Mos Maiorum - Mod Diary

[Canute VII]

Good day all! Let me introduce you to the Mos Maiorum Mod, pinnacle of my excursion into strategy game modding. Mos Maiorum – that's the „Way of the Elders“ and in reference to the „Clash of the Ancients“, this mod sets about to introduce all those activities to Hegemony III that pertain to non bellicose, more peaceful activities of building our empires and dealing with our neighbours.

"The mos maiorum or way of the ancestors was the time-honoured principles, behavioural models, and social practices that affected private, political, and military life in ancient Rome."

Mod Foundations

For starters, the base of this mod is built on the foundation of my other mods, namely:
1. Active Diplomacy
2. Governance
3. Trade Skills
and a selection of my smaller mods: Military Drill, Fortress, Militia Stance, Improved Razing, Testudo stance, Assault Stance, Unit Trapped Bug.

The aim is to integrate these into a unified experience and weave a net of relationships between its components, where this seems appropriate.

For example of what I've got on my mind here:
1. the society skill tree (from the Governance mod), namely the aristocracy, plutocracy and meritocracy skills, will give improved efficiency for each of the three envoy stances (emissary, trader, spy) from the Active Diplomacy mod.
2. The courthouse upgrade unlocked by the legalism skill will also give XP to newly recruited envoys, so officers can be upgraded earlier and they will be more effective with their diplomatic tasks

At a later stage I will evaluate my other mods such as Pandora's Box or my AI mods if and how best to integrate them.

Wonders of the Ancient World

The first truly new feature that this mod will introduce is the "Wonders of the World". You'll be able to build these in your cities for a sizable cost in gold and wood - provided that you also meet their specific requirements!

There are two types of wonders, one generally available and the other faction specific.
There will be three wonders available for any faction group and one special wonder that is only available to certain faction groups. Each gernerally available wonder will grant a victory point (so there will be max 3 VP for wonders), each special wonder will grant a skill point (not final, open to balancing).

Statue of the King of Gods

Yes, this is reference to the Statue of Zeus in Olympia from the list of the historical 7 Wonders of the ancient Worlds. However, as this wasn't built until 435 BC I'm giving players the opportunity to build it themselves, given vanilla starts approximately in 500 BC (I might disable this when playing certain start dates of the Alternative Start Dates mod).

Requirements:
75% authority
State Religion Skill
Can only be built in a city that has a great temple upgrade

As the original Statue of Zeus was build inside a Great Temple, the State Religion Skill is required since this skill unlocks the Great Temple building.

Pantheon

The pantheon is a great temple and symbolizes the unity and harmony of the Gods. It was built ~114 AD in Rome. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. A truly worthy Wonder to be built!

Requirements:
75% community
Checks and Balances Skill
Can only be built in a city that has a temple upgrade

The Pantheon is an upgrade to an ordinary temple, in contrast to Great Temple upgrades it does not require the state religion skill.

Pharos

The Lighthouse of Alexandria has been estimated to have been at least 100 metres in height was built in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (280–247 BC). For many centuries it was one of the tallest man-made structures in the world.

Requirements:
A certain amount of goods traded (tbd)
Lighthouse Skill
Can only be built in a city that has a lighthouse upgrade

The Pharos is an upgrade to the common lighthouse that is unlocked by the lighthouse skill in the expanded custom naval skill tree.

Colossus

The Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of the Greek sun-god Helios, erected in the city of Rhodes, by Chares of Lindos in 280 BC. This special wonder is restricted to the greek faction group (eligible factions groups in e.g. Classical World mod tbd).

Requirements:
Stone walls in all cities
Can only be built in a city that has sea access
Can only be built in a city that has a fortress upgrade

Colosseum

The Collosseum, built ~80 AD in Rome, is the largest ancient amphitheatre ever built, and is still the largest standing amphitheatre in the world today. This special wonder is restricted to the latin, sabellic and etruscan faction groups (eligible factions groups in e.g. Classical World mod tbd).

Requirements:
Circus in all cities
Can only be built in a city that has a colliseum upgrade


I have not wrapped my head around which special wonder I should give to the gauls (and other similar faction goups in e.g. Iberia or Classical World mods). Given no historical prededent for them building wonders, maybe I have to make one up? Maybe they don't deserve a wonder? Idk.

Outlook

Modding progress is slow but steady, the feature scope is not yet final and once it's ready I want to have a lengthy playthrough to really balance things out and spot issues. Thus the mod will not be published shortly. In the meantime, feel free to try my other mods and suggest improvements or additons.

Next time I will likely write about something to do with internal stakeholders in our empires (tbd).

[easytarget]

I saw roads in the research path. I'm guessing that impacts troop movement but doesn't actually reflect in roads showing up on the campaign map right?

Definitely going to grab that when it becomes available, getting around on the map faster would certainly make things a bit less whack a mole as they're sometimes want to become.

Canute VII の投稿を引用：

easytarget の投稿を引用：

P.S. Oh and I'd forgotten what PITA cultural differences are with a captured city until you can do something about it.

Nah, with this mod you've got more options to deal wth that. I'm dropping: heretic temple upgrade, high priest objective, migrants from the society skill tree.

So instead of pumping out colonists could I for example in the city I just captured build a Heathen Temple instead?

[Canute VII]

easytarget の投稿を引用：

I saw roads in the research path. I'm guessing that impacts troop movement but doesn't actually reflect in roads showing up on the campaign map right?

Yes, sadly I couldn't figure out how to do graphical upgrades...

So instead of pumping out colonists could I for example in the city I just captured build a Heathen Temple instead?

Exactly, this will improve relations with that native faction (reduce hostility) as a percentage of city pop to total faction pop. If the faction isn't hostile, risk of rebellion is much lower.

[Iakovosian]

Canute VII の投稿を引用：

But without much more ado here's the five basic government forms available (not much of a surprise, I guess):

Autocracy

Oligarchy

Democracy

Monarchy

Republic

When you have the 'Descend into Decadence' event and are given a chance to change government (and I suppose any other chance to change government after that as well), there's a list of clickable governments but no description of what they each do. I tried looking in the in-game help files, but didn't find anything there either. In fact, I keep having to come back to this post to remind me what they do!

Could you add some description of the government bonuses into the game (perhaps on hover), or a link to a descriptive helpfile from the objective?

[Canute VII]

Iakovosian の投稿を引用：

Could you add some description of the government bonuses into the game (perhaps on hover), or a link to a descriptive helpfile from the objective?

Hey, sure, this is a good point! i've added a desciption of the effects to the game manual. You can now also directly call up the manual from the "change government form" objective description, since I put a link there.

[easytarget]

Not positive but I believe one of the events is a tad wonky.

It’s called Sacrifices to the Gods, 225 or 450 food, increases civil virtue. I only remember to do this when I get dinged some decadence once a year for failing to do it, haha.

Anyway, one of the other events under Governance and Policies requests that you relocate your capital. Which is fair enough since it often gets left back in the hinterlands as you expand.

But here’s the trick, if you relocate your capital the event for sacrifice to the gods is no longer possible. It just says you don’t have enough food even if you do. My guess is the event points to where your capital was originally and once you’ve relocated it the logic for the event fails. I relocated my capital back to it’s original location and the sacrifice works again.

[Canute VII]

easytarget の投稿を引用：

Not positive but I believe one of the events is a tad wonky.

It’s called Sacrifices to the Gods, 225 or 450 food, increases civil virtue. I only remember to do this when I get dinged some decadence once a year for failing to do it, haha.

Anyway, one of the other events under Governance and Policies requests that you relocate your capital. Which is fair enough since it often gets left back in the hinterlands as you expand.

But here’s the trick, if you relocate your capital the event for sacrifice to the gods is no longer possible. It just says you don’t have enough food even if you do. My guess is the event points to where your capital was originally and once you’ve relocated it the logic for the event fails. I relocated my capital back to it’s original location and the sacrifice works again.

Hi, I've tried to replicate this, but after relocating my capital city, the sacrifice still worked. Maybe you could send me a save file?

[easytarget]

Hey man, responded to you at QT3.

[Canute VII]

Here's a little preview for Mos Maiorum v1.1.0 which I'm preparing at the moment... Ladies and Gentlemen: the new voluntary hostage brigade!

Voluntary Hostages

While in vanilla, hostages can only be recruited in conqured non-native cities to reduce unrest there if send over to a native city, this new brigade is recruited in our native cities.

It can be send to neighbouring factions to reduce hostility on arrival by a relatively large amount (well, a truce is still required for it to be able to enter a foreign city).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3331887303

However, that's only possible if that faction is already (or still) hostile; if not you'll have to use the envoy.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3331887035

Also beware,that you don'T send it to a weaker faction (i.e. an intimmidated one), because that will only mean self humiliation. Who after all would kneel before weaklings?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3331886708

Thus, this new brigade has a very dedicated role: reduce hostility with stronger hostile factions when you don't want to wait for envoys to do their job and can spare some manpower.

If the faction becomes a friend, it might even let the hostages go home. But if it remains hostile, it may as well decide to enslave them or worse...!

[Canute VII]

AI response to player army buildup

I feel it's time to share something again, an issue which has been brought up by @Iakovosian way back in september. I've picked this up and let it simmer a bit. The result of this is that I will include a new AI script in the next 1.2 update (for those who activate the "more resilient AI" game option).

Here goes the suggestion Iakovosian brought up in the MoMa commentaries, I just cite it because I couldn't describe it any better in my own words....:

Iakovosian の投稿を引用：

Another thought - though I don't know if possible - relies on detecting if player combat troops are in the supply territory of another faction. And if that faction isn't in a higher level of truce/alliance with the player, and the player's troops remain there for some time, gives the faction a chance to warn the player about the territorial incursion.

If the player doesn't then move out of the area, perhaps a one-time hit to faction relations plus a message, or perhaps just a trickling reduction in faction relations. Maybe even after a subsequent threshold of some kind, the faction could break the truce (which then allows the AI to react to your troops and push them away).

I feel this could be an interesting mechanic, if possible. Though perhaps there should be an exclusion on small territories of forward forts that are unconnected to a city to avoid it being triggered in less sensical situations. Specifically, this also stop the player abusing a truce by manoeuvring a large army into position uncontested.

At the moment it's easy to... get a truce with a faction, manoeuvre armies right outside their cities (even being within arm's length of their troops), break truce and immediately attack their cities leaving little time for them to react, and usually ending up capturing the city with still a lot of recruits left ...which seems a bit of a broken exploit! I discovered this, had fun with it briefly, now wish it wasn't possible.

So this idea is along the lines of a 'higher level truce' (i.e. above supply truce) - either an actual truce type negotiated by envoys, or just being below a certain hostility - allowing for troops to enter each other's territories without complaint. But for other factions in a 'lower level truce', and/or with higher hostility, being more resistive to military incursions in some way.

So what have I done with all that?

I have implemented a daily check on all factions neighbouring the player, not being at war with the player and above -75 hostility (i.e. that usually means "no allies", "weak allies" or just "neutral"). It will trigger randomly based on the actual hostility of the faction. That means it is less likely to trigger for a friendly faction than for a less friendly faction.

When the script runs it will check all those factions' cities which are near the player faction and calculate if there is a player invasion force nearby as well as its strength. It will do the same for the AI's (current) defense force.

If the AI's defense force is inferior to the player's invasion force, then the AI will build new brigades - provided it has the recruits and money to spare, of course.

The new brigades will be assigned to a special "taskforce" which is specifically assigned to defend the city. And "defend" the AI will do much better using a taskforce than it would if I just dropped some brigades into the city. The AI will even send reinforcements from other cities in case the city is attacked, regardless (yes, I likely will make more use of taskforces in v1.2 :-)

I found this effectively helped the AI a lot in fielding appropriate defenses IN TIME before an imminent attack by the player, since the new brigades usually have enough time to draw recruits and gather strength. The AI will also not be allowed to disband the brigades, so they will hang on there and should make the AI a more formidable foe in case of war.

Ah, and yes! the AI will also notify the player with a message most appropriate to the situation and circumstances (hostility, intimidation...). But that's really just the sugar on the cake and rather cosmetic :-))

Huh, there are a lot of details I've tossed over, now. However, I hope this sheds some light how @Iakovosian's idea/observation has made it into my mod (...or indeed potentially any reasonable idea could make it into my mod). There have been more suggestions, but I found this one particularly satisfying to work on

[Iakovosian]

Hot damn - that sounds amazing! I really can't wait to be thwarted at more turns than now by a more reactive and preemptive AI! And I'm curious (but will have to be patient) about those extra hints you dropped about taskforces.

(also kinda chuffed that my musings were neither too outrageous nor impossible to tackle)

[Iakovosian]

To throw a potential curveball at you, what if I took a random invasion fleet down to Sicily or up to Illyria or some other flanking coastal invasion. Would my first capture be pretty normal/easy before those cities realise I'm nearby and start checking for player troop build-up?

Or maybe that's actually touching on a different question about AI navies and how they can react to the player better. I don't think I've ever seen an AI scout ship keeping watch so that its navies can better head-off invasion fleets.

Speaking of scouts, I'm guessing the AI doesn't have fog of war but needs to react to only what it sees / is nearby to stay believable. What if after issuing such a verbal threat, the AI sometimes sends a scout to the area of player troop build-up to ensure it can see that you actually move away?

[Canute VII]

Iakovosian の投稿を引用：

To throw a potential curveball at you, what if I took a random invasion fleet down to Sicily or up to Illyria or some other flanking coastal invasion. Would my first capture be pretty normal/easy before those cities realise I'm nearby and start checking for player troop build-up?

Thanks for the ball... until recently such faction would not have been included in the script (only neighbours) and have "waited" for your first capture. Mainly that's because I was anxious that doing the calculations on every faction and on every city would be too burdensome. Now I have included also all "discovered" factions, so when you send a ship to Sicily etc. and discover the faction, it will be included.

Now a conditions that I described in my diary entry had been that the city in question is near the player's faction (i.e. near cities, forts, resource buildings, the script funtion I use doesn't consider brigades). In fact there already had been another condition that I didn't explicitely mention... full disclosure: the city has to be near the player faction OR it needs to have a "defenderthreat" and not be foggy.

defenderthreat() actually is a vanilla script funcion that seems to give a positive number if there is a threat to the city. However, the function doesn't say if the threat is coming from the player or some other AI (that's why the city has to be non-foggy to make sure the player has some brigades there). I'm also not sure how good it actually works, but it's better than nothing.

Anyway, thats the second alternative condition and I believe together with the already mentioned condition that the faction needs to have been already discovered (and be either non-hostile or have a truce) I hope this is enough to reduce the number of factions and cities the script needs to run on.

So, yes, the Sicilians and Illyrians will greet you appropriately :-)

Or maybe that's actually touching on a different question about AI navies and how they can react to the player better. I don't think I've ever seen an AI scout ship keeping watch so that its navies can better head-off invasion fleets.

I'm thinking about if it would be possible to create a similar script for coastal cities and navies....

Speaking of scouts, I'm guessing the AI doesn't have fog of war but needs to react to only what it sees / is nearby to stay believable. What if after issuing such a verbal threat, the AI sometimes sends a scout to the area of player troop build-up to ensure it can see that you actually move away?

The main problem with AI scouts is, that I believe me as a modder I cannot actually check, what the scout would be able to "see" if it was a player scout. The vanilla script function isfoggy() gives a return based on if an entity is foggy fro the player, and only from the player's perspective. That being said, AI actually "using" scouts seems a bit impractical (but I'll be keeping it in the back of my mind).

[Iakovosian]

Fair point on the AI scouts. It's more of an immersion thing, really, and 'all' the AI would need to do is send a scout to near the player troops (it's more important that the player sees the AI scout than it actually providing 'visibility' for the AI - obviously the AI can technically 'see' everything already, it just only react to certain things for fairness and believability). The basis being that, upon receiving such a request/threat from the AI to remove your troops, it'd help to ram home the point if the player then sees an AI scout come into view to 'keep watch' and make sure you comply. Since it's not a combat unit it's no direct threat to the player, but serves as an indication that the message from the AI faction is actually meaningful.
If you're not (or no longer) intending to attack the AI faction, then their scout doesn't do you any harm - but if you happen to attack their scout (out of frustration, or to 'hide' your troop movements), then suddenly you're at war and that gives the AI even more reason to prepare their garrisons.

Ship scouts are something different again - I was just thinking how common it is to send an invasion fleet and completely bypass the AI's patrolling combat fleet, and how cool it'd be to come across an AI scout a bit further off the coast and get the impression that they're looking out for your movements. Maybe even their patrolling fleet could react to you being near their scout, but as you say it's a bit harder to know when that happens.

Anyway, tuppence-worth duly given. :-)

[Iakovosian]

Got any teasers for v1.3? Anticipation be dripping!

[Canute VII]

Iakovosian の投稿を引用：

Got any teasers for v1.3? Anticipation be dripping!

All in due time... :-) But so much I can tell already:

• v1.3 will be about the management of generals/governors and civil wars: Currently I'm setting up potential interactions with generals. Civil wars are yet in conceptual stage. Maybe I'll make this stuff optional.
  
• v1.4 will be about adding new city/building upgrades: I've already got a couple of ideas for new or re-done upgrades, itching to implement that actually - but have to remind myself to stick to my plan.