Question about ancillaries.

[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.




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?

[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.

[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!

[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]= 1073741823

The 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!"

[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? :p

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.

[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

[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.

[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.

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.

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.

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