Self imposed rules

[torealis]

My housemates and I love playing this mod in hotseat, but the problem we were always faced with was that our expansion was far too rapid as our latent competetiveness just drove us to win, rather than enjoy the slower pace of a normal game.

For our newest hotseat, we've tried to impose some rules that will hopefully make it a slower paced, and far more challenging game. I thought i'd share them here to see what you guys think, and maybe get some more suggestions...

Economy
One of the major problems for some of us was having far too much money, more than could be spent each turn. Given that we're all playing as catholic factions this time, we've set the following:

- on turn 10, given 10,000 florins to the Pope.
most of our games have led to us using the large starting florin amount for ages and ages without being able to spend it. This should level the playing field at the beginning, and slow us down from the offset.
- also set up a 10 turn regular tribute to the Pope, set to the floring value of 10% of the total population of all your cities (with each city pop. rounded to the nearest 500).
This should control our spending and budgets, and because it's not a % of income, means we can go into the red if not careful. My worry is that this is too much money in the long run, and when cities get huge, will be a massive problem...
- every 10 turns this amount is to be reaudited and a new tribute established.

Towns and Cities

- no low tax rates
prevents farming chivalry for characters
- no low happiness by choice
essentially we have to maintain green happiness by any means (except low taxes) possible.
- Garrisons must be present in all towns.
should keep money down
This amounts to:
-in border towns (defined as any territory bordering enemy/neutral state) - 5 full units minimum. For every 1000 population = 1 extra unit.
- in interior towns - no minimum. For every 2000 population = 1 unit
- only 1 unit per garrison can be peasants.
- Garrisons are to be audited and updated every 10 turns.

Diplomacy

- Only trade rights and map information with allies.
not sure how good trade rights are yet. This rule could be subject to change
- only allowed 1 war at a time. Must try to conclude any further wars as quickly as possible. Offers of peace should be genuine and always 'balanced' at least if possible.

Military

- armies over 3 units must be led by a General
- You can only siege an enemy settlement with an equal number of unit cards as the enemy has defending.
- Generals do not count as a unit card slot.
- No messing around with sallying heavy cavalry when defending sieges.
- We also need some army comp rules. One of the main problems with our last games was that Spear Militia spam won every battle somehow.

Crusades

- no declaring crusades
- must join crusade, if declared by Pope, within 10 turns
- crusade must be led by faction heir or leader
- must either walk the whole way, or go to venice and hire merc boats from there.
- no army composition rules apply
- must build 5 priests to accompany crusade. if any die en route, must abandon crusade
- only 1 stack, must move as fast as possible

Agents

- spies not allowed to open gates
- merchants only allowed to farm on allied territory, not home.
- no priests allowed unless commanded by Pope (must stay in that territory) or for crusade.

That's about it... Thoughts?

[meese]

I don't usually like commenting on people's house rules I mean, that's what they are: rules for one person's particular game and it just feels bad saying, "No! You're rules are wrong!"

*shrugs*

Anyway, I never play with set rules and somehow it ends up pretty slow anyway (ie. I've never managed to take 70 settlements within the time limit and I think I've played four campaigns that have lasted that long?)

I've noticed though that I always do that first economy one anyway just because I want the pope to be on my side when I go to war against a Christian faction, so I'll often just give him money.

The only possible 'rule' that I play with is I only ever seem to have one to two generals commanding armies (until very late when that's just impossible) and I always stop to retrain if I take more than 150 or so casualties. This is probably because I hate seeing depleted units and I really really hate losing units altogether. So what ends up happening is I take settlements really slowly.

[Kazuhiro]

These rules are Horseradish!!!


Just use the BYG mod, or you will just get bored with this game.

[Massive_attack]

Oh man, you guys and your silly house rules.

They always seem to find inventive ways of killing the fun i have in my campaigns. Personally i just laugh at house rules or house rule mods. Its only not funny when they force you to use it.

Anyway, as long as everyone involved is cool with the rules, thats fine.

Possible suggestions ? Ugh i dont know... what would kill the most fun in a game... um... bah cant think of any, sorry to dissapoint XD.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

torealis...

Superb, I applaud you'alls creativity, +Rep, Thanks for sharing that...

My Rules and Laws of the Land.

1. FOW on - to act as embassy's and spies, plus SS as a creation is too beautiful not to watch as it unfolds...Oh how the plot thickens differently in every game... Since I love watching the map develop I pepper the land with towers and spies anyway and once established go several turns at a throw with FOW off.

2. Turtle - Don't rush the board.

3. Auto-calc - 80% of the time. I prefer "little wars" and don't like fighting with pitchforks and butter knives. I prefer doing battle with the upgraded stuff.

Oh ya....almost forgot...torealis... Welcome to the TWC Forums...Please give us a holler if you ever need anything {questions & such}

[JiangZiya]

the game imposes its own rules on itself. why make more?

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

For me...roleplay and to be "king of the Kingdom". Though you are quite right in what you said...

[Samariten]

I think houserules give you another dimension of the gameplay in total war. I also belive that the more experienced players (not all of them ofc) use such rules to gain more challenge ingame. I dont see the point were people just flame or say they suck. If you like them use them if not then dont. I mostly myself try to use a mixed army composition not spamming horsearchers/archers or elite units in my armies. I also like to use the old feudal system where all the dukes and counts had to supply the king with forces in the times of war. That means i build up every army stack building units from all settlements from my kingdom for example Nottingham supplys with 4 units of whatever and 3 units from York and so on.

[JiangZiya]

Well i use my own custom AI so I have yet to have the problem of an easy campaign.

[torealis]

Well i use my own custom AI so I have yet to have the problem of an easy campaign.

but the game imposes it's own rules? Why change them?

But seriously, for the people with suggestions and constructive comments, thanks.

A couple of new things/changes:

We realise that the economic sanctions may be a bit weighty and especially later in the game might have to introduce caps.

The rules are, in essence, to slow down the rate of expansion, because unchecked, we all expand far too fast.

There are only 2 of us in this hotseat.

As to using factions we don't like? Why bother? We want to enjoy the game, but also be challenged by it. We've chosen some reasonably well placed factions that ordinarily we should do exceptionally well with (Venice and Spain) so our restrictions are necessary.

New Rules:

Monarchs - when your king dies, use the 'control faction' command to give the AI control of your kingdom for 4 turns. A sort of 'handover' period for the heir.

So yeah, thanks. If you don't like the concept of houserules, there probably isn't much point posting is there? For me it isn't the concept that is flawed, we need these to enjoy the game. If you don't, great.

So we just want help ironing out the kinks.

Ta

[JiangZiya]

It was a simple question, no need to PMS all over me.. damn.
Apparently people agree with me as well, so it's not like my question was without merit.


I use my own custom AI to improve the AI's ability to defend its borders.

[Samariten]

Well if some players want to add more rules, roleplaying or whatever to the game why cant they and if they want to share them with other likeminded so be it. I cant see why people bother to post in such threads if the only thing they can say is "why make more rules", well obviously because they want to!

[JiangZiya]

Because i'm genuinely curious why people would want to alter a game to be even more unrealistic.
Some of those house rules are preposterous. I'm not the only one who thinks that, as you can see from other posts.
By trying to stifle my opinion you're doing the same exact thing you are accusing me of.
I meant no harm in my post, I didn't say "THATS STUPID." I merely asked why.
Perhaps if there's a good argument for it, I may choose to make house rules for myself in the future.
Such hostility in here... that's new to me on this forum.

[torealis]

I told everyone why in the first post. The campaign isn't hard enough.

[JiangZiya]

Ok, well in that case you should try a different AI or submod. The original campaign was too easy so I downloaded RR/RC and BGRIV and tweaked the AI to be a bit smarter. Also, in your original post you also did ask for our thoughts on the matter of house rules; if you didn't want to hear them, you shouldn't have asked.

[torealis]

Ok, well in that case you should try a different AI or submod. The original campaign was too easy so I downloaded RR/RC and BGRIV and tweaked the AI to be a bit smarter. Also, in your original post you also did ask for our thoughts on the matter of house rules; if you didn't want to hear them, you shouldn't have asked.

we have all those on, and i don't have the knowitall to tweak the AI.

As for autoresolve, we don't want to remove a whole part of the game (essentially half of it)

[Blakdust]

I wouldnt bother only having merchants in your own lands the best tactic in such a case would be to not even bother building merchants

[Nightbringer]

try an autoresolve only campaign, that makes things a great deal harder.

[Samariten]

I dont agree that the game get more unrealistic adding houserules or "rules" to the game. My experience from houserules is that they are often added to aim for realism to that time of era like army compositions, military tactics and so on. This is not necessary for all houserules or rules added to the game, a great tip is to check out the RTW mod SPQR and its houserules you get an idea what it is all about. I also apologize if my post were being about hostile or felt like it was not my purpose to be. I also think that adding a few own rules into the game is better then add hundreds of diffrent tweaks or fixes to the game. Everyone should play the game in the way that make them enjoy it the most rules or no rules...