[MOD] Princes of Darkness

[Lord Asgar]

Hm, it seems diablerizing someone of a lower generation doesn't decrease your own? My 10th generation Assamite just ate a 6th generation Tzimisce...

Also, my vampire randomly got the "malnourished" trait at one point (is that related to feeding?) and earlier got the default vanilla sickness event and "Ill" trait.

 

[flintsparc]

Hm, it seems diablerizing someone of a lower generation doesn't decrease your own? My 10th generation Assamite just ate a 6th generation Tzimisce...

The desired behavior is that a 10th generation Assamite diablerizing a 6th generation Tzimisce will get a 9th generation diablerie SECRET.

Also, my vampire randomly got the "malnourished" trait at one point (is that related to feeding?) and earlier got the default vanilla sickness event and "Ill" trait.

We have tried to remove vampires from getting sick or ill. Malnourished is not from our hunger mechanics. We will hunt down this vanilla event to make vampires immune to it.

 

[flintsparc]

The desired behavior is that a 10th generation Assamite diablerizing a 6th generation Tzimisce will get a 9th generation diablerie SECRET.


We have tried to remove vampires from getting sick or ill. Malnourished is not from our hunger mechanics. We will hunt down this vanilla event to make vampires immune to it.

There was an issue with the trigger for 10th generation. Fix will be in the next update.

 

[tankhedgehog]

On the topic of nutritional issues, my vampire randomly got the obese trait. I don't know how hard the trait is supposed to be to remove in vanilla but he's been trying to lose weight for over 200 years now with no success

Also, lemme just say that the speed and consistency with which you guys pump out updates is amazing. I'm not used to this sort of thing with mods. Or even games

 

[Setmaster]

On the topic of nutritional issues, my vampire randomly got the obese trait. I don't know how hard the trait is supposed to be to remove in vanilla but he's been trying to lose weight for over 200 years now with no success

Also, lemme just say that the speed and consistency with which you guys pump out updates is amazing. I'm not used to this sort of thing with mods. Or even games

I have a vanilla game that I'm playing with the immortal trait, losing weight doesn't seem to be working at all.

 

[flintsparc]

On the topic of nutritional issues, my vampire randomly got the obese trait. I don't know how hard the trait is supposed to be to remove in vanilla but he's been trying to lose weight for over 200 years now with no success

We are aware. You'll notice that your vampire avatar portrait, however, does not get fat. We had to make it so no vampires got fat, otherwise a few hundreds years in and all the landed vampires would be huge.

Also, lemme just say that the speed and consistency with which you guys pump out updates is amazing. I'm not used to this sort of thing with mods. Or even games

Thank you. Please be aware, the updates will slow down. We are trying to quash some obvious bugs that come up over the course of play, but as we address those, we hope to focus more deeply on preparing our expansion of adding the hunters of the shadow inquisition along with increased Masquerade mechanics and consequences. We had a lot of things in the queue that weren't quite finished that we are getting out in updates now, but the pace will slow down probably next week. Also, we don't want to break save games so the length between updates will lengthen. Usually, we will try to wait to do them until after Paradox releases an update for the base game.

 

[flintsparc]

Hello ! Is there a way to help for localization of this mod ?

Indeed! Join our discord. There are several language channels working on translation. You can also tell people what localization you are working on and submit files.

 

[flintsparc]

Will you only include WoD characters or sneak in a few easter egg characters from other vampire media?

There will be Easter Egg characters. There already are some. Here is an hint, look for the immortals who have moved into the wreckage of Michael's Dream.

 

[trias10]

May I please ask how you are supposed to get levies from your Feudal vassals as a vampire? I'm currently playing an Assamite who controls the empire of Alamut, and I have 30+ vassals, from kings to barons, however, none of them give me any levies, and my crown authority is level 2, so no levies from there. As I understand it, if this was a vanilla game, I should be getting levies from the individual feudal contracts between each vassal and me, however, in this mod, when I modify the feudal contract with each vassal, I don't see any option for increased levies, only increased taxes, and bunch of Vampire Covenants (none of them deal with levies though). Hence am confused how to get levies?

I ask because it's quite weird, as despite how powerful I am, I am not the Dynasty Head, and that's because I only have 600 military strength (since I get no levies from any vassal). However, another Assamite, al-Ashrad, is the Dynasty Head, because he has 2000+ military strength, however, as far as I can tell, he only has Crown Authority 2 as well, and so he's not getting any levies from vassals either, and yet he has so many more levies than I do. What is he doing which I am not doing?

Would greatly appreciate any help.

 

[karde]

Levies are basically worthless in PoD, don't overthink them. To be more specific, we have halved their strength, and upped the Knight's contribution to the battles. We have reports of 5/6 well built knights easily winning against 7/8k armies of levies. So the real military strength of an Empire is its ability to have the best Knights available.

The calculation of Dynasty Head is kind of obscure at the moment, and we are not sure if we can mod this. So weird behavior from it is sadly expected.

 

[Lord Asgar]

Random thought, but I hope this will be compatible with Rise to Power once that comes out for CK3, so we can play a landless, adventuring vampire. From what I understand about oWoD lore, actually staying in one place and ruling it like a feudal lord is mostly something very old or very powerful vampires do. The signature characters of the novels, like Beckett and Lucita, do a lot of travelling. And it would be cool to, say, pop over to Iberia to participate in the Shadow Reconquista without having to conquer your way across the maghreb first.

 

[karde]

It's a request often being put forth by the players for the CK2 version. I expect any "landless" mod to be highly incompatible with PoD though (which, as an overhaul, changes almost all the game's file). But who knows, a compatibility patch might happen.

 

[flintsparc]

Princes of Darkness, Version 1.0.3.4, September 7, 2020
- Fixed issue with 10th generation vampires committing diablerie. - Sparc
- Added trigger restriction to summon to ban use on rulers. - Sparc
- Adjusted Drain Animal "My War Horse" to reduce remove modifier clutter. - Sparc
- House Zych and its founder . - Sparc

Spoiler

​

- Default values for Traditions Feudal Contract have been altered to give lords something to trade for increased taxes. - Sparc
- Nerfed find mortals. - Karde
- Fix for Character Generator for forming cadet houses. - Sparc

Princes of Darkness, Version 1.0.3.4.1, September 7, 2020
- Traditions Contract Opinion Fix. - Sparc
- Traditions Contract Kine Blood Oath Localization Fix. - Sparc
- Traditions Contract changed normal taxation to default, because contract can currently only be changed once per lifetime. - Sparc

 

[trias10]

Levies are basically worthless in PoD, don't overthink them. To be more specific, we have halved their strength, and upped the Knight's contribution to the battles. We have reports of 5/6 well built knights easily winning against 7/8k armies of levies. So the real military strength of an Empire is its ability to have the best Knights available.

The calculation of Dynasty Head is kind of obscure at the moment, and we are not sure if we can mod this. So weird behavior from it is sadly expected.

Whilst I completely agree that in terms of army vs army clashes, the levies don't matter at all, and I too have seen 8 vampire knights kill off an opposing army of 6k levies, I would respectfully disagree that levies are worthless because of one crucial element: sieges. Having 8 super powerful knights is great for defeating armies, but you can't siege with them, and this makes bigger wars very long and protracted, because while I can play whack-a-mole with the enemy armies, chasing them down and defeating them with my 8 super powerful knights (as my tiny amount of levies die off quickly), I can't actually end the wars quickly because I never have any levies to siege any of the enemy capitals. This makes wars extremely unfun and long lasting, and for example in my current Assamite game, I routinely get attacked on multiple fronts by multiple wars, and not being able to quickly siege to end a peasent rebellion or independence war is quite frustrating.

I highly recommend your team reconsiders adding in a feudal levies option into the custom Covenent Feudal Contracts because it would be very helpful in situations such as mine. Plus it would allow us to rightfully claim the Dynasty Head title too. I'm currently the Emperor of Alamut, Old Man of the Mountain, but I'm not the Dynasty Head of the Banu Haqim solely because I have no levies to speak of. That's just not quite right.

 

[flintsparc]

List of things to do in no particular order:

• Vassal Character Interaction Blood Tithes: Demanding Vampire Blood, Demanding Kine, Demanding Vampiric Childer. Cooldown Once a Year?
• Add check for Vassal Contract Masquerade Enforcement to determine if arresting vassal for Masquerade Breach event is Tryanny or not.
• Add restriction on Vassal Contract Masquerade Enforcement that limits increase to having Masquerade Lax or Strict in Faith Tenets
• Check that Faith Tennent for Masquerade Consent is working properly with Predator Type Consensualist
• Vassal Character Interaction Blood Oath demand
• Add tool tip to current Blood Bond scheme that indicates to player that after getting the weak Blood Bond Oath, they can run the scheme again to get the Strong Hook Blood Oath
• Add Blood bond Prisoner character interaction
• Add Herdify Scheme, allow vampires to be herd as well. Gives opinion bonus to Schemer. Makes herd always accept Drink Blood character interaction. Lingering Kiss has option to help scheme. Lingering Kiss gives option to instantly succeed on scheme after successful vamphunt scheme.
• Add Ghoulify Scheme
• Add Character Interaction Drink Blood from characters with high opinion of player character. Good for blood leeches who don't want to be diablerists. Character that uses this interaction on vampires gets bloodleech secret. Target also learn character has blood leech secret.
• Auspex Scry the Soul power, allows learning of diablerist secret and resonance of target.
• Auspex Telepathy, allows learning of 1 secret from target
• Dominate Forgetful Mind, re,pves secret known about schemer from target.
• Change government decisions for Traditions of Free State contract
• Maintenance events that git rid of more fuedal, clan, tribal, republic and theocratic governments
• Potence: Brutal Feed: Zero hunger after every battle participated in
• Coverp Up Masquerade Personal Character Interaction. Attempt to reduce Masquerade exposure by bribery (- gold), murder spree (stress, potentially increasing Masq exposure, potential wounding, dread gain), or mass memory erasure (hunger cost, stress gain). Are there other methods?
• Allow relocating capital, Obfuscate Imposture's Guise and Malleable Visage to give chance for player to remove "Exposed" trait
• Stake a prisoner decision. Remove Stake prisoner decision. Have certain vampires be immune to staking with right disciplines.
• Add stress event that causes player character to frenzy.
• Add stress event that causes player character to go into torpor and abdicate.
• Add stress event that causes player character to become wight and abdicate.
• Add mechanic maintenance event to wake up from torpor. Add "Awaken Torpored Vampire" character interaction from vampire at your location
• Animalism Quell the Beast
• Animalism Draw out the Besat
• Dominate Dementation
• Dominate Mass Manipulation and "Mind-Controlled Mob" to Spawn Army MAA Regiment Type
• Rewrite Spawn Army/MAA Regiment Type values for balance
• Vampire add spooky stuff to random house mottos
• Vampire Clan Banes
• Humanity Touchstone mechanics
• Rewrite Tenents to combine Virtues
• Convert Gehenna Prophecies Events
• Add more Gehenna Omen Events
• Add Owholic Egyptian Clothing for Setites
• Localization, particularly Lifestyle tooltips to explain powers/character interaction and effects that are not obvious
• Make Mithras hat red again
• Canon Character Portraits

 

[karde]

Whilst I completely agree that in terms of army vs army clashes, the levies don't matter at all, and I too have seen 8 vampire knights kill off an opposing army of 6k levies, I would respectfully disagree that levies are worthless because of one crucial element: sieges. Having 8 super powerful knights is great for defeating armies, but you can't siege with them, and this makes bigger wars very long and protracted, because while I can play whack-a-mole with the enemy armies, chasing them down and defeating them with my 8 super powerful knights (as my tiny amount of levies die off quickly), I can't actually end the wars quickly because I never have any levies to siege any of the enemy capitals. This makes wars extremely unfun and long lasting, and for example in my current Assamite game, I routinely get attacked on multiple fronts by multiple wars, and not being able to quickly siege to end a peasent rebellion or independence war is quite frustrating.

I highly recommend your team reconsiders adding in a feudal levies option into the custom Covenent Feudal Contracts because it would be very helpful in situations such as mine. Plus it would allow us to rightfully claim the Dynasty Head title too. I'm currently the Emperor of Alamut, Old Man of the Mountain, but I'm not the Dynasty Head of the Banu Haqim solely because I have no levies to speak of. That's just not quite right.

It's a complex question.

The first thing to consider is that we want to keep the different feel from vanilla, closer to VTM. As such, levies will stay useless (except for sieges as you say) and knights will still be able to cleave through them like butter.

We have conflicting reports on the size of levies, you said in your first post that you were way below Al Ashrad in levy size, despite a bigger realm, and, just before I posted, we had a report on our discord "So I think Levy Methods my need to be looked into, it could also be the direct results of wars sometimes, but I notice my Levies, granted while useless, I'm at about 17K or something like that... most other power clans, even ones with huge swath of territory go up to 6K tops or so. " so the exact opposite of your situation.
Perhaps they have a better developed capital city and more Rabble and thugs buildings, I can't say.

Anyway, the traditions contracts are still up in the air, with many of those not being quite finished. So it's one lever we can pull to mix things up. Cultural innovations is another, we haven't done anything about those yet, and I can see buildings granting levy replenish time being unlocked with those for example.

 

[Lord Asgar]

List of things to do in no particular order:
(...)

Looking forward to the new disciplines/powers and ghouling options.

By the way, the first point reminds me, does thirst actually tick down on its own, or only when you use disciplines? I think I played for 20 ingame years or so recently and my thirst didn't change. Are you considering introducing a regular blood/hunger tick, or have I overlooked one? I'm actually conflicted whether or not that should even be a mechanic. On one hand, being a vampire who basically doesn't have to drink blood (as in, not being much of a discpline user) seems a bit odd, on the other, it could quickly degrade into busywork more than a challenging/meaningful mechanic. I remember there being some complaints when several mods for VtM: Bloodlines introduced such a mechanic. Maybe as an optional game rule?

 

[flintsparc]

Looking forward to the new disciplines/powers and ghouling options.

By the way, the first point reminds me, does thirst actually tick down on its own, or only when you use disciplines? I think I played for 20 ingame years or so recently and my thirst didn't change. Are you considering introducing a regular blood/hunger tick, or have I overlooked one? I'm actually conflicted whether or not that should even be a mechanic. On one hand, being a vampire who basically doesn't have to drink blood (as in, not being much of a discpline user) seems a bit odd, on the other, it could quickly degrade into busywork more than a challenging/meaningful mechanic. I remember there being some complaints when several mods for VtM: Bloodlines introduced such a mechanic. Maybe as an optional game rule?

Your hunger will only increase or decrease based on your choices. If you use a vampire power, 60% chance of hunger increase. If you drink blood, depending on the amount and your blood potency, your hunger will decrease. In table top V5, you have a rouse check every evening at waking. With the time scale of CK3 (particularly at speed five) that is too much maintenance. So the nightly rouse and satisfying that is assumed to just happen in the background. But we do want an opportunity cost for using your vampire powers and hunger is a good way to do that (combined with other consequences of satisfying hunter like potential stress, piety loss and masquerade exposure). So in general our rule has been, "Do vampire shit, get hungry for blood."

 

[eljodn]

Seem to be running into issues accessing perks when I gain one by hunting. It says I have, in this instance, a few phlegmatic perk points but I have no way of spending them. Speccing into that discipline doesn’t seem to help. Also, is diablerizing supposed to fail ever? My success chances vary according to the menu prompt but I have never failed one.

 

[flintsparc]

Seem to be running into issues accessing perks when I gain one by hunting. It says I have, in this instance, a few phlegmatic perk points but I have no way of spending them. Speccing into that discipline doesn’t seem to help. Also, is diablerizing supposed to fail ever? My success chances vary according to the menu prompt but I have never failed one.

You need the basic or advanced version of the discipline to spend resonance on that discipline tree. Clans have three disciplines. You can pick up a fourth by careful selection of predator type. You can sometimes get discipline traits through diablerie. In the future, we will let you be trained in a discipline by using a hook on a character who has one.

It seems that diablerie is working too well, despite being a copy of the murder scheme using intrigue stat. Probably because agents join in to help you. We plan to add some more complexity too it in the future like a prowess duel.