The Citadel

Cheers. Well, here's my progress report for the weekend:

- Vale dynasties created
- Vale titles created
- Vale characters created
- Vale provinces created
- Vale de jure set up created
- Localisation for the above.

The de jure set up:


My todo list (tell me if I'm missing anything!):
- Vale province histories (with particular attention to the set up for Robert's Rebellion)
- Vale title histories (ditto)
- Inter-regional characters (a few wives here and there that need to be assigned the correct spouse IDs etc, especially of note since I've created my characters from scratch)

I'm not planning to touch these until we finalise our dating system and the game comes out.

A brief wishlist of province border changes, if it's revisited:
- Shifting the impassable borders to more intuitively follow the mountains
- Shift other borders (especially around The Bite and Strongsong) to similarly use mountains and rivers as borders

Hroppa wrote:A brief wishlist of province border changes, if it's revisited:
- Shifting the impassable borders to more intuitively follow the mountains
- Shift other borders (especially around The Bite and Strongsong) to similarly use mountains and rivers as borders

Ok, I'll see what I can do. The problem is this might create a few huge provinces in the eastern bank of the Green Fork, unless we split them and give the extra ones (for example) to the Vale or to the Mountain Clans.

Yeah, I'd have the mountain clans on the outside of the Vale.

Also, if these changes are going to be made, it'd be good to put a mountain clan province in between the Bloody Gate and the Riverlands.

Hroppa wrote:Yeah, I'd have the mountain clans on the outside of the Vale.

Also, if these changes are going to be made, it'd be good to put a mountain clan province in between the Bloody Gate and the Riverlands.

Talking about the mountain clans; in any conceivable scenario, I can't see how these guys can last more than a few years before being partitioned between the Riverlands and the Vale. Independent uncivilized barbarians right in the middle of the most populated region in the continent? How do we keep them alive? Could it be a better option to just remove them from the map and give their provinces some kind of modifier to simulate their raids?

I definitely see an argument for that... and it's not like we want the Mountain clansmen marrying nobles. I think the best way to simulate them would probably be something along the lines of what you suggest, a mountain clansman modifier reducing income and increasing attrition, plus a mercenary company or two (which might result in them getting lands anyway).

I'd agree with a clansmen modifier and not actually GIVING the clans any land for a Robert's Rebellion scenario, though we could potentially do different things with it in different time periods.

I don't have a problem with it being territory that gets land-grabbed right away, though it does seem somewhat pointless.

My humble suggestion;

Regarding Clans;
- Recruitable Mercenaries (for each clan)
- Random events tied to specific lands, basically once a year they are raiding at least one province.
event;
Clansman raid X province!
choices
1) Hunt them down! ---> -25% manpower, +1 moral of armies, + relations with the lords of the province. You gain prestige.
2) Let the local lords deal with them. ---> -5% manpower, +0.2 moral of armies, - relations with the lords of the province.
3) Petition for help from the west. ---> -5% manpower, - allot of prestige + some monies.

Hroppa (or anybody who feels up to it), would you mind making a suggestion for the new provinces to add? Names, owners, that kind of thing. I'm terrible at naming stuff I suppose the provinces will have to go to the Vale, since the Riverlands is leaning more on the "too many damn provinces already" side.

Ogaburan wrote:My humble suggestion;

Regarding Clans;
- Recruitable Mercenaries (for each clan)
- Random events tied to specific lands, basically once a year they are raiding at least one province.
event;
Clansman raid X province!
choices
1) Hunt them down! ---> -25% manpower, +1 moral of armies, + relations with the lords of the province. You gain prestige.
2) Let the local lords deal with them. ---> -5% manpower, +0.2 moral of armies, - relations with the lords of the province.
3) Petition for help from the west. ---> -5% manpower, - allot of prestige + some monies.

That's a pretty cool idea. Perhaps the province modifier will change to one which gives less penalties in that province if you choose the first option? Or turn it into a decision in order to organize whole campaigns against the clans in order to get decreased penalties all around.

That's a nice basis for a dynamic Mountain clan system. Perhaps we could go the whole way and create an even to spread them to other mountainous provinces, and an event to eradicate them.

What specific new provinces are you going to add? I think the neatest way to tie things up would actually be to:
- move Darkmoor southeast, so it blocks the way to the Bloody Gate (it will be added to the Giant's Lance duchy)
- move Moonsgrey (the only non-coastal province in The Bite duchy) south of the mountains, so the river's its southern border
- consolidate the non-Darkmoor provinces in the Strongsong duchy within the mountains (I'll add Moonsgrey to this duchy)
- consolidate The Bite duchy into three provinces on the north side of the mountains

Hroppa wrote:That's a nice basis for a dynamic Mountain clan system. Perhaps we could go the whole way and create an even to spread them to other mountainous provinces, and an event to eradicate them.

What specific new provinces are you going to add? I think the neatest way to tie things up would actually be to:
- move Darkmoor southeast, so it blocks the way to the Bloody Gate (it will be added to the Giant's Lance duchy)
- move Moonsgrey (the only non-coastal province in The Bite duchy) south of the mountains, so the river's its southern border
- consolidate the non-Darkmoor provinces in the Strongsong duchy within the mountains (I'll add Moonsgrey to this duchy)
- consolidate The Bite duchy into three provinces on the north side of the mountains

Oh, ok; when you talked about putting a clansmen province blocking the Bloody Gate I assumed you meant a new province.

Uploaded a bunch of files to the dropbox.

There are a few minor errors I've been fixing, so there must be a few more, but I've found one major problem on loading up a 8282 start date:

Jon Arryn, his father Jasper and his son Robert (the first 3 characters in the Vale file) are the only characters the game loads. The duchies etc are wonky too, but I presume that this is because the game isn't loading the characters who are meant to hold them.

I've scanned the file, presuming that there's an unclosed bracket or something after the 3rd character... but no luck there. A fresh pair of eyes would be appreciated!

Hroppa, are the files you uploaded still a work in progress? Because I found some weird things in them and I don't know if I screwed up somewhere when merging or if you are still going to make further changes. For example, there are only two Dukes, some counties don't belong to the right owners according to the Doc (for instance, The Bloody Gate) and some other counties don't have an owner defined.

Also, a suggestion: Could it be a good idea to give The Eyrie a couple towns and a sept instead of so many castles? The Arryns will probably be unbalanced with all these (they will either have too many troops or too little money...).

I think its rather fitting for the Eyrie itself to have all the named castles from the book, maybe we can just compensate with a -% modifier on manpower and taxes? to represent how small they actually are - garrison stations.

On a similar note, the situation seems dire for the high septon. There are currently just 3 septs on the map.
2 in Oldtown and 1 in Higharden.
...adding the single temple in Winterfell this brings the total number of bishoprics to 4.
I think for the sake of balance we need to invent some more... :/

Ogaburan wrote:I think its rather fitting for the Eyrie itself to have all the named castles from the book, maybe we can just compensate with a -% modifier on manpower and taxes? to represent how small they actually are - garrison stations.

On a similar note, the situation seems dire for the high septon. There are currently just 3 septs on the map.
2 in Oldtown and 1 in Higharden.
...adding the single temple in Winterfell this brings the total number of bishoprics to 4.
I think for the sake of balance we need to invent some more... :/

I agree there should be more, but not many more. At the moment, I think we have an overabundance of castles and a lack of towns and septs in general.

Yeah, these are still work in progress. I uploaded them when I ran into that problem. Didn't get a chance to do any testing or revisions. Won't have much time to do so until next weekend.

Most of the castles are there for canon reasons, but septs should definitely be added. In my opinion, for example, the Eyrie really should be mostly castles. A solution might be to add more towns to other provinces the Arryns hold.

Duchies are... a problem (as I posted before). I'm not entirely happy with the current set up, but it was the best I could come up with at the time. The few liege-vassal situations that are listed in canon make no sense as a de jure set up. The current set up involves most duchies being uncreated, but with canon vassal relations included. It will have to be revised for balance.

Made a few fixes (the funniest being that 'Rowena' Hardyng was a man... married to both Jon Arryn and his son Robert).

Not altering the ownership of bloody gate; I think it should be in Arryn hands, unless someone can point me to a source that says otherwise. Best argument would be for making it the Blackfish's, but we might want to make the Knight of the Gate an honorary title anyway, and I can't make him the owner until the Riverlands characters are done. Also, I don't see a problem with leaving some counties ownerless; I don't think we should necessarily assume GRRM has named all the lords of the vale. The game does a fine job of randomly generating them.

No changes to the duchies either; some thinking to be done there. It's not out of the question just to leave it in the current setup for now, closely based on canon, with almost every count a vassal of the Arryns. Duchies can be distributed on grounds of balance, if we find wacky shenanigans going on.

No sept or town additions yet. Still thinking over this one. Septs need to be added, for sure... but I'd say that there are about equal numbers of cities and castles in the vale at present, maybe only slightly in favour of the latter. The distribution would be skewed in favour of cities, except for a) the Eyrie (Stone, Sky, Snow, the Gates of the Moon and the Eyrie itself should all surely be castles) and b) the Fingers (because there are lots of one holding provinces; they have to be castles to have feudal lords).

Hroppa wrote:Made a few fixes (the funniest being that 'Rowena' Hardyng was a man... married to both Jon Arryn and his son Robert).

Not altering the ownership of bloody gate; I think it should be in Arryn hands, unless someone can point me to a source that says otherwise. Best argument would be for making it the Blackfish's, but we might want to make the Knight of the Gate an honorary title anyway, and I can't make him the owner until the Riverlands characters are done. Also, I don't see a problem with leaving some counties ownerless; I don't think we should necessarily assume GRRM has named all the lords of the vale. The game does a fine job of randomly generating them.

No changes to the duchies either; some thinking to be done there. It's not out of the question just to leave it in the current setup for now, closely based on canon, with almost every count a vassal of the Arryns. Duchies can be distributed on grounds of balance, if we find wacky shenanigans going on.

No sept or town additions yet. Still thinking over this one. Septs need to be added, for sure... but I'd say that there are about equal numbers of cities and castles in the vale at present, maybe only slightly in favour of the latter. The distribution would be skewed in favour of cities, except for a) the Eyrie (Stone, Sky, Snow, the Gates of the Moon and the Eyrie itself should all surely be castles) and b) the Fingers (because there are lots of one holding provinces; they have to be castles to have feudal lords).

Ok, it's your call, at least until the time for balancing everything comes. But one thing I definitely don't agree with is the part about leaving counties ownerless. It would be fine if we couldn't find any canon or semi-canon houses to give it to (and in that case I'd still rather give it to its de jure Duke as a demesne county), but we have plenty. Why would it be better to have the "of Sunset Keep" family as the counts of Sunset Keep instead of the "Donniger" family (who are a canon Vale house, even if we don't know their canon possessions)? If we do this, we are wasting perfectly good canon families. In fact, even these houses that probably were made up by Grell (like the Wyndman) sound better to me than the "of Scarle Keep"'s...