Europa 1400 (The Guild 1) was full of bugs, its AI was in rudimentary condition (AI-guided business building made you like 4x less profit per given time than one controlled manually), there were quite a few cheatholes allowing player to become millionaire in no time (like marrying old baronesses or capturing rogue guilds for sale), and there was a huge impact of random. Guild 2 (Renaissance especially) have managed to overcome most of these obstacles. But everything comes at a price, it seems... A single campaign of G1 could take about 100 turns until you are able to oust other dynasties by buying their manufactures for insane quadripled prices, and destroying their houses using castle triple-barreled cannon. This included a lot of training, espionage, courts, artifact using, duels, gradual grow of player assets (followed by imperial title advance), and OF COURSE - alternation of generations. Now, most of these features are simply useless. Here I tell you how to win in 12 turns vs 15 other dynasties on hardest difficulty.
Start as a craftsman. Robber can make way more gold per time, yes - but it is not gold but decent weapons and armours (battleaxes and plate mail) that lead to quick victory. Also, there are just six useful talents out of ten existing: con, dex, martial, rhetoric, bargaining, arcane. Craftsman has bonuses to three of them and malus to one, while robber has 2x bonus and 2x malus. Start in the smallest village - Zurich on "Alamannia", Belley on "Lyon, Macon and Belley", and so on. Set 4 years per turn: your char won't die anyway, but you can raise your child up to a playable age in just 4 turns. Start with weaving mill. It requires almost no resources on tier1 (just wool), and brings about 2000g per turn (and lets you produce leather gloves for your main PC later). This would allow you to build your second business building on the second turn.
- Priority #1: get married with a patron and impregnate female PC asap. Firstly, you are going to need 2 more PCs (your wife/husband and your child) to "guard" your mayor post and don't let anyone to apply for it while you are far away committing genocide to other dynasties; then, it is extremely important to have PCs of both sexes to compliment and beguile high-ranked officials without spending a single coin. Courting takes 10 hours max, without any material investments as well: just use kissing, embracing, complimenting and beguiling in turns. Work at your mill while abilities "recharge"; use "follow me" button to court without being distracted from work. Once this part is done and your child is playing in your house, start flattering on politics (village mayor firstly) using both chars, non-stop, once "compliment" and "beguile" are off the "cooldown".
- Priority #2: destroying 15 opponents takes quite a bit of money and equipment. Combine reaching these goals. Your second building should be orchardist - this is about 3500g per turn, absolute maximum of patron & craftsman businesses (with exception of mine, which grants 5k per day, but takes 10k of investments). Later start founding absolutely necessary business buildings: carpenter's shop (battleaxes!), foundry (plate armor & helm), tavern (mead), plus two more to your taste (to me, usually that's brickery and mine). It would require citizen title - its limit is 7 buildings, and also it's required to apply for mayor office. You don't need any other titles.
- Priority #3: gain immunity asap. This is why I've said to start in a village: for the first 2.5 turns it requires just a "citizen without" title to apply for mediator office (later, once village becomes city, it would require to be citizen). In case you manage to construct 2 buildings, collect money for "yeoman" and then "citizen without" titles, and apply before noon of the third turn, you're set (otherwise you will have to collect 15k more, and waste another round to advance from the lower office). Also, try to make your wife (/husband) bailiff at the same day (not as important, but saves time and nerves too). As soon as you are immune to accusations, hire thugs and start killing members of other dynasties in your village. Three turns later you should be able to buy "citizen" title, apply for mayor office with your main PC and insta take his former office with your child. Besides, mayor owns a mine on most maps, so you can kill mayor just before elections, effectively reaching two goals: free his office and buy his business.
- Priority #4: build and equip your army! Once you've constructed 7 business buildings, stop developing your handicraft industry - you won't need any higher daily income to win. Instead, wipe out rivals, buy their houses, upgrade them up to "gabled houses" and hire four thugs per each. Gradually, you gather an army of 24 thugs. Organize them in groups of 8 and put on hotkeys. Once they are armed and your main PC is fully armored ("ironsides" ability included), you can attack and murder anyone at the central square of any capital city without fear of being killed by guards. When there are no abandoned houses and you've got excess money, advance your buildings. Start with carpenter - up to tier3 (the sooner you equip yourself and your gang with battleaxes, the sooner you win); then tavern - up to tier2 (use mead rather than visiting hospital, it saves loads of time); then foundry and weaving up to tier3 (armours - for your main PC only, thugs are almost never attacked by guards). Store about 10 extra axes and about 25 extra mead in your main house, then put every your manufacture on AI management and forget about it.
- Final: massacre! Sabotage (fire bombs rock) mines, woodcutters and robber camps: they are far away from wells to extinguish fire quick enough, so you can capture them rather soon. You can't build more than 7 business buildings as citizen, but this limit doesn't apply on captured buildings. Kill every member of another dynasty you see. Decent places to hunt are: campfires, fountains, near churches, near hospital, near taverns, near town hall after 15 o'clock. Never return to preside at elections (save your time): your wife/husband and son/daughter have to care about it. Unlike with trials, you don't get fined for neglecting your official duties. When there are no visible enemies left, use "important units" list and find them one by one. In case some of them is inside a building, sabotage it and kill everyone while they are running for water.
As simple as that. Now I just want to ask the developer team: was it supposed to be like that? With no real need for spies, gathering evidences, courts, artifact using (except for mead), with no need for economical means of bankrupting your rivals, with no way to merge companies (or at least to buy opponents' buildings for a really high price), no point to participate in crusades/wars, no real need to build an estate? Then you can as well rename Europa 1400 into Russia-2010! Look:
- The most profitable business is robbery, but it requires a high seat.
- Next most profitable is raw material trading (too bad there are no oil rigs).
- The least profitable is anything related to science, education and health protection.
- The best way to deal with someone dangerous/troublesome to you is to kill him.
- Courts mean no danger even to a murderer in case he has backstair influence.
And so on. Was it really designed to be like that? If yes, then ok - I just don't really see why did developers waste so much time implementing features which are nearly useless. If not, we can start to seek for ways to fix it. So far I can bring the following idea out of the top of my head, to fix the biggest problem - easy access to immunity. Maybe make immunity to be a property of imperial level officials only? Then, it should probably take a bit more effort to apply for imperial level than just gathering a lot of money and taking mayor office... Say, certain character level? Right now it's easy to raise your level via exp gained for guards killed by your thugs - but, with no immunity, with sane courts and combat exp shared with every participant equally it should be _a bit_ harder.
Win in 12 turns against 15 dynasties on hardest HOW TO
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Excellent thread, showing how gameplay works to the maximum. Especially showing up the problems inherited in it!
You know, fixing AI (responses), and various small implementation can make this game much more harder, if not "difficult".
For instance, when did you see King AI repelling someone's immunity?, or other AI dynasties organizing guards/army?, or even effectively attacking player dynasty? Best thing you can expect is a pesky sabotage, joined together with high taxes for your goods to sell, and thats about it.Where are famous "free" town militias, raids, even taking over towns by means of force, and emperor of the land responding, city arming its guards/bailiffs with goods hoarded or from the market reflecting each city's wealth. Forceful arrest made to a player ...etc?...
This thread opens up to (not only) player's suggestions on how to overcome this problem, but developers also.
I suggested an interesting feature in the bug-forum, about quickening (only scripting) political election, maybe we should do that with the trails too (closed sessions), so that many more trails can happen in one turn, instead of 1, making whole system much more punishing. So finally repel immunity will have effect, before player kills every member of the jury in few turns...etc
This game needs MAJESTIC balancing in the politics/economics, because you have a feeling that in those times, you could have been nobody and in few years you could be a king of the land, let alone major producer of whatever you produce. Instead, as a dawn of capitalism and "free-market", not only that it was hard to manage such feat, but should be entirely impossible, and that is why this game is focused on dynasties, hoarding wealth, and inheritance. Not only deadly competition in economic, but even tougher in the politics... When they expanded guild membership more, trying to tie up certain group of people with certain interest, it was a great start, but still, it needs to be expanded and expanded and expanded.
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You know, fixing AI (responses), and various small implementation can make this game much more harder, if not "difficult".
Which would probably be a Good Thing: what's the point of having various levels of game difficulty if you can win in 2 evenings of play on hardest? Right now, AFAIK, difficulty affects starting gold, starting title and exp_to_level only...
For instance, when did you see King AI repelling someone's immunity?, or other AI dynasties organizing guards/army?, or even effectively attacking player dynasty?
Something tells me these features are not even supposed to be used by AI
That's why I've suggested to reserve immunity for king only.
As for organizing guards - it would probably take a lot of effort to code... So I'm trying to find a few solutions that would require just a bit of twiddling with variables and defines, which would still make the game more diverse and enjoyable.
This thread opens up to (not only) player's suggestions on how to overcome this problem, but developers also.
Agreed. I don't really believe it was designed to be like this: a game about brute force only. Well, I can understand PC supported by his thugs raiding a robber camp - but, using this tool everywhere? It shouldn't be possible. This is economic management game rather than, say, Warcraft, after all! It should be more about gaining wealth and titles rather than about street fighting... IMHO. -
Which would probably be a Good Thing: what's the point of having various levels of game difficulty if you can win in 2 evenings of play on hardest? Right now, AFAIK, difficulty affects starting gold, starting title and exp_to_level only...
Exactly what I had in mind!
As for organizing guards - it would probably take a lot of effort to code...
I noticed that they included code with patrolling bailiffs, where they "select" the "main guard" and several others just follow him, and that main guard is the only one (fully) scripted. Maybe something similar can be done with the raids? or at least organizing AI dynasty/town member's defenses. Or at least some town retribution code/system where they will punish maniacs that go rampart and kill members of the town...etc -
I think all empty political seats should get auto filled, seems like most of the time the seats are empty. election perhaps should occur less often, like every 4 turns, so you actually have to use your abilities on the low level, as it is now you are just waiting around until you can get a high office, and rarely use your low abilities, of course the low abilities need to actually matter, the npcs play like they are bankrupt all the time anyway so what is the point of trying to bankrupt them?
One quick and easy way to make it harder would be to give the npc dynasties the ability to higher three thugs for everyone of you can at your house.
the most important thing for all games is options and customization, many game developers force you into a rigid frame, the games that don't and allow many options tend to be the better selling ones.
Im very happy to see progress being made on this game, if this game had less bugs and more challenge, it would honestly be one of the best games of all time.
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the real problem is that is simply not challenging enough militarily,economically, or politcally. I have never seen a dynasty with over free citizen title other than the king's family and rarely over citizen without full civil rights, so they are always stuck in the bottom level unless the city upgrades with them in a higher office. they almost never get over two businesses either, they cant compete with the play in any aspect. this is very fun game but needs to be much more challenging and more ways to win other than massacre.
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Not to mention they dont ever make an attack. they are completely useless...
