Civil War Overhaul: Death to Spies! (Spy Removal)

[xLoneWolf94x]

Hello, everyone! Recently (a few weeks ago now, I'm really slow) I decided to take things into my hands and remove the only part of Civil War Overhaul that drove me mad, the bloody f**king spies! They plagued my last game, infecting almost the entirety of town guards. Being a big roleplayer and needing all muh immersion this really bugged me. Towns were basically 24/7 warzones, couldn't relax in them, nothing. Since I am still rather new to modding, I was unable to fix them, but I did remove them! Permanently!

 

Well, why remove them?

Simply put, they don't work right. CWO is an amazing mod that fleshes out the civil war and makes it what it should've been at launch. There's a few cosmetic bugs here and there, but nothing too bad... except for the spies. There's been a bit of talk about them for a while, with a few agreeing they're either annoying or unbearable. Basically the issue is (This comes from an old reddit post in which the user inmundano listed bugs they found and apparently fixed) ""Benedict Arnold" (spies system)is so totally broken. To begin with, the thing is almost guaranteed to happen every X time, even if the mod description claims it happens rarely. Secondly, whenever these actors respawn, their faction change will still be applied. This will cause even more spies." To elaborate, this means that if given enough time, all guards will become dirty traitors!

 

Alright, but how do you get rid of them for good?

Well you're in luck, here's what you'll need to do! (Reposted from MY reddit post about this)

 

Eureka! After a lot of hours worth of work and basically running through the civil war quest 2-3 times (I had a friend assist for a second opinion) I can safely say the spies are gone and the game still works! Oddly enough the civil war works better for me, but I digress.

 

WARNING!! WARNING!! THIS WILL ONLY WORK FOR A NEW GAME. FOR A CURRENT SAVE SEE THE BOTTOM OF THIS COMMENT.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO: If you want to remove the spies portion of CWO (And I do mean REMOVE, this is not a fix, this is a purge) you need to open Civil War Overhaul through either TESV Edit or Creation Kit (I used Edit then checked with CK to confirm) Using the search functions find these items:

• CWOBAChance
• CWOBAController
• CWOBAQuest
• CWOBAQuestLength
• CWOBATime
• CWOBATimeLower
• CWOBATimeUpper
• And TWO in Spells/Effects starting with CWOBenedictArnold.

REMOVE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THESE.

NOTE: CK will give you a warning regarding "CWOSpyToSolitude" and "CWOSpyToWindhelm" ignore these. They're AI packages for the spies that won't exist anymore, it's harmless.

Then congratulations! You have a spy free game!

 

FOR A NON-NEWGAME: Sadly, I wasn't able to test this much, but I can confirm one thing. Doing these should not break your save and WILL stop future spies. You will however need to use Save Game Cleaner to remove the CWOBAQuest and CWOBAController scripts again AS WELL as doing the above. Any spies you have had previously will still be spies and will still respawn as spies. I heard that console removing their factions will solve the respawn issue, but I cannot confirm as I didn't have a far enough save to test that. Hope this helps and DEATH TO THE TRAITORS!

P.S. If anyone is willing to, I did all of my tests using the Imperial side though I have 0 reason to believe there is any difference between the two.

 

UPDATED: Thanks to reddit user EarlGravey, if you do this AS WELL as the above spies will be fixed.

"EDIT 9.6.16 - Same guard at a Whiterun gate was seen as a spy by other guards after purging, so I used this to reset his fraction. As I exited Whiterun, before he started fighting with his fellow guards, I immediately opened the console, clicked on him, then

• removefromallfactions

then looked up guard faction id via

• help faction 1

then, while still having guard's ID focused on

• addfaction <faction ID> 1

That kept him cool and friendly (although he retained all the spy stuff in his inventory, oh well). I hope that will help anybody with spies still in their save."

 

And you're sure this works?

Absolutely! I've been playing on my new save for days and haven't seen a single spy, nor any other issues. If you find any issues and you're 100% certain it's because of this please let me know. Otherwise it's most likely something else.

 

Now get out there and KILL THOSE TRAITORS FOR GOOD!

 

Special thanks to apollo for the great mod and Earl for posting the fix for current saves! I know apollo'll patch this once he's done with Awake, but until then this should at least keep spies under wraps.

Edited June 14, 2016 by xLoneWolf94x

[fightthatbutt]

This is a good post, but for a mid-game fix, it's easier to add or remove them from the sons/imperial faction and kill/resurrect them.

 

0001c9fc imperial

0001c9fd cloak

so if you have an imperial spy problem, addtofaction 0001c9fc -1

then kill/resurrect. Killing is necessary otherwise they will still be hostile.

[Draezeth]

Thanks so much for this, I've been desperate to get rid of those sons of liches. I'm following the instructions, but I can't find the two scripts I'm supposed to delete using Save Cleaner.

[protoculturejunkie]

Yeah, I was considering removing the mod because of this issue. Thanks for sharing it. Now to ask about something else that was bugging me. Do you know how to revert the player's faction to normal after the CW quests are complete? Or change the other side's hostility level back down afterwards? I've noticed the other side remains hostile toward me after winning the war and this has caused some issues with a couple quests, both from vanilla Skyrim and from a couple other mods.

[Alvoltz]

Just a quick update for future viewers

its addfac 00086EEE 1

[AbdullahZZ]

thank you so much for this!, i followed your instruction on an existing save, and it worked with no issues.

Note: i finished the whole civil war questline then i done this fix.