New M2TW Hotseat Game: Sign Ups/ Rules Discussion

[Nightbringer]

Hello everyone!

Well with a couple of new faces around here, and just two games running currently, I think this is a fine time to get something new started.

The concept is based on something I have been kicking around in my head for a while now, but is certainly not set in stone.

Essentially, Crusade mechanics are fully allowed, but all players are required to play as Catholic factions. I feel that this should give some real weight to what the Pope thinks, and possibly lead to some interesting situations of contest when crusades are called.

As to other rules, and mod choice, I think just about anything would be fine. I would probably lean towards stainless steel 6.2 for mod personally.

In any case, if you are interested please speak up, and if you have an opinion about rules o mod, please let it be known!

Here are the basic set of rules we use in almost all games for reference. Obviously, the rule against crusades would be removed, and a requirement of only playing catholic factions would be added.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Each player has 48 hours to complete his turn (not counting weekends). After that the Admin may skip his faction or he can be subbed.

Do not bypass or ignore zones of control to lift a siege (or in any other way).

Do not attack ships in ports.

Armies boarding ships in ports can't stay there for more than one turn.

Don't leave blockaded ports without beating the blockading ships first.

Don't stack merchants in armies or forts to get more than one to stand on the same resource (Merchant Fort)

No surrounding armies or agents to destroy them. (Surround&Destroy)

Don't attack units who were left next to a settlement in order to capture it on the same turn in order to cheat the garrison script. In fact don't cheat the garrison script period. (this only applies vs AI factions)

Don't use repeated offers for bribe to increase your faction leader's dread.

Enable "Unlimited men on battlefield" in order to not abuse when leading battles vs the AI (PM me for instructions, though SS has this on by default)

Armies that are defeated in battle by a player that comes after them in the turn list may not move the following turn. This is to make it fair for people who are defeated by players that come before them in the turn list, and thus lose all their movement points

Armies that are defeated in battle may not be attacked on the following turn, as they are banned from moving, either by the game mechanics or by the rule above. They must be allowed to move first, or must be reinforced. If the defeated army retreats to a settlement or fort, this rule does not apply.

Ballistas can't open anything, catapults can open wooden walls, trebuchets or better can open anything.

Assassins are allowed to target anyone but the players are limited to one assassination attempt per turn. It must be the first action they do, before they spend money or do anything else. Upon a successful assassination the game admin can load that player's save and attempt the assassination. If the results are different there will be penalties for cheating.

Spies are not allowed to open anything.

Crusades and Jihads cannot be called, joined or used/exploited in any way.

ONLY religious buildings can be destroyed upon the conquest of a settlement and ONLY if they are of a religion different than your own.

No trading of provinces to receive free troops. If you trade provinces, make sure they have no garrison prior to the exchange.

No deliberate deals that would put you in debt above -10,000 florins.

[Myth]

Why 6.2? I'm in nevertheless. Oh, and bribing the Pope should be banned - no gifts of money, land and so on (alliance should be fine).

[LooseCannon1]

Why 6.2? I'm in nevertheless. Oh, and bribing the Pope should be banned - no gifts of money, land and so on (alliance should be fine).

I have to second the "Why 6.2?" question. Bit of a step backwards and requires multiple installs of SS.

Also, Catholic factions allied with Papal States receive boosts to their faction's standings and prevent them from being excommunicated. That's why no alliances with PS should ever be allowed.

[Myth]

Oh no, the Pope can break the alliance if you annoy him enough. He just can't insta-excommunicate you, he has to break relations first.

[Nightbringer]

6.2 was just me forgetting what we having been using, i meant 6.4

As to gifting to the pope, I could go either way on that one. I feel like ti might actually be kind of interesting to let people do that, especially since it would give assassins plenty of work trying to kill off diplomats that are persuading the pope. Probably no land gifting still though. What if we made it so that minimum gift to the pope was 1000 florins? That way you could still bribe him, but it would come at a real cost.

[Myth]

Yeah but how would you enforce this rule? From my sp experience, the pope is happy to ally with any catholic nation if it isn't at war already. A gift of 100 florins for the next 999 turns works well enough, whilst obviously not as good as 5000 florins right now. 1000 florins is paltry, really. If you want to wage war vs a catholic faction AND be in good with the pope, you have to gift 5000-8000 florins every time you start dropping below the middle of the pope-o-meter.

So this is another issue - a rich HRE player can start a war with a small faction like Genoa or Denmark and wipe them out at the cost of only a couple of bribes which, to such a large faction, will be worth the cost. OTOH a faction with 2 provinces can't afford a 6000 gold bribe.

I think some sort of Casus Beli rule should be added, so that if someone plays the role of the expansionist he faces more than just theoretical excommunication, but also military action by the other catholic factions. The Crusade will be the stone that trips the wagon, because you can juggle the Pope with bribes and also fight a war with your neighbors but if you bite off more than you can chew, you start losing too much money and thus can't keep your papal relations up and presto - you get steamrolled because someone else had the money to bribe the pope and call a crusade on you.

[Nightbringer]

As I said, I am open to going either way on the bribing issue, and it would indeed be difficult to enforce. I would like to hear some other opinions about this. As for Casus Beli, we could set up the game to be won by points and you can only score points for legitimate wars. For example, you can get points from attacking any excommunicated faction (purging the heretics), but not from a non-excommunicated one. You can get points from attacking a non-Catholic faction that is waging war against a christian one, but not if they are neutral to all catholic factions (protecting innocent Christians). We could also set up bonus points for controlling jerusalem, and things like that.

[LooseCannon1]

How about this- No alliances, gifting regions, or multi-turn bribes to the PS. The admin can take control of PS to check every few turns. Changing a faction from AI to human control puts them last in turn order. The cleared save could also be posted in thread so everyone can see them at turn start. The admin then takes save and returns it to AI control and it's on to the next turn. May require a non-playing admin or could have the admin just play the PS (might be interesting)

And if this game gets going I claim the Crusader States.

[Myth]

I suggest Casus Beli is awarded by voting by all the diplomats if the war is "legit" or not. If we wait for someone to be excommunicated to win points, no one ever will be, since the only way to get excommed is to attack a Catholic faction against the Pope's wishes.

Is this Early or Late Era? If it's SS 6.4 Late I'd try the TO or Poland or HRE... Lots of options to chose from. Is the TO a Horde Faction in Late?

[Nightbringer]

i don't think TO is a horde in late. And yes, I was figuring we would go for late. I like the voting method btw.

[Mithridate]

If horde means that they dont die once they lose all their regions, then they are horde.
Hell, even loosing all their FMs dont seem to work

[Nightbringer]

huh, well, we could just set them to ai if the player loses all their regions. @Mithridate, are you thinking of joining in. That would bring us to 4, but I think at least 5 would be a good number for this game.

[Myth]

It'd be really interesting for sure. Perhaps it is best to have no gifts to the Pope at all - raise piety by making churches and priests, and doing his missions. Then even when someone gets excommed it's not a death sentence since the Pope is not too eager to call crusades, but rather gives the catholics a chance to repent.

Also, we have to account for something else - the Pope likes calling a crusade on Jerusalem or Baghdad around turns 11-20. It will be funny for everyone to buld up and wait for the Crusade to start only to immediately jump at each other's throats. Seeing as how it takes the AIs 20 turns to end a crusade, and then there is a 10 turn cooldown period before a new one can be called, the game will most probably be over in that window where everyone is safe from Crusades.

Perhaps a rule that whilst a Crusade on a non-Christian nation is called, everyone must participate and no one may attack Catholics until after the Crusade is finished?

[Nightbringer]

I agree, no gifts to the pope, and no warring with eachother while a crusade is called on another non-christian faction.

Also, perhaps we should switch over to base m2tw as some people are having trouble with SS, and it will be easier for new players to get involved.

[Myth]

I find the low MPs and sub-par rosters, not to mention the missing Catholic factions a bit disappointing in Vanilla. Is there an alternative?

[Nightbringer]

well, I would like @Darth Feather to be able to join if he is interested, perhaps the kingdoms grand campaign mod would work? That is a pretty basic mod.

Of course, if noyl people with working SS are interested in playing I would probably go for that.

[Darth Feather]

well, I would like @Darth Feather to be able to join if he is interested, perhaps the kingdoms grand campaign mod would work? That is a pretty basic mod.

Of course, if noyl people with working SS are interested in playing I would probably go for that.

Ok, KGCM works on my computer last time I checked. You can count me in. (loved that mod)

[LooseCannon1]

KGCM is fine with me.

[Mithridate]

Same here, id lay claim to the danes ;)

[Myth]

Two questions:

1. Is this to be forced AR or do we lead vs the AI?
2. Has KGCM rebalanced autoresolve? I have the version with the HS patch on (it's a bit outdated I hear). How does AR work in the most recent KGCM?

Based on that I'd choose my faction.

[Mithridate]

Lead vs AI is always preferable imho, AR is still pretty bad imho but it definetly works.

[LooseCannon1]

Two questions:

1. Is this to be forced AR or do we lead vs the AI?
2. Has KGCM rebalanced autoresolve? I have the version with the HS patch on (it's a bit outdated I hear). How does AR work in the most recent KGCM?

Based on that I'd choose my faction.

Lead vs the AI, of course.

Now the question of balance, the answer is "It depends" In a quick test I ran on 4.3, mailed knights despite a 1, 5 for stat_health were kind of useless in the one larger battle. Seven units vs eight, (a mistake-supposed to be even) both 4 star generals, HRE(mailed knight) vs France (scots quard) the only different units between them, HRE attacking on medium and HRE lost (clear defeat-lost 2x men). On replay, moved HRE to slightly higher ground (one tile) and then attacked and got a clear victory (lost 1/2 X men).
I thought the first time I had equal numbers but I checked while typing this and saw the uneven number of units.

As long as nobody gets to take Byzantium we'll be fairly even, (I think) in unit quality.

[Myth]

Lead vs AI is always preferable imho, AR is still pretty bad imho but it definetly works.

Well sorry but I haven't discovered a third option yet, it's either LB or AR

@LooseCannon1 wow those are some pretty wonky results. What abut infantry? How will Order Spearmen, Hospitallier Sergeants, Armoured Sergeants, Armoured Sworsmen or those 20 defence speamen for Wales fare?

[Mana Æ Varyl]

AR rebalance has been included as part of the latest patch, they also made cav units have more men to pack a punch. Infantry isn't much different from retrofit, but the spearmen cost quite more. For Example, The Morgannwg Spearmen have 300 upkeep as opposed to 155 in Brittania(note retrofit's stats/mechanics are basically the same as the kingdoms expansions, so MS would have 155 if Wales was in retrofit ). The rebalance patch I believe make horse archers better too, however, I haven't gotten to use them much yet in KGCM so I can't vouch for their effectiveness.

Now that I mention that, I kinda want to play around with horse archers now, too bad there are not very many catholic horse archer units. However I am interested in joining this hotseat to see how games here go. Afterall our games on TWH are pretty slow and I'm of the faster players(or just have more freetime), nigh-always finishing my turn the day I get it.

I don't really mind if we do lead battles or forced AR, with our current hotseat where we can lead battles against the AI, I have been mostly doing AR(albiet I am bad at seiges and I have good AR units as Wales so that's why). Although if I use HAs I probably will want to do lead battles(especially in the open), Hungary is the only Catholic faction with HAs I can think of, are there any others you guys know of?

[Myth]

Nice to have you on board! Hungary has HAs and Poland has jav-cav (general killers) and I think one unit of HA. There are also HA mercs in Eastern Europe. HAs are not recommended for autoresolve however... Well then. Also, KGCM has a garrison script. Can anyone find me a download link on the TWC?

[Mithridate]

Well sorry but I haven't discovered a third option yet, it's either LB or AR

We usually do both, Lead if you want vs AI and AR is a must vs humans.

As mentioned, i will not participate in a lead only HS

[Nightbringer]

I would be into doing KCGM with autoresolve only vs. all. I feel that allows the ai to put up much more of a fight, which I think will be good in this game to prevent just blitzing ai factions. I myself would probably go for Spain in this game.

[Myth]

Forced AR + garrison scripts + rebalanced AR = slooow game

[Mithridate]

I assumed we would remove the garrison script?

[Nightbringer]

I would say removing the garrison script would be great, if we have someone with the know how. Otherwise, I suppose it probably would be best to have lead battles ok vs ai.