[Mod project] Agents Revived

[YourMadDoc]

I lack minigame with merchant and culture war and princesses so I decided to bring it back. They wont fit eb II much so I changed them :

Merchants are settlers now

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Priests are migrants, colonists and nomads

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Princesses are leader's daughter, i dont plan to change them much, only to remove diplomacy so they will only seduce enemy generals. They will also look like witches it seems.

Heretics and witches are migrants and nomads


I have few problems though:

1 noone has traits and I cant find them. Were they removed? How I import them back?

2 How to enable heretics and witches?

3 Is it possible to change pool of pics and names for agents? I would like to change names to Areuakoi,Belli, Pellendones, Lusones and surnames to settles, band, tribe etc.

4 When I add picture to info_card it will always be zoomed. No matter if I add large,small or recommended size. is there a way how to avoid this?

5 Where can I find prices for map resources?

[isa0005]

This is an awesome idea! Can't wait to see how this develops! +rep for you and I will deffs be following this with great anticipation!

[YourMadDoc]

Thanks for the support. I have solved most of the problems, I cant make custom names and pictures for them so changed descriptions of unit of settlers and migrants to a leader of this group. Makes sense, you don't send one spy to gather information about whole enemy region nor you send one assassin to sabotage government structure in a territory.

I cut down conversion rates by half and restricted independent groups drastically so they are just annoying not vanilla heretic nightmare. I gave settlers high unkeep and high bonus for every prosperity point so they need to work for years to get investment back but they can make nice money after. I started working on traits and ancillaries for settlers, they have about 10 ancillaries representing people in group and traits represents current status. Most of traits have vanilla merchant mechanics but there are two new upgradable traits

- wealth - gained for years of work (4 levels)
- rights - granted in the capital after the group has gained some prosperity (4 levels)

little peek

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[cowrecked]

Oh my, this looks AWESOME. Can't wait to try it out!

[Mamlaz]

This is really neat stuff

[Sarkiss]

it always felt that EB missed out on adding these additional 'chess pieces' to the board limiting itself to inheritance from RTW (spy, assassin). like the ideas of colonists and settlers and it makes sense. though assassins will need to be renamed as well to something that adequately represents their ability to wipe out these groups? maybe also restricting colonists to higher city levels that demonstrates surplus population would be a good idea?

on princesess, whats the logic/rationalle for restricting them in this way:

Princesses are leader's daughter, i dont plan to change them much, only to remove diplomacy so they will only seduce enemy generals.

why should be they able to seduce generals away from their original factions?

if you keep diplomacy but restrict princesses to monarchies only (at least to begin with, maybe adding them to tribal confederacies later) that should work and represent dynastic politics to a certain degree.

[YourMadDoc]

it always felt that EB missed out on adding these additional 'chess pieces' to the board limiting itself to inheritance from RTW (spy, assassin). like the ideas of colonists and settlers and it makes sense. though assassins will need to be renamed as well to something that adequately represents their ability to wipe out these groups? maybe also restricting colonists to higher city levels that demonstrates surplus population would be a good idea?

They both have hidden trait with 100 security rating so there is only minimal chance of assassination. In my original plan, I wanted to enable settlers and migrants from core factional governments but there are tons of them and idk which is which as I played only handfull of factions. Also - it would severely complicate updating of submod. Now migrants come from market and settlers from level 3 market, but it's not final.

on princesess, whats the logic/rationalle for restricting them in this way: why should be they able to seduce generals away from their original factions?

if you keep diplomacy but restrict princesses to monarchies only (at least to begin with, maybe adding them to tribal confederacies later) that should work and represent dynastic politics to a certain degree.

It has a technical reason. Princess has four possible actions: moving_normal, diplomacy, bribe, marry. I can do nothing else only to disable or enable them. And I dont want them to do diplomacy and I want them to be married. I want them to marry my FM of my choosing or enemy FM. For example if I'm going to conquer Rome, I will marry my leader's daughter to some disloyal ambitious Roman noble to get cassus belli, I will help him to become my puppet ruler there and after two decades when my influence there raise and my little half-Romans comes to age I will make them governors in Italic provinces.

[Sarkiss]

They both have hidden trait with 100 security rating so there is only minimal chance of assassination. In my original plan, I wanted to enable settlers and migrants from core factional governments but there are tons of them and idk which is which as I played only handfull of factions. Also - it would severely complicate updating of submod. Now migrants come from market and settlers from level 3 market, but it's not final.

perhaps tying them to wall and thus settlement size level would be better? not sure if its going to complicate implementation as opposed to markets though.

It has a technical reason. Princess has four possible actions: moving_normal, diplomacy, bribe, marry. I can do nothing else only to disable or enable them. And I dont want them to do diplomacy and I want them to be married. I want them to marry my FM of my choosing or enemy FM. For example if I'm going to conquer Rome, I will marry my leader's daughter to some disloyal ambitious Roman noble to get cassus belli, I will help him to become my puppet ruler there and after two decades when my influence there raise and my little half-Romans comes to age I will make them governors in Italic provinces.

i see. can marriage option alone also form a part of inter-dynastic 'diplomacy'? i.e., marrying them off to another monarchy to seal an alliance?

anyway, well done. its good to see some progress in this direction. these 'agents' create an additional gameplay dimension and a mini-game in and of itself imho.
good luck with this.

[isa0005]

So the one thing I really love about EBII are some of the flavour traits that generals get, particularly the dynastic and ethno-racial traits. Simmiliarly, a number of other mods (outside the EBII universe that is) have applied simmilar traits to their generals AND their princesses. With this in mind, I'd love to see something simmilar introduced with princesses in this submod, with the traits of the father and the mother carried on into their children, particularly so when it comes to dynastic traits and such. Is that something that could be possible?

[YourMadDoc]

At first I would like to thank Cowrecked for his help with proofreading and editing traits, ancillaries,tootips and descriptions which makes about 15 pages by now.

perhaps tying them to wall and thus settlement size level would be better? not sure if its going to complicate implementation as opposed to markets though.


i see. can marriage option alone also form a part of inter-dynastic 'diplomacy'? i.e., marrying them off to another monarchy to seal an alliance?

anyway, well done. its good to see some progress in this direction. these 'agents' create an additional gameplay dimension and a mini-game in and of itself imho.
good luck with this.

I might try o spawn them with wall. It should be possible to marry princess though diplomacy, I havent tried it though.

So the one thing I really love about EBII are some of the flavour traits that generals get, particularly the dynastic and ethno-racial traits. Simmiliarly, a number of other mods (outside the EBII universe that is) have applied simmilar traits to their generals AND their princesses. With this in mind, I'd love to see something simmilar introduced with princesses in this submod, with the traits of the father and the mother carried on into their children, particularly so when it comes to dynastic traits and such. Is that something that could be possible?

There are plenty of ethnicities and dynasties, many of them have "this man" of similar in a description so it would take considerable amount of time to find them, check them and make a female variant. And as they cant do diplomacy with them anymore, you can only leave them in settlement and then marry them so I want to spend time on more visible elements. Truth to be told princess agent is at the bottom of the list. I ported ancillaries and traits from vanilla, linked some with EB energy/charisma/inteligence traits of a father, when I didnt get any errors from log I moved on. They will get character and other traits but not ethnic. Maybe I will do starting dynasties in far future, right now im ocuppied with merchants and priests.

There are also some problems with AI as well. When I set cultural conversion ratio to some acceptable value, AI don't create migrants, when I set it higher they will start making them but culture shifts very quickly. There are no heretics or witches on the map, even if I give them 10x max limit and spawn rate. Merchants looked ok until I noticed Carthage spamming merchants on Sardin and only a few of them are trading, then I noticed there is unreachable mine which might affect AI to produce merchants there to use it as it is vauable resource so I will probably have to check all resources on the map if I can reach them with merchant and them move them somewhere else. But not all is bad, there was a significant progress on a stage of the mod, there were some discoveries I'm very excited about, but I haven't tested them properly to announce them as working.

[Sarkiss]

They both have hidden trait with 100 security rating so there is only minimal chance of assassination.

on this, will it not lead to spam and inability to get rid of undesired agents infiltrating one's territory? sometimes when there is poison there needs to be cure to balance things out a little. otherwise its a one-way street where one feature is introcduced at the expense of another.

[YourMadDoc]

on this, will it not lead to spam and inability to get rid of undesired agents infiltrating one's territory? sometimes when there is poison there needs to be cure to balance things out a little. otherwise its a one-way street where one feature is introcduced at the expense of another.

No. You can deal with settlers usual way and cultures are mixed up in most regions so most of factions will try to infuence their own regions with migrants. And if not, bad things will happen. Migrants have an attribute "traditions" (aka unorthodoxy) which will make them more likely to become independent (or at least I think it does that, I haven't tested it enough). Group will slowly lose traditions in regions with low culture and fast in foreign territories. It will also lower their influence so even if someone tries to migrate into foreign territories, they won't do much damage and they will lose control over them in time. I'm also trying to give migrants ability to lower traditions of nearby groups (like witch can curse nearby priest or general in vanilla) but my experiments are without success.

I'm almost done with migrants now, they are very similar to settlers, they share same ancillaries and some traits as well. Migrants have new trait called "fame" which will raise with conversion to own culture.

There is also one new trait for both groups I'm happy about as I achieved what I originally wanted with this. It is called "Way of Life" which will change the title of the group as well. All groups start with the same one and depending on what they have achieved and what kind of people they have, their Way of Life will change and they will get a unique bonus. For example, if barbarian faction has one from low, middle, warrior and high classes of people in the group and big population, they will become Tribe with Way of Life: Tribal, which gives them bonuses but removes movement points. If a group has slavers as that one on the picture, and they successfully capture slaves and slave girls in enemy lands they will become Slavers and they won't lose traditions in enemy territory anymore and they get movement points. There are about 20 ancillaries and 10 Ways of Life to pick from I think.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Rendon]

Was there any progress made on this?

[YourMadDoc]

Was there any progress made on this?

I'm still working on it, but progress is much slower. At the start, I did everything I knew how to do quickly, but now I had to look for ways how to deal with problems idk much about and it also requires a lot of testing and experimentation and with Christmas at a doorstep, I have limited time right now. Traits a Ancillaries are mostly done, but I still have to add faction, religion and culture exceptions to them so Romans wont get druids or become nomads etc. They are also with unbalanced bonuses and chances and with only barebone descriptions if they have any. I will have to change all descriptions I have already written because settlers can have basic migration ways of life and migrants can have some settled ways + AI plays with settlers as if they were migrants, traveling around the world. I need to change merchant to something to represent large single community and priest to something to represent smaller communities scattered around region. I have added large penalties for merchants and priests in enemy territory, so significant foreign migration into player's territories can be used as casus belli to deal with them. There are acquisition chance penalties for merchants if there is trade agreement between factions, so it is safe to merchants from friendly factions to settle close to each other. {it is annoying to deal with neighbors spamming them every few turns}. Agents have no unkeep to protect AI economy, merchants have very low income and priests have conversion ratios close to FM, so they impact on a game shouldn't be very significant.

I still havent made any progress with princesses but as they cant get their +4 charm from negotiations, I think I will replace it with a small minigame to improve their body (by movement), mind (settlement), hearth (by spending time in minor settlements and countryside) and manners traits(capital) a bit. They are locked at level 2 I think so for example if the princess is cruel she won't get kind no matter how much time she spends with small folks. I was also thinking about raising their bravery by spending time with army with a small chance to raise lust traits, but I guess that would be too much to have a perverted warrior-princess . Well, at least some factions will still have that chance if I will be able to make it work.

[Hohenstaufen234]

Isnt it the IB mods that has the ethno-racial traits? Like Gallo-Romano, Syrian-Romano, Greece-Romano etc etc? Maybe it is the "Gens" traits that you are thinking off?

[YourMadDoc]

Isnt it the IB mods that has the ethno-racial traits? Like Gallo-Romano, Syrian-Romano, Greece-Romano etc etc? Maybe it is the "Gens" traits that you are thinking off?

I dont understarstand this question. Are you responding to the dynastic and ethno-racial traits for princesses? They are in EB II mod and I would like to create universal trait and description variants for them at some point so I can use them for all 3 agents , but it is low priority. And idk what IB mods means.

[isa0005]

I dont understarstand this question. Are you responding to the dynastic and ethno-racial traits for princesses? They are in EB II mod and I would like to create universal trait and description variants for them at some point so I can use them for all 3 agents , but it is low priority. And idk what IB mods means.

I think "IB" means Invasio Barbarorum

[YourMadDoc]

So princesses are in the game, using northern models, they become available at 14 , they cant bribe, they can do diplomacy missions, but as it's not their place they get the offensive trait from doing it. They can level up good and bad traits as I mentioned earlier, with all of them become unremovable at level 2. They have most of their original traits and some new ones and they can marry independent rules and disloyal nobles now while boosting their loyalty and influence within her faction.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[HaHawk]

This whole project looks very promising, good work!

[isa0005]

Love it!
Can't wait for release!
Side note, you should have a look at DBM's models for their female agents. They'd fit the aesthetic of your mod rather allot