[SUBMOD] Tweaking PoP 3.7 (UPD #45, 2016-12-17, 04:34 PM)

seems a real good chunk of these aren't workable and crash the game, or at least they do for me.

Stratigo said:

seems a real good chunk of these aren't workable and crash the game, or at least they do for me.

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You did something wrong.

Install tweaks one by one and make sure each time they work with your game. If you install a bunch all at once without knowing what you're doing, you will almost certainly get errors

Master_Lucas_III said:

Is there a way to change the troops that your village recruits? I would like to have my villages produce a mix of lower level troops if possible.

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Or alternately, is there a way to adjust the proportion of culture of troops a village produces? Like, can you make it so it's always 40% the original faction, and 60% the new faction?

thermocline said:

Master_Lucas_III said:

Is there a way to change the troops that your village recruits? I would like to have my villages produce a mix of lower level troops if possible.

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Or alternately, is there a way to adjust the proportion of culture of troops a village produces? Like, can you make it so it's always 40% the original faction, and 60% the new faction?

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I had done this before in native but python and source code are required. So in this case, only devs can do it if they are willing to.

I would like to request a tweak:

The ability to have either all or some of the following pop up in the tavern for hiring: Farmer, Refugee, Pendor Nobleman. I ask for this because i would like to have another source of pendorian-type recruits early game rather than just rescuing prisoners or waiting until i have a kingdom set up.

Thanks.

Master_Lucas_III said:

Is there a way to change the troops that your village recruits? I would like to have my villages produce a mix of lower level troops if possible.

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I can suggest this solution:

1) In menus.txt  find menu_recruit_volunteers.
In the "body" of this menu find 521 3 1224979098644774912 144115188075856141 92 and replace it with 2133 2 1224979098644774912 360287970189639705
2) Then find Recruit_them_({reg6}_denars).  2 1 1 936748722493063616 2060 1 864691128455135349 and replace it with the following:
Recruit_them_({reg6}_denars).  12 2133 2 1224979098644774912 360287970189639705 521 3 1224979098644774913 144115188075856141 93 1633 2 1224979098644774914 648518346341351424 2110 2 1224979098644774913 1224979098644774914 2149 2 1224979098644774915 360287970189639680 2123 3 1224979098644774916 1224979098644774915 20 2110 2 1224979098644774913 1224979098644774916 1610 3 648518346341351424 1224979098644774912 1224979098644774913 501 3 144115188075856141 93 -1 2122 3 1224979098644774917 1224979098644774913 20 1529 2 360287970189639680 1224979098644774917 2060 1 864691128455135349

If you do this, you will always recruit peasants from village menu, but you will still always recruit faction troops when you will talk directly to village elders.

360287970189639705 is a farmer.
You can change him to whoever you want by adding a troop's number (that you can see in Morghs Editor) to 360287970189639680.
So farmers are 360287970189639680 + 25 = 360287970189639705.
If you want to recruit females, then it's 360287970189639680 + 199 (peasant woman) = 360287970189639879.
And so on...
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Changing mercs that can be hired in taverns is a little tricky.
A script that is responsible for this is update_mercenary_units_of_towns from scripts.txt.
In this script there is an operation 2136 3 1224979098644774913 360287970189639707 360287970189639734 which defines a range of troops (the bottom and the top+1 respectively) that will randomly appear in taverns. You can adjust this range the same way as described above (when I was talking about farmers and peasant women).
Just know that simply extending this range may result in fake (trp_mercenaries_end) or quest troops (trp_37_arsonist) appearing in taverns as well if they are present somewhere within the range borders.
Reworking this aspect of the game is easier said than done if one wants to keep game balance and atmosphere intact.
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Also at this point I think I'll stop.
At the beginning it was fun, but recently all these tweaks and all these numbers started to annoy me a little bit, so I'd rather take a break before a lost my interest in them for good.
If I see some really interesting suggestion, I will probably implement it, but otherwise my work on tweaking PoP 3.7 is over.
You can still post your suggestions (I have a text file where I keep the ones I liked but didn't implement yet), just please don't be angry at me for not answering and not implementing them (I just don't want to sound like a broken record, repeating same excuses "too big for a tweak"/"can't be implemented"/"dunno how to do this"/"sorry, not interested" over and over again). I read all your suggestions, I just don't reply. 
Also I've read all of your "thank you" messages that oftentimes made me blush.  Thank you for your kind words, it was really nice, but most of the credits should definitely go to PoP developers for creating the mod so great that I got motivated and actually wanted to spend my time to try to make some of its features a little better, rather than just play the mod once and say "ahhh, to hell with this".

The last wish, though, if you don't mind giving a little feedback. What tweaks did you like most? Like you top-5 (if you installed more than 5 tweaks )?

Leonion said:

Also at this point I think I'll stop.
At the beginning it was fun, but recently all these tweaks and all these numbers started to annoy me a little bit, so I'd rather take a break before a lost my interest in them for good.
If I see some really interesting suggestion, I will probably implement it, but otherwise my work on tweaking PoP 3.7 is over.
You can still post your suggestions (I have a text file where I keep the ones I liked but didn't implement yet), just please don't be angry at me for not answering and not implementing them (I just don't want to sound like a broken record, repeating same excuses "too big for a tweak"/"can't be implemented"/"dunno how to do this"/"sorry, not interested" over and over again). I read all your suggestions, I just don't reply. 
Also I've read all of your "thank you" messages that oftentimes made me blush.  Thank you for your kind words, it was really nice, but most of the credits should definitely go to PoP developers for creating the mod so great that I got motivated and actually wanted to spend my time to try to make some of its features a little better, rather than just play the mod once and say "ahhh, to hell with this".

The last wish, though, if you don't mind giving a little feedback. What tweaks did you like most? Like you top-5 (if you installed more than 5 tweaks )?

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Thank you for everything! My top 5 (not in order):

14. A tweak to let the king/queen player character create KO chapters in walled fiefs of his/her kingdom that don't belong to any specific lord yet
17. Forbidding weak lords to raid villages
38. Making +1 relation gain with friendly lords after large battles or sieges automatic
25. Giving money to poor friendly lords
33.1. Replacing "The steward of X needs your help" full-screen notification with a simple log message

Mine are:

1.) Village watchtowers notifying you of unique spawns' whereabouts - so useful. Helps reduce the blind luck element of reaching spawns before they get taken out by someone else.
2.) Don't touch my ammo in sally outs - this feature is done purely to deter not using an outnumbered force of archers, but makes no sense in-game. The defenders of a castle sally out into the waiting, ready army of the besiegers, and they don't use all their arrows? Glad this tweak is there to reinstate realism.
3.) Swapping spawn points of farmers and bandits - another one that should've been in vanilla from day 1. Without the tweak it actually makes YOU feel like the bandit running to ransack the village since you're spawning outside and rushing into it.
4.) Smarter patrols - brings more intelligence to what you can do with AI parties. I really like it. As the lord of a fief, you should be able to command your patrols. I think this one should actually be higher since it's one of the tweaks that add more depth to the gameplay itself, rather than making things more convenient.
5.) Reserved - reserving this one for a kingdom gameplay tweak. I actually have never recruited a lord so I have no idea how the kingdom/lord management works. But I expect them to be quite useful.

I'm really happy with what you've given us Leonion. Thanks for your work in devising and implementing them.

My top:
1. 4. Making lords use KO troops from towns/castles they own
2. 12. Fixing companions
3. 17. Forbidding weak lords to raid villages
4. 11. Adding a line about lords' personalities to their "profiles"
5. 38 and 40 look very good, but I have to test those yet, if they work as intented, they are in top 5 

Good tweaks!

Thanks for the tweaks.

Here's my top 5:

1.- 11. Adding a line about lords' personalities to their "profiles":
For obvious reasons, this is my favorite from all the tweaks.

2.- 33.1. Replacing "The steward of X needs your help" full-screen notification with a simple log message:
It's very nice to not be interrupted so often because my incompetent steward needs help.

3.- 40. Making relation grinding during feasts semi-automatic:
Because of the inability of having every single lord spawn inside a castle during feast, it's very good to have a way to get relation with all the "off screen" lords.

4.- 30. Investing money into villages => increasing their prosperity:
A very good way to "buy" honor.

5.- 28. Exchanging fiefs with lords:
It's very helpful for when you want to have an order in every single castle or town, just keep exchanging until you cycle what you want.

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This is not is not to say that these are the only tweaks i like, there are some very close contenders, like:
1. Smarter patrols
3. Selecting fiefs for the player character
4. Making lords use KO troops from towns/castles they own
5.1. Making martial and cunning lords less *****y
5.2. Making martial and cunning lords less *****y (part 2)
13. A tweak to disable villages being automatically granted to a new lord of a castle/town after this castle/town is captured and appropriated or given away by the player
14. A tweak to let the king/queen player character create KO chapters in walled fiefs of his/her kingdom that don't belong to any specific lord yet
17. Forbidding weak lords to raid villages
19. Ransoming imprisoned lords from other friendly lords
25. Giving money to poor friendly lords
29. Adding "Jatu Army/Dread Legion/etc was spotted near {insert_fief_name_here}" kind of notifications
32. Forcing lords to GTFO of dead factions ASAP
33.2. Replacing "Your village is under attack" full-screen notification with a simple log message
36. Adding a trigger that will force militia patrols to occasionally drop off their prisoners in a walled fief that patrol's village is assigned to

Hello guys !
this looks realy realy great !
thank you for your effort to make this great mod even greater !

there is just one little problem for me ..... messing with all these numbers makes my head explode  .... 15 years ago maybe i had a chance to survive it 

... so is there any chance that anyone could send me his modified files ?
... i would realy love to play arround with those tweaks    ... if not i just stick to the standard version and have  nearly endless fun there

my top 5 would be a little longer  ... haha
it would be something like
1/3/4/5.2/8/9/11/12.1/12.2/13/14/15/17/18.2/19/20.2/24/25/26/27/28/29/30/32/36/37/38/39/40

Added the link to compilation of most tweaks to the first message.

Thank you for your amazing work once more Leonion!

I "installed" tweak #1 - 8, #11, #14 - 16, #18.1 - #21, #24 - 32, #34 - 38, and #40 all together. They all work wonders. I found the others "cheaty" or simply excessive, although I know that we have different desires .

Here is a little feedback:
- Tweak #29: The reports about minor faction armies. They are a bit too frequent in my opinion. If a unique spawn is sitting ducks next to a castle for example, I still get the report every couple of hours that he / she is there. Also, if for example 5 unique spawns are roaming around, my note list becomes almost full with their sighting reports. I don't know if this is the way it should work, but minor faction's armies (at least the hostile ones) are not named specifically in the reports, I only see that "Army of enemies spotted near Marleons" for example in the case of a Heretic army. However I don't know how the report would look like for other minor faction armies, especially for friendly ones, like Vanskerry (for me), as I haven't got any other army spawned lately. Don't get me wrong, I'm still satisfied with this tweak, otherwise I wouldn't have installed it . It's just that I have to search a bit more carefully if I want to notice something more important between the recent reports.
- Tweak #38: The automatic relation points increase after bigger battles. The relation increase is granted towards companions in my party too, is this intended? Anyhow, I think it is fine as it is, as the player should get some relations with them after fighting together. Battles should be the moments when they forget about all of their quarrels, and fight like a team . This tweak works like a charm by the way!

I haven't found anything else that is worth mentioning. Besides that these tweaks are really cool, and improve the gameplay a lot!!

My top 5 tweaks (with further feedbacks):
#1: Tweak #40: Daily relation increase during feasts are semi-automatic now. Finally those boring moments during feasts, when you had to talk with each of your vassals, then send them away to be able to talk with the rest, reinvite everyone again, and do this every day is finally gone. Feasts are much less grindy now! Thank you!
#2: Tweak #4: Lords should have been using knighthood order troops from their fiefs right from the start! I don't know why this hasn't made it into PoP in an earlier phase.
#3: Tweak #29: Finally I don't have to search for armies, and unique spawns for hours! I have a much better chance now to catch them in time, before they are taken out by someone else.
#4: The tweak you mentioned me on how to increase the threshold to be able to capture unique spawn heroes that have a positive relation with you. Currently the threshold is at 0, which I don't think is right. You can fight friendly patrols and lords until the relation of 80 with their faction, so why can't you capture unique spawn heroes if you are just a bit over 0 relation with their faction? For example having a relation of '6' with Adventurer companies and not being able capture Kodan Ironsword because of that is unjust imo. Also, could you please make a link to this tweak too (top of page 22) on the first page? So anyone else can find it more easily who is interested (like following the "filthy rich" challenge). Thanks!
#5: Tweak #34: Overhaul of upgrading Knighthood orders. A really good overhaul in my opinion. I hope this will make into PoP 3.8 too! Finally sergeants upgrade also a bit (they really should have been doing this from the start), and the money costs are not moving in a so wide range anymore! The original 10k, 20k and 40k denars for the first 3 upgrade were really cheap, and any upgrade that cost over 640k denars was insane, as the prices kept increasing exponentially. Now the number of upgrades are the true limits, not the amount of money, which is the way it should be. You will still have to pay a lot for the upgrades, but now the costs are much more balanced, starting from 50k denars, which is a just price. I also love the variety between the different levels of the upgrade, as they are not all the same anymore.

Of course I like the other tweaks I mentioned very much too!

Cheers

Gorvex said:

I don't know if this is the way it should work, but minor faction's armies (at least the hostile ones) are not named specifically in the reports, I only see that "Army of enemies spotted near Marleons" for example in the case of a Heretic army.

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Hmm. Every army should be named exactly as it is named when you see it (i.e. "Heretic Army was spotted ..." / "Three Seers was spotted ..." / etc.).
Are you sure you got the report about a Heretic army and not an army of lords from a major faction that also happened to be passing by?

As for report frequency - since I used the existing script, it gets triggered as often as before, and changing the frequency would affect other things that this trigger... triggers.
But yeah, I agree it's too frequent.
I'll probably make this tweak as a separate trigger for the next version if the developers don't do this before me.

Gorvex said:

Tweak #38: The automatic relation points increase after bigger battles. The relation increase is granted towards companions in my party too, is this intended?

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Ow, sh....
No, it actually isn't intended. I just didn't have any companions in my party when I tested the tweak.
When I included them I thought of them as lords, so that relations with them would also improve after they are made ones. But I'm not sure I can make the game understand the difference. So either your relations with them will always improve or never.
I can exclude companions, if you want to, but in this case you will never get relation points from them after large battles.

Also, thank you everyone for the feedback.

Leonion said:

Gorvex said:

I don't know if this is the way it should work, but minor faction's armies (at least the hostile ones) are not named specifically in the reports, I only see that "Army of enemies spotted near Marleons" for example in the case of a Heretic army.

Click to expand...

Hmm. Every army should be named exactly as it is named when you see it (i.e. "Heretic Army was spotted ..." / "Three Seers was spotted ..." / etc.).
Are you sure you got the report about a Heretic army and not an army of lords from a major faction that also happened to be passing by?

As for report frequency - since I used the existing script, it gets triggered as often as before, and changing the frequency would affect other things that this trigger... triggers.
But yeah, I agree it's too frequent.
I'll probably make this tweak as a separate trigger for the next version if the developers don't do this before me.

Gorvex said:

Tweak #38: The automatic relation points increase after bigger battles. The relation increase is granted towards companions in my party too, is this intended?

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Ow, sh....
No, it actually isn't intended. I just didn't have any companions in my party when I tested the tweak.
When I included them I thought of them as lords, so that relations with them would also improve after they are made ones. But I'm not sure I can make the game understand the difference. So either your relations with them will always improve or never.
I can exclude companions, if you want to, but in this case you will never get relation points from them after large battles.

Also, thank you everyone for the feedback.

Click to expand...

Hi!

I'm positive that it could be only the Heretic army that gave me that report, since I was at peace with everyone, and currently every minor faction who doesn't need to be obliterated are my pals . But I'll make more tests to have a more clear picture of the situation. And I'll report back for sure! Sadly no more minor faction armies want to spawn right now, even though I increased the spawn rate and I ask rumors from every tavern keeper, castle scribe, traveller, lord and militia patrol I can. As for the frequency, I understand that it would have been a much bigger job to create a separate trigger. It's not that big deal anyways, I mean you have done an amazing job, and I'm just "complaining" about it (I hope it didn't sound like I was complaining by the way, since I just wanted to give you a feedback) .

As for the relation increase after battles towards companions in your party, I think it is perfectly fine, really! At least there is a way now to keep them a bit more happy even if there are clashes sometimes. I mean let's say if Sir Jocelyn saved the life of Sir Alistair in a battle, he should be thankful for that, regardless they don't get along that well. And that +1 or +2 relation increase per big battle will not be game-breaking for sure .

I can confirm that non-unique armies are shown as "army of enemies".

Unique spawns are correctly named.

Darn it...

Well, since I had to fix it anyway, I now replaced the tweak with a separate trigger.
Just replace your process_alarms script with its content from original 3.7063 script.txt file (so that you will not get double reports) and then add a new trigger as is now said in the tweak's descriptions (steps 2-3, tweak #29).
I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Thanks for the update!

Just noticed an odd bug(or is it?) while using the files provided at Dropbox from here..

All the villages has a view garrison option that allows you to take and add units. They all show villagers and militia units.
I'm pretty sure this isn't supposed to be accessible.

Waaat...
How on Earth did it get there...

I made such a change in my "work" version, but these files are supposed to be a clean version.
Reuploaded everything, fixed the link.
Try again.