[GS] Modifying the rock band name generation list for Gathering Storm

[pookie wocket]

So I really love the new Rock Band feature in Gathering Storm. The fact that you have to name your rock bands, and that there is a silly random generator just for suggesting rock band names is pointless but awesome!

I immediately wanted to tweak the list to make its rock band name suggestions more to my taste. I thought this should be very simple. There should be a list of words somewhere and all I have to do is add and subtract from that list, right?

Well, there IS a list. I found it pretty much right away. Expansion2_UnitNames_Text under \steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\DLC\Expansion2\Text\en_US appeared to be the XML file that had all the words for generating band names, divided into prefixes and suffixes. OK, great! I got to work deleting the boring ones and adding some new ones that I thought would be cool or funny. I was careful to follow the same syntax used in the base file. Here are examples of an original rock band prefix and suffix:

<Row Tag="LOC_UNITNAME_ROCK_BAND_PREFIX_FLYING">
            <Text>Flying</Text>
        </Row>
<Row Tag="LOC_UNITNAME_ROCK_BAND_SUFFIX_HATS">
            <Text>Hats</Text>
        </Row>

Now I might like to add something like:

<Row Tag="LOC_UNITNAME_ROCK_BAND_PREFIX_DANGEROUS">
            <Text>Dangerous</Text>
        </Row>
<Row Tag="LOC_UNITNAME_ROCK_BAND_SUFFIX_WEASEL">
            <Text>Weasel</Text>
        </Row>

I saved the file and fired up the game. I loaded up my current save and started generating rock band names. But wait, the suggestions coming up didn't have any of my new words. And they definitely contained words I had removed.

As far as I can tell, my XML is valid. The database.log doesn't seem to contain any errors specific to me (there is a 'no gamedata...' error that apparently never goes away but that's it). It just seems like my changes aren't getting incorporated into the game's database.

I thought editing the rock band name generator suggestions would be really straightforward. I would like to avoid having to write a mod just to do this! However this is driving me crazy and I really want to figure it out, so I am open to suggestions here. Please help! Thank you in advance.

 

[pookie wocket]

UPDATE: I figured it out! You experienced modders reading the above probably already have too. You're laughing at me and whispering 'n00b' under your breath.

Turns out that there is another file that you have to modify: Expansion2_UnitNames.xml under \Sid Meier's Civilization VI\DLC\Expansion2\Data. You must go in there and for every 'Tag' you added in the \Text UnitNames xml file you must add it here as well. If you removed any there you must remove them here to match.

For example, if you added

<Row Tag="LOC_UNITNAME_ROCK_BAND_SUFFIX_LASER">
            <Text>Laser</Text>
        </Row>

to the \Text UnitNames_Text.xml file, you must also add

<Row NameType="SUFFIX_ROCK_BAND" TextKey="LOC_UNITNAME_ROCK_BAND_SUFFIX_LASER"/>

to the \Data UnitNames.xml file.

In my defense this is a really tedious and over-complicated procedure for simply modifying a list of words. In fact it is so bad, it appears to have tripped up the Firaxis devs themselves. I spotted several text entries that did not have matching data entries, which means they do not show up in the game proper as obviously intended.

Somebody really ought to bang together a tool to automate this. or hopefully Firaxis will simplify this process in a future patch. It's a list of words for Sid's sake. It shouldn't be this complicated to edit.