testing my house rules

[missu]

edit: this thread was for dlv 2.x, so some things might have changed...

hi everybody,

i wanted to start a thread concerning different house rules for a long time- but didn't cause i was too lazy. i want to know your house rules and see if i could improve mine...

well, here it goes:

1. No Adoptions: I only adopt in a special case: when i had a daughter and married her to a incredible general- and i don't want their offspring. these branches of my family die after one generation.
2. Keep the true Heir! When -for some reason- my aunt Sally became heir, i sent her on a not-so-pleasant boatride... until my true heir is installed (had to kill 8 family members once...)
3. Keep up the Roleplay! When my king sucks and half the nobility goes rebel- well, i play this game because it is called total war. and always attacking my neighbours is boring. attacking my kin is fun, sometimes...
4. Keep the map "historical". One of the first things i do is destroy milan, in every game. I fight wars for my allies as well as for my enemies to gift them their rightfully owned lands (back).
5. No mercenaries (as far as possible). I use crusader-mercenaries for crusades, but especially in the early game you can own everyone with mercenary armies.
6. toggle_fow every decade to see which faction needs help- for example when the poles have conquered germany and russia- again.
7. not more than five spies and assassins at a time. Makes the game too easy.
8. recruit generals only to place them as governors for your cities.
9. auto-resolve every single battle against rebels.

[verity_blues]

These are interesting enough. I only use a few house rules. They are:

1. No reloading. Exceptions: glitches, crashes and the like,totaly-useless and unpredictable Ally AI (in battles), failed simple-diplomacy matters(diplomacy can be unpredictible at times)

2. F.O.W. all the time. Exceptions: searching for princesses for my heir and vice-versa, and the first 10 turns or so while I look for diplomats and where to send my diplomats. Also, I too get bored sometimes and want to see if allies need me or check in on the progress of other wars going on. I think I'll incorperate your 10 year FOW census rule as well.

3. Roleplay all the time. Yes, I am an old-school Player's Handbook-thumping roleplay-addict

4. Never restart battles. Though I have done this before. Hey, not even drawn blood yet and my favorite general gets slain by an arrow!

5. I try not to have to many of these things, the fifth rule is enjoy my game. Thats all, rules can give a perception of a bad game, and DLV is not that. So far for me, It's freakin hard. I know how to play it, with patience and all. It's just that sometimes I like to get in deep and see if I can survive it. Many times the Dynasty has been lost, nothing compares to roleplaying to the death of my Monarch!

6. Yeah, I know that #5 lied. Deal with it! The sixth is to play my campaign based on the traits/retinue of my faction leader. DLV has given us such deep character strengths/flaws that it would be unseemly not to "play" them out. You can always start over, after all. I for one have nvr finished a DLV campaign, nor have the desire to do so. I play DLV to play my kingdom, however the kings of my dynasty dictate that I should do so. I sometimes even keep a chronicle of my kings, what they did and what they died wishing to have done...

Good Gaming to all!

[Lu Ying]

I dont have any hard and fast rules I play by but I do have a general sort of guide I follow, or maybe just habit!

1) I try not to reload. I do reload though when silly things happen that shouldnt, like when I get "offends the nobility" without any reason I can see, although I keep it if I can see a reason.

2) I really like to roleplay along with the game although I'm not too concerned with keeping things historical. As for poor Milan, I always saw them as Genoa. Whenever I play as them I move the capital there.

3) recruiting generals, adoptions, all that. I do it as often as I can! I want as many characters as I can get. More characters means more stories, more guys to pick sides in civil wars and the like. Most of my princesses end up married to generals I recruit

[Siculus]

My "house rules" are few:

• I never send more than one spy into a town. Otherwise it's too easy to open the gates and storm away.
• I don't reload, except for crashes, etc.
• FoW, of course, although I peek when I'm tyring to see how a new mod is working (I do my best to check developments on the opposite side of the map).
• VH/VH, unless the modder recommends some other setting.
• No cheats for cash, etc.

I guess that's it.

Siculus

[missu]

well, no reloads is clear.
no cheats also. i only cheat for the ai.

i tried something and it balanced my game nicely, so far.
on the first turn, i gave all the factions i wanted to survive +40000florins: england, france, hre, russia, turks, moors.
i took -40000 florins from the following factions: venice, milan, poland, hungary, denmark.
the rest goes without a change.

what i observed: after about twenty turns the "poor" factions started to build up, just in time to face the consolidated "great" powers, thus eliminating the biggest problem i had with this game: world-ruling danish, polish, hungarian, and even egyptian empires.
russia is actually expanding within the first twenty turns. hre was able to take magdeburg and hamburg. bordeaux is french, just like dijon. hre and france fight a longlasting war over bern, it has been french or german for only a couple of turns until the other one seizes it again.

[gewehr36]

1. No adoptions. Ever. I like to keep my empire under control of the original royal family.

2. Roleplay as if I'm the emperor, and if my current one dies change my ways to better suit the one that takes over.

3. Keep infantry, archers, and cavalry in seperate units. In my experience it's better to operate as a whole instead of split up your available soldiers into different categories, even if you're extremely outnumbered. I once destroyed 1000 Milanese heavy infantry and heavy cavalry with 300 well trained town militia with only 72 casualties.

4. Defend my allies to the death.

5. Stay out of war unless attacked first or one of my allies is attacked.

6. Trade with everyone I can.

7. Place watchtowers and citadels on my borders.

8. Leave fow off all the time. In real life you are able to see your enemies coming at all times, whether it be from spies, lookouts, traveling merchants, or whatever.

9. Keep foreign militaries, merchants, spies, priests, etc. out of my borders at all time.

10. Never rule my faction with morality, rule it with laws, rights, and a military.

[DarthK]

1. No adoptions or getting married in. (Keep the blood pure, just try not to marry your sister)
2. Minimal reloading. (Icky)
3. No blitzkrieg. (Leave that to the Fuheror)

Not a rule of no expansion, just en-cautioned and usually with only one stack per war.

4. More realistic army stacks.

No stacks of only knights, and sword-bearing characters. Knights, Nobles, Cavalry and Sword using regiments make up the smallest portion of the force. Why swords too? The cost of a sword in the middle-ages was equivalent to owning a Feruari today.

So most of your army will consist of spears, pikes, voulges, pole-axes, and axes wielded by the repressed.

5. Restrict camera view, from the General's eyes. Much more realistic and challenging.

6. Limited use of Spies and Assassins. Spies mostly as defensive agents watching over the King's cities.

7. VH/VH game setting.

8. No cheating.

[verity_blues]

I am considering another one for some future campaign.

Roleplay the King exclusively. Auto-calc all battles except the ones lead by my King.

[missu]

you could at least give your heir the deserved respect!
but i am considering this also. good thought, verity blues!

[verity_blues]

I'm bringing back this thread started by Missu. I wanted to know if 3.0 has changed anybody's house rules or not.

It changed mine!

I was having problems with the rebel faction spawning over, and over. To the point that there was no men left to defend my capital nor mercs available anywhere. Then my autosave's started failing, the autosave will no longer load. So I had to go back to my last manual save, which saved me from the rebel faction spawning in a seemingly endless cycle. Then later on they came back again, defeated them, then again, defeted them... till I just said screw it, and relaoded. I did this a total of three times, all three preventing them from spawning the turn that they would have before hand.

This is where I broke a rule, no reloads to save my keister! But, I had zero chance against these monsters for three consecutive turns, not enough troops! So, by breaking my no-reload rule, I was able to build up my military enough that I think I can handle them now.

Maybe if I had done a military build from the start I could have handled them, but I went financial. Now its still only 1188, so I don't consider that I've been to terrible with my reloading. It was either that or lose my capital, even though I maintained it vigourously! And that would have been more than enough to make me want to take a break from the game. And Lord knows, I didn't want to do that!

So now I am back to my rules, and I am really enjoying my campaign in 3.0. M/VH is just what I want it to be.
Hope all is well on everyones campaign!

To the walls!

[missu]

well,
i have thought about this thread when someone came up with house rules again, and i wanted to know
a) where did verity blues go? haven't seen him around for ages.
b) have your house rules changed for 4.0?

my rules have certainly changed in some aspects.
the best part is that i don't have to cheat for the ai anymore because the game is wonderfully balanced. the milanese or flandrish empire every four or five games is allright with me. before, it was too often.

i do adopt now if i have a princess left over.
i hire mercs in the first turn to get rid off the 2nd turn rebel, but the next mercs i hire are either crusaders or pikemen.
i do not limit my assassins any more, at least not if i am playing on a "belief border", there is no other way to get rid of priests/imams.
but i do not use my assassins for enemy generals.
a maximum of one spy per enemy settlement. (opening gates with spies is almost cheating!)
no reloading, ever.

oh, and btw, i changed the death mod, so that my generals at least grow 40 years old.

any thoughts?

[Harry Lime]

Whoa, first post April 14th. Where did you find this Missu, page 32?

a) verity blues is still around. He's been posting in my Extra Crusades/Jihad threads. Unfortunately he's been having real problems installing DLV 4 but hopefully he'll get it sorted soon.

b) my house rules have never really changed.
No reloading ever. I love it if I lose a battle!
No adoptions
No assassins for anyone (I mod them out, I really, really hate assassins)
No building or recruitment unless a governor is present.
No captain led armies
Alliances only through marriage & then only to factions I have a good relationship with.
No trade rights with factions I have less than so-so relationships with.
Role-play faction decisions depending on leaders personality.
Minimal use of spies, mobile watch towers.

There's more but unless I'm actually playing I tend to forget some of the more obscure ones!

[Furin]

... avoid listening to house music whenever possible...

[Lord Cave]

FOW?

[repman]

better listening to KISS ... Detroit Rock City.....

What's FOW ?

repman

[Harry Lime]

Fog of War. You can turn if off but I consider that cheating of the highest order!

[ivanhoex]

i m still using 3.0, stopped that campaign long ago, slowly retaking it

(timur and his fellowmen just appear at my door this year)



-spyies are only for defense
-no assasins
-fow off (im playing dlv3, so i missed the fun of finding out how the map was evolving, then i got fow off... and i kept it that way, so much fun... with 4.0 and new abrocomos and tokus "plugin" that wont be necesary, and i love my towers and placing them correctly)
-dont anihilate a nation unless they force me to. when they ask for ceasefire, i tend to accept so far they are weakened to the point of no immediate danger.
-make mongols stronger and militia weaker, reevaluate armor values, i guess this may be taken by new AIs
-eliminate ability to hire monster bombard and cannon elephants
-only autocalc if battle is obvious or too much time for little strategic importance (as trying to fight off a pair of horse archers with an army wich lends to infinite running over the map)
-only cheat the AI if AI has used same cheat on me (like when i lost an army trapped in a river pass with no bridge fending off mongols, i trapped one of their armies there and we were even)
-enjoy

=P


as i m finding out, the expansion seems to have hit the street with its promised new traps in castles and all that, is DLV getting an update to use the new features, the new features are available right now or we wont probably ever witness that at all?