Rogue and general improvement ideas

[Tikimon]

Hi, I've played guild 3 now during the holidays, and I think it's already quite a good game, but there's still room for improvement. Most of the business are working quite well, and sure, there is little differences but most of the higher level building are capable of making a good profit. My first games as a merchant/craftman were pretty fun.... and then I tried rogue gameplay. Well, when pickpocketing and break into building is legalized, then those thievery building do make money, but bigger the map, the more problems in rogue game play shows. Here's my ideas how to fix those:

1) I think it would help, if we could assign areas/district for rogue businesses. Currently in any of the bigger maps, your rogue employees are just running around the map most of the time, and not doing their job. Most of their time goes from moving one spot to another, and for example in Paris, their first patrol duty could be in Reims, and then they decide to run all the way to Orleans to patrol there next time. We really need to be able to set their area, like this building's employees are only operating in Saint-Denis and when I build another, I can assign them to work in Saint-Antoine. Even better if there was a list of districts where player could check districts where they want current building's employees to operate. This goes for all rogue activities like game of dice, burglary, pickpocketing, guard duty, patrol etc. Also this way you could "pacify" your home district, that all your employees won't get a debuff because everybody hates them.

2) I'd like to have a possibility to assign recurring jobs outside business building. If for example I assign somebody in guard duty in front of my other businesses, I don't want to do that every few minutes. Just let that guard duty job run until I end it.

3) Employees doing crimes is quite a big problem. It's not happening every time, but considering how aggressive AI is, I pretty much always end in feud with at least half of them. Then my thieves get attacked by my enemies and my patrols attack criminals, and since I try to arm my guys, they usually win those fights. Then after the fight they sometimes break their opponents bones or steal from their victim on their own. Result is that original attacker/criminal gets fine and my employer gets 2 turns in jail, since everybody hates my guts because I'm playing a rogue. My family members also get attacked a lot, but at least I haven't noticed that they'd committed any crimes against their attackers, it's just those normal employees.

4) For some reason palmistry increases your reputation and game of dice decreases it. Since city thieves can't use palmistry, your reputation always tanks even if gambling is legal. Please teach those city thieves palmistry also. It's little less XP and little less gold, but at least you can still run for city offices, since everybody does not hate you.

5) Let garrisons do ambushes or collect tolls or something in the countryside. Currently there's nothing even remotely close to other business money making potential for garrisons, and they seem like total waste of time and money buildings. At least with thievery buildings you can legalize pickpocketing and burglary in the end game, but for garrisons there's really nothing that brings money. Even extortion brings only few golds per attempt, and since your employees run all around the map to get those few golds, garrisons barely break even money wise.


Next are not really rogue gameplay ideas, but more like general nice to have features:

1) I'd like to be able to set stance for punishments my characters are going vote for. Like go with public opinion, or easier/harsher punishments. Even better, if I could set them dynasty level, like set harsher penalties for dynasties I'm having a feud with and easier penalties to those dynasties I'm allied with or my own dynasty. When you have several characters in different chambers, and since AI is breaking the law constantly, lots of my time goes to voting penalties. If I don't set them manually, and when the real voting starts and you get the court scene, some of my recurring jobs halt, and then I have to manually fix those. Like kids stop reading in public and stuff like that. I assume that is a bug, and hopefully fixed eventually, but still I'd like to automate the voting.

2) Same automated voting of course goes to new job appointment voting also, and I'd like to be able to set those too. Like always vote my own dynasty member to get the chamber position, then my allies, then whoever has the best opinion of my dynasty. If I want to do some manual adjustments, I could do that in the ledger manually or for example when I'm presenting evidences of crimes, I could ask for maximum penalty.

3) Some actions/skills are taking too long. For example public relations takes so long, that character might die of plague before it ends. Also XP for that is pitiful. Make it similar to boasting, and give less XP per public relations "chat session", and let it run only during that one session. I assume actions/skills are still a work in progress, and hopefully balanced in the future, but public relations is a big problem currently, since it can kill your characters before they go to get treated.

4) School is kinda meh... I mean, reading out in public gets your kids to level 5, and school that costs like 15-20k gold only gets them to level 4 when they are 15 ( I play 1 year per 4 seasons so my kids are spending a lot of time reading/school ). Sure they don't get sick while they are in school, but maybe XP from school should still be increased, or cost decreased.

4) I have no idea how to join guilds. I can see them in the guild tab, and in one game I got an invitation, but most of my games nothing happens. I can't join and nobody invites me. I've had great reputation and really abysmal reputation in the city population, and still no invitations to any of the guilds.

5) Dynasty actions really should be in the dynasty tab. It's really hard place to find for new players, that you first have to click the dynasty leader and then from there get that deal button. Just add new buttons to dynasty view that we can click to make a dynasty trade/declare feud. I don't know about others, but I had to search that info from steam forums since even in the game manual/help it's nowhere to be found where that freaking dynasty deal button is.

[Akadai]

I'm still writing up my feedback, as I too played it over the holiday season. Will probably be shelving the game for a while due to other priorities, but I see a lot of potential with this game. Interesting to read your take and suggestions and wanted to comment on a couple things

1) I like the idea of assigning districts, this was more of a problem with the robbers hut for me. Once I got the city thieves building though, it didn't seem to be a problem anymore. I wasn't really keeping an eye on my thieves and what they were doing. All I know is they were making me so much money I didn't care

I actually kept pick pocketing and breaking into buildings illegal. I controlled the courts, so I just set them free, not caring about public opinion. The main reason I did this is so I could punish AI from doing it to me. If it's legal, you can't punish them for it. I actually made more things illegal for this reason. All my people had get out of jail free cards

2) Agreed

3) I actually enjoyed this. I don't know what it is, but I'm always a militaristic person. I'll play peacefully and mind my own business most of the time, but the moment another family threatened me or declared a feud, it was on. It was full on war, and man was I aggressive about it. I always made sure my family were geared up. I had my henchmen with riding horses so they could get around quickly to backup family members. My thieves and robbers became assassins. Until their entire dynasty was wiped out did I rest and go back to my peaceful play. Civ 6 kind of turned me into a war monger >_>

I have noticed the occasional extra crime my people would do without my say. Like a henchmen stealing from a body when I certainly didn't tell him to. Hell, I've seen random passerby just break someones bones. My guess is because I tanked their public opinion through my political power. Still, don't like my people doing things I didn't tell them to

4) This explains a few things for me... a lot of skills need some tweaking it seems

5) I built one of these just before saving a game. I saw how poorly the money was coming in and reloaded my game. The amount of money they extort was so low, it didn't make up the cost of paying the employee. It wouldn't be as bad if they didn't return to the garrison after every extortion

I'm actually about to build one again in a current game and intend to give them horses, now that I have a horse production line. But the way I plan to use them is basically a personal military for my growing family. The amount of henchmen I have isn't cutting it

Part of me wonders if maybe this was their intended use. Not really a way to make money, but a way to further expand your own military. At any rate, I'm making more than enough money from my other business to pay for it. Militaries don't typically make money, they cost money. So, that's how I'm going to use them

---

1) I actually have a few ideas on how to change the punishment system. I don't find it too big of a bother constantly voting on things, as it's a pretty quick process. What I do have a problem with, is when their auto tasks stop because of it. That is super annoying

I believe the reason they do this, is because you're brought into a different scene and I think it might physically move the character there, which cancels whatever it was they were doing. This happens all the time during weddings, as several family members show up there

2) An auto-vote for your people would be nice. I think if all 3 nominators are your family, it does just auto-vote your family, but I could be wrong on that. Also if you are the only nominee, it doesn't matter if people vote or not. The game has to fill the spot one way or another, even if it has to pull some random person off the street, I've noticed

3) I stopped using Public Relations for this reason. It takes so damn long it wasn't worth it. There's a lot of other skills that need tweaking as well

4) I actually send kids to school because it's safer than any other activities, which brings up a whole other issue. The moment a kid gets sick, you might as well write them off as dead unless they just happen to be next to a place to heal. They die so epicly fast from illness, I haven't had a single child survive. I stopped sending them to do tasks because of this and just send them to school now

4B) (you typed 4 twice :P ) I actually don't really know how either. I'm not entirely sure how certain actions influence the bars on the guild screen. I've been invited to the Thieves Guild the most, and then I usually instantly get booted out of it for whatever reason. I've been invited to 2 of the other guilds as well, but I don't even know what I'm doing to cause it to happen. So making this more clear would be nice

5) The tutorial actually tells you where to do this. The way you did is actually just one of the several ways to do it. Having the option on the Dynasty screen would certainly make it easier/quicker to use

[Tyleet]

Hi,
thanks for the detailed feedback. In general you are right. There are quite a few actions that are currently not 100% balanced due to a lot of them still changing and not all of the execution times/XP is reworked for all actions when we change or implement a new one. There will be a few more rounds of re-balancing the actions during the Early Access phase.

Generally I like your Quality of Life suggestions. We will think about more ways to make interaction a bit easier and so that you don't have to watch over every court proceeding in detail and maybe can set a voting behavior per office holder.

[[OS] Ellionas]

Agree with the 1. Assign a area to robbery is an excellent idea !

[Whiskiz]

Good to see the dev(s) still giving feedback, let's you know it's still being worked on and that they care.

This would/will be an amazing game once it's finished, imagine an up-to-date The Guild 2 with better AI, balance, more options etc

Can't wait!