Question about ancillaries.

[Mongoose]

in vanilla RTW, ancillaries were much more limited for "barbarians" then for greek and roman factions. Is EB going to change this?

If so, how?

thanks :bow:

[Malrubius]

Ooh, ooh, a question for me! ~D

I'll answer regarding the open beta (for the final version there will be a lot more than the beta).

In vanilla, some ancillaries were outright unavailable to the barbarian culture. But why couldn't a 'barbarian' recognize the usefulness of an architect, if he wanted to order the construction of a building?

We've also worked around some bugs from the vanilla files, so that now generals can get ancillaries after coming of age or getting married. So that's almost as good as adding a few new ancillaries. ~;)

But we're adding new ancillaries, too: A handful of new historical ancillaries, a large number of ancillaries for Pahlava, new priest and temple ancillaries.

I'll be packing more in there every day until the open beta. ~:)

[Mongoose]

Ok, thanks for the quick answer!


One more reason to look forword to when/it's/done ~D

[jerby]

what kidn of triggers will be used for the anciliares?or will they be a bit "random"?
will father look like sons, or the opposite?

[Malrubius]

This area is in heavy development right now, and is nowhere near being complete. The triggers for getting ancillaries will not be much different from the original files for the open beta. Some of the historical ancillaries will be a bit more historical in where they can be acquired. Fathers will affect the traits of their sons, and traits can affect ancillary acquisition, just like in vanilla.

We have some big plans for the future beyond the open beta. Only a tiny fraction of what we want will be done for the beta.

[jerby]

how hard will it be to "breed" a 10-star General?

[Malrubius]

If you mean, to have a general come of age with 10 stars in Command, I'd say very very rare. We're trying to make exceptional characters exceptional, not common.

[jerby]

yes..that i understand,
what i tried to ask (but didnt phrase dorrectly, sorry bout that) was how hard will it be to get a General up to 10-stars?
And what will be the in-field-effects of a high command-rating general? statwise, i meen

[Malrubius]

Ah, ok, I thought you were just asking about the genetics part of things. ~:)

Well, the main visible effect of Command stars themselves seems to be that they provide a morale boost to nearby units:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=44549

They will be generally more difficult to acquire than in the original game, depending on the general's natural ability. But good leaders can inspire their men, and soldiers feel more confident when commanded by capable generals.

[Mongoose]

So, your saying that all ancillaries will be available to the "barbarian" Factions?

Or will they have to take a greek/roman/eastern city first?

[kayapó]

Some of the historical ancillaries will be a bit more historical in where they can be acquired.


So Archimedes only to someone how is managing Syracuse? That is really great. What about factions? Will Archimedes be available to Romans as in vanilla???
~:)

[jerby]

another, more specific, Q:
what triggers a general to gain a Command-star (in the battlefield)?

[therother]

The issue of acquiring command stars is one that the EB team has given a great deal of thought to, specifically with a mind to making whole traits system more realistic. The EB system is therefore quite different from vanilla, and is certainly substantially more complex. I think people will like the changes when they play the forthcoming open beta. ~:)

[abortretryfail]

So Archimedes only to someone how is managing Syracuse? That is really great. What about factions? Will Archimedes be available to Romans as in vanilla???
~:)

Is there any way to make killing a general w/ a certain ancillary a trigger for the victorious general aquiring that specific ancillary? If my Roman general slaughters A greek w/ Archimedes in his retinue, Roman general generously allows Archimedes to live so long as he serves him. that would be cool.

[kayapó]

Is there any way to make killing a general w/ a certain ancillary a trigger for the victorious general aquiring that specific ancillary? If my Roman general slaughters A greek w/ Archimedes in his retinue, Roman general generously allows Archimedes to live so long as he serves him. that would be cool.

I quote the great Malrubius: "As it is, we have no way to check a general for ancillaries".

So the answer is unfortunatly no. But I give you that it would indeed be very cool...

k

[Danest]

Historically, didn't the Romans actually kill archimedes instead of actually keeping him, upon capturing Syracuse? Heh, maybe then the loss of ancilliaries is, hmm, just fine? :p

[Mongoose]

Can't we keep the slaves though?

[Malrubius]

There are 2 technical difficulties that are insurmountable here:

1. The bane of the ancillary system--we can't tell what ancillary a general has gotten, either through a trigger, or as a present from another general.

2. We can only see and affect the traits of a single general at a time (one exception being a general's father). We can't say, "if this enemy general has this trait, give this trait to this general."

So, in conclusion, a general's traits can be based on his father's traits (and only his father's, not his son's, brother's, or enemy's), but his ancillaries can not be based on anybody else's ancillaries.

:sad:


And yes, one story of Archimedes' death is that the Roman general Marcellus sent his soldiers to bring the great mathematician to him. Archimedes wanted to finish the math problem he was working on instead ("Do not disturb my circles!"), so they killed him. Maybe they were upset because the engines he had built for King Hiero had killed so many of their countrymen?

[metatron]

Historically, didn't the Romans actually kill archimedes instead of actually keeping him, upon capturing Syracuse? Heh, maybe then the loss of ancilliaries is, hmm, just fine? :pHe was slaughtered by a legionary because he wouldn't leave his home.

The general of the campaign, Marcelleus, was rather incensed, as he had given specific instructions to capture Archimedes alive.

[jerby]

what about an "avenger" trait? if a father was killed by a faction (rome perhaps). his son would get:' avenge romans" or soemthing..and get a +1-command versus Romans..maybe

[Moros]

what about an "avenger" trait? if a father was killed by a faction (rome perhaps). his son would get:' avenge romans" or soemthing..and get a +1-command versus Romans..maybe
I like this Idea!!!
this would really be cool. ~:)

[kayapó]

I like this Idea!!!
this would really be cool. ~:)

Yes really cool. But I don't think this is possible either. When Malrubius said that the general's father is an exception, so there is a way to check his traits, I think he means the father would have to be alive. I might be wrong.

k

[Big_John]

well, maybe it could be given to a living son at the father's death event if he is killed in battle?

[Malrubius]

You can't give a general a trait if he's dead.

The death event takes place during the battle, and you can't give traits during battles. You can give traits after battles, but there's no death event that ties into the character record so a trait can be given. You have to have an event that exports character_record for a trait to be given. AFAIK, one doesn't exist.

Lots of the documented events and conditions don't even work right, or don't work at all, so I doubt there are any undocumented ones that will do the trick, and nobody has been able to find them yet.

[Dux Corvanus]

He was slaughtered by a legionary because he wouldn't leave his home.

The general of the campaign, Marcelleus, was rather incensed, as he had given specific instructions to capture Archimedes alive.

Yep, the complete story was like this: the guy was in his yard, obsessed with some geometry problem he was drawing with a stick in the pool of sand that the ancient used as we use chalkboards now. The soldier entered the yard and tried to bring him out, but he refused. He was about to find the solution to the problem and wanted to have it solved before leaving. Then the soldier started to erase with his feet the figures that Archimedes had drawn, so the wise man was very angered. He started beating the soldier with his thin stick as he yelled: "Don't erase my circles!"

Those were his last words. The infuriated soldier drew his sword and stabbed him. :embarassed:

[kayapó]

Yep, the complete story was like this: the guy was in his yard, obsessed with some geometry problem he was drawing with a stick in the pool of sand that the ancient used as we use chalkboards now. The soldier entered the yard and tried to bring him out, but he refused. He was about to find the solution to the problem and wanted to have it solved before leaving. Then the soldier started to erase with his feet the figures that Archimedes had drawn, so the wise man was very angered. He started beating the soldier with his thin stick as he yelled: "Don't erase my circles!"

Those were his last words. The infuriated soldier drew his sword and stabbed him. :embarassed:

And that's how a mith is born. ~:)

Not that I don't believe in the story...
I have a great respect for miths.

k

ps. Loved it, saved it for later use...

[jerby]

well..i dotn think it's that heroic..
"dont erase my circles" sounds a bit excentrick..

btw, i didnt know you were a member kayapo..what's you function?

[kayapó]

btw, i didnt know you were a member kayapo..what's you function?

Malrubius seems to think I have some use...

...if you ask me he must be developing some really bad traits...it is starting to affect his judgement...or maybe he's been standing too long around a temple of fun. ~D

k

[therother]

...if you ask me he must be developing some really bad traits...it is starting to affect his judgement...or maybe he's been standing too long around a temple of fun. ~D Nah, it's his ancillaries that are the problem: they are forever giving him more work to do, rather than helping him out. ~:)

[kayapó]

Nah, it's his ancillaries that are the problem: they are forever giving him more work to do, rather than helping him out. ~:)

WHAT??? Someone has to nerf them ASAP. ~;)
I just wonder, who will have the courage? He who steps up to this task must be either crazy or a masochist... :dizzy2:

[Simetrical]

The bane of the ancillary system--we can't tell what ancillary a general has gotten, either through a trigger, or as a present from another general.Hmmmm. What if you assigned every ancillary a unique power of two as a code number (1, 2, 4, 8, 16 . . .), and then had it give an Electability bonus equal to that number? You would then have a finite number of possibilities for the Electability attribute for a possessor of the ancillary.

For instance, say we wanted to check five ancillaries as part of trigger conditions. We assigned them respective powers of two from 2^0 to 2^4. Now, if we want to check whether a general has ancillary #3 (with code number 4), we check if his Electability is equal to 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29, 30, or 31. If it's equal to any of those numbers, he has the ancillary; if not, he doesn't. Of course, the number of possibilities will increase exponentially as we increase the number of ancillaries we want to test for, but there's no limit to triggers, so no worries there. We'd just need to make a simple program to generate them.

*adds another notch to his List of Stuff I've Probably Helped EB Out with Without Having to Do a Damned Thing, a list quite a lot longer than the List of Stuff I've Helped EB Out with by Actually Doing Something*

[Malrubius]

Any idea what the maximum value of Electability is?

You're going to get into very large numbers very quickly, unless you just do this for a handful of ancillaries. (IOW, don't notch your chickens before they're hatched ~;) )

[jerby]

if you , after a battle, get teh message that a general died in battle. is that a possible trigger?
could that spawn a "avenger" trait for his son?

[Malrubius]

Hmm, I'll have to test and see if that works.

[Simetrical]

Any idea what the maximum value of Electability is?I'll do a quick test.

(IOW, don't notch your chickens before they're hatched ~;) )That's why I said "Probably".

Edit: I removed all triggers from EDCT, gave Good_Commander (which Flavius Julius starts with in vanilla) the effect of Electability 1000000000, and then added the following triggers:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger inherited
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition Attribute Electability [gt]= 1000000000

Affects GoodAttacker 20 Chance 100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger inherited
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition Attribute Electability [gt]= 1000000

Affects GoodDefender 20 Chance 100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger inherited
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition Attribute Electability [gt]= 1000

Affects Drink 100 Chance 100 I then started a game and ended my turn. Suddenly, good ol' Flavius was a heroic attacker and defender, but Paralytic. I think we can safely guess that there's not any limit. 1,000,000,000 is good enough for 29-30 ancillaries, in any case.

Of course, there's the slight problem of having to list roughly 500,000,000 possibilities to check for the presence of any given ancillary, but this can be simplified substantially by translating the triggers into ranges. The 29th ancillary, for instance, has a code number of 268,435,456, so (assuming 30 ancillaries) we can just check:

Condition Attribute Electability [gt]= 268435456
and Attribute Electability [lt]= 536870911
[next trigger]
Condition Attribute Electability [gt]= 805306368
and Attribute Electability [lt]= 1073741823The number of triggers will then double for each step down, all the way up to the maximum of 536,870,912 for the first ancillary (listing all odd numbers from 1 through 1,073,741,823). Of course, such problems wouldn't really arise if we just selected a few ancillaries we wanted to check for.

Given the Senate's removal, perhaps we could also use SenateStanding and PopularStanding? Or are those used? They would, of course, reduce the burden exponentially.

I can't help but think there must be some way to refine the system. What if we had, for each ancillary with code number N, a hidden trait, which would give -N electability? We could then have a progression of trigger pairs for CharacterTurnEnd that would grant or remove the traits in succession, such that only one pair would be necessary per ancillary. For example, say we have N ancillaries, where any ancillary N gives an Electability bonus of 2^(N−1) = N'. Then we would have a series of triggers such as:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger AncillaryNGain
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition Attribute Electability [gt]= N'

Affects AncillaryN 1 Chance 100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger AncillaryN−1Gain
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition Attribute Electability [gt]= N'/2

Affects AncillaryN−1 1 Chance 100

. . .
;------------------------------------------
Trigger Ancillary1Gain
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition Attribute Electability [gt]= 1

Affects Ancillary1 1 Chance 100 AncillaryNGain would, of course, give Electability -N' for any N. Now, consider. For the first trigger, what combination of ancillaries could possibly cause an Electability bonus of [gt]= N'? Only one that contains Ancillary N, because all other ancillaries' Electability combined amounts only to N'−1 Electability.

So if the character has the ancillary, he'll gain the AncillaryN trait, which will reduce his Electability by N'. After that's checked, he can only have more than (N−1)' = N'/2 Electability if he has Ancillary N−1. And so on, all the way down to Ancillary 1. Do you follow?

Okay, now after all those triggers, if the player hasn't traded away any ancillaries, Electability will be 0. If he has traded away ancillaries, we can test in exactly the same way as before. If the player traded away Ancillary N, Electability will be at -N' due to the AncillaryN trait, and so we check for that and adjust traits accordingly to account for lost ancillaries.

Finally, as an error-catcher: immediately after all these checks are done, have the game check to be sure Electability is 0. If it's not, have a warning message popup saying "BUG! Save this game and send it to EB at foo@bar.com, or post it on our message boards!"

[jerby]

Hmm, I'll have to test and see if that works.
would be nice to get: avenger ; this man wants to avenge his fathers death:
+1 command (vs faction..is possible)

[therother]

if you , after a battle, get teh message that a general died in battle. is that a possible trigger?
could that spawn a "avenger" trait for his son?It is possible, and we'll be looking into these sorts of traits. Probably not for the open beta though.

Thanks for the suggestion! ~:)

[kayapó]

It is possible, and we'll be looking into these sorts of traits. Probably not for the open beta though.

Thanks for the suggestion! ~:)

Oh, great. More work for us. Malrubius is already getting his :whip:
k

[Big_John]

Thanks for the suggestion! ~:)it was my idea first... :mean:


so the death event for a general being killed in battle is different than the event for dying of old-age/plague/whatever?

[Divinus Arma]

HOLY SMOKES!!!!

Where the hell do you guys learn this stuff? I knew it was complicated, but my God!

You guys either:

(1) Work for dev companies or have done so in the past.

or

(2) Went to school for this stuff?

or

(3) I don't know! Holy Crup!


I would love to learn this, but the mod academy took a dump immediately. That's so damn cool....

Are there any uses for this knowledge other than video games?

[therother]

it was my idea first... :mean:Sorry, Big_John! Serves me right for not rereading the thread. :embarassed:


so the death event for a general being killed in battle is different than the event for dying of old-age/plague/whatever?Well, it's different in the sense that it occurs PostBattle rather than on the strategy map.

[Big_John]

Well, it's different in the sense that it occurs PostBattle rather than on the strategy map.so if you try to give people an "avenger" triat, they won't acquire that at any old death event? it can be tied specifically to the event of a general being killed in battle?

[therother]

Yes, PostBattle only occurs after a battle, either autoresolve or battlemap.

[Simetrical]

And it also returns the factions that participated, plus various other handy stuff that could be worked in (e.g., the odds―did he die in glorious combat or was he dishonorably/stupidly overwhelmed by numbers alone?).

[Big_John]

And it also returns the factions that participated, plus various other handy stuff that could be worked in (e.g., the odds―did he die in glorious combat or was he dishonorably/stupidly overwhelmed by numbers alone?).mm.. sounds like you guys could do a lot with that particular event. good stuff.

edit: is there any trait that would make sense to give to a faction leader if several of his generals die dishonorably in combat?

edit2: therother, are you one of the invisble ones??? ~;)

[therother]

mm.. sounds like you guys could do a lot with that particular event. good stuff.Yes, the trait system is very flexible;very little of its potential was tapped in RTW. EB will go a long way to correcting that. ~:)

[jerby]

it was my idea first... :mean:


so the death event for a general being killed in battle is different than the event for dying of old-age/plague/whatever?
that might have been teh inspiration for me suggesting..i felt liek my "avenger" was original...whoops..

still feels nice to help~;)

[Moros]

that might have been teh inspiration for me suggesting..i felt liek my "avenger" was original...whoops..

still feels nice to help~;)
stealing Ideas are we? jerby,jerby, jerby ~;)

you can say what you want about my wise lynx but at least I was original ~D

~:cheers:

[Malrubius]

ask any writer or movie producer: ideas are cheap; everybody has them, and plenty of them. But the implementation is a bit more difficult. ~;)

Although being the mastermind is of course the most important and is the hardest work!

[Malrubius]

edit2: therother, are you one of the invisble ones??? ~;)

He's the mastermind of our system, yes. The puppetmaster pulling the strings and keeping us all in line. :whip:

[kayapó]

All.. :bow: :bow: :bow: to the great traiter gods... :bow: :bow: :bow: