Getting the AI to balance guilds

[HoreTore]

How do you get the AI to get other guilds than thieves guild in cities?

I think I can count the number of times I've seen any other guild on one hand... Even Venice and milan has thieves guilds instead of merchants guilds in the italian cities. It's getting a bit dull...

So, does anyone have a way to encourage other guilds for the AI? Any files to change or something like that?

[LordKhaine]

I've seen them have other guilds many times, but they do tend to mainly have thieves guilds. I suspect this is due to the thieves guild being offered so much, and they accept the first guild offer they get. I know as a human player I get offered thieves guilds far more than any other.

[JCoyote]

I've gotten Sword Guilds in many castles... but yeah, first order of business in captured city: knock down the Thieve's Guild.

[Foz]

Well I just did a quick inspection of the export_descr_guilds.txt file to see what you could do about this... and I stumbled right into the reason it happens. Check out these two triggers:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger 0211_Spy_On_Settlement
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and not SettlementIsLocal

    Guild thiefs_guild a  2 

;------------------------------------------
Trigger 0212_Spy_Mission
    WhenToTest SpyMission

    Condition MissionSucceeded

    Guild thiefs_guild a  10

0211 says that anytime a spy ends his turn in an enemy settlement (local would mean you own it, so not local is anyone elses), all settlements controlled by that spy's owner gain 2 points toward a thieves guild. 0212 says when a spy succeeds at a mission, all his owner's settlements get 10 thieves guild points.

0211 is a real killer, since all the computer factions spam spies so much there will always be tons in enemy settlements, probably generating 10-20 thieves guild points each turn at a minimum. Toning 0211 down to 1 point, or even removing its effect entirely, may be able to actually bring some balance to the guild recruitment (as I'm sure the computer just accepts whatever guild it is first offered).

I'm not sure if 0212 refers to missions given by someone to the player in the game, or just to spies completing an assignment you gave them. If it's the latter, that too would be a ridiculous source of thieves guild points to the computer. I've never seen a "spying mission" given from anyone in-game, so I'm speculating it is in fact every time a spy does anything successfully. If true, we'd also want to cut that back a lot probably.

[HoreTore]

Thanks a lot for the help so far :)

So far, 2 possible fixes:

1. find out how to make the ai refuse guilds. or thieves guild in particular. best fix, however, I've no clue how to do it.

2. Tone down those to triggers. I'll try that next time I start a campaign(currently playing russia and having too much fun holding the mongols out..). I'll probably try removing the first one completely, and tuning down the second to 1 or 2...

BTW, I'm 99% sure that "spyingmission" refers to spying on someone, as the other guild missions read "id_merchant_guild_mission" or something like that...

[Carl]

Be warned, the AI seems to re-order it's spys in a settelment to spy on that settelment again at the end of each turn so every spy in every settelment will get the bouns from the second trigger every turn, thats a big one.

[HoreTore]

Was hoping you'd drop by, Carl :)

hmm...How sure are you about that? If that's true, maybe leaving the first one and removing the second one will be better...

[Carl]

hmm...How sure are you about that? If that's true, maybe leaving the first one and removing the second one will be better...

I reguarly see AI spies stand up i cities they are allready in and then dissappear back into it. they don't leave they just re-enter it, bu my own only do that if I order them to.

Was hoping you'd drop by, Carl :)

This will make my ProblemFixer. Ill probably remove both as they easilly accumulate 10+ points a turn each even at 1 point a time.