Guilds

[Lifthrasir]

Not all Cumans moved to Hungary. Beside that I'd be very surprised to see a guild system for them and for the Mongols
My guess is that an alternative option has to be found for these factions unless I'm completely wrong

[Jurand of Cracow]

If we would have a big team of the modders then some solutions from the EBII steppe factions (Saka, Sauromatae) could be introduced.
However, for the moment I think we should stick to the idea that the more urbanized society (ie. the bigger settlements it supports), the more developed solutions they adopt, and this means they'd be using the system of the neighboring factions. Thus I wouldn't make separate solutions for them.
I admit I don't care much for the Mongols, as they'd historically leave in place the socio-economic institutions they meet while conquering regions. They just wanted tribute and control. Furthermore, I don't think they deserve attention from a perspective of a player - there'd be very few people ever playing Mongol during the next 100 years of the SSHIP.

[Lifthrasir]

Cumans aren't an emerging faction and are playable. They had more nomadic attributes than sedentary one. I see your solution above only as a short term one for the time that a better one can be found.Beside the fact that it is unhistorical, it also has the disadvantage to standardize the factions while I'm trying to see how to make them unique on the gameplay side. Simplicity is not always the best solution.

[j.a.luna]

Cumans aren't an emerging faction and are playable. They had more nomadic attributes than sedentary one. I see your solution above only as a short term one for the time that a better one can be found.Beside the fact that it is unhistorical, it also has the disadvantage to standardize the factions while I'm trying to see how to make them unique on the gameplay side. Simplicity is not always the best solution.

Yes, i am also in favour to make more unique the gameplay for differents factions and culture, this is the funny and inmersive in a game of strategy...
In this case you can ''learn'' the examples of EBII with Saka faction, maybe they could have poor economy in poor developers settlements and buildings but for other thing they could benefit for sell slaves in markets, silk roads and make fast ''razzias'' or incursions in enemy territoties for adquire money, they were stteppe warriors and had many horsearchers and cavalry so a solution would be give them money for other ''non-civilizated'' methods, and same for mongols and pagans lithuanians at the beginning of the game... HUN STYLE

[Jurand of Cracow]

Cumans aren't an emerging faction and are playable. They had more nomadic attributes than sedentary one. I see your solution above only as a short term one for the time that a better one can be found.Beside the fact that it is unhistorical, it also has the disadvantage to standardize the factions while I'm trying to see how to make them unique on the gameplay side. Simplicity is not always the best solution.

I fully agree with that. And yes, this is a short-term solution.
I'm always repeating "it's better to be roughly right than perfectly wrong".
The history of M2TW modding is littered with projects that failed due to over-ambitiousness.
And the major advantage of the SSHIP is that it actually smoothly works, what I've recently learned trying to play Titanium (CTDs at the end of the battles... I thought it's the matter the distant RTW past).

[Jurand of Cracow]

Some further thoughts on “the guild system”
1.
In the game there’re a lot of buildings. In one city you can have more than 24. Making more of them would be counterproductive from the gameplay perspective: every additional building blurs the your picture of role and use of a settlement in your game. Too many is not that good – the best proof is that in the more recent TW titles the number of the buildings is heavily cut (too heavily to my taste, but still).
2.
Historically, the guilds would be present in cities in a particular legal setting from the high Middle Ages. There’d be just one or few guilds at the beginning of the existence of a city, but then they’d multiply by dozens. At the same time, I can’t imagine that each of them deserves a separate building to convey historicity for the gameplay. I don’t think there’s a need to make guilds an explicit “building” – they’re woven in the concepts of “Minor City” or “Large City”, or in many other buildings like “Merchant Quarters” etc.
3.
Currently, in the SSHIP (and other M2TW medieval mods) you can have just one “guild” per settlement. Many (most?) of the guilds are not historical in the sense they were not guilds but something different. Look at the Theologians, Assassins, but even Explorers or Horse Breeders. The “HQ” level – something unique in the world – is a complete fantasy. So the mechanics doesn’t convey anything historical called “the guilds”, and even doesn’t have a potential to do so. However, it can convey something different.
4.
The very mechanics of the “guild system” is interesting and adds to the variety to the game. You don’t build them, but through your actions you collect the hidden points – both at a settlement level and also at the faction level. You can get a guild while the number of points passes a certain threshold but you can also reject one guild to wait for another. This means that there are many choices for the player – and gaming is exactly about making choices.
5.
The “guilds” also provide interesting benefits often at the faction level, and sometimes very unique – like bonuses for the agents at spawning. This also adds to the variety given that there’s one-per-settlement. The system gives/emphasizes a particular feature/character of a settlement/province. In my games, I always know where do I have a Master Theologian’s guild (because I train priests only there) or a Merchants’ guild (because I train merchants only there) or if I have a Master Thieves’ one (it gives PO faction-wide).
6.
The system has been extended (some time ago) and updated by MWY for the new release of the SSHIP. There’re new “guilds”: the number grows to 17, and the points have been reviewed and updated (a heavy work indeed). This should not be wasted.
7.
However, many of the features of the system should be updated and the whole system should be balanced. For instance, the benefits: for some “guilds” the benefits are too good (Master Thieves: +5% PO for all the settlements), while for some they’re very small (Master Explorers: additional navy doesn’t matter since you get it from the other sources beforehand). Or the prices were never adjusted – they’re 1000, 2000, 3000 while the income in the course of the modification changed and the prices of the units as well. The guilds are very cheap in comparison to the other buildings and there's no choice if to accept them on the basis of the costs (you always accept that 1000 if it it would be 3000?). And so forth.
8.
The modding resources (modders, their time and dedication) are scarce and the audience for the mods has shrunk. There's neither need nor possibility to make swapping changes.

It's also worth to read this post describing the whole logic of the guilds.


My conclusions:
A. There’s absolutely neither need nor desirability to make a new system based on multiplying the guilds as normal buildings.
B. The “guild mechanics” should be kept in the game – both for the gameplay and for the amount of work put into it.
C. What should be changed is the narrative. We shouldn't call them “the guilds”. They're about something different. They're unique.D. According to the narrative, some features should be changed. The existing assets should be harnessed, but no revolution should be made.


My proposal for the narrative is:

The system refers to “Fame of the province” or “Specialization of the province” or “Dominating Societal Activities”: what the inhabitants of a province specialize in, for what this province stands out in the king’s realm, how it’s unique for the player. In many games (and also in the SSHIP) some provinces are “different” from the others – like Mekka, Jerusalem or Rome. This system, however, adds additional level and is dependent on the decisions of the player by accepting (or not) the offered building (of course, this is very much true for the current system called "guilds").

There’ll be three types of this “fame”.
- economic organizations defined as "An internal organization of (some) inhabitants of a settlement which dominates the economic landscape of the province". In other words: what is the main economic occupation of the people in the province. Do the people make much of the textiles? Or maybe they are famous for their crafts? Or maybe they mainly fish? In-game such a specialization would provide various economic benefits and might be seen as the current (somehow more plausible) guilds: Masons, Merchants, Craftsmen, Fishermen, Tanners, Weavers, Brewers, Printers and Hanseatic.
- organizations related to particular activities of the parts of society. They provide some faction-wide benefits and buffs for some agents: Secret Organizations (ex-Thieves: buffs for the spies and assassins), Theologians (buffs for the priests), Explorers (bonuses for the navies for sure, more to be developed), (Assassins would be removed or replaces with another name and another function). Well, some provinces were famous for the monasteries and monks, while some cities were famous for the criminal world.
- society (people and specialist) in a province providing military benefits: Horse Breeders, Armoursmiths, Swordsmiths, Archers (they obviously provide better units or may add something to the existing ones).


So this a broad scheme for a possible modification. The current guilds would be renamed, details adjusted, benefits reviewed, points recounted – but the mechanics would stay and 90% of the current system would be in the game.

Just to recall what I’ve already written on the approach to the whole issue:

I'd propose the following principles:
1) the goal is to make the guilds' system more realistic/historical,
2) we don't want to make the system too complicated for a player to understand it (rather few changes to the whole logic),
3) the engine mechanics stays what means:
--- one guild per settlement,
--- founding guilds, not building them,
--- collecting (hidden) points for various actions, done per settlement, but also per faction.
--- between 1 and 3 stages of buildings,
--- they provide some of the following bonuses: additional (flat) income; bonuses to trade income, public order, religious conversion, population growth, buildings' costs (both for the settlement and faction-wide); experience of the units; availability of units; better characteristics of the priests/merchants/diplomats/spies/assassins, maybe princesses and generals.
4) the number of the guilds may increase just by a few (due to the in-game limit of the buildings).
5) buildings should be the same for all 3 religions (but some guild may be unavailable for some religions?).
6) availability related to the level of a settlement (eg Minor City)

I'm always repeating "it's better to be roughly right than perfectly wrong".
The history of M2TW modding is littered with projects that failed due to over-ambitiousness.

[Kilo11]

JoC has (almost) won me over here. There is a lot in here that I think everyone would agree on and that is always being slightly improved where possible. However, there are two things that impact directly on my earlier proposal (scrap the guilds, replace them with normal structures, so that there can be multiple per settlement) that JoC is right about.

1. There are indeed a lot of buildings that can be built in each settlement. Many buildings is not bad, but the fact that they can all be built by everyone makes things get overcrowded fast, and that makes it (as JoC said) hard to really get a good view of each settlement. Having guilds be buildable by all, with multiple per settlement, will just make the settlements chocked full of buildings, which is tiresome. I think we should be aiming to compress some building trees and axe some odd or redundant structures, in order to add more flavor to the factions, making some unique Muslim structures, some unique southern European ones, etc.

4. The points and mechanics of the guilds are indeed interesting, and ought not be wasted, if there is a way to do that. Moreover, these points could be used for a variety of interesting and varied purposes, which might also be worth exploring more.


My current work:

In trying to crack the guild system, and figure out how to make things run more efficiently and using all of the engines resources I think I have figured out a way to use the guild mechanics without being limited to one guild per settlement. This is still very preliminary, as there is a lot of work to do just to check if it really functions in game, but I am hopeful about it. However, the "solution" is clunky, has some limitations, and adds a number of buildings. Now, I no longer think we should be aiming for multiple guilds per settlement, for the reasons JoC mentioned, but we should aim to use the points system and the "guilds" system to make the building trees in the game more interesting. For example, we could make it so a prerequisite for the highest tier of smithing is an armorsmiths guild in settlement. In this way, the "guilds" could be recycled into the building tree in a positive way, without the loss of the mechanics, which are actually pretty cool.

Now, I've been keeping a lid on this work so far, as I didn't want to excite anyone prematurely, but I think it's important that I ask now whether such a method would be interesting to anyone, or whether there would be a desire to use such a thing? This is important, cause it will take me some serious time and effort, and I'd hate to do it and then have no one take an interest. The pros and cons (that I've thought of) are the following:

Pros

1. Allows for a more involved building tree for many standard structures --> use points to determine the availability of a "guild", the "guild" is a prereq for the next tier of the tree
2. Utilizes the guild mechanics, without being tied to one per settlement
3. Can be exported to a variety of other modding purposes as well, including some narrative-gameplay elements, or things related to a sort of "faction progression" (I can see many applications of this method to mods like Third Age)

Cons:

1. Adds a number of building trees (already a problem for some mods)
2. Will necessarily involve some scripting, which is always (at least for me) a bit more tricky
3. Does not allow for both multiple guilds and multiple tiers for the guilds. I.e. if you want to have a three tier guild, then you can't have two guilds, and vice versa.

Let me know what your thoughts are on this. I will probably keep working on it anyway, as it seems like a resource that would be of interest to many different modding groups, but I had initially thought it up for SSHIP, so it would be good to see your thougts.

[Jurand of Cracow]

A very interesting article on the economics of guilds is to be read here.