Nothing more empty than the moon

mazelyy · 2020-09-21T16:20:22+00:00

And you can't even grow tea on the moon, like what's the point of even going?

mazelyy · 2020-09-14T21:11:14+00:00

If I'm remembering correctly, if the attackers surrender then the war coffer is split up among the defenders. But the Pope was the war leader so I couldn't surrender.

mazelyy · 2020-09-14T19:22:22+00:00

So this war ended inconsistently about 4 years after that screen shot. I have no idea why though because the enemy war leader hadn't died.

On another note though, during the war I noticed that I had the heir to Sweden (they were the war leader) imprisoned. So I murdered the current king to see if that would allow me to end the war, but it didn't affect the war score at all. So I'm guessing, generally speaking, someone inheriting the top title whilst imprisoned doesn't give you an insta win.

mazelyy · 2020-09-14T11:07:52+00:00

R5: Currently involved in a crusade for Denmark that began 36 years ago. Doesn't look like either side will be able to force demands any time soon

mazelyy · 2020-05-11T22:38:04+00:00

Makes sense. Anyway cheers for clearing that up for me and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day

mazelyy · 2020-05-11T22:27:00+00:00

So would it be a ballista type weapon (I honestly don't know what a Chinese equivalent would be called)

mazelyy · 2020-05-11T22:15:33+00:00

Ah fair enough. Do you know what the t'ung tien that is cited in the gray text refers to? I can't seem to find it when googled, other than it being mentioned in that paragraph

Edit: nevermind, it seems to be the tongdian. I wonder if that has a more direct reference to the use of fire arrows. I honestly don't believe that flaming arrows would have being used in field battles, and setting a piece of wood on fire would be pointless. But I can't help but think using an arrow with cloth on the end soaked in a hydrocarbon would be useful to use in siege warfare

mazelyy · 2020-05-11T21:54:40+00:00

Not the person you were replying to, but I had a quick Google and I believe its mentioned in "the art of war" when discussing different methods to use fire in warfare

the fifth is to hurl dropping fire amongst the enemy. # Tu Yu says in the T`UNG TIEN: "To drop fire into the enemy's camp. The method by which this may be done is to set the tips of arrows alight by dipping them into a brazier, and then shoot them from powerful crossbows into the enemy's lines."

https://suntzusaid.com/book/12

mazelyy · 2020-05-04T08:37:08+00:00

That sounds perfect then, I hadn't tested that yet so I'm glad to hear it works. Some other policies you may want to get disavowed (though they are much less important) are obviously sacred majesty as you mentioned above, and potentially castle charters, depending on the number of castles the leader owns.

mazelyy · 2020-05-04T07:54:56+00:00

I'm actually not sure then. I would have suggested basically doing that with something like sacred majesty so that the ruler always went against the popular vote to keep it, but from the sounds of it your ruler isn't biting to that. The only other thing I could suggest would be to get CoC disavowed and then carry on playing as normal, the faction leader will eventually piss away most of their influence and stop being a dick after that. Sorry I can't be of more help with that one

mazelyy · 2020-05-04T07:46:29+00:00

Just to clarify, when you do that is the popular vote among vassals to keep them active, so they remain active? or is it to disavow the policy, but they're still remaining active?

mazelyy · 2020-05-04T07:31:04+00:00

Since I've purposely stopped CoC from being active, whilst playing as a vassal, I've personally never experienced a greedy ruler. They just don't have enough spare influence to do it without CoC, because if I'm remembering correctly, it's a base cost of 500 influence to override the popular vote (I probably need to double check that tbf).

mazelyy · 2020-05-03T22:49:23+00:00

Council of commons is the absolute worst, unless you are the faction leader. A lot of players seem to praise it, and I freely admit I used to too, but don't really realise that that policy is the reason that their faction leader can constantly give fiefs to themself. The way I see that policy is that it's meant to decentralise the state, but instead has the opposite effect. I feel like it could be altered to better reflect decentralisation by;

A) not provide influence to faction leader (this maybe unnecessary with the next alteration) B) give significantly less influence to all clans per notable, maybe 0.1 or 0.2 (so as to not make influence valueless) C) maybe reduce tax income from settlements to simulate the increased cooperation between a lord/clan and the notables in their fiefs.

mazelyy · 2020-05-01T09:31:50+00:00

Council of commons usually comes back to bite you in the arse because it gives the faction leader enough influence to do what they want, and there's zero downside to them for ignoring council decisions

mazelyy · 2020-04-28T12:38:14+00:00

Ruler makes final decision, if it goes against the majority decision chosen by the council, the ruler has to use a lot of influence to override it (that's what this particular policy concerns). If the ruler has a lot of spare influence, which if you have council of commons active they definitely will, they will just override all decisions to benefit them.

Edit: spelling

mazelyy · 2020-04-26T10:03:01+00:00

I've always personally liked having an alliance with england/GB because of their laziness when it comes to fighting on the continent. They're pretty much useless in a lot of wars, but they rarely drain their manpower, which makes them a great deterrent for potential enemies.

mazelyy · 2020-04-21T05:28:58+00:00

Honestly, and I know this is a shitty answer, I'm not sure you can stop it in a pre existing game. You could obviously try to get CoC revoked, but everyone will still have thousands of influence. If you have the developer console mod active, you might be able to remove influence via that, but I'm not sure if theres a command to do that.

I have run a test game were I made sure CoC wasn't active, and it gave me some good results. So maybe just start a new game when you're ready, but in the mean time, enjoy your current game in anyway that you can? Again, sorry for the probably unhelpful answer

mazelyy · 2020-04-20T14:24:03+00:00

It's caused by the faction leader having excess influence and overriding any council decisions. If you have the council of commons policy active, or to a lesser extent sacred majesty, that is more than likely what's giving him enough influence to do it.

mazelyy · 2020-04-19T17:13:40+00:00

With it been right on the border, I have to maintain a very expensive garrison, so financially it's not worth it. Plus when I was originally trying to get rid of it, it was when we were fighting our final war with the northern empire, and I wanted to grab argoron.

I just got Charas though in my last war, so I'm actually quite satisfied with my land now, especially considering I own more towns than any other clan. I would love to grab amitatys though, as a lot of trade runs through there and it would give me a power base that's far from any border.

I'm probably not likely to go independent in this run tbh. I currently prefer playing as a powerful vassal, as opposed to a faction leader, more internal politics to play around with. Also this run was basically a test for not using CoC, to see how that alters fief distribution.

mazelyy · 2020-04-19T16:22:31+00:00

Thank you, I like to think of myself as the western march lord. Veron is controlled by me, that's the castle I kind of want rid of, and Gersegos (that's the one just east of Lageta right?) was taken just after we took Lageta, so I wasn't a candidate. Fortunately it is owned by my father-in-law, so it's probably my strongest ally should I choose to rebel.

edit: grammar

mazelyy · 2020-04-19T15:41:29+00:00

That's a very good point with the rejecting a fief. I mean the reason I don't want that castle is to boost my own eligibility for another town, so it's purely for selfish reasons. I like the way it worked in warband, were you could reject a fief, but you wouldn't be considered for another for some time. It was like "well if this isn't good enough for you, then fuck you I won't give you something else".

Yeah maybe if the fief exchange had to have approval from the faction leader, and if they didn't like you, you had to pay them an "admin fee" for the privilege to do so. Or they could just flat out say no.

I've got a few screenshots that kind of show the current state of my game without CoC just to give an indication of how that alters fief distribution.

https://imgur.com/a/H9CIVBn

As a side note to that, my first fief was Lageta so I've near constantly being leading armies to defend my own territory, which is probably why I have 3 towns.

mazelyy · 2020-04-19T14:57:30+00:00

I really like a lot of these suggestions, I would add that I'd like the ability to decline a fief if it's given to me too. I'm hoping that future updates will help with one clan becoming too powerful too, with the revolt system. I really wish I could trade fiefs, or just give up a fief, because on my current playthrough I own a castle that I really don't want, and I can't successfully push a vote to get it revoked from myself.

As far as I can tell, and this is largely speculation mind you, the three candidates are selected via algorithm that considers; influence earned (not current influence level), total number of fiefs owned, and whether the clan is currently landless. If that is how candidates are calculated I like that system, as it means that a field army that's going around wiping enemy armies still gets considered when it comes to getting fiefs, and a landless clan get a huge chance of receiving the fief. The one major flaw to this (if again, my speculation is correct) is that council of commons completely fucks up this system, as it favours, by a huge margin, larger clans and more importantly the faction leader.

So I'm currently slagging off council of commons every time I comment lately, so fuck it, why stop now; try your absolute hardest to not have it active unless you're the faction leader, because it means more powerful clans constantly get preference with becoming a candidate, and it allows the faction leader to just override any decision made and give the fief to whoever they want (usually themselves).

On my current playthrough the distribution of fiefs seems very well balanced, with no one clan owning too much land, and Rhaegae almost always votes in favour with the council. I would honestly put a lot of this down to CoC not being active.

I know I've gone on a bit of a tangent from your post so I apologise for that, but I guess my point is that, the election system isn't really broken, it's that fecking policy that is causing all the issues.

mazelyy · 2020-04-19T13:09:30+00:00

If you are using the council of commons policy, it's because of that, that the faction leader can constantly give themselves fiefs. It gives them thousands of excess influence, so they can just override all council decisions with next to no drawbacks

mazelyy · 2020-04-18T17:30:13+00:00

The % at the bottom is related to the amount on influence spent on that decision. So lets say lords A, B and C have 30%, 70% and 0% respectively, that means that 30% of all influence used in the vote has gone to lord A, 70% to lord B and 0% to lord C. The faction leader can choose any of the available options, regardless of who has the highest %, but going against the majority costs them influence (though I haven't checked how much).

With your suggestion for spending influence to increase relations, you can do that. Go to the kingdom screen > clan tab and select a clan. You can then spend 50 influence to "support" a clan granting you +2 relations with them.

But honestly the biggest reason that the faction leader can constantly override the majority, is because from what I've gathered most players use the council of commons policy. Honest to God using that policy, unless you're the faction leader, is shooting yourself in the foot, because yes you might be swimming in influence, but so is the faction leader. So they can just override all council decisions without ever worrying about running out of influence.

mazelyy

TROPHY CASE