[MOD] Princes of Darkness

[JasperClay]

I agree on your overall point and some (but not all) of your proposed solutions.

Randomly generated characters should be way less powerful than they are, that's a given. We already worked on that actually (mortals from hunt mortals are now really bad, peasant leaders are not all Alexander reborn like in vanilla). But obviously, CK3 generates a hell of a lot of characters in so many events and such that it's hard to have a catch all "nerf random characters".

Right, this is one reason it's easier to move the goalposts of what a good character is, rather than trying to plug the dyke stopping the flow of characters that are "too good"

I agree about generally buffing Great Persons, these are truly exceptional figures indeed.

I disagree about an overall buff to vampires. We had a serious issues of stat bloats in PoD CK2 (40+ in every stat for every vampire) that we want to avoid, since that made stats utterly meaningless (PoD CK3 system is far from perfect, but you actually care about your char stats now). Also "setting wise", being a vampire makes you stronger, quicker and tougher than the average human (well represented by the numerous prowess boost they have) but it doesn't make you a tactical genius, a perfect administrator or a genius diplomat.
Most vampires are actually very much set in what they were as a mortal (if somewhat twisted) and don't learn anything.

Though that's a general point, and I'm happy to argue or hear suggestions about specific vampires needing a boost or a specific trait. Just keep in mind that most starting stats in CK3 are random, so I perhaps just not gotten around fixing them for the specific character you are thinking about yet.

My overall point is just that long-reigning Vampire "monarchs" probably are pretty ingenious, precisely because, unlike a mortal ruler, their longevity is basically only a result of their political skill, and to a certain extent their prowess. So, I might at the very least toss Helena "quick," Montano "shrewd," and Salianna "pretty," simply because they should feel like Apex boss characters, who have high stats in tune with their exceptional traits, not in spite of them. (And maybe those three deserve more! You know the lore better than I)

Since none of these traits will actually be passed onto their offspring, it should help stabilize their realms and aid their trajectories now, without persisting if they die. You can make Adana "intelligent" and Lucita "pretty, quick, and hale" to fit the idea that they're truly exceptional prospects, and not just lucky to survive into ancient status.

By the same token, we can assume that most vampires who are awful administrators and diplomats don't last long, even if their sire was wasteful enough to embrace them. Vampires represent the higher range of mortal abilities, precisely because of the selection and attrition pressures that allow the fittest to survive indefinitely, and which kill off the weak before they're even reborn, let alone ruling the Sea of Shadows. Therefore, surviving canon vampire rulers have a higher floor and a higher ceiling than what I'd expect to see from a randomly generated CK3 king.

I totally agree that CK2 erred in the other direction in a lot of ways - I actually helped cut down the combat rating bonuses when they got out of hand. I just feel like both Francois Villon and Hannibal should feel larger than life in a similar way that Anna Comnena does. (And, with a 6 in appearance, I think comely's not even enough for her!) I think the way to do this is partially setting good stats, but also signaling those stats to players with impressive trait combinations.

 

[karde]

Fair point. Though I will say that canon stats don't matter. From one edition to another you can have so much of a gap that any semblance of coherence for those is out of the window (as an example, you can argue that El Diablo Verde, a random 13th generation catcher from the 80s has better stats than Izhim ur Baal, a 5th gen embraced in -4800 and a major character in many storylines). So stats must be based on what we actually know of the characters (Helena was the most beautiful woman on Earth, beauty 3 makes sense no matter her stats for example).

Beyond that, your reasoning is certainly sound. I will probably go back to the canon characters for another look at their stats at some point.

 

[Komex-17]

This mod is so addicting. Great work.
Just two questions:

Where did you get the cost of arms of the Rayeen Al-Fen? Because it's gorgeous.

Second: I really like that you implemented the arabic variations of the clans. Just why did you ignore the Malkavians? As far as I see it every other clan got it's arabic counterpart. Just the Bayt Majnoon seem to be absent. Which is a bit sad because they happen to be my favourite one. ;-)
I'm just interested if that was a conscious decision.

 

[Orinsul]

It kind of makes sense for the random generated characters to sometimes be too high stats for mortals, as they're the few mortals , interesting enough to be noticed by the vampire world. So if geniuses or etc pop up that's.. ok

Fair point. Though I will say that canon stats don't matter. From one edition to another you can have so much of a gap that any semblance of coherence for those is out of the window (as an example, you can argue that El Diablo Verde, a random 13th generation catcher from the 80s has better stats than Izhim ur Baal, a 5th gen embraced in -4800 and a major character in many storylines). So stats must be based on what we actually know of the characters (Helena was the most beautiful woman on Earth, beauty 3 makes sense no matter her stats for example).

Beyond that, your reasoning is certainly sound. I will probably go back to the canon characters for another look at their stats at some point.

I worry canon stats are, based on the campaign theyre from more than reflective of fact. Like, the level/experience of players when they are expected to meet it matter more than the canon to canon stats.

 

[Nemostill]

1.Need more special buildings.
2.Need more magic & technology.
3.Need story lines.
4.Need more special units.

 

[karde]

@Komex Thanks for the praise ! You would have to ask our artist on our discord for the exact inspiration for the CoA.
The Malkavian Ashirra absence is more of a consequence of the twists and turns of development than a conscious decision really. I thought there wouldn't be enough of them to warrant an house at the time so sort of subsumed them into house Plague. With new sources being read and such, they have more characters than I first thought. So dividing house Plague with Mujnoon could certainly happen in the future.

@Nemostiil All of that will happen (and already have in the dev build actually). Just keep in mind we are just two guys (script wise) doing stuff. So these things, and testing they don't break other things, take time.

 

[flintsparc]

This mod is so addicting. Great work.
Just two questions:

Where did you get the cost of arms of the Rayeen Al-Fen? Because it's gorgeous.

Thank you. Glad you are enjoying the mod.

The Rayeen Al-Fen design is a combination of the canon Arabic script for "Rayeen Al-Fen" and a free clip art "MashaAllah" Rose. I will send you a link. I've tried to take the approach of using the canon Arabic script clan variations from "Veil of Night" and combining them with symbols that don't violate norms in Islamic heraldry/depictions.

Second: I really like that you implemented the arabic variations of the clans. Just why did you ignore the Malkavians? As far as I see it every other clan got it's arabic counterpart. Just the Bayt Majnoon seem to be absent. Which is a bit sad because they happen to be my favourite one. ;-)
I'm just interested if that was a conscious decision.

They are there, but with a different name we could change.

The Arabic Script there is the Bay't Majnoon

As leader of the Tal'mahe'Ra, Elimelech is arguably the most territorially powerful Malkavian at the 1230 bookmark.

We could change "House Izha" to "Bay't Majnoon".

There is a one line founder of Bay't Manjoon, "Marid", but that could just be Malkav. Or it could just be a word for elder.

Another candidate could be a new house under Aratz Labarde 'the Madman of Marrakish', a very important holding. However, that character is only a neonate.

I think the Izaha Coat of Arms would be how I would want Bay't Majnoon's coat of arms, since they are also "Clan of the Moon".

 

[flintsparc]

1.Need more special buildings.
2.Need more magic & technology.
3.Need story lines.
4.Need more special units.

That all sounds great! Care to make some suggestions?

 

[flintsparc]

Since I like showing off Coats of Arms, here are our Banu Haqim/Ashirra/Arab/Middle Eastern inspired Coats of Arms:

We have not implemented any al-Amin (Salubri) or El Hijazi (Ventrue) yet.

We also have Followers of Set/Ancient Egypt inspired Coats of Arms:

These are all for houses of canon characters. A number of randomly generated Dynasties will also have thematic Coat of Arms based on their Religion/Faith (Road/Path) and/or Clan/Bloodline.

 

[Komex-17]

The Rayeen Al-Fen design is a combination of the canon Arabic script for "Rayeen Al-Fen" and a free clip art "MashaAllah" Rose. I will send you a link. I've tried to take the approach of using the canon Arabic script clan variations from "Veil of Night" and combining them with symbols that don't violate norms in Islamic heraldry/depictions.

They are there, but with a different name we could change.

View attachment 647376

The Arabic Script there is the Bay't Majnoon
View attachment 647377


View attachment 647379

As leader of the Tal'mahe'Ra, Elimelech is arguably the most territorially powerful Malkavian at the 1230 bookmark.

We could change "House Izha" to "Bay't Majnoon".

I think the Izaha Coat of Arms would be how I would want Bay't Majnoon's coat of arms, since they are also "Clan of the Moon".

Thank you very much for the link. Your interpretation is gorgeous. It's a shame that the original White Wolf designs of the arabic clan symbols seem to be gibberish (native Arabic speakers may of course prove me wrong).
But that's not your fault. The choice of the mashaallah rose was great. The choice of colours too.

Concerning the Bayt Majnoon: It's funny. I saw the house yesterday and noticed the script for the first time.
In my opinion it would be great to rename the house to Bayt Majnoon. I at least would be very happy.
Maybe swap out the moon for some calligraphic ones. There are some nice ones online that spell 'eid mubarak' which is nice in a vampire context. (Vampires and Ramadan might an interesting topic.)

My suggestion would be to swap the colours of the CoA to substitute gold with silver/white in order to emphasize the Bayt Majnoon's role as advisors rather than leaders. What do you think?

 

[hypaspist]

so how much of the mod is completed in percentages ? i know its never really completed but if your goal is VTM 1.0 ,or 1.1 , where are we now in comparison to that? 1.0 should be a mod in which every major lore thing or huge majority of the things that can be implemented (expect something that simply cant be done) are implemented in the game, and most of the minor things , but not all

also can u give us a realistic approximation of when that ll happen ? be more pessimistic than you think you should in the estimation

 

[guinea prince]

Been having fun with this, but I can't help but notice that the AI doesn't seem to be able to calculate risks based on knight quantity/prowess. Reading the thread, I get the justification of "don't look weak, puff up". That's actually some cool thinking. And it is cool that a dozen or two frontline vampires can slaughter thousands in a night, but the AI is a bit eager to throw the entirety of their armies against my death stack of 15-20 knights over and over, while my siege stacks (ALL the siege MAAs! And levies if needed) repaint their territory.

I suspect they're looking at pure troop sizes, both for "do we invade?" and "can I win this fight?" Is knight presence a thing that the AI can weigh?

 

[karde]

@Hypapist Hard to answer that. If you are talking pure Dark Ages : Vampires (1230), the dev build that has the "endgame" is close to complete feature wise in my book. Obviously, we are still lacking some events, powers, balance and such but the core DA experience is there.
Other splats are not existent yet, or just barely starting (inquisitors).

@Guinea We have very few means of modding the AI. We can't change much, if anything, of AI calculation. Your estimation was right by the way, the AI only consider levies size for assessing relative power (hence why we have levies in the mod in the first place, despite them making little sense lore wise)

 

[Jia Xu]

so how much of the mod is completed in percentages ? i know its never really completed but if your goal is VTM 1.0 ,or 1.1 , where are we now in comparison to that? 1.0 should be a mod in which every major lore thing or huge majority of the things that can be implemented (expect something that simply cant be done) are implemented in the game, and most of the minor things , but not all

also can u give us a realistic approximation of when that ll happen ? be more pessimistic than you think you should in the estimation

Unless the devs of a mod get tired, the answer is around 7-10 years. The reason I say that is because the developers of the base game at Paradox are always going to be adding new features in DLC and all mods still in development will have to update to adapt to those new features. New government types with special powers, new ways to deal with religions, new trade mechanics, etc, etc, etc. x100. Use your imagination. Some new feature made for vanilla could be brilliantly reinterpreted to enhance the flavour of mods. CK2 at launch and CK2 from last year looked very different. Who knows where the game or this mod will be in 2025?

 

[hypaspist]

@Hypapist Hard to answer that. If you are talking pure Dark Ages : Vampires (1230), the dev build that has the "endgame" is close to complete feature wise in my book. Obviously, we are still lacking some events, powers, balance and such but the core DA experience is there.
Other splats are not existent yet, or just barely starting (inquisitors).

@Guinea We have very few means of modding the AI. We can't change much, if anything, of AI calculation. Your estimation was right by the way, the AI only consider levies size for assessing relative power (hence why we have levies in the mod in the first place, despite them making little sense lore wise)

so who should constitue the army of a vampire ruler in ck3? lore wise

 

[karde]

His main followers (basically, vampires that he can coerce one way or another to work for him, Knights in CK3) and some ghouls or indebted mortals if this is an especially big operation (MaA in CK3). We are talking about hundred of combattants here, very rarely thousands.

 

[aantia]

It's more like organised criminals taking over territory than an actual war, for the most part. You try to distract your enemy, and investigate and strip away their resources, and then you raid their base and take it over.

 

[hypaspist]

His main followers (basically, vampires that he can coerce one way or another to work for him, Knights in CK3) and some ghouls or indebted mortals if this is an especially big operation (MaA in CK3). We are talking about hundred of combattants here, very rarely thousands.

It's more like organised criminals taking over territory than an actual war, for the most part. You try to distract your enemy, and investigate and strip away their resources, and then you raid their base and take it over.

interesting . would it be fairly common in the lore to see vampires manipulating entire kings into sending armies here and there to perhaps slaughter other kings who are influenced (unknowingly i guess) by their Rival vampires , or perhaps to slaughter or chase away other rival vampires themselves?
All the time maintaining secrecy and all

 

[aantia]

interesting . would it be fairly common in the lore to see vampires manipulating entire kings into sending armies here and there to perhaps slaughter other kings who are influenced (unknowingly i guess) by their Rival vampires , or perhaps to slaughter or chase away other rival vampires themselves?
All the time maintaining secrecy and all

Oh yes, definitely. Although as a matter of policy the writers (in theory, at least) tried to avoid ascribing any particular historical atrocity to supernatural manipulation. And the vampires certainly see themselves as dark masters ruling humanity from the shadows, even though they spend 90% of their time plotting against each other, and their contribution to society is just them leeching off it (appropriately).
There's one very significant event that the older and more powerful vampires in CK3 will remember, and that's the 3rd Punic War, where the Roman Republic (manipulated by the Ventrue and their Malkavian and Toreador allies) destroyed Carthage, which was openly ruled by Brujah and Baali. After that vampires kept their heads down more in Western Europe.

 

[flintsparc]

so how much of the mod is completed in percentages ? i know its never really completed but if your goal is VTM 1.0 ,or 1.1 , where are we now in comparison to that? 1.0 should be a mod in which every major lore thing or huge majority of the things that can be implemented (expect something that simply cant be done) are implemented in the game, and most of the minor things , but not all

also can u give us a realistic approximation of when that ll happen ? be more pessimistic than you think you should in the estimation

We are keeping our version #s close to vanilla CK3 version #s. V:TM/D:AV/WoD is too expansive of a universe to give q "completeness" as you suggest. For example, we already have more clans than in V5 V:TM, but some D:AV 20 bloodlines like gargoyles are not fleshed out for play. Next update will include ghouls, herd and revenant mechanics and Hunters as AI. Hunters as player characters will be mid-winter release.

The next update includes big lore pieces like the Anarch revolt and formation of the Camarilla.