Greetings,
so I am back on my PC and am back working on the mod(s) - but then, University is starting again so I don't really have time :/
Anyway, I am interested how the mod has been working out for you guys. In particular, some things I haven't really had time to test out myself, but also balance. I'll list some areas that I could use feedback on:
a) Are you seeing events similar to this one:
Meaning events that allow you to change a province's resource (which fire so rarely that I tested them only via console).
How satisfied are you with them currently (usefulness, frequency, ...)?
b) How satisfied are you with the tradegoods (province modifiers) in general?
Is something missing (
I doubt it), is something OP or too weak? Are traderanges reasonable?
c) What is your opinion on Natural Barriers?
Are they working as intended, get removed properly etc.? Are the costs for their removal adequate?
d) Is the AI behaving any good?
There currently is a bit missing on the AI side, so it might spam a few tradegoods more than would be reasonable. This will be fixed later, but it wouldn't be bad for me to know which tradegoods are affected most often, so I can focus on them.
e) Do you share the opinion that was voiced earlier that refined and finalized prompts are too frequent, and going through the event chains is tedious?
I can understand if you agree with the last question, and have thought about how to make that different.
Totally redoing the event chains would be a huge amount of work, and I can do a number of things with the current setup (AI chances, and player Info mainly) that would be difficult with a different system.
However, the issue could be tackled from a different perspective, by keeping the events as they are, but making them appear less frequently. I shall outline my current vision below, and you may decide if that would be good. Might be a bit
technical, but please bear with me: I have ideas for more content, but as long as the technical background isn't where I want it to be, it's no use adding stuff that will have to be redone shortly after.
1) Prompts for the choice of
Refined and
Finalized tradegoods will be rolled out via an event that fires on startup, as opposed to random time as is currently.
However, they will be fired with a random delay of
1 day to
half a year or so, based on province, to allow the production of tradegoods that require other tradegoods, and to (hopefully) keep gameplay smooth.
2) Prompts will be fired from province scope instead of owner, and will thus no longer appear as a bulk of events at once.
They will also no longer fire randomly, but instead repeat themselves after a fixed amount of time (see below), starting from the delayed startup event. That would mean that any province would always have its event fire on the same day every few years, regardless of its owner and not randomly.
3) The interval would be increased to 15 years (from currently ~5 years), which would coincide with the Medieval
Indiction (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiction).
The
Business Focus would allow for a province decision to actively chose another refined or finalized good there every 5 years, potentially allowing you to make use of e.g. a freshly conquered gold mine earlier (this would not block "Indiction" prompts, but you can just reaffirm then).
Both the
Rulership Focus and
Business Focus would allow for a province decision to actively scout for a new resource in the area every 10 years, which would offer a random alternative resource via an event as pictured in the screenshot.
Note that from a historic perspective on Indiction, it's kinda strange to split up that tradegood prompts over different years, as its original use was to set tax rates for the country at a given date.
However, during the Middle Ages that was not important anymore (except for possibly the half-Roman Byzantines, dunno), so not only from a gameplay perspective that could well be justified.
So, tell me, what do you think of this?
Would it be better? Would you rather prefer the events to fire for all provinces at once, as is currently? Or do you have another idea?
None of this is code yet, so I am open for suggestions
.
Hope your Easter holidays weren't as
freezing cold as mine,
LordPeter
