New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
Some of you may still remember our not-very-successful outdrop which was called the Provincial Titles Project, and the promise that we'd have a similar but more complicated and interesting system for MA (and now for II and later AD).
The provincial titles are pretty much finished (except for individualising them for each settlement), with an important change: For each settlement there are four different versions. These represent the differences between a high or low control over the settlement on the part of your king (see the authority preview for further details) and the difference between a communal/rural focus of your settlement. Before I go into further detail, let me explain the feature to those who aren't familiar with it:
I think most of you know the titles system in MTW. One part of it were titles that designated one of your characters as the ruler of a certain province, giving certain bonuses which differed from region to region.
Our titles system is quite similar. At the start of the game, none of your settlements have a ruler. When you select a settlement, the advisor will pop up automatically, asking you whether you want to appoint one:
https://img207.imageshack.us/img207/...les1ur9.th.jpg
If you accept (i.e. you click on "Show me How"), the army overview screen will open where you can select a character. You can also select a character on the map, but only if he's not inside of a settlement.
https://img258.imageshack.us/img258/...les2no8.th.jpg
If you dismiss the advisor, the process will be cancelled and you'll be able to do something else before choosing your ruler (or don't choose one at all).
https://img511.imageshack.us/img511/...les3mt0.th.jpg
Should you have selected a character, he'll get a trait marking him as "designated to rule" which means that in the next turn, he'll become the ruler of this province. However, you can still cancel this transition by selecting your settlement again, in which case another advisor will pop up, asking you if you changed your mind:
https://img515.imageshack.us/img515/...les6zu5.th.jpg
If you didn't cancel it, at the next turn your new ruler will have the Ruler trait. He will also get an epithet so in this example he'd be called Francesco of Florence if he wasn't my faction heir - both for style and so you can quickly find your current ruler via the army overview.
If at any time you feel like another character might be better suited to be the ruler of this city, simply request the settlement advice and you'll be able to change your ruler (but be wary as the newly-disposed ruler will get negative traits that especially decrease loyalty - it's more than likely he'll hold a grudge against you):
https://img443.imageshack.us/img443/...les5mt0.th.jpg
After this technical explanation of how the system works, let me give you a bit more info about what the results are in the game. The most obvious effect are the direct effects of the trait. These are Piety, Command, Loyalty, Authority (you can assign a province to your king this time around) and of course Chivalry.
The bonuses will vary from region to region, and even within a region - as I mentioned in the opening paragraph. For example, Florence in the above screenshots is a Rural province (our interpretation of the castles) with a Reliance as control level. The attribute effects for a Rural settlement with a lower control level are: +3 Command, +2 Authority, -4 Loyalty
For a Urban province with a high level of control, you'd get +1 Command, +1 Authority, +2 Loyalty and for a low level +2 Command, +2 Authority, -2 Loyalty (these all are just examples, I can't promise these will be the exact bonuses you get for Florence, but they'll be large).
In addition to these direct effects, you will get a passive effect if the province's ruler is also the governor of his province. These will range from happiness shifts (increases or decreases, depending on how loyal the character is, etc.), increased income and so on. They'll usually make it worth your while to let the character stay in the settlement a lot of the time but if he doesn't get his hands dirty with blood and a few miles under his feet he'll probably slowly degenerate into something nasty.
The last effect we already thought about is granting an Influence boost to your faction if you have good rulers (it'll be small but will add up nicely).
Lastly, let me explain how this system differs from the already fairly well-known approach that uses ancillaries (we'll have nice ancillaries with the Coat of Arms of the province, but only for show).
Firstly, it's obviously much more complex. Differences depending on how you evolved the provinces just don't happen with ancillaries.
Secondly, to transfer the rule of a province, the two characters don't have to meet anymore and you can quickly re-assign it to a worthy successor once the old ruler has passed away.
Thirdly, stripping a character from rule will now have severe consequences, which isn't possible with ancillaries.
You see, this system is very much preferable over the ancillary approach
And as a very last salute to modders who'd like to implement our titles system after our release: It will be free to use (although you'll have to implement it by yourself) and with the introduction of event counters in 1.2 the script has gotten much sleeker than the PTPV was (and also easier to understand).
Stay tuned for more info from us, and be free to ask any questions.
alpaca
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[II] Feature Preview 1: View City
[II] Feature Preview 2: Degrees of Independence
[II/AD] Feature Preview 3: Authority
[II] Feature Preview 4: The Levy Script
[II] Feature Preview 5: Scalable Difficulty
[II] Feature Preview 6: Imperial Support
[II] Feature Preview 7: Influence
Re: New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
How did...what the....how???!?!?
The best I could come up with to explain how you're assigning this "designated to rule" trait is a trigger with the CharacterSelected event and I_EventCounter condition. Am I too far?
Fantastic job, by the way. It's great to see people being innovative in this area.
Re: New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
Quote:
Originally Posted by BozosLiveHere
How did...what the....how???!?!?
The best I could come up with to explain how you're assigning this "designated to rule" trait is a trigger with the CharacterSelected event and I_EventCounter condition. Am I too far?
Fantastic job, by the way. It's great to see people being innovative in this area.
No, I use "console_command give_trait this Florence_Province_Rule 1"
That's why you have to select a character in the first place *cough*
It's easy and reliable (and comfortable for the player).
Re: New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
Alpaca, geez, that's amazing, grats on a job well done, another great script idea.
Re: New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
Quote:
Originally Posted by alpaca
No, I use "console_command give_trait this Florence_Province_Rule 1"
That's why you have to select a character in the first place *cough*
It's easy and reliable (and comfortable for the player).
Holy crap....I never knew we could do that. That opens up a lot of possibilities. I have to see if it works in RTW now.
Re: New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
Quote:
Originally Posted by BozosLiveHere
Holy crap....I never knew we could do that. That opens up a lot of possibilities. I have to see if it works in RTW now.
Afaik that only works in M2TW.
You could also do a trigger combined with an event counter setting though, it'd work equally well. In fact, I could directly trigger the normal ruler trait that way but I thought it'd make sense if the ruler isn't directly appointed both historically and from a gameplay point of view (so you can change your mind without penalty for example).
Edit: By the way, another nifty thing for modders that's related to this is my advisor cycle. I often have multiple advisors pending on events like SettlementSelected for example. So what I did is script an advisor cycle that cycles through the available messages when you select the settlement. So every time you click on it, you get the next message (if there are more than one). It's an easy way to overcome the problem of searching for a new interface for each interaction (because I'm also implementing things like Bishop titles and other offices).
Here's the code for it if you're interested (so far, only two possible states but more will be added):
Code:
declare_counter advisor_cycle_pos_select
declare_counter skip_monitor
monitor_event SettlementSelected SettlementName Florence
; Position 0: no character present
if I_CompareCounter advisor_cycle_pos_select == 0
if I_CompareCounter advisor_cycle_character_present 1
advance_advice_thread No_Character_Present_Thread
set_counter skip_monitor 1
end_if
inc_counter advisor_cycle_pos_select 1
end_if
; Position 1: Province title/Cancel province title
if I_CompareCounter advisor_cycle_pos_select == 1
and I_CompareCounter skip_monitor == 0
if I_EventCounter Florence_Title == 0
advance_advice_thread New_Ruler_Thread
set_counter skip_monitor 1
end_if
if I_EventCounter Florence_Title == 3
advance_advice_thread Cancel_New_Ruler_Thread
set_counter skip_monitor 1
end_if
;inc_counter advisor_cycle_pos_select 1
set_counter advisor_cycle_pos_select 0
end_if
set_counter skip_monitor 0
end_monitor
Edit2: The above code also contains my implementation of an Else if statement (the skip_monitor thing)
Re: New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
Here's a quick look at the first office title I implemented:
https://img72.imageshack.us/img72/36...tlesnv4.th.jpg
This one is available for each settlement, but linked to a special building called the Episcopal Palace which can be constructed in the larger cities (but it requires a cathedral). The title can be upgraded with the building to that of an archbishop.
The bonuses are WIP of course.
We'll probably also link some random event to this, guess what it is ~;)
Re: New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
Re: New food for the hungry: Titles sneak peek
No, the pope is still elected by cardinals who are drawn from amongst the priests.
The bishop title is for named characters (aka generals).
Note that I have been convinced to remove the command bonus, the title works now slightly differently.
