FOTE Campaign Mechanics Test Pack

[Grizwald714]

I have been working on campaign changes I finished the test pack last night but what it needs right now is testing and balancing so I was hoping you guys could help me out. My main goal is to make the player care a lot more more about Political power, general loyalty and army Integrity. Remember this is a first draft so its not perfect. Your guys help in testing will be greatly appreciated and any thing that you guys think is unbalanced or should be added please let me know.


Here is a complete list of changes
Traits:
These are mainly traits I felt were OP and need to be nerfed or were to server and need to be knocked down a little. I also thought the ERE should be given a slight discount to non roman troops since the romans used a lot of barbarians in their army but it is not nearly as much as it is for the WRE since they relied on barbarians in their army way more from what I know.

Group Traits:
Barbarians: main building conversion cost decreased to 100 and time increased to 250
Migrators : main building conversion cost decreased to 150 and time increased to 250

Faction Traits:
Western Romans: Non Roman units upkeep increased to -8%
Eastern Romans: given the reduced upkeep of Non Roman units -2% and interest trait decreased to 3%
Sassanid’s: vassal income decreased to plus 100%
Alamans: melee attack against roman decreased to +7
Votadini: Agent action cost decreased to -10% and agent success chance decreased to +8%
Picts: Night fighting Moral bonus decreased to +4

Campaign Changes:
I felt the ERE should have the guardhouse change since I believe it is in their victory conditions and to allow the player to fortify their frontiers better. The income negative from a province that doesn't balance its food also seemed extreme since it applies even if your faction as a whole has more food then need so I decreased it but I up'd the public order negative to -2 to offset this. Zone of control was also lowered to help army moremovement and hopefully stop armies being stuck in city ZOC.

Province Negative food production income decreased to -10% and public order incressed to -2
ERE given the guardhouse chain
Zone of Control: Land Decreased to 2.8 and Naval to 4

Political Power:
A player should aim for 50-70% power. I hope this system will cause the player to care a lot more about their current power. My only worry is there are not enough negatives to outweigh the bonuses you get from increased cash for maintaining complete control over the government. I tried to think about what would be realistic positives and negatives from either having to much or to little power. For example a leader with low power wont be feared which will lead to increased corruption and decreased taxes since neither his subjects nor his nobles will fear the consequences of steeling or not paying. However a leader that has total power will be feared and people will be a lot less likely to steel and people will pay their taxes.

Public Order: -25/-15/-8/4/8/4/-2/-8/-12
Army Recruitment: -10/-8/-5/3/0/0/0/0/0
General Loyalty: -7/-5/-3/0/2/2/0/-2/-4
Army Integrity: -20/-10/-5/0/3/5/7/10/15
Corruption: 35/20/10/0/-5/-10/-15/-25/-40
Tax: -20/-15/-5/0/4/8/10/12/16

Loyalty:
My goal was to make loyalty much harder to maintain and make it so all characters have a chance to rebel.
The main differences are everything as has an increased impact on your generals. Will update with a detailed list later of all loyalty changes.


General Chance of Rebelling:
Loyalty 1 chance of rebellion: 40%
Loyalty 2 chance of rebellion: 20%
Loyalty 3 chance of rebellion: 5%
Loyalty 4 chance of rebellion: 1%
Loyalty 5-7 chance of rebellion: 0.5%
Loyalty 8-9 chance of rebellion: 0.1%

Political Actions:
My goal with political actions is to try to make the players try to deal with their generals instead of just assassinating or adopting them. So I increased the price of Adoption and assassination. I also decreased the price of securing loyalty since it should be the first option and to try to get the general loyalty up due to the increased chance of them rebelling. I also decreased the price of seek a wife and becoming a retainer since they should not be hard things for someone in the royal family to do. I also decreased the price of marriage while increasing the price of divorce to make marring your daughter to one of your generals or to another faction a harder choice but then dissolving that marriage will be more expensive so it should help think out your decision.

Adopt increased from 50 to 75
Assassinate: Increased from 25 to 40
Become Retainer Decreased from 15 to 10
Seek Wife: Decreased from 20 to 10
Secure Loyalty: Decreased from: 25 to 15
Marriage: Decreased from 30 to 25
Divorce: Increased from 20 to 25
Gather Support Increased from 25 to 30


Faction Leader Increased:
I increased the rate at which the faction leader gained influence so he can hopefully keep up with other nobles and still have points to spend on political actions if needed.

Per turn increased from 1 to 3
Per situation increased from 3 to 4

Army Integrity
Army Integrity should be alot harder to maintain. Winning battles will have a bigger impact then losing battles but the effects of losing a battle last longer then winning. Also things like Attrition and being on foreign soil will have a much bigger negative on your army.

Starting Integrity: 70
Low Moral level: 25
Attrition : -8
Bankrupt: -10
Battle lost turns: 4
Battle lost: -20
Battle won turns: 2
Battle won: 30
Decimate: 25
Decimate turns: 2
Faction leader death: -5
Faction leader death turns: 2
Foreign soil: -8
Idle: 2
Kings own: 10
Moral level low: 25
Raiding: 10
Transfer turns penalty: 0


Political Offices:
In vanilla all offices no matter high the rank are the same amount of time 4 turns minimum and 8 turns max. I felt that higher ranking offices should have much longer terms so you cant switch characters out every couple of turns to get the bonuses.I also lowered the minimum age a little for the 1st ranking office.

level 4 offices term maximum has been increased to 12 turns (3 years)
level 5 offices minimum and and maximum terms have been increased to 8 (2 years) turns minimum and 16 (4 years) turns maximum
level 6 offices minimum and and maximum terms have been increased to 8 (2 years) turns minimum and 20(5 years) turns maximum

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4d...ew?usp=sharing

[Junaidi83 de Bodemloze]

Wow nice one Sir Grizwald, keep doing what you doing

[Indus_Valley]

It looks brilliant. The kind of campaign I want to play .

[Grizwald714]

Thanks for the compliments I'm glad you guys like it. Don't forget to let me know how it is working in game after you play with it for awhile.

[shawn858]

wow, looks good, will definitely give it a try!

One question though, do you think the Imperial Economy mod will mess with this too much?

[miTo82]

wow, looks good, will definitely give it a try!

One question though, do you think the Imperial Economy mod will mess with this too much?

I think it should be compatible because Imperiales only changes the recruitment/upkeep costs depending on your imperium level...

I like the changings you posted here. Especially the changings for integrity. I made a little mod for myself a couple of weeks ago with quite similar values and keeping the integrity up is more interesting now.
But I made something different: I gave a MALUS to an army when it is idling! The Idea was that the only thing to have a good integrity is when the army is fighting and raiding. Otherwise the soldiers will geht bored and start to revolt.

Feels pretty good and I have the feeling that the enemy is a little bit more "active". Because he cant put his army in his only City and still doing nothing all the time. He has to attack and raid, because he will have integrity problems otherwise.

Maybe you can think about that.

Very nice work so far *thumbs up*

[Grizwald714]

I was thinking about making idle a negative but with increasing the negatives so much for everything else the and the only other way you can get positive integrity no matter what is from either a victory or decimating your army unless your faction leader is the general and only one army can have that. So I figured that their needs to be another way to gain integrity. If after testing Integrity is still no problem to maintain then I'll probably either lower it or make it a negative.

[The Iron Chancellor]

Thank you, Grizwald. The changes sound promising! Therefore, I will test and get back to you.

[Faramir D'Andunie]

Decided to give your test campaign back a go and here is my opinion after 20 turns on a WRE campaign attempt:

Integrity: Actually had to resort to decimating forces which were either not enganged in battles or found themselves defeated. Was quite interesting that I actually had to pay attention and take actions against it.

Loyalty: Given than I tried your pack together with the latest Better CAI I found myself with the majority of the political figures around 6 loyalty. Political offices and influence gain became a major nuisance (in a good way). No rebellious generals in the first 20 turns but a lot of bribing to ensure loyalty took place.

Political Power: I found exteremly interesting the ability to lower corruption through political power. The negative loyalty effect means that unless you have wasted a lot of influence on securing loyalty beforehand increasing your power might actually bring you a civil war. The only detail that I am unsure of is the +8 public order bonus when you are in the Balanced Power level. That might be a tad too much in my opinion. Maybe +5 is more sensible? Just a thought really.

Political Actions: Good reasoning in making divorce and adoption harder. Not sure about assasination but I am biased because I rarely manage to get anyone properly killed through it.


All in all the changes are enjoyable and a nice addition to the campaign.

[Dresden]

Thanks for your testing and feedback! Very much appreciated.

[Grizwald714]

Thanks for the feedback.
Sorry I didn't respond sooner I have been busy the last 2 weeks getting my series 6 license for my new job and have made it to the forums for a little while. I am was planning on lowering it 6 for the finial version.