Pritanoi - comments on manual and reform requirements
Guys,
I've played Pritanoi a while and I'd like to share some observations on the manual, reform requirements, and some minor issues.
In the other threads: I've made a proposal for the faction difficulty re-assessment here, pointed at some text bugs here, proposed a few home rules here, pointed for at some the issues I have with the battle system here.
Some issues spotted in the manual:
* there’s a mistake in the lines of government: after having built Military Occupation on the continent, you need to choose Protectorate OR Migration (not: first Protectorate, and then Migration). Or maybe there's a mistake in the game and it should indeed be Miltary Occupation -> Protectorate -> Migration ?
* Allied City – how many units have free upkeep?
* what is the difference when Law bonus is formed for Tribal Community ("disappears when a Kingdom is formed") and Large Tribal Community ("disappears on a medium size kingdom"). Is it the "A Kingdom Arises" event in both cases?
* similarily, what does it mean “British wide kingdom” for Petty Kingdom (7 or 6 provinces? Petty Kingdom built in each province or just possession?) It cannot be the even "A Kingdom Arises" as it's exactly this event that enables the "Petty Kingdom" building.
* Society – everything fine, but I’d add information description of the “Altron” mechanics. It's not explained how does the trait work: I've notices one of my generals getting that "teacher" trait, then my young general getting "Successful Altron", but why, how and what kind of impact it has - I don't know. It's a nice flavor to the game so I think it may be explained and highlighted also in the manual.
* Eligible for Tribal Education – is it at age of 28 or up to? Additionally, I don’t understand why “Proper” is better than “Exemplary”, but maybe it’s just translation.
Reform conditions:
I do like how the conditions for Kingdom Arises are set:
- 4 Kuanos effectively means you need to have at least one large town on the continent (since on the Isles you have only 3 towns with access to the sea)
- 2 Maros means you need to develop at least two cities (feasible around turn 150 at the earliest)
- 3 Candrons: you have to build those temples, not linger even if you don’t have problems with the unrest (which you usually don’t)
- 10 Cavalry units: you need to recruit, not only retrain (although 10 is too low to make a serious bump).
However, I’d add a requirement “Hire 10 mercenary units”. This is because the players have few incentive to hire expensive mercs as they have access to the same units through their buildings. Providing them with those incentives to do so would be good for the gameplay (and would somehow alleviate the flood-of-money problem of the design of this faction). This would be also historical, imo, as it shows the opening of the system and transformation to a petty kingdom: you don’t rely only on “your” peoples, you use also the others.
For role-playing purposes, to prompt the player using the ingenious EBII mechanics, I'd add a requirement that a general with the Druid trait exists.
Another idea for reforms' is to use the "Mercenary Service" traits. Each aristocrat whoe made "mercenary service" abroad or acted as a hostage would provide a "point" towards reforms, and a reform would have happened after a number of those points are gathered.
I'd find it very historical: the experience that the mercenaries brought back home is claimed in the academic textbooks to had made a crucial impact on the increase of "technology" in the "barbarian" world - in both military and political spheres (other forces mentioned are: long-distance trade, threats and opportunities provided by more developed neighboring societies, and exchange of hostages (and outside the EBII timeframe, the impact of missionaries). Eg. in Britain the political consolidation in the 1st century BC (development of a few petty kingdoms) is directly linked to the trade with the Gauls and to mercenary service on the continent. Or the "Celticization" of Ireland is theorized to be closely related to the exchange of hostages after striking alliances. Apparently, after each alliance, such exchange happened and upon the return as adults, the aristocratic Goidels introduced changes in the society in such a way that even linguists may discern them.
Minor comments & questions:
* town Alauna - it's in current Northumberland or around. I wonder if it shouldn't be on the western side of the Island, in Cumberland? I’ve searched for it on the web and there’re a few candidates for the place but not exactly in the current EBII place. Another "Alauna" is - as I've checked in the Barrington atlas - north of the Hadrian Wall, but it's very close to Dunopalator (100 km), so I doubt it's what EBII team had in mind. Another Alauna can be in Scotland, north of Striling, south of Perth. Again, not relevant in our case.
* town Dunopalator - I've checked some pages on the internet, it seems to me that "Dunpendyrlaw" would be a better name
* all Pritanoi generals get "experts in mathematics" traits. They all happened to be Smart so I guess it's related. However, I’ve found it a bit un-historical – it's too frequent and un-related to the schools (and their schools were unlikely to be very familiar with mathematics, btw).
* the differences between temples are very small. For the player, it currently makes little difference what choice does he make. The difference also appears late in the game. For the player who doesn’t retrain units one of the temples is basically useless.
* schools: Altron Uoglanmens (school lvl 1) costs 100 upkeep. However, the higher levels (lvl 2 and lvl 3) don't cost anything but they provide happiness. Additionally, the lvl 3 requires Large City that is not possible to be built by Pritanoi (the can just build Katri to upgrade from Large Town to City) - this might be intendend (eg. signify that 4 great shrines of the Celtic world? but this would require a hidden resource - I don't know, I didn't check)
* an idea: there're pop-ups every hour reminding the player to take rest. Maybe a text can be added that switching off the Medieval 2 every odd hour would prevent the memory-overflow CTD?
Besides, I find the gameplay of this faction to be not a perfect one. I've hinted at here, but I'll write on this separately.
Finally, I just want to re-iterate that I find the EBII to be the best mod (together with TATW) for all the TW games! Thanks for the EBII team again!
(even though the gameplay should be improved ;-)
JoC
For reference: the Pritanoi roster
