Recruits: Village Expansion – Addon for Recruits

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For test builds click here

FAN MADE ADDONS

Villages created by this addon are not static structures: they are active entities that manage recruits, assign roles, maintain their identity, and react to world events. Each village can expand, build functional structures, establish territory, and maintain internal balance between civilians, soldiers, and resources.

The goal is to turn villages into autonomous factions, consistent and believable, interacting dynamically with the world and the player. The result is a more alive, emergent, and strategic experience that integrates seamlessly with Recruits.

NEW UPDATE Make your custom factions!( for now no special buildings for a singular faction will be added later)

to start creating a faction do /vrfaction (everything is explained in the game after you do the command) also if you don't have items and wanna exit the menu just press esc grab what you need and then redo /vrfaction even tho it is explained in game its better to know that your progress will be kept after exiting the faction creating menu.

to test your special faction do /vrspecial next then the tips should tell you what to write and after doing it the next village to spawn will have your special faction!

/vr disable_spawner

/vr enable_spawner

Steps

1. (Only if you put a villager spawn block in it) run /vr disable_spawner.
2. Build your house or workplace. Do not place any Recruit block.
3. Place a vanilla Structure Block in Save mode.
4. Name it (your structure ID, e.g. mypack:cozy_house).
5. Fit the box around the whole build and click SAVE.

Quick checklist before you save a normal building

• ☐ There is NO Recruit block anywhere in it
• ☐ The Structure Block box covers everything

Common mistakes (and what goes wrong)

Registering your structures (turning .nbt files into an addon)

Saving the .nbt is only half the job — the addon won't use your structure until you register it. The good news: you do NOT need to write a mod or any Java. You just make a normal datapack (a folder or .zip) with two things in it:

1. your saved .nbt files, and
2. one tiny .json file per structure telling the addon how to use it.

The addon reads these automatically when the world loads and every time you run /reload. There is a ready-made example in the example_datapack/ folder next to this guide — copy it and change the names.

Folder layout

A datapack looks like this:

my_structures_pack/
├── pack.mcmeta
└── data/
    └── mypack/                 ← your namespace (any lowercase name you like)
        ├── structures/         ← your saved .nbt files go here
        │   ├── desert_tower.nbt
        │   ├── cozy_house.nbt
        │   └── blacksmith.nbt
        └── vr_structures/      ← one .json per structure goes here
            ├── desert_tower.json
            ├── cozy_house.json
            └── blacksmith.json

• pack.mcmeta marks the folder as a datapack (copy it from the example).
• structures/ is the vanilla folder the Structure Block saves into. A file at data/mypack/structures/desert_tower.nbt has the ID mypack:desert_tower.
• vr_structures/ is where you put the small .json descriptors that register each structure with the addon.

The .json descriptor

Each .json has a type and points at a structure ID. Fields:

Towers use real biome IDs, houses/work use the 5 categories — they're different!
Tower biomes are exact biomes like minecraft:desert. House/work categories are one of only five: plains / taiga / desert / savanna / snowy. The addon maps every real biome to one of those (e.g. forest/meadow/jungle → plains, spruce/pine → taiga, anything snowy/frozen → snowy). Using a real biome name like forest in categories will be ignored.

Examples (copy these)

A tower in two specific biomes:

{
  "type": "tower",
  "structure": "mypack:desert_tower",
  "weight": 10,
  "biomes": ["minecraft:desert", "minecraft:plains"]
}

A tower that can appear anywhere (no biomes):

{
  "type": "tower",
  "structure": "mypack:global_tower",
  "weight": 3
}

A house in a couple of categories:

{
  "type": "house",
  "structure": "mypack:cozy_house",
  "categories": ["plains", "savanna"]
}

A workplace in every category (no categories):

{
  "type": "work",
  "structure": "mypack:blacksmith"
}

Installing the pack

• Single world: drop the folder/zip into <world>/datapacks/, then run /reload (or rejoin the world).
• Whole server / every world: put it in the global datapack location, or zip it and share it with other players the same way as any datapack.

After loading, check the server log — you'll see a line like [VillageRecruits] Strutture da datapack caricate: 2 torri, 1 case, 1 lavoro. If a .json is wrong, that same log prints the file name and what's wrong, and only that one entry is skipped.

Reminder: the building rules still apply. A tower structure must have the Recruit block in the middle + a Villager spawn block; a house/work structure must have no Recruit block. Using the wrong type will spawn it broken.

Recap (the one‑line version)

• Tower replacement: /vr disable_spawner → Recruit block in the middle + Villager spawn block anywhere → keep it ≤ 11×11 → save.
• Normal building: never a Recruit block → save (use /vr disable_spawner first only if it contains a villager spawn block).

Coming Next Update

Diplomacy and war, automatic expansion, attacks, battles, and hirable promoted entities.

Compatible Mods

ewewukek's Musket Mod gives muskets to crossbowmen, increasing their spawn rate.

Upcoming Features

• Diplomacy and War
• Automatic faction expansion
• More advanced structure building
• Balancing improvements

Recommended Optimization Mods

• Let Me Despawn
• Radium Reforged
• Almanac Lib
• Embeddium
• ServerCore
• ModernFix
• Entity Culling
• FerriteCore