First off, I would like to thank you Nirvana for your tireless work, if I can be of any assistance, you say!! (I'm serious) I've been a fan of Europa 1400/Guild franchise since it first got out in 2002, and I am ardent "follower" of it.
Now, to cut the chase and get to the point, concerning Guild 2 Renaissance, I have been playing it massively in multilayer with my best friend over hamachi for few month now, occasionally having 3rd player join us for at least 3-8 hour sessions, mostly on some of the biggest maps (Hanseatic League, Vienna...etc) with most dynasties 12-16 . We observed ton of problems, bugs, unbalances, exploits...etc Only since we found out this forum and started using beta some time ago, and also started investigating code, we got interested to contribute! Now I finally registered (together with my friends) so we might point out important issues that we together could fix, or at least point out.
So that I don't make this thread useless with 100 of issues, I will start with few, but most alarming ones.
1. Cart bug - after some time, and depending on the amount of NPC instances on the map, whole parts of the roads get blocked with huge number of carts rotating around their axis in the same spot. Hindering whole economy not only for player but also for AI. They could be "rested" by manually attacking each cart, but that is useless unless you want to spend few hours doing so.
2. Complicated micro-managing especially in the late parts of the game, when owning Gypsy camp (Vagabond camp) and Whorehouse (Pub), workers get reset so you need manually position them across the city/map. AI does that rarely, but when he finally enables protocols to, he is sloppy, usually clustering all gypsies on the same spot. Whores don't even leave the Pub with AI. Only solution it seems is to make them work 24/7, but in same turn overpowering those classes/buildings.
3. Pawn shop/Money Lender - Looking at the code and practically in-game, taking/returning credit by the idle people is so rare, that is most completely useless option, especially looking the income from it. We found a way to make it more interesting and in line with other scholar houses by increasing interest rate that you get credit back and making credit searching and returning more plausible by increasing its importance in std_Idle file!
4. Market ping - Many time when you own, for instance the only weapon producing business on the whole map, suddenly whole market periodically gets automatically saturated with high quality goods that only I can create, totally ruining the business. On the other hand, not even saturating with needed goods like Wheat flour...etc
5. Robber camp overpowered - You can usually max out your start character by the age of 29 (4years turn, hardest) if you play with robber camps, also it makes building profitable out of proportions concerning any other building. Not only that you can waylay and blockade any road and gain insane amount of money from it, but you can also ask for protection money, which is the easiest and fastest way not only to cheat away any competition with insane amounts of money, but you can also literally lead ANY AI to bankruptcy. On the other hand, gaining quick levels by attacking random passers, makes whole game distasteful. For instance, king walking alone, or some 10 lvl dynasty character with only 1 thug, make up easy pray for a horde of bastards. Not even roaming guards or even cities united in (players) Marshals control can stop them. Something needs to be fixed here. Organizing robber-hunt by the cities, like they organize wars? That could be nice, especially introducing a new level in politics. Public actions, voting...etc
6. Infirmary bug - many times, even roaming dynasty characters and any other get stuck in front of AI (sometimes even mine after a longer game) infirmary/hospital trying to "administer treatment". Its similar like the Cart bug, it can usually get fixed by calling characters, but its major game-play breaker.
7. Courting (gameplay question) - it would be nice, at least showing us where we can change code so that we can court last member of a dynasty, and to make use being able to force marry younger children (something those times knew well). All changes that we searched concluded that that might be hard-coded...
8. Mutual Assistance pact bug - Its a law in any MP game when we pre-set alliances among players, that in the same time those alliances get broken and players turned hostile toward each other, bugging the system up so that we can never be neutral or even allies. We linked that bug with whores and pickpockets trying to "do" other ally character, bugging up the system. Sometimes when you even hire neutral character, while he is being hired (automatically), a pickpocket/whore... tries to rob him, and in a middle of that process he switches allegiance and they attack each other. Maybe a fix could be that a "favor" system be introduced among even Player dynasties, thing like that.
9. XP not given - we noticed that many times for many activities both Dynasty character and NPCs (workers too) don't get XP for things they do. For instance, thugs that guard/follow NPC don't level up at all, but guard that just stands there do...etc I can explain more later if you want, because I already hogged up the whole thread.
10. Many maps needs minimum resource balancing to make it playable with certain classes. For instance there are big maps with only one clay pit in the far corner, like Lyon, Macon and Belley, if I spelled right. I would be glad write all problems like this in one of my next posts...
11. Quick add, SOUND BUG misplaced sound bugs around the game. Stuck audio. Like hearing birds in courthouse, upgrading buildings have random looping sound of something that code picked (bird, vomiting, clapping, crying...etc). This is very annoying. Especially when you enter and exit building, there is a chance bug of entering/closing door will be constant throughout the game.
This is for now, I wrote this in haste, I'm sure there are many that I wanted to include that I missed. Hopefully Nirvana, this could be of an assistance. And just to point out we play with hardest difficulty, clean installs, clean patches, newest also. Those above are just problems persisting still from the base game. I would be glad to write more and try to solve those problems cooperatively.
I would be glad if someone posted any comment on these bugs, hopefully proving that I'm not a lone loony. So that I can spam some more bugs.