Newb question about empires
 

Hi, this is my first post here on the forum so please be gentle http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I'm sorry if this question has been asked before but I couldn’t find anything about it with the search....

OK, here goes: Is it possible to rename (and/or further edit) the stock empires the game ships with?

So for example, can I rename the terran confederation and call them Human Empire or something? I know one can edit an empire and save it to a file. But in that case the "new" empire is created while the old remains unchanged. All I want to do is edit the existing empires, not creating additional ones.

Any sugestions?
Thanks

Re: Newb question about empires
 

You can always edit the stock empires, rename them and delete the old ones http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Newb question about empires
 

Simply save the new empire over the old one and presto, you have succeeded. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Also you should read the Newbie Fact Sticky at the top of this forum. It contains a ton of information to help new players.

Re: Newb question about empires
 

Heh, I feel a bit sheepish right now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Thanks anyway!

Re: Newb question about empires
 

You can edit the AI files too, so that they will be changed when randomly added to a game. Look in Pictures\Races\Racename (where racename is the name of the race in question) folder. Racename_AI_General.txt has that sort of info in it that you want to change. I suggest you only make changes to these files in a mod folder though, to preserve the originals. To make a mod folder:
1) Navigate to the SE4 folder.
2) Create an empty folder named whatever you want.
3) Copy the entire Data folder (including the folder) into the new mod folder (so it now looks like SE4\Mod\Data and has all those text files in it).
4) Create a Pictures folder in the mod folder.
5) Create a Races folder in the pictures folder.
6) Copy all of the race folders from the default SE4 Races folder into the mod's Races folder.
7) To preserve disk space, you can delete all the files in each Racename folder in the Mod's Races folder (except the ones you want to edit, such as Racename_AI_General.txt). SE4 will look in the default folders for any files it needs but can not find in the mod folders.

Then, you can change the files in the mod folder to whatever you want, and use the changes in games where you do not have to select each empire. Just make sure you have 20 or more shipsets/races in the mod, or SE4 will tend to make duplicate empires in random games.