Merchant ,Priest and Princess in EBII

In M2TW ,besides Spy ,Diplomat and Assassin we have also Priests/Imams ,Princess and Merchants ! Considering the timeline of EB II I'm wondering what use they would have in EBII?

Well for merchants ,Of course they can continue their current role ,But princess and Religious characters I have no idea !!!

As long as religions will be implented, there will be also a use for religion related charakters, imo.

I've been playing M2TW lately and I really hope EB2 doesn't use pricesses, merchants and priests. Here is my reasoning...

The Total War series does some things better than others, when jusged by the standards of PC games in general (i.e. the things I could play instead).

The Good Stuff: Warfare.
RTW (especially EB) does the battlefield better than anything else I've played, and strategic maneuvring is OK.

The OK Stuff: Management.
Running your economy and recruitment is OK, seeing threats coming and deploying to be ready is interesting, but plenty of games do this at least as well.

The Ugly: Agents.
Spies who open gates (ridiculous). Diplomatic agreements that last about a nanosecond. Hitting end of turn and thinking "damn, did I move that diplomat another few inches across the steppe or did I forget". The absolute lack of a "show me all the agents that haven't moved this turn" button, which has been standard in other games for 15 years.

Now M2TW added added merchants who raise trivial amounts of money, and princesses whose diplomacy sticks about as well as the diplomats', and priests who need to be moved and monitored so you can watch a few numbers go up and down. They took the least interesting part of RTW and made it into a larger part of the game -- they made it bigger when they should have made it better. And it drags the average down.

Do not repeat this mistake EB2, EB team. Keep it lean and mean, concentrate on the good stuff. More is not automatically better.

Well, now that I've got Kingdoms there is a little thing that I want to work on which will basically use merchants (though not as they are now), so they'll have to be in. Princesses are quite interesting, and with a modifiable diplomacy engine (to some extent) I'm hoping that these will add a little something something to the game. For priests, we will probably not use if the case is true that any new implemented religions don't get access to their own priests.

Foot

I can agree with you on many things, Morte66. The new agents in M2 seem like a total waste. Merchants either have to be superpowered or dead. The AI will hunt down your merchants, even if they don't want the resource, and buy them out. So you either have to put tons of effort into merchants or none.

And the religious guys piss me off. The AI will cluster them around your town, and you have no way of getting rid of them. Why can't my priests denounce their Imams? Instead I have to send an assassin, who takes for ever to get them all, and then my faction leader is an evil man, because he killed them. I hate that trait system of making my leader evil for using assassins. Assassins are necessary to the game system. I've had my faction leader lose traits when I had an assassin assassinate an enemy assassin. Protecting your people from a killer makes you evil?

I also think that EB does not need those characters. Playing MTW2 i have never used princesses because they can not really change anything. Priests are not suitable for EB period and merchants are useless because of things explained by MarcusAureliusAntonius.

Originally Posted by Foot:
Princesses are quite interesting, and with a modifiable diplomacy engine (to some extent) I'm hoping that these will add a little something something to the game.

I doubt that. In history there were many attempts to make diplomatic relations better this way, but often it was futile (Seleucids and Ptolemaids unsuccesfully tried to make more firm peace by marriages).

Well, it wasn't always done for firm peace....it was often done because the new husband might fall in line for the throne somehow, and then that empire would pass to the Seleukids (or Ptolemaios, depending on who the girl was....I know I've heard it before, but I can't remember if it was a Seleukid princess or a Ptolemaioi Princess).

Originally Posted by Son of Perun:
I doubt that. In history there were many attempts to make diplomatic relations better this way, but often it was futile (Seleucids and Ptolemaids unsuccesfully tried to make more firm peace by marriages).

Unsuccessful for the most part, but they still did it. It seems to have worked better for the Seleukids and Antigonids. Also, marriage between tribes was common and the Carthaginians, Numidians, and Iberians are strong examples that tended to be successful.

Originally Posted by abou:
Also, marriage between tribes was common and the Carthaginians, Numidians, and Iberians are strong examples that tended to be successful.

I didn't know that. Carthaginians had kind of republic, so who did they have instead of princess? A nobleman's or merchant's daugther, perhaps?

Ancient peoples weren't usually to particular about their religion especially around the mediterranian since each culture had analogous gods/myths to each other's. The whole 'crusade' style religion system used for M2TW should be dropped unless you can find a different use for them.

Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
The whole 'crusade' style religion system used for M2TW should be dropped unless you can find a different use for them.

We were thinking of the migrations of the nomadic people and celts for the jihad style stuff. As we are looking into making religion into culture, this makes sense.

Foot

Originally Posted by Foot:
We were thinking of the migrations of the nomadic people and celts for the jihad style stuff. As we are looking into making religion into culture, this makes sense.

Foot

Hmm interesting. Can you explain more please ???

Originally Posted by Foot:
We were thinking of the migrations of the nomadic people and celts for the jihad style stuff. As we are looking into making religion into culture, this makes sense.

Foot

I was refering to the priests and stuff. It would be odd to denounce your leaders and stuff...

How are you going to handle the college of cardinals?

Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
I was refering to the priests and stuff. It would be odd to denounce your leaders and stuff...

How are you going to handle the college of cardinals?

I've already said that priests will likely not make it in.

won't exist. The papal states is going.

Foot

Carthage: prominent Carthaginians often married the daughters of prominent locals to gain their allegiance or sometimes even gave thier own daughters.

During the 2nd punic war the battle of great plains was possible basically thanks to two factors: Hasdrubal (might be the wrong name) giving is daughter in marriage to Syphax to regain allegiance of at least part of the numidians and 4000 celtiberian heavy mercenaries to reinforce the backbone of the army.

I would not deny the agents already, I'm happy with what Foot said. Merchants in M2TW can be useful if given a little love. Princesses were often a tool of politics and there was an influence on the relations. Of course some improvement above the vanilla M2TW must be done. To the spies: one of the better ways to take a town in the ancient times was to conspirate with a faction within the city; success was quite often, so see the spy + open gates as a symbol for treachery.

i think the papal states can be used to simulate casus belli and balance of power.

I think merchants can be quite interesting in EB, particularly if you can mod resources to give other advantages besides cash; I'm fairly sure you can.

It can be used to represent an active attempt by the ruling class to improve infrastructure and such, which is especially important, I think, for the success of the less developed factions.

There are already buildings to do this, sure, but if you're trying to get rid of some buildings to free up some slots for other factions... The only thing, though, I love reading descriptions. For me, it's an important part of the atmosphere in EB; puts thing into perspective. It'd be a shame to see too many missing.

I like the idea of Bellum of resources giving bonuses others than just cash. I'm only afraid that this will end up as, in M2TW, where 10stars merchant eliminating all of the player's merchants (at least mine...)

However, maybe making merchants less expensive(maybe) and by giving resources specific bonuses then it won't just end up as a war for the more lucrative resources while cheap ones are left wasting on the map.

And I am sure to that this can be done because I was already the case in BI where land with abundance of grains(a resource) received a bonuses to the population growth.

As if this could a global bonus for the faction or only for the region, I don't know the limitations to this modding

Princesses for Celts would be fine, and presumably Germans. Ariovistus had a wife who was the daughter of the king of Noricum (at the time a Roman client state).

All new agents can find its use in EB2, you only need to correctly implement them( first suggestion is strongly limit their amount to prevent flooding map with them).

I agree with an earlier post that one of my least favorite things about MTWII are the innumerable characters one has to keep track of. And merchants create incredible amounts of cognitive dissonance for me: something as endemic and pervasive as trade is going to be summed up in a few merchants? Not bloody likely. Better to use them for something else, if at all. Perhaps they could be used as Regents? They were fewer and had more impact politically, afaik. Double as diplomats?

Princesses I can get behind. <ahem> Marriage-created alliances I think can be proven to have been very important diplomatic efforts, successful or not. Not to mention the off-spring caused huge upheavals in the transferring of power.

Priests, my secular humanism aside, are particularly troubling. Someone lamented earlier at suffering the use of them merely to watch some numbers move. I concur. Perhaps they could be changed into philosophers? A good example would be Archimedes at Syracuse: +3 morale for the garrison, +2 stars for the general, etc. It'd be like a moveable ancilliary.

It's quite natural this temptation of using new possibilities. In case of M2TW we have priests, merchants and princesses. IMHO these characters are totally killing playability. Ridiculous trade wars ("duels in the sun" with pouches instead of guns), stupid endless journeys of princesses in search of ideal candidate to marriage. Finally priests who suddenly transform into zombie-heretics. Ekhm, Quo vadis Total War?

I love EB for role playing traits & ancilliaries system. It greatly supports atmosphere and doesn't affect negatively playability of game. I know that diplomacy inherited from CA is not funny retardation. We have so much fatigue with diplomats, please don't give us extra time-wasting strawheads.

ps. Sorry for emphasis ;)

It's kind of nice to marry a 3-star rebel general with nice ancillaries into your family. And if there were a young lady playing this game, and I am sure there are a few, I'd guess it would be received as very forward-thinking and welcoming. Perhaps the dev team is all guys and couldn't care less, but you guys are on the fence, I'd hope that would a consideration. It's not like princesses are totally useless. Merchants and Priests are, imo. I still like the philosopher-character idea.

Originally Posted by HistoryProf:
It's kind of nice to marry a 3-star rebel general with nice ancillaries into your family. And if there were a young lady playing this game, and I am sure there are a few, I'd guess it would be received as very forward-thinking and welcoming. Perhaps the dev team is all guys and couldn't care less, but you guys are on the fence, I'd hope that would a consideration. It's not like princesses are totally useless. Merchants and Priests are, imo. I still like the philosopher-character idea.

I know girl gamers, and they could care less about such a thing. What is more stereotypical than marrying off to some guy you don't know 'cause your a princess? It's a dumb reason to utilize a game element anyhow. Girls would play EB for the same reasons we do....

Well, anecdotal evidence aside, I'd for one (being male, even) would like to see women represented in some way, however that happens.

I remember one of my first thoughts I had when playing RTW, "No women? Typical." Not only were princess influential, but female regents were, as well. Even faction leaders. The Iceni had this one, if I recall...

Originally Posted by HistoryProf:
Priests, my secular humanism aside, are particularly troubling. Someone lamented earlier at suffering the use of them merely to watch some numbers move. I concur. Perhaps they could be changed into philosophers? A good example would be Archimedes at Syracuse: +3 morale for the garrison, +2 stars for the general, etc. It'd be like a moveable ancilliary.

I don't think it's possible to affect generals' abilities with other agents.

You're probably right, though an agent can affect a city: priests can effect religious adherence, merchants/income, etc. So perhaps the many brilliant minds at EB can use that characteristic to enhance gameplay.

Their is no mechanism to use the priests for earlier religions?

An example would be the Romani would recieve a priest who would attempt to spread the Romani Pantheon, the Greeks would recieve a greek priest, etc. etc.

Is there a limit on the number of different priests you can have in game? Could you have 30 different priests? Would this take away from the model and/or unit caps, thus be totally not worth it?

I just thought it would add a little flavor to have priests of Jupiter, Baal, Zues, etc. etc.

Something tells me that it either won't work, or isn't worth the unit spaces it will take up. I was just curious. :2thumbsup:

Originally Posted by HistoryProf:
You're probably right, though an agent can affect a city: priests can effect religious adherence, merchants/income, etc. So perhaps the many brilliant minds at EB can use that characteristic to enhance gameplay.

Can agents affect city income, you mean? You're not talking about the merchant income when staying on a trade resource? I don't think I've spotted any change to the city from agents staying there. Then again I haven't played the game all that much.