The Ministerial Offices - a feature of the SSHIP
(I) General information
Getting an Office:
- A Faction Leader acquires an office if the following conditions are fulfilled:
- there’re still undistributed offices for he factions (there’s one office per faction rule);
- he doesn’t have any office on him (he didn’t have one, or he's already given the acquired one to another general);
- in some cases certain buildings must exist.
- he holds his personal strengths: he's not Diseased, AbsentMinded, Sadly or Blissfully Ignorant, Senile or Totally Senile, Quite Mad or Utterly Insane.
- Once the FL gets an office, the player is better to give it to another general (through manual swapping). This is because: 1. FL can have only one title at once so there can be other offices to be gotten, 2. the generals may draw much higher benefits from the offices than the FL himself (this concerns mainly the other traits possible to attain).
- The player is then free to swap offices between generals - there’re no penalties for removing an offices from a general (unlike in the case of the provincial titles).
The benefits of the Offices
- all Offices provide with a trait “Office holder” that gives +1 Authority and +1 Loyalty at the cost of lower Private Security.
- Each office provides additional benefits, and they may be quite substantial.
- However, the main advantage of having an office is that it allows / speeds up getting certain traits (this part is still to be further modded by me). It is technically possible to keep a few offices on one general (and even on FL), but it’s a waste of resources. It is much beneficial to assign one office per general.
(II) Modding considerations
- The main goal of this submod is to make the Offices meaningful for the gameplay. The direct benefits (like +1 Law) have been buffed up, but crucially they’ll feature in the triggers for other traits. Specifically, they’ll impact through the Loyalty system: a general with an Office will be less likely to lose Loyalty due to the distance from capital and other event. The +1 Authority will be crucial to be get also other traits (see here).
- The second goal of this submod is to make the offices more “historical”. This concerns mainly the way of getting them. Currently, they are given directly to the generals on the basis of their traits, some other requirements (building in a settlement), and with (sometimes low) probabilities. There’s nothing that prevents from swapping them later on to the other guys what means their assignment is made on purpose (all these conditions), but then they may be used by different generals (the player usually swaps them according to their needs), irrelevant from those conditions. So why to bother making those conditions? (and they make little sense anyway). Historically, in most cases the award of an office depended on the will of the ruler. In this context, I seriously trim the triggers and introduce simple rules.
- There’re also other problems: Chamberlain is an office of a person, but it sticks to the FactionLeader (so it’s a human ancillary). But the other titles are the titles of the generals (so they’re not “humans” like Architect, they’re just titles). I also think that the names are very ango-centric - I’ve tweaked them making more universal.
The modding framework is as follows:
- all offices are transferable – they’re the tools for the player to play the game.
- There are no “penalties” of stripping a general of an office (unlike the provincial titles – in that case there’re sever penalties to the loyalty).
- all offices are initially assigned to the FL – then swapping them to a general is part of the play for the player. If the player keeps a title on the FL, a trait lowering FL authority follows.
- to get an office the FL does not need to be in vicinity of the the capital – I’ve played with this requirement and I’ve found it bad for the gameplay: it discouraged from moving the FL elsewhere; however, one may thinkg about introducint it…
- some offices require certain buildings to be owned by the faction (eg. Lord Marshall: Large City, Master of Horse: stables level III), and some require historical events to happen.
- given that the AI doesn’t swap the ancillaries between generals, there’re separate triggers for the AI assigning the offices directly to the generals and having lower requirements.
- as said, the triggers in the old version (0.9.2) included varous conditions and probabilities that resulted in late and incidental appearance of the offices in-game. Now they’ll appear more easily while their delay has been related to deterministic factors (eg if the faction has a certain building).
The benefits of the titles
- have been buffed up in comparison to the initial values to make them more meaningful for the player. Now a decision to assign an office is a significant one.
- Having an office gives a trait “Office holder” giving +1 Authority, +1 Loyalty and -1 PublicSecurity - as it seems to me that having an office raises the authority of the person among his peers, makes him more loyal to the rulers (“if another ruler will come, will he give me this office?”), and exposes him to the eye of everybody, makes some enemies etc.
- The Offices still have their own benefits, but they’re usually small (+1 Law, or + 1 Piety). Some offices are more “economic” by nature: more economy benefits – then they’re also related to some bad things (like + 1 unrest). Master of Horse has also a negation of the +1 Authority, given that it was rather less respected office.
- Having more than one office doesn’t provide much benefits – only those “own” benefits, as the “Office holder” trait is gives the same benefit for any number of offices.
- I hesitated how much Loyalty buffs should be included. Giving too many to the civilian offices (like PrivySeal or Seneshal) would have prompted the player to use them for military purposes (as leaders of a far-away expeditions). Therefore I’ve decided to give that +1 Loyalty through the trait, and only in one case – PrivySeal – to give an additional one. More loyalty will be passed through the Near/Far Loyalty and through the Content/Discontent general triggers.
- I haven’t touched upon the Byzantine career offices (imported to the SS from the CBUR mod). However, any general who would acquire a CBUR office will get the trait “Office holder” and will draw all benefits due to this fact.
- If the FL keeps an office undistributed, he gets a malus -1 Authority with the text calling for distribution of the offices.