Hard to get - best tip

[Daveybaby]

Assassins guild is pretty damn easy, especially since patch 1.2.

(1) Build 5 assassins.
(2) Find a rebel stack somewhere convenient
(3) Assassinate the captain of the rebel stack 5 times (i.e. with each assassin)
(4) DONT DESTROY THE REBEL STACK - LEAVE IT THERE
(5) Repeat step 3 every turn

You will start getting assassins guild offers all over the place. After a surprisingly short time you should have an assassins guild HQ.

Yes, its a bit cheesy. Meh. If you dont like the cheesiness of this then just build lots of assassins from the same place, and perform lots of assassinations on 'proper' targets. A bit more diffcult and time consuming, but it should work just as well.



As for the masons guild:

(1) Pick the city you want your guild in (not a castle)
(2) Build a town watch (or a leather tanner will work just as well) there.
(3) Once built, destroy the town watch.
(4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 ad infinitum.

This is even more cheesy, but its pretty much the only realistic way of getting a masons guild. Note that i havent actually tried this out, but according to the game textfiles, it should work (should take about 10-13 build/destroy cycles to get offered the low level guild).

[darth_napo]

^ what surprises me is why CA didn't fix the broken guilds (I mean about attracting them), and also that even most major mods that out now didn't fix them either (AFAIK NONE of them did it).

[FactionHeir]

^ what surprises me is why CA didn't fix the broken guilds (I mean about attracting them), and also that even most major mods that out now didn't fix them either (AFAIK NONE of them did it).

Can't really call it fixing. Its a matter of choice, taste, and balancing. I would think most modders who did change the file did it for themselves to their own tastes. I for one have, but I don't thnk that this would be everyone else's taste, so there is no good reason to publish it.

[Daveybaby]

Can't really call it fixing. Its a matter of choice, taste, and balancing.

Ever seen the AI build a mason's guild? Or half the other guilds for that matter - its all thieves guilds and the occasional explorers guild or swordsmiths guild once in a while. If this is how the game is supposed to be then the AI doesnt know how to play it properly.

So either the AI needs fixing or the guild triggers do. Since i very much doubt there's an AI module dealing with choosing guilds I'll go with the triggers.

Coincidentally (or not) this thread has just been resurrected.

[CMcMahon]

Ever seen the AI build a mason's guild?

The Milanese built on in Milan in my Scottish campaign.

[HoreTore]

Well, I've had the Masons Guild HQ... Converted Toulouse(Citadel) to a city, and prioritized barracks, eventually I got it. I didn't play to get it either, I was aiming for musketeers...

@ Daveybaby: what you need to do is reduce the thieves guild. That guild gets points WAY too quickly, and as such gets offered a long time before any other guilds. To do that, try lowering the numbers for the successful spy mission, spy in settlement(these two can actually be removed completely) and recruitspy triggers. I would leave the last one as the highest, as it means that the guild will appear where spies are built. Another way I haven't tested yet, is add a trigger for a spy failing it's mission, giving -10 points or so. With the increased chances of failure in 1.2, it might be a better solution.

[Hermann the Lombard]

I thought there was a penalty for failing spy missions (other than death to the spy and damage to relations!). Is that only for failing assassination missions?

[seari]

I don't know but isn't it better to build/destroy mustering halls.
They only need 1 turn to build and when you have built/destroyed 60 or something convert your castle/fortress/citadel to city and upgrade to huge city.
Personally I think the Mason guild HQ is fairly good. It saves you 30% on construction cost. So eventually it'll save you a lot of money (especially when building those huge cathedrals to keep the Pope happy)

[alpaca]

A different but important question is: Is it even worth the hassle? The guild is very hard to get and almost all it does is to give you a bonus on stone. That means you build walls, castles, towers and guilds cheaper as nothing else uses stone. Great stuff, eh :P

[khaos83_2000]

To me, it doesn't really matter. But it adds another trophy to the display

[ReiseReise]

I thought masons guild reduced building costs for all buildings.

The problem with AI Thieves guild is not in the guild itself, its that the AI loves to spam spies all over the place so it gets points in every city and seems to build the first guild offered.

[Sir Kermit]

Can't you have multiple guilds in the same city?

[Rhedd]

Can't you have multiple guilds in the same city?

Nope. Definitely not.