[DOWNLOAD] SSHIP 0.98 ver. September 8th, 2022

[Jurand of Cracow]

Congratulations on releasing the new version! I'm enjoying it a lot, seems all around much better than the April version.

Did Lithuania lose their ability to recruit pagan priests though? They begin with one priest, but in the April version it was possible to recruit new ones on every captured settlement you built/had a shrine in, and also on the pop up message on some round says that you should be able to recruit priests according to your pagan shrines - but in the September version none seem to have a priest listed as recruitable, not even in the building browser for higher tier shrines. The pagan priests aren't too effective, but at least they slow down the conversion loss to Christian religions.

good catch! seems a sloppy coding on my side, sorry, will be fixed in the patch

[j.a.luna]

Now in September version sicilians can not recruit berber archers in Palermo... I think that in some way the Muslims in this city and the island of Sicily would have to be represented, the Muslims in the XII-XIII century served as archers in the Sicilian-Norman armies, maybe we could add andhat archers in the barracks and maybe some unit Muslim infantry... because the Berber archers I think should only be recruited from North Africa.Any solution?

[opaxite]

Couple of observations playing Poland around turn 100: Please take these with a grain of salt. I am new to this mod, and I only played Vanilla before. I don't know anything about modding and the history of balancing decisions you've made. Some of the problems you've most likely considered. For context, I play on Easy campaign difficulty, and I understand the game is not balanced around that.

- Some areas have become heretic meetups. It's sort of historic in Bohemia, but feels un-historic near Rome. Seems like priests are too easily converted, there are none to be seen. Just heretics.
- My princesses have a really, really short movement range, feels like 50% of a regular character or even less. It takes years to get to a suitor, who often gets married in the meantime. Then onto another suitor, rinse and repeat. If the target moves in the opposite direction, the princess can not catch up with him. Meanwhile, the Princess is getting old. Short range also makes princesses somewhat useless as diplomats, as they need to be solely focused on reaching suitors ASAP.
- AI princesses are abundant. Managed to marry both my FL and FH to full heart princesses. There's always a handful of princesses walking around. Haven't seen a foreign diplomat in ages on the other hand.
- I'm still only allowed 1 diplomat, which feels a bit lacking at this point, especially when my own princesses are scarce, and not very useful as diplomats. I could bribe another faction's diplomat, but I can't find any.
- There's not much incentive to level up or specialize spies. They are abundant, cheap to recruit, cheap to maintain, easy to replace. I mostly use them for recon. The only time I actually need to use the spy action is to reveal a potential suitor's character traits. If one spy fails to do that, there's always another nearby. Just spam spies.
- AI seems to make weird decisions. HRE will break an alliance to besiege a vulnerable settlement with a tiny army, when my own reinforcements are in range, and their own reinforcements are scattered far away.
- AI scatters forces a lot, making family members and even faction leaders walk almost alone, while two of their other small stacks are nearby. Makes it very easy to defeat them in detail and feels like an exploit. At the same time, smaller scale battles feel much more refreshing and immresive, compared to vanilla ever-present full stack battles of fully developed armies.
- Mercenaries feel like an exploit: I can keep a reserve of around 5000 and raise a force immediately when needed. Once I defeat the opposing army, I can disband the units. All in the same turn. But this might be actually historic.
- Seems like the pool of mercenaries is too big, but at the same time, I end up almost never using them: They are always abundant, so I don't have to "seize the opportunity", and they are too expensive to be kept long-term.
- Replenishment mechanics make this an entirely different game. I am absolutely in love with how rare some of the units are. With that being said, I think the times to train another unit could still be much, much longer. Would give me a reason to recruit those mercenaries perhaps.
- I am getting notifications about new family members being born, while they are not in the family tree, like generals married to a noble lady.
- I am getting reccurent messages about certain events, e.g. the founding of Moscow.

Thank you for all the amazing work. This mod is a true work of art. I'm 4th generation, still didn't manage to get mi FL crowned, and I love it.

[Macaras]

There is no need. The AI switcher is still there and easy to use. I suppose I will need to pull my together and fight for my life! For the Empire!

ilnur, in case you find it still somehow lacking these is the old diplomacy file that was used before - its easier: https://www.mediafire.com/file/1mokn...omacy.xml/file

You just need to change its name to descr_diplomacy.xml (which means delete the "OLD-" part) and replace the same file that you find in the folder SSHIP0.98/data.

- AI seems to make weird decisions. HRE will break an alliance to besiege a vulnerable settlement with a tiny army, when my own reinforcements are in range, and their own reinforcements are scattered far away.
- AI scatters forces a lot, making family members and even faction leaders walk almost alone, while two of their other small stacks are nearby. Makes it very easy to defeat them in detail and feels like an exploit. At the same time, smaller scale battles feel much more refreshing and immresive, compared to vanilla ever-present full stack battles of fully developed armies.

opaxite, did you switch AI maybe? It doesn't sound like the current one- it should be at least sending full stacks, more then vanilla ?

- I am getting notifications about new family members being born, while they are not in the family tree, like generals married to a noble lady.

It sound like a very old version, where did you download the game from?

[Jurand of Cracow]

Now in September version sicilians can not recruit berber archers in Palermo... I think that in some way the Muslims in this city and the island of Sicily would have to be represented, the Muslims in the XII-XIII century served as archers in the Sicilian-Norman armies, maybe we could add andhat archers in the barracks and maybe some unit Muslim infantry... because the Berber archers I think should only be recruited from North Africa.Any solution?

Berber Archers were disabled in Italy as ahistorical. You can recruit them in the Maghrib:

;====================================================================================================================================;--- Berber Archers (AoR)
; with mercenary_unit attribute
; available in 5 provinces


recruit_pool "Berber Archers" 1 0.04 2 0 requires factions { all, } and hidden_resource berber
recruit_pool "Berber Archers" 0 0.037 0 0 requires factions { moors, egypt, zengid, abbasid, rum, turks, slave, } and hidden_resource berber

What you've hinted about - Ahdath Archers, that it Muslim Levy Archers - would be perfectly fine and is planned to be implemented once kostic would make this unit available for Sicilian faction (the Normans).

Couple of observations playing Poland around turn 100: Please take these with a grain of salt. I am new to this mod, and I only played Vanilla before. I don't know anything about modding and the history of balancing decisions you've made. Some of the problems you've most likely considered. For context, I play on Easy campaign difficulty, and I understand the game is not balanced around that.

- Some areas have become heretic meetups. It's sort of historic in Bohemia, but feels un-historic near Rome. Seems like priests are too easily converted, there are none to be seen. Just heretics.
- My princesses have a really, really short movement range, feels like 50% of a regular character or even less. It takes years to get to a suitor, who often gets married in the meantime. Then onto another suitor, rinse and repeat. If the target moves in the opposite direction, the princess can not catch up with him. Meanwhile, the Princess is getting old. Short range also makes princesses somewhat useless as diplomats, as they need to be solely focused on reaching suitors ASAP.
- AI princesses are abundant. Managed to marry both my FL and FH to full heart princesses. There's always a handful of princesses walking around. Haven't seen a foreign diplomat in ages on the other hand.
- I'm still only allowed 1 diplomat, which feels a bit lacking at this point, especially when my own princesses are scarce, and not very useful as diplomats. I could bribe another faction's diplomat, but I can't find any.
- There's not much incentive to level up or specialize spies. They are abundant, cheap to recruit, cheap to maintain, easy to replace. I mostly use them for recon. The only time I actually need to use the spy action is to reveal a potential suitor's character traits. If one spy fails to do that, there's always another nearby. Just spam spies.
- AI seems to make weird decisions. HRE will break an alliance to besiege a vulnerable settlement with a tiny army, when my own reinforcements are in range, and their own reinforcements are scattered far away.
- AI scatters forces a lot, making family members and even faction leaders walk almost alone, while two of their other small stacks are nearby. Makes it very easy to defeat them in detail and feels like an exploit. At the same time, smaller scale battles feel much more refreshing and immresive, compared to vanilla ever-present full stack battles of fully developed armies.
- Mercenaries feel like an exploit: I can keep a reserve of around 5000 and raise a force immediately when needed. Once I defeat the opposing army, I can disband the units. All in the same turn. But this might be actually historic.
- Seems like the pool of mercenaries is too big, but at the same time, I end up almost never using them: They are always abundant, so I don't have to "seize the opportunity", and they are too expensive to be kept long-term.
- Replenishment mechanics make this an entirely different game. I am absolutely in love with how rare some of the units are. With that being said, I think the times to train another unit could still be much, much longer. Would give me a reason to recruit those mercenaries perhaps.
- I am getting notifications about new family members being born, while they are not in the family tree, like generals married to a noble lady.
- I am getting reccurent messages about certain events, e.g. the founding of Moscow.

Thank you for all the amazing work. This mod is a true work of art. I'm 4th generation, still didn't manage to get mi FL crowned, and I love it.

Quite a number of observations here. I'll try go through them and see.

However, I've got an initial question: which version of the mod do you play? It seems that the older one, from April, because we've fixed that message about Moscow for September (or maybe it doesn't work?)

if I_EventCounter MOSCOW_FOUNDED < 1 and RandomPercent < 50
set_event_counter continue 0
if I_TurnNumber > 30
and I_SettlementOwner Rustov = russia
and I_SettlementOwner Suzdal = russia
and I_SettlementOwner Ryazan = russia
set_event_counter continue 1
end_if
if I_TurnNumber > 80
and I_SettlementOwner Novgorod = russia
set_event_counter continue 1
end_if
if I_EventCounter continue = 1
set_event_counter continue 0
historic_event MOSCOW_FOUNDED factions { russia, kievan_rus, hungary, poland, cumans, norway, denmark, byzantium, }
if not I_IsFactionAIControlled russia
inc_event_counter rus2_moscow_player 1
end_if
end_if
end_if

if I_EventCounter MOSCOW_FOUNDED < 1 and RandomPercent < 50
set_event_counter continue 0
if I_TurnNumber > 30
and I_SettlementOwner Rustov = kievan_rus
and I_SettlementOwner Suzdal = kievan_rus
and I_SettlementOwner Ryazan = kievan_rus
set_event_counter continue 1
end_if
if I_TurnNumber > 80
and I_SettlementOwner Kiev = kievan_rus
set_event_counter continue 1
end_if
if I_EventCounter continue = 1
set_event_counter continue 0
historic_event MOSCOW_FOUNDED factions { russia, kievan_rus, hungary, poland, cumans, norway, denmark, byzantium, }
if not I_IsFactionAIControlled russia
inc_event_counter rus2_moscow_player 1
end_if
end_if
end_if

[Grathus]

Grathus, you are welcomed to test it. Just have in mind:
1. DaC and ours AI have the same war mechanics (Piters), there are entries for war with human and ai that basically the same.
2. In DaC there is no vassal system at all as much as I know,
3. Ours have some additional mechanics - when ceasefire mission by the Pope the AI most of the time retreats and asks for peace, also there are some mechanisms that work together with diplomacy and faction standing and some entries to to relive factions surrounded on every side.

Its always good to experiment, I am very curious how will the DaC ai behave in our map and game mechanics.

Thank you very much for your reply Macaras.
I test the AI and I will describe my experiences in the new 098 teaser thread: SUPPORT for the AI initiated by Jurand.
I will also try to describe there my thoughts on the current AI support mechanisms.

[Gaku]

Are Hospitallers and Ritterbruders supposed to be removed as part of the evolution of factions? seems like they're removed very early.

[Belovèse]

Couple of observations playing Poland around turn 100: Please take these with a grain of salt. I am new to this mod, and I only played Vanilla before. I don't know anything about modding and the history of balancing decisions you've made. Some of the problems you've most likely considered. For context, I play on Easy campaign difficulty, and I understand the game is not balanced around that.

- Some areas have become heretic meetups. It's sort of historic in Bohemia, but feels un-historic near Rome. Seems like priests are too easily converted, there are none to be seen. Just heretics.
- My princesses have a really, really short movement range, feels like 50% of a regular character or even less. It takes years to get to a suitor, who often gets married in the meantime. Then onto another suitor, rinse and repeat. If the target moves in the opposite direction, the princess can not catch up with him. Meanwhile, the Princess is getting old. Short range also makes princesses somewhat useless as diplomats, as they need to be solely focused on reaching suitors ASAP.
- AI princesses are abundant. Managed to marry both my FL and FH to full heart princesses. There's always a handful of princesses walking around. Haven't seen a foreign diplomat in ages on the other hand.
- I'm still only allowed 1 diplomat, which feels a bit lacking at this point, especially when my own princesses are scarce, and not very useful as diplomats. I could bribe another faction's diplomat, but I can't find any.
- There's not much incentive to level up or specialize spies. They are abundant, cheap to recruit, cheap to maintain, easy to replace. I mostly use them for recon. The only time I actually need to use the spy action is to reveal a potential suitor's character traits. If one spy fails to do that, there's always another nearby. Just spam spies.
- AI seems to make weird decisions. HRE will break an alliance to besiege a vulnerable settlement with a tiny army, when my own reinforcements are in range, and their own reinforcements are scattered far away.
- AI scatters forces a lot, making family members and even faction leaders walk almost alone, while two of their other small stacks are nearby. Makes it very easy to defeat them in detail and feels like an exploit. At the same time, smaller scale battles feel much more refreshing and immresive, compared to vanilla ever-present full stack battles of fully developed armies.
- Mercenaries feel like an exploit: I can keep a reserve of around 5000 and raise a force immediately when needed. Once I defeat the opposing army, I can disband the units. All in the same turn. But this might be actually historic.
- Seems like the pool of mercenaries is too big, but at the same time, I end up almost never using them: They are always abundant, so I don't have to "seize the opportunity", and they are too expensive to be kept long-term.
- Replenishment mechanics make this an entirely different game. I am absolutely in love with how rare some of the units are. With that being said, I think the times to train another unit could still be much, much longer. Would give me a reason to recruit those mercenaries perhaps.
- I am getting notifications about new family members being born, while they are not in the family tree, like generals married to a noble lady.
- I am getting reccurent messages about certain events, e.g. the founding of Moscow.

Thank you for all the amazing work. This mod is a true work of art. I'm 4th generation, still didn't manage to get mi FL crowned, and I love it.

Thanks for your feedback, we'll look at those.
I think some of the balancing issue you mention come from playing on easy as you said, maybe try Normal? The more punishing mechanics will still not get activated but it may address the spies and money issues

[Belovèse]

What seems very strange to me, is Utrecht - it has a wooden wall, but it is still a town. Nothing possible to build. @Belo, can you have a look?
@Waluk - how have you got Praha and Brenna in your realm? I guess Brenna in a normal way, but Praha you've bought?

I have looked at it and did not find anything suspicious. Only one thing that I don't think has any link to being unable to upgrade: the settlement starts with a population higher than the upgrade requirement, maybe it should come with stone wall right of the bat?
@waluk, you did not reuse a save from the previous version I suppose?

[Jurand of Cracow]

I have looked at it and did not find anything suspicious. Only one thing that I don't think has any link to being unable to upgrade: the settlement starts with a population higher than the upgrade requirement, maybe it should come with stone wall right of the bat?
@waluk, you did not reuse a save from the previous version I suppose?

It's not a start, it's turn 200. Utrecht has all requirements, it has wooden wall - yet it's termed "Town" , not "Large Town", and it cannot build anything from that large_town level.

Are Hospitallers and Ritterbruders supposed to be removed as part of the evolution of factions? seems like they're removed very early.

No, they are not a part of the evolution. There's only a script to disable the Templars. However, I haven't worked on the military orders yet.

[Belovèse]

Yes I understood the context and was just pointing something else I discovered while looking at the files !

Sent from my FP2 using Tapatalk

[Gaku]

No, they are not a part of the evolution. There's only a script to disable the Templars. However, I haven't worked on the military orders yet.

How/when are the Templars supposed to be disabled? I lost the ability to train any of their units in Szekes, Olomoc, Plock, and Gyula.

[Jurand of Cracow]

looks like 10 Major Chapter Houses built

monitor_event BuildingCompleted TrueCondition and NumBuildingsCompleted templars_major_ch > 9


set_event_counter templar_independence 1
historic_event templar_greed
terminate_monitor
end_monitor

you should have received a message:

log ------ terminate monitor historic_event TEMPLAR_ORDER_DISSOLVED
terminate_monitor
end_if

[vovery]

good catch! seems a sloppy coding on my side, sorry, will be fixed in the patch

It happens, no worries

I started a Novgorodian campaign in the meantime. At 12 turns I've so far noticed only two curiosities:

- Mercenary chudies cost only 1/3 to recruit when compared to what the unit costs if recruited from a settlement. I think Gaku reported the same issue for some other faction & similar mercenary unit?
- After capturing Polotsk it would've been possible to build a blacksmith even though the settlement didn't have a leather tanner yet either. I'm not sure though, if this is correct or not.

[sarpedon21]

i get CTDs when i try to start custom battles.
campaign seems to work ok.
the byzantines dont have acess to western knights anymore?

[Gaku]

turn 306, constant wars with the Byzantines and their broken stacks of full heavy cav. as if things aren't going bad enough, need a CIVIL WAR to make me lose my capital AND Szekes AND Bosnia. despite my leader having nearly full authority. -20k florins per turn. GG. I quit. Mongols win again.

[Macaras]

i get CTDs when i try to start custom battles.
campaign seems to work ok.
the byzantines dont have acess to western knights anymore?

Sarpedon can you say exactly which units were you trying to set in custom battle ?

[Jurand of Cracow]

I started a Novgorodian campaign in the meantime. At 12 turns I've so far noticed only two curiosities:

- Mercenary chudies cost only 1/3 to recruit when compared to what the unit costs if recruited from a settlement. I think Gaku reported the same issue for some other faction & similar mercenary unit?
- After capturing Polotsk it would've been possible to build a blacksmith even though the settlement didn't have a leather tanner yet either. I'm not sure though, if this is correct or not.

Thanks for helping to find discrepancies!
- Chude - will be adjusted in the next version
- hmm, there's a Leather Tanner from the beginnig in Polotsk. Otherwise it would be a strange bug.

@Gaku, this is another HU campaign, right? The posession of various factions seem different than in the save you've had sent before.

[Gaku]

@Gaku, this is another HU campaign, right? The posession of various factions seem different than in the save you've had sent before.

Yes it is. Time to start over from scratch again.

A few other issues:
1) The random guild buildings you're presented with. I was spammed with offers to build them while I was fighting a war, and so I refused them all. that opportunity is just gone forever, now?
2) Could that have something to do with Szekes never upgrading at 30k pop?
3) The Mongols really need a nerf now. Everyone else has restricted recruitment pools. Have they been toned down at all to compensate?
4) Byzantines lose infantry in battle, but their cav are indestructible and survive every battle. and they keep training more cav. so the end result is an army that's like 75%-90% cav.

[vovery]

- hmm, there's a Leather Tanner from the beginnig in Polotsk. Otherwise it would be a strange bug.

Ah, only now that you mentioned it, I noticed I've just built a duplicate leather tanner. Some sort of a bug that the building tree wasn't recognized I guess.