SSHIP - General Discussion

[Lifthrasir]

I'm not convinced that it would be the best way to represent the retinue of a lord or of a king that way
Also, for the gameplay, no way to give that feature to the Western factions only, not historical as well.
Last, I'd prefer to keep that kind of script for diplomatic purposes, something like Miguel_80 did in his mod with the marriages and succession rights

[Elendil 03]

Without the intention of starting an argument: what else - given the limitations of the game engine - would you then consider more historical if you leave gameplay aside?
About the Eastern european factions I don't know, how was their military roughly organised during the High middle Ages? The muslim factions are an entirely different story, according to everything I've read. Did you also mean to include them in your statement?

[Lifthrasir]

I just don't see the benefit of such script tbh
For "regular" units, you can organise your recruitment per settlement in advance if you really want to.
For, let's say, nobles or kings (for instance in game generals and some specific units), this feature would represent the retinue (if I'm not mistaken). Bodyguards are already supposed to be the retinue. Ayway, how would you set up the recruitment cost and upkeep?
If you don't want to implement such feature for all factions (like the Muslim one who used a system based on slavery to stay simple), what do you propose to counterbalance the effect of the feature given to the Western factions?
From my opinion, it's really not worth the effort.

[Standard Nerd]

I think Elendil 03 is talking about knightly and Gendarme retinues. For example (at least according to Wikipedia) a Gendarme company had 1 coutillier, 1 page, and 3 mounted infantry archers for every Gendarme.

[Lifthrasir]

That's not possible to represent that in game, not in a "fair" way IMO.

[Standard Nerd]

I agree. Total War recruitment has always been a very general abstraction anyway. Recruitment in Western Europe doesn’t really reflect the feudal nature of armies at the time. A ruler would have relatively little control of what levies his vassals supplied him with. Frankly the Total War engine wasn’t built with feudalism in mind. All this to say that there’s a lot more standing between recruitment and historical authenticity than a weird recruitment script for Western Europeans.

[Alavaria]

I believe it's 378 turns, so it's 189 years, so 1321, so it's even earlier than the Walter de Milemete pic.

Not according to my turn 97ish "rudder" event which is:

event	historic	first_rudder
date	48

event	historic	ENGLISH_ARCHERS
date	138 158

event	historic	musket_invented
date	378

[Lifthrasir]

Looks like some of these events need to be checked

Anyway, unless I'm mistaken, these 'date' are supposed to be an amount of turns, not years, right?

[Elendil 03]

I just don't see the benefit of such script tbh
For "regular" units, you can organise your recruitment per settlement in advance if you really want to.
For, let's say, nobles or kings (for instance in game generals and some specific units), this feature would represent the retinue (if I'm not mistaken). Bodyguards are already supposed to be the retinue. Ayway, how would you set up the recruitment cost and upkeep?
If you don't want to implement such feature for all factions (like the Muslim one who used a system based on slavery to stay simple), what do you propose to counterbalance the effect of the feature given to the Western factions?
From my opinion, it's really not worth the effort.

The script would've made all-elite armies next to impossible to recruit. For the recruitment costs, I had imagined to add the costs of all the individual units up and use high upkeep costs for the knights, but very low ones for the other units. If done thoughtfully, this would not have affected balance (as far as the AI were able to cope with it), but hugely changed the Western playstyle. Historically speaking, we know there was a similar system used (most knights would take one squire and a few unhorsed servants along the way). Other mods with a "population drain" effect as known from Rome 1 set the amount of population reduced to 3 or 4 for recruited knights because of this reason.
I agree though that it most likely would'nt have worked.
And yes, I was referring to what Standard Nerd explained.

[Alavaria]

Looks like some of these events need to be checked

Anyway, unless I'm mistaken, these 'date' are supposed to be an amount of turns, not years, right?

Well the "date 48" event showed up on turn 96. So a 0 year old character at the campaign start would be 48 years old when it arrived.

The game tracks date in actual years, at 2 turns a year. Check your family tree and it should say when someone was born/died, for example. Mods using a different number of turns per year constantly change the date to avoid issues, which works just fine with respect to characters and events.

[Lifthrasir]

According to this tuto, these figures are the amount of turns, not years. So in your example, the general wo's born in turn 0, should be 24 years old when the first_rudder event happens and not 48 (with 2TPY of course)
The timescale in the descr_strat.txt file is correctly set at 0.50 (have just checked it).

In conclusion: we're having something weird here

[Alavaria]

According to this tuto, these figures are the amount of turns, not years. So in your example, the general wo's born in turn 0, should be 24 years old when the first_rudder event happens and not 48 (with 2TPY of course)
The timescale in the descr_strat.txt file is correctly set at 0.50 (have just checked it).

In conclusion: we're having something weird here

That timescale should be right, 0.5 years per turn, or 2 turns per year.

As for ingame, easily checked, see Soderino here:

Turn 1, 26 years old.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Turn 96, 73 years old, 47 years older

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And the game at least tells you a specific date when someone dies.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And yep, the Rudder shows up on turn 97.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

start_date	1132 summer
end_date	1560 winter
timescale	0.50

Basically there's 428 years, or 856, maybe 858 turns for the campaign.

There's events like these:

event	historic	ADV_MATCHLOCK
date	418 428
;Mid 16th c

event	historic	the_flintlock
date	448 468

Where the_flintlock and some units tied to that event will appear after the "end" of the campaign or something. Obviously I never played 850+ turns to see what exactly happens. (Turn 187 is when the world was finally unified)

[Lifthrasir]

Looks like the tuto is wrong (or I got it wrong ). I need to look deeper on that stuff

[Albertus Magnus]

Hello guys,

I am actually just a rather passive reader of this forum but after playing your submod for a while I felt like leaving a feedback of mine on this platform.

First things first, I considered SS 6.4. a great mod, and your submod did a lot of changes which improved many things and did it even better.
Just to mention some things I which come to my mind and I do not want to miss after playing this submod:

- The campaign map is so well done that I have been almost disapointed when I played another mod/ submod with the original map.
- The unit roster has been arranged perfectly. Especially for scotland.
- The AI has made a huge step forward. It avoids spikes, retreats when it is reasonable, tries flanking attacks etc.
- The new unrest system has been polished and now well balanced. It is harder to hold a great city, but doable.
- Due to the fact that the commanders have a longer lasting life it makes more fun to improve them

I would furthermore like to mention some things that could be improved from my point of view (by the way I play on Vh/Vh):

- Although I can handle the higher upkeep costs of units, the AI seems to be unable to build armies which are useful and cost efficient at the same time.
France f.e. usually builds an army consisting almost of only yery expensive knights and horseman and is not able to develop its economy because of this.
It seems the AI does not undestand and cannot handle the fact that these units are way to expensive in this submod.
This results in the problem, that it is far too easy to fully destroy an enemy after beating such an expensive army, because of missing resources.
Even the mongols after seem to lack of money and therefore are only able to build mercenary armies after reaching parts of central europe.

- Many units are almost not useful due to their upkeep. When playing the HRE I do not employ a single feudal or imperial knight unit or even consider it.
I usually end up building massive amounts of Teutonic Knights and Knights of St. John on foot and horse instead which are better, and easier to afford.
I actually consider this a little bit boring and sad, since there are many new unit textures.

- The system which allows me to elect an successor does not really work in my opinion and makes things very complicated since it now does not show me my whole family tree anymore.
Since the game still decides which character is going to be my heir I can only arrange a marriage for him. This contains the problem that my elected heir usually dies without any children.
There is a mod that allows you to get a princess for your commanders but it is unfortunately not compatible with this submod. Is there a certain reason why it has not been introduced yet ?

- Altough I like the reputation system which prevents you from butchering your way through the world without real consequences there are some things which I consider zu be odd.
Since beeing at war is considered to be "bad" and lowers the reputation your reputation depends on the AIs behaviour. It is not an unusual thing that you are attacked by 3 different factions in 1 turn.
Altough you are not the agressor your reputation drops 3 times. It needs a lot of turns to recover that and that is annoying since the AI often offers or accepts a peace agreement at once 1 turn after attacking .
It is also a bit annoying when you are forced to go on a crusade and having your reputation dropped, because you declare war by doing so. This often prevents me from taking partin a crusade if there is the possibility.


- I kind of dislike that the teutonic order has to be removed in order to put new factions in it. The teutonic order was really unique and the new factions feel rather like copies of other factions for me.
Especially Serbia lacks of relevance since it uses a mixture of roman and hungarian units. And even historically it has not enough impact from my point of view.
You probably had personal reasons for this change, which I do not want to challenge, but for me it is a bit sad

Well this was I think enough for the first post and hope this submod is going to last as long as possible and continue the good work.

[Ogmios]

I think someone in the mod development was just very pro-Serbia. I think that's a good area for another faction, but why Serbia instead of Bulgaria for example?

[Lifthrasir]

It was decided before my time in the mod team. Anyway, I guess that SErbia is not worse or better than Bulgaria for instance. I think that you also need to consider the gameplay. Serbia has probably more impact in the Balkans in game than Bulgaria.

[Albertus Magnus]

Well, and would you consider to implement something similar to the "Royal Ladies of the Court (RLC)" Mod fpr SS 6.4 (which is unfortunately not compatible) ?
It just hurts to see a bunch of family members die out without offsprings because there is no "bride presented event" and you have no own princess at hand.
Since it seems that the foreign bloodline trait is now transferred to the offsprings it is fun to maintain certain bloodlines within the family tree.

[Standard Nerd]

Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the start date for the SSHIP early campaign (so really the only SSHIP campaign) is 1132 AD. Between 1018 and 1184, Bulgaria was a part of the Byzantine Empire/Roman Empire/Eastern Roman Empire. As a result, the only other significant Balkan states at the time were Serbia and Croatia. However, Croatia was in a personal union with Hungary at the time I think.

[kostic]

In 1018, Bulgaria is annexed by the Byzantine Empire. It was not until 1186 that they rose against Byzantium. In 1091, Croatia is subjugated by the Hungarian king Lazlo 1st ... it remains under the authority of the Kingdom of Hungary during the Middle Ages.
In 1182, Stephen Nemanja freed Serbia from the Byzantine authority ... In the 14th century, Stephen IX (of the lineage of the Serbian kings) dominated the Balkans with the title of emperor of the Serbs and Greeks and he is an authority on the Bulgarian.
I think the SSHIP choice is entirely justified.


Sources: "The world in the Middle Ages" Bernard Merdrignac and Patrick Mérienne (c 2003/2007)

[Ogmios]

Almost certainly not worth the work, but when/if a later era campaign is implemented maybe it would make sense to swap the early era to Bulgaria and the later era to Serbia. Bulgaria is the larger and more relevant state in the 12th and 13th centuries, but appears to be overtaken in prominence by Serbia by the 14th century.

Either Balkan faction could use more fleshing out at some point, the mix of Hungarian and Roman is not the best.