SSHIP - General Discussion

[sapiens86]

still crashes for me...

hmm or there a way for me to work around it and continue with my game? For eg. perhaps using the console give_trait method to give the crown? Would it cause any complications further down in the game, if I were to give the crown/ancillary via the console?

[Jurand of Cracow]

I don't have experience with giving anything with console, but I see no reason why it would cause complications.

[sapiens86]

I don't have experience with giving anything with console, but I see no reason why it would cause complications.

cool! Anyone knows what's the names for the king/crown related trait/ancillary? Eg. Give_trait this "Crown trait name"

[Belovèse]

No, they're using the base Stainless Steel plus some icons from elsewhere. Besides, I'm actually pretty relaxed about using my work, at least. Sometimes I also add few instructions how to incorporate it.

Just to be explicit, I'm also ok with anyone using my work for anything, as long as credit is given to the original author if needed. For me it's the basis of modding: everyone is working for free, fun, and a bit of credit

@Belovèse I wonder what mod it is. Can you give the link of the mod? I would like to test and experience.

Of course, it is is Europa Barbaorum II if I recall correctly. They also had quite some frustration about the emergence mechanics that we use for the civil war script.

The idea I had, but did not try yet, was also thought of and tested by Callistonian and seems to work well, I "just" have to find the time to implement it in SSHIP.

About the coming back of civil war in SSHIP, sorry I didn't find the time to answer you. If you want to activate it for AI factions, open the file mods/SSHIP_098/data/worlds/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign/campaign_script.txt, search for "CIVIL WARS & REVOLTS" and remove all the lines with

and not I_IsFactionAIControlled .........

Stop when you reach those lines:

        log ------ Script end
    end_monitor

cool! Anyone knows what's the names for the king/crown related trait/ancillary? Eg. Give_trait this "Crown trait name"

The best way is to open the files describing the traits and ancillaries. In the folder mods/SSHIP_098/data (or mods/SS6.3/data if you're using SSHIP 0.97) you will find export_descr_ancillaries.txt and export_descr_character_traits.txt. These are the files that defines all the ancillaries and traits, and in the first part of the files you will find the definitions and the names for them. The second part contains the triggers that give them to characters. Don't hesitate to come back to us if you need more explanations!

[Berk]

Of course, it is is Europa Barbaorum II if I recall correctly. They also had quite some frustration about the emergence mechanics that we use for the civil war script.

The idea I had, but did not try yet, was also thought of and tested by Callistonian and seems to work well, I "just" have to find the time to implement it in SSHIP.

About the coming back of civil war in SSHIP, sorry I didn't find the time to answer you. If you want to activate it for AI factions, open the file mods/SSHIP_098/data/worlds/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign/campaign_script.txt, search for "CIVIL WARS & REVOLTS" and remove all the lines with

and not I_IsFactionAIControlled .........

Stop when you reach those lines:

        log ------ Script end
    end_monitor

@Belovèse
Was the "Civil War" script also passive? If it's passive, I'll try.

But I asked about activating "Reemerging Factions". When I didn't get an answer from you, I tried something myself. I copied and pasted the "Reemerging Factions" script from v0.97 into v0.98. I was testing if it works.

[Belovèse]

Ah yes, sorry, I misunderstood. Well the reemerging script is still there in 0.98, and it is in fact more likely to happen in 0.98 than in 0.97.

I'm not sure what you mean about the "passive" aspect of the Civil War script, but it doesn't require any specific actions from the player.

[Berk]

@Belovèse

1) In v0.98, the Zengids did not respawn despite being destroyed. So I thought the "Reemerging faction" script was removed.


2) I asked if the "Civil War" script was passive?


3) Meanwhile, some military unit cards from the rebel faction are missing.
-Tawashi Cavalry
-Fari Cavalry

[AlberdoBalsam]

Will the factions be rebalanced eventually, or is this the final feel for the lack of better word?

[Jurand of Cracow]

How to lose usurper trait as king? Im in civil war for a long time and my king has max authority? Will it go away, or must I wait for next king to be legitimate one?

Perhaps wait, I don't remember (or I've never known) how precisely does it work.

Will the factions be rebalanced eventually, or is this the final feel for the lack of better word?

In what sense "rebalanced"?

For fun: here some blueprints for the building icons, perhaps from the earlier version of my work on the water mills:



If somebody could collect a similar medley from the current icons, this would be helpful to pinpoint the issues, if there're any.

[AlberdoBalsam]

When i meant rebalanced, i was talking about the stats of units themselves. I feel like originally, SS was balanced towards western european factions and they had pretty much everything for every role. I'd like to see some positive uniqueness for the east as well. For example, having heavier cavalry at the start. I like how mods like Tsardoms do that. European factions are more balanced towards heavier infantry, while east has superior cavalry. In SS and its submods, it feels like the west has everything. Would be nice to see some heavier cavalry with superior stats for turko-persians and arabs early on.

[Macaras]

AlberdoBalsam, did the easter factions historically have heavy cavalry that could match the western ? As far as I know for example in the first crusade the westerners were heavier armored, both infantry and cavalry. Their horses were bred to carry the heavy armor, the climate was colder - the eastern countries had rather light cavalry and horse archers ? Besides that - Ghulams and Fari lancers are heavy cavalry available in the begining, if you compare them to the mailed knights there is not such a difference - they are a little less armored, but have good charge and skills..
I played Tsardoms and the easter factions have a lot of good horse archers, but the lancers are less armored then the western ones- until some of the later events, but still they are one step behind the west.

[AlberdoBalsam]

Yes, eastern factions did have heavy cavalry to match the western one. You are saying that during the first crusade, western cavalry was heavier and the horses could carry heavy armor. Quite untrue. The amount of armor western european cavalry had in first crusade, was not much more than, for example, Charlemagne's. For centuries, main armor for heavy cavalry in Europe consisted of a chainmail shirt, a helmet and a shield. During the first crusade, most knights had a long hauberk with mostly short or 2/3 sleeves, a coif with a helmet on it and a kite shield.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This is exactly how western heavy cavalry would have looked like for the most part in 12th century. That's a lot of armor for the horse to carry, but not as much as for the eastern cavalry.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Here is an example of how french knights would look like in the end on 12th century, so like third or fourth crusade. Heavy, but again, not as heavy as eastern shock cavalry.

When we look at middle eastern shock cavalry in 12th century, it is the same as western, really. They adopted kite shields quickly and the main armor was a mail shirt with a helmet on a coif. That would be the standart equipment, but their real elite would be influenced by persian cataphracts.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This is a graffito from Dura-Europos. Its a 3rd century depiction of a cataphract. We know for a fact that it persisted, but how it morhped, we can't say for sure.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This is statue of Khorsow II. As you can see, he does have horse armor, although not full caparison just like shown in Dura-Europos. It is unclear what kind of armor is worn here in the big picture, because it is obstructed by robe, but we can see the aventail that covers the whole face. It is notable that after some time, during islamic conquest, muslims used persian style cataphracts as well. Now, these cataphracts were not as numerous as knights, they were the best of the best, but they existed nonetheless. For example, there were 4 elite regiments during the islamic conquest. One of them was known as the "iron regiment". Here is an example of how it's soldiers are described. "Ibn Ishaq said: In it are the Muhajirun and the Ansar, may God be pleased with them. He can only see the eyes from all the iron on them". So from the desription, we know that they were armored up so much that their eyes were only see with the face probably being covered my chainmail coif or aventail. It is unclear what kind of armor they wore on limbs, it could be manica like shown in Dura-europos, but it couldbe chainmail as well. We will not know for sure, can only speculate. It is a fact that cataphracts were but a small portion of islamic army then, but it is logical that persians would have more of them.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Fast-forward a bit to mid-late 13th century. Romance of varqa and goulshah shows mostly lighter turkic cavalry, but we can see the elements of older cataphract depictions are still there, just like the mail coif, covering the face. Now, the fact is, like i mentioned, this shows mostly light turkic cavalry, horse archers. For "light cavalry", they wear a lot of armor. They wear pretty much the same armor as knights, but without long mail sleeves and chausses or hoses on legs. Just like knights of that time, they wear coifs, but those coifs can also cover the whole face, except eyes. Just like knights, they wear various helmets that can protect the top of the head, or the sides and the back like shown here.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It is also unclear where the masks came from, who really wore them or how to date them, but here you ho, they also wore solid plate masks

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

. The robes they are wearing are not just clothing. They are called kazaghand. Its a type of robe that has integrated mail padding and chainmail shirt either with long or short sleeves. It can also have two mail shirts for extra protection.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see, kazaghand is depicted just like a normal robe.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This is how it actually looks in real life. Padded robe with chainmail inside. All because of heat and sun. Europeans wore surcoats on their chainmail hauberks, instead.

Also, it is shown that one some kazaghands, seljuks are wearing lamello-laminar. It is also described that Usamah ibn munqidh wore a kazaghand with a yawshan (which at that time meant lamellar or maybe lamello-laminar), so what is shown here being worn by these light seljuk horsemen, was really done by most cultures in the area.

So you get the idea. These light seljuk horsemen are shown wearing that much armor already. I don't know any depiction of heavy turkic, persian or arabic cavalry of this time. Regardless of how heavy european knights were at that time, they were mostly wearing chainmail, they would not be as heavy as cataphracts, wearing chainmail and lamellar on top of it. This is why i think that heavy eastern cavalry of byzantines, arabs, persians and turks should be much stronger than knights at first. Europeans start developing more rigid armor worn on chainmail only in second part of 13th century in a form of coat and plates and start wearing limb protection made out of plate in second part of 14th century, mostly. Horse armor was also more rare in the west, compared to east. 14th and 15th centuries could be the glory days for western cavalry, when for middle east, the only development is the brigandine and mail and plate armor, which does not really add more protection, just makes it more compact, easy to put on and take off, instead of having a separate lamellar armor you have to put on chainmail.

[AlberdoBalsam]

Just to be clear how much lamellar can be used on chainmail. Don't think this is 11th or 12th century arabs or turco-persians. Its just an example of how much of the body can lamellar, lemallo-laminar or laminar can cover.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sogdian warriors of 6th to 8th centuries. Just to make clear that this shows them wearing either lamellar, lamello-laminar or laminar over mail. They were neighbours of persians, completely different culture, but since it is evident that light turco-persian cavalry wore lamellar, this is how much of the body lamellar would cover for their heavy cavalry.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This is 14th century Il-khanate. Again, not first crusade, but gives a general idea that lamellar or laminar can cover body, upper arms and can have tassets that protect the legs. And again, Il-khanate is not turco-persians of the first crusade, but its still Persia.

These are only hints on how much lamellar or laminar armor was worn on chainmail in Persia centuries before and after the first crusade. Do not use it as a source for that time.

[kostic]

Thank you for all this documentation and these thoughts. There are Eastern armored units in the game, but they are rarer than Western Knights. For example, I chose horses that were sometimes better protected for the general's bodyguards with the Middle Eastern factions.
All is not perfect, but the job is not finished.

[AlberdoBalsam]

Yeah, that is why i was asking if the balance was final. I feel like middle eastern factions could be very powerful early on, while getting less powerful later. Don't get me wrong, they are powerful now, it just feels like could be just like byzantine in terms of power creep, like its supposed to be.

[Camaloux]

Hello everyone,

First I want to thank the team behind this awesome project which adds a lot of depth to the game.

I do not know much about modding nor hardcoded limitations to the game engine (I only know there cannot be more than 31 factions and 200 regions on the map, which truly is a shame).
I still find the points to follow a bit frustrating. They are especially linked to the AI struggling to handle basic strategic planning and I think some tweaks could help the AI or bypass its deficiencies. Therefore I started lurking on the Center in search of minimods addressing the issues and I met. I did found things but a lot of them are outdated or being addressed (or planned to being so). To sum up a lot of it was solved by TM's minimods but unfortunately he seems to have closed the download link and I understood that o lot of his work became incompatible with the more recent versions of SSHIP.

In any case, I wanted to share my experience and thoughts with my last two campaigns with France in 0.9.7. I hope it will help SSHIP going in what is -in my opinion- the right direction. Here is what I found:

1 - The AI is awful at naval-land operations. I like to play France and I must say that about nothing prevents me to obliterate the English on the continent. They are unable to bring reinforcements across the Channel, even though they have good sized or even full stacks armies in England. I saw that TM said that the Moors had the exact same problem with Iberia. What TM did was he put land bridges in the Channel and Gibraltar. I saw posts saying that a major downside to this technique is that the Moors usually become overpowered, but I think that it can be offset by a combinations of 1: nerfing the Moors in some way (historically if they did not obliterate Europe but instead gradually declined before the christians factions of Iberia), 2: enabling recruitement of spearmen for Iberian factions as did one of TM's minimods (I am not a historian but I see no reason why they should be unable to train proper spearmen units), 3: doing something of Reconquista since it was a thing, maybe by enabling the recruitement of special mercenaries units for the Iberian catholic factions (similarly to what TM did), 4: the introduction of similar to TM's Fight For Survival mechanics to help factions with a low number of provinces. I want to add that similar causes having similar consequences, there are already landbridges in vanilla SSHIP in Denmark. Additionnaly, since the landbridges are to help the AI it could be a home-rule for the player to not use Gibraltar and La Manche landbridges for armies, to prevent too easy invasions of England by a player-led France and Morocco by a player-led christian faction.

2 - I found general bodyguards and heavy cavalry in general being too powerful, capable of wiping full units of spearmen (even semi-professional or professional spearmen) in one or two charges and (especially for general bodyguards) capable of sustaining extremely long fights even against spearmen, and too succesfully. I think especially that militia spearmen are too weak, especially since they are supposed to be the backbone of an army. I found an attempt at rebalancing units by Sillygoy but it seems that it was not that successful and it is outdated by now anyway. Is a rebalancing in the plans?

3 - The campaign AI can not do strategic planning. They try to siege settlements with very small armies. I already had a city with 6 units in it besieged by only a general and a half-unit of levy archers. They also suicide generals by sending them wandering alone or by two with no army when I am at war with them. On the paper BeeMugCarl's campaign AI seems to tweak these problems but I have found posts pointing to the fact that this AI was not working as intended and made the game unplayable. Maybe there is another campaign AI around that could replace the current AI?
Moreover, I think this is linked to point 2: the AI is incapable of predicting wether it has a chance to win a battle or not, based on the types and number of units it and I have in our respective armies. I have read this problem is partly due to the formula the game uses to estimate the strength of opposing armies not matching the statistics of the units in the mod, so the AI thinks it can win battles whereas in fact it cannot. Is this fixable? Also the Papal States tend to be very aggressive especially against neutral settlements. Would there be a way to make them calm down a bit?

4 - Some small factions seem to struggle a bit too much, especially the Crusader States which get destroyed a bit too fast. A Fight For Survival mechanics would help them last a bit longer. In fact, in general, I find the game a bit too fast-paced. For what I saw in my own games and in the Screenshots / Empires' Maps Thread it is very common that enormous empires of dozens of provinces appear only a few dozens years after the beginning of the game, whereas I think it sould happen way more slowly, like it did with the Roman or the Ottoman Empires. Maybe it would be a good idea to add a 'reverse' Fight For Survival mechanic that disadvantages big factions based on the number of provinces it has (public order maluses, poorer relations with other factions, other things?). I think also that the Garrison Script would have a positive effect in slowing the game a bit by making it a bit more difficult to conquer settlements. Plus from my experience the AI is incapable to garrison a sufficient amount of defenders in settlements for their defence si it would help it.

5 - I'm not really happy with the way the game selects the heir to the throne. It's quite obscure, quite often the heir is the brother of the King even if in the meantime the King's own eldest son grew up and is 25 years old or so, quite often the heir is in a hidden family tree, not to mention the regent loop problem. I saw that Macaras is developping a minimod tweaking the hidden family tree problem. For the heir selection problem I do not know what could help it, as I do not code myself I am ready to believe it is difficult to do. What I think could help it would be Miguel_80's script for selecting the heir assorted with home-rules for the player not to select the best family member.

6 - I'm not really happy neither with how crusades or jihad work. It is impossible for the faction defending the city to succeed in defeating the 5 or 6 full stacks of armies full of crusade/jihad mercenaries, and as a player it is difficult to arrive in time. I have thought about siome limitations. For example limiting the number of factions that can participate and/or lowering a bit the willingness of the AI to participate, maybe entirely remove the appearance of hireable special mercenaries (except for religious fanatics, I mean, historically the trained soldiers and knights who participated in the crusades used to be trained soldiers and knights already, they did no spawn out of nowhere). The special crusade mercenaries units would still be in the game as special mercenaries available for Iberian christian factions since a lot of soldiers and knights from all of Europe gathered to Iberia during the Reconquista. Maybe there could be a tweak for them to not be used against any other facton than the Moors (like an extremely low morale like the peasants when fighting against any other faction, if it is at all possible)?

Thanks for reading . I hope all my sentences were clear, in my first language sentences are usually longer than they are in english.
In fact, since a lot of the changes I would like in the game have been put in place by TM but for SSHIP 0.9.2 and even if he unfortunately retired from the modding community, do you think it might be possible to include his minimods as options during the installation of SSHIP in a launcher or like he did for 0.9.2?

I hope this is the right thread for suggestions, I did not find a dedicated one.
Anyway, here is my two cents and thanks again for developping this mod for everyone to use on your free-time lads

[stefdim7]

I agree with the general direction of Camaloux' comments but I believe that the 0.97 version is ok regarding the speed of conquest. On the contrary, the 0.98 beta version is way too quick in developping big empires and destroying factions, a problem which is mostly caused by the absence of civil wars, I believe, a scenario which is the most fun part of the game for me as it sometimes completely alters the dynamics. It would be also good if a strong faction could establish client kingdoms more easily. I had to eliminate Serbia as Byzantium for example, because they would never accept vassalage, even when the would be definitely destroyed next round! I am also in favour of the Garisson script as a halt to quick expansion! As for the Papal States' aggresiveness, this seems to have been fixed in the Beta version; in 195 turns they never launched an attack, instead they were attacked by Sicily. As for the Crusades: maybe limiting the time the Crusade can last would be a solution. If it is possible, there should also be a limit to one general or army per faction (just adding to that said by Camaloux). I was once able to defend Trebizond against a Jihad as Byzantium but I had to murder many enemy generals and send a couple of strong armies to defend it (plus the Muslim factions are not that numerous). But the AI cannot do that...

[Leopold III von Habsburg]

Is there any possibility to get the 0.98 version to start playing on it, despite not being finished? Id love to start a new game, and with the new version i could also give some testing feedback in case i notice stuff not working as intended.

Thank you in advance

[lequintal69]

I have tried 0.98 for 120 turns so far as HRE. Vh/Vh. I only conquered Prague. Other than that, I just built up cities and passed turned without doing anything else (for the sake of testing, and also because I cba doing battles with early units)

my feedback:

-got quite a lot of crashes on end-turns. About 1 every 10 turns I would say
-One single faction attacked me, once. Granted, I'm HRE, so they might be afraid, but I wanted to stress that out.
-new buildings are awesome. Upkeep on many buildings make sense and finally balance them out. The additional income unlocked by other buildings (on mines for example) is a really nice touch.
-Didnt witness any major bug or inconsistency with general's traits
-The events /info windows popping up are well done and a nice addition

Couple remarks:
-what about a downside for Knight orders buildings ? Imo, by building them everywhere, you can really quickly get a "cheesy" elite army, at a "low" cost. Not sure what the malus would be though. Or maybe hardcap their units too?
-I feel like (maybe it's just a western civ problem) that barracks and stables higher tiers are not worth building as they mostly only grant higher unit cap. I mean, who is really pumping out spearmen so much that he needs to pay 8k money to slightly increase the recruitment capacity ? seems underwhelming
what about other bonuses attached to military buildings?

[Jurand of Cracow]

I have tried 0.98 for 120 turns so far as HRE. Vh/Vh. I only conquered Prague. Other than that, I just built up cities and passed turned without doing anything else (for the sake of testing, and also because I cba doing battles with early units)
my feedback:
-got quite a lot of crashes on end-turns. About 1 every 10 turns I would say
-One single faction attacked me, once. Granted, I'm HRE, so they might be afraid, but I wanted to stress that out.
-new buildings are awesome. Upkeep on many buildings make sense and finally balance them out. The additional income unlocked by other buildings (on mines for example) is a really nice touch.
-Didnt witness any major bug or inconsistency with general's traits
-The events /info windows popping up are well done and a nice addition

Couple remarks:
-what about a downside for Knight orders buildings ? Imo, by building them everywhere, you can really quickly get a "cheesy" elite army, at a "low" cost. Not sure what the malus would be though. Or maybe hardcap their units too?
-I feel like (maybe it's just a western civ problem) that barracks and stables higher tiers are not worth building as they mostly only grant higher unit cap. I mean, who is really pumping out spearmen so much that he needs to pay 8k money to slightly increase the recruitment capacity ? seems underwhelming
what about other bonuses attached to military buildings?

upload a save, it's always worth to see the situation after 120 turns!
thanks for the info, it's always good to hear about experiences of the players.

Knights orders - haven't been touched yet. Eventually there'll be just one building providing orders' units depending on the historical areas - see here. The additional benefits and costs will be added.
Barracks - higher availability of units should justify building them. The replenishment pools are not listed in the descriptions but there're big differences, actually.
Bonuses for the military buildings have not been changed much yet. I work on the buildings but slowly, I admit. Currently, @Macaras is doing work on the availability of troops, he's finished the Landowners' and will get his hands dirty with something else, if he'd fancy :-)