Noob modding questions

[FOARP]

Am getting the error message that I have to create a capital city for each country when I try to save my mod. How do you create a capital city? I see how to create cities using the resource layer but the cities I create don't show up as available for adding as a capital city.

Is there a general modding guide somewhere? The game manual doesn't contain much detail.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Capitals can be found in the Resources layer under cities and major cities. Place one of those in each nation's territory and it will automatically be made the capital of that nation.

- BNC

[mroyer]

Capitals can be found in the Resources layer under cities and major cities. Place one of those in each nation's territory and it will automatically be made the capital of that nation.

The prerequisite of this is that you first need to create some land territory (on the tile layer), then assign it an owner, then place the capital city in it. This had me stymied for a while early on too.

[FOARP]

Thanks guys. Yeah, I hadn’t known about the need to assign territory first.

[FOARP]

Oh, also: is there any way of doing coastlines that isn't simply agony-inducing? You have to go through hundreds of possible items none of which seem to fit properly. The alternative is just not doing them but that looks terrible.

[FOARP]

Am very slowly building a map of North America. Even using the map-generator tool and the image of North America provided, the coastline has many misalignments. Correcting each by hand requires selecting a coastline hex from ~600 potential options. After a number of days at doing this, I have only just finished the Pacific coast and still have the (way more gnarly) Atlantic and Caribbean coasts left to do (EDIT: have now done the Gulf coast - thank god for that flat Texas coast - and Florida/the Carolinas, Chesapeake bay next....).

Suggestion: the map-tool should check that the coastline hexes match and average out the differences where they don't.

[BillRunacre]

The only way is manually I'm afraid, but you will find that the more you do, the quicker you will get at it.

[FOARP]

Hi All,

Thanks for your assistance so far. A few more noob questions:

1) I've created a graphics mod (i.e., I'm over-writing Yugoslavia with a different country, changing the Yugoslav flag to a different one etc.). Can I apply the graphics changes in the editor? The edited graphics files are in C:\Users\[me]\Documents\My Games\[game name]\Mods\[my mod]\interface, and my mod shows up in the "mods" dialogue in the editor, but when I select it nothing changes. It would be nice to know they are actually working before loading the mod fully.

2) Whilst I have assigned Canada to a faction, for some reason Canada's borders do not show up in the editor minimap. Indeed, only faction majors appear to be highlighted, and these all in a single colour for each faction. I am not sure what is going wrong here.

[El Condoro]

I'm not sure if coastlines can be made *easy* but I made them *easier* to do these ways:
1. Hover the mouse over any coast hex and use the + or - keys to scroll through the coastlines. You'll notice that the coastline 'rotates' in a clockwise direction.
2. Once you have the right-hand side of the coast anchored, using + and - will be easier to find the 'other side' of the coast to anchor.
3. When you have a coast that you want to use in multiple places, you can right-click it to select in the palette and then left-click into all the hexes that will use that coast.
4. Finally, I drew a simple hex and indicated where the 2-side and 3-side coast numbers were. I'm not sure it will make sense but 516 and 517, for example, will have a coastline that has two sides 'hinged' in the NE corner; 524 and 525 have 3 sides with the centre side in the NE; 540-543 have 5 sides with the open side in the NW. LMK if you want further info - this simple scribbled page allowed me to keep what little hair I still have.
Hex numbers