New Mod

[vicberg]

I'm thinking of starting down the path of modding. The Devs have mentioned that his might be considered van guard for changes brought into the game. In order to do this, I'd need support from you (all of you, every last one, absolutely no exceptions at all, nope) for testing, suggestions and ideas. No guarantee that they would make it into the game.

First two things I would be working on are
1) Removing the date checks on events, starting with 1805, then 1806, etc.. so that an early invasion of Austria by France doesn't mean waiting until October for a treaty. HRE could be dissolved after Pressburg. RHC could be resolved after HRE. Limitation is engagement points, which can be tweaked.
2) Providing an open diplomatic system via Regional Decision Cards (or Events). 18 of them would be provided for each power in order to

1. 1) give money (say 100 gold) by dropping it on a country capital
2. 2) transferring ownership of a region to another power
3. 3) give horses by dropping on a capital.

3) With open agreements between players, should the treaty events stay around? My thoughts are yes, and they should NOT require the defeated opponents approval. In other words, Nappy captures Wein, fires Pressburg and it goes off with no choice by Austria. Alternatively, both France and Austria could agree to not do Pressburg and use regional cards instead.

This would enable open agreements, not enforced by the game and unscrupulous players could go back on their word, just like Nappy did.

Thoughts?

[vicberg]

More I'm thinking about this, there's events for transferring money. I'm thinking of using those (probably dropping the amount down from 500 to 100) and making 1 for each major power. Second, might do same with horses. Make them events. Transferring ownership of regions would be RGCs. Drop one for the major power you wish to give the region to ONTO the region and it will transfer control.

Lastly, thinking of tweaking the way annexation works. With these events, they are based on a date and owning the capital. I'm wondering if something similar should happen for all other powers in a more generic way. DOW a minor, get the capital and annex the country, with large relationship costs in the process.

[Franz Ferdinand]

More I'm thinking about this, there's events for transferring money. I'm thinking of using those (probably dropping the amount down from 500 to 100) and making 1 for each major power. Second, might do same with horses. Make them events. Transferring ownership of regions would be RGCs. Drop one for the major power you wish to give the region to ONTO the region and it will transfer control.

Lastly, thinking of tweaking the way annexation works. With these events, they are based on a date and owning the capital. I'm wondering if something similar should happen for all other powers in a more generic way. DOW a minor, get the capital and annex the country, with large relationship costs in the process.

Brilliant, could not agree more. For annexation, it should be like that for smaller minors (1 to 3 cities), while the bigger ones like Denmark, Sweden or the USA should take a few wars to fully annex. Cannot wait to see it. Would be more than happy to test it both in SP and PBEM. I do not know how to mod, but would be more than happy to help with the historic background on diplomacy. This idea is exactly what I would be doing if I knew how to mod. +1

[vicberg]

Do you speak multiple languages Valentino? Adding additional options to give supply is requiring quite a bit of guessing about languages because they are all tied to war with a 3rd party country.

[Franz Ferdinand]

Do you speak multiple languages Valentino? Adding additional options to give supply is requiring quite a bit of guessing about languages because they are all tied to war with a 3rd party country.

A bit confused about your comment. What do you mean by that? If you need help with translations or looking up sources for this mod, I speak Croatian/Serbian (and can understand most Slavic languages), Russian and I can read some Italian. I also used to know some German and was able to translate Latin fairly well, but it has been years since the last time I even looked at texts in these two languages.

[StatboyVT]

I'm thinking of starting down the path of modding. The Devs have mentioned that his might be considered van guard for changes brought into the game. In order to do this, I'd need support from you (all of you, every last one, absolutely no exceptions at all, nope) for testing, suggestions and ideas. No guarantee that they would make it into the game.

First two things I would be working on are
1) Removing the date checks on events, starting with 1805, then 1806, etc.. so that an early invasion of Austria by France doesn't mean waiting until October for a treaty. HRE could be dissolved after Pressburg. RHC could be resolved after HRE. Limitation is engagement points, which can be tweaked.
2) Providing an open diplomatic system via Regional Decision Cards (or Events). 18 of them would be provided for each power in order to

1. 1) give money (say 100 gold) by dropping it on a country capital
2. 2) transferring ownership of a region to another power
3. 3) give horses by dropping on a capital.

3) With open agreements between players, should the treaty events stay around? My thoughts are yes, and they should NOT require the defeated opponents approval. In other words, Nappy captures Wein, fires Pressburg and it goes off with no choice by Austria. Alternatively, both France and Austria could agree to not do Pressburg and use regional cards instead.

This would enable open agreements, not enforced by the game and unscrupulous players could go back on their word, just like Nappy did.

Thoughts?

I'd certainly use the mod, and provide whatever feedback I could. I've felt like Ageod games have lacked a really good modder ever since Clovis stopped. His work with the AI for AACW was amazing, and to this day my favorite AGEOD game I've played was AACW with his mod installed. He got the AI to perform much better than the unmodded version.

Of course, you aren't talking about modding the AI, but still, I really like the work you've done in such a limited amount of time with WON.

Let me throw this out there for you. I'm playing as Prussia. When I look at Saxony's units, they are building lots of new brigades. Infantry, cavalry and artillery. However, they aren't replacing the losses for their original units. Some of their original brigades have elements that are nearly wiped out from attrition, and I'm guessing that's because the AI is not very good at allocating replacements. A small country like Saxony should be more focused on replacements, IMO. I have no idea if it's been the same for other smaller AI nations. I played over a year as France one time, and Bavaria didn't seem to have the same issue. But I've played 2+ years as Prussia in an old game, and about 1 year in a new game, and Saxony has the same issue each time.

So there's some feedback for you...get to work

FYI, here's the link to the Clovis mod thread. Maybe that could give you a few ideas. http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?16957-Struggle-for-a-Vast-Future-1-1

[lycortas2]

But Clovis was a dick so don't become too much like him.

I like most of what you said, I love regional decisions for horses and money transfers.
Uselessly enough I am an expert at Linear B, Attic Greek, and Roman Latin. Stupid archaeology degree.
I think treaty events should stay as they are creating a peace that is outside the limits of even the most optimistic of modding.

[Sir Garnet]

SUBSIDIES and PAID RECRUITS

Quarterly wartime subsidies to allies or co-belligerents for a term of years or the duration of the war would be more in the spirit of policy of the time and make more financial sense than odd one-off payments. Mechanics for reparations are already in the game and I myself and other players used and copied scripts that effected periodic payments in PBEM PON.

A "mercenaries" decision might do the same by paying for needed infantry replacements over time or periodically, the recipient's manpower permitting (or the donor might provide some of the manpower by clearing out its jails or hiring soldiers of misfortune from petty rulers in various places in the Germanies). If this event ran before the AI expended its manpower itself, this would help fill up the weakened formations. There are mechanics for a lot of conditional tests but I don't know if there is a direct or indirect script test for replacement needs, but if so this could trigger only when there was such a need, and not if the formations are full, which would work nicely to support a minor ally.

[vicberg]

As far as my knowledge goes and using regex to search through the source code, I haven't been able to find anything to modify the diplomacy system which is new to WON. I could use events with a duration for trade agreements, subsidies, recruits, but for a wide open game it would require additional events for each power to each power. I might be able to use the multiple choice command, genMCevent, to reduce the amount of events displayed to the user, but it would definitely be a bear to code and still would be hard wired. There isn't an ability to have a user entered value through the front end. Ideally, user wants to give 45 gold per turn for 4 turns and receive 20 horses, the numbers entered by the user. Not possible with current user interface, so the events would end up being hard wired also.

My solution right now that would provide for a wide open political game for PBEM is to use the RGD cards. There's one for money, horses, war supplies. Money provides 100 to target minor or major faction. Horses provides 25 and war supplies provides 25. Each card use costs 5 EP and increases faction relationship of target by 1. Using these cards, two powers could enter into an agreement of any length. The only limitation is EP and the hard coded values (100, 25, 25).

I've created two new cards in addition: Demand Region and Cede Region. Again, these would be by mutual consent between two players and is a two step process. The ceding player places a card on the agreed upon region(s). Next turn, the annexing player(s) place the demand region card on the regions and the region is ceded. This would enable multiple allies to make claims on various regions. All of this is outside of scripted events, which still remain. So Single Players vs. AI will continue to use the diplomacy system and scripted events to demand regions. Scripted events may be used in PBEM also. These are for multi-player flexibility beyond the scripted events.

It's a very simple approach which doesn't always go over with people used to complex models. Again, anything put into an event will be hard coded and more limited. Using RGD cards is very flexible, though somewhat manual process as players will need to track outside of the game, the agreements in place. But it will allow for war between Prussia and Austria leading to a peace agreement, reparations and finally region ceding.

I'd like some feedback before deploying this to this forum.

[vicberg]

And I forgot. I'm working on two more RGD cards. Liberate region and Annex Region. Liberate will return the ownership to the "legitimate" owner. I haven't figured out quite how I will do that yet. The second will be annex region, which will require 1 year of control.

These are all alpha version thinking. So additional input/feedback ideas are welcomed.

[loki100]

As far as my knowledge goes and using regex to search through the source code, I haven't been able to find anything to modify the diplomacy system which is new to WON. I could use events with a duration for trade agreements, subsidies, recruits, but for a wide open game it would require additional events for each power to each power. I might be able to use the multiple choice command, genMCevent, to reduce the amount of events displayed to the user, but it would definitely be a bear to code and still would be hard wired. There isn't an ability to have a user entered value through the front end. Ideally, user wants to give 45 gold per turn for 4 turns and receive 20 horses, the numbers entered by the user. Not possible with current user interface, so the events would end up being hard wired also.

bit of advice here, the diplomacy system is not 'new to WON'. The system in WON is a substantial upgrade on that used in Pride of Nations. However, there are some issues that are a legacy of the PoN approach. I'd strongly suggest looking in the PoN modding forum (the event syntax is the same in both games) for some discussions about how to trigger different AI behaviour, in particular the concepts around 'interests' etc.

Second point from PoN MP games - there was a tendency for player groups to script in whatever diplomatic solutions they wanted (regardless of the sometimes very deliberate constraints in the game engine). A couple of games ended up falling apart and one reason was the ongoing consequences of doing too much of this.

[murat]

Is it possible to add via Regional Decision Cards the option regarding the protectorate/satellite nation?

[vicberg]

There is a command called SetSatelite. I'm not sure of the game affect and it isn't listed on the Wiki, but the answer is yes. I'm testing through the CedeRegion and DemandRegion cards. LiberateRegion works fine. Next is AnnexRegion. Not sure how I'll handle that fully yet. And then yes, I can do the Satellite.

Satellite will have to encompass both Protectorate and Satellite nations. I'm not finding another command for Protectorate.

[vicberg]

And so far, I'm liking what I'm seeing with the card use. It will be a work in progress to tweak the number of cards and duration so cash heavy countries like England can't overuse them to build a large army quickly OR paint the map red in terms of English relationships, but England is limited by conscripts and I'm not including them as a trade commodity so that should limit the army size. As far as diplomatic influence goes, we'll have to play test it out.

[Sir Garnet]

Brilliant, could not agree more. For annexation, it should be like that for smaller minors (1 to 3 cities), while the bigger ones like Denmark, Sweden or the USA should take a few wars to fully annex. Cannot wait to see it. Would be more than happy to test it both in SP and PBEM. I do not know how to mod, but would be more than happy to help with the historic background on diplomacy. This idea is exactly what I would be doing if I knew how to mod. +1

Do you know of an explanation of how peace resolutions and permissible demands and offers work in WON? Just want to see how to retain conquered objectives.

Also, the webwork of war/peace/neutral relationships I've already seen can be rather complex, and predicting whether a recent DOW announcement means a call to war is not easy without tracking the chains of DOWs. In some cases an expected casus belli for an ally does not occur - is that barr , and in others no call to war (though IMP/DIP scores may be confounding the issue from my perspective.

[vicberg]

Here's the basics of how Satellites and Annexations will work. There will be one annexation card and one satellite available at any given time.

Satellites will require 3-6 months (haven't decided yet) to enact from the time the card is played. If a conquered minor, it will cost 50 EP and a roll is made against the average loyalty of all regions in the minor faction towards the major power. If the roll fails, the loyalty of the entire minor faction is dropped towards the major power and there’s a small chance for revolt (as population reacts to the intrusion). I'm tempted, once I get the base in place for this, to incorporate demonstrations as a method to disrupt a satellite or annexation, as loyalty is dropped. Secret police counters demonstrations, so I could see something like this adding another level to the game.

The second way to create a Satellite is to have a diplomatic relationship of 80+ with major faction (possibly 90+ or maybe 100). So France could create a Satellite with Bavaria for example without having to conquer it.

Two ways to create Satellites. Diplomatic and conquest.

Annexations will take 3-6 months and require the country being a satellite or conquered. The same approach is done as Satellite. For a conquered minor, roll versus loyalty, failure means significant loyalty drop and a small chance for revolt. For diplomatic, high relationship value required. Annexation will be resisted more than becoming a satellite, so the roll will be more difficult. Failure in a conquered minor, means a significant drop in loyalty towards the major. Failure in a minor with a high diplomatic relationship will result in a significant drop in diplomatic relationship.

Larger countries will be more difficult to swallow up via conquest as the roll will be based on the loyalty of all regions in the minor country. It will require many develop territories/habeus, etc. in order to improve loyalty.

This is where I might introduce the royal marriage/honorary title cards to increase morale across the entire faction, both limited to 1 per year.

For the “major” minors like Denmark, Sweden (or Swiss), I’m tempted to give them a resistance to annexation/satellite. So if someone focuses EVERYTHING on one of those minors, it would still require a great roll for them to agree and if roll is failed, they are worse off than doing nothing at all.

These will work for SP, but there’s no AI built around them. At least not yet.

[Franz Ferdinand]

Here's the basics of how Satellites and Annexations will work. There will be one annexation card and one satellite available at any given time.

Satellites will require 3-6 months (haven't decided yet) to enact from the time the card is played. If a conquered minor, it will cost 50 EP and a roll is made against the average loyalty of all regions in the minor faction towards the major power. If the roll fails, the loyalty of the entire minor faction is dropped towards the major power and there’s a small chance for revolt (as population reacts to the intrusion). I'm tempted, once I get the base in place for this, to incorporate demonstrations as a method to disrupt a satellite or annexation, as loyalty is dropped. Secret police counters demonstrations, so I could see something like this adding another level to the game.

The second way to create a Satellite is to have a diplomatic relationship of 80+ with major faction (possibly 90+ or maybe 100). So France could create a Satellite with Bavaria for example without having to conquer it.

Two ways to create Satellites. Diplomatic and conquest.

Annexations will take 3-6 months and require the country being a satellite or conquered. The same approach is done as Satellite. For a conquered minor, roll versus loyalty, failure means significant loyalty drop and a small chance for revolt. For diplomatic, high relationship value required. Annexation will be resisted more than becoming a satellite, so the roll will be more difficult. Failure in a conquered minor, means a significant drop in loyalty towards the major. Failure in a minor with a high diplomatic relationship will result in a significant drop in diplomatic relationship.

Larger countries will be more difficult to swallow up via conquest as the roll will be based on the loyalty of all regions in the minor country. It will require many develop territories/habeus, etc. in order to improve loyalty.

This is where I might introduce the royal marriage/honorary title cards to increase morale across the entire faction, both limited to 1 per year.

For the “major” minors like Denmark, Sweden (or Swiss), I’m tempted to give them a resistance to annexation/satellite. So if someone focuses EVERYTHING on one of those minors, it would still require a great roll for them to agree and if roll is failed, they are worse off than doing nothing at all.

These will work for SP, but there’s no AI built around them. At least not yet.

This sounds great. Just because there is so many minors, I would consider having two of each cards rather than one, and maybe 3 months. Also, do you plan on a system that would allow majors to annex other major's territory outside of pbem? Something like 4 to maybe even 5 cities per war sounds fair to me, considering how big majors are.