Make Attila Great Again (MAGA)

[hardballer]

After a solid week of work I'm pleased to show you a first video of my upcoming mod.
This mod will be a collection of scripted mechanics that aimed to enhanced the campaign experience.

The first mechanic will be about adding back the possibility to gift or trade region with the AI.



Keep in mind that due to the way it works this is only for single player campaign.


The first release is planed for the end of the month and will consist of a functional but not balanced trading mechanic.
By that I mean the AI will accept any deal you make no matter how bad it may be for them.

Developing some kind of AI decision making is the next step on my roadmap but I rather release this first version as soon as possible.
As you could imagine with this kind of mod, bugs and unwanted side effect may appear, some are already dealt with and I count on your feedback to fix the rest of them.


This mod will be compatible with the 3 campaigns (Attila, Last Roman, Age of Charlemagne)
and compatible with any mod that doesn't touch the scripting.lua file (That's pretty much most of them)


What to expect for the first release:

Trade will be limited to one per turn.
Capital and regions under siege won't be tradable.
If you can gift at will, the AI won't give away his region freely, you need to propose something in exchange.
And maybe more fancy UI for the region's name if I got the time.



Edit 20/07:
Steam Link : here

[Commissar Caligula_]

Witcher 3 music?
Being able to trade settlements?
Its for Attila?

Give this man a round of applause!

[Theramines]

Holy moly! That's such a welcome mod.

[Frunk]

Looks cool, hardballer! +rep

Feel free to keep the community up to date by posting announcements using the Mod Announcements system, if you wish to.

[zxcvmnb]

Amazing work! This is one of the best mods I have seen in a very long time! Any idea how difficult this mechanic would be to carry over between Rome/Shogun/Warhammer? Region trading was one of my most missed features after Napoleon, and considering most of this is scripting side, I would assume there would be at least some form of carryover, outside of the UI. Either way, great work and I can't wait to see what other scripts you come up with!

[hardballer]

Can't tell, I don't own those games.
What's sure is the UI part can't be port as it's based on Attila, it will need a rewrite to be use in other games.

[alhoon]

Awesome work. +rep.

Can you perhaps make a version that the player can only GIFT regions to the AI? Not trade, gift. And if that is possible, could you do it so that it could only be done to allies?

I suggest that because it cuts down the exploitation of the AI unable to balance it.

+rep

[hardballer]

Thanks alhoon !

Sure this could be done but I rather have the trading available and help the AI figuring out if the deal is interesting or not.
This will be added on the second release and won't be too far away from the first one, maybe one or two months.

[Star_destroyer]

After a solid week of work I'm pleased to show you a first video of my upcoming mod.
This mod will be a collection of scripted mechanics that aimed to enhanced the campaign experience.

The first mechanic will be about adding back the possibility to gift or trade region with the AI.



Keep in mind that due to the way it works this is only for single player campaign.


The first release is planed for the end of the month and will consist of a functional but not balanced trading mechanic.
By that I mean the AI will accept any deal you make no matter how bad it may be for them.

Developing some kind of AI decision making is the next step on my roadmap but I rather release this first version as soon as possible.
As you could imagine with this kind of mod, bugs and unwanted side effect may appear, some are already dealt with and I count on your feedback to fix the rest of them.


This mod will be compatible with the 3 campaigns (Attila, Last Roman, Age of Charlemagne)
and compatible with any mod that doesn't touch the scripting.lua file (That's pretty much most of them)


What to expect for the first release:

Trade will be limited to one per turn.
Capital and regions under siege won't be tradable.
If you can gift at will, the AI won't give away his region freely, you need to propose something in exchange.
And maybe more fancy UI for the region's name if I got the time.

YE HAVE DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE!

[hardballer]

Small video showcasing the progress made this past week


Added:
- Blocking of the region trading if you are already in a diplomatic process with the AI.
- Custom map overlay (player: yellow, AI: green).
- Toggle map button.
- Bigger font for the region name.
- Gift and trade icons.


I'm finishing the map overlay for Last Roman and Charlemagne this week and the alpha will be released

[Viking1978]

Great feature, fine progress... Simply looks awesome!

[Viking1978]

One question: what happens when an army is garrisoned in a traded settlement, does it cause any problems?

[hardballer]

None, the army just leaves the city. Look carefully on the first video at 0:54.

[Viking1978]

Wow! Damn, that's awesome!

[hardballer]

First release is out on steam (see OP for the link)
Give it a try and tell me if everything is working correctly.

I will start to code the "AI" now

[Viking1978]

Works like a charm, thanks man!

Sorry to bother you with this, don't want to distract you, but I have two remarks:

- I found a bug that doesn't always happen... Yeah, I know... I could produce it about 5 times in about half an hour, always when I give a region, then click several times on the map so that the map is replaced by the actual 3D campaign map (I am aware that this is not a normal action), and then clicking several times on the gifted region text so that the region text disappears... The bug happens when I then decide to press the X to quit the gift region option and it consists of most of the diplomacy UI disappearing except for the 2 faction leader columns. You can still hover & scroll with your mouse over the campaign map, but that's it. I can post a savegame if that would help.

- I don't know if you are aware of this, but you can also open the "initiate diplomacy" screen by double tapping on the "faction line" in the diplomacy screen. This manner doesn't bring up the gift/trade region button. Not a big deal, of course, just mentioning it.

[hardballer]

Good catch, will be fix tonight.
Thanks Viking

[Maetharin]

Well colour me surprised!

Damn, if you can bring the AI to actually use this, this could be the biggest accomplishment in Attila yet!
How hard would it be to implement this in mods which already altered the scripting.lua file?

I don´t know how your parting with the AE team went through, but I really hope we can see this implemented in AE.
Because this is a feature I definitly missed in Rome 2!

BTW, would it be possible to trade a region for f.e. peace or money?
I don´t know anything about scripting, so I wouldn´t know about this.

[hardballer]

Hey Maetharin,

How hard would it be to implement this in mods which already altered the scripting.lua file?

For the 0.1.1 version you just need to add require("maga/init"); at the end of the scripting.lua file.
This will be more complicated for the 0.2 version that will come out next month but I will write a small tool to help modders create compatibility patch.

BTW, would it be possible to trade a region for f.e. peace or money?
I don´t know anything about scripting, so I wouldn´t know about this.

Giving a region in exchange of a peace treaty will be easy to add.
Involving money to the exchange may be more difficult, I will give it a try later.

[Causeless]

I don´t know how your parting with the AE team went through, but I really hope we can see this implemented in AE.
Because this is a feature I definitly missed in Rome 2!

I might be able to write some compatibility code to load in the region trading mod to AE if the user has the region trading pack file enabled, but I cannot promise anything.

Hardballer, this is impressive work. The UI stuff is really good looking and I see you've started using binary UI file modifications too. Our differences aside, this is an impressive proof of concept and I'm excited to see it completed.