Custom Opponents?

Here are some assumptions.

I assume that its not an oversight and that its either something that causes significant crashes that is temporarily disabled until they can fix it or that Brad is coding AI differently per faction to add flavor to the game. I too would like to be able to fight against those factions I've created again

My guess would be the option was pulled because playing against custom factions was causing problems with the new AI re-write. I'm hoping this one comes back soon too.

It's good to know that it isn't just a problem on my end, I suppose.  Thanks for the responses.  Does anyone know a way to enable custom factions via modding or by some other means?  I really have a problem playing Elemental without custom factions as I don't find the original ones very interesting.

.. it's there. you just have to create the faction in the faction creater and then use it in the same game session right away (ie.. without exiting elemental)

the issue was introduced well before the new ai being added. (at least 1 stable patch before 1.09 beta)

https://forums.elementalgame.com/400530

note that i don't actually play against custom made ai factions.. i just see if i can pick them.. also can't remember if i tried creating a bunch of custom ai ones in one go and see if they are all available at the same time.

I've been able to play against my custom faction, but as mentioned, I usually play said custom faction first.  I like filling that 10th opponent slot...

First time poster (huh; guess I can use my Impulse account to post here).

I think I've found a way to fix this. Was looking at my custom races' .xml data, to see if there was anything different from the coreraceconfig .xml which has all the original races, and I noticed one thing:

For the original races, all of them had 'Good' or 'Evil' Alignment tags. For all of my custom factions, they were automatically set to 'Neutral'.

So, I connected the dots, and changed it to Good and Evil where appropriate. And then they appeared as selectable opponents.

Hope this helps.

Note: While you're editing their alignments, you might as well set the sovereign associated with them via the sovereignunittype, else it'll default to Lord Relias. Dunno what would happen if all of them would have Lord Relias, haven't tested. Just copy the name of the .xml file of the custom sovereign you want to link it to.

Now that I think about it, I think this fix has been posted before, but eh, memory ain't that good.

I can confirm that this works.  Thanks blueoceans10!!

Great news, I'll try that next time I play.  Thanks a lot of Blue.

Okay, so I have an update on this issue.  I tried the above suggestion and it worked up to a point.  Changing the alignment of each custom faction indeed allowed them to be selectable as opponents.  However, I've since started two games with a roster of eight custom factions and two vanillia factions, yet both times I've encountered factions I did not place in the game and not a hide nor hair of my custom factions.  For some reason my custom factions still aren't getting into the game and even though they show up in the selection screen and are chosen, the game randomly decides to throw in vanillia factions instead.

Anyone had any success actually playing against custom factions in 1.1?  If so, what did you do?

Eh, sorry if this might sound stupid and condescending (not intending the latter at all; might not be able to help the former, heh) , but when selecting opponents, you're putting the factions that you want in-game in the middle 2 rows, right?

The fact that you've played pre- 1.1 would make me assume that, but eh, when I came back for the patch after taking a break, it took me a while to realize that all my choices were the opposite of what I made; the 'Kingdoms' and 'Empires' that I put in the top and bottom rows that I thought I'd be paying against were nowhere to be found, while I found myself fighting against the leftover factions I didn't 'choose' in the middle.

... wasn't it always the ones in the middle that are picked for the game?!  or at least hasn't changed in the last one or two stable versions?

...Eh, maybe it was? 'Twas a while since I started playing again (started on release and kept playing on-and-off; tried a few games in the early 1.09x beta patches before deciding to wait for the big one), so I don't remember much.

That, and I pointedly ignored the 'Selected opponents' subtitle that clearly labelled the two middle rows in favor of the pretty Bigfont Kingdoms and Empires of Elemental tags adorning the top and bottom sections. As I said earlier, can't really help bein' me at times~

It's all right, no harm in asking the obvious.  The answer is no, however.  I correctly selected the factions.  As it turns out I solved my issue by (of all things) creating a world that wasn't the same name as before I created the nations and edited their files.  Apparently using the same world name loaded up the nations loaded in the game I had prior to the custom factions working.  Don't ask me, odd bug.  Yet changing the world name did fix it.  So if anyone else runs into this issue, just change your world name if you're like me and continue using the same one.