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.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



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.

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:



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:

Castles:



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:



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 .

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

[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

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!

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.

[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

[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.