Thread for random suggestions

[ingolifs]

A thread for making sugestions as they come to mind. ;D

About marnid and Borcha. Do they need to be in the game? I'm sick of the sight of them. I think it would be more appropriate if we acquired companion heroes through our rank and whatnot. Similar to what happens in The Last Days.

For example, once you become a citizen, a destitute squire shows up in the tavern looking for a new master.

And once you become the Podesta, along with the gonfalonier, you could get a knight bodyguard or something.

[phaedo]

I like that idea.

Another good one would be creating a sort of "potestas urbis", a power of the city. Basically, as you lead your city, accomplishing certain actions give your city (Vicenza, Milan, whatever) increased status in the League; and an opportunity to influence its decisions.

I also think a League Council to decide policy would be pretty cool.

[ingolifs]

If you don't want to get rid of marnid and borcha, you could always rename them to Marnidoni and Borcharella.

I'd like to be able to forward my city in the league standings. The mayfield is one way of doing it, but it'd be great to do it through other ways as well. The council requests and stuff is another way I can see.

[crustyrustyaphid]

no clue what happened to my topic...

I like Borcha being my prisoner and I think Marnid should be in there to!

[Khalid ibn Walid]

I am rather attached to Borcha & Marnid, even if they are old hat. They're like kindly old relatives now, breaks my heart to send them away. And there's an Artemesia to pick up if you get bored of them.

But perhaps in the future that can be changed.

As far as the inter-city rankings, I am not sure how that would be useful. What do you have in mind? Or rather, why?

[nasrudin]

I don't care what happens to Borch-nid, but phaedo's potestas urbis and a Last Days-style companion system sound fantastic!

Edit: should I move my "third tier" thread here?

[johnathanandrews]

If you don't want to get rid of marnid and borcha, you could always rename them to Marnidoni and Borcharella.

It'd be Borcharello and Marnido probably.
I favor changing their names slightly and giving them mustachios!

In the event that you do eventually do away with Marnid and Borcha, they should stand accused in one of the court cases. Perhaps Marnid the Bergher can accuse Borcha, the peasant, of killing their former leader by shooting him in the back of the head with a crossbow and burying the body in the afar land of Caldaria.

I think (as is discussed in the other thread) Podestas need a +2 bonus to leadership, which can be confered by having a gonfalon bearer in your party (nice idea Khalid).
Also, It'd be nice if Bishops got a bonus to intellect upon achieving their office (or shortly thereafter), and freemen got a bonus to agility or strength (perhaps a +1 bonus to one of these abilities).

It'd be nice to see a non-cash material reward from the lists at the fairs.

As an added touch that may be nice to implement much later, it would be interesting to add the occasional merchant of rare and exotic goods that would show up offering a sword of rare quality, softer silk sheets for your bed, slaves, tapestries for your chamber, a gold-gilded chamber pot, ect. Of course, these merchants would not travel on the overland map, but would just appear in your court chamber rarely and stay for a few days, offering a couple rare and exotic (and most likely frivilous) products for an exteemed Podesta.

Edit: Whew.. I tried to modify my post only to find out it had moved.

[Khalid ibn Walid]

nasrudin said:

Edit: should I move my "third tier" thread here?

Actually, playing around, I ended up moving this thread to the Arengo.

Probably better that way, since we can open it to more general suggesters & reserve the sub-forum specifically for testing issues.

[ingolifs]

So, you're not at all concerned with information escaping? It's not that important then?

[Khalid ibn Walid]

ingolifs said:

So, you're not at all concerned with information escaping? It's not that important then?

When we breach classified information, crucial for the fate of the Guelf or Ghibelline, I'll move it back.

For the moment, though, it seems like this is general overall suggestions, so can be kept public.

Main point is that I don't want to clutter the testing board with too many threads that aren't specifically addressing the latest testing version of the mod.

[phaedo]

I was thinking mainly that, if it could be coded, a city with an important enough ranking in the League might be able to gather the communal armies against a specific troublesome marquis or rival city.

But I think to really make that a good feature, cities must be able to switch factions once captured by the communal armies.

[Khalid ibn Walid]

phaedo said:

I was thinking mainly that, if it could be coded, a city with an important enough ranking in the League might be able to gather the communal armies against a specific troublesome marquis or rival city.

But I think to really make that a good feature, cities must be able to switch factions once captured by the communal armies.

Switching factions should be possible, but I warn it's going to be quite a bit of a headache to do. A lot the scripts (esp. Mayfields/Campaigns) will have to be rewritten to allow it.

But I still don't see a strong & pressing "why" for intra-league rankings. I'm planning to attach brief city-on-city and city-on-marquis encounters to the ultimatum/pleas quests. But a single city's army is a pretty equal match for any other city or marquis, particularly if you join & help them out.

If an issue is too big for one city to handle by itself, I don't think forming a sub-league is the way to go. The issue would just be forwarded to Milan or Pavia & added to the list of demands/negotiating points that will be fought for in the league campaigns. I mean, that's implicitly what the leagues and the campaigns are about, after all. One for all, all for one.

And if you need to petition for league assistance on behalf of your city, shouldn't your personal ranking vis-a-vis the League be enough?

On the lists tournaments: yes, your performance/non-performance has effects. I haven't finalized that. It will certainly affect your popularity in the city. But relative rankings are a bit hard to do without everyone fighting everyone else. And that seems a bit hard to code since the lists participants vary so much from fair to fair (and I have to fix it, since the lists-constructions have some bugs). For rankings, I might just record numbers of victories & defeats vis-a-vis you and leave it at that.

[ingolifs]

Another thing, Is it at all possible to have quests change as you gain ranks? It seems to be a bit silly to me to have 'fetch me stuff' quests from bishops and consuls when you're the podesta. I'd think of quests at that stage as more favours that they have to ask of you.

While i'm on the topic of quests, is it also possible to have the specific quests caused by world events, instead of causing them? For example with the raider quest, would it be possible to spawn a raiding party randomly, and when that happens, the counts are able to give you a 'bring raiders to justice' quest? Or perhaps with the imperial magnate quests, whenever a imperial mission party spawns on the map, you get consuls from several towns asking you to 'convince' him to come to their town, and which one you decide to drag him to, affects your standing with all the other towns. I know this sort of thing is possible, because AW has managed that 'defeat the host of mordor' quest, which occurs after the party spawns. I just don't know how hard it is though.

Finally, I think people are growing tired of the standard count quests. Oftentimes, they don't reflect anything meaningful, and they're not fun to complete. I'd like if they were replaced by some more open type quests like those you see in AW's mods. Things where you are required to go out and defeat some parties, and the number of them you defeat influences how much reward you get. Or just more general quests like 'get me some horses' rather than 'get me 7 sumpter horses' where the number and quality (cost to buy) influences your reward. I'm not sure how easy all this would be, and i feel a bit guilty about posting suggestions that would require a lot of work, but better out than in, I suppose.

[Khalid ibn Walid]

I agree with practically everything you say.

There's nothing preventing more elaborate quests & advancing them up the line in "quality".

The original idea was precisely to open up these quests gradually.

- low level players do only the count's grunt-work quests. Consuls, bailiffs & bishops tell him to take a hike. (why should they trust some lowly soldier with these delicate quests?)

- once you reach a certain threshold level, bishops, bailiffs & consuls quests open up and your political influence begins. (You can still do count stuff, but why? that's only sheer rank stuff, and they're pretty boring by now.)

- When you get office, you then take on particular obligations. (mayfields, court days, etc.). Becoming bishop or bailiff would mean different obligations (not yet modelled).

I suppose the question here is whether bishop, consul & bailiff quests should should change because you're count, or count's quests change because you're bishop. I suppose they could. But we're talking an astronomical increase in the number of quests, which may hit up against our creativity barrier..

Your suggestion about linking quests up is also planned. (e.g. particular revolts to conditions of city rule/episcopal rule; a particular noble faction revolts if you do x, etc.)

As for multiple-endedness, there's a bit of it there. You have multiple (OK, two) ways to "complete" imperial & papal legate quests. You can choose who to help/hurt in city revolts. You can choose where to commandeer your pilgrims. etc.

So, there's nothing I disagree with you. It can and should be done. The issue is coming up with them and writing them. My creativity is rather limited.

If you can think of something precise, doable and someone is willing to write the dialogs for, there's is no reason for not doing it.

Heck, why not use your post to open up a "Propose New Quests Here" thread? We could just have posters sketch out the who/what/consqeuences of the quest in some detail and (ideally) write up a draft of the dialogues.

Don't need modding experience. If you're testing, you already have some idea of who's there and what the parameters are to be affected (burghers/nobles/etc.), so it shouldn't be hard. I'd be willing to convert it into mod script.

[ingolifs]

A few ideas for the citizen and Podesta levels, in terms of rewards and stuff:

Because the party sizes seem to increase in this mod faster than they do in vanilla, I'd suggest adding charisma and leadership.

Once you become citizen, your charisma increases by 3, and your leadership by 1. Once you become podesta, your charisma increses by 6 and your leadership by 2.

Also, I'd like to see the number and quality of the hireable troops increase. It's annoying to have to scavenger peasants and militia from all the towns nearby to fill up your army of 61. I'd expect a podestal army to consist of more than just the guys you had before you became count.

The soldiers you can hire from the faction noble could be of a tier higher than what you get in taverns, and also be slightly more abundant. The soldiers available from the barracks, a tier higher again (so you have horsemen, infantry and crossbowmen). When the martinella rings for the mayfield campaign, perhaps the quantities of these troops available could be increased. Is this at all feasable?

Finally, there could be a reward in heroes. Perhaps, at the start, the only hero you can hire is 'marnido', marnid with an itanian name or something But anyway, a fairly low level guy. Once you become a citizen, you find a destitute squire at your tavern looking for a new master. This guy would be mainly weapon skill oriented. Finally, when you become podesta and get your gonfalonier, I think she should have high skills in surgery, wound treatment and first-aid. Also, with some decent points in tactics.

Other positions, when you get them (like bishop and bailiff) could have other rewards. For example, bishop could have a +3 intelligence and +1 to all healing skills bonus.

I dunno, something to think about.