Quick clarification regarding Final Victory / Issue 22

[kaeldragor]

Issue 22 is marked as resolved, but I want to clarify something.  First a little background.

I need to have positive relationships with the Noldor to achieve victory.  So I need to join in against their enemies in battle a couple times right?  But HOW positive does the relationship need to be for victory?

This question led to my need for clarification on Issue 22.  It mentions resolving an issue where relations with renegades, adventure companies etc. would get too positive to fight them.  It indicates that without the ability to fight them, victory is not possible.

However, the Victory Progress screen lists the following Minor Factions:
Snake Cult
Jatu
Mystmountain
Heretic

It then says that no minor factions or heroic personalities can remain for final victory.  So does this refer to ANY army, even if not part of the listed minor factions?  It implies that it does include characters like Ithilrandir the Noldor and Boris the Raven.

So far so good... except I need to have positive relationships with the Noldor AND defeat a couple unique Noldor lords to achieve victory.

This is where Issue 22 comes in - my understanding is that after a while, the relationship will go back to hostile.

So the clarification I want is about the following:

-Do all listed armies in the Victory Progress need to be defeated for final victory, regardless of faction? (This is my current assumption.)
-How does the Issue 22 fix affect the Noldor enemies?  Does it sabotage your relationship with the entire race, or just with those heroes?
  -If with the whole race, I can see just having to re-befriend them.  If just with the hero, that is perfect.
      -However, it doesn't mention them... so if it does neither, I'll be stuck, unable to attack the army of Ithilrandir unless I can catch him fighting a nation's lords that I haven't opposed yet.


In a nutshell, my concern is regarding just how much LUCK is required while trying to achieve victory.  And whether I should wait until the late game to befriend the Noldor.  And if I do, it will be even harder, since there are fewer people they can fight that I can join against at that point.  (It'll be my own caravans and lords fighting them in the end-game.)

 

[noosers]

As far as I understand (but this serious question will need the big boss´explanation and confirmation);

-Do all listed armies in the Victory Progress need to be defeated for final victory, regardless of faction? (This is my current assumption.)

Yes. Listed armies are Unique Spawns and the various Minor Faction spawns.

-How does the Issue 22 fix affect the Noldor enemies?  Does it sabotage your relationship with the entire race, or just with those heroes?

Entire race including the Heroes, since they belong to Noldor. I had in a testing game the annyoing situation that I was befriended with the Adventurer Parties roaming Ravenstern (not around anymore). They were as yellow as the two Adventurer spawns - The Griffonsword Company and Ironsword, both Adventurer faction. So I befriended those Adventurer Parties and wasn´t able to attack the Griffonsword Company anymore which formerly chased me all around the map just for fun.

I dont think this has been changed so far but it is one of the main reasons why the automatic loss of relation with minor faction over time was introduced. That way, you will somewhen arrive at a relation <4 with them and be able to attack again.

-If with the whole race, I can see just having to re-befriend them.  If just with the hero, that is perfect.

Managing this, is very tricky. You need to be careful how much you abuse the Noldor as meatshield for grinding down armies. There´s advantages and drawbacks, and workarounds. Everything in Pendor comes at a price.

-However, it doesn't mention them... so if it does neither, I'll be stuck, unable to attack the army of Ithilrandir unless I can catch him fighting a nation's lords that I haven't opposed yet.

That will only work if your relation isn´t too positive with him. My vague guess there is +15 relation as treshold. Which is about the same that the Noldor relation message in your victory conditions goes to "friendly".

And yes. The Noldor are there to make the endgame pretty entertainig again. Something you have to fight and crave, achieve and think for. The loot alone is worth it. Not to mention to be the first one who beat PoP and unified Pendor ;P

 

[kaeldragor]

You post provided a lot of food for thought, but I'm still encountering the base concern - how do I finish with positive relations with the Noldor if I have to fight at least two of their unique hero spawns?

I can either be an enemy and take out those spawns, or help the race and get positive relations.

The closest I have gotten was waiting until they spawned, then attacking them and defeating their unique armies.  This crushed their faction and then all I had to do was help them in fights AFTER that (kiting them into jatu / snake cult parties).  I managed to get positive just as another unique Noldor army arrived (I guess it took me too long and they recovered).  I shouldn't have gone for the gem ransom option, eh?

In my mind this is the hardest part of the victory conditions once you get into the late game, due to the balancing act required between keeping hostile with the Noldor so you can fight the unique spawns, but not TOO hostile so that you can befriend them afterward.

Any tips from anyone who's managed both?

 

[hohyss]

If you are really desperate, then you could try this when you have a positive relation with noldor.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,67335.msg1759516.html#msg1759516

It will allow you to completely annihilate their army without losing a relationship and your men.

This is considered as an exploit and I actually reported it myself since it kind of makes the game too easy.

I think it is already posted to dev forum ( according to misguided )

 

[kaeldragor]

If you are really desperate, then you could try this when you have a positive relation with noldor.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,67335.msg1759516.html#msg1759516

It will allow you to completely annihilate their army without losing a relationship and your men.

This is considered as an exploit and I actually reported it myself since it kind of makes the game too easy.

I think it is already posted to dev forum ( according to misguided )

I remember laughing when I read that originally, but for some reason didn't carry it over to THIS situation.  Thanks for the reminder.

And yes, the dev team is aware - the problem is that unless there is another commanding lord on the battlefield it just makes sense that you'd be in charge.  (Siege battles being an exception, but possibly hard to edit due to native's structure.)  Difficult to build exceptions into that, but I'm not as mod-savvy as SD so he may have ideas that I don't know about.

Again, not a bad workaround/exploit if needed for final victory.  It won't feel that cheap if I wait until I've conquered everything else.

 

[hohyss]

If you are really desperate, then you could try this when you have a positive relation with noldor.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,67335.msg1759516.html#msg1759516

It will allow you to completely annihilate their army without losing a relationship and your men.

This is considered as an exploit and I actually reported it myself since it kind of makes the game too easy.

I think it is already posted to dev forum ( according to misguided )

I remember laughing when I read that originally, but for some reason didn't carry it over to THIS situation.  Thanks for the reminder.

And yes, the dev team is aware - the problem is that unless there is another commanding lord on the battlefield it just makes sense that you'd be in charge.  (Siege battles being an exception, but possibly hard to edit due to native's structure.)  Difficult to build exceptions into that, but I'm not as mod-savvy as SD so he may have ideas that I don't know about.

Again, not a bad workaround/exploit if needed for final victory.  It won't feel that cheap if I wait until I've conquered everything else.

Glad that it kind of helped you. For me, I used that method to attack Noldor when I became the only remaining major faction
on the map. ( there was no way I could attack them since I had a very high positive relation with Noldor.)

And it is actually funny..and sad at the same time.... when you see brave Noldor knight fall one by one in the hand of low-life barbaric bandits.
It looks funny when you see knights swinging their fist like crazy but when you closely watch them you can feel the sense of desperation, like a desperation of heroes in his final battle.

Noldor should be able to attack player,but as of 2.02, they are prevented from doing so when you have high relation with them.
( problematic since you have to defeat noldor army to win)

 

[Pode]

You post provided a lot of food for thought, but I'm still encountering the base concern - how do I finish with positive relations with the Noldor if I have to fight at least two of their unique hero spawns?

I can either be an enemy and take out those spawns, or help the race and get positive relations.

The closest I have gotten was waiting until they spawned, then attacking them and defeating their unique armies.  This crushed their faction and then all I had to do was help them in fights AFTER that (kiting them into jatu / snake cult parties).  I managed to get positive just as another unique Noldor army arrived (I guess it took me too long and they recovered).  I shouldn't have gone for the gem ransom option, eh?

In my mind this is the hardest part of the victory conditions once you get into the late game, due to the balancing act required between keeping hostile with the Noldor so you can fight the unique spawns, but not TOO hostile so that you can befriend them afterward.

Any tips from anyone who's managed both?

Haven't managed both yet, haven't even managed one, but I think I figured out how SD intended us to achieve the victory conditions (eventually).  Stay hostile enough that you can attack until both leaders have spawned, then defeat them both and demand they retire.  With both their racist lords safely off the map for good, you can proceed to win over the lesser Noldor to accept your enlightened if non-elven leadership.  Most likley via a mass release of all your Noldor prisoners you've accumulated. 

You're forcing a major change (tolerating humans) on a society of long-lived folk, it makes sense that you'd have to remove the old leadership who've been set in their attitudes for decades (centuries?) before institutional attitudes could change.

The dilemma is that us players are using the Noldor to build up our power so that we arrive at the late game earlier than I think SD intended, and with a side effect of positive relations from helping them in fights.  If I'm right on his intent, he can close off the possibility of us getting into this trap.  There's already an is_retired? test to prevent heroic respawns, and a relation normalizer script that eventually resets relations with bandits etc to hostile.  Noldor should get their relations normalized to hostile over time until both lords have been retired, at which point the normalizer should stop and we can make friends the way we do now.  We'd still be able to get temporary friendship in the early game, but not game-threatening permanent friendship.

 

[kaeldragor]

You post provided a lot of food for thought, but I'm still encountering the base concern - how do I finish with positive relations with the Noldor if I have to fight at least two of their unique hero spawns?

I can either be an enemy and take out those spawns, or help the race and get positive relations.

The closest I have gotten was waiting until they spawned, then attacking them and defeating their unique armies.  This crushed their faction and then all I had to do was help them in fights AFTER that (kiting them into jatu / snake cult parties).  I managed to get positive just as another unique Noldor army arrived (I guess it took me too long and they recovered).  I shouldn't have gone for the gem ransom option, eh?

In my mind this is the hardest part of the victory conditions once you get into the late game, due to the balancing act required between keeping hostile with the Noldor so you can fight the unique spawns, but not TOO hostile so that you can befriend them afterward.

Any tips from anyone who's managed both?

Haven't managed both yet, haven't even managed one, but I think I figured out how SD intended us to achieve the victory conditions (eventually).  Stay hostile enough that you can attack until both leaders have spawned, then defeat them both and demand they retire.  With both their racist lords safely off the map for good, you can proceed to win over the lesser Noldor to accept your enlightened if non-elven leadership.  Most likley via a mass release of all your Noldor prisoners you've accumulated. 

You're forcing a major change (tolerating humans) on a society of long-lived folk, it makes sense that you'd have to remove the old leadership who've been set in their attitudes for decades (centuries?) before institutional attitudes could change.

The dilemma is that us players are using the Noldor to build up our power so that we arrive at the late game earlier than I think SD intended, and with a side effect of positive relations from helping them in fights.  If I'm right on his intent, he can close off the possibility of us getting into this trap.  There's already an is_retired? test to prevent heroic respawns, and a relation normalizer script that eventually resets relations with bandits etc to hostile.  Noldor should get their relations normalized to hostile over time until both lords have been retired, at which point the normalizer should stop and we can make friends the way we do now.  We'd still be able to get temporary friendship in the early game, but not game-threatening permanent friendship.

I think you've struck upon the golden solution (until SD alters the behavior), as it were. Just need to be careful to make sure the relationship doesn't go TOO negative by that point.

 

[Pode]

I think you've struck upon the golden solution (until SD alters the behavior), as it were. Just need to be careful to make sure the relationship doesn't go TOO negative by that point.

Good point, maybe have it normalize to negative 1 or -5 or at worst -10

 

[Whitestrake]

You could always capture nolder and then talk to them and let them go for honour/renown/and 1+ relations with nolder after youve defeated the unique spawns

 

[kaeldragor]

You could always capture nolder and then talk to them and let them go for honour/renown/and 1+ relations with nolder after youve defeated the unique spawns

Having a stock of Noldor prisoners waiting until you defeat both Noldor lords is also a viable option, but you'll want a good amount of them, and to keep them from escaping.