SSHIP - General Discussion

[kostic]

I note that the problem of rebel garrisons is always the same with this version 0.9.6.
Curiously, these are each time - often ? - composed of the same unit replicated in quantity.

[nvm]

Actually, there's something I'd like to complain about based on the starting situation of England. Everything I've mentioned up to this point was pretty weird, but acceptable, until the "usurper"''s sons came of age. Not only they were opposing him, they also became conspirators! Now I know that sometimes people just wanted to screw each other, even regardless of blood ties, but when the supposed opponent of historical civil war has over 6 loyalty and your own children end up having it close to 0 then I feel there's a real problem. I think this might be caused by the fact that Usurper system is normally supposed to be reserved for ACTUAL usurpers - and Stephen does, hence his kids are born as proper heirs and have 0 loyalty because they want to reclaim what's rightfully theirs. I feel this has to be changed. Either by checking for sons if their father is an usurper and making them automatically support him if that's possible, or just changing this particular situation so that Stephen is not an usurper and have the situatino have represented with him having less authority instead.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Well, it's VineFynn in our team who deals with the system now, so cannot tell much. It's very complicated and one need to spend much time on working things out.
For the moment, afaik, he doesn't have much time so the issue will be streamlined in the future.

However, it's actually my goal to balance the whole mechanism out for the best gameplay. My minimods on Provincial Titles, Offices, Crowns, Education and Generals' traits aim exactly to provide enough Authority and Loyalty tools for the player that he can (try) to avoid having usurpation (too often ;-)

For the moment I just can say, that in 092 I had a usurpation and I lost 20 years of kingdom not expanding because the king was not safe, his best sons rebelled etc. That's a medieval life...

[Lifthrasir]

I note that the problem of rebel garrisons is always the same with this version 0.9.6.
Curiously, these are each time - often ? - composed of the same unit replicated in quantity.

Not fixed yet. Read the OP at the bottom of this thread

[RodriguesSting]

So using the lessons I learned with Novgorod on a new Lithuania play through (yes I am a masochist), things went much smoother. Now I am using minimal infantry support for my generals when I am sieging settlements to convince them to get out and try their luck on me. I ended up having said infantry support (specially Baltic Spearmen) being completely annihilated in the process, but the general wins often enough, even if he has to exterminate everyone on the plaza. Furthermore, so far, I have been gaining Chivalry traits and ancillaries from these battles (and reducing my odds of Dread considerably so far), but overall, things are pretty good. Now, I had two main scenarios happen so far.

1st - I took the villages (Riga, one in the West, and the one in Finland) and the castles (south and north). Polotsk was also an expansion goal but I couldn't make it in time, Novgorod snatched it. My economy was reasonable with these places, and being mostly pagan, they didn't have much trouble with garrisoning them. My forces and recruitment consisted mostly out of melee infantry supported by mercenaries (Spearmen mostly, but Axemen when I started encroaching on Russia). However, eventually Novgorod declared war on me, and started sending stacks from the territory of Polotsk directly to my capital. I could defeat them easily with my main army, but it was never on the right place to do so, so I decided to abandon that campaign.

2nd and current - I took Riga, the castle down south, and Polotsk. Polotsk wasn't too bad to grab, despite I needing a considerable force (chivalrous General that was FL, 2 Lithuanian Cavs, 4 Baltic Spearmen). The city was garrisoned only by one unit, but the rest of the army was quick to attack me when I sieged the settlement. The battle quickly degenerated into a mosh pit (maybe I should have left the main army in AI control right after things got messy and just micro the general), but I won and occupied the city. The good thing about having a city is that it can make diplomats, thus freeing your princesses for other duties, can educate your generals, can *potentially* make you a lot of money, and with a blacksmith, you can get good armors for your generals that improves their odds of surviving battles, and you can get crowned. The bad thing is, Polotsk is barely pagan, and I always had a permanent +60% Unrest modifier that wouldn't go away. To top it off, my pagan priests (after FINALLY getting traits by standing in the city, unlike Orthodox and Catholics who get good traits by just existing) were either barely converting the place or not at all, so it required a GIGANTIC garrison just to keep the place from rebelling, and thus eventually becoming an economic burden. Despite that, very early on, as my FL is having the nasty tendency of dying on turn 2, my adopted general (and thus faction heir) married to the Novgorod princess they consistently send early on to open diplomatic relationships with Lithuania. Thus, I grabbed an alliance with Novgorod and started to build up a good bloodline. So I think this is probably the best move so far.

In conclusion, next time I take Polotsk with non-Orthodox, I am going to either Sack or Exterminate the place to make it at least manageable. And maybe you guys should consider checking if Pagan priests are properly converting provinces, because not even in my capital I managed to ever get above 50%, which I believe resulted in all my generals having piety.

Edit: Could someone with some programming skills run the more detailed unit cards script for this submod and make it available here? It would be pretty handy. https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...it-statistics)

[RodriguesSting]

So I picked everything I learned so far and gave another shot with the scots. Can't be worse than the Norwegian with infantry bodyguards. It wasn't, but got weird.



Cruzades are pretty good to turn a nearly useless character into a great character, and sacking a large city does make it more manageable. But I should probably been smart and just sold it to the pope, or even better, just targeted a rebel settlement and leave it to its own devices after a turn or so.

Edit: Although I am somehow managing to make a profit out of holding Palermo (probably because of all the crusade mercs with low-ish upkeep), enough to easily amass an army up in the isles (of what, that's up to debate), I consider this campaign sorta egged. I managed to marry my heir to a Venetian girl (yay!) who turned out to be infertile (nay!), and had luck with adoption candidates. Also, as all my urban militia is very bad level, at least on the early age, I probably should avoid large cities altogether. I noticed higher tier militia tends to offer better garrison levels than low tier in the Novgorod campaign.

[nvm]

Alternatively, you could move your capital there instead and grow like that. I did it when playing Norway and went after England as the win conditions told me to, I found London to be incredibly difficult to hold even having destroyed almost all of population growth and negative public order buildings, but after I moved my capital, things got better. It was much, much more profitable than everything I've seized in Scandinavia combined too.

[RodriguesSting]

Possible but I would still be struggling with horrible militia and stuck with but only one holding down there. At least I can recruit Highland Nobles in Sicilia. Now that's something to think about.

[officialdeo]

And finally, a few questions: How many people do I need living in a city with Wooden Walls in order to upgrade it to Stone Walls (as I never managed to get the upgrade in my game, even tanking a general to get Bad With Taxes just to try to go above 12k)? What actually happens if I run out of time to grab one of the objective timed settlements? And my reputation tanked badly when I invaded the Lithuanians, even with Christians, so why is that? Was it because I had a trade deal?

this is a bad strategy. Far better is to fight battles as an underdog, win and release the prisoners. High Chivalry is the key to upgrading the cities.
The sources of population growth are as follows:\n- the innate fertility of a province (usually between 0,5 and 2.5%, but there're a few breadbasket provinces giving much more);\n- farms, especially their higher levels;\n- buildings providing Health give around 0.5% growth per 1 health point (they also make plagues rarer);\n- buildings providing Growth give the expected 0.5% per 0.5% described on their cards;\n- buildings providing Happiness also give growth: 0.25% per 1 point described on the card;\n- buildings providing Law and reducing unrest do not have any impact on growth;\n- Chivalry of generals can have a very significant impact: 1 point gives 0.5% or 1% (up to 6.5% for 10 Chivalry); it's worth noting that Dread doesn't make any difference in this respect (in particular: no penalties);\n- squalor in the settlement lowers growth;\n- generals may get traits that negates some of that squalor;\n- trade with the other provinces give between 0.5 and 3% growth (you don't need to have road connections, it's enough just to have a border;\n- switching taxes in cities makes 0.5% difference per level (but watch out the impacts on the traits of the governors!);\n- plagues have extremely negative consequences - they occur occasionally in the settlements with: large populations, little health, bordering provinces afflicted by plague, visited by infected characters or armies.

I have a different strategy regarding settlement growth. I usually milk most settlements dry, but focus my resources on a number of settlements that is easily upgradeable and expand my kingdom strategically to accommodate these regional capitals' growth. In return I make sure the borders are at least well defended, if keeping their mood content or better proves too expensive. Then, I slowly develop those supporting settlements according to their needs and potential (or none thereof).

For example, in Anatolia Iconium and Caesarea are the obvious big fish, followed by Sebasteia, Nicaea, Ancyra, and Sis. Then you have settlements like Sinope which I will only spend my time trying to upgrade if I have an abundance of chivalrous governors and am done pouring my resource into those priority settlements.

[kostic]

I would like to know what the players think of the making of tanneries, armories and the improvement they bring to armor ...
1 - Would it not be advantageous and more realistic to increase the number of turns to manufacture these armories ? I would say 3 laps for the 1st level, 6 for the second, 10 for the 3rd ...
2 - The advantage obtained from a better protected unit is currently very low; shouldn't the value of better armor be higher ? (even going from nothing to leather)


(it is by working on the upgrades of my units that I asked myself these questions)

[RodriguesSting]

Apparently armor upgrades effect on practical defense are higher than they seem, from what I remember from years ago. A unit with an armor of 0 going to 1 has an effective armor closer to 2.5 or something like that. Anyway I do think it maybe should take longer to construct, mostly because I just use them to train my generals in building and to not have them iddle.

[Jurand of Cracow]

yes, I also recall armour upgrade is actually 2,5.

Building time: the SSHIP is (or should be ;-) about historicity. Building a tannery is not so time consuming (but 3,6,10 seem ok to me). However, building a chain of ports or the mines - this should be very time consuming. In the Europa Barbarorum I it took 10 years (40 turns) to build mines. And this seems reasonable to me.

[kostic]

Okay, if 1 point equals 2.5, then the armor is effective! (I have also just done a little test that demonstrates its effectiveness on spearmen)
Thank you for the info!
There remains the idea of ​​extending the time for building armories ... so the player also benefits better from units without protection at the start of the campaign.

[Sigma]

Don't beat me with sticks for asking this, but I noticed there's a high and late campaign button on the main menu. Is this something being planned in the far distant future? Or a left over from something else?

[Dekhatres]

Don't beat me with sticks

Lifthrasir's gona beat you with a baguette

to answer your question, late campaign is simply abandoned as of right now since the person who was working on it simply disappeared

[Lifthrasir]

Lifthrasir's gona beat you with a baguette

Dunkirk has a strong fishing tradition and has more flemish origins than french actually. So, no, I won't beat him with a baguette but rather with a kliper (smoked herring)

[RodriguesSting]

(I have also just done a little test that demonstrates its effectiveness on spearmen)

As not even Jurand managed to give a concrete answer, I for one am really curious about the results. Another thing to consider about armor is that it is the most reliable of the 3 defensive stats. Unlike shields, you get full value from behind. And unlike defensive skill, it won't go down with tiredness. I think exhausted units have effective defense of 0, so it is a big deal.

[j.a.luna]

Sship developers, is possible make a figure similar to ecumenical patriarch but for muslims and pagans? Or at least for muslims... Maybe a Great Iman of Baghdad with similar stats of ecumenical patriarch and different strat map unit models, who faction have this figure will have better relations with the rest of muslims factions ( it should be as the pope for muslims)
I already said some time before but i dont know if you liked this proposal for gameplay

[RodriguesSting]

Every muslim faction is pretty much its own caliphate. That means, effectively, they only acknowledge their own FL as the supreme religious authority on islam. To make matters a bit more difficult even, they don't all follow the same branch of islam.

Edit: Also, while the pope confers some advantages, not having it peering over your shoulder also has its benefits.

[Lifthrasir]

This is actually not true. At the time the game starts, there were 2 Caliphs: 1 Sunni in Baghdad and 1 Shiite in Cairo.
When the last Shiite Caliph died in 1171 AD, its caliphate was linked to the one of Baghdad by Saladin.
When Mongols took Baghdad in 1258 AD, the Abbasid Caliph was executed. The Mamluks kept the Abbasid dynasty (for those who managed to flee to Egypt), more as a symbol rather than as a real power, and until 1517 AD when the last Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mutawakkil III, demised his title to the Ottoman Sultan Selim I.