Experiment: Freeze_AI and the Pope.

[RollingWave]

Ok, the goal of this experiment is to test how the Papal State Reacts when I freeze their AI, the objective is to see if the Papacy can still function.

The point of the experiment is mostly tied to the use of invisble agents, In the sense that I want to utilize them but I don't want to give up a faction slot to do it. the papal state is obviousuly the most valid candidate to "freeze" so to speak, but only if their other functions still work....


Test 1:


Diplomacy: does a frozen AI still have a functional diplomacy?

Result: so far so good, I can still negotiate trade rights and alliance with them.



Test 2: Papal Election: will the pope still die and elections hold?

Result: a frozen AI faction's character will not age, so thats a problem.... the good news is that you can use scripts to kill the pope... and after testing when you kill him papal elections will still be held normally.


Test 3: what if Rome is taken?

Result : to be determined...

[RollingWave]

Ok, tested, the papacy will function propery after I took down rome too, this is quite promising for folks who want to use PSF invisible agents but don't want to sacrifice a faction slot IMHO.

[Ichon]

Where does the Pope appear after Rome is taken and he is frozen? Since if trying to end an excommunication the easiest method is killing FL or Pope.

[RollingWave]

Where does the Pope appear after Rome is taken and he is frozen? Since if trying to end an excommunication the easiest method is killing FL or Pope.

Good question, that test is still ongoing, I killed the Pope one, and he was reelected the next turn without problem, however the Papal State did not pop up , though I ended my test at that point yesterday so I didn't investigate further.

Still, the Papal stat'es move was never in the campaign_script to begin with, so I'm assuming that it's written in some other hidden hard coded aspect of the game?

I'm not terribly familiar with the Papal Function since it's been ages where i played a catholic faction and even longer since in one of those games where Rome was taken.. how long does it usually suppose to take for the Pope faction to pop up somewhere else again? does it happen immediately after new election or usually longer?

[Gigantus]

The pope should 'pop up' in his turn as long as there are eligible cardinals.
As the faction hasn't got a family tree it cannot be defeated, hence hard coded stuff like the election and calling a crusade should work (not 100% sure about the last one)

[RollingWave]

The pope should 'pop up' in his turn as long as there are eligible cardinals.
As the faction hasn't got a family tree it cannot be defeated, hence hard coded stuff like the election and calling a crusade should work (not 100% sure about the last one)

Calling Crusade works I confirmed it, election works too, what Ichon and I are talking about is that usually if Rome's taken the pope will ask some other catholic faction to give him land, I havnt' seen that happen yet, though that's probably because I didn't test it enough.

[Gigantus]

The pope will ask you for Rome if you conquer it from a third party afaik. Not sure if he asks if you have just chucked him out from there yourself. I am not sure either whether the region will have to have the rome hidden_resource as well or if that is only applicable for the Marian Reforms.

[RollingWave]

The pope will ask you for Rome if you conquer it from a third party afaik. Not sure if he asks if you have just chucked him out from there yourself. I am not sure either whether the region will have to have the rome hidden_resource as well or if that is only applicable for the Marian Reforms.

vanilla Rome doesn't have the rome hidden_resource, and I thought the marian reform resource is actually called italy .

if that's the case then i think we can confirm almost all the papal function will work, the only problem is that pope will live forever, however that can be solved via the kill_character script, aka I script roughly in accordance as to historical papal changes (on that turn I kill all Papal characters, however i need to think about if that might conflict with my agents.)

[Gigantus]

Please remember that you will need to know the name of the character if you want to kill him, something rather difficult if the character has not been spawned via script. Otherwise you can try 'retire_characters [faction_name] [character_type]' which will take care of a specific character type faction wide.

[RollingWave]

Please remember that you will need to know the name of the character if you want to kill him, something rather difficult if the character has not been spawned via script. Otherwise you can try 'retire_characters [faction_name] [character_type]' which will take care of a specific character type faction wide.

oo very interesting...

I was thinkng that one easy way to do it was simply have all the popes with unique name tags (like Pope_Urban, Pope_Innocent etc) and then at those point just kill them all

[Gigantus]

Unique 'name tags' are basically the 'label' entry used when spawning or preplacing characters - all other naming during the game will be through the descr_names entries and is thus random. Refer to my comment regarding 'kill'.
I have my doubts that you could spawn a pope when the previous one dies, unless there is no cardinal in the electorate. Else you will end up with two named characters with the 'FactionLeader' trait characteristics - doubtful that will work.
If you keep in mind that the pope is basically a glorified faction leader - hence named character - and that the faction cannot be defeated, then you could simply retire all named characters (burn them all, God will know his own ). Probably a minor disaster for the papal faction, but it will do the job.

[absinthia]

Test 2: Papal Election: will the pope still die and elections hold?

Result: a frozen AI faction's character will not age, so thats a problem.... the good news is that you can use scripts to kill the pope... and after testing when you kill him papal elections will still be held normally.

Test 3: what if Rome is taken?

Result : to be determined...

so if what i wanted was an imortal papal faction that let me call crusades, but otherwise is undefeatable like an off-map faction.
could i use a spare faction as a "dummy" without no settlements or characters on the campaign map?

[Gigantus]

I am not sure if you could start the game without the faction without at least one named character on the map, but it should be possible. Due to the 'no family tree' setting in descr_sm_factions the faction is undefeatable and as far as I know you do not need a 'live' pope to call a crusade (might be wrong there).

I believe the hidden resource 'rome' is the hard coded base for the pope asking back for the region with it (Rome Region) if he looses it, so simply removing the hidden resource should suffice.

[absinthia]

using a dummy faction it seem that everything worked out just fine, except one minor snag - i can not bring up the popes info tab, where the call Crusade button is located, while pope is off-map...
though i do not know how this would affect the AI, as that does not need to click windows, tabs and buttons. i wonder how an vanilla AI faction call crusade, if it is possible to bring up an info tab without the character being on the map?

using an active faction i can not freeze the AI label, which supposedly should stop the "pope" from ageing, i will probably need an electorate of Cardinals to keep faction leader alive. i guess this is doable, but it screws the faction family tree and succession. and then there is the issue of transfer from a priest(agent) to a general(named character), what determines the outcome that is the Pope character?

edit:
ha-ha.
seems that i was mistaken, i simply had forgott to make the papal states a papal_faction

[Gigantus]

We all have days like that