Askthepizzaguy
10-06-2010, 18:15
The Noblest Family Competition
I love this game, even though I find myself playing mafia down in the gameroom more often than Medieval 2 on my computer. I've played single player, blitzed all over the map, played mods, played hotseats, duelled to the death, and posted my campaigns all over the place. After taking a break for a while, I'm back and I have a challenge for all of you Medieval 2 lovers out there:
Impress me with your role-playing. This is the area in the game I am the very weakest at. I'm more concerned with crushing victory and simply building the buildings which will fund my conquests than worrying about family lines, governors, and silly things like the plague. Unless I have a spy and I feel like causing massive death to my enemies for the giddy thrill of it (I'm a demented monster when I play this game sometimes) I don't really care about individual characters, other than my general's command and dread rating, and if he can take a beating in battle and if he's a-scared of the sight of blood. Because if he doesn't have what I want, I toss him at my enemies' spear formation until he learns to be a better general, or learns to love being a pincushion. I can always promote captains. There's competent people somewhere, and I'm willing to make everyone die until I find them. My empire is a meritocracy of evil.
Well, no more!*
Not today, anyway.
Today, I challenge you all to impress me with feats of managerial mastery, rousing role-play, and tree-mendous treatment of your family tree.
Here's the outline:
1. There must be at least 5 generations of kings between the start of the game and the end of the game. Your original faction leader's great, great grandson (or later) must be the king. However, you must also have no more than 8 generations, because if you play this game long enough, you'll have access to better buildings and armories and stuff and that means the challenge goes away.
2. High piety in most, if not all of your family.
3. High Chivalry or dread in every member that bears the family name.
4. You must have at least two impressive commanders with interesting traits and retinue, leading two different, high-experience, well-armored veteran armies of 20 units, including the general. Impress me with the army experience level and armor level, at full troop strength. Show me a screenshot of both.
5. You must have at least three impressive HIGH-CHIVALRY governors with interesting traits and retinue, especially as it relates to governing bonuses. I want to know exactly by what percentage your governor boosts the city's public order, population growth, lowers training costs, lowers construction costs, boosts trade, and otherwise improves the settlement. Show me the difference by placing them in your biggest city, and then showing the full city details (with the pictures and percentages on the left) before and after the governor leads the settlement, using a screenshot.
6. No bad apples in the bunch. Show me every general and governor that was ever part of your family, alive or dead. Points will be taken away if they have awful traits, bad retinue, or if people mysteriously vanished from your family tree due to an unfortunate mishap at sea. I know there are giant octopuses out there, but kindly refrain from pushing your inbred cousins into their hungry beaks. Dying in heroic battle is the only acceptable way to get rid of those folks, and you must show me that the battle in question earned a "Heroic victory" with the crossed swords marking his great accomplishment on the campaign map. If they don't die heroically, they'd better die naturally, and if they have children, you'll have to figure out a way to deal with possible bad traits there.
7. Maintain the family name. Every king must have a male heir who becomes king and bears his name, with his bloodline. No adoptees, and no foreign princes, and no generals marrying princesses! If you are the house of Capet, there had better be a King named Capet at the end of this.
8. Marry a princess to each of your faction heirs, from a foreign family. Bonus points will be added for each additional different foreign power you add to your family through marriage ties. This way, every single King besides your original King will have a Queen of Noble and Foreign birth, which could quite possibly mean that you could inherit another entire empire if their family line should die off (because you're now part of their royal family as well. Even though the game doesn't recognize this, I will.)
9. Show me the princess in question, and show me they have high charm, and a decent retinue. Spy on foreign princesses to learn which is the best one to marry.
10. Additionally, I want you to have a maximum piety religious agent, a maximum skill level spy, a maximum skill level assassin, a maximum skill level diplomat, and you must have at least one princess with a very large amount of charm.
11. You get nothing by completing this challenge, so don't bother cheating. DO NOT ADD TRAITS, RETINUE, or otherwise, OR REMOVE TRAITS, RETINUE, or otherwise manipulate the game using the cheat screen. This is a challenge, not a "press a button to win" competition. If you don't document your achievements, I can't be sure you didn't just add_retinue or add_trait. Show me how you accomplished your goals.
12. Tell me of the history of your glorious family, hopefully with an After Action Report. Post such threads in the TreasAARy (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?296-TreasAARy) when they are ready.
13. This is a competition, and the winners will be:
Best Royal Family (Champion) out of all submitted Royal Families, chosen by judges decision.
Best AAR (Champion) written for this challenge, chosen by judges decision.
Fan Favorite (Runner-up) chosen by popular opinion poll
14. Judging
The winner will not be judged by poll, which avoids problems where people who have a lot of contacts (like me) might win this contest due to out-of-contest popularity. This contest will be decided by Judges in the following categories of your family and their direct agents:
I: Best Retinue (Governor)
II: Best Retinue (General)
III: Best Traits (Governor)
IV: Best Traits (General)
V: Agent Retinue/traits (Princess)
VI: Agent Retinue/traits (Spy *and* Assassin)
VII: Agent Retinue/traits (Merchant)
VIII: Agent Retinue/traits (Diplomat)
XI: Agent Retinue/traits (Priest)
X: Best Overall Governor
XI: Best Overall General
XII: Best Dynasty (Highest number of "Original Last Name"-named Family members, so this does not count male family members who do not bear the family last name.)
XIII: Best Bloodline (Highest number of "direct descendants", which includes non-original-last-name Family members, as long as they all have a direct bloodline to the original King)
XIV: Best Veteran Army
XV: Fewest Penalty Points (Low percentage of bad traits, bad retinue, and family deaths without producing offspring or early deaths)
XVI: Documentation (screenshots and a text description of everything you wish included in the judging. The better the documentation, the more credible your submission is)
XVII: After Action Report (Have your own AAR thread, and this will be judged based on writing quality and presentation)
Each category will get a rating of 0-100, with 50 being an average level of accomplishment, 0 being a terrible, horrible, bad luck performance, and 100 being godlike.
Judges will be people who are not participants in this challenge.
I will be one of the judges, but I will accept 2 additional non-participant volunteers to be judges.
The total points from every category will be posted by each judge for each challenger, and the total points from all judges for each challenger will be their total score.
Highest total score wins.
After that, a poll will be opened to the public and a "fan favorite" will be selected from the non-winners, who will be considered the runner-up. I'll also hand out honorable mentions personally.
Links will be posted to each AAR, and each Documentation submission.
PLEASE SIGN UP TO THIS COMPETITION! I would like to have at least 8 contestants, hopefully more!
Please apply to be a judge!
Judges: (1/3)
Askthepizzaguy
vacant
vacant
Judges Applications: 2
Lord of Lent
Ratwar
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Sign-ups:
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I love this game, even though I find myself playing mafia down in the gameroom more often than Medieval 2 on my computer. I've played single player, blitzed all over the map, played mods, played hotseats, duelled to the death, and posted my campaigns all over the place. After taking a break for a while, I'm back and I have a challenge for all of you Medieval 2 lovers out there:
Impress me with your role-playing. This is the area in the game I am the very weakest at. I'm more concerned with crushing victory and simply building the buildings which will fund my conquests than worrying about family lines, governors, and silly things like the plague. Unless I have a spy and I feel like causing massive death to my enemies for the giddy thrill of it (I'm a demented monster when I play this game sometimes) I don't really care about individual characters, other than my general's command and dread rating, and if he can take a beating in battle and if he's a-scared of the sight of blood. Because if he doesn't have what I want, I toss him at my enemies' spear formation until he learns to be a better general, or learns to love being a pincushion. I can always promote captains. There's competent people somewhere, and I'm willing to make everyone die until I find them. My empire is a meritocracy of evil.
Well, no more!*
Not today, anyway.
Today, I challenge you all to impress me with feats of managerial mastery, rousing role-play, and tree-mendous treatment of your family tree.
Here's the outline:
1. There must be at least 5 generations of kings between the start of the game and the end of the game. Your original faction leader's great, great grandson (or later) must be the king. However, you must also have no more than 8 generations, because if you play this game long enough, you'll have access to better buildings and armories and stuff and that means the challenge goes away.
2. High piety in most, if not all of your family.
3. High Chivalry or dread in every member that bears the family name.
4. You must have at least two impressive commanders with interesting traits and retinue, leading two different, high-experience, well-armored veteran armies of 20 units, including the general. Impress me with the army experience level and armor level, at full troop strength. Show me a screenshot of both.
5. You must have at least three impressive HIGH-CHIVALRY governors with interesting traits and retinue, especially as it relates to governing bonuses. I want to know exactly by what percentage your governor boosts the city's public order, population growth, lowers training costs, lowers construction costs, boosts trade, and otherwise improves the settlement. Show me the difference by placing them in your biggest city, and then showing the full city details (with the pictures and percentages on the left) before and after the governor leads the settlement, using a screenshot.
6. No bad apples in the bunch. Show me every general and governor that was ever part of your family, alive or dead. Points will be taken away if they have awful traits, bad retinue, or if people mysteriously vanished from your family tree due to an unfortunate mishap at sea. I know there are giant octopuses out there, but kindly refrain from pushing your inbred cousins into their hungry beaks. Dying in heroic battle is the only acceptable way to get rid of those folks, and you must show me that the battle in question earned a "Heroic victory" with the crossed swords marking his great accomplishment on the campaign map. If they don't die heroically, they'd better die naturally, and if they have children, you'll have to figure out a way to deal with possible bad traits there.
7. Maintain the family name. Every king must have a male heir who becomes king and bears his name, with his bloodline. No adoptees, and no foreign princes, and no generals marrying princesses! If you are the house of Capet, there had better be a King named Capet at the end of this.
8. Marry a princess to each of your faction heirs, from a foreign family. Bonus points will be added for each additional different foreign power you add to your family through marriage ties. This way, every single King besides your original King will have a Queen of Noble and Foreign birth, which could quite possibly mean that you could inherit another entire empire if their family line should die off (because you're now part of their royal family as well. Even though the game doesn't recognize this, I will.)
9. Show me the princess in question, and show me they have high charm, and a decent retinue. Spy on foreign princesses to learn which is the best one to marry.
10. Additionally, I want you to have a maximum piety religious agent, a maximum skill level spy, a maximum skill level assassin, a maximum skill level diplomat, and you must have at least one princess with a very large amount of charm.
11. You get nothing by completing this challenge, so don't bother cheating. DO NOT ADD TRAITS, RETINUE, or otherwise, OR REMOVE TRAITS, RETINUE, or otherwise manipulate the game using the cheat screen. This is a challenge, not a "press a button to win" competition. If you don't document your achievements, I can't be sure you didn't just add_retinue or add_trait. Show me how you accomplished your goals.
12. Tell me of the history of your glorious family, hopefully with an After Action Report. Post such threads in the TreasAARy (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?296-TreasAARy) when they are ready.
13. This is a competition, and the winners will be:
Best Royal Family (Champion) out of all submitted Royal Families, chosen by judges decision.
Best AAR (Champion) written for this challenge, chosen by judges decision.
Fan Favorite (Runner-up) chosen by popular opinion poll
14. Judging
The winner will not be judged by poll, which avoids problems where people who have a lot of contacts (like me) might win this contest due to out-of-contest popularity. This contest will be decided by Judges in the following categories of your family and their direct agents:
I: Best Retinue (Governor)
II: Best Retinue (General)
III: Best Traits (Governor)
IV: Best Traits (General)
V: Agent Retinue/traits (Princess)
VI: Agent Retinue/traits (Spy *and* Assassin)
VII: Agent Retinue/traits (Merchant)
VIII: Agent Retinue/traits (Diplomat)
XI: Agent Retinue/traits (Priest)
X: Best Overall Governor
XI: Best Overall General
XII: Best Dynasty (Highest number of "Original Last Name"-named Family members, so this does not count male family members who do not bear the family last name.)
XIII: Best Bloodline (Highest number of "direct descendants", which includes non-original-last-name Family members, as long as they all have a direct bloodline to the original King)
XIV: Best Veteran Army
XV: Fewest Penalty Points (Low percentage of bad traits, bad retinue, and family deaths without producing offspring or early deaths)
XVI: Documentation (screenshots and a text description of everything you wish included in the judging. The better the documentation, the more credible your submission is)
XVII: After Action Report (Have your own AAR thread, and this will be judged based on writing quality and presentation)
Each category will get a rating of 0-100, with 50 being an average level of accomplishment, 0 being a terrible, horrible, bad luck performance, and 100 being godlike.
Judges will be people who are not participants in this challenge.
I will be one of the judges, but I will accept 2 additional non-participant volunteers to be judges.
The total points from every category will be posted by each judge for each challenger, and the total points from all judges for each challenger will be their total score.
Highest total score wins.
After that, a poll will be opened to the public and a "fan favorite" will be selected from the non-winners, who will be considered the runner-up. I'll also hand out honorable mentions personally.
Links will be posted to each AAR, and each Documentation submission.
PLEASE SIGN UP TO THIS COMPETITION! I would like to have at least 8 contestants, hopefully more!
Please apply to be a judge!
Judges: (1/3)
Askthepizzaguy
vacant
vacant
Judges Applications: 2
Lord of Lent
Ratwar
-
-
-
-
Sign-ups:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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