Need Help The war I want...

[Takeda-One]

Hey folks,

how can I change date and nation relations within a running game? If that is not possible how can I change it prior to a game start?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you have a recent Beta 3.5 WIP version, you can choose the starting date on a Free Play game.
If you look up the Beta 3.4 thread on the Build forum, you'll find a zip there that allows you to do that in the latest public release version too.

Nation relations are linked to which of the six periods you play in.
This can be easily tweaked in PROGRAM\Periods.c .

If you want something historically accurate, you could also see about working together with @Grey Roger because he had the idea before to add some specific date dependent starting relations in the Free Play StartStoryline.c file.
That would be possible too.

 

[Takeda-One]

Assuming that the relations for the periods are correct, then changing the date in the Storyline start must affect it automatically, or not?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That's the idea, yes. Though of course six sets of different initial relations is admittedly quite a simplification over real history.

See what you get. If you're happy with it, that does save you the trouble of changing things.

 

[Grey Roger]

Relations are generally correct at the start of the period. Periods cover a long time and international relations changed frequently, which is why I had the idea of adding a lot of statements to the free-play "StartStoryline.c" to change relations based on exact year. During "Spanish Main", for example, Portugal starts off at war with England but they ought to ally in 1640 (the war was because of Portugal's union with Spain, which ended in 1640), while Holland and England had several on-off wars during the period. That's currently the one example where I know relations aren't accurate at the start - I changed "Periods.c" to put Holland at war with England for the benefit of Michiel de Ruyter.

You don't need to change the Storyline start to change the date for a free-play game, you can choose the starting date at the selection screen. It's probably not a good idea to change the start date for fixed storylines as the plot is likely to assume the original start date - at the very least you might encounter quest ships which, being chosen for the default start date, are inappropriate for your chosen date.