Death of the faction leader (Suggestions)

[Mouzafphaerre]

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One of the good features of MTW is the emphasize on the faction leaders, albeit sometimes unbalanced or exaggerated. If you get your king killed or isolated (the most popular locations for that were the Mediterranean isles and Ireland) you would face the risk of serious turmoil, revolts, even a civil war. In RTW your FL is just another FM in that aspect. Have him killed in a crushing defeat and the heir will simply take his place. No effect on gameplay except the loss of a general/governor. (I don't know if rulers' importance has been restored in MiNO.)

Since I haven't noticed (maybe my bad?) any improvements in that area, may I suggest some scripted penalties for both the player and AI factions (especially in case of kingdoms with centralized government models) if the FL gets killed in a defeat or a riot, or isolated (besieged, campaigning for too long in enemy soil, in an island with no ports, too much away from the capital for too long etc.) in terms of increase in global unrest, disloyalty traits of generals/governors, drop to bribe costs for disloyal generals, loss of FL's influence, if possible aphistemenoi resurgences, decrease in tax income maybe, or something neater that I'm so sure you can come up with than I do?
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[Mouzafphaerre]

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Let me also add that FL based penalties will make oliphauntic expansions such as the overgrown Grey Death seen on many faction progress posts on AI's part and will force both human and AI players to establish better instead of crazily expanding. The FL will need to be kept carefully mobile, traversing his realm.
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[johnhughthom]

I would be nice if it was possible to put a "distance to leader" penalty on cities rather than "distance to capital."

[Tellos Athenaios]

This would indeed make it very difficult to play historically as the Seleukids. Consider Antiochos Megas (Anty III) who is singlehandedly responsible for many an EB historical battle. Or was that abou?

Secondly it doesn't make particularly much sense in the factions which relied heavily on:
a) Local autonomy & petty chiefs (think of the 'tribal' factions);
b) Factions with a strong developped Satrapal / Provincial / Similar system. In those cases -AFAIK- the Satrapy is pretty much a state within a state - more colloquial translations of the word Satrap often end up as something + 'king'... (as in local king) or viceroy. By this I mean that a Satrapy was arranged to be pretty much self sufficient as far as bureacratic, civic and military needs go.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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For Seleukeia, OK, point taken*. But how about -say- Lusotana, Epeiros or Pahlava? Suppose Epeiros lose Pyrrhos at the heap of their expansion.

*Still, my mind forces me to think that over expansion would result in a break-apart eventually.
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[Tellos Athenaios]

Historically Epeiros did lose Phyrrhos in the midst of an important campaign - and that didn't mean the end of Epeiros. Mind you, Epeiros turns out to be another city/tribal confederation and being king of Epeiros is surprisingly similar to being the Kunningaz of the Sweboz - at least if I understood Kos' description correctly.

Pahlava was kinda feudalistic if memory serves. Therefore the most powerful clan could largely do as it saw fit. And while all clans were de jure all united under the banner of "The Pahlava" (and would act as such when faced with foreign invasions) in every day matters they were de facto rather like a loose federation. A permanent KH of sorts.

To my understanding: with confederation-style factions and with factions such as the successors this kind of thing (loyalty) is based on the leading tribe/clan and the loyalty of the truly powerful rather than on the distance to leader. Distance to capital makes probably even less sense in this respect- as long as there is a clear dominant political & military factor in the internal workings of the faction and that factor is loyal to the current ruler; the ruler is pretty much safe from dissertion. And if there isn't any such factor the ruler simply isn't safe and dissertion will hapen regardless of where the ruler is located.

EDIT: To say there wouldn't have been any effects at all is probably not exactly true either. But to mod this in...

[oudysseos]

Maybe a true EB for BI mini-mod? Implement loyalty, with rebelling generals reverting to the Eleutheroi? (no room left for shadow-factions). Use religion in some creative way to make assimilation more difficult and interesting? And to furthermore highlight the importance the Faction Leader, look at some of the work that Arthurian and LOTR TW have done with legendary items being passed down or spawned by script. With something like that (royal insignia etc.) you could make the succession from Faction Leader to Heir much less automatic, much more role-playable. Also some ideas from MTW mods like Bloods, Broads and Bastards might be apropos. But I don't think that any of it would work with vanilla EB.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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My reference to Epeiros was for an in-game, supposedly overgrown one. (See most of any AS in the AI progress thread.) I know when and how Pyrrhos died in the real world.

I made my previous post, went to bed but it kept bugging my mind;

In decentralized, confederate structures, there must be even more to a central "thing" to keep them together. To hold the satrapies from deciding to do their own on their own. (Baktria and Hayasdan were Seleucid satrapies. The latter was practically independent and its head was recognized king by foreigners, that's why it was included in EB with a tie so to speak - see the inside forum archive for the historical document and discussions if you wish).

An emphasis on faction leader would represent that "thing" which had some effect to keep them together. It doesn't necessarily have to mean a Louis XIV type king or an Ottoman emperor. But what happened to his empire after Aleksandros dies still stands...

I know, distance to capital is hard-coded sucummurgi.
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[Pharnakes]

Well, we at least will be implementing something along the lines of what you suggest in AtB, including quite a few of the ideas already suggested.

No, I'm not going to tell you exactly which ideas.

If you want to find out, join the team.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I joined the EB twice doing virtually nothing useful mate. (This statement makes one exception that shall not be spoken in public.) I'm not a skilled modder and I'm extremely under-read especially in ancient history. What use do you have in mind for me?
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[Pharnakes]

I don't really know, I was just hoping that since you had been a member of the eb team you must have a certain knowledge of history and modding.

At the moment we are so short handed that anyone who is prepared to be involved in the mod, regardless of ability, is more than welcome.

Even if all you do is come up with crazy and impractical ideas

Its all I do.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Thanks for your offer. TBH I'm not ready to undertake any responsibilities these days. I'm neglecting my own (RL) works too and investing my free computer time to EB, ORG and...concubines.

I'll knock your door when I feel like doing something and ask if you still need a hand.
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[Labrat]

Maybe a true EB for BI mini-mod? Implement loyalty, with rebelling generals reverting to the Eleutheroi? (no room left for shadow-factions).

Somebody tried that, but it resulted in CTDs when a faction was killed. I like the other suggestions, though. IIRC a team member mentioned they were working on a collapsing-faction script, but I guess they gave up on that.