A Guide for Guilds

[darox]

This is GREAT ! Thank you.

I have a question: does anyone know if the Merchants Guild ACTUALLY increases trade income. I think it does'nt, it says it does in the game files, and in the descriptive text but I've not noticed any difference.

Salute !

But it does, there should be a difference before and after building the guild in city income. I got about 100-200 florins per upgrade. Although it would be helpful if we'd actually see the effects of the guild(s) in the details window.

On a sidenote, does anyone know anything about a limit on guilds? It seems there is one. It's either similar to the family (proportionate to regions), a global limit or limited to ten in general. Not sure if upgrades count or not, but in my current campaign I owned 20 regions at the time, had 11 guilds and I wasn't offered any further guilds at all! Even though I was building tons of guild pts. When I scrapped two guilds I suddenly got an offer again, so either my triggers are yet again fubar or there is some sort of limit. Pretty stupid imho.

[Sinan]

Well I will test again. Maybe it was such a small difference I did'nt notice it. Thanks for the info, now I know they DO actually do something.

I think there is a limit to the number of guilds vis vis number of settlements. Don't know for sure.

[darox]

Yeah, I suppose it depends a little on the basic trade value of the city and it's overall infrastructure development. I once ripped down the entire building (MG HQ) to see it's effect in Zaragossa and that was around 1k income. Toledo has proven to be much larger in trade and overall income, but at them moment I'm lacking a decent governor there so I can't really say how much it affects those 5-6k trade income.

As for the guild limit, if so that really sucks. I haven't quite figured out how it works yet, but it doesn't seem linked to the regions but rather to a global or numerical one. I don't really see the point of that, since it's basically just a nuisance to keep people from developing one's castles in far off regions with an additional swordsmith's guild.

[DarkKnight]

Is there any way to see how much more points a settlement needs?

Unfortunately not. The only thing you can do is try your best to keep score yourself.

Is it possible to create military guild with new units? For example making a new knightly order?

Yes. Probably the easiest way to go about this would be to clone one of the existing knightly orders and change its name in each document. Then change the affects, triggers, and text for it. Then use one of the guides to create a new unit in conjunction with this one to make the new unit the guild allows.

As for the guild limit, if so that really sucks. I haven't quite figured out how it works yet, but it doesn't seem linked to the regions but rather to a global or numerical one. I don't really see the point of that, since it's basically just a nuisance to keep people from developing one's castles in far off regions with an additional swordsmith's guild.

Bummer.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Thanks!

[darox]

Aye, I'm pretty sure now that it's not due to a global limit. I own 34 regions and have ripped down plenty of guilds to stay beneath 10 in total, but everytime I reach 10 I get no further offers. The only odd similarity here I can think of is that Spain has ten different guild houses in total. Might be interesting to note if the same limit applies to other factions who have one or two guilds more and if adding new guilds presents a tedious but possible way of avoiding the issue.

I finally got the Master Explorer Guild in Brugges and Jedda -the latter I had to rip down- through conquer, but in 3/4 of cases the AI will build a Thieves Guild so conquering guilds only has limited use. Not to mention that the AI's placing is about as questionable as that of their watchtowers. Another problem with this limit -in the late game at least- is that the game will get 'hooked' on offers to one region and neglect others, similar to marriage proposals. Aleppo and Marrakesh have probably amounted enough points to go straight to the HQ (sword/horse respectively) but instead I've been forced to turn down three offers for a KoS guild in Angers.

I dunno, maybe you want to include this info in your guide since it means people will probably want to plan their guilds wiser, which may have been the thought in the onset but in reality it's really nothing but a nuisance to the player.

[DarkKnight]

When you get to the point where it seems that you aren't getting any guilds offered even though you should be have you tried saving and reloading the game. I have a current working hypothesis that the guild system tends to break itself occassionally. While doing some of my own testing I noticed that sometimes I wouldn't be offered any guilds but when I saved and reloaded the guild would be offered (I'm talking immediately when it reloads, not the next turn). It could be that destroying the guild, as you say you have done, has the same affect in fixing the system as reloading.

There is another possibility that I have thought of. I have noticed that you only get offered one guild per turn. If two cities earn a guild the same turn, only one of them will be offered that turn. Maybe this 1 guild per turn limit is not just a local thing but a global thing. And when you progress into the game there are so many different provinces being offered guilds that it takes forever for it to be your turn to be offered the guild. This could be tested by playing hotseat and seeing if your factions ever get guilds offered on the same turn. However, I would be somewhat surprised if this theory was the case.

If your are correct about a limit of the number of houses being the number of guilds that the faction can build then we could increase this number by making a bunch of guilds with no triggers. So effectively they would just boost that number.

[darox]

So far that save/reload trick hasn't worked for me. At best I get a renewed offer at the beginning of the next turn. But yes, I agree the game tends to break it's 'flow' from time to time, not just concerning guilds but in general and in particular in regard to AI behaviour. Not sure what the cause is but I assume that one issue may be the game mechanics themselves, which rely heavily on triggers. Because there seems to be a common pattern between these and other issues and another explanation I could imagine is that guilds like proposals due to relying on triggers have a very narrow range of setting them off. So for example, when one rejects a guild offer the accumulated points remain, but for the offer to be renewed one has to trigger it by hitting the set mark again. This would explain why one sometimes gets to build a minor guild house, only to be offered the upgrades almost immediately within the next turn(s). The points seem to sum up and in marriage terms it's perhaps the age or a certain amount of years triggering it.

Global limitations are another possibility but either explanation still leaves the question why the game is so hooked on one particular city as such, just as it is constantly making marriage proposals to the same woman when a lot of others are still single. So perhaps the limitations themselves have a part in this, because as long as one has a lot of slots available for either it seems to switch fine between people and cities, as soon as one closes in on the limit though it gets 'stuck' on one particular. Adding guilds to avoid the limitations may be a little optimistic and I fear these might as well be hidden, hard coded somewhere just like the family to region numbers eg., but I guess there's no harm in keeping an eye on factions with more than ten guilds in total.

[Garnier]

Could someone who has unpacked the game PM me the descr_guilds file please? I want to make some changes for my LTC addon to balance things, but I don't want to unpack for this one file..

If this is illegal.. I guess I will not change that file.

[Trajan]

Could someone who has unpacked the game PM me the descr_guilds file please? I want to make some changes for my LTC addon to balance things, but I don't want to unpack for this one file..

If this is illegal.. I guess I will not change that file.

That's illegal. We cannot share any unmodified files here. I think you can use the unpacker to grab one file. Not sure but check out the unpacker readme.

[darox]

Yeah, apparently that is possible but I for one have never got the command to work properly. It even says "all files extracted ok." but nope. But what one can do is open the unpack_all.bat file and edit dthe destination folder, set it to somewhere else, extract, pick out the files one needs and delete the rest without any confusion.

[Garnier]

Yeah.. not really worth the trouble for me to unpack for just a few changes.

[YXAndyYX]

Hey guys,

I made a diplomats guild (as diplomats are the only agents (beside princesses) which cannot be boosted by guilds) that works exactly like the thieves guild or the assassins guild so all trained diplomats will gain up to 3 influence depending on the guild level...

Everything worked fine but then I thought that this guild might also improve princesses...

Now I want to add some princess related triggers that give guild points on my diplomats guild and that's why I would like to know how I test if

1. a female family member was born (maybe even distinguish prospective princesses and "normal" female family members) or
2. one of my princesses gets married

in the export_descr_guilds.txt.

Basically I'm only struggeling with the conditions that need to be set, the events are of course Birth in the first case and CharacterMarriesPrincess in the second one or am I mistaken?

Hopefully you can help me out...

[Trifler]

I have 2 questions:
2. Has anyone actually gotten Sherwood Archers. I've been playing as England on VH/VH and I've been pumping out lbows and yeomen for many, many turns at Nottingham, but I've only gooten the basic woodsmens guild (no SA's). Any suggestions?

The first game I ever played was a short campaign as England and I got the Sherwood Archers. They're good for sneak attacks but it was really the experience bonus from the guild that made it shine. I was pretty much building all of my archers out of Nottingham. I don't think I set up another location to build archers until I wiped out the French and the Danish and I had broken the back of the HRE. By then I had had a Master Woodsmen's Guild for a while.

[Snipafist]

I had a question regarding guilds. As we all know, the AI loves using agents, especially spies. This is actually a benefit of the AI, as it has the endless patience to carefully manage every individual agent and army (if not terribly well sometimes). The problem here is that the AI quickly builds up points for thieves' guilds through all of its spying, and you quickly find (upon conquering the AI cities) that the AI has overdone it on thieves' guilds that it cannot actually use (no brothels in some cities). I was wondering if there was some way to make the guild points dependent on buildings being present in the given settlements. Let's take this line of code for example:

Trigger 0163_Governor_Dread2
WhenToTest SettlementTurnStart

Condition GovernorAttribute Chivalry < -4
and SettlementBuildingExists >= brothel

Guild thiefs_guild s 2

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Should work just fine - the settlement only gets the thieves' guild points if it has both a brothel+ building and a dread 4+ character in it. But what about the following?

Trigger 0212_Spy_Mission
WhenToTest SpyMission

Condition MissionSucceeded
and SettlementBuildingExists >= brothel

Guild thiefs_guild s 10

This is trickier. Should I have changed the "thiefs_guild s" to "thiefs_guild a"? I figured the S would mean the game would run through each individual settlement I owned, checking for the brothel+ building upon completing a successful spying mission, but it could also provide those points to the enemy settlement depending on the game reads the code! The A would mean it would apply the points to all settlements, but in that case, would it successfully check for the brothel+ in each settlement?

[Socal_infidel]

Don't think you can use a "SettlementBuildingExists" condition with a "SpyMission" event.

That said, to avoid seeing an over-proliferation of thieve's guilds, you can comment out the endedinsettlement and spymission sucess triggers like so:

;------------------------------------------
;Trigger 0211_Spy_On_Settlement
; WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
; Condition EndedInSettlement
; and not SettlementIsLocal
; Guild thiefs_guild a 2
;------------------------------------------
Trigger 0212_Spy_Mission
; WhenToTest SpyMission
; Condition MissionSucceeded
; Guild thiefs_guild a 10

I've done this and let it run on auto-pilot for a while and it seems to work. I've seen settlements with explorer's guilds, swordsmith's guilds, theologian's guilds.

The problem with these two triggers is the AI spams spies like nobody's business. And because those triggers gives guild points to "all" settlements, settlements that don't even have a brothel end up getting offered thieves' guilds...

[Hephaistos]

Has anyone ever successfully added a completly new guild into the game? I just tried, by following the tutorial step by step. I have been very careful to make everything exactly as written in the tutorial. The only thing I changed was the name of the guild, I called it "HL_office" (Hanseatic League).

Allright, when I use the edited files, the game crashed to desktop even before the intro was playing. The error log does show the following:

[script.err] [error] Script Error in data/descr_building_battle.txt, at line 1029, column 23
Unable to find building_battle localised string 'HL_office'

This probably refers to the added guild code:

HL_office
{
stat_cat medium_stone
localised_name HL_office
}
m_HL_office
{
stat_cat medium_stone
localised_name m_HL_office
}
gm_HL_office
{
stat_cat medium_stone
localised_name gm_HL_office
}

I see absolutly no difference to the code of the vanilla guilds, which could crash this game, so I assume the error must be somewhere else. But I don't have the slightest idea, I allready tripple checked all changes I did and compared them to the turorial.

The only thing I woundered about was, that I didn't do any changes which do tell the programm, which graphical files to use. For example if you add an ancillary you have to say to the programm which tga to use. But the turorial says nothing about doing an entry anywhere to add the informations which tga und which models and textures to use.

Can anyone help me or it is simply impossible to add a completly new guild without overwriting another one?

[Nestor Drake]

Since its my first post in the thread first I'll just say its a great guide for a person like me who wants to know all the little deatails. Thnx

However, since I've only read this half-way through my current campaign with Spain I wasn't really counting any points or doing anything specific to aquire certain guilds and I'd really like to see them all. So after reading this I picked one huge city for every guild (except Knights of Santiago adn Alchemists) and have since done all the training and building in those cities with a sole goal of being offered a guild.

Since I haven't been counting the points I can't really tell what my standings are but two things happend which I can't explain.

I picked Genoa for assassins guild, razed a Thieves Guild there and started training assassins each turn. I didn't count exactly how many turns but soon I was offered Assassins guild in Lisbon. I figured it just got to 100 points generated earlier in the game from trainings and becuse of a lot of tavern line buildings I was completing at the time. I accepted, but continued training assassins in Genoa since Lisbon was too far away. Some turns later (I again didn't count how many exactly) I still don't have even level 1 guild in Genoa BUT now I get an offer for Master Guild in Lisbon. I have been training one assassin in Genoa each turn (along with completing a Pleasure Palace) and exactly zero assassins in Lisbon this whole time!

Another thing happened in the meantime which I also can't explain. I got offered a Knights of Santiago Chapter House in Timbuktu which is basicly impossible because I am excommunicated from like turn 10 and the only crusade was on Toulouse which is owned by myself... Chivalry bonus from governor is also excluded since I've only conquered Timbuktu 2 turns earlier.


Two questions (apart from the obvious "I'm totally lost" situation):

1. When you take over a city from another faction do you start from 0 or their points count as yours now?

2. When normalization starts if you're not doing anything for a certain guild in a certain city can the points go to negative?


Sorry if its a too long post, but I tried to include all the relevant details.


EDIT: I believe I've just solved the mistery of the assassins guild. Apparently in order to have a chance of a guild being offered, you have to leave the building queue of a city empty for the turn...something I almost never do

Still, this doesn't explain the Knights of Santiago in Timbuktu... Is it possible that Hungary, Poland, France, England, Sicily, HRE and Pope creating crusader armies to destroy me actually enabled me to build Knights of Santiago guild?

EDIT2: Disregard the first edit. Apparently it was just a coincidence. A number of turns later I still haven't been offered an assassins guild in Genoa even though I now counted the points from training assassins and assassinating. They are well over 100 in last 2-3 turns alone, but no guild offer yet. Merchants and Thieves guilds were offered to me. I refused thinking the next will be assassins guild, but next turn came and no guild was offered whatsoever (I mean globally, not just in Genoa, obviously you can only be offered one guild per turn), same for the next couple of turns. I am absolutly positive on my points count, which is also supported by the fact that Master upgrade was offered in Lisbon where, logically, I would have to have considerable number of points less than in Genoa by this time after all the training that was done in Genoa and none that was done in Lisbon (points from assassinatons and normalization are obviously same for both cities).

[dm04]

Maybe I missed something, but where can I define what the guild can do? Now I have a "trade monopol" guild but thats it. No benefits defined...

[Hephaistos]

You have to insert effects in the buildings file, where it says:

capability
{
}

Have a look at the vanilla guilds for what is possible.