Out of Character thread

[Ituralde]

I know we are all "lower house" generals and should check out the savegames ourselves, but it is good to have information on this kind of thing for those of us busy with other stuff.

May sound like a rather dumb question, but I must have missed where I can download the current savegame from. Could someone bring me up to date please. Seems everybody's checking the savegame, except me.

[OverKnight]

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/

The saved games are named kotr and year and sometimes with a 1 or 2 indicating prebattle or postbattle.

Edit: Click on "last modified" twice and that should bring up the most recent save.

[OverKnight]

A disturbing vision of the future from my test game:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I didn't put a lot of effort into paying off anyone except the Pope so this may not be inevitable.

I'm defending successfully on all fronts, except Italy, where I've taken the initiative and seized Venice and Genoa while besieging Milan.

Edit: Spoilers tags wouldn't appear on my preview of the post but appeared in the post itself. Weird.

[pevergreen]

Sweet! Time for Fighting!

[Ignoramus]

I guess we will be handing out some declarations of war soon.

[OverKnight]

I guess we will be handing out some declarations of war soon.

They all declared on me. Venice first, then they all began to pile on. The Danes even betrayed our Marriage alliance. Of course this is just my test game run off the initial KotR 1080 save, results in the actual KotR might vary. Though once we reach a certain size we'll most likely be unpopular.

[pevergreen]

For Sure!

Lets get cracking some skulls!

[Lucjan]

For the sake of maintaining a decent sort of blindness in regards to roleplaying our game out realistically in regards to players not being able to make prophetic predictions and what not, I have to advise against playing ahead with kotr saves. No problems with playing a seperate HRE campaign on your own, but please don't play ahead with kotr saves.

We went over this with the WotS game and all agreed that it's better not to do so for the sake of maintaining a proper role playing perspective, keeping the game surprising, and, in all reality, maintaining a decent level of fairness between our dealings and the computer's ai. Let's face it, there's over a dozen of us, and 1 central computer ai trying to outsmart us. Let's keep this challenging by not peering into the future so to speak.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Okay, it's the midterms.

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/kotr1100.zip

I will post a midterm report and begin the session of the Diet shortly. Thank you for your patience.

[OverKnight]

For the sake of maintaining a decent sort of blindness in regards to roleplaying our game out realistically in regards to players not being able to make prophetic predictions and what not, I have to advise against playing ahead with kotr saves. No problems with playing a seperate HRE campaign on your own, but please don't play ahead with kotr saves.

The game I posted off of was a separate HRE campaign played 34 turns forward from the initial KotR 1080 save. The original save was used to ensure I got the unit size and difficulty settings right and to check compatability with the medifix mod. I've been playing the separate campaign to practice battles and to become familiar with HRE units. I have not been playing forward from the recent saves. I apologize if I unintentionally gave that impression.

We went over this with the WotS game and all agreed that it's better not to do so for the sake of maintaining a proper role playing perspective, keeping the game surprising, and, in all reality, maintaining a decent level of fairness between our dealings and the computer's ai.

This is a valid point, I now realize even posting off of a another HRE game could spoil people or ruin the surprise of the game. I erred when I posted specific information. In the future, I might post about a glitch or oddity, like adoption, but I won't post again about specifics like diplomacy, game history, or scripted events from my HRE game.

So to sum up, I made an error in protocol but I am not in the Oracle business.

[Ignoramus]

It's alright dlain, I don't think any harm has come of it.

On another note, I have a suggestion for TinCow and the Imperial Library.

I suggest that we record the achievements of each Chancellor and Kaiser. We could have the Chancellor/Kaiser's avatar, the list of towns and castles conquered during his reign, a map of the provinces conquered during his reign, and a list of the battles won and lost during his reign.

[pevergreen]

I agree with Ignoramus

[TinCow]

I'll do an update of the Library tonight with the new avatar and info. I'll create a section as suggested for cataloging the events of each Emperor's reign.

I have another question which perhaps belongs in the Diet, but given the nature of the previous land allocation discussions, I think it's best to bring it up here first. Do Houses have the right to trade settlements that have already been allocated to them by the Emperor? If we really have sovereign control over our lands, shouldn't we be free to dispose of them as we wish?

[Lucjan]

I believe that was one of the argument I made for houses being allocated settlements rather than being able to vote for them. They have to earn them first, but can later trade them freely via a passed edict.

Also, to Dlain, seems that I may have come out a little snappy on that one. Sorry, didn't mean any harm.

[econ21]

Do Houses have the right to trade settlements that have already been allocated to them by the Emperor? If we really have sovereign control over our lands, shouldn't we be free to dispose of them as we wish?

Yes, I think Houses (read: Dukes) should be able to dispose of settlements as they see fit. Counts who are the sons of a Duke should have a veto over trading their own settlement though. (It's only the bonded Counts who can be turfed out by the Duke - he has to put up with his own rotten kids.)

I'm inclined to keep settlement allocation out of edicts though - this is the Middle Ages, we don't want too much democracy.

[Lucjan]

this is the Middle Ages, we don't want too much democracy

Interesting idea, I like it. Opens up some nice, private wheelings and dealings.

[TinCow]

The Library has been updated (it's easy when there's only a few avatars!). Unfortunately, it seems that CA changed the way the character view screen works. In RTW, the entire area would be devoted to retinue and V&V if the character was in a ship or in a fort. In M2TW, the divider line is there no matter where the person is. This makes it much more of a pain in the ass for me to take screenshots of the V&V, etc. I will certainly continue doing it, but since I will have to start cutting and pasting from multiple photos for each avatar with more than 5 traits, they may not look as neat as they did in RTW. Apologies for that. If anyone can figure out how to view a full screen of traits, I would very much like to know.

Also, for anyone who can't see the World Map well and/or hasn't loaded up the saved game: Ajaccio (Corsica) has been captured by Milan and Cagliari (Sardinia) is under siege by Sicily and likely to be taken. Even if Sicily fails, a Milanese army is next to Cagliari as well and will likely capture it. So... for whoever said that Milan does not have a castle settlement, that is not true.

[Ituralde]

No castle on the mainland...
Only looked at the savegame with fog of war on.

[Ignoramus]

I don't think we should turn fog of war off, even for viewing purposes. We have an enormous advantage over the AI, so why do we need to cheat?

[OverKnight]

TinCow is the librarian, so in order to get some of his pretty pictures FOW has to be off. I like having that picture of the known world and seeing how the other factions are doing.

However, I do hope that actual game play is occurring with fog of war on, and that we're basing in game decisions off of this.

Was this issue ever dealt with in WotS? Any house rules?

[econ21]

Was this issue ever dealt with in WotS? Any house rules?

I think we came to the view that:
(a) the Consul/Chancellor should strictly play blind;
(b) with other players what they do in private is their business - some did play on from saves for fun - but they should not publicise anything that could prejudice the game and they should not try to influence other players with things learnt from parallel games.

[TinCow]

I have absolutely no issues with turning off FOW to see who owns what. Surely it would be public knowledge after at least 2 years that Milan had conquered Corsica. Every last peasant would know by then, if they'd bothered to ask. Conquests of territories are not things that go unnoticed by other nations. So, unless there's some major belief to the contrary, I will continue to post the world map with FOW off in the Library.

I don't agree with turning off FOW during a Chancellor's gameplay, because it can reveal armies and other things that it shouldn't. However, that's different than knowing that Scotland has taken Inverness.

[Lucjan]

I have to agree with TinCow on this one.

The chancellor should, at no point in time for any reason, turn their fog of war off. Players should only base comments, information and opinions on saves that keep fog of war on.

However, I see no problem in TinCow turning fog of war off to update our map with the correct political situation for the time.

[econ21]

Playing with fog of war on, but periodically (in Diet sessions) revealing ownership of territories in the library seems a good compromise.

It can be a good surprise while playing as Chancellor to find out the hard way that an AI faction was suddenly where you did not expect it to be. E.g. it might have been fun to race for Antwerp but then discover the Danes had beaten us there.

But eventually word should get around and it would be silly to have an edict to take Antwerp premised on the wrong information about its owner.

[Lucjan]

Well, it was pretty easy to tell Antwerp fell to the Danes, our border colors with it changed from being on a rebel province to a Danish one.

But I agree with both of you on this one.

[Patriarch of Constantinople]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1092

If I may suggest for Dukes and such, the Heraldry Mod

The Heraldry Mod is actually quite good. At the end of a turn, if a General controls a province, they get the Coat of Arms of that province (I don't know if there are bonuses). I believe the coat of arms can be traded off. Try it out.

[OverKnight]

TinCow, I'm expecting Max to nail his 95 theses onto the door of the church in Nuremberg at any moment.

[Lucjan]

Max is a firebrand, but he's in a tenuous position. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Dukedom of Bavaria.

[TinCow]

Yeah, I didn't really want to come right out with that so early, but I had already established that trait in my first story. Given that, it didn't make much sense Mandorf to just sit there and not respond when the Cardinal so blatantly praised the Pope. It kind of forced me to come out with it. I fully expect to be ostricized from the Diet. It would be fun if some other people would aggitate against the Pope, but somehow I doubt that's going to happen. Since it'll just be me on my lonesome, I'm rather doomed. It would be hillarious if I got burned by an Inquisitor, but it's equally possible that everyone BUT me will get burned. Silly AI...

[OverKnight]

I wouldn't worry TinCow, if a few of us do get barbecued, Max will be seen as the only man who saw it coming. Churchill to everyone else's Chamberlain.