Total Diplomacy v1.8.4 (Forced Diplomacy, Taking Allied Forts, Allied Allies, Osgiliath Ferry, Ally Invade) [3.2 compatible]

[Mr_Nygren]

Does your mod have the epic LOTR music heard in MOS 1.25?

[Withwnar]

Does this TD submod add music? No.

[Mr_Nygren]

I meant this mod: Withwnar's Submod Collection v1.5?

I can´t play a version with original Medieval 2 music on the campaign map..

[Withwnar]

No. None of my submods add music.

[Ngugi]

It has vanilla TATW-music, which I can't recall is 'original Medieval 2 music'?

[Mr_Nygren]

The vanilla game has the wrong music on the campaign map!

You should play MOS v 1.25 to realize the difference. I mean that Isengard for an example has the "Isengard music" in MOS 1.25, in the vanilla game it is not like that.

And even if the vanilla game do have LOTR music on the campaign map it doesn´t have the same in battles.. In some of the battles it uses the "vanilla" music fråm Medieval 2 total war.

In MOS 1.25 there is Rohans music in Rohan territory, Shire music in Eriador territory and so on.. Much better.

[Withwnar]

Okay. But this has nothing to do with Total Diplomacy.

[Mr_Nygren]

But it has, cause i want a mos version with Total diplomacy v 1.8 =).

[Withwnar]

TD 1.8 is currently being added to MOS.

[Mr_Nygren]

TD 1.8 is currently being added to MOS.

That sounds great . When will it be ready?

I hate the "attack faction" -option because they will only fight one battle and then they´re done.. I want it to be a "total war" between factions, they shouldn´t stop the war until one of the factions are destroyed!

Can you order every faction to have one "destroy faction" -opponent?

[Withwnar]

You will need to ask the MOS guys. I have sent Stylix a MOS-compatible version but I have no idea what the MOS release schedule is.

Can you order every faction to have one "destroy faction" -opponent?

From the OP...

There can only be one sponsor per faction. e.g. You can't tell Gondor to invade Harad and Mordor. But you can tell multiple allies to invade the same faction. Also, "good" factions can only invade "evil" factions and vice versa. e.g. You can't tell Gondor to invade Rohan, nor Mordor to invade Harad.

e.g. You can tell all good factions to attack Mordor. Or all evil factions to attack the Silvans. And so on. But a faction needs to be your ally before you can tell them what to do. e.g. Playing as Gondor you can't tell evil factions to attack Dale, unless those evil factions happen to be your ally.

I'm not sure that "destroy faction" is the way to put it. There is no guarantee that your allies will be successful because in their effort to follow your command they may very well be leaving their own lands open to attack (from other enemies) and rebellion. i.e. It could destroy them.

Furthermore, as I'm sure I wrote somewhere but now can not find it, if the ally does not share a border with the target faction then it seems that they will not invade. e.g. You can tell Gondor to invade Rhun but, from what I've seen in testing, they will not do it unless they are neighbours. (I have added this info to the OP.)

[Ngugi]

You will need to ask the MOS guys. I have sent Stylix a MOS-compatible version but I have no idea what the MOS release schedule is.

Very true: And we won't tell.

I'm not sure that "destroy faction" is the way to put it. There is no guarantee that your allies will be successful because in their effort to follow your command they may very well be leaving their own lands open to attack (from other enemies) and rebellion. i.e. It could destroy them.

That's why it's a strategic decision

[Withwnar]

From a PM but best asked (and answered) here instead...

I would like to suggest to make different player stances possible. If the player chooses to play according to the lore, he should be rewarded for, eg. conquering fallen allied province and giving it back, backing up allied armies during battles or simply invading enemies of an ally. The rewards could include money or experienced, elite units.

However, if the player chooses to dominate the whole map (which he cannot be forbidden of, maybe even encouraged, as it is still a Total War game) scripts should allow him to incorporate weaker allies into his realm. The best example here are Free Peoples and High Elves. During my games as one of them I find it very difficult to end other way than having another encircled by my provinces. Having my Arnor developped economically, I buy out all I can, but usually end with Mithlond and Imladris inside my kingdom. Leading High Elves, it is usually Bree and Annuminas/Hobbiton.

My solution is to deploy a script that destroys a realm and gives it lands under player's ruling if:
a. player is an ally of the realm
b. they both have "perfect" relations for some turns
c. the allied realm does not border with anyone else except the player (or their common ally)
d. player has a diplomat in their capital
If those conditions are met, player would be informed that the allies notice the superiority of the player and wants to become part of his empire.

Thanks for the suggestions, ppetrus.

Ally Rewards:
I think that money would be the best reward. The player can then decide whether to spend that on the units of his choosing or on something else entirely. I would also prefer not to have TD reliant on the existence of specific units (which could disappear in other submods/compilations and future TATW versions).

I help out my allies all of the time and I find that it is its own reward, both in interest and long term strategy for my own faction. But it can be a very expensive pursuit.

I would need to think about this though. I'm not sure if script can know whether a city was gifted to another faction or sold to them; if it was sold then the player would be getting a double reward. As for invading an ally's enemy: in my experience my ally's enemies are typically the same as my enemies, so this would mean rewarding myself for attacking my own enemies. I take it that you mean only when invading one that is not already the player's enemy?

World Domination:
So, basically, the ability to destroy a faction without going to war with them? I see where you're coming from but I wouldn't be interested in doing this one. I mean, you say "become part of his empire" but what it really means is kicking the characters and armies out of that land (killing them actually) and taking ownership of the region. Unless you mean that those characters and armies should join the player's faction? Possible, to an extent, but I believe that only those units that are in both factions' rosters will be transferred over; this effectively means that no units will, or very few.

[Withwnar]

v1.8.1 released. A minor update, mainly just adding the missing unit images for the Ferry.

[MIKE GOLF]

You could possibly add a trait or ancillary as another reward, something to the effect of, "United We Stand" or "Defender of Allies" or "Our Word is Our Bond" or some such title. Make it a one time event so that no matter how many times you help out, you only receive it once per faction leader and that it would gives a bonus to respect and authority to the faction leader.

[Withwnar]

Thanks for the suggestion Mike. Ultimately, though, I think that this would just translate to a "declared war on another faction" trait. I mean, if they are already your enemy then it is a reward for fighting your own enemy. If they are not already your enemy then you're declaring war on them and there's a good chance that they are already at war with at least one of your allies.

Making it work could be quite tricky. A lot of effort for a little bonus, I'm afraid. However, perhaps some kind of reward when:
1) Faction A is your ally
2) Faction B is an enemy of Faction A
3) You attack a Faction B army in Faction A's lands
That could be difficult too, finding out whether the region belongs to an ally. Possible but I think that it would take hundreds of monitors.

[Withwnar]

v1.8.2 released. export_units.txt had some wrong text and extra entries.

Also, fixed a bug regarding Ally Invade's sponsorship display.

Nothing game breaking.

[alleycat]

Hi withwnar, your alley invade script is very interesting to me, I've been going through it the last few days. I was wondering what you've generally seen in terms of turns till you see an affect in the game that is appropriate for allied assistance. I only ask to get an idea of the consequences if the script was rigged to terminate after X turns so that a faction could resume a more balanced AI for a while.If I understand whats going on, in the larger totalwar universe, this script could be used to make actual effective use of the vassal feature?
EDIT: actually the more I think about it, a stripped down version could this be used be used to swap in AI parameters for a whole bunch of reasons, this script could revolutionize campaign AI across the board. please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Withwnar]

Hi alleycat. Good to see it generating interest. And it is Ally Invade; Alley Invade is probably something you'd know more about.

Well, it is hit and miss in my experience. I can't say that I did enough testing to get a 'typical' number. From what I understand (being a campaign_ai noob) the relative strengths of the factions still plays a part in the invader's timing, in that they will build up until they think that they are strong enough to invade. "Strong enough" for what exactly I'm not sure ... to capture the first settlement or to go up against the other faction as a whole.

In some initial experimental tests I made OotMM invade Isengard at campaign start and they began within a few turns. But when trying to get the Silvans to take Dol Guldur (which they pretty much had surrounded, region wise) they did not play ball at all. They amassed some armies and were lurking just beyond Dol Guldur's border but did not actually invade before I gave up waiting many turns later.

Not much help I'm afraid. The unreliability is why I didn't wish to put a cost on it.

With vassals do you mean ordering a vassal to invade someone?

[alleycat]

spelling hard
Yes I ment getting a vassal to attack. I expect it would just be a matter of altering decision_entries to offset the base desc_campaign_db entries for invasion. It should certainly be possible to command aggressive results.
XCAI4.01a (link removed)here is my version of XCAI for TATW. Its a lot of numbers but it will give you a full range of examples since they seem to use them all. Regardless of ones opinion of this work, it will certainly provide a larger view of this topic than the version in game