SSHIP - General Discussion

[Lifthrasir]

Gentlemen, the 2019 Modding Awards are live!

Please check the Modding Awards Forum and nominate your favorites but don't forget to check the Rules before nominating!

It will take 5-10 minutes of your time but will please and will motivate those who make mods

[Kilo11]

There's no specific script for that as far as I know. Check your buildings. you may have built one with negative impact on your public order or have brought a general with bad traits

Well, that's what was weird; I hadn't moved anyone into or out of my cities, and all the buildings were in the middle of construction times. Also, it wasn't one city going rebel, it was two separate ones. The exact thing that happened was as follows:

I'm playing as Venice, and all my cities were happy and no large events had occurred.
I hit End Turn.
At the end of the turn Venice and Naples revolted (both were happy, had no new buildings or governors, and both had adequate garrisons and governors present).
I didn't understand the revolt, so I reloaded the turn before, and again hit End Turn, just to see what would happen.
This time, Milan and Tunis revolted (and same as above, both were happy, had no new buildings, etc.)

The fact that it hit two cities, and that the cities weren't necessarily the same ones, makes me think it's some larger event going on, but I don't know what it would be, or why. That's why I brought it up. Any thoughts?


P.s. I hunted through the log file for ages looking from events, triggers firing, or anything else that might provide explanation, but couldn't find a thing. There seems to be some mystery at play

[kostic]

Indeed ... this is a mystery that deserves an explanatory window.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Well, that's what was weird; I hadn't moved anyone into or out of my cities, and all the buildings were in the middle of construction times. Also, it wasn't one city going rebel, it was two separate ones. The exact thing that happened was as follows:

I'm playing as Venice, and all my cities were happy and no large events had occurred. I hit End Turn. At the end of the turn Venice and Naples revolted (both were happy, had no new buildings or governors, and both had adequate garrisons and governors present).
I didn't understand the revolt, so I reloaded the turn before, and again hit End Turn, just to see what would happen.
This time, Milan and Tunis revolted (and same as above, both were happy, had no new buildings, etc.)

The fact that it hit two cities, and that the cities weren't necessarily the same ones, makes me think it's some larger event going on, but I don't know what it would be, or why. That's why I brought it up. Any thoughts?

upload a save pls. it's interesting.

explanatory windows - I'm going to work on them in the future. but this one is not clear to me.

Crossbow (Samostrel) was an EXTREMELY rare weapon, I don't think that crossbow militia makes sense. Modern archeologists found thousands of arrowheads, and only 50 (!) bolt heads. Bows were way more wide-spread.

indeed!

[Kilo11]

So, I just did some playtesting with my weird revolt situation. Here is some general info:

Did three loads of a save immediately before the revolt, hitting end turn each time without changing anything.
First run: Venice and Naples revolt.
Second run: Milan and Tunis revolt.
Third run: Milan and Tunis revolt.

The lowest public order in any of those cities was 80%, they were all adequately garrisoned, none had finished a building, and none had a governor enter or leave them in that turn. The situation is very confusing to me, especially given that the revolting cities sometimes change...

Here is a link to my save file, for those who might be interested in investigating further: Venice (Pre-Revolt)

[XXZit]

I'd like to take the chance to express my gratitude for the changes brought by the recent updates 0.95-.96. With respect to faction standings, while I find the changes to be wonderful, I still think that military conflict is heavily penalized. This time this is shown more specifically by taking settlements outside your "sphere of influence". This is a game about military expansion, the winning rules are specifically defined as conquering territory. It is absurd that your are so heavily penalized for doing what the game requires of you.

Additionally, these reputation punishments negatively affect most factions creating an environment where almost everyone has a bad reputation. Only idle factions have decent reputation. In a world where everyone is "Despicable" being bad sort of loses significance.

I propose to greatly reduce the penalties for taking settlements outside a faction's sphere of influence or limit their impact by creating a threshold that these transgressions will not cross. e.g your reputation won't be affected beyond "Very Untrustworthy" or so.

Alternatively, the reputation impact of "good deeds" could be highly increased to offset the negative effect of taking settlements.

A faction could be honorable in war, releasing prisoners, refraining from low acts and being fair in combat. It could honor its diplomatic agreements, it could support its allies in combat, it could stick to its word in every way possible and yet be considered untrustworthy or worse simply because it's conquering its one enemy. I don't think this is realistic or immersive.

I already adjusted these things to my taste in my campaign, but I thought I'd bring the issue here for debate and consideration. After all, I want my favorite Medieval2 mod to be the best it can be.
Just some food for thought.

[kostic]

All these reflections seem to me to be completely coherent !
I saw that you had provided a fix in the "Bugs report" section ... is it adapted to the last patch posted by Jurand of Cracow ? Are the creators of SSHIP going to integrate your participation ? I hope so...

[Dekhatres]

many of these penalties have been put in oder to limit player expansion, i am exploring some other options to do that and so far all failed

low unit replenishment doesnt work because the AI is not smart enough to recruit from far way provinces and move his forces where they are needed

unrest i think is also showing its drawbacks with cities going into turmoil suddenly out of nowhere

some other mods i've played had a income penalty, others an aditional settlement upkeep, havent seen anyone say anything good about those either, infact they all had minimods removing them

dont really know what best way to go is, perhaps is just preference, some ppl like expansion to be limited by unrest and others by other things

[XXZit]

I didn't include my changes to faction standing in the fix I posted. Those are only trait fixes. You can change things yourself very easily thou by editing the factions_standing file yourself. The most severe penalties are all at the end of the file. I would post my changes here but I haven't tested them thoroughly enough to be convinced they are adequate.

On another note, perhaps the unrest issue you are having is related to spies. When another faction puts spies in your settlement unrest grows proportionally to the number of spies and their skill. That is a core game mechanic. You can defend yourself by having spies of your own, but once the spies are in the damage is done and I don't know of a sure way of kicking them out.

[XXZit]

@Dekhatres If the intent is slowing down player expansion, reputation is not a good way to do it; mainly because reputation doesn't have a direct impact on the player's military capability. Sure, if your reputation is bad, neighbor nations are more likely to target you for their own expansion ambitions but that doesn't necessarily prevent player expansion, and it is not guaranteed they will attack; they might be engaged in their own conflicts or might have a passive AI or might be bankrupt, have less military power or a combination of all that.

If we want to control the rate of player expansion we have to hit his military. And what has a direct impact on the player's military forces? unrest. If the player is forced to leave most of his army in a city after conquering it, then most of his army is gone and can't be used for further conquest. Creating more units takes time and money and will incur a tax on the treasury. Same with buildings that affect popularity. And even with enough money to hire an army of mercenaries, there is no economy that can support full garrisons in every city and enough men in the field to conquer more settlements. On that,this mod has done an excellent job, doing away with free upkeep and increasing units maintenance costs all around.

To make it fair, this type of unrest should be artificial, i.e it only affects settlements after being captured, lasts for a few turns and then disappears. It shouldn't affect normal settlement unrest after. This is probably best done by script though and I don't know how feasible that is.

[Dekhatres]

we dont lack ways to make expansion hard, there's a thousand ways to achieve that, what i am trying to find is a system that makes sense and is above all fun

if you want to go that way there's a SS6.4 script doing exactly that, "limited assimilation" i believe it was called, it doesnt actually limit expansion that much tho since the unrest lasts only a few turns after conquest (2 or 3)

[kostic]

There is something that already limits expansion in a relatively moderate way: the distance from conquered cities to the capital. It is already a constraint. It is not easy for a faction in the west to manage cities conquered in the east !

[Lifthrasir]

Estimated fellow members, due to the recent TWC downtime, we have decided to have a backup for SSHIP. It still needs to be improved but SSHIP has its own Moddb page now that can be found here
So, if TWC is unavailable again, we're still reacheable on Moddb

[kostic]

Good initiative ! Thank you Lifth !

[kostic]

Do you think I can use Rusichi mod material (models for the strategic map) for my KCC sub-mod ?

Naturally, I would point this out in the credits ...

[Lifthrasir]

Unless I'm wrong, they have put their mod fully as an open source. So yes, you should be fine that way
We're using already some of their unit models in SSHIP.

[XXZit]

I've had some time to make more extensive changes to my faction_standing file, fixing certain imbalances and inconsistencies, duplicates and redundant triggers, etc. I think the result is a more fair inter-faction relationship for your campaign.
I'll post it here as it pertains to the discussion we had before about faction relations. Feel free to test it out if you are interested.
Attachment 360755

[Lifthrasir]

How does it affect the AI behaviour? Is it more agressive?

[Eodez]

Anything from H/H and above is fine. VH/VH is supposed to be the best. However, it really depends on your tastes

Thanks, mostly enjoying the mod so far, seems to be a lot more to "juggle" around then a regular play through. Currently playing the Byzantines, I've noticed the HRE is becoming really powerful, by turn 75 they've gobbled up all nearby rebel provinces and have allied themselves with France/Hungary/Denmark. Would've thought they would be kind of hobbled with the changes from the mod.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Thanks, mostly enjoying the mod so far, seems to be a lot more to "juggle" around then a regular play through. Currently playing the Byzantines, I've noticed the HRE is becoming really powerful, by turn 75 they've gobbled up all nearby rebel provinces and have allied themselves with France/Hungary/Denmark. Would've thought they would be kind of hobbled with the changes from the mod.

This conforms to my observations: very aggressive CAI (ie moving armies around and attacking enemies) and very soft diplomatic AI (making peaces is easy). Perhaps changes to the standing of factions caused the latter, while the former is the usual (and welcome) SSHIP behaviour.