A thank you to the modders, and some questions

[Grimmy]

First:
Thank you for your efforts to provide us players with this very interesting mod. I remember the Chivalry mod that was being produced for the RTW game and had often wished for the same mod for M2:TW. Silly me, didn't realize this existed until a few days ago.

So far, I've only played as England in the Dark Ages and on m/m. I have a vista system but with that permissions gizmo turned off and the mod set to xp emulation.

Now for the questions. I understand and appreciate the required compromises that enforce a slower start in the game. I am a natural born turtler so have no problem at all spending upwards of a 100 turns just building up my infrastructure to allow for imperial expansion.

But, I have rather hard problems in keeping any positive pop growth after a town builds its first level of stone walls. Lowering tax from normal to low gives no help in that area. If a settlement is at 0 growth in normal tax, it will be 0 growth in low tax too.

I've noticed that many of the desirable buildings carry a rather heavy negative pop growth penalty in the building description. Farms do not carry any positive growth bonus in the description but seem to give a bit of a boost at the highest tier. The description I refer to is the one available ingame. I haven't gone through the .txt in the folders, because I'm not a modder and might accidentally change something without intending to.

Also, I've noticed that the town west of London on the south coast of England gives no spies or assassins with the dungeon building and no merchants with the market upgrades that give those units in London. Are they hidden resources that are only available in specific settlements?

It also seems that building ports and coastal trade buildings provide no real benefit until after Market Rights are purchased for a settlement. Is this how it is designed? Or am I doing something wrong?

And last, the Danes in England are totally passive. They'll send a stack into the rebel area west of their area but never attack anything either rebel stacks or attempt to siege the settlement. They've never attempted any aggression against my nearly undefended settlements either. Is this intended? or a product of the difficulty level I've been playing on?

PS. There also seems to be a rather large bunch of wasted unit designs that are similar almost to the point of duplication in ability. Only real difference is name of unit and graphical representation in the unit cards. This is most noticeable in the militia level units.

Oh, nearly forgot:

Does the starting the game in the Dark Age mean I can play up through the rest of the eras through events? Or does the Dark Age game end at the beginning of the Early?

[ElSypatiko]

Something for the bug forum ?

[Grimmy]

Donno. It doesn't seem like bugs. Seems more like design of some sort, but I'm no bug expert. The settlements that seem most problematic, so far are Chester, Dorchester and York.

[Grimmy]

Forgot to add:

just finished playing the opening phase of a new game as England again. Paid better attention to building descriptions, and some of the farms list a pop bonus, and some don't. Some give a pop bonus as soon as they're built, some dont. It didn't seem to follow any predictable pattern and varied from settlement to settlement.

It was the same for synagogues, temples and the inn lines of buildings. Those that didn't get spies/assassins from the dungeon, got no units from any of those buildings.

That's what made me think it might be design, rather than bug, if units can be a hidden resource sort of thing.

[ElSypatiko]

have a look at the EDB file
in your data \mod\sicilianvespe\data
there you can check the + and - for every building
As long as you only read and never save you can do nothing wrong
Gtx

[DaVinci]

It's correct that also Chivalry II has a vast use of a hidden_resource design, respectively ups and downs (just boni and penalties per certain buildings similar to the known traits/anc system) for different kind of regions. Unintended would be, if a settlement cannot grow at all to an available tier per building browser, then this would be an area of improvements, that we will do with patches, so your kind of observation is good, if we get info about settlements, that cannot grow at all at a certain stage. Similar valid for different kinds of recruitments etc.

If you wanna have it easier, then you can follow the advice that was given by the poster above (changing penalties into neutral or positive values). Of course you wouldn't play then the intended Chivalry mod design, rather a semi-vanilla mod in this area of mod-design, and not that, what is one part of the Chivalry design "trademarks".

[Grimmy]

DaVinci:

I am in no way, shape or form, interested in making it easier. I do really enjoy your mod.
Also, I do not know if my observations have any viable usefulness at all. I'm still in the "mess aorund with it and see what does what" part.

I'm not a note taker nor a detail type person, so most of what I notice is nothing more than what seems to be patterns. One of those seeming patterns is that building things in specific orders seems to effect what those things give as bonuses and minuses.

I've noticed, for example, in London...
The freeholding building. Depending on when I build it, can have a bonus to pop growth, and neg to pop growth or no effect on pop growth. But, that's only what is noticed by me dropping the building into the build que to see what it does to the settlement details.

So far, just a guess, it seems to pattern out that building the freehold too early in the farm development for the settlement hits pop as a neg. Building it too late gives a null.

Of course, I do suspect that I am really only completely confused.

To help me in helping you...

Specifically, are Chester and Dorchester supposed to be unable to recruit spies and assassins from the dungeon building, and priests from the church building? This has held steady in each Darkage game I've played as England so far. If that's not supposed to be, then I guess I posted a bug. If it is supposed to be, then fine by me. Helps in figuring out how to specialize towns in later turns. It's the not knowing that's a pita lol.

[DaVinci]

You haven't encountered a bug in this matter. It's intended that certain settlements can and cannot recruit or construct or cause certain contents

[Grimmy]

Thanks. Actually, I had just figured that out. Well done on that feature, btw.

Also, I am pleased to report that my earlier grumbles about settlement growth were due to my own mismanagement and misunderstandings on what buildings did what and where.

Everything makes sense now... except why oh why do so many of my generals make me have to break them on the wheel. Nasty disloyalists. That's not a complaint, btw. It's rather nice knowing that I MUST pay attention to my generals.

[DaVinci]

The higher the distance to the leader is, the higher the danger to get disloyal family members. But i think, if i ever have the time, i'll change that "feature" still more to a more moderate setting, as it is partly overdone by the BBB modders, imo., but already modded down to a more playable design by me ... eventually partly not enough ... this is something where we need some reflection, just after 50 years or more, how your experience is in that area of character traits.

[ElSypatiko]

Everything makes sense now... except why oh why do so many of my generals make me have to break them on the wheel. Nasty disloyalists. That's not a complaint, btw. It's rather nice knowing that I MUST pay attention to my generals.[/quote]

Yes that is why i make a "regatta for them non loyalist" .
And oeps did whe take a cours straigt at a masive pirate fleet?

[Grimmy]

DaVinci:

I've only had one general go rebel so far. My king was in London, where I always park him, and the traitorous bastage general was in Chester.

The only really annoying part was that once he got kicked out of Chester, the general wouldn't move. I couldn't move him anywhere. He just stood there, just outside of the rebelling town. I did disband his army, but had no clue why I couldn't get him to move at all. He stood there like a doofus for 5 turns, costing me money. Then he went gray and I had one of those "ohh, ok. that's what's going on" moments.

Again, it wasn't that he went rebel, it was that I didn't know what was going on, that was annoying me at that time. Now I know. So now I pay more attention. Not a bad thing, imo.

ElSypatiko:

I tend to send my undesriable generals out to attack the nearest enemy on the ground. I hate spending extra coin on building a boat just to sink it lol.

[ElSypatiko]

perhaps we should be able to aasasinate our own generals.
wouldn't that be realistic??

[DaVinci]

perhaps we should be able to aasasinate our own generals.
wouldn't that be realistic??

But not possible due to hardcode.

@Grimmy
The non-movement is the last tier of unloyalty

[ElSypatiko]

than i have to build more boats

[Grimmy]

perhaps we should be able to aasasinate our own generals.
wouldn't that be realistic??

I had, eventually, figured that out after the first general pulled that betrayer crap.
Actually, I do think that's a pretty cool and "life mimic" thing. A general that has mad up his mind to turn coat isn't one that's going to be putting much energy into following orders.

[DaVinci]

I had, eventually, figured that out after the first general pulled that betrayer crap.
Actually, I do think that's a pretty cool and "life mimic" thing. A general that has mad up his mind to turn coat isn't one that's going to be putting much energy into following orders.

Exactly. But while you learn to play the campaign gameplay, with the time, you'll see that you can reduce quite good the illoyalty of generals. It is all on traits and especially the behaviour of the leader. Ie. loyalty weak characters should be kept in the near of the leader, only characters with high loyalty are good for adventures far away on the map. This is a well historical reflection, and a great idea created by the BBB modders ... they had this content a bit harder than in our current mod, because i reduced it to have it a bit more player friendly, and not to exagerate the effects, with the danger of real game-fun killers

[Grimmy]

Well done, all around.