Sengoku-mod - Fedual Japan mod preview/test

[embryodead]

Battle for the Sundered Realm

There was an event that was supposed to happen near the end of the game, where all opposing warlords ally against you to stop you from winning, to simulate Segikahara campaign. It was broken, however. I've fixed and extended it so that when it happens, you get a warning one year in advance, and then a -1 penalty for every war going on, which means you'll have to destroy or pacify at least some of the opposition to regain lost Legitimacy and win.

Building the Council of Five Elders also makes the AI more eager to sign alliances and vassal agreements (with anyone, not just the winning player), which helps building end game coalitions. In my Oda game the final "battle" was me & my 14 vassals vs. a coalition of 18 remaining players; 6 clans remained neutral. It may be a bit of a mess, but at least it's not the usual game of civ!

Also, war declarations are silent for vassals now, so there's no silly spam when this happens. Need a new diplo advisor, though.

 

[lfgr]

Got a python error (see attachment, I sadly don't have a savegame, but I know I was christian.)

Another thing: the check for RELIGION_CHRISTIANITY in Sengoku.py/Line 919 seems to be unnecessary.

I'm enjoying your mod very much.

 

[embryodead]

Got a python error (see attachment, I sadly don't have a savegame, but I know I was christian.)

Thanks, it's fixed now. You can safely update to latest revision.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Looks great!
I was already thinking in my last game (which you saw in the savegame) why I didn't see a big alliance against me, I saw in the concepts that it should happen
Didn't think it was a bug though, only that there is a chance for this to happen and I was lucky somehow
Anyway, definitely will try this out in another game, when I will have more time

PS: What's your future plans with the mod, beside the diplo advisor?
Do you have any bigger things remaining, or is it closing to an official release?

 

[embryodead]

There are 2 things I'd like to do:
- fixing the GUI issues like leaderboard or diplo advisor (I'm still unsure how to do this though)
- adding a couple more events/missions I have semi-prepared

There were a couple more features on the table, like Edicts/projects (Abolishion of Toll Booths, Sword Hunt, Expulsion Edict etc.) but they aren't particularly important and I'm happy with the current list.

 

[God-Emperor]

I have an idea for cleaning up the diplo advisor: a button (or check box) on it you can click which causes vassals to not show up (yours or theirs). That should thin it out a lot.

When that is active you might also show smaller icons for the vassals next to their masters, so you can see how big each group is and who is in it . They could be half or 1/4 the size with no text identifying them but the mouse-over help pop-up should still show for them which would identify them if you can't recognize the icon. Possibly in a double row radiating outwards at the same angle, but coming up with an arrangement the doesn't block the text could require some work. An alternative would be to add a list of vassals to the mouse-over pop-up, for those who have them.

There may be times when this would not help at all, but given the way the mod appears to work (I haven't tried it yet) it should help most of the time.

If it works well you could even switch the function of the button, so it is on by default and you activate the button to switch back to the old view.

 

[PinkPallin]

Talking about the leaderboard, I 'd like to have the clan leader in the retainers screen too, in order to see his age.

 

[embryodead]

I have an idea for cleaning up the diplo advisor: a button (or check box) on it you can click which causes vassals to not show up (yours or theirs). That should thin it out a lot.

When that is active you might also show smaller icons for the vassals next to their masters, so you can see how big each group is and who is in it . They could be half or 1/4 the size with no text identifying them but the mouse-over help pop-up should still show for them which would identify them if you can't recognize the icon. Possibly in a double row radiating outwards at the same angle, but coming up with an arrangement the doesn't block the text could require some work. An alternative would be to add a list of vassals to the mouse-over pop-up, for those who have them.

There may be times when this would not help at all, but given the way the mod appears to work (I haven't tried it yet) it should help most of the time.

If it works well you could even switch the function of the button, so it is on by default and you activate the button to switch back to the old view.

Thanks for the suggestions. It's not feasible to move all player's vassals (the AI may have a couple of them as well) but I've moved and disabled the Active Player's ones. Also adjusted icon sizes and text position. It doesn't fix all the problems but certainly looks much more usable right now, good enough for me. I don't think a switch is necessary, it just looks better this way.

Screenshots are of the same game a few years later (with 17 vassals) + a different perspective with just 1 vassal.

 

[embryodead]

A band-aid solution for too large leaderboard: you can press ALT-V to toggle the visibility of vassals (they are hidden by default). When vassals are hidden, their score is shown together with that of their Master's, in parentheses. I prefer this to the slider, which is rather ugly and doesn't seem to work well.

 

[embryodead]

Talking about the leaderboard, I 'd like to have the clan leader in the retainers screen too, in order to see his age.

You can't see the clan leader's age for a reason Clan leaders are based on history & available portraits, so if history goes a different way, there's no way to compensate for it like in Total War Shogun or Paradox's Sengoku, which have unlimited number of generic leaders. If age was shown, you might sometimes bump into leaders that are like -15 years old.

 

[Osakasayama]

You can't see the clan leader's age for a reason

I guess we have to memorize them all

By the way, some generals died in battle, so shouldn't they live longer if they stayed home?
Ryuzouji Takanobu and Imagawa Yoshimoto were both obese , but they weren't that old yet, and Saito Dosan could have lived longer if he escaped his son's wreath.

Also, could you possibly make an espionage option for betrayal of generals? I think its too restricting if battles were the only factors...

 

[AbsintheRed]

By the way, some generals died in battle, so shouldn't they live longer if they stayed home?
Ryuzouji Takanobu and Imagawa Yoshimoto were both obese , but they weren't that old yet, and Saito Dosan could have lived longer if he escaped his son's wreath.

I think edead already added some sort of randomness to the leaders' exact "die-date"

Also, could you possibly make an espionage option for betrayal of generals? I think its too restricting if battles were the only factors...

Sounds like a nice idea to me
I barely used espionage in my last game, but convincing generals to switch side sounds like a really tempting option in a couple cases

 

[embryodead]

By the way, some generals died in battle, so shouldn't they live longer if they stayed home?
Ryuzouji Takanobu and Imagawa Yoshimoto were both obese , but they weren't that old yet, and Saito Dosan could have lived longer if he escaped his son's wreath.

Apart from deaths being a bit random, it also works like this: under AI control, daimyo will die more or less in their historical timeframe (depending on the Balance settings); however, under human control they won't die prematurely, meaning that Ryuzoji Takanobu and Imagawa Yoshimoto can actually live up to 70-80 years.

Also, could you possibly make an espionage option for betrayal of generals? I think its too restricting if battles were the only factors...

There's betrayal that can happen when a general is defeated, though you probably know that. Using spies to bribe units is a bit problematic, however:
1. Spies can only target units that are within their own borders.
2. The bribed general and his army would have to be teleported back to your borders, or at least to a nearby spot (not possible without war or military access).

That's neither convienient nor realistic... I'd love to be able to change the Mission system so that it can be performed on units rather than plots, but that would require pretty much rewriting it, and I'm really not up for it.

 

[Askiya]

I must say, this mod has been very fun so far! Unlike in most other Civ games, when I tried to conquer all of Japan all the other daimyos allied against me. I appreciate the changes in strategy, just so you know!

 

[Opera]

Pretty impressive work, edead

I've been playing as the Takeda clan with Random. Things are going well although I have a hard time getting used to names. Will take me some time before I can place each clan from memory! Or unit names. Just when I feel comfortable with Yumi/Yari, I research their upgrades...

How common are Castle-towns supposed to be? I think around half of my cities are 6+ so far.
Also, did you remove the capital star because it couldn't exist with the Castle-towns' fat circle or because it wasn't relevant, what with Kyoto being the capital more than any other city?

Re: the scoreboard, what about putting vassals under their master, like you can do in BUG? Perhaps this could also allow you to hide them if there are 2+. That is, if there is only one, you show it, while if there are 2 or more, instead of the name of the first one, you display "+X Vassals".

It could also be nice to have a better way to track where our diplomats are.

How is the "wealth" column of the clan advisor calculated?

Takeda starts with a Onna Bugeisha unit. Are those only available at start or also through events? It didn't seem like anyone could train them though.

 

[Silver_wizard]

First of all, GREAT MOD, i've always been hoping that someone would make this, and it is awesome. There goes my Christmas vacation...

Currently playing as my favorite clan, the Shimazu. The year is 1595 and i control (partly through vassals) most of Kyushu and Shikoku. I have fairly high honor and fame scores, and my legitimacy is around 30%, the highest of all clans.

Some things that i noticed during the game that you might want to consider changing.

1) The diplo-screen colors. For the color-blind among us, military access and exchanged hostages look pretty much the same.

2) Unit movement. Really, does it take more than a year to march from one end of Kyushu to the other?

3) The general speed of the game. In reality, Japan was pretty much united by 1600, i don't see that happening in the next 5 game-years. Switching the calendar to months instead of bi-months would solve the above as well.

4) It isn't really visible where the shogun resides at any given moment. Perhaps you could add the current status (banished or not) to the victory screen?

 

[Spirictum]

Amazing work! What a jewel of a mod. I'm not used to play many mods (actually I've substituted vanilla BtS with Legends of Revolution as my normal civ games, and besides that I only play RFCs), so it really took me a good moment to digest the number of things you put/changed in this mod. Well Done! I'm playing with Clan Hojo and I'm liking it a lot! (actually I know almost nothing of Japanese history, so a clan with the "triforce" symbol was enough to convince me this was the one to play).

I have to agree with Opera that it's hard to get along with the names (clans and units). I don't see much of a problem with units (you can check civilopedia to know what you're facing), but when someone calls me in the beggining of the turn I usually have no idea who I'm talking to, and mostly who is the one that this guy is asking me to declare war on. I guess for this I'll just need to get used to the names, colors and placement (my first plays with SoI were like that too, I didn't know most of the nations there, but christian and muslin nations - and 3 hindus - is not hard to memorize fast, I think this will take a lot more time). Maybe this way is even better, as it forces the player to learn something about the history of Japan, as expressed in the mod (that's exactly what happened with me in SoI).

I didn't play much yet, but I found one tiny mispelling while playing: The Siege Expert Promotion I is correct, but the Siege Expert II is mispelled as Siege Expert I. By the status the bonuses seem to apply normally for both Siege Experts (curiously my General is attached to a Mounted Samurai, which doesn't receive neither City Attack Bonuses nor Defensive Bonuses, but when I hover the cursor I see a 10% city defense bonus and no city attack bonuses. I didn't check if it's applying or not, just saw it in the bonuses list).

 

[Zlatko]

This is amazing i must play this mod

 

[lfgr]

feedback:
TXT_KEY_UNIT_KIHOHEI entry is missing

After archiving time victory I wanted to go for unification. I got the sundered realm event, but nothing happened. It may be related to the fact that nearly every leader was friendly, since I gave all conquered cities to vassals and so had a honor of about 19 (See screenshot)

Spoiler :

 

[ezzlar]

Been playing some more now. Same wonderful atmosphere as in SOI. Well done! Some comments:

1. Trade agreement and Military access two different deals, that is a nice implementation.
2. Attacking strategic cities can be almost impossible if good defense. A double promoted samurai on a hills square and possible a river makes the odds at 0,5% even if I have a promoted Fire Bomb Thrower which is the only worthwhile attack unit for cities(?).
3. Science is a bit lame. Somewhat few techs and no good end-game units. Most of the good stuff comes early.
4. Why would I build Teppo Cavalry, a samurai with strength 7 when I can build Heavy Cavalry earlier with a strength of 8 and more bonuses?
5. Overall, wouldnt the game benefit from merging a few of the clans? One city clans are very weak. And it would create more playable cases.
6. Religion seems to play a very minor role. Intentional?
7. Considered more ways to win the game?

But on the whole. Its a great mod which is highly playable! I wouldnt be ashamed if I released this as v1.0! Great work!