Horse Breeders Guild - city only!

[Jambo]

It would appear that the Horse Breeders Guild is a city only guild, which might explain why one never sees one in a game. Most factions can only build stables and cavalry in their castle line of buildings...

Crazy.

One for the modders no doubt.

[FactionHeir]

Just remove the word city from the requires section in the EDB file from each level of the guild and you have it for castles too.

[Agent Smith]

Yay! Russia can get a guild that barely anyone one else can!

[TinCow]

Actually, I think it might be intentional. By restricting it to cities, it essentially limits the Horse Breeders Guild to factions that can recruit cavalry in their cities. These happen to be factions that were historically noted for having high quality horses, essentially the Muslim and Iberian factions. That makes sense to me.

[Jambo]

Maybe...

But then the stables line of buildings arguably gives the largest amount of points towards the guild, and they can only be built in castles and castles can't have the guild. So if it's intentional, it's pretty bizarre. Anyway, all cities still end up with Thieves Guilds.

[Shahed]

Right you are TinCow. It's city only to give an advantage to the Eastern factions.
You can achieve it with any faction.

Example As England if you wish to get the guild asap.

• Produce 60 (to be absolutely certain of gaining HQ) Hobilars from a castle.
• Disband them as they are produced unless you want to use them.
• Convert the castle to a city
• Low taxes
• High Chivalry Governor
• Maximise growth, build farms etc.
• Rush to Huge Stone Wall for HB Guild HQ.

Note: You don't need 60 Hobilars, I do that just to be sure and anyway I have cash to throw around.

[Daveybaby]

Right you are TinCow. It's city only to give an advantage to the Eastern factions.

I've said this before w.r.t. swordsmith's guilds - if it is intentional then its a mind bogglingly stupid way of achieving it. The golden rule of game design is: dont obfuscate the rules. The player should be able to determine cause and effect in your game, either by reading the manual, or by obvious in-game feedback. If horse breeders guilds are supposed to be aimed at eastern factions only, then be blatant about it. Make it only available to muslim and orthodox factions. Dont leave the player stumbling around trying to figure out a way to beat the limitations. Dont dangle a carrot in front of us but then force the us to try to come up with exploits just to get it (cos its not like the AI factions are ever going to work it out).

Similarly with swordsmiths guilds - you have to do some pretty detailed digging around in the game files before you discover that a couple of factions can't build em. All this can possibly do is alienate the player who's been playing as a russian wondering why they never get a swordsmiths guild. Either explicitly state that russians cant build em or make it as easy as it is for everyone else. Dont make the player extract descr_guilds.txt to figure it out.

Personally I find it very hard to believe that it's by design, given how broken a lot of the guild attraction mechanism obviously is. Case in point: thieves guilds. The AI obviously has no long term goals w.r.t. trying to attract certain guilds, it just builds the first thing it gets offered in each city - i.e. thieves guilds. This indicates that guilds are supposed to be balanced in terms of how quickly they get offered. Theyre supposed to come along in a way that suits whats being built in that city - its supposed to encourage city diversification - but thieves guilds just stomp all over that because their triggers are too easy to get.

Conversely, masons guilds are pretty damn hard to get. Frankly i never bother since the rewards are pretty poor, and i've yet to see one in an AI city.

Also: alchemists guilds - hands up anybody who has ever seen one in an AI city. Its only possible to get them late in the game once gunpowder arrives, by which point every city already has a guild, so you will have to either demolish an existing guild or have planned in advance and denied all guild requests in your chosen city. The AI doesnt do either of these as far as i can tell, so alchemists guilds might as well come with a rule which says 'only the player is allowed to build these'. If you build one of these then you're effectively using an exploit.

So the whole scheme is fundamentally broken for thieves guilds (too easy), mason's guilds (too hard) and alchemists guilds (too late). Its not beyond the realms of possibility thats swordsmiths guilds (bugged anyway if you consider that the guild HQ gives no extra effects after the master guild, so why have it?) and horse breeders guilds arent similarly broken.



I'd really like to see guilds drastically reassessed in the next patch (or even in the expansion). Make it so that once you have one thieves (or any other type of) guild, it becomes harder to get offered one of that type in your empire - i.e. push up the thresholds for that guild type - so other guilds get a chance. i.e. for the first guild the threshold is 100, for the second guild of the same type its 200, for the third its 300 etc*. Plus make swordsmiths guilds globally available, and make horse breeders guilds possible for castles - and if you want eastern factions to have a cavalry advantage then give it to them up front in some other way.

(*alternatively, every time you gain a guild, reset all of the guild scores to zero for that guild type)

[Husar]

I've said this before w.r.t. swordsmith's guilds - if it is intentional then its a mind bogglingly stupid way of achieving it. The golden rule of game design is: dont obfuscate the rules. The player should be able to determine cause and effect in your game, either by reading the manual, or by obvious in-game feedback.

The games which do that are often boring a lot sooner than those where I can always find new stuff that was hidden before, so I don't entirely agree. Some features are better revealed, but others are not. In this case, it's good as it is, IMO.

[HoreTore]

Factions who can get horse breeders without doing something very special(like building units you wont use in your armies):

- England(Demi-Lancers)
- France(Gendarmes and Mounted Archers)
- Milan(Famiglia Ducale, broken lances and milita)
- Venice(Broken lances and milita)
- Spanish(Jinetes and Gendarmes)
- Portugese(Jinites)
- Moors(Arabs, Christian Guard and Granadine Jinetes)
- Egypt(Mamelukes and arabs)
- Turks(Turkomans and Sipahi)
- Sicily(Broken Lances and milita)
- Hungary(Hussars)
- Poland(Hussars)
- Can russia build cav other than their poor milita cav in cities?

This list is from memory, I might have left out some.

All of the units listed above are units you are very likely to use in your armies. For example, the italians get their heavy cav in cities, the english demi-lancers are as good as castle knights and can be built in cities, the iberians usually use a LOT of jinetes, same goes for the horse archers of the muslim factions.

However, for a lot of factions, these units come late, usually only from a huge city. That means you probably already have a guild in place... So simply demolish the guild in place, or plan far ahead and don't accept guilds where you'll one build cav.

The method I use, is to demolish the guilds already there. I usually do it when gunpowder arrives, as I'll then switch production from castles to cities. I'll have a couple of towns produce gunpowder with the alchemy guild, and a couple others producing cavalry with the horse breeder.

[Shahed]

Good post !

My idea is for those who wish to get the guild in early before Demi Lancers. Updated my 1st post.

[FactionHeir]

Actually you can have a city, get the merchant's guild, recruit loads of merchant cav, destroy the guild and upgrade to horse breeder.

[Philbert]

Factions who can get horse breeders without doing something very special(like building units you wont use in your armies):

- England(Demi-Lancers)
- France(Gendarmes and Mounted Archers)
...

The Danes should be able to get horse breeder's guild as well, since they can train the Norse War Clerics from a church buildings Abbey and up. I use these a lot since they get an experience point when they only frown towards an enemy and can basically be retrained in almost every city since you need your churches anyway.

I will try to dedicate one city to train these in my current Dane Campaign and see if I really can get the Horse lovers' Guild.

[Vladimir]

This should work perfect in Italy. I just turned Florence into a castle on VH to for a quick supply of cavalry.

[Foz]

As HoreTore suggested, I commented out the spy-in-enemy-settlement and spy-mission-success type triggers. The end result after 77 turns on autopilot (I typically start a hotseat game, control mongols, then give up control of my faction in order to make a bunch of turns pass) is no thieves guilds that I can find at all. As a result most cities have mechants or explorers guilds, but Egypt in particular seems to have developed a healthy dose of theologians guilds. Some cities also get knight chapter houses now, as thieves guilds are not turning up to push everything else out. All in all it's a huge step in the right direction, though it makes me cringe to see explorers guilds knowing how worthless they are. Perhaps they ought to be disabled until we can hammer down enough other solutions to actually get to fixing them somehow.

I don't know at what point the AI will start getting some thieves guilds again, but it seems like we should push the numbers up from here to try to achieve balance. It turns out I don't like the one-guild trigger plan as much, as it would generally guarantee the capital will house the thieves guild since it achieves guild ability first. With the trigger mods in place, the capitals are generally getting merchants guilds, which seems just fine with me considering that they usually are the economic center of the empire. I'm not sure whether the guild bonus for producing spies should go up or if either of the two removed triggers should just be reinstated, but my inclination is the former as both removed triggers are likely overpowered on their own, especially since they grant points to all settlements.

About Daveybaby's idea of reworking the guilds, I'm definitely all for it. Many guilds seem rather afterthought-like, and there is clearly a lot more benefit that can be squeezed out of the idea.

I think the combat troop guilds would actually make the most sense if they were just aligned by troop type. It makes great sense from a design perspective to have a melee guild, an archer guild, and a mounted troop guild. The horsebreeders already counts for all cavalry that exist, and doubly so after it is allowed in castles. Swordsmith gains points from only sword troops, but grants a general melee bonus, which seems inconsistent. Woodsmens seems tailor-made to be an archery guild, but is unnecessarily limited to only England. I think a lot of the complaints and balance issues with those 3 guilds would be solved if they were simply expanded into their natural broad-class roles: the given class grants guild points when recruited, and gains benefits from the guild. Castles would then have far more/better guild choices (judging realistically, not by what a player could theoretically accomplish) and each AI faction is likely to make best use of the guild that plays on its unit strengths, lending a more distinct feel to fighting different factions than is currently possible. With some tinkering it may even be possible to get some AI factions to have nearly even odds of getting each of the 3 guilds, mimicking the settlement specialization that some players will employ.

[TinCow]

All in all it's a huge step in the right direction, though it makes me cringe to see explorers guilds knowing how worthless they are. Perhaps they ought to be disabled until we can hammer down enough other solutions to actually get to fixing them somehow.

...

About Daveybaby's idea of reworking the guilds, I'm definitely all for it. Many guilds seem rather afterthought-like, and there is clearly a lot more benefit that can be squeezed out of the idea.

If you want to make the Explorer's Guild useful, I have an idea. Make them give temporary bonuses to movement. For instance, units that start their turn in a city with an Explorer's Guild get an extra 50% movement for that turn. A Master's level increases it to 2 turns (or an extra 100% movement maybe) and a HQ increases it to 3 turns (or an extra 150% movement). Perhaps this could be done by granting traits 100% of the time when in an EG city, then every turn the trait loses 1 rank until it is at 0. As long as there is 1 rank in it, the bonus movement works. Regular EG give rank 1, Master's gives rank 2, HQ gives rank 3.

[FactionHeir]

If you want to make the Explorer's Guild useful, I have an idea. Make them give temporary bonuses to movement. For instance, units that start their turn in a city with an Explorer's Guild get an extra 50% movement for that turn. A Master's level increases it to 2 turns (or an extra 100% movement maybe) and a HQ increases it to 3 turns (or an extra 150% movement). Perhaps this could be done by granting traits 100% of the time when in an EG city, then every turn the trait loses 1 rank until it is at 0. As long as there is 1 rank in it, the bonus movement works. Regular EG give rank 1, Master's gives rank 2, HQ gives rank 3.

Don't think that's currently possible, but its certainly possible to make some named ancillaries only become available if you have a higher level of the explorer guild. And in general increase the chances of getting them when spending a turn in town.

[Jambo]

Here's some initial things I'm testing as changes for the Explorers_Guild:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger intrepid_explorer_vnv_trigger1
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and SettlementBuildingExists = explorers_guild
          and IsGeneral

    AcquireAncillary intrepid_explorer chance  5 

;------------------------------------------
Trigger intrepid_explorer_vnv_trigger2
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and SettlementBuildingExists = m_explorers_guild
          and IsGeneral

    AcquireAncillary intrepid_explorer chance  10 

;------------------------------------------
Trigger intrepid_explorer_vnv_trigger3
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and FactionBuildingExists = gm_explorers_guild
          and IsGeneral

    AcquireAncillary intrepid_explorer chance  10 

;------------------------------------------
Trigger intrepid_explorer_vnv_trigger4
    WhenToTest AgentCreated
    Condition SettlementBuildingExists = explorers_guild

    AcquireAncillary intrepid_explorer chance  25 

;------------------------------------------

Trigger intrepid_explorer_vnv_trigger5
    WhenToTest AgentCreated
    Condition SettlementBuildingExists = m_explorers_guild

    AcquireAncillary intrepid_explorer chance  50 

;------------------------------------------

Trigger intrepid_explorer_vnv_trigger6
    WhenToTest AgentCreated
    Condition FactionBuildingExists = gm_explorers_guild

    AcquireAncillary intrepid_explorer chance  50 

;------------------------------------------
Trigger naval_navigator_vnv_trigger1
    WhenToTest AgentCreated
    Condition IsAdmiral
          and SettlementBuildingExists = explorers_guild

    AcquireAncillary naval_navigator chance  25 

;------------------------------------------
Trigger naval_navigator_vnv_trigger2
    WhenToTest AgentCreated
    Condition IsAdmiral
          and SettlementBuildingExists = m_explorers_guild

    AcquireAncillary naval_navigator chance  50 

;------------------------------------------
Trigger naval_navigator_vnv_trigger3
    WhenToTest AgentCreated
    Condition IsAdmiral
          and FactionBuildingExists = gm_explorers_guild

    AcquireAncillary naval_navigator chance  50 

;------------------------------------------

I also gave trade_based_income bonuses to each level (+1, +2 and +3).

[Foz]

If you want to make the Explorer's Guild useful, I have an idea. Make them give temporary bonuses to movement. For instance, units that start their turn in a city with an Explorer's Guild get an extra 50% movement for that turn. A Master's level increases it to 2 turns (or an extra 100% movement maybe) and a HQ increases it to 3 turns (or an extra 150% movement). Perhaps this could be done by granting traits 100% of the time when in an EG city, then every turn the trait loses 1 rank until it is at 0. As long as there is 1 rank in it, the bonus movement works. Regular EG give rank 1, Master's gives rank 2, HQ gives rank 3.

Don't think that's currently possible, but its certainly possible to make some named ancillaries only become available if you have a higher level of the explorer guild. And in general increase the chances of getting them when spending a turn in town.

Why wouldn't it be possible? Here's something close, I'll finish making it to order when I can. As it is, sitting in an explorers guild builds up movement bonus levels. Shouldn't be too hard to make it work the other way, based on guild level. I start out using a 3 level trait to get the job done. Something like this:

;------------------------------------------
Trait EnhancedMovement
    Characters all

    Level Movement_1
        Description Movement_1_desc
        EffectsDescription Movement_1_effects_desc
        GainMessage Movement_1_gain_desc
        LoseMessage Movement_1_lose_desc
        Threshold  1 

        Effect MovementPoints  5 

    Level Movement_2
        Description Movement_2_desc
        EffectsDescription Movement_2_effects_desc
        GainMessage Movement_2_gain_desc
        LoseMessage Movement_2_lose_desc
        Threshold  2 

        Effect MovementPoints  10 

    Level Movement_3
        Description Movement_3_desc
        EffectsDescription Movement_3_effects_desc
        GainMessage Movement_3_gain_desc
        LoseMessage Movement_3_lose_desc
        Threshold  3 

        Effect MovementPoints  15

That goes in the export_descr_character_traits.txt file (EDCT). IIRC MovementPoints is percentage based, so this should be 50%/100%/150% bonus. I could be mistaken though.

From there, you want triggers that fire on turn start or turn end, your choice. Try these:

;------------------------------------------
Trigger EG_Give_Bonus
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and SettlementBuildingExists >= explorers_guild

    Affects EnhancedMovement  1  Chance  100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger EG_Remove_Bonus_A
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
    Condition not EndedInSettlement

    Affects EnhancedMovement  -1  Chance  100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger EG_Remove_Bonus_B
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and not SettlementBuildingExists >= explorers_guild

    Affects EnhancedMovement  -1  Chance  100

And that also goes in the EDCT, just in the lower (trigger) section. Note that the removal triggers will hit everything that isn't in a explorers guild settlement at the end of the turn. This shouldn't be problematic though, as I recall demonstrating before that minuses to traits can never take them negative, it simply isn't allowed. So, no one can go below 0 in EnhancedMovement ranks, meaning there shouldn't be any quirks as a result.

...and, we're finished. That should get the job done. I haven't tried it, but it ought to work theoretically. I may of course have mistyped things or simply missed something, in which case anyone with a mind to try it can let me know. Also you may need to add descriptions to the correct file - I have no idea what the game does if/when it can't find some that are listed for a trait. It may even be possible to skip all the lines about descriptions and whatnot - I don't make new traits enough to know what is required, or their particular quirks.

[FactionHeir]

In my own working copy of the guilds file, I got a quite good balance of guilds even for AI factions. They tend to get quite a lot of horse breeder and order guilds in particular and some sword and merchants guilds. Of course also the occassional thieves guild.
Haven't seen an assassin guild or explorer guild with the AI yet in my set up, but thats likely due to the AI hardly ever training/using assassins or if they do, they have other guilds already.

[IrishArmenian]

As Russia I get this guild all the time. My cavalry is great, even when their green they start with experience!