​​​​​I have repeatedly encountered this issue when creating new Custom Factions: creating a new one will somehow overwrite an old one, which not only erases the previous custom faction forever (since there's no way that I know of to "restore/undelete/etc." an overwritten XML file), but also removes all of that custom faction's entries from the Empire Chronicles.

The files for the old custom faction (and custom population) disappear (or are overwritten into the new ones), and the custom faction can't be selected at game generation (since it's not there, having been replaced by the new one), but the save files for the games in which they were played still load, with all the faction traits and custom flavour text intact.

The chronicle files for those games remain, but the Empire Chronicles won't load any chronicle files associated with the disappeared custom faction.

Manually rebuilding the custom faction doesn't seem to restore the Empire Chronicle's access to removed record files (although that makes some sense, since it technically isn't the same faction in the save file).

Is there an unannounced limit on the number or nature of custom factions? Why are new ones overwriting old ones without any warning or confirmation prompt? Is there any way to make the Empire Chronicles load record files from games with custom factions that have been mistakenly erased, deleted, or overwritten? Is this all some kind of bug, or is it working as intended? It doesn't seem to be a flat numerical limit, since I appear to be able to create and store more than a dozen different custom factions at once; the game just doesn't give me any warning or notice at all when it's about to save a new one over an old one rather than independently.

I may be in the minority, but I like to have my saved games accessible even when they're finished (I look back over them sometimes), and I'm something of a completionist with my Empire Chronicles, so it's a little bit devastating to have the game just overwrite and/or erase my custom data without any warnings or confirmation prompts. I've started manually backing up all my custom files every time I do anything at all with them, but this is really tedious and extremely frustrating; I shouldn't have to go to these lengths to preserve my game data. Is there something wrong with my install, or with the game's data writing function in this area? Or is this just how it works? And if this ​is​ just how it works, then some explanation and a few warnings or confirmation prompts before the game erases my custom data forever would be really appreciated. I don't think I have any other games that erase my data forever without any warnings, so I'd be super jazzed (and a lot less pissed about my data loss) to have this one get on board.

As far as I can tell, this only repeats if I name two factions the same thing, but with different cases. Like MyCustomFaction vs MYCUSTOMFACTION. I made like 200 custom factions without any problems just to test this with no issues, so it might be either something on your PC or a naming problem.

Thanks for the insight! That's actually quite possible: now that you mention it, I have a habit of using a placeholder name first while I determine other things (faction traits etc.), and I typically use the same placeholder for that, something like "temp" or "temp1." I also noticed while I was backing up my files that even after I'd settled on a permanent name for a custom faction, the file continued to be called "temp1." I changed the file name to that of the custom faction and the game continued to read it, which is great, but it never at all occurred to me that I could be accidentally saving over my old custom factions by using this placeholder name.

In other words, if I make a new faction called "temp1," determine its abilities, then rename the faction "Nothobbits," the game continues to refer to the file as "temp1"; if I then create another new faction, call it "temp1," determine its abilities, then rename it "Notdwarfs," the game will save it as "temp1" again, thereby overwriting my previous faction. That makes perfect sense. Thank you!

I'd love to see a small, simple fix for this: maybe a prompt like, "You are about to save over a custom faction; continue?" One could also make the game change the name of custom faction files to their current name rather than establishing a file name from their first name and using that in perpetuity. (I don't know which would be easier, but I'm generally in favour of easier solutions.) Here's hoping, anyway.

Thank you so much for your insight! I really appreciate understanding what's (likely) happening here, and this'll help me avoid this little pitfall in the future. I hope you have a great New Year! 🙂

Good luck! Have a good New Year!