New civ mod not working

Age of Empires III: DE III - Modding
1

I’ve been trying to make a mod for me and friends to try with an entirely new civ and while I can upload it to the game it never appears in the skirmish menu when I go to select it. I am admittedly quite bad at coding, but I can’t find any obvious problems. It isn’t done yet, but I believe I have all of the files needed for it to at least appear in game completed. Is this a common issue? If so, what are some common fixes? If anyone wants to look at it themselves I can send whatever you need to see.

2

Download a different civ mod, and compare the files.
Most likely there is an issue in the homecity file, which causes the game to create a broken savegame file.

Common issue.

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3

I just went through and made fixes to my homecity file, but the issue is persisting. What other files are most likely to cause the civ not to appear if an error is present?

I don’t know how relevant this is, but I noticed this next to my civ under enabled mods in the logs:
1 “modciv” Crc: 2539911958 CrcFromInstall: 0 SafeForMultiplayer: 0
For other mods, the CrcFromInstall is the same as the Crc.

I’m also not done with the mod, so I’m missing a few things that I know are needed for the civ to function properly (shipments past age 2, politicians, age up techs other than age 1). What information needs to be present just for the civ to appear?

4

If it doesnt show up, delete the savegame file. And make sure that you have cloudsaves disabled.

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5

I tried this a few times and while every other mod is working properly, mine still isn’t. The CrcFromInstall still reads as 0 for mine, while other mods have a CrcFromInstall equal to the Crc. Earlier you said it was most likely an issue with the homecity file; are there any other files that often cause issues like this when they contain an error?

I’m also noticing that my homecity in the save file appeared as only 2kb (other mods were all 60-100), so is that a sign I should double-check my homecity file again?

6

What’s a CRCFromInstall?

7

I’m honestly not sure what it means, I was checking the logs when I was troubleshooting and saw this:

PreGame 20875: Enabled Mods:
PreGame 20875: 1 “newmoddedciv” Crc: 306072604 CrcFromInstall: 0 SafeForMultiplayer: 0
PreGame 20875: 3 “Just Poland - Polish Civilization” Crc: 2707825593 CrcFromInstall: 2707825593 SafeForMultiplayer: 0
PreGame 20875: 4 “Denmark - Norway Civilization” Crc: 2521156608 CrcFromInstall: 2521156608 SafeForMultiplayer: 0

The top one is the one I’m making, and the other 2 were active so I could compare my mod to ones I knew worked.

8

I still don’t understand what are you even doing.

What logs, where did you find those?

9

C:\Users\myname\Games\Age of Empires 3 DE\Logs\Age3Log

10

Because the Polish civ is not as local mod. Its from the subscribet part.
Thats why the CRC is the same

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11

Okay, that makes sense.

Another thing I tried doing was checking the homecity file in the savegame folder that the game created for my mod, and the saved homecity file it generated for my civ was much shorter than every other one, despite the fact that I have a complete homecity folder aside from some shipments:

<savedhomecity version="11">
	<checksum>ceC9DZ2/WrYSJnY6eQI0HbAhIOp0p9RxUqeDa99/HG8=</checksum>
	<civ></civ>
	<hctype>HC</hctype>
	<name></name>
	<heroname>Reginleif</heroname>
	<herodogname></herodogname>
	<heroskinids>
		<skinid>-1</skinid>
		<skinid>-1</skinid>
	</heroskinids>
	<shipname></shipname>
	<hcid></hcid>
	<respec>1</respec>
	<level>1</level>
	<xp>0</xp>
	<skillpoints>0</skillpoints>
	<xppercentage>0.000000</xppercentage>
	<numpropunlocksearned>0</numpropunlocksearned>
</savedhomecity>

This occurred even after deleting the savegame folder with steam cloud disabled. Does this imply that the problem lies in my homecity file?

12

Correct, that means there is an issue with the homecity file in data and or the civ entry in civs.xml

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13

I found it this morning, there were just two slashes in a entry. Thank you for all of the help, I greatly appreciate it.

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14

As a word of advice, I recommend regularly checking every file you edit with an xml linter before trying to load it into a game (there are plenty of free ones online, just copy the text of the file into it). If there is a syntax error in a file, the game won’t load it.

This has bitten me a lot in the past.

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15

The program I use, Notepad++, comes with one incorporated as a free plugin.

It has made scripting way, way easier and faster.

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