PRINCESSES in the SSHIP

[Jurand of Cracow]

Princesses in the SSHIP

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Horizontal issues
** there are 2 kinds of women in the Med2 engine:
(1) the princesses: agents appearing on the map, they have charm (heart) attribute, can marry and conduct diplomatic missions. When they marry, they provide traits for his husband (then transmitted to the children) depending on their charm (and luck).
(2) noble women (daughters and wives): they appear only in the family tree (not on the map), they provide very few traits for the generals upon marriage, and these traits do not depend on their personalities (as they have no traits).
** the retirement age of any unmarried women in the SSHIP is set to 35 years. After they retire, they empty the slot for a child for a general (so he can get another child if already 4 were taken), and also lower the number of characters in the faction (thus the engine may re-start giving children / offering the spouses).
** the princesses are available for all the factions (unlike in the base SS where the Muslims do not have access to them).
** the number of Princesses in the game is in comparison with the SS high due to (1) special Princess script (see below), (2) lower retirement age.

In the SSHIP 097, the traits of the Princesses are as they were in the SSHIP 092 (so perhaps SS6.4, maybe even vanilla). They should be reviewed and re-moded in the future in respect to:
(1) the list of traits (they should be assessed whether they make sense, they do not double etc.).
(2) the triggers: whether they make sense, whether they do not produce contradictory personalities etc.
(3) eradication of NCB+antitrati bug.

There are three distinct situations when Princesses get into play:
A) the player gets a royal princess : born in the family (present in the family tree), usually having the faction's blood, coming of age as a daughter of FH or FL (only then she would appear as an agent on the map, status of her father at her birth does not matter. She is very valuable as she carry the faction bloodline and relations (ie other bloodlines). A standard use is to marry her off to a very good general who is not in the family tree so that the bloodline is not wasted and that general gets into the family tree. Of course, she can also conduct diplomatic actions what may be crucial given the limited number of the diplomats in the SSHIP.
B) the players gets a lady of the court every ca. 15 years. She is not in the family tree and doesn't have a bloodline (but may have if scripted). A general married to her would get better traits, it also means a bigger control for the player for a superb general to get married (the engine can never offer any marriage to him). A standard use is to marry her to the FL / FH / other family members so that they can get children. She can also conduct diplomatic actions (esp. marriage with another faction to get a stronger alliance), or "steal" a good general from the AI. Having such princesses was one the reasons for having the Royal Ladies of the Court submod for the SS6.4 (the other were to be able to marry a FL/FH at all - the engine sometimes would not give a spouse for them, and the AI princesses were not available). In the SSHIP they are given by the recurring events for each faction. In the future, it can probably by modded to be an interactive event.
C) the player meets an AI princess and can marry a Faction Leader or a Faction Heir. Thanks to the script, the AI factions are likely to have many princesses so that the player may (statistically) meet them often. They have the faction bloodlines to make the game interesting for the player (transmission of the "relations").

Noble Ladies script (in SSHIP 096-7): The script gives each faction a princess (on average) every 30 turns, starting after turn 60. As a result, it is much easier to meet a potential spouse for your Faction Heir so that he can keep the family line, and also to get a foreign blood (and alliance, and better traits for children of FH/FL) through diplomatic deals. As a last resort you may also marry your FH/FL to the Noble Lady that is given to your faction (they're not relatives; some ladies can have 5-6 charm that will profit in the traits of the husband and his children).
Due to the Noble Lady script, their number is significantly higher in the game. In the past, the princesses were extremely rare: after the few initial turns, the player was not able to meet almost any - they would get married away by the AI very soon after coming of age.

For the family management this might be useful info (should be true in the long run, while deviations in the short run occur):

The M2TW engine gives children and spouses and adoptions until the number of generals and princesses (and perhaps children, I don't remember) is roughly equal to the number of provinces. This is not a fixed number, there might be deviations of +/- a few generals.
If you've got more generals than provinces, you will get neither spouses, nor children, nor adoptions. Fertility doesn't have any impact on it. It matters only if that number is correct. So you need either to take more provinces or get some of the generals killed.
The engine also "fixates" at one character. It usually keeps proposing a spouse for a general/a princess/a women in the family tree for several turns, if you keep on declining.
You may recruit new generals as "Bodyguard" units and break the limits. But they won't be in the family tree and the engine won't give you any more characters, for the described reasons.
You may try to marry your princesses to the foreign generals thus "stealing" them. They'll be in the family tree but again, the engine won't give you any more characters.

[Ensyvtre]

I wasn't quite sure if this was a topic that required its own thread since it does seem like it could turn into a major piece of work, but I think it might be a good idea to take a look at some of the different traits related to princesses. I feel like there are two issues that I run into with them, the first one being related to traits given to generals that marry agent-type princesses. Generals tend to get a selection of traits based on various things such as the nationality, charm level and traits of the princess.

In my campaign I had a general marry a princess and he ended up obtaining two different traits that have very contradictory descriptions:

{Wife_is_Noble1_desc}This man's wife is noted to be a pleasant person to deal with, and generally liked.
{Wife_is_Noble1_effects_desc}+1 to popularity (improves public order)

{Wife_is_Unpleasant1_desc}This man's wife is simply not pleasant to deal with at all.
{Wife_is_Unpleasant1_effects_desc}-1 from popularity (reduces public order)

This doesn't seem quite right if you ask me. But since those two traits don't have anything to do with each other it's very much possible for one character to obtain both of them based on the princess he marries. I'm not going to go into detail about all the triggers and causes for these traits, especially not since the trait WifeIsNoble has a ton of triggers that can give the general this trait. But I do think it'd be worthwhile if a lot of the spouse/marriage traits were given another look at to ensure there aren't too many different traits and descriptions that outright contradict each other.
This is also because of the second issue that I often find myself encountering whenever a new princess comes of age and spawns as an agent: due to sheer amount of different traits that already exist for this type of character the player controlled princesses often end up spawning with either 0-1 Charm or above 8. Rarely do I see princesses with moderate amounts of their agent stats; it's always either extremely high or extremely low. This is not an issue exclusive to this submod since I also remember encountering it in the regular Stainless Steel mods.
From a gameplay perspective this also means the characters often end up feeling like throwaway princesses which you just marry off to some distant family member (I suppose that's thematically appropriate though) which tends to give them a collection of negative traits since they'd be marrying a princess with 0 charm. Conversely it also means that princesses with maxed out (or at the very least a very high) charm don't feel as rare and impactful as I feel they should be.

All of this doesn't happen as much during the initial couple of turns of a campaign, but once you get further in the princesses fathers will likely have an abundance of different traits and ancillaries which in turn causes the princess to spawn with a ton of different traits that heavily steer her Charm stat towards either extreme negatives or extremely high amounts. The princess having a huge list of traits also increases the likelihood of her spouse obtaining a multitude of traits (I'm starting to see a pattern here) which in turn increases the likelihood of the general getting contradictory traits like I mentioned at the start of my post.

I really wish I could support my post with more examples and various screenshots, but sadly I keep all my progress on a single save file which currently doesn't have anything I can show outside of the character with the contradictory traits which is what prompted me to make this thread in the first place. I would like to hear from other users if this also is an issue they encounter or what their thoughts on the matter are.
Although it's not a particularly elegant or easy solution I personally feel like the entire list of traits could benefit from another look at their trigger rates as well as the implementation of measures against contradictory traits.

[Belovèse]

Thanks a lot for your detailed and meaningful feedback, and for pointing out something to fix: the traits WifeIsNoble and WifeIsBitch (don't know who coded that name...) should be mutually exclusive, I'll fix it.

As Jurand stated in his post, a lot of the traits are still to review and balance out. So I agree with you about the different qualities of princess being spawned, but I don't feel it to be as much a nhindrance. Maybe because my way of playing them is to let them be educated in the same settlement I use for my generals, and them make some light and easy diplomacy with them. THis can turn any princess into a medium or good one, usually.

[Ensyvtre]

It seems like both of those traits actually are from the vanilla version of the game, except the vanilla version seems to use the antitrait system to prevent a character from getting both.

[Belovèse]

Is it done, I've put the antitraits parameter back. Thanks again!

[Jurand of Cracow]

Is it done, I've put the antitraits parameter back. Thanks again!

No, no, the antitraits bug it most pronounced for CoA of the Princesses. Actually, the number of hearts has little relation to the actual number. The traits have to be remodded, but no antitrait.

[Belovèse]

Ah sorry, I didn't know that, well I'll get to rework that after our EDB things are settled I suppose!
But I didn't touch the CoA traits, just the WifeIsNoble/WifeIsBitch trait pair.

[Steward Denethor II]

I think the problem is more with no going back level than AntiTraits, from my experience. When I mod my vanilla game to remove all No Going Back levels it seems to work best.

Do you think the age of retiring daughters could be lowered a bit more? 35 is lower than 40 from vanilla, but if it was reduced further to 30 or high 20's the player could choose to not marry them off to try to get more sons. I am not certain it would work but if it did it is an idea.

Once I married off my Kings 3 daughters to his various nephews. I noticed that even though the daughters moved on the family tree from being daughters of the King to wives of the nephews, the King did not get any more children or adoption offers. I guess the game still remembered that he had 4 children, even though the placement of the daughters on the tree changed.

[Jurand of Cracow]

In my understanding the problems emerge from the simultaneous use of Antitraits and NGB. Separately they don't cause so much harm. The worst situation is when at the Coming of Age many triggers fire in various directions - and this is precisely the moment of CoA of princesses. Here is the problem most pronounced.

We're tinkering with age parameters with @Macaras, but not anymore with the daughters. 40 seems acceptable, and changing it would require going again through the family trees to find the crashe-sources.

I share you opinion that the engine remembers he'd 4 daughters. Well, hasn't he?

[kostic]

My topic might not be posted in the right place, but does the speed of the ships depend on the characters inside ?
This is what I seem to see. For example, the princesses - who move very slowly - slow down ships considerably.
It is not logical. Only the skills of the captain should change the speed of ships. If this defect is not hard-coded, maybe we can fix it ourselves ?

[Jurand of Cracow]

My topic might not be posted in the right place, but does the speed of the ships depend on the characters inside ?
This is what I seem to see. For example, the princesses - who move very slowly - slow down ships considerably.
It is not logical. Only the skills of the captain should change the speed of ships. If this defect is not hard-coded, maybe we can fix it ourselves ?

Check her traits - she must be fat!

(just kidding, I have no idea how it's impacted)

[Nemesis2345]

My topic might not be posted in the right place, but does the speed of the ships depend on the characters inside ?
This is what I seem to see. For example, the princesses - who move very slowly - slow down ships considerably.
It is not logical. Only the skills of the captain should change the speed of ships. If this defect is not hard-coded, maybe we can fix it ourselves ?

I think its hardcoded sadly. Nothing that can be done unless you increase princesses speed , fleets will share the speeds with the slowest unit on board.

[Ensyvtre]

Would it be possible to give agents a hidden trait that increases their movement speed when at sea?
Of course it wouldn't be a complete solution since I don't think there are any triggers that'd let the trait trigger immediately upon entering a boat, but I guess it's one way to get around agents slowing down boats.

[Jurand of Cracow]

EDIT2: I'm not sure it's true what I'm writing here. I've seen a report from a player who was able to marry his FL/FH to foreign princesses. But maybe they were true (ie born in the family) ones, not these spawned by script.
-------------------------------------------------

Much to my horror I've realised, that the Princess script doesn't solve the problem of marrying princesses with foreign blood. The Princesses that are given to the AI factions by script cannot be married - on the contrary, they only can "steal" your generals into the AI factions (even if they do it rarely). If anybody would know solution to this problem (ie how to script a Princess into the family tree of another faction), I'd be very interested.

EDIT1:

You spawn her like an agent, hence why it's not possible to add her as family member. You simply can't add anything to an agent spawn.

So, it won't be possible to make it as neatly, as I though. For now, I think I'll redo the script in a following way:
* only for the player - it seems the AI doesn't know what to do with it, there're many princesses in the game, and it doesn't change anything. It may also be treated by the AI as a replacement for other agents.
* the player will be offered to recruit a lady against quite significant payments:
1. (quite often) a noble lady without bloodline, perhaps of a not-so-great charm, but young (14) so that the player may educate her.
2. (rarely) a noble lady with a foreign blood, maybe also young for education, to be decided.
The aim would be to provide the player with opportunities to get nice traits for his generals.
Perhaps (1) would depend on the size of faction.

[Gigantus]

My topic might not be posted in the right place, but does the speed of the ships depend on the characters inside ?
This is what I seem to see. For example, the princesses - who move very slowly - slow down ships considerably.
It is not logical. Only the skills of the captain should change the speed of ships. If this defect is not hard-coded, maybe we can fix it ourselves ?

A passenger's movement points affects the speed of a boat afaik, not sure what the formula is.

[j.a.luna]

As a curiosity in sship, the issue of royal blood and the different royal houses that exist in the game is quite immersive.
In my Sicilian campaign I have a lineage of heirs who have married Pisan, German and Crusader princesses , so I will currently have a son/daughter with 4 types of royal blood in the same person (Sicilian, Pisan, German and Crusade), further increasing its authority from birth, my goal is to try to have as many royal blood as possible.
It would be great if there could be an option to marry other royal blood princesses to characters other than the king or heir.

[Napovanni]

Hi jaluna,

You can marry your generals to the daughters of the Faction leader right?
Or do you mean " other royal blood princesses" with princesses of other factions to your generals?

I do not quite understand your question

[Jurand of Cracow]

As a curiosity in sship, the issue of royal blood and the different royal houses that exist in the game is quite immersive.
In my Sicilian campaign I have a lineage of heirs who have married Pisan, German and Crusader princesses , so I will currently have a son/daughter with 4 types of royal blood in the same person (Sicilian, Pisan, German and Crusade), further increasing its authority from birth, my goal is to try to have as many royal blood as possible.
It would be great if there could be an option to marry other royal blood princesses to characters other than the king or heir.

As Napovanni has indicated, you can marry off your Princess (naturally born, or just spawned by the very script this thread is devoted to) to a general. However, if that general marries a foreign princess, it defects to the faction that princess comes from.

[Gigantus]

I do so love the eloping feature, got me the odd good general.