SSHIP - General Discussion

[zsimmortal]

How about Fari lancers/tawashi cav? Also, dismounted fari archers should be able to trade pretty good against the romans. Later on, you get turkish ghulams and Ottoman/Jannisary units.

Haven't seen any Fari Lancers anywhere (there's bodyguard units though). Maybe I don't have anywhere that's high level enough yet? I'd think Kayseri should be, but all I can build are Fari Archer cav, Turkoman cav and Turkish horse archers, which are all pretty decent but don't deal that much damage to tougher units. And yes, the Fari archers are pretty good, but the infantry doesn't hold up against Scoutatoi/Kastrophylakes/Athanatoi (Scoutatoi have 200 units to 123 Foot fari lancers and seem to have better stats too, I'd have to check) and I'm taking horrific losses trying to take settlements (not even to tower fire or oil). I don't really mind if designed as such and it is a nice challenge, just feels kind of lame that I can get better units with the Heitareia barracks in Sis than anywhere else in my empire.

Yes, it's an improved SS 6.4 roster. And I think in the beginning of the game, it's pretty historical. Mostly adjustments need to be done for the later stages.

I like the roster. Maybe it's just my experience or just the Byzantine units.

[j.a.luna]

Yes,mercenary barracks are awesome,you can recruit mercenaries and i think that this building is a great improve for sship but some regions need this buildings, MWY said that was working in add more mercenary barracks in different regions, and also,when sship team have time, i would like see new buildings as italians colonies(that it iss historical) where you can recruit italians mercenaries as genoeses,pisans or venetians specific units and also get income and trade resources
Or as jurcek said a pronoia building for byzzies or new guilts or more economic buildings as banks, resources shops...that this required time but would improve so much sship game

[FOR GONDOR]

what I would love to see is the wester units overhaul mod models be applied to ALL units in the game, as I really enjoy his style, and sometimes its a bit of a throw off to see for example a unit of "archers" in the early era compared to the models of the other things, although I am sure this will one day become a feature. also would be possible to lower the age that generals die of old age to something more realistic. I am tired of having generals living way up into their 70's witch causes the young generals to not have any kids because of the way having children works in Medieval 2

[Dekhatres]

what I would love to see is the wester units overhaul mod models be applied to ALL units in the game, as I really enjoy his style, and sometimes its a bit of a throw off to see for example a unit of "archers" in the early era compared to the models of the other things, although I am sure this will one day become a feature. also would be possible to lower the age that generals die of old age to something more realistic. I am tired of having generals living way up into their 70's witch causes the young generals to not have any kids because of the way having children works in Medieval 2

i dont enjoy wester units overhaul at all, they are way too skinny and dark, i think the old units look better

[achilles-91]

Lift and MWY, obviously you're preoccupied with the current version at the moment, but when you find the time I'd like to hear your ideas regarding the proposed early era campaign. I'd like to help with the research or any other endeavour in any way I can, I've always been fascinated by this often overlooked period and a dark age campaign would be like the best thing ever. Almost all mods are focused on the 12th century period or beyond, very few on earlier times. First order of business would be to choose a suitable start date which is no mean feat. Like Marius said, in 8th century you would have a Muslim superfaction covering half the map and in 9th century Franks control a sizable chunk of Europe and anything earlier would just be a dick measuring contest between Romans and Sassanids/Caliphate with other factions playing a supporting role. Also the amount of overhauling would be enormous. Just looking at the maps, a starting date at around 900 would make more sense.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A very balanced political situation with no too obvious big players. Muslims are quite evenly divided, there are two Frankish factions instead of one, the Roman resurgence is still in it's infancy and they have powerful Bulgars right at their doorstep, all in all a pretty fun scenario I think.
We should have a separate thread for this discussion before it gets out of hand, this one should be for more current affairs.

If this project is going to happen, count me too in.

[Dekhatres]

Lift and MWY, obviously you're preoccupied with the current version at the moment, but when you find the time I'd like to hear your ideas regarding the proposed early era campaign. I'd like to help with the research or any other endeavour in any way I can, I've always been fascinated by this often overlooked period and a dark age campaign would be like the best thing ever. Almost all mods are focused on the 12th century period or beyond, very few on earlier times. First order of business would be to choose a suitable start date which is no mean feat. Like Marius said, in 8th century you would have a Muslim superfaction covering half the map and in 9th century Franks control a sizable chunk of Europe and anything earlier would just be a dick measuring contest between Romans and Sassanids/Caliphate with other factions playing a supporting role. Also the amount of overhauling would be enormous. Just looking at the maps, a starting date at around 900 would make more sense.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A very balanced political situation with no too obvious big players. Muslims are quite evenly divided, there are two Frankish factions instead of one, the Roman resurgence is still in it's infancy and they have powerful Bulgars right at their doorstep, all in all a pretty fun scenario I think.
We should have a separate thread for this discussion before it gets out of hand, this one should be for more current affairs.

a shame i didnt see this earlier

EDIT: btw there's already a mod for this period i think, called East of Rome, maybe you could use some of their work

[Lifthrasir]

I guess there are some mods covering that period. However, none of them is covering the same area as SS.

[jurcek1987]

East of Rome is a 6/7th century mod. But there is Chivalry 2: Sicilan Vespers which has a dark age campaign (heirs of Charlemagne) starting in 888. Obviously it's far less advanced than SS but could be used as a base/reference.

[+Marius+]

A 900 AD start date would incidentally be the first time that anyone can play as the Kingdom of Italy in a Total War game.

Berengar I of Italy ftw.

Would be interesting having loads of pagan factions as well.

Heck, even Hungary would be pagan.


Well, all of that is far, far away.

[achilles-91]

We can help Lifth and MWY, by preparing this campaing for them. We can do factions, banners, repositioning towns and simillar stuff...
Imagine factions transitions to knights and ghulams, it is way more interesting scenarion then going to 'full plate mail'(at least for me). Plus player can exploit cavalry very much in medieval 2,while here it would be harder, because most factions rely on infantry's.

So, my question is... Can we assemble team for doing dark age campaing?
Im up for it.

[beermugcarl]

out of curiosity would you guys put in baby settlements (perma forts) on choke points? is it something that has been discussed?

[Boogie Knight]

Is that map meant to be 900AD on the dot? Because as busy as the British Isles are, I can see at least one they've missed: the kingdom of Dumnonia, which also included part or all (I keep seeing conflicting things on this) of Brittany. Honestly I'd give a nut to play as them, but alas they weren't hugely important at that time. They fought hard against the Saxons, Franks and Irish with varying degrees of success but by 900 they're not long for this world. It's a shame they didn't have more of an impact; the Byzantines occasionally sent envoys throughout the kingdom's history asking them to rejoin the empire. For some reason they never accepted, probably because they saw the disappearance of the Romans as a chance to expand and were optimistic until the end.

But aside from them, Norman emergent faction anyone?

[Lifthrasir]

out of curiosity would you guys put in baby settlements (perma forts) on choke points? is it something that has been discussed?

Well, it has been tried by the past but without a sucessfull result. The main reason is that the AI is not able to use them efficiently. It leaves the main settlements almost empty while keeping the PSF's fully garrisoned. That gives a huge advantage to the human player who just needs to avoid PSF's and to go directly for settlements.

I honestly like to find a way to correct that because it would let us add more "settlements" on the map.


Regarding a Dark Age Campaign, let us fix the existing campaigns first. Then we can focuse on that

[beermugcarl]

well the way i have seen it best implemented is just when they are rarely used and used as literally choke points almost like bridges instead of as historical placements. having mountainous terrain (or something similar) and then a perma fort with the AI on high fortify normally results in success.

I did a lot of previous work with AI but that was about 3 years ago and i'm trying to catch up on the modding scene :3

EDIT: deleted a question because i found the answer in the code.

What is the modding teams opinion on moar land bridges?

[MWY]

As soon as you switch from fortified to any other defense mode, the troops might be stuck in the fort forever. Even constantly on fortified defense mode, the AI doesn't/cant prioritise cities to forts.

Some/a few more land bridges might be useful I think. Do you have suggestions?

[beermugcarl]

see i love land bridges so i would have as many as possible because as far as i see it a smart human will probably use boats anyway but the stupid AI doesn't know what a boat is.
So even terribly unjustifiable land bridges (sicily to tunisia) would be ok in my books because hey at least then the AI will actually do what it should be doing.

as far as ones that are more justifiable, An isle of white to Normandy one would be pretty good as well as something linking to ireland (possibly from south west scotland)

I was literally just adding in land bridges for personal use and one of my favourite ones in terms of the auto campaign impact that i could see was one leading from sweden (hopping islands) into finland

Similar with the greek isles you can island hop the Land bridges (adding more islands when necessary >.>)

So err... that is how i justify it, i justify it as 'the ai is really bad so lets develop a workaround' cough my own opinion though

[fireball900]

So I've been playing Sicily (and England, and HRE, and Byzantines...) on Hard-campaign and I've been getting rather annoyed with my reputation - specifically, the fact that it rapidly drops to despicable for no visible reason. I know in Vanilla M2TW hard-campaign difficulty normalises the human player's reputation to despicable (source: TWC wiki). I'm assuming that's the same in SSHIP.
So I'm asking two related questions. Firstly, is it possible for me to mod that specific trait in the hard difficulty setting so it normalises to neutral like in Medium-campaign difficulty?
And secondly, what are the effects of harder campaign difficulty levels in SSHIP? Were I to just switch back to medium-campaign, would the AI choose worse units, etc. or would it just get less handouts, or what? And, similarly, what is the effect of Very Hard-Campaign?

Thank you.

[beermugcarl]

So I've been playing Sicily (and England, and HRE, and Byzantines...) on Hard-campaign and I've been getting rather annoyed with my reputation - specifically, the fact that it rapidly drops to despicable for no visible reason. I know in Vanilla M2TW hard-campaign difficulty normalises the human player's reputation to despicable (source: TWC wiki). I'm assuming that's the same in SSHIP.
So I'm asking two related questions. Firstly, is it possible for me to mod that specific trait in the hard difficulty setting so it normalises to neutral like in Medium-campaign difficulty?
And secondly, what are the effects of harder campaign difficulty levels in SSHIP? Were I to just switch back to medium-campaign, would the AI choose worse units, etc. or would it just get less handouts, or what? And, similarly, what is the effect of Very Hard-Campaign?

Thank you.

It's built in Ai relations that higher difficulty worsens relations but they don't effect your global reputation or shouldn't

I have to ask though have you been doing anything at all? sacking rebels, executing? etc. they all decrease global relations?

As far as the actual difficulty goes the only real difference should be how the AI itself is set up (normally less aggression on lower difficulties and normally less cash scripts as well)

it shouldn't actually change the AI

[fireball900]

On the reputation page of the wiki:
"On Hard/Very Hard difficulty reputation is normalized to -1."
-1 being worst.

And pre-dispicable I had sacked 2 cities, and conquered 2 others. Most of my prisoners I ransom.
....If I choose ransom, and they can't pay so I execute them, does that count as ransom or execution for rep?

And now the popes declare war on me as soon as they get elected. Which is bizarre, as I've been fighting African rebels, Byzantines and excommunicated Pisa (who attacked first at that!)
Oh, and I annexed Venice. But the pope was attacking me before that.
It's got to the point my assassin has gained 4 stars just from killing popes

[Lifthrasir]

Actually, that's quite realistic considering that the Anglo-Sicilian kingdom and the Papal-States (to not mention all Italian factions and HRE) had very bad relations.

Regarding land bridges, that's something that needs to be tested. For instance, the one between Morocco and Gibraltar has been removed as it was too much in favor of Almoravids when they (and the Spanish factions plus Portugal as well) were controlled by the AI. So you need to consider carefully the gameplay in your equation.

Regarding the PSF's, I've been in contact with Used2BRoz (formerly Rozanov) who worked a lot on them. He mentioned that they preferably need to be put on road crossings and/or with a ressource associated to them, to let the AI knows there's something there. However, it doesn't solve the problem on how the AI handles them.
For gameplay purpose again, I'm not in favor to place them just in front of bridges or in narrow mountain corridors. It blocks the path and again, might be too advantageous for the human player.