Research on campaign mechanics - post results here

[Beefeater]

Moderator edit: In the (perhaps temporary) absence of a Ludus Magna for M2TW, let's use this thread to post the results of research into campaign mechanics.

If you are not posting test results, please keep any commentary or questions to a minimum. This is not a thread to debate or to report on your solo games - it's for research results.

If you do research on campaigns and want to start your own thread for some reason, that's fine. But let's sticky this thread for those who want to use it.

I'm going to move some of the battle mechanics stuff over to the sister thread.

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OK, we've had it for a short while now and have formed our initial impressions. What it would be great to see next (and what this email is an attempt to kickstart) is an under-the-hood look at certain questions regarding the way in which the game works. Mods - I'm posting here because of the absence of a Ludus Magna-style forum dealing with these issues.

Off the top of my head, the following probably need to be addressed.

Guilds
It seems to me that it would be helpful to know the following:

What triggers an offer of a guild?
So far I have noticed that upgrading a city to level 3 triggers a guild offer, to level 4 triggers a 'master' guild offer, and to level 5 gives an 'HQ' offer if there are no HQs of that guild already present in the world. I presume that it's just L4 and L5 for Castles.

When you're offered a guild, you can turn it down. When will you be re-offered (that guild or another) and what governs this?

What are the prerequisites for each guild?

What do the guilds do?
This is sometimes transparent (e.g. recruiting Hospitallers and the health bonus for the order of St. John) and sometimes opaque (any idea what the Explorer's Guild actually does?).

V&Vs (Traits)

Obvious one this but I'm hoping to start off a FAQ similar to Aesculapius' excellent essay on the 'Feeding and Breeding of Governors and Generals'. What makes our little sim-tyrants tick? How do I turn them into bloodthirsty populace-oppressing monsters, or into gentle and chivalric knights? How can princesses gain charm, and what makes Merchants great?

Also, what do those hidden priest skills (e.g. violence) affect?

That's all I can think off for now but I'll try to post more this evening. Thoughts?

[Quillan]

I can answer a couple of the guild questions definitely, and make suggestions for a couple more.

The Explorers Guild increases your movement points. I now have two of these, and it's noticable the difference it makes. I can't say for certain if the increase is just within a certain map distance of the guild hall, just within your borders, or globally. I don't have a Master Explorer's Guild yet, so also not sure what benefits will come from the higher level build.

I got a Theologians Guild last night. It increased piety of priest trained there by +1. I expect each level will add another +1.

As to triggers, I think the Explorers guild trigger was getting map info around the world. I've sent a number of diplomats, spies, and ships out travelling the map. I got the Theologians guild after a spate of heavy priest/temple building. Others are less obvious.

[OMGLAZERS]

Violence for priests I believe affects their policy choices as Pope (willingness to launch crusades)

[econ21]

Good initiative - questions that are answered can go in the stickied FAQ.

There's ongoing discussion about a Ludus Magna for M2TW. I am not sure we'll have the critical mass of real research to sustain it. But if people do post real research at the Org, we'll consider it.

[therother]

Good initiative - questions that are answered can go in the stickied FAQ.Indeed. :bow:

I'm going to have a go at the basic mechanics which affect city management, e.g. squalor, taxes, distance to capital, corruption etc.

I've had a quick look at distance to capital public order penalties, and it seems much less of a problem than in RTW, although the general form appears similar (i.e. a linear relationship between the penalty and distance). It also appears to affect castles less than cities (by at least a factor of two.) I'll try to quantify the factors involved asap.

[therother]

Ok, preliminary results in. The Distance to Capitial PO penalty, in cities, has been roughly halved since RTW: it used to max out at 80% approximately 85 squares away from your capital. That has now grown to ~160 squares (need more data to nail it down firmly). Also, the gradient of the best fit line through the data has halved to ~0.5 % per square (from 1% per square). Anything over the max is capped at 80% (see the two black outliers in the graph below). The grace distance appears to still be ~18-19 squares.

Things are slightly different for castles. I have much less data for castles, but they appear to follow a similar pattern, although here the best fit gradient is down to 0.2 % per square, or 2.5 times lower than for cities (and 5 times lower than RTW). In other words, castles keep better order than cities. Anyhow, the graph:

https://www.europabarbarorum.com/i/M2TW/dist2cap.gif

I'll try to improve the fit as I take over more settlements.

[Tamur]

Just got the game and I'll be plowing into diplomacy first thing. I'm also very curious about the Guilds -- working out a testing methodology for them will be interesting in itself!

[Neon twilight]

Some preist/cardinal "hidden" traits may affect thier profile if they become pope, ex violence may mean warth the better way to observe this is to watch carefully with a spy near the papacy and do everything to have the pope of your nation (sending lots priest everywhere especialy in holy lands help you to have a lot of cardinals because they train themselve and up thier faith value).

For the guilds it looks they're restricted to some factions like the knights orders such as Teutonics only aviable for germans, Santiago for portugal and spain ect... Explorer guilds seems to pop more often in oriental cities too.

[therother]

Again, similar to the RTW squalor thread, below is the table of squalor thresholds for cities and castles of various sizes (only Huge cities complete right now). To explain the table, when the population is 15000, the squalor PO penalty in a Huge city (absent governor traits/retinue) will be 40%, whilst the growth rate penalty will be 4%. At 14999, it would be 35% and 3.5% respectively. PO squalor is capped at 80% (population = 30000, highlighted in the table below) and growth is capped at 16% (population = 54000). Meaning that if you can get 15.5% growth in a Huge city, and you put the taxes down to low, the city will grow at 0.5% forever...

Table is currently a WIP, click here for cities or here for castles :

Cities:
2^=%|Village|Town|L.Town|City|Large|Huge
4^=5|||||1500|1500
4^=10|||||3000|3000
4^=15|||||6000|6000
4^=20|||||7500|7500
4^=25|||||9000|9000
4^=30|||||10500|10500
4^=35|||||13500|13500
4^=40|||||15000|15000
4^=45|||||16500|16500
4^=50|||||18000|18000
4^=55|||||21000|21000
4^=60|||||22500|22500
4^=65|||||24000|24000
4^=70|||||25500|25500
4^=75|||||26250|28500
4^=80|||||27000|30000
3^=8.5|||||27750|31500
3^=9|||||28500|33000
3^=9.5|||||30000|36000
3^=10|||||30750|37500
3^=10.5|||||31500|39000
3^=11|||||32250|40500
3^=11.5|||||33750|43500
3^=12|||||34500|45000
3^=12.5|||||35250|46500
3^=13|||||36000|48000
3^=13.5|||||36700|49500
3^=14|||||36750|50250
3^=14.5|||||37050|51000
3^=15|||||37400|51750
3^=15.5|||||37750|53250
3^=16|||||38100|54000
3^=16.5|=∞|=∞|=∞|=∞|=∞|=∞


Castles:
2^=Growth %|PO %|M & B|W.Castle|Castle|Fortress|Citadel
4^=0.5|=0|||||1500
4^=1|=5|||||3000
4^=1.5|=10|||||6000
4^=2|=10|||||7500
4^=2.5|=10|||||9000
4^=3|=15|||||10500
4^=3.5|=20|||||13500
4^=4|=20|||||15000
4^=4.5|=20|||||16500
4^=5|=25|||||18000
4^=5.5|=30|||||18700
4^=6|=30|||||18750
4^=6.5|=30|||||19050
4^=7|=35|||||19400
4^=7.5|=40|||||19750
4^=8|=40|||||20100
4^=8.5|=40|||||20250
4^=9|=45|||||20450
4^=9.5|=50|||||21000
4^=10|=50|||||21150
4^=10.5|=50|||||21500
4^=11|=55|||||21750
4^=11.5|=60|||||22200
4^=12|=60|||||22500
4^=12.5|=60|||||22550
4^=13|=65|||||22900
4^=13.5|=70|||||23250
4^=14|=70|||||23600
4^=14.5|=70|||||23950
4^=15|=75|||||24000
4^=15.5|=80|||||24650
4^=16|=80|||||24750
4^=16.5|=85|=∞|=∞|=∞|=∞|=∞



As an aside, the penalties from squalor have, like Distance to Capital, have been reduced markedly from RTW. The PO cap for RTW (post 1.2) was 100% at population = 30000 (c.f. 80% in M2TW), whilst the reciprocal value for 80% PO penalty for an Imperial palace was just 24000. The cap growth level has also been lowered, from 25% in RTW to only 16% in M2TW, meaning cities which grow indefinitely are now a real possibility in unmodded games. London, fully upgraded, has a growth rate of 12.5%. Its base farming level is only 3% though. Antioch has the highest base level that I have at the moment (although there's probably higher) and it has 4.5%. That would mean, with grain trade and governor traits/retinue, the magic 15.5% growth would be in sight. Edit: In fact, it is perfectly possible: https://www.europabarbarorum.com/i/M2TW/Shuggy.jpg

[therother]

I'm just about to add squalor data from Large Cities and Citadels. For M2TW cities (and RTW settlements), population growth penalties were always a tenth of public order (PO) penalties. It would seem that this is not so for M2TW castles. Indeed, it appears that the PO penalties are only 5 times those of growth, rounded to the nearest 5%. So that a growth penalty of 7.5% corresponds to the PO penalty of only 40% (37.5% rounded up to nearest 5%, 32.5% is rounded down to 30%). The other major point is the rapidity with which Castle PO and growth penalties increase after population is 18000: the growth penalty goes up by 1.5% in just 1050 after 18000 for instance. That kind of hammering doesn't happen until about twice that population in cities. Once again, though, the PO effect is capped at 80% and the growth and 160%.

One thing to note: Epistolary Richard has reported that we will be able to modify the effects of squalor and distance to capital with the descr_settlement_mechanics.xml file. That file is packed for the moment, so it is anyone's guess how much control we will be given.

[TinCow]

The Merchant's Guild Headquarters gives all merchants produced in your Empire a +1 to their skill, no matter where they are produced.

One thing I haven't figured out yet though is whether this stacks with the bonuses given by the lower level Merchant's Guilds. For instance, London has the HQ and all Merchants trained there get a +1. However, Paris has a minor Merchant's guild. If a Merchant trained there gets a +1 from the minor guild, they must also get a +1 from the HQ. This seems wrong though, because it would mean that the Merchants trained in the city with the HQ would actually be LESS experienced than those trained elsewhere (since the HQ city loses the lower level Guild buildings when it upgrades). Can anyone confirm this?

Another question:
I swear on my life that the number of resources visible on the map increased when I put Merchants on them. I started concentrating on wine in France for my merchants and could only find 3 at the beginning of the game. Yet over time, I kept noticing more and more where I hadn't seen them before. It's possible that I missed them, but given that there are now about 8 wine resources, many of which I couldn't possibly have missed beforehand, I suspect that more have become visible for some reason over time.

[TinCow]

Was rushing out the door when I posted that last one (damn the need for employment! I have important games to play!) and a few things occurred to me as soon as my computer shut down.

Regarding the number of resources visible, there are three possible contributing factors as far as I can tell. (1) Time - resources appear according to a set turn clock (2) Merchants - resources appear as the number of merchants increases (3) Buildings - resources appear as the settlement in that specific provinces builds structures that increase trade. Of all of these, (3) seems the most likely. I did not think of it at the time, because that\'s not how increased trade from Markets and such worked in RTW. However, thinking of the areas where more wine resources appeared, they were all cities. I do remember that two of the new wine resources appeared in a province after I converted a Citadel to a City and began developing it. I did not notice the appearance of resources other than wine, but then again I also never looked for them.

So, here is the theory: City structures that increase trade, ALSO make additional resources visible on the campaign map, within their own province.

[Tamur]

A note on diplomacy:

Obviously it's much easier to see whether a proposal will be accepted than with RTW. From some basic testing it seems clear that each demand & offer has a monetary value associated with it, by which the calculation of V.Demanding/Demanding/Balanced/Generous/V.Generous is done.

Given that it's a deterministic model, it should be very straightforward to work out price points for each offer and each set of conditions (e.g. what combination of offers a 1-influence diplomat will have to use to get an alliance from a faction with Terrible relations, Meagre wealth, different religion, and Unknown priorities, or any other combination of the above).

What may not be so straightforward will be determining multi-turn causality.

For example, in my first campaign yesterday, I was Spain, negotiating with the Moors. I offered an alliance, and they demanded the equivalent of 5500 fl (in tribute, straight payment, or settlement/cash combination). I demured, noting that they were Bankrupt, and gave them 500 fl. as a gift.

On the next turn, I offered them an alliance again: their relations had changed to Reasonable, and the alliance offer was greeted as Generous! To make the offer Balanced, I demanded 1000 fl in payment for the alliance, which they readily agreed to.

At any rate, lots to discover here!

[Biggus Diccus]

So, here is the theory: City structures that increase trade, ALSO make additional resources visible on the campaign map, within their own province.

This is not the case. I checked several regions when upgrading the trade buildings, and I could not see extra trade resources become visible in those regions.

[TinCow]

The funny thing is that last night I started a new game and remembered to check France for the wine resources. They were all visibile except for one at the start of the game. That one I may have imagined as well, though I didn't actually check.

So, my new theory is that the number of resources visible on the map decreases in direct proportion with the amount of alcohol you have consumed before playing. I will try to verify this with a nice bottle of wine tonight.

[Spendius]

Interesting theory !

One thing I noticed, the wine north of Bordeaux is giving me twice as much as the wine west of Angers (they are very close to each other, the second one belongs to Britanny / Rennes).

The wine of bordeaux is sitting on the stone road going from the main road to the port, while the wine of Rennes is sitting in the hills, far from the lvl1 road (Bdx = castle, Rennes = city).

So either:
- improving roads improves income from resources
- resources on roads give more
- or my merchant had been sitting on the Bordeaux wine before, and didn't want to move to Britanny.

Anyway, it seems marketplaces does not influence how much a resource is worth.

[therother]

Corruption appears to be working much as it did in RTW: the gradients appear very similar, as does the the y-axis intercept. Preliminary data, generated using same methodology as in the thread above:

https://www.europabarbarorum.com/i/M2TW/corruption.gif

Note this data is without governors, and with minimal buildings, on Medium. Cities only: castles get bonuses to law, which reduces corruption.

[Dorkus]

This is a great thread. wish i could help. have the game, but swamped at the moment, and haven't even started playing it! (and it's a weekend!)

[Daveybaby]

I swear on my life that the number of resources visible on the map increased when I put Merchants on them. I started concentrating on wine in France for my merchants and could only find 3 at the beginning of the game. Yet over time, I kept noticing more and more where I hadn't seen them before. It's possible that I missed them, but given that there are now about 8 wine resources, many of which I couldn't possibly have missed beforehand, I suspect that more have become visible for some reason over time.
I'm pretty certain that's not the case. The resources are pretty easy to miss on occasion though, e.g. if you have a unit standing in front of them.

FWIW i was curious about the mechanism whereby getting a monopoly in a trade resource supposedly increases the income from it, and wanted to figure out all of the locations for a resource to try it out - so i've started a list of all resources in the game by region (which i will then also compile into a list of locations for each resource). Wish i hadnt started cos its boring the tits off me now, but i'm nearly done and if i have one thing going for me its sheer bloodymindedness w.r.t. things like that :sweatdrop: .

Will hopefully post the results later today.

[maestro]

Regarding Guilds:

In my latest campaign (H/VH England), having read a lot of anecdotal evidence on the forum about guilds and who got what, when and why, I decided to test some theories.

Basically, when your City becomes Level 3, you get offered a guild. This seems to happen every time a city reaches that level. This has been documented before, but I'm pertty suer I know what determines which guild you get - to a great extent.

From turn 1, I specialised my cities. this is something veteran totalwar players have always done cause it's the most efficient way of getting high ranked buildings. But I think it's even more important in M2TW cause it determines your guilds, too. In this campaign i've made sure every priest I've trained has been trained in London, and London got offered a Theologians' Guild. I made sure I trained all my swordsmen in Caen and Caen got offered a Swordsmiths' Guild. I made sure I trained all my spies in York, and York got offered a Theives' Guild. I made sure I trained all my archers at Nottingham, and Nottingham got offered a Woodsmans' Guild. I made sure I trained all of my Merchants at Bruges, and Bruges got offered a Merchants' Guild. I made sure that the place next to Bruges (forget the name) trained all my assasins .... well, you get the piture.

So specialise and be rutheless and disciplined where you build stuff and you can easily determine what guilds you get!

i hope this helps you guys as much as it's helped me ~D

[Scottn72]

Regarding Guilds:

In my latest campaign (H/VH England), having read a lot of anecdotal evidence on the forum about guilds and who got what, when and why, I decided to test some theories.

Basically, when your City becomes Level 3, you get offered a guild. This seems to happen every time a city reaches that level. This has been documented before, but I'm pertty suer I know what determines which guild you get - to a great extent.

From turn 1, I specialised my cities. this is something veteran totalwar players have always done cause it's the most efficient way of getting high ranked buildings. But I think it's even more important in M2TW cause it determines your guilds, too. In this campaign i've made sure every priest I've trained has been trained in London, and London got offered a Theologians' Guild. I made sure I trained all my swordsmen in Caen and Caen got offered a Swordsmiths' Guild. I made sure I trained all my spies in York, and York got offered a Theives' Guild. I made sure I trained all my archers at Nottingham, and Nottingham got offered a Woodsmans' Guild. I made sure I trained all of my Merchants at Bruges, and Bruges got offered a Merchants' Guild. I made sure that the place next to Bruges (forget the name) trained all my assasins .... well, you get the piture.

So specialise and be rutheless and disciplined where you build stuff and you can easily determine what guilds you get!

i hope this helps you guys as much as it's helped me ~D

I've had the very same results, the only one i'm not sure of is the explorers guild

[zarkis]

Unlike RTW the number of men in a unit are not longer deducted/added to the city/castle population when you recruit/disband the unit.

This is a good change, because in RTW the AI would drain their cities when you played with huge unit sizes. Also it was difficult to control the rate of city growth in mods, because it depended so much on the unit size the player was choosing.

[Whacker]

Friends,

I had an idea that I was hoping to get your thoughts and feedback on. I am travelling this week and unable to do this myself so please excuse me for that.

I was thinking on the subject of generals not gaining piety very well. Has anyone tried an experiment yet where a priest or cardinal is put in the same stack as a general and seeing if their piety increases over a few turns? If this does, then GREAT! If not, then I would submit that this is an excellent idea. The higher the priest's rating, the faster and more piety the general gains. Also, I think it'd be great for the priests to gain piety as well, as they'd gain theirs by increasing another's.

What do you all think about this? If anyone does test this please let us know! :yes:

Cheers!

[sapi]

Sounds like it'd make sense....

[Spendius]

It seems Muslim generals have higher piety. My Turkish generals quite usually have 5, something I have never seen with my French (it might just be that French historically are miscreants, though). Well, that was a few turns ago before all of them got a pagan mage.

[Bugout]

My own experience with guilds suggest that it is just randomly generated. For example as Spain when I conquered a city or converted a castle to a city every time the first guild offered was the thieves guild when there was no guild there first. After the first 2 thieves guilds I refused and every couple of turns would get a new offer for one of the various guilds, in fact I refused every guild for Zaragoza to see what different kinds I could get and have been offered every kind except the horse breeders, swordsmith and knights of santiago. I am sure that eventually the horse one will show up too. Swordsmith shows up in castles after they become citadels. Unfortunately I have not been offered a Santiago chapter yet though I have completed 8 crusades, so I am not sure about that one. Another thing I have noticed is that almost every city I have come across has a thieves guild in it. So it seems that the computer just accepts the first guild it is offered. I will destroy the guild after I conquer the city and then will be offered various guilds every 3-5 turns without it being the thieves guild first.

[Bugout]

A few observations on diplomacy.
Diplomacy has become more involved to say the least. I am glad to have the hints about how the computer views your offers. However two things that will have a big effect on how things go are visible so you have an idea what is going on, namely the relationship and reputation indicators. If you want cooperation from your allies you have to maintain constant contact with them, getting that first initial treaty and trade rights is not enough in Medieval 2. Just having your diplomat talk to them every couple of turns and giving them 100 florins will keep a very nice relationship and make it far easier to get military access and support for your cardinals to become pope. I would guess that when the computer offers you good deals then it is doing so to try improve its reputation or the relations with you. Also your reputation makes a difference in how willing nations are going to be to cooperate with you. I have watched France with a very untrustworthy reputation be unable to get or keep allies for any period of time. While others with mixed reputations will have 4 or 5 allies for a 100 years or more. I am not sure quite how you get your reputation to improve but I do know that attacking an ally will make you untrustworthy. These are some of my impressions of how diplomacy is working in the game after a week of playing it. :2cents:

[Kobal2fr]

My own experience with guilds suggest that it is just randomly generated. For example as Spain when I conquered a city or converted a castle to a city every time the first guild offered was the thieves guild when there was no guild there first. After the first 2 thieves guilds I refused and every couple of turns would get a new offer for one of the various guilds, in fact I refused every guild for Zaragoza to see what different kinds I could get and have been offered every kind except the horse breeders, swordsmith and knights of santiago. I am sure that eventually the horse one will show up too. Swordsmith.

I don't believe it's totally random.

My impression is that there is a hidden "guild list" of sorts for every city. When you start your game, every guild has the same chance of popping up in any of your cities. When you buy a building or unit that relates to a specific guild or guilds, that guild rank increases, so that over time the list weighs itself towards whatever you've been building there. When a guild is offered and you refuse, it's rank in the list is either reduced by a given value, or brought back to nil.

Here's an example of what I mean :

Let's say Venice starts this way
- Swordsmen : 0
- Merchants : 0
- Thieves : 0
- Theologians : 0
- Hospitallers : 0

Then I build say merchant wharfs, market, upgraded market, brothel, 2 priests and 4 merchants. Now assuming for the sake of example that any building/unit has the same value attached to it, the list now looks like this :

- Merchants : 7
- Theologians : 2
- Thieves : 1
- Swordsmen : 0
- Hospitallers : 0

Merchants are clearly on top, and a couple turns after the city has grown, I get an offer from them. Say I'm weird and I turn it down, the list turns into

- Theologians : 2
- Thieves : 1
- Swords : 0
- Hospitallers : 0
- Merchants : -1

Actually, I'd think the relative values are incremented on a turn basis, ie a merch wharf takes 3 turns to be built, so it increments the Merchant rank by 3 etc..., or it could be a florin thing and each guild rank is equal to the amount of florins you've spent on buildings tied to that guild.
There could also be a global factor to take into account, meaning that maybe if I build a priest in city A, Theologian rank in city A increases by 10, and Theologian rank in every other city I own increases by 1.

While the specifics are still opaque to me, I believe that's the general principle.

As to the Explorers' Guild, it's the first I've been offered in my current Venice, instead of the usual Merchants. This time around I had built a couple diplomats early on and traded maps with every faction except for the Rus, Turks and Egyptians, so I think what happens is that this particular guild's "rank" is increased in all of your cities equally, depending on the overall fog of war percentage you've cleared.

No clue regarding the different knightly orders though, as I've never seen one yet.

[maestro]

I've done a complete listing of all General's traits and their effects.

thread is here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73180)

[Excalibur Bane]

Guilds are a strange thing. I get offered guilds nearly at random, as someone above posted. I've accepted, destroyed the building and get offered another one a few turns later. The fact that I have ignored merchant's for the entire game is interesting, because it is always the first guild type to be offered, and they continue to offer it over and over. I've never trained a single merchant throughout the game, and I've got a Merchant Headquarters in Paris.

I also have a number of Explorer Guilds. They seem to be entirely random, though they seem to only be offered to coastal cities. I can't seem to figure precisely what it does either. Sea movement remains the same, land movement remains the same. Fog of war seems to be constant. I don't know why they couldn't list the effect instead of having to make us guess what it does.

It goes without saying, that destroying a guild in a city won't stop you from being offered another one, so you if you have one that isn't proving useful, you can always scrap it and wait for another, more useful one, to cycle around.

[Beefeater]

One thing I can confirm is that family members in a city with an explorer's guild are likely to pick up the 'explorer' ancillary, who gives +15% movement.

[Temujin]

I also have a number of Explorer Guilds. They seem to be entirely random, though they seem to only be offered to coastal cities.
I have an explorer's guild in Baghdad, playing as the Egyptians.

[Whacker]

OK, I don't recall seeing anything documented to this effect, so I have a question regarding priest mechanics. Playing as England, my priests wandering around my lands seem to gain piety very slowly, which is to be expected from other's posts and findings. My question is, which I have not been able to determine, is do the priests need to be inside cities to gain piety and preach, or should they be parked outside the cities on the maps to preach and gain piety? Or does it matter?

[PickledGecko]

Preists gain piety quickest in areas of low Catholicism. Put them in and around Turkey, Egypt, Jerusalem (high Islam) or Russia (high Orthadox) to gain piety the quickest

[Shahed]

Excellent thread. Definetly my new hangout.

All my questions keep in mind I'm playing Turks and will be for the near future (till I finish at least one campaign).

Guilds: They seem to mostly pop in cities. So that means castles become redundant except for some specialist guilds ?

Can I post questions in this thread btw ?

[Barny Bangs]

Guilds, Guilds, Guilds

I suspect that guild offers depend on your style of playing. I only got offered two thieves guilds, while Assassin's guilds get offered every second turn. My first Assassin's guild in London got upgraded to a HQ after I turned London into an assassin asembly line.

I also got four Templar's guilds, they were offered to me after one of my characters finished a crusade and got the Templar retinue.

Merchants guilds seem to pop up occasionaly, I got one Merchants HQ in Rennes, the others I declined.

For Theologician Guilds, I got offered my first after my prince got a 8-point piety ranking (also after a crusade), which got level ups after only some turns.

Woodsmen guilds were offered to me after I built my first level-4 Archery building, yet I did not recieve possibilites for upgrades yet.

Swordsmith, oh Swordsmith. The guild that made my blood boil. Never got offered one, yet three castles I took (from three different factions) all got swordsmith guilds. I got offered to upgrade the Swordsmith guil in Palermo after I mass-produced some dozen units there, but I am not sure if that was just some coinicidence.

Edit: I forgot: Also got one Explorers Guild, but never got upgraded (for 80 turns)

[Quillan]

Priests can gain piety in a few different ways. Periodically they'll get retinue members that add piety, like monks, choir boys (that just seems wrong somehow), deacons and such. However, most of the incremental increases I've seen come from two trait lines: the anti-heresy trait and the increased faith trait. The first comes from reducing the amount of heresy in a province, so you can park a couple of priests in a province with heresy for a while, and they'll go through a 1 or 2 point piety increase over time. The other only seems to happen when you put the priests in a province you control, but your faith is well in the minority. Over time, as your faith surpasses the previous faith, they get piety increases because they see their preaching make a difference. I've gotten the "enemy of heresy" traits by putting my priests in foreign lands, but I've never gotten the "growing faith" traits if I didn't own the province. I've dumped priests into Turkish territory, cranked my faith up to 80% from 0%, and not gotten the traits. But I have seen it at lower differentials of faith percentages when I owned the province.

[Whacker]

Priests can gain piety in a few different ways. Periodically they'll get retinue members that add piety, like monks, choir boys (that just seems wrong somehow), deacons and such. However, most of the incremental increases I've seen come from two trait lines: the anti-heresy trait and the increased faith trait. The first comes from reducing the amount of heresy in a province, so you can park a couple of priests in a province with heresy for a while, and they'll go through a 1 or 2 point piety increase over time. The other only seems to happen when you put the priests in a province you control, but your faith is well in the minority. Over time, as your faith surpasses the previous faith, they get piety increases because they see their preaching make a difference. I've gotten the "enemy of heresy" traits by putting my priests in foreign lands, but I've never gotten the "growing faith" traits if I didn't own the province. I've dumped priests into Turkish territory, cranked my faith up to 80% from 0%, and not gotten the traits. But I have seen it at lower differentials of faith percentages when I owned the province.

Thanks Quillian, that is helpful info. I just realized while I was reading your post, I think we'll be able to find out when the 1st patch/unpacker is out what the triggers are for the retinues and traits. Hopefully that'll give us a good clue as to what causes them and how to effectively gain them.

Cheers!:balloon2:

[Barny Bangs]

As for priests and the retinue they gain:

My priests always started out with a rather meek piety rating. After building a tier-2 Theologicans Guild in Jerusalem and a cathedral all the priests I build in Jerusalem automatically start with at least a level-5 piety, in most cases even higher (at least one base point + two points from retinue + Bishop trait + guild bonus). On a global scale my priests receive "special" retinue more often (royal seminarian, witch hunter, crusader knight, deacon) in addition to their "normal" retinue (choir boy, monk, etc.).

So mostly my priests from Jerusalme start out as bishops and have from a young age on great piety levels (The pope, one of my guys, is currently 33 years old and had level 10 piety).

IMO theologicans Guild combined with cathedral is far more important for piety levels than cathedral or huge cathedral on its own. The priests I churned out in Edinburgh (huge cathedral) were not that great before I build the Theos guild.

[FactionHeir]

As for priestly piety, there seem to be a few factors:

Putting a priest in a region with heresy AND another religion than yours lets the priest get the purger of heresy line of traits fairly quickly.
If there is only your religion and heresy, it goes quite a bit slower.
Putting a priest in a region with your religion and another one (ie. 70% catholic 30% muslim), will often result in no special traits (except orthodoxy/violence/purity) being assigned at all. If you are lucky you get the growing faith trait.

Putting a catholic in muslim regions without heresy or paganism often results in no gain at all.

Having multiple priests in a region will train them all sometimes and sometimes only trains a few of those. I.e. I had 2 priests in the Algiers region. After 10 turns, one of them had 6 piety, the other one still had 1 piety and only got the "orthodox" trait. Stark difference really.

Bottomline: Put priests in regions with heresy and another religion than yours. They'll train quickest there, especially if its the catholic/heretic combo together with either pagan or orthodox.


On guilds:
You are offered only 1 guild a turn and only can have 1 guild per city/castle. What kind of guild you get is actually fairly random IMO although others may claim otherwise. I most often get offered thieves guild followed by merchants guild. I have never been offered masons, woodsmen and theologian's guild chapters. Knight orders usually seem to appear after crusades, but I have heard conflicting reports about that as well.
I.e. i was producing priests every turn in every city in the holy land and none of them got theologian's guild. Or I was mass producing knights in my european castles and often didn't get offered anything there at all while i keep getting offers from hospitallers in my border castles and cities and newly conquered territories. Oh, and I only ever got a swordsman guild and explorer's guild once on my own (without capturing it from the AI), even though I mass produce dismounted feudals too and have all map info already early game.

[KARTLOS]

question - is it possible to have both templar and hospitaler guilds in your faction. in my experience i only ever have one or the other - i would like to know if this is always the case?

[FactionHeir]

From my experience, yes, you can only have one or the other.

[Quillan]

According to the export_descr_guilds.txt file, you can only have one of the Hospitalar and Templar chapter houses. You can have one of those two, plus a Teutonic or a Santiago depending upon your faction.

;------------------------------------------
Guild templars_chapter_house
building guild_templars_chapter_house
exclude st_johns_chapter_house
levels 100 250 500

;------------------------------------------
Guild st_johns_chapter_house
building guild_st_johns_chapter_house
exclude templars_chapter_house
levels 100 250 500

;------------------------------------------
Guild teutonic_knights_chapter_house
building guild_teutonic_knights_chapter_house
levels 100 250 500

;------------------------------------------
Guild knights_of_santiago_chapter_house
building guild_knights_of_santiago_chapter_house
levels 100 250 500

[Whacker]

According to the export_descr_guilds.txt file, you can only have one of the Hospitalar and Templar chapter houses. You can have one of those two, plus a Teutonic or a Santiago depending upon your faction.

Excellent discussion folks. Question on the mechanics I haven't been able to discern so far from this and a few other threads. Is it a random event that governs if one gets the Hospitalar or Templar houses? The reason I ask is because several others have been offered both in their english campaigns. Have we determined what causes this yet? Reason I ask is if it's possible to "lean" towards the Hospitalars, I'd prefer them over the Templars...

Cheers!:balloon2:

[Nestor]

Did anyone receive more than one offer for guilds in a single turn? I didn't and I have the feeling that I get offered again and again the same ones (for spies and merchants). If this is the case it becomes very difficult to receive an offer for some of the rare guilds that need more work to reach their threshold, even if you always turn down the ones you don't want.

Can someone confirm or provide evidence for the opposite? It could be the reason why we don't get some of the guilds.

[Jagger]

Sounds like if I want to dominate the college of bishops, I need to use assassins to destroy large religious buildings such as cathedrals in the land of my enemies. Then my enemies won't be able to produce high level priests straight out of the factory.

[Bongaroo]

In my French Campaign I was able to dominate the College of Bishops by building Cathedrals. It was late in the campaign and I hadn't done much to keep up relations with the Pope, I was at 2 or 3 on the Pope-o-scope. I built Cathedrals like mad and seemingly with each cathedral I had a priest promoted to cardinal. Maybe not 1 for 1, but almost. My best guess is that as my relations improved with each cathedral, I was more likely to have priests promoted, but I can't be sure.

[Shahed]

TRADE FORTS

I just tried the merchant fort i.e

-Build fort using a general on a resource.
-Put in a few merchants.

Each merchant in the fort will now be trading the resource.

I have tried this with 3 merchants in a fort just outside Constantinople, trading silk. All three are n00bish merchants but are making about a 1000Florins/Turn all together in that fort.

Don't know if this is intended but it works anyway.

*sees a mad rush to build forts in Timbuktu* :2thumbsup:

Discussion thread is here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75540

[Bongaroo]

Can enemy merchants not seize the assets of a merchant in a fort? Seems like an exploit if not.

[Shahed]

Discussion is in this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75540

[sapi]

Can enemy merchants not seize the assets of a merchant in a fort? Seems like an exploit if not.
No, they can't, so i'd class it as an exploit, but the jury's still out on it (see above)

[ArchieGremlin]

I did a bit of digging in order to work out what effect the various trade buildings have on the value of a settlement's trade routes and I thought you might like to see the results.

The short answer is that anything in the building browser with the property "Increase in tradeable goods" will increase your trade income by 10% or 20% of the base value.

It's hard to tell how much extra money you'll make when you're choosing which building to construct next. However, the increase in trade value will affect all land trade and sea export routes in the settlement with the new building. It will also increase the value goods imported from this settlement by other settlements.

For example, if Bruge exports cloth to London then upgrading Bruge's Market to a Fairground will increase the value of London's sea import route from Bruge. (But not the other import routes in London.)

I you want to work out a settlement's total trade bonus then just add the bonuses for each building together. For example, if London has a Shipwright, a Great Market and a Merchant's Guild then the trade bonus is 90%. (30% + 50% + 10%) This means that the value of each trade route is 190% of the basic value. (i.e. 1.9 x base value) The bonuses are all listed in the table below.

Note that the bonuses aren't multiplied together. If you add Merchant's Wharf to London then the value of each trade route won't increase by 20%; it'll increase by a factor of 210/190. (about 10.5%)

A good strategy for maximising your income is build ports first and then the other improvements starting with the cheapest.

I don't know what determines the base value for each trade route.

I haven't looked at the effect of roads on trade.


3^Type|Building|Cost|Trade Bonus|Other Effects
7^Ports|Port|800|20%|Allows 1 sea export route, trains ship units
7^Ports|Shipwright|1600|30%|Allows 2 sea export routes, trains ship units
7^Ports|Dockyard|3200|40%|Allows 3 sea exports routes, trains ship units
7^Ports|Naval Drydock|6400|*50%|*Allows 4 sea export routes, trains ship units
7^Sea Trade|Merchant's Wharf|1600|20%|# Trade fleets available 1
7^Sea Trade|Warehouse|3200|30%|# Trade fleets available 2
7^Sea Trade|Docklands|6400|40%|# Trade fleets available 3
7^Trade|Grain Exchange|600|20%|
7^Trade|Market|1200|30%|
7^Trade|Fairground|2400|40%|
7^Trade|Great Market|4800|50%|
7^Trade|Merchants' Quarter|9600|60%|
7^Merchants' Guild|Merchants' Guild|1000|10%|
7^Merchants' Guild|Master Merchants' Guild|2000|20%|
7^Merchants' Guild|Merchants' Guild Headquarters|3000|*30%|
7^Banks|Merchant Bank|4800|20%|Trains merchants, HRE, Venice and Milan only
7^Banks|Merchant Vault|9600|*30%|Trains merchants, HRE, Venice and Milan only
7^Paper Printing|Printing Press|4800|*20%|Increases happiness, HRE and Poland only
7^Paper Printing|Printing House|9600|*40%|Increases happiness, HRE and Poland only



The buildings listed in this table are the ones that are shown in the game with the property "Increase in tradeable goods". (This matches the "trade_base_income_bonus bonus" property in export_descr_buildings.txt.)

* I've checked the behaviour of most buildings but the ones I couldn't check are marked with a *.

# The "Sea Trade" buildings have the property "Trade fleets available x". As far as I can tell this has no effect on the value of trade. Does anyone know if this property does anything at all? (It maps to the "trade_fleet" property in export_descr_buildings.txt.)

enjoy,
Archie

[ArchieGremlin]

Nuts. I've made a mess of the table and I don't seem to have the right to fix it. Please can a kind admin fix the table for me or allow me to edit it myself.

cheers,
Archie

[sapi]

Nice work on the research there mate!

It seems to me, looking at that, that the best things to build are ports (because they produce naval units, are relitively cheap and also increase trade) and printing presses/houses (for the happiness bonus)

The problem that you will have had with the table is that spaces are automatically condensed.

You can fix this by using another character (such as -) to space the columns or hosting the spreadsheet offsite (at a location such as google spreadsheets (spreadsheets.google.com))

[d3nn16]

Hi,
I'm playing with Venice and the pope was a pain in the ass (at least as long as he was in Italy before I moved him to Caffa :juggle2: ).
I don't know if this was talked about in other posts or if you all know that already and it's worthless to post it.
How many of you sent an assassin kill an agent after saving the game then reloading it because he failed ?
Personally I tried this as soon as I could get assassins and I remarked that the succeeding of an assassin depends on the movements and actions your other agents and generals did before.

So a little test you can do in your campaign right now is choose an assassin and give him a target (you saved the game before) and see if he fails. In this case reload the game and move only one other agent or general and retest with the same target : a very likely result is that your assassin succeeds (this is how I managed to have 13 cardinals, get rid of the pope each time he's nasty and move him to Caffa, kill all Mongolian Generals and transform them in rebels [in most cases when many generals die in a turn the faction is destroyed], and become master of the world :laugh4: ).

Still, if your assassin has 5% chances most of the time he will fail (at least I don't insist much when the assassin has low skill level). When I killed the Mongolian Generals my assassins had 9/10 skill level and 16-20% chances (I had to move other generals and captains around the map and even fight some battles before they succeeded in the same turn).

The trick works with other agents too : priests when burning heretics, merchants (I once succeeded in buying an egyptian merchant with 5% chances), it must work with princess too but I didn't try it.

The first agents I move around a map at the start of a turn are my assassins (sometimes they all get killed except one that succeeds after what the others succeed as well).

Some of you already think it's not their style of gameplay, and prefer more hard games. I agree, and I'll try it in my next campaign.

[Darkarbiter]

I seem to remember if your priests are garrisoned while your building or upgrading churches they tend to gain piety through traits or retinue. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

[sapi]

I'll test it later this arvo - i've got a bunch of priests in jerusalem with nothing better to do.

[TevashSzat]

I believe dark arbiter is correct from reading the triggers for the traits somewhere on the forum