Total War: ROME REMASTERED

Total War: ROME REMASTERED

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Basic game file editing.
By Andrwe
This will give you a basic understanding on how the Rome text files interact with the game as an intent to get you to delve deeper into the engine. Included are simple edits that directly effect aspects of the game.
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Before we start..
Whenever you do anything in life, it's a good idea to have a "plan B." Digitally, this is a copy..

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We will have some fun with the historical battles. Despite text files simplicity, sometimes even just removing a single letter can lock you out of that battle or launching any campaign until you fix it, if you don't know what you edited/deleted, good luck... So please have a backup.

It's also important to note, this is not "modding" the game. Think of Rome's text files as a block of clay, we can poke it and pull it, but we can not make it two.
To be clear, we do not need to exit the game to complete these edits. You only need to go back to the menu and restart a new campaign.
Historical Battles. (Alexander DLC)
Getting there -
Right click on Remastered Rome in your steam library, hover over "manage." Then click "browse local files."


Follow this path.
Contents -> Resources -> Data -> Alexander -> Data -> World -> Maps -> Battle -> Custom -> *

It should look like this..

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As it is at the top, lets click into "Chaeronea" first. Go ahead an open up the text file called "descr_battle"

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I will give you a second to take in the beauty of what you see, this is a serious statement. If you don't already understand, we are looking at the battle in text form. Any numerical data we change here will appear in the battle of "Chaeronea." So take note of the line that says " Unit-alexander-soldiers 80-exp 8-armour 3-weapon_lvl3"

Now lets visualise this...
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If you compare our text file with our most recent screenshots you will immediately see the connections. Time to take it a step further.. If you have a backup, lets have a go at changing this now. Edit Alexanders description from "soldiers 80" to "soldiers 300"
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Make sure to save this text file.
Time to view the results...
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Absolutely brilliant isn't it?? So simple, no tricks. Just a simple numerical edit. If it isn't already clear, yes, you can change any units numbers in this battle, you can also change their "exp" "armour" and "weapon_lvl" These are dictated clearly in each unit cards line. This should also not require any further explanation. If you wish to edit another battle, simply go back and select a different battle and go into its related "descr_battle" file.

Further Notes
-This applies for the base games historical battles and Barbarian Invasion, after this you should be confident enough to source these file locations out yourself.
-I reiterate, just removing a letter from most parts of this document will lock you out of the corresponding battle.

descr_script
-You may have noticed there is a "descr_script" text file located with "descr_battle" Lets open this up to view even more beauty!
If you play this battle and do not engage with the "sacred band" you will lose the battle, this can all be edited here. Any "mythical" trigger can be edited here. In here we find out that for example, the sacred band will rout no matter what after "sustaining 80% casualties." We can change this number to make them rout at 5% casualties! This guide would be a ludicrous size if we sampled and examined all the factors in here. I encourage you to have a look, it's interesting. Maybe content you are trying to make can benefit from this knowledge.

Using the "descr_script" text document, lets attempt to make every unit spawn at the same location..
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Brilliant success!
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It should be noted that some things appear to be overwritten or connect with different files, so unless you know where to find them a change you might try could have no response when you launch the battle.
Either way I hope this gives you some inspiration to dig into this beautiful games brains and I would love to see what silly things you can come up with using only such simple edits..

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Imperial Campaign.
Getting there.
Contents -> Resources -> Data -> World -> Maps -> Campaign -> imperial_campaign

Go ahead and click on the Text Document, "descr_strat" - Our destination should look like this.
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Lets examine the the basic ways we can manipulate this file for our nefarious purposes. Go ahead and find the Julii section.

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First and foremost we can see our starting treasury, this is currently "5000" This will barely fund our armies for long, begin by editing this value from "5000" to 250000!-
Excellent! Directly underneath you will begin to notice we have our settlements, this can take some critical thinking and investigation work for they aren't named. Either way, the first settlement we see is "Arretium."
Hmmm, 4,000 people will barely keep our armies replenished for long. Lets increase this value to 8000 and see what happens. -
Italy is a dangerous place, we are at threat of Gaul invasion constantly. We will replace our pitiful wooden palisade with a perfectly crafted stone wall, this will keep the Gauls out.


We should feel a bit safer now. Scroll down to our character section.
Here we should see "Flavius Julius." Lets give him a more formidable force, make sure you conform to the currents texts rules. This could be a little confusing, but if you are having trouble launching the campaign you need to fix something here. There is four space between the naming and exp. You can copy and paste this space from one already completed like so..
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Here is what my new army looks like. Lets take a look in game to check our progress.. (I used a document called "export_units" to find specific naming.)
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Awesome, everything is there and acts as a good example of your possibilities. Curious about those peasants that in the text file are called "warband sword briton?" Good question!

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Surprise, surprise! They are Briton swordsmen..

One final "basic" concept you should know is moving the starting location of your characters. Today, we will go on the offensive!
Go back to our armies text file and view the character Flavius Julius's start coordinates, they are x 89, y 82.
The Rome map is actually a heap of squares that each have a specific coordinate, to visualise this look what happens when we mouse over this resource near Arretium.
So using this knowledge I will have Flavius spawn directly outside of Patavium. I slowly move my mouse north as if to move the general and every time the line depicting the movement path changes, I know that it is a single square/coordinate.

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My guess using this method would be, I will want the coordinates x 93 y 90. Lets try this!
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We will now launch the campaign one final time to see our results!
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Absolutely fantastic!
Thank you!!
I hope you have learnt something or refreshed your memory. Perhaps you have gained a love for how all this works like I did many years ago.
Good fortune to you all!
20 Comments
goddardpaul589 22 Dec, 2023 @ 1:17am 
Just edited the file to give my factions some more money - makes the starting game a lot easier even on the not very good start with just a few pennies and 2 cities type factions, :steamhappy:

Now I can build up the cities and get some nice armies/navies set up.
Otokami_Kogasengaha Of Kinaishon 23 May, 2023 @ 3:48pm 
Well overall its just a regular campaign with some submods is all. The only thing that would "Differ" the game would be extended carthaginian roster and I don't use another "vanilla campaign rework" when I tested it again. Its just OG troop cards, 12 turns, greek reskin submod (purely visual), reroster etc. None of which SHOULD Theoretically change the games main file if it were unit changes. All these sub mods would just be in side main code rather than a full conversion for 2.05 but that obviously isn't the case.
Andrwe  [author] 23 May, 2023 @ 3:36pm 
Ah yeah.. My only idea is that the mod is using a separate txt.file, unless you (for example) are able to see the added factions in the original descr_strat file of course. In which case I am afraid it would be a question for how the modders are "storing" the data.
And if it is helps you find the conclusion, I personally have never installed mods for Rome on this computer at all so it is completely clean.
Otokami_Kogasengaha Of Kinaishon 23 May, 2023 @ 3:29pm 
Well either it doesn't work with mods or there is something i'm somehow missing. But the exact same thing shown, Nada. Nothing, new save and everything and just nope. Money doesn't increase, city pop, city wall (Just to check that) I even went with ur SS's here to double check twice over aaaand Nope. I know how these txt.files work because Warband is the exact same way and even Bannerlord which is EVEN more a headache at times. Even the unit sizes won't change even tho i'm playing on extreme lol General age/stats/traits etc, nothin. Even changing the other factions denarii won't pull through for some reason and yes oc. All done on 2.05/ current.
Andrwe  [author] 23 May, 2023 @ 3:21pm 
@Otokami_Kogasengaha Of Kinaishon
Hey, what exactly are you trying to change? I just went in and all changes I did to the Imperial Campaign were successful. My game version is 2.0.5
Otokami_Kogasengaha Of Kinaishon 23 May, 2023 @ 2:23am 
Yea this shit doesn't work anymore for some reason. I've done everything I could. Either its an update the fuckin devs decided to do or I am somehow missing something so simple which is not the case I can assure you.
Yorick 1 Feb, 2023 @ 11:02am 
Good guide, but my god, the game is already heavily biased toward Rome. :)
patwest 2 Aug, 2021 @ 2:24am 
I haven't been able to get any changes to take since the 2.0.2 beta update. Is their some new way to get it to recognize the changes. I have extensive experience doing this and have a successful submod up and running until I tried to update it a few days ago now I get nowhere.
Mr.Ghosty 23 Jul, 2021 @ 7:34am 
the export_descr_unit file
ArgelTal 3 Jul, 2021 @ 1:25pm 
Another question: how can I access the units stats like: melee attack, missile damage, morale, etc.?
Especially in Barbarian Invasion.