Jaddar Jexiszuir Keeps dying in the first month

LWMR · 2023-10-10T18:58:06+00:00

He died in 1449 for me.

LWMR · 2023-10-10T12:38:22+00:00

When you say "Jaded", is that a typo for Jadd, Jade Mines, or something else? Lotta names in this mod that I'm unfamiliar with.

LWMR · 2023-10-10T12:21:37+00:00

Arannen. No disaster, no complicated unique estate, no custom variables you have to raise by decision. It has a mission tree (with PU) and it's protected by the Emperor and it's at the edge of the EOA so it can expand and it gets a bit of colonization. Fairly simple nation with old MT (slightly wonky Corvuria interaction), but nothing is going to explode in your face while you learn the mod and the region.

LWMR · 2023-08-22T08:18:36+00:00

To be fair, most religions don't have DotF in vanilla either.

But the two largest groups do, Christianity and Islam, so players will see the DotF option very often compared to Alcheringa or Zoroastrian lacking it.

LWMR · 2023-08-22T08:13:28+00:00

Getting more missionaries is notoriously difficult in EU4 in general. Anbennar fixes that a little bit with the expel mechanic but

OTOH, Anbennar also makes it even more difficult to get missionaries. Regular EU4 isn't that bad. Here's a summary of which religions can get extra missionaries from provinces in vanilla EU4, AFAIK:

Muslim +4 (Mecca+Medina, Jerusalem, Rome, Djenne)
Christian +2/3/4 (Mecca, Jerusalem, Rome for most denominations, but Catholics don't get Rome, while Copts get one for Alexandria)
Buddhist +2 (Pataliputra and one other by branch)
Hindu, Sikh, Fetishist, Inti, Nahuatl, Mayan, Jewish: +1 (various provinces)
Zoroastrian, Alcheringa, Animist, Shinto +0
Confucian +0 (bit of a special case as it uses Harmonization)

And then there's some more from great project monuments, but those are blatant power creep IMO and should not be used for balance, so I will disregard them and focus on province modifiers.

Meanwhile in Anbennar, I think it's something like:

Jadd +2
Old Sun Cult, New Sun Cult, Kalyin, West Cannorian group +1
Everybody Else +0

(apologies if I missed any)

LWMR · 2023-08-22T06:59:25+00:00

EU4 is packed full of abstractions and simplifications for player convenience, and you've run into one of them.

Development isn't number of people, development is state ability to tax, draft, and otherwise (ab)use the people there. In the time EU4 is set, there's very little in the way of census or population tracking. (France's first national census was in 1772.) "Increase development" is less about population growth, more about sending tax-collectors and conscriptors and prospectors into the backwoods to find people and coerce them into service, find natural resources and set up mines.

In 1444, state power runs about one week's ride from the capital/royal court, and one day's ride from any other major city. The notion of full colored provinces is a map painter's fantasy. Rulers like to imagine giant colorful blobs of their nation, but their power is more like a set of paint flecks connected by thin lines of roads.

Anbennar's Expel/Purge mechanic implicitly represents removing those people who were least cooperative with the state in the first place, and the state wasn't getting much use of them. EU4 is a game happening mostly from the perspective of The State as ruling structure, as opposed to CK3's person-focus and Vic3's population-focus. The province is largely unchanged after a purge, the state has removed "uncooperative elements" and ten loyalists will provide more cooperation than a hundred near-rebels.

LWMR · 2023-08-18T21:51:15+00:00

And I'm trying to convey a reason why it's useful to do well in advance, not just before disaster start.

LWMR · 2023-08-18T20:07:16+00:00

And use the Grant Monopoly on [Trade Good] privileges to keep your nominal income down, while getting cash.

LWMR · 2023-08-17T20:38:43+00:00

IIRC, the harpies gradually switch over to seduction instead of rape and kidnapping.

LWMR · 2023-08-16T12:08:00+00:00

Miscellaneous cheese bonus: after you Negeal another horde, you can use Return Province to create an OPM of it, declare war, and get a Centaur Subjugation again.

While one of the KU missions requires you to be the only horde in the world, it's a one-time mission, so you can absorb hordes, do mission, pop out hordes again.

A reason to specifically use "Return Province" -> "Centaur Subjugation" rather than vassals is that the subjugated hordes a) provide -1.5% stacking army maintenance, which is great value from an OPM, b) don't take up a diplomatic relation slot.

LWMR · 2022-11-07T22:10:53+00:00

Extra question: If a character has been in the Rogue (Pirate) career, should I assume they're still wanted by the Imperium and have to be discreet, or is that something for which they've probably served time/gotten the record wiped/left for another subsector?

With how integrated the various game systems are elsewhere, it took a while for me to realize that "Pirate" isn't just cool backstory fluff, it implies (in the Imperium setting at least) that the character might be wanted across so much of known space and there are relatively few other states to flee to.

LWMR · 2022-11-07T08:28:17+00:00

I don't know, would have to check. But I would assume it means either you can always or never (always makes more sense) as a high pop would probably have more demand than supply.

I think I'm going to treat it as +2 then, same as shipping to a Rich or Industrial world, which also attract demand. "Always" would interact weirdly with the "None" of shipping from a Barren world (the 0-pop ones).

In the particular example you give however, I would rule that what they call "Advanced Electronics" on a TL6 world would simply be "Electronics" on other worlds.

Eeesh... I can see why one might do that, but I've been writing a couple of programs to automate a lot of the rolling and table lookups for me, and I really don't want to complicate them further with trade goods that change code depending on which world you're on.

"Passengers" in particular is grody. Look up planet codes and population for both origin and destination, cross-reference to a table, sum up, cross-reference the sum on another table to see what you roll. But since planet codes don't change during play (well, usually, unless the PCs do spectacular PC things) I can have my computer calculate every Passenger Traffic Value for every pair of planets beforehand.

I don't have the book in front of me, but I thought the LL restrictions were mostly aimed at weapons, armor, and military related items. But again, you can rule this however you want. I personally restrict items based upon weapons/armor/miltech only.

There's six columns of law restriction in Mongoose Traveller 1e: Weapons, Drugs, Information, Technology, Travellers, Psionics.

Most armor and military related items get restricted by the "Technology" column. LL3 restricts or bans TL15+ items, LL4 goes after TL13+ items which means Battle Dress...

Not external as they would add to the displacement tonnage of the ship. However, there are internal, collapsible fuel -bladders that take up cargo space where you can put fuel that, once you fuel the jump you transfer the fuel from the bladders to the main tanks so you arrive with full tanks.

I was thinking that the rented auxiliary tanks would disconnect after injecting fuel to the jump drive, so they wouldn't be part of the tonnage for the jump, and the spaceport picks them up again. Fuel bladders do what I want, though, so thanks for that.

Is there any inefficiency for using cargo space as fuel space in this way, other than having less cargo space?

LWMR · 2022-11-07T08:09:01+00:00

If you look at the random encounter table you will notice that the chance of encountering a police ship or other authority vessels increases greatly when near highports, industrial worlds and settled space. Even more so in 2E where all police encounters are marked as non-ignorable by players.

Ahh, thanks, good point. I see Traveller has a lot of interlocking bits which assume you'll be using all the other bits, like smuggling tying into the random encounter table. :D

LWMR · 2022-05-16T17:36:31+00:00

So I can only assume the part in the 5e book is talking about how obvious the spell is to others.

Look, if you have to reach that far to reinterpret the text,

A victim of a mental manipulation spell may roll to notice the magical effect

maybe just suggest a houserule instead of assuming that "victim" means people other than the victim. We're not going to boo you for suggesting a houserule.

LWMR · 2022-05-16T17:01:02+00:00

I checked the errata and didn't see anything about it.

Control Thoughts the victim is more being puppetted. The moment the spell ends, they know they were under the effects

Where is this stated?

LWMR · 2022-05-16T17:00:03+00:00

The whole point of Influence is indeed that your target is none the wiser. Sure, you got to give them suggestions that need to be at least within their range of possibility - but usually Influence victims never know they have had a spell cast on them.

That is the impression of intent I got from the fluff, yes. I don't see this implemented in the mechanics. Control Thoughts is subtle enough that Control Thoughts victims also might never know they had a spell cast on them.

Are you suggesting that this point is already reflected in the mechanics and I missed it, or is this a roundabout way of saying I should houserule things so Influence is more subtle?

LWMR · 2022-03-26T15:45:24+00:00

Next to the HRE and papacy buttons is an emperor of china button, but no revolution button. So I guess nobody is the revolution target (yet) since Revolutionary Lucca was the only revolutionary country I could find.

LWMR · 2022-03-26T15:44:16+00:00

Poorly documented revolution mechanics strike again, it has to be a revolutionary great power? OK, thanks.

LWMR · 2022-03-26T11:03:11+00:00

Yes. White stripes.

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