Merchant and Gameplay Change Suggestion

[R.P. Gryphus]

I have a little suggestion for the authors of this mod. Knowing a bit about modding, even though really not as much as those who made this mod, I think my suggestion can easily be implemented if we find it interesting enough. The idea would be to replace the "merchants" agent for "Inspectors" agent and all resources for different type of small settlement (farming, cultural, industrial, etc). I feel playing with those agent would be quite more fun role playing wise if they actually were a bit more political figures. And sending inspectors to secure the loyalty of enemy village would be nice and having inspectors fight themselves with their retinues (merchant bribing another merchant) over a village would be very cool. And I'm willing to help out with the expanded.txt, strat.txt and tooltips.txt and with descr_cultures.txt. But for the rest I'm not sure I could do it all by my self. So what do you think? Cause resources is a very meh feature in M2TW in my opinion, even role playing wise. But having an inspector overseing our settlement or taking care of enemy settlement resources and sending it to our territories, that sound awesome.

[Seether]

I moved your post to a new thread because the other was for art comments and suggestions.

Anyways, your suggestion actually sounds interesting, but I’d need to confer with Gigantus on feasibility.

Just so I’m understanding you correctly, what do you mean by replacing “all resources for different type of small settlement (farming, cultural, industrial, etc)“?

Also, what are you referring to when you mention “villages”?

[R.P. Gryphus]

Hi Seether!


First forgive me my mediocre English, I made a hasty proposal without really applying myself. I am sure that what I am suggesting is feasible, the question really is whether the time is worth it. In my opinion, yes and I am ready to help where I can!


What I mean by "replacing all resources with settlements" is exactly that. Aesthetically. So instead of having amber, horses, iron, there would be settlements with various appearances (just need to agglomerate some already existing settlement buildings to make villages / towns without ramparts) whose specialties would vary between an industrial, agricultural, equine, cultural, etc. settlement (so it's still resources, but implemented differently). The variation of these settlements is only a pretext for variety. It would then be necessary to create new .CAS models, which it seems is not so complicated.


By village, I mean the settlements that would replace the current resources like amber, etc.


If I can help, I'm sure I could, so do not hesitate to coordinate me if the idea really tempts you.

[Seether]

Ok, I understand now. So essentially what you are proposing is changing the concept of merchants. Merchants become “Inspectors” and trade resources become “villages” that each specialize in the production of a specific resource. The Inspectors would take control of village, and its resource production, and would also battle other Inspectors for control of villages and their resources. Is that correct?

[R.P. Gryphus]

Exactly. And to make things better, it would be nice to give ancillaries under the form of retinues (armed companions, etc), so role playing wise it would be like small scale fighting instead of literally 2 characters fist fighting for the control of a village. x)

[R.P. Gryphus]

So instead of having "Finance" as level, we could have "Power" or "Influence" that would represent the strength of the character and his retinues.

[Minn]

Sound very interesting!

[Gigantus]

I like the idea - just not the tail of modding that comes with it

Apart from a number of new strat models (+-30 - haven't got anyone for it atm) it will also require a substantial edit of text entries, mainly traits. Not to forget the odd event pics. Would have to dig where that text entry for the financial page is (merchant income)....

[R.P. Gryphus]

I did it.

Agent description :

A commandery is run by three officers - the governor, the commandant and the inspector. The inspector has multiple functions, one is as a censor for the Imperial government but has other duties as well, including but not limited to duties such as running public projects, recommending local officials, checking the performance of high-ranking official, arresting criminals, fighting bandits and managing jails.

Placing an Inspector on a village will grant a considerable bonus to your economy.



It will be part of my submod.

[Gigantus]

Looking great - do you still have regular merchants?

[R.P. Gryphus]

Thanks! It's actually the same agent, but I changed all the text and some UI so it plays like an Inspector. So there's no more 'merchant' in appearance, but technically it is the merchant agent. ^^

[Gigantus]

You may need to remove the 'diminishing return' entries in the EDB - the larger your empire the less income your inspectors will generate if they remain in your own regions. It would certainly spoil immersion if you would be forced to send your inspectors to the neighbors to make money....


Edit: nvm, we removed that in the last version.

[R.P. Gryphus]

Yeah that's what I was gonna tell you ^^