Welcome to the twenty-fifth installment of my Oblivion Immersion Series.  It's here!  Number 25!  To celebrate this milestone, it's time for a big one.  This is my single biggest release to date in terms of total development time and scope (I'm absurdly proud of it, if you can't tell).  So, without further adieu,  I present to you: Legion-occupied Forts.

I can’t be the only one who was annoyed by the fact that every fort in Cyrodiil is in a state of disrepair, inhabited by ghosts, goblins, and vagabonds.  Every.  Single.  Last.  One.  Isn’t Cyrodiil supposed to be the metropolitan heartland of a prosperous empire?  Shouldn’t the roads, villages,and waterways be better protected than this? The backwater territories of Morrowind were better policed with actual properly manned fortresses.  ESO retroactively justifies many of these forts as ruins left by the Interregnum of the Second Era… but still, that was like 800 years ago relative to Oblivion.  Just what on Nirn is that Imperial Legion doing while Mehrunes Dagon ravages the land? Does the entire government of the Empire, save of course for our glorious Emperor Patrick Stewart; have its collective thumb shoved up its collective “second aperture?” (Incidentally, this bugged me about Skyrim too,but I don’t make mods for Skyrim.  So there.)

This mod changes that, refurbishing 14 forts across Cyrodiil to better reflect the Legion’s presence and reflect how militarily secure Cyrodiil ought to be.  The refurbished forts have been selected according to the following criteria:

• Non-quest related
  

• Proximity to a settlement, major road,or waterway
  

In practice, this means that most of the restored forts will be those surrounding the Imperial City, with a handful being along the Niben River or near minor villages and settlements.  So many of these forts are out in the middle of nowhere, making it more sensible to leave them as ruins.  Why expend resources manning forts stationed where NOBODY lives, right?

As the day-to-day operations of Roman fortifications served as an inspiration for this mod, evidence of activities necessary for fort operations can be seen in so far as the vanilla space allows (logging, smithing, equestrianism, etc.).  To further reflect the real-life functions of historical Roman fortresses, support personnel like a Legion officers and smiths are stationed at each fort.  Included as well at each fort are magical support personnel, like healers, priests, alchemists, or battlemages.  Many of these NPCs will act as merchants or low-level trainers.  Astute history-buffs will notice, of course,that this mod will not be a historically accurate recreation of life in a military fortification, but is merely inspired by it. 

Here are the restored forts:

• Fort Alessia
• Fort Ash
• Fort Cedrian
• Fort Chalman
• Fort Empire
• Fort Entius
• Fort Flecia
• Fort Homestead
• Fort Horunn
• Fort Nikel
• Fort Nomore
• Fort Urasek
• Fort Virtue
• Fort Woodenhand
  

To make this mod stylistically compatible with Diverse Guards, the mod comes with different racial distributions of NPCs to match that mod’s
diversity options:

• Default plugin: Imperial exclusively, male only
• Imperial Only: Imperial exclusively, male and female
• Humans Only: Imperials, Redguards, Bretons, and Nords, male and female
• All Races: all races, male and female
  

The racial distribution for the diverse plugins is as follows:

• Majority: Imperial males
• Minor presence: Orcs, Nords, Bretons, Redguards, male and female alike
• Minimal presence: Dunmer, Altmer, Bosmer, Argonians, Khajiit, male and female alike
  

Races were also assigned logical occupations, i.e. Orcs/Redguards/Nords tend to be smiths and soldiers, while Bretons/Dunmer/Altmer tend to be battlemages/alchemists.

V1.1 is a fix-update, correcting many problems, small and large, that user reported and I noticed along the way.  The AI of all 200+ NPCs has been altered to (hopefully) get rid of the aimless clustering that some NPCs displayed.  My own beta testing seems to show that the issue is fixed.  As of now, only the default version is available in V1.1.  The various diversity plugins will be released later.  See the Changelog for a more detailed overview.

V1.2 makes further changes, including a re-compiled BSA, collision box fixes for Ft. Nikel, and various minor corrections.  See the Change Log for details.

Requirements
============

Oblivion Version 1.2.0416

Installation Instructions
====================

Copy contents into your Oblivion data folder.  You must install the default version first, as it's the only file with the BSA.  To install one of the alternate plugins, simply overwrite the default esp with the alternative of your choice.  Before loading this mod, be sure that your character is saved far away from any fort exteriors or interiors, to prevent issues loading inside/on top of added content.  

Uninstallation Instructions
=======================

Delete the esp and bsa

Incompatibility
=============

Each version of this mod will be mutually incompatible, so install only one esp.  This mod will be incompatible with any mod that alters the interior or exterior of forts across Cyrodiil.  Fully compatible with Diverse Guards, with extra plugins provided explicitly for stylistic compatibility.  Fully compatible with ImpeREAL Empire - Unique Forts.  Verified incompatibility with UL: Silverfish River.  Verified compatibility with UL: The Dark Forest, The Great Forest - Ancient Redwoods, Entius Gorge and The Great Forest - Lush Woodlands.  Verified incompatibility with The HESU Mod Collection by mhahn13, with a patch potentially in the works.

Change Log
==========

-V1.2:
  -removed collision boxes in Ft. Nikel
  -corrected chest/crate/barrel faction ownership: Fts. Alessia, Cedrian, Empire, Entius, Horunn
  -removed floating firewood in Ft. Flecia
  -removed extraneous static clutter (firewood, broken pots): Fts. Ash, Cedrian, Entius, Flecia
  -removed extraneous loose dishware: Ft. Woodenhand
  -removed unnecessary pressure plate: Ft. Urasek
  -corrected miscellaneous item faction ownership (food, clothing, dishware, weapons, etc.): Fts. Cedrian, Empire, Entius, Horunn, Nomore, Virtue,  
   Woodenhand
  -recompressed BSA with texture-pathing corrections

- V1.1
  -deleted reference objects restored with TES4Edit, mod manually re-cleaned to remove unnecessary object restorations
  -rearranged stables: Fts. Alessia, Chalman, Empire, Homestead, Horunn, Nikel, Urasek, Virtue, Woodenhand
  -changes to horses: 1 removed from Fts. Chalman, Nikel, Urasek, Virtue; horse faction ownership corrected at Ft. Horunn
  -added rope-bridge access to second floors of forts without stairs: Fts. Alessia, Nomore, Urasek, Virtue
  -all AI corrected with "Must Reach Location" and "Skip Fallout Behavior" to ensure better compliance with daily schedules
  -minor corrections to path-gridding in and around all forts
  -object alignment corrections: Ft. Chalman exterior, Ft. Empire interior and exterior, Ft.Homestead exterior
  -misc changes: removed invisible barrier in Ft. Urasek, corrected misaligned entrance of Ft. Virtue

-V1.0
  - initial release

Known Issues
============

Sometimes the AI acts a little wonky, such as the captains not "reading" at their work desks as programmed.  This mod is character-heavy, and so can cause noticeable frame-rate drops where NPCs cluster together.  Sometimes NPC spawning can get a little wonky too, including NPCs becoming lodged into or behind objects.  I've found that a simple reload of the save/zone will alleviate this. 

While many of the AI problems seem to have been corrected with v1.1, the sheer number of NPCs in close proximity means that their schedules will tend to lag and some NPCs will be later than others to fulfill their assigned duties.

Use the LoF - Scroll Hotfix file to correct the missing textures in V1.1 and V1.0.  Be sure to install it after installing the original in order to see the correction.

One user has reported the appearance of monsters at a fort that has been refurbished (and thus shouldn't have any).  Given my own replication of this issue, this is likely caused by booting up the mod for the first time while being too close to one of the restored forts, causing the game to have already loaded in enemy NPCs even though their spawn points have been removed.  The best work-around is to ensure that you are far away from any fort exteriors before loading this mod for the first time. 

Troubleshooting
==============

Feel free to come to me with questions or issues and I will help as best as I can.  That said, please bear in mind that I am a novice modder and may not be able to offer much in the way of assistance.  The size of this mod means that I can't reliably beta-test the entire thing by myself, so feedback on bugs that I've missed is most appreciated.  If you have a bug to report, please give specifics, including but not limited to: the fort name, the NPC type, and the type of glitch that is occurring.  Failure to report specifics will result in the report being ignored.  See Known Issues for more on known problems and possible solutions. 

Credits
======
 
Thanks to:

Bethesda Softworks
TES Nexus
LHammonds - Readme Generator
Nifskope
The makers of these wonderful resources
The Imperial Library

Meshes and textures from:

LadyN - Paper Goods, Book Jackets Modders Resource
Omegacron - Static Scrolls Resource, Armory Clutter
Stroti - skyrim smelter, misc meshes, Ravenheart, tanning rack, tree house, saddle
Meo3000 - Meos Winecellar, Meos Fortruins Renovated, Open Books
Trollf - West Weald Castle
Naruyamatoko - Naruyamatoko Resources
Senten - Senten Resources

Licensing
========

I am making this mod open to revision by the public.  If you have any ideas of how to expand or improve upon this mod, then go ahead.  No permission needed.  All I ask is that you give me proper credit.  This mod and its contents may not be commercialized for any reason.