guess I have a bit of a legal question for the moderation and people with more insight into how the game works than me. If at some point I want to streamline the process, could I upload the modified versions of campaign.txt and text5.txt, as the mod still requires a bunch of other files the play, or would you rather see I wouldn't do that?
StuccoFresco
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Re: Skirmish with Pike and Shot army list

Post by StuccoFresco »

Thanks!
jlsb101088
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Re: Skirmish with Pike and Shot army list

Post by jlsb101088 »

I would like to join a mod's armies to the list. Is it possible?

Also, the list of opponents is small to some factions. Is it possible to add some more?

Thanks in advance
PanCalvus
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Re: Skirmish with Pike and Shot army list

Post by PanCalvus »

O, hey, sorry. I don't uhh, check this tpic very regularly.
jlsb101088 wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 7:33 pm I would like to join a mod's armies to the list. Is it possible?

Also, the list of opponents is small to some factions. Is it possible to add some more?

Thanks in advance
The first question: that's probably possible. It would require some text file editing. I'm not sure exactly how to do it, but I could take a look?

As for the second question: If you toggle "filter army lists" to off you should be able to pitch any army against any other army. You could probably change the lists of "official" opponents the armies have, but clicking the filter to off accomplishes the same thing.
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