@Waluk - if you like to spend time on the campaign map,
my Excel file may be of some use for you. On the basis on this recording I'm able to produce
reports like this one.
@lequintal - role playing is needed in Med2 engine. There're always unknown thing, like some factions tha don't want to talk to you, or attacking out of the blue and against their interests.
To follow-up the changes that will be made in 097 concerning agents, this is the current state of affairs:
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III. AGENTS
PRINCESS SPAWN SCRIPT fixed
* the goal of this script is to provide the player with another aspect of the game: royal marriages. Without the script the princesses are very rare after the initial phase of the game so the player never bothered. Now the princesses are numerous and the player will activelly seek to marry-off his FL and FH, or use his own ladies for diplomacy.
- previously (introduced in 096): there’s a script giving each AI faction a Princess with 0 charm every 14 years, starting after 1162 (each faction gets it in a different turn, so the Cumans get one in 1176 at the earliest) in either of two place for each faction. They were without any trait, with Charm 0, and frequently nameless. No info appears, you need find them.
- after fixing (097): Noble Ladies start appearing after 1152 and for each faction one is spawned every generation (slightly more than 20 years (it's stochastic: may be longer or shorter). There are 6 types of ladies for each faction, ie each has a different name, different traits and resulting different level of Charm (1-6). Each of them gets an epitaph “the Noble Lady” (it distinguish them from the born-in-family princesses; it has no impact on the game for the AI princesses, while for the player it means they're not in the family tree). There's an information window popping-out about the ladies spawned with the highest charm (5 or 6).
- future work: make an interactive event for the player to get a noble lady against a payment. Or introduce the Royal Ladies of the Court submod.
- the traits of the princess have not yet been reviewed. There're rather painful anti-trait + NGB bugs so the Ladies may even be better to be married than the normally born princesses.
MERCHANTS
* the goal of these changes is to limit the increase of time the player deals with the merchants as the faction grows. The fewer merchants but each providing more income will be good for playing experience.
- availability limited to a few per faction. They'll be provided by:
(1) each capital (ie if you take another faction capital, you can recruit an additional merchant)
(2) guilds: Merchants, Explorers & Hanseatic (only after Ostsiedlung event).
(3) large cities in North Italy and in the Low Countries (if Warehouse is built).
(4) all huge coastal cities (if Docklands are built).
- information windows on their impact have been included.
- the traits of the merchants have not yet been reviewed after 092, but they seem to work more-or-less ok.
DIPLOMATS
* the goal of these changes is to limit the processing time of the turns since the AI diplomats sometimes keep on trying to bribe cities and that makes turns longer if they are numerous. Another reason is to decrease the diplomat spam the player makes, keeping a diplomat at each of the enemy faction.
- every faction should have an access to a diplomat from the very beginning. However, there'll be fewer diplomat in-game overall because: 1. many AI diplomats very often checked the other cities for bribe and this slowed the processing time much, 2. there's a Noble Lady script: each faction gets a princess every ca. 40 turns. To this end the diplomat are available from:
(1) the administrative buildings in the capitals only (ie. provinces with hidden resource capital: if the player conquers another faction capital, he'll have access to another diplomat).
(2) Explorers Guilds, Theologian Guilds (note: the Latin Europe factions will get this ability only after 4th Lateran Council).
(3) Universities.
- information windows on their impact have been included.
- the traits for the diplomats had been reviewed for 096.
PRIESTS
* the goal of these changes is to limit the increase of time the player deals with the priests while keeping their importance for the game and using the AI ability to use the priest.
- recruitment of pagan priests from the castles removed but left for any level of the pagan shrines in the cities (also altars).
- recruitment from lower levels of churches and mosques (town, large town) removed; and the number of priests recruited from higher levels of churches significantly limited.
- availability of the priests limited to a few per faction. The limits is increased by 1 with:
(1) each capital (ie. it works for the initial capital and also for any other faction's capital conquered) starting from the town level (Small Church).
(2) abbey (ie. from the minor city level except from the capitals - in this case no difference, still the same 1).
(3) huge cathedral (ie huge city level).
(3) if the FL has the "strictly_religious" policy (trait), the limit for each church is increased by +1 (ie. 2 instead of 1, or 3 instead of 2).
(4) guilds: Theologians.
- information windows on their use, levelling up and availability included.
- occassional fixes to traits.
Spies, assassins, inquisitors, witches, heretics: improvements were made in SSHIP ver. 096 and, especialy the February patch after 096. In 097 few changes, if any.