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[Lifeng]

Excuse me! I use the Hex editor Neo ver 5.01....
I want to change Chen Gong's LDR to 85, which mean the bytes is 55, but when i text, his LDR is 59...I try changing his LRD and WAR to byte 64, which mean 100...But when i text again, his LDR and WAR are 70....
Please help me to check Chen Gong:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9f4aqr16g41t1bs

[Hero of Chaos]

So, old HoC did some obscure testing again.

Changing an officer's APT to 65 (101) seems to give the best results considering ATK and DEF of the unit.
A Xiahou Dun with 93 LDR and 90 WAR with the APT of 65 in Cavalry gets an ATK of 252 and a DEF of 137 (I think). He does about 3000 dmg against a LDR 88 Gao Shun with Swords using Onslaught (so it's tactic + critical) with 6000 men.

Now comes the weird part. Changing the APT to 66 (102) on the other hand drops the ATK to 6 and raises the DEF to something above 140. You are still able to do all tactics.

Changing it to 64 (100) drops ATK and DEF a little bit compared to 65, which is just as expected. But from 65 onwards you get some weird combinations.

Changing the APT to ff (the highest possible) results in 60's ATK, 50's DEF and disables all tactics.

That explains why in the first version of Lu Bu Campaign, Lei Bo (who had 1f in Spears APT) did so much damage.

[El Jefe]

Since others seem more into testing changes like this, I'll mention an idea I had. The byte that determines whether someone died naturally or unnaturally, did anyone ever test other values for that byte? Sun Ce's event and the longevity/fictional settings got me thinking about it.

[Hero of Chaos]

I think Sun Ce's case is different, since it's the event that increases his lifespan. He has 01 in the byte you mention, so if the event doesn't happen, he'll die around 210. I may test other bytes though, if you haven't already.

So, I'm creating a new scenario right now (it's about time!) and I've come across something in the force code. Let's take Cao Cao in Rival Warlords.

57 01 fe 00 64 14 32 32 32 1e 32 46 14 32 00 32 32 32 32 32 1e 32 00 32 28 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 00 00 00 00 00 09 ff 00 00 ff 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00

We have discovered the use of almost every single byte here. Ruler, strategist, relations with other forces, relations with the 5 tribes (Qiang, Shanyue, Wuhuan, Nanman, Bandits), rank, country name, colour, alliances and techniques.
But what about 00 ff? Well, I think I've got it.

In the district code, we can set the district's target, such as conquering an area or destroying a force. These two bytes are similar, just that they're setting the force's overall target.

00 ff:
This force will aim for total conquest. Most of the big forces have this code, as well as every force in Rise of Heroes.

01 xx:
This force aims for control over a certain area. An example is Ma Teng, he has 01 02. We know from the district target codes that 02 is the code for Xiliang, so Ma Teng will focus on conquering the northwestern area.

00 = Hebei
01 = Zhongyuan
02 = Xiliang
03 = Jiangdong
04 = Bashu
05 = Nanzhong

02 xx:
This force aims for control over a certain region. An example for this one is Liu Yao/Yan Baihu/Wang Lang in Rival Warlords. They have 02 07 here. This means they're trying to take control of the region that has the cities Jianye, Wu, Huiji, Lujiang and Chaisang. Zhang Lu has 02 0a, so he'll try to conquer the cities in the Shu area.

00 = Xiangping, Beiping, Ji
01 = Nanpi, Pingyuan, Jinyang, Ye
02 = Beihai, Xiapi, Xiaopei, Shouchun
03 = Puyang, Chenliu, Xuchang, Runan
04 = Luoyang
05 = Wan, Chang'an, Shangyong
06 = Anding, Tianshui, Wuwei
07 = Jianye, Wu, Huiji, Lujiang, Chaisang
08 = Jiangxia, Xinye, Xiangyang, Jiangling
09 = Changsha, Wuling, Lingling, Guiyang
0a = Yong'an, Hanzhong, Zitong, Jiangzhou, Chengdu
0b = Jianning, Yunnan

03 ff:
This force does nothing more than taking free cities and such. The typical Liu Biao/Liu Zhang/Tao Qian/etc... force.

These are the only codes I've come across so far.

If you don't believe this, simply compare my lists to the scenario files. You'll come across the obvious things (Liu Yu aiming for control over region 00 in DZ's Rise, Gongsun Zan aiming for control over Hebei in YTR, etc.).

That should decipher the whole force code. Not doing the alliances though, for me they're random values. Just start the scenario, take control of the forces you want to ally in the scenario, form alliances, save, open the save file, copy the newly generated bytes in the alliance code and paste them into the scenario file. Annoying if you want many forces to ally, but that's the only way to do it at the moment.

[El Jefe]

Well that explains why all the behavior stuff I tried to change for certain forces never really did much. I might change that byte and see if it has a significant impact on the two suckster Lius, though with all the bonuses I gave them to make up for their ineptitude, they do all right in the X Series stuff. At least, they do about as well as I want them to perform, heh.

Oh, and the tribe relations thing. Does it have any impact on gameplay at all? I would imagine the only possible effect would be like having X Ties applied to the entire force rather than the city an officer with such a skill is in.

[Hero of Chaos]

AI force behavior in general depends on 3 things:
- Force's target
- District's target
- Ruler's "target"

The ruler's target is something we have not discovered yet, but the RTKXI.exe file (which you can hex edit as well and thus create translations and such) as well as that buggy scenario editor that has been released a few months ago confirm that there is some byte which codes what the officer aims for. Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Quan, Yuan Shao and others are coded to aim for unification of the whole country, but other officers only aim for unifying a province, an area or so (probably like the two "suckster Lius").

It might be set in the Apiration code, since we have discovered that there are more than one possible codes for a certain aspiration like "Goodly" or "Military".

I actually might take a look at these aspiration codes as I have kept my hands off it mostly (only touched it when I made Liu Xie playable and had to do something there). Perhaps we can see similarities in the aspiration and force/district target codes?

------

The relations thing. Well, most forces have 00 bytes here, which means that they're hostile towards every tribe. Only a few forces have bytes here, namely:
- Zhang Jiao (64 with bandits)
- Ma Teng/Chao (64 with Qiang)
- Gongsun Zan (50 with Wuhuan)
- Liu Yu (IIRC 50 as well with Wuhuan)
- Yan Baihu (50 with Shanyue)
- Meng Huo (64 with Nanman)
- Yuan Shao (something with the Wuhuan in Clash at Guan Du)
- Cao Cao (3c with Wuhuan and Qiang in the later scenarios)

That makes testing in general difficult if you don't force it (by using the blank map scenario, creating a few one city forces and setting their relations).
I can say that the higher the relation is, the less likely the force will be attacked by a tribe. However, it does not prevent it wholly. IIRC I've once seen Zhang Jiao having to deal with bandits despite his 64 relations with them.
I also don't know if the relations with a tribe decrease during a game. If yes, this might be an explenation for bandit attacks on Zhang Jiao. But this really was the only time something like this had happened. I've never seen the Qiang going mad at Ma Teng for example.

[Hero of Chaos]

Uh, yeah... just wanted to say that I found out that the regions' names are coded in the scenario.S11 file (those that are used for force/district targets and birthplaces).

00 = You (Xiangping, Beiping, Ji)
01 = Ji (Ye, Nanpi, Pingyuan, Jinyang)
02 = Qing Xu (Beihai, Xiapi, Xiaopei, Shouchun)
03 = Yan Yu (Chenliu, Puyang, Xuchang, Runan)
04 = Si Li (Luoyang)
05 = Jing Zhao (Chang'an, Wan, Shangyong)
06 = Liang (Wuwei, Anding, Tianshui)
07 = Yang (Jianye, Wu, Huiji, Lujiang, Chaisang)
08 = Jing Bei (Xinye, Xiangyang, Jiangling, Jiangxia)
09 = Jing Nan (Changsha, Wuling, Lingling, Guiyang)
0a = Yi (Chengdu, Zitong, Hanzhong, Jiangzhou, Yong'an)
0b = Nan Zhong (Yunnan, Jianning)

Nothing new, just the names. It's obvious that they took the names of provinces for the regions (except for Jing Zhao).

And something regarding the discussion about Liu Biao... he himself (the officer, not the force) seems to be coded to aim for Unification of such a region. Just examine his general behavior in the games. The first city in Rival Warlords he targets is always Xinye, a city which is in the same region as the other 3 cities under his command. He never goes after Wuling or Changsha first, of which both are in a different region.

Since I have PUK again, I can use Van's Editor to finally decipher the behavior of officers completely...

!EDIT!

Good, I have taken a look on the officers via Van's Editor and have come to the following conclusion (together with my knowledge from the in-game editor as well as RoTK X PUK):
The personality of an officer is set by the following things:

- Virtue (Very Low, Low, Normal, High, Very High)
- Desire (Very Low, Low, Normal, High, Very High)
- Officer selection regarding ranks (Stats, Result, Fame/Deeds, Virtue, ?)
- Character (Timid, Cool, Brave, Reckless)
- Loyalty towards the Han (Ignore, Normal, High)
- Aim for Unification (Total, Area, Province/Region, None)
- Something I can't identify (3 options)
- Something regarding debates (also 3 options)
- Voice (Timid, Cool, Brave, Reckless, Lu Bu, Zhuge Liang and 2 others)
- General Behavior (Normal, Polite, Barbarian, Courteous, Reckless, Zhang Fei and all the others you can choose when creating an officer)

They are listed in that order in Van's Editor, perhaps we can do something with it... there are also 5 checkboxes regarding debates, they must be the special cards an officer can use without a book.

Also, Liu Biao is coded to aim for unification of an area... one level higher than I have imagined. But still, his force is coded to be rubbish as I have pointed out earlier.

Now, all what's left to do is finding the corresponding bytes...

[Hero of Chaos]

Uh, yeah, tripple post, I hope I don't get killed for this.

While playing around with Van's Editor, I have noticed some things:

The MakeData.S11 file does not only contain Created Officers, but also Created Items. You can create own items at the end of the file (after the 150 officer codes). You have to use the images of existing items though and can't use new images. You can even insert own item descriptions.

Secondly, the scenario.S11 file is quite interesting. It stores quite a bit of data. You can edit:
- Names and positions of cities, gates and ports (haven't tried the positions yet)
- Names of areas (Hebei, Zhongyuan, ...) and regions (You, Ji, Qing Xu, ...)
- Ruler ranks (names and max troop number)
- Officer ranks (names, wages, stat bonuses, troop numbers)
- Buildings: names, descriptions, HP, required researches, how much they increase something (e.g. how much gold markets yield or how much siege weapons are produced per action), cost
- Troop types (names, max ATK, DEF, MOV, cost, tactics, how fast they move on what terrain (or whether they can access the terrain in the first place))
- Skills (names, descriptions, topic and tier? (I guess this is for unlocking purposes)
- Researches (names, descriptions, topic, order, TP and Gold cost, required researches)
- Tactics (names, power, what they can be used against, will cost, range, required APT, on which terrain they can be used)
- Terrain (name and... something else, no idea)
- Names (Lu, Cao, Xiahou etc.) (in Van's Editor, you can only see their chinese characters) ---> no idea what you can edit here
- Research & Development (the additional research tree in PUK that allows you to train your officers skills and raise their abilities) ---> here you can edit the max uses per skill, names, description, required researches and what skill this will teach

I've been able to apply LDR boosts to the lower officer ranks. You can choose whatever stat you like. Unfortunately, you can't apply more than one stat per rank. The max bonus is 255, but anything higher than 99 is pointless.
On a side note, there are some free spots for tactics, you can implement them into the game, but they don't have any effects, unfortunately. So they do not do damage or so.

Now the thing is, Van's Editor easily allows you to edit these things, but via hex editing, it might be quite difficult. After I have done the Aspiration setting, I'll take a look at it and experiment a little bit.

[Hero of Chaos]

Please excuse the quadruple post, lol. I wanted to edit my previous post but the length of 5000 characters was exceeded.

So... here's the Aspiration code:

Let's take Yang Song as an example, as he's used in the guide.

ff 02 00 02 02 00 00 0d 00 03 00

ff is the Skill. It has nothing to do with the Aspiration Code, it's just for orientation.

02 = Favorite Debate topic:
Heh, yes, that byte really does exist (was it Louwhak who mentioned it?). No idea what it does in the Gameplay. Might affect One Hit KOs, might not.
00 = Fact
01 = Logic
02 = Time

00 = Virtue:
The higher the officer's virtue, the less likely he'll betray you (loyalty drops slower).
00 = Very Low
01 = Low
02 = Normal
03 = High
04 = Very High

02 = Desire:
Officers with high Desire are more likely to create own forces or rebel. They might lose loyalty quicker. The Reward command will also raise the loyalty slower (just look at Mi Fang and how often you have to reward him...).
00 = Very Low
01 = Low
02 = Normal
03 = High
04 = Very High

02 = Selection (rank):
Well, the name is guessed. I think this byte codes the criteria for rulers to appoint officers. Might also have to do something with choices for commanders of units.
00 = Stats
01 = Result
02 = Fame/Deeds
03 = Virtue
04 = Select (perhaps rather random selection or preferance of family, I don't know)
The names are taken from the RTK X PUK translation.

00 00 0d 00 are Character, Voice, Tone and Court Importance, already explained in Zetta's guide.

03 = Unification:
This byte determines the aim of unification for that officer.
00 = Total
01 = Area
02 = Region/Province
03 = None
Officers with 00 are more aggressive rulers. You find that byte on officers such as Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Yuan Shao or the Sun family. Yang Song has 03, making him not the most capable ruler.
This might explain why rulers such as Liu Biao are less aggressive, as they often have 01 or 02 here. (plus their forces are also coded to act like rubbish)

00 = ?:
No idea what this byte does. There are three options, 00, 01 and 02. Someone might do some testing.

Good, that's the Aspiration Code. I've found another thing.

After the model, you see 20. Zetta's guide claims that it's the Action byte, coding Available or Done. This is wrong, though.
This byte codes the Special Cards an officer can use during the debate at default. It's difficult because each combination has a different byte. I can tell you that f8 allows the officer to use every special card. Officers with f8 therefore do not need one of those book items.

[El Jefe]

I've been able to apply LDR boosts to the lower officer ranks. You can choose whatever stat you like. Unfortunately, you can't apply more than one stat per rank. The max bonus is 255, but anything higher than 99 is pointless.
On a side note, there are some free spots for tactics, you can implement them into the game, but they don't have any effects, unfortunately. So they do not do damage or so.

That's interesting. I've always felt the military ranks gave rather shoddy boosts.

Favorite debate topic probably means the officer gets more of those cards during debates? That's my guess.

[Louhawk]

You mentioned that there was a debate byte.  Is that how you determine what Guiles the officer can use?  I noticed on the editing program that was made you could edit what Guiles officers had and things like the Art of War allow the use of all Guiles.  I was not sure if those bytes or byte had been discovered yet.

[Hero of Chaos]

The debate byte I mentioned in the Aspiration Code really is the Favourite Debate Topic. At least I guess so.
I viewed the officer data in Van's San11 Editor and tried to figure out what each byte in the Aspiration Code means. I can't read Chinese, but I can compare options from the Aspiration Code with other options. This helped for example for the Unification Aim byte. The options here were pretty much the same as the options for force/district targets.
And well, for the debate byte, the three options have the same chinese characters as the three debate topics. I compared them to debate screenshots from the japanese game.

The byte that sets what Guile cards you can use is the "Action" byte in Zetta's Guide at the end of the officer code. Each combination of different cards seems to give another byte. Yell gives one byte, Reflect gives another byte, but Yell + Reflect also gives a different byte.
This makes it harder to find out what byte you have to insert for a particular combination. It would have been much easier if there were 5 bytes, one for each guile card and you'd just have to insert 01 in order to be able to use the card. But unfortunately, it is not.

It might be the sum of each cards. So if Yell was 09 and Reflect was 06, you'd be able to use both cards by using 0f. But that's only a wild guess.

[Hero of Chaos]

Some updates from my side:

The last missing byte in the Aspiration Code I have not found out yet might be some kind of Local Affinity Importance. The exe file mentions something like this and one of the options is the same as the "Important" option in the Court Importance, so it would make sense. I guess this codes what an officer does after his force is defeated. Some officers tend to return to their birthplace region, others are spread across the land (Wen Yang appearing in Bashu or so).

The next thing is about created officers. They start at number 850 and go to 999 (so it's 150 created officers in total). However, I have noticed in Van's Editor that there are additional free spots from 1000 up to 1099. You can't use them to create new officers in the Main Menue though.
Now there are two ways how to make use of them. First, you can create new officers with them in Save files, as they are appearing here. Or the second option is, you can use their bytes for creating siblings.
I've often had the problem that I wanted to make two created officers brothers, but for this, I had to create their father as well, practically wasting an officer spot. Now, you can simply insert one of the numbers from 1000 to 1099 (in hexadecimal of course) into their father bytes and they'll be siblings.
This is the exact way how for example Cao Ren and Cao Chun are coded as brothers. The non-playable fathers of existing officers are coded from 2000 to 2060. You can't see them in-game (but you can use them for created officers as well, making your officer a brother of Sun Jian or so).

Oh yeah, the byte I've called "Unification Aim" is actually called "Strategic Tendency". Just FYI.

I might be mistaken, but there is one additional Tone you can't select for created officers. It's called Guan Yu and is only used by Guan Yu. Just as the voices of Zhuge Liang and Lu Bu. The only "special" Tone you can use is Zhang Fei.

[El Jefe]

So much new info x_x

I was wondering if anyone had managed to discover how to alter the city territories themselves. Take the Guangling area (that peninsula between Xiapi and Yang Province). It causes major problems for the AI so I want to create a port on the northern coast and change Jiangduo to Wu's control. Is stuff like that possible?

[Hero of Chaos]

Nope, not yet unfortunately.
I also have no idea where you could possibly edit it. I can't completely figure out the codes of gates and ports in the scenario.S11 file. They're too random and ports belonging to the same city don't really have similarities in their codes. I can only edit their names, lol.