SP Native Antiquity Ludus - Gladiator Schools

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Compatible version
e1.5.9
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Ludus adds a completely new business opportunity for you. In all Imperial cities, you can find a "Ludus" - a gladiator school. You can buy, train your slaves as gladiators, sell them and much more. All schools are inside the game's sandbox simulation - means that they are sustaining their own economy independent from player action.



About

Ludus Simulation

This mod creates independent simulated gladiator schools in all Empire cities. Unlike workshops in-game, these gladiator schools have their own budget and population/slaves to maintain. If they are out of budget, they stop buying slaves to train or opt-out from underground fights to protect their asset. City that they are in also decides how many slaves they can get - i.e. more popular prosper town means it's getting more trader and slave trader traffic hence they have higher chance of buying slaves. These differences are deciding their prices along with how many already existing gladiators they have. Same as players' ludus, they also train their infantry each day and upgrade them based on the experience. Everything is dynamic, if one slave dies in fight, Lanista have to find a replacement in order to increase revenue.


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New Troops
This mod adds 6 different troop types with a unique troop tree. This is essential for separating slaves/gladiators from the normal units. However, beware, this can cause issues in your saved files. Please make sure that you are okay with using this mod - otherwise, if you remove it halfway through, it's very likely that you will get a crash.


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Buying and Selling Ludus
Buying gladiator school is as simple as a button click. You cannot own two Ludus at the same time, therefore you need to make a wise choice before buying a ludus. Selling ludus is also available after going inside the ludus.


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Managing Ludus

When you enter your Ludus, you will see the estimated weekly revenue. This might be more or less than that value at the end of the week, however it's very likely to be around that. Happiness is also quite important and I will explain that in the Slave Uprising section.
In order to manage your ludus, you have multiple options. I will go one by one to explain each of them.
  • Manage Fighters: This option allows you to manage your fighters and your prisoners. You can take your gladiators into your army and let them fight alongside of you and you can put them back into ludus once you are done with them. This action doesn't cost anything. You can also put your prisoners ( as long as they are not lords ). Once you put your prisoners and close the window, it will automatically convert them into slaves and start training them as true warriors.
  • Manage Stocks: This option allows you to monitor your food stocks for the Ludus. Based on the food conditions, each day, every Ludus buys their own food from their local town market. And they pay same price with you while buying this. If you only stash grain in there, it's very likely that happiness will go down and this is problematic. Especially if you are already "crowded".
  • Underground Fights: This option can be set to On or Off. Underground fights were essential, dirty side of gladiatorial games. Not every Ludus was getting picked by elite. Hence underground fights were necessary for some of them to earn more. This option increases your revenue, however, this also increases chances of your fighters to be killed or wounded as well - since underground fights are not regulated and quite brutal. You can opt-out if you don't want this.
  • Automatic Resupply: By default, all Luduses buys their own food from their local market to avoid any issues. Local towns are not always most profitable ones. Hence you can opt-out if you have a better source.
  • Automatic Slave Trading: By default, all Luduses gets their slaves from their local slave market. This can be costly or unnecessary if you think you have the correct amount of slaves. Automatic slave-trading never surpluses the cap while buying the slaves. But this doesn't mean that you can't. You can opt-out and add your prisoners as slave.
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Celebrational Games
If a faction leader or any clan member higher than tier 3 experiences a fierce battle between two factions and wins they may choose to hire your ludus for celebration games. This means quick cash-in but beware, this also means that your fighters might get hurt badly or killed in arena since games are tend to be fierce than usual ceremonial games. And because of the nature of these games, your stocks will be drained much quicker in that hours. After you accept the offer, everything will goes to normal and the effects will be immediate.
Currently, you cannot hire others to do celebrational games - in the future, I will add this so that you can gain influence ( in a way, exchange popularity with denars )


Gladiatorial Games
With this system, if you get enslaved in any of the Imperial cities, your captor will sell you to Ludus. This means you will be a gladiator. This won't be optional in terms of the effects but it will be optional in terms of attendance ( ie you can say skip ). With each successful day, the game will track your progress and after you escape, based on how much "win" rate you have, you will also bring several other slaves and gladiators with you.
Each champion has some sort of a procedural personality - which reflected to you via their insult-lines when they enter the arena. This is nothing fancy, but I think adds a bit of immersion.


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Slave Uprising

If you know history, or at least if you watched Spartacus, you should know that being a slave isn't nice. And putting sweaty jagged fighter guys in a small location with weapons isn't very logical if they hate you to guts. Roman Empire experienced this three times with three Servile Wars. In this mod, things are not so different. If you don't make your ludus happy, you will trigger a slave uprising. Unlike the game's rebellions, slave uprising doesn't result in slaves taking over the city. Instead, they declare war against you ( or your faction if you are in ) and on the owner faction. And they spawn outside of the city with a single army ( yes, like Total War ). But you lose control of the ludus and all of your assets. Slaves are led by one person and it's considered as a clan in game ( similar to Rebellions )


Troop Tree and Some Remarks
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Remarks: They are ( obviously ) not historically accurate. I tried my best to caption their real look but the game's assets are not that helpful for this type of job. I used this Gladiators mod to guide me. I tried to make their skin color and face type as diverse as possible, however, if you somehow feel offended, it's not my problem.


Notes:
- It's very likely that some luduses get too much wealth because of this unchecked balance. This wouldn't be so unrealistic - since Lanista's often known to have quite noticeable wealth. However if player earns too much denars with this, it might unbalance the game. If you spot any issues, feel free to post and let me know.
- It could be that some gladitors are too strong. Although they have no agenda of besieging anywhere, they can still cause too much problem if they snowball with those good tier units. Let me know if this creates any issue as well.
- For all other bugs etc, create a bug ticket.
- I'm aware of the fact that this would be great if I added units from CA Eagle Rising - although I wanted to keep it separated. If you can come up with a troop tree for CA Eagle Rising, let me know, I can add it as optional patch for those who enjoy Eagle Rising. Check Gladiators.xml file for their items and such.


Planned Features:
- Planning to add Ludus as a scene. Just cosmetic.
- Planning to give ability to organize games by players to gain influence and such.
- Planning to bring possibility of being enslaved as gladiator if you get caught by certain lords and brought to Empire town ( i.e. you can have multiple tournament fights till you gain your freedom or escape )


Some Screenshots:
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Have fun!
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  • Version 1.1.0.2​

    • Fixed an issue where you get crash if you are asked to fight without owning a ludus
  • Version 1.1.0.1​

    • Fixed an issue where you get constant messages about luduses that you don't own.
  • Version 1.1.0​

    • New captive system: Now with this system, if you get enslaved in any of the Imperial cities, your captor will sell you to Ludus. This means you will be a gladiator. This won't be optional in terms of the effects but it will be optional in terms of attendance ( ie you can say skip ). With each successful day, the game will track your progress and after you escape, based on how much "win" rate you have, you will also bring several other slaves and gladiators with you.
    • New Lanista System: Now you can watch your gladiators fighting in weekly games. You need to be in that town while this is happening and these games only happen at the end of the week.
    • Fixed several issues
    • Optimized the revenue from the Luduses. Previously it was generating too unfair revenue.
 
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With the latest patch:
  • New captive system: Now with this system, if you get enslaved in any of the Imperial cities, your captor will sell you to Ludus. This means you will be a gladiator. This won't be optional in terms of the effects but it will be optional in terms of attendance ( ie you can say skip ). With each successful day, the game will track your progress and after you escape, based on how much "win" rate you have, you will also bring several other slaves and gladiators with you.
  • New Lanista System: Now you can watch your gladiators fighting in weekly games. You need to be in that town while this is happening and these games only happen at the end of the week.
  • Fixed several issues
  • Optimized the revenue from the Luduses. Previously it was generating too unfair revenue.
  • Fixed an issue where you get crash if you are asked to fight without owning a ludus
  • Fixed an issue where you get constant messages about luduses that you don't own.


Gladiatorial Games
With this system, if you get enslaved in any of the Imperial cities, your captor will sell you to Ludus. This means you will be a gladiator. This won't be optional in terms of the effects but it will be optional in terms of attendance ( ie you can say skip ). With each successful day, the game will track your progress and after you escape, based on how much "win" rate you have, you will also bring several other slaves and gladiators with you.
Each champion has some sort of a procedural personality - which reflected to you via their insult-lines when they enter the arena. This is nothing fancy, but I think adds a bit of immersion.
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Feel free to throw any ideas and such :party:

I thought about adding similar unique things to other cultures as well. Like wrestlers to Khuzait, cheap slave markets in Aserai, fist fight locations to Battania/Vlandia etc but then it felt like going outside of the mod's name and scope. Perhaps in the future I can expand to that area as well
 
Oh man, this is amazing I am definitely going to try it out tonight and give you my thoughts. Now if you can manage to build an additional mod relating to this and allow us to play a Spartacus-like rebellion campaign like history's Third Serville War I would not only love you but I would surely donate to you!
 
This is awesome, you've been killing it with all of your mods and are the types of features that keep me hyped about this game! I'd love to eventually see a total conversion with all these different mechanics in.

Do the gladiators have randomized stats? For example, if two max-level Gladiators were to go toe-to-toe will it always be an even fight or will their stats make a difference in the matter?
 
if you can manage to build an additional mod relating to this and allow us to play a Spartacus-like rebellion campaign like history's Third Serville War
In order to do this, I should either add being part of rebellion while you are enslaved in that ludus or force all users to stay as a gladiator and imprisoned for days. The issue with this is, people don't like to play click simulator so if I force people to be slaves/gladiators for days or even for months, then the player will be bored.
For you do this type of rebellion campaign is actually easy. Not exactly the same as Serville Wars but buy a ludus, train your own slave/gladiator army, add them into your party, attack whomever you wanna attack. And for this one you don't actually need anything extra in the mod because it provides this already.

Do the gladiators have randomized stats? For example, if two max-level Gladiators were to go toe-to-toe will it always be an even fight or will their stats make a difference in the matter?
They don't have randomized stats but they do have randomized equipment based on their type hence it creates the difference between their fight style and out come of the match. I.e. if two Thraex faced in the match, one might have fast pugio and the other one have curved scimitar which is slower but with more damage. Even in the game, more or less all other variables/actions are randomized anyway so there is no "oh X will definitely going to win". Especially with attach waves system, it becomes more surprising and unpredictable because it could be that your Murmillo is great in 1v1 but if he is already hurt, even a slave can take him down.
 
Just wanted to +1 your mod. Great work, if I have any ideas ill definitly ping you.

Cool thing in my game, there are quite some few gladiators running around just outside of the empire's border in Battania. And they are acting as a patrol force significantly culling the bandit population.|


Is there any reason why you didn't make the gladiators upgradeable by themselves? Would be cool if those gladiators on the run could become power houses over time and exact some revenge on the empire.

Not that I dont have slaves, but they are happy :p
 
Is there any reason why you didn't make the gladiators upgradeable by themselves?
Not sure what you mean in there. I didn't add anything extra to stop their "development" when they become rebel. They are like any other regular soldiers, if they get enough experience, they are getting upgraded. Most likely they are not getting enough experience with fighting all these bandits. If they fight with proper units - i.e. like Empire or Battania, then they should get enough experience. Although they don't have much chance against organized parties - especially against ranged parties.

About they being wandering around like stray dogs, eh, that part is also quite strange to me. I guess it's related to AI's limitation. I'm assigning them a target, to raid nearby villages at the start while creating them but they are running away instantly when they see a nearby hostile party.
But regardless, autonomous Luduses are being extremely sensitive and trying not to trigger any uprising, so witnessing an uprising outside of your own doing should be quite rare.
 
Top mod with Eagle Rising... will you add historical gladiators?
No I don't want to add any models and force people to play something outside of native models - but Eagle Rising will add gladiatorial equipment in the future and once they do, I will put another optional XML file for those who use Eagle Rising so that they can enjoy historical gladiators and so on
 
Yes, it does. I forgot to update it in here I guess - will do now.

Not sure what you mean by your "pc" but yes you can join them not volunteerily though only if you have been captured and delivered to a city prison which has ludus.
 
PC is Player Character. The guy that you play.

Interesting aspect that you can be forced to play gladiatorial games. I might get captured more often~
 
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