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[Vanshilar]

I've figured out where the instructions for the plots (i.e. do this if human player selects A, check for that, etc.) are stored in LIB.CLU. They're a bunch of 6-byte lines. There's 80831 of them. So it'll take a while to figure out what they do.

However, I've figured out some basic things, such as the instruction to display lines of text (the lines in the previous 15 posts), and adding player stats such as resources and ability (Adm/Mil/Pol) points. Since Adm points are the hardest to get later on, I thought I'd take a look at how to get them first:

* Marrying Queen Catherine
* If Holy Teuton Empire decides to support you, you gain 5 of each resource and 1 of each ability point (this is one of the best outcomes of all the plots)
* When Alain is on trial, and you select B to appoint a new judge, you'll lose a Pol point but gain an Adm point
* When peasants suspect judge in Aniber is accepting bribes, and you select B to have someone try to bribe him
* In Annonay plot, when you try to deliver 8 gold (and have it), Sir Percy reveals himself, and you accept him into your council, you gain 1 of each ability point
* Etienne plot, when you talk to the Order, and ask for extra support from the guilds
* Etienne plot, when asked "Why was Man created?", one of the results says "a smile comes to his face", in which case you'll gain 1 Adm point and 3 of each resource, then 1 Mil point and 1 Pol point; one of the other results says "smiles", in which case you'll gain 1 Adm point and later 1 Pol point; one of the other results may be that nothing happens
* Random event saying bureaucracy gains abacuses
* Professor offers to lecture, and you pay 5 gold and can raise any one ability point
* There's some oddity with the "state of the kingdom" plot. When you give gold to repair the cathedral or throw a festival, it says you gain Adm points (up to 6 if you give 3 gold). This is patently absurd and doesn't work, so there's likely something in the intervening instructions that hampers this. Just mentioning it because it's in the instructions list
* For the stonemason guild repairing St. Simone, when you threaten the guild with force
* In the Lord Chassaine plot, various ways such as if you successfully ambush Corinn
* For Mercurato plot, if you don't have enough troops and he ends up staying in your court
* For Mercurato plot. if Sir Estes signs treaty with King Qalati, you get 1 Adm point, 1 Pol point, 1 infantry, and 1 archers
* For Mercurato, if you don't have enough gold or food, he cancels the expedition and you gain 1 Adm point, 2 infantry, and 1 archers (you probably lost some of those to the plot at some point)
* For Mercurato, he returns from successful expedition to the Pyramids, and you gain 1 Adm point, 2 infantry, 1 archers, and 10 gold
* Doing bishop's paperwork, there's a number of branches where you gain 1 of each ability point or just 1 Adm point (but you probably lost them somewhere along the line)
* When the town Clouseu heals

Some of these may be inaccurate -- I've figured out less than half of the instructions so far, so there's a lot of stuff that I don't understand yet.

Looking at the outcomes, it seems like the Holy Teuton Empire one, the Annonay one, and the Etienne one have the best outcomes (they all give 1 of each ability point and sometimes some resources too) so I'll look into how those work first.

[Vanshilar]

So an overview of the plots:

The probabilities of seeing each of the plots is as follows:
40% "Main" plots
15% "One-liner" plots
41% "Resource" plots
4% Queen Catherine's daughters plot

Main plots:
Each of the main plots are equally likely. There are 18 of them. Some of them start with a wait time, meaning that by the time you see them, you're already locked into that plot. It also means that if the usual time for a plot comes and goes without a plot starting (the first one starts on May 24, 1312), then you have one of these delayed plots. The 18 main plots are:
Arinseault
Mortain (wait 60 days)
Chamord (wait 60 days)
Catherine's debt
Teuton (wait 40 days)
Denmark (wait 60 days)
Peasant grievances (wait 65 days)
Annonay
Laval barracks (wait 60 days)
Duke of Compagne (wait 60 days)
Castile (wait 60 days)
Roland (wait 60 days)
Chassaine
Mercurato
Officious-looking clerk
Clouseu
Discontented
Etienne

One-liner plots:
These are just humorous anecdotes or random events that give you a few gold or takes a few gold, etc. There are 52 of them.

Resource plots:
There seems to be some sort of check to not give these plots unless you have enough resources. Thus, if these plots are unavailable, the plot script goes back and chooses another. These plots basically take resources and give happiness. There are 13 of them. They are:
Illness ("terrible plague has hit the village")
Plague ("archer complains of shooting pains in his stomach")
Locust ("swarm of locusts is attacking our crops")
Termites ("termites have invaded our lumber supply")
Drought ("serious drought has plagued the village")
Mining accident ("mine tunnels collapsed")
Killer bees ("swarm of killer bees is attacking our people")
Explosion ("explosion at the foundry")
Weapons ("Sir Gunny")
Camouflage ("Sara Thimble")
Dowser ("Madame Zelda")
Genetic Engineer ("Dr. Snodgrass")
Fertilizer ("Sir Vincent")

Queen Catherine's daughters:
There are separate plots for each of the factions (Valois, Anjou, Burgundy, and Aragon). I'm not sure yet how they differ. Albion cannot have this plot because Albion is married already to Edna.

[Vanshilar]

For those who are interested, I've put up the save game format for the game here:

http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/C...ve_Game_Format

If you have any questions about the save game data, please let me know.

[Vanshilar]

I've (mostly) figured out how the initial map creation process works, and put the results in a graphic attached here.

Each faction can start in one of 3 possible locations. The Pope starts with 3 territories; each can be at 1 of 4 possible locations. Each of those sets have a different pattern (solid color, horizontal stripes, or vertical stripes).

If the commodities is set to "Balanced", then the resource type is dictated by the castle size in the graphic (no castle, Partial Castle, Small Castle, or Large Castle), with each castle size corresponding to one of the resources. Note that it's not exactly even; there are 10 "Small Castles" and 8 "Large Castles". So once you know one of them, you know where all the territories are for that resource type.

If the commodities is set to "Geographic", then the resource type depends on the type shown in the graphic. An "F" represents plains, which has a 75% chance of being food, otherwise it will be iron or gold (never timber). A "T" represents forest, which has a 75% chance of being timber, otherwise it will be iron or gold (never food). A "G" represents mountains, which has a 50% chance of being iron and 50% chance of being gold (never food nor timber).

I didn't look into what if the commodities is set to "Random", I assume then the resources are randomly generated but didn't verify this.

The numbers are the territory ID's. You can see this order if you tab through the territories during the game. (Beware though, if you tab during a plot or other actions while the lower right window is active, you may break the game including breaking any save games saved after doing so.)

Since gold is the most important resource, if you're playing on "Geographic", then Valois is probably the best option since it puts you close to the largest number of mountain territories. Just make sure you scout ahead so you know which one is the Pope.

[Vanshilar]

In Castles 2: Siege and Conquest, copy protection takes the form of occasional questions about random things from the manual like how many points does a castle need to have to prevent a territory from revolting. They're not that hard to memorize, but if you want to disable them, follow these steps:

1. Open up LIB.CLU in your favorite hex editor.
2. Go to bytes 0xB4BBC to 0xB4BC1. The values should be "04 40 2F 4C 00 00" (in hexadecimal). Alternatively, you can just search for this sequence of byte values, as there are only two of them.
3. Change the value "2F" into "2D".
4. Save the file and play! If copy protection comes up during the course of the game, you'll simply get the "Thank you, Majesty" message for successfully completing the copy protection.

Node 19500 in LIB.CLU is the "plot" that gets activated when doing the copy protection. It usually goes to node 19503 ("2F 4C"), which then goes to the appropriate question to ask. This change moves it instead to node 19501, which is when you successfully answer the copy protection question.

[starfiretbt]

I'm glad somebody posted the plots to this game, how do I read them? For example I see the plots and their response but where does the plot continue? I thought those words "NODE" referred to the rest of the plot if you gave a specific response, but I can't find the second NODE corresponding to the response.
I'm trying to complete the plots in a manner that succeeds.

[Smiling Spectre]

Um, where do you see the plots?

[Vanshilar]

Originally Posted by starfiretbt

I'm glad somebody posted the plots to this game, how do I read them?

What's posted is the text displayed to the user from the plots. The code that controls what happens wasn't posted, although they're in the same file (LIB.CLU). I never figured out all of the code, however I figured out roughly 80% of it, good enough to get a decent handle on how it works. When you make each choice, there's sometimes some stat checking, then it'll move you to the node corresponding to the next part of the plot. You can figure out which node most of the plots go by context, though you'd have to look at the LIB.CLU code to see the stat checking. If you have a specific one in mind let me know and I can tell you what happens to it.

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

Um, where do you see the plots?

The plots are taken from the file LIB.CLU. It contains the text displayed to the user (posted here) as well as some code giving the logic for which node to go to depending on the state of the game, i.e. depending on your Adm/Mil/Pol or your resources, etc.

[starfiretbt]

I didn't have notifications turned on so I didn't see everybody's responses until now.
I tried opening a file called "LIB" and it says it's a type "CLU" file so I assume that's what your talking about, but it seems to be in another language. How do you read it?
EDIT: By the way, thank you for responding.

[Vanshilar]

I posted about how to read LIB.CLU here: https://moddingwiki.shikadi.net/wiki...Cluster_Format

I know that the description there might be a bit "dense", it takes a bit of playing around with it to see what I meant. To help, you can search LIB.CLU for "Annonay", where the text just happens to be unencrypted (because the cluster ID value just happens to line up to where no text changes), to get an idea of how the file is saved. From there you can try decoding the actual plot instructions if you want; I had gotten through quite a bit of it, but never posted about it because I never finished it. Let me know if you want help with that.

Note that on the same website, I also posted about how the save game file is stored, in case you want to edit the save game files.