Edit a faction

Factions at the top, its Edit faction tab (the first), then pick the faction. The window fills with what it is now; change what you want. Untouched fields and towns stay exactly as they are.

The rebels (slave) are in the list too: their armies, fleets, agents, garrisons, towns, buildings and units are edited like any faction's. A rebel has a sub_faction - the faction whose look and name list it uses: a new rebel army (Maps, right click) asks for it, a captain for an empty rebel town takes the nearest rebel's. The rebels are never playable and have no capital, leader or heir.

Edit faction tab (the faction itself)

• Names, tooltip and campaign-screen text, colours, AI, money (denari), playable.
• Culture: the faction's culture (descr_sm_factions.txt). The game takes from it the look of its towns, forts and ports on the map, its portraits and agents' pictures, the buildings and units open to that culture and the event pictures (Rome: the voices too). Preview says which units it gains or loses and which buildings in its towns the new culture cannot build (they stay). A new faction keeps its template's culture unless another is picked.
• Rename... beside the internal name changes the faction's code name (egypt -> kemet) in every file of the mod at once: the campaign, units, buildings, names, banners, models, texts' keys; its pictures are copied under the new name. The campaign scripts (campaign_script.txt: I_LocalFaction venice...) follow too; Lua / Squirrel scripts that name it are listed, not changed (code is changed by hand). One write, one backup - Undo this write puts it all back.
• Towns: Towns on the map... opens Maps - a click on a town adds it (their rebels leave; another owner's characters go to its other towns), another click takes it out to give it to the faction in Removed towns go to (rebels by default); Done brings you back, nothing lost. Capital on the map...: one click.
• Capital puts that town first in the faction's block.
• Leader and heir: new names (from the faction's name list) and ages.
• Leader's title / heir's: what the game calls them - King, Duke, Emperor, Grand Prince... Medieval II: only the word of 'King %S' / 'Prince %S' (text/expanded.txt, %S is his name) and the former leader's title change; Rome: the whole leader's / heir's label (expanded_bi.txt). A mod whose texts are only in a .strings.bin is told so in Preview.
• Name list...: the faction's men's names, surnames and women's names, typed in three steps (see New faction). Names its characters and family already carry stay in the list (Preview says which) - the game crashes on a name that is in no list.

Units & armies

• A town's garrison opens as it stands now (marked unchanged until you click a card).
• The faction's armies, fleets and agents already on the map: change units, remove (right click its row) an agent, captain or admiral (never a family member).
• New armies, agents and fleets: Maps (right click the map); a double click on a row opens the Map editor on it.

Buildings

Every building chain the faction may build, with the game's picture of each level. The settlement level and population follow a governor's building (a town with a governor's palace becomes a large town).

City or castle (Medieval II). Settlement is a (top right of the Buildings tab) turns the town into a castle or a city. In Medieval II that is the settlement's own line in descr_strat.txt (settlement castle) together with its buildings, which are either a city's or a castle's (each level says which in export_descr_buildings.txt). The tool converts the buildings the game's own way: a level becomes the level its convert_to names in the matching chain (a city's wooden_wall becomes a castle's castle, town_guard becomes drill_square, a church a chapel), a level with no such line goes (a castle has no market or town hall), and the governor's building is fitted to the settlement (a castle's level equals the settlement's, a city's is one below; a village castle has a motte and bailey, a village city none). Only the kind's own buildings are offered afterwards. Castles go up to a large city (a citadel); a huge city stays a city. Rome has no castles, so the choice is not shown there.

Other tabs

• Map: drag the faction's characters, see Campaign map.
• Diplomacy: per faction the Status at the start (neutral, alliance or war on the first turn, both games) and the AI feeling both ways (Rome: a number, lower is better, 600 (enemies); Medieval II: -1.0 to 1.0). A status pulls the feelings along; hover a column's ?.
• Family tree: the button at the top of the Edit / New faction tab opens it in the form's place.
• Victory (on the Edit / New faction tab, under the leader): regions to hold, how many to take, factions to outlive, Rome's goal (be emperor / take Rome) - for the long and the short campaign. Only the player needs them, but a playable faction without them, or naming a region that does not exist, can crash the game. The list of regions or factions takes many at once: drag over the rows, Shift-click a run, Tick all shown (with Find), tick a whole group (every region a faction holds), or On the map... - click towns there, their regions turn yellow.
• Art: see Faction art.
• Models: who is shown by which figure on the campaign map, their textures, 3D - see Faction art.
• Roster: give or take units and building levels - see Units and buildings.
• Family: characters, traits, the family tree - see Characters and portraits.

Preview changes, then Apply changes. One Apply writes every tab at once, with a backup. Picking another faction with changes not written asks: apply them, drop them, or stay. New faction and Edit faction are the first two tabs (Edit faction is the old Faction tab); going to Maps, the other one or any other editor drops nothing - each keeps its work not written yet until you come back.