Some new VERY IMPORTANT modding features :D

Democracy 3 modding
1

So version 1.08 is live for windows and it adds support for two new thinsg:

  1. There is now a new folder in \my documents\my games\democracy3 called ‘overrides’.
    this is for player-overrides, which means anyone playing the game who wants to globally and totally change one of the existing effects in the game (or add a new one, for example) can do so without having to go through all the complexities of creating a mod, with a mod ini file etc…

So if you stick a file in there called ‘mychange.ini’ (filename is irrelevant but must be unique) filled with this:

[override] TargetName = "WorkerProductivity" HostName = "AlcoholConsumption" Equation = "0-(0.07*x)" Inertia = 0

Then this will change that equation for every country in the game, even modded ones. You can also delete the effect by replacing the equation with Equation = “DELETE”. You can add a new connection just by specifying the host and target.

Next in the order of priority are some new ini files which are looked for in every mod, and these are in a new folder called ‘overrides’ in a mods ‘data’ folder.
so for example in

\program files\democracy 3\my mod\data\overrides

You can stick a bunch of ini files that change the game. Note that this allows you to change a whole bunch of game equations without ever touching the games core files, so you can, for example have a mod which boosts the extent to which science helps technology, and have it as a mod you can happily toggle on or off. Also note that mods don’t have to involve new countries at all, you can just have a ‘remix’ mod that changes all the equations :smiley:

2

this sounds to good to be true
like it

3

Does this only effect simulation and policies equations or can events and dilemmas be overridden too?

4

Actually that’s a very good question, I have no reason to suspect it won’t work, but tbh it didn’t occur to me to test that (or try it!).

5

Cool feature, though when I tried placing:

[override]
TargetName = "JuryTrial"
HostName = "Education"
Equation = "0.04+(0.04*x)"
Inertia = 0

In my mod’s data/overrides folder, it didn’t change anything. Am I doing something wrong?

6

Hi folks

What i am trying to do is just maintain a modified policies.csv, i have a steam install on a win 7 machine. I have successfully created a new “country” mod using the modding gui - it plays not sure if the grudges are working yet.

a) where should i put a modded policies.csv? i wish these to be across the board changes (all missions).

I currently have it in place of the original (put here)

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Democracy 3\data\simulation

That seems to work fine.

Suppose i put it here

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Democracy 3\idealmods\data\simulation

should that work? (currently it kinda works - does not crash but things go haywire pretty quick. makes me wonder if everything effect is “doubled”)

My modded version (at the moment) has only changed levels of political capital for all items - generally lowering (on a curve) the costs for everything so i don’t expect it to change the dynamics.

b) if i use this folder . . . .

C:\Users\username\Documents\My Games\democracy3\overrides

does this method only support changes in the override.ini format described above, or does it support the whole directory tree thing.

7

ahhh… you can only add new policies right now, not replace existing ones… I shall investigate fixing that in future. You can change effects for existing policies but not alter stuff like costs etc.

8

That should work fine, can you send me the mod files? (cliff AT positech dot co dot uk)

9

Sent. Hopefully you’ll find what the hell I’ve done wrong.

10

Umm, I’m not sure this feature works properly? Either that or your instructions above are wrong? After a bunch of fiddling around, I can get player-overrides working fine, but moving the file from there to a mod’s ‘/data/overrides/’ folder and it stops working. So it doesn’t seem to load mod overrides? Or at least, if the game does I can’t work out why it isn’t loading mine when they work fine as player-overrides.

-El

11

I can’t seem to make this feature work at all, for either player-overrides or mod-overrides. Is it a problem with Steam?

EDIT: Got it working for player-overrides. Windows thought I’d created a .txt file. I set my system to show file names, manually changed it to a .ini, and now player-overrides work. I haven’t tested mod-overrides yet.

12

Hmmm it definitely worked, I just re-tested it again to be 100% sure. I made education boost oil prices :smiley:
Are you definitely using build 1.08 or later?
Are you definitely seeing the mod as ‘enabled’ (the default) in the mod control panel, and is it being detected there?
I think mission-based mods take priority, so if you add an effect, and then a mission-based override removes it, you won’t see it.

13

Okay, I have no idea what I was doing wrong before. I just tried again what exactly I thought I had tried last tried last time to double check the problem I was having and now it works? Not sure how I managed to screw up. Anyway, yes, it does work. Sorry about that.

-El

14

Hey, it works. I’m not sure what I did wrong the first time, but I have since discovered something. If you have overrides in the my games\democracy3 area, and you have identical overrides in a mod, then the game will crash if the mod is enabled.

15

Interesting, and glad it can at least work, I was wondering what I might have screwed up :smiley:

16

Putting five overrides into the same .ini causes the fifth override to fail. It doesn’t crash like a misformatted override does, it just doesn’t function. Sticking that override into another .ini makes it work. In any case, if there’s an extra linebreak between overrides in one file, it will stop processing. That limited me to one override per .ini until I figured it out.

I’m getting some erratic impact from inertia, as well. Sometimes modifying inertia works, sometimes it doesn’t. Out of four times I’ve tried to make an override that increased the inertia of a policy’s impact on a stat, only one of them worked. It was the first override in the .ini, in case that matters.

17

when will the 1.08 for mac be coming?
and will it be possible to override mission policies, like adding policies that a country has from the start?

18

mac and linux will be skipping 1.08 and going to 1.09 which I plan to release this week on PC, and then there will be a few days delay porting it to mac.

19

awesome, thanks

20

It would be good to be able to mod existing events, dilemmas and assassinations without modifying original game.