Vassals & Valour: Redux - Rules Finalization and Sign-ups

[Zim]

Which set of instructions are you following? LTC uses the Kingdoms exe but it's not a Kingdoms mod per se. In Kingdoms you can start a hotseat in the game menu.

Most likely you'll have to follow the instructions for vanilla MTW2. In that case after you make the changes and switch the preferences file back to read only you cross your fingers and start up the game. You should be able to click on multiple factions once on the campaign screen.

Note there is also a trick that allows you to fight defensive battles in hotseats that would be needed for the game. It was used for both LOTR and KOTF, but it's been so long I don't remember how it was done...

Edit: That was surprisingly easy to find. For defensive battles. I'll see if it works for me in a few.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=288683

[Zim]

Hmmm...I can't get a hotseat started with LTC, either by changing the regular preferences file or the one for LTC.

We made it work somehow for KOTF (which also used LTC), I'll dig through the old threads for the game and see if anything useful comes up.

[phonicsmonkey]

Note there is also a trick that allows you to fight defensive battles in hotseats that would be needed for the game. It was used for both LOTR and KOTF, but it's been so long I don't remember how it was done...

How does this work? do you fight your defensive battles at the start of your turn or something? Could we use this in a regular multiplayer hotseat?

Keep us posted on how you go with setting up a hotseat in LTC - I will have a crack later as well and if I can't get it working I'll search the LTC forums to see if anybody else has posted this problem. We might even be able to PM Lusted and ask him if he can help us do it, as a final straw.

[Zim]

You fight defensive battles during the AI's turn, but not during those of other players.

How does this work? do you fight your defensive battles at the start of your turn or something? Could we use this in a regular multiplayer hotseat?

Keep us posted on how you go with setting up a hotseat in LTC - I will have a crack later as well and if I can't get it working I'll search the LTC forums to see if anybody else has posted this problem. We might even be able to PM Lusted and ask him if he can help us do it, as a final straw.

[_Tristan_]

As a side note, can we delay on the start of this until the first days of September, with holidays and all ?

Not that I don't want to grab the reins but I won't have Internet access (or at best patchy) and won't have access to the game until then...

(Hides to avoid the thrown garbage)

[Ferret]

Yeah I go off to the Virgin Festival in Chelmsford from Friday to Monday, so will have no internet access for those days...

[phonicsmonkey]

hey I found this which should allow us to start LTC in hotseat mode

I have to go to bed now so I haven't tested it, but someone give it a try or I might be able to get to it tomorrow or something

[Password]

Hi there.

I've been a lurker on these forums for a while and been interested in joining a hotseat for a TW game, however, not having played much of the series recently my skills are somewhat lacking and I decided to hold out joining one. When I saw this thread it seemed like a TW skill deficiency would obviously not be the deciding factor in the enjoyment of the game so I feel it would be ideally suited to someone like me.

I would like to sign up for this RPG, though whether I will be accepted is another matter. I do not have any experience in online RPGs, though I have played a few hotseats a few years ago and this is fairly similar.

If I am allowed to join I will reinstall M2TW, Kingdoms and LTC Gold. I am slightly confused however, as I've not seen the game save provided if there are any characters left and if so if a new one can be created. If the answer is no to both of them I am happy enough to wait until a chance occurs to join.

[Cecil XIX]

Welcome to the Guild, Password! It's an honor that your first post on the forum would be to sign up for Vassals & Valour. The game is always accepting new players, although due to the unique nature of the starting PvP conflict I'll have to think about what I can give you. At the very least, you'll be welcome to participate in the Diet discussion, which I'll start later today, as well as send other players PMs and write coop stories with them. And you'll be first in line to receive a new character when it becomes available. I'll create the official starting save today, and I'll look and see if I can squeeze you in without upsetting the balance of the Civil War. Welcome to Vassals & Valour!

[Cecil XIX]

All right, slight change of plans. Right now I'm working on introductory writeups for the players. I've also given Password an option on how to participate, and am waiting for his response. Since we've had two requests for a delay, I'll wait until this Tuesday and then I'll post the official starting save, send out the introductory PMs, and begin the first Diet session, which will last for four days instead of three. That should give you all time to hash strategies, deceptions, and whatnot. Once that's done I'll kindly ask for our good moderators to close this thread.

Now, about the writeups. I wrote my first one, and I was a bit more exhaustive about possible strategies and counter-strategies available. While I don't think my meagre advice is enough to give anyone any real help, the possible is there I wouldn't want to give everyone's enemies advice without giving them the chance to object. What do you say?

[phonicsmonkey]

Well, being one of the ones who probably needs more advice than the other ones, I'm all in favour of it!

[The Celtic Viking]

You'll find no objection from me: alles klar.

[Password]

Hopefully Cecil XIX will have received my response by now. In regards to the topic of giving advice I have no problems with it if it causes more competitive play.

[phonicsmonkey]

ok, so I managed to start an LTC game in hotseat mode following 'the usual' instructions (from here) and then also doing this

here is the save file for you to look at. the admin password is 'cecil' - so in the console, type 'logon cecil' and then you can use other console commands like 'control england' which will switch england to human control (for example)

only problem is that whatever I did (in the second step I think) seems to have messed up the characters - a couple are missing and leopold is now someone else in a different city. They are all still fine when I load Cecil's test save again, so it's just something in what I've had to do to get the hotseat mode working.

So I'm hoping that someone with more modding skills than I can figure this out.

This is a clean install of the whole game (I had problems with another game and had to wipe it all and start again yesterday) so the changes are limited to cecil's name file, making the hre family tree 'yes' instead of 'teutonic' and the two steps above relating to hotseat.

[Cecil XIX]

I owe you an apology phonicsmonkey, I actually got it working a while back with Zim's help and I forget to mention it in public. Thanks very much for your consideration though, I really appreciate it.

[phonicsmonkey]

no problem, I only spent a few minutes on it really...

[deguerra]

Cecil with a new idea, Ignoramus with a Hummel and phonicsmonkey finally joining us...you guys are all nuts

I'm in, in all probability, but give me a day or two to read through stuff and get settled again.

edit: read everything, sounds good. I take it Cecil and Zim got things working with defensive battles as well? as someone mentioned, that is quite important.

I haven't downloaded the mod yet, so I don't know what the character situation is, but if we're full at the moment, I'm quite happy to sit back and relax for a bit until someone comes along.

One final thing: I have always thought that it should be easier to die in these things. At the end of the day, what makes us attached to ourselves as characters is the possibility of our brief stint at existence coming to an end, and I think in no small part our previous hotseats have suffered from the fact that outside the highly sterilized civil war battles, there was no way to kill someone. Now I'm not at all sure of how to implement things - it couldn't really be done in game as far as I can see, even a hired assassin cannot take out characters in his own faction - but if anyone has any thoughts at all on this, I'd certainly be interested in hearing them.

Mind you, don't let my stray thoughts delay things. Even if something vaguely useful comes out of it at some stage, it could always be added later.

For Flemish Cloth indeed.

-deguerra

[Cecil XIX]

Welcome aboard, deguerra. It's true there aren't any generals available, but you're welcome to sit in on the Diet and comment on things, as was done in the beginning of KotR. Regarding defensive battles, Zim was a big help with getting things working and I should say that I did indeed find a workaround. It's not perfect, but if you order an army to attack another player faction, then switch the current faction to AI control while it's enroute the Human controlling the defending faction can fight the battle. I intend to use this when I take control of factions the HRE's at war with so everybody watch out!

As for players killing players: I'm hoping that with players having their own land and armies, they'll feel more confident that they can start trouble and get away with it. Having players assassinating each other is something that I'd be very much for in theory, but a careful balance would need to be struck. Success can by no means be certain, attempts must not be made to often, and the perpetrator should have to expose himself to great risk in order to do it. If I knew what the formula the game used to determine assassination success odds was, I could probably have players use assassin against each other exactly the same way the game was. I probably wouldn't show them on the map though, and I'd probably need to tweek the numbers to prevent things like assassin spam. It is something worth pursueing though, probably once we've got settled into things.