Started playing Empire:TW finally - got a problem

[Vympel]

I do. Fuck all happens. The icon is 'active' (i.e. in colour, not grayed out) when I take the gentlemen out of the school, I click it and ... nothing. Does the Persian fuck have to be in the school? If so that's fucking bullshit, because he walks in and out of the school every damn turn.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Don't you just right-click your dude onto his dude? That's how I assassinate anyway.

[Thanas]

I do. Fuck all happens. The icon is 'active' (i.e. in colour, not grayed out) when I take the gentlemen out of the school, I click it and ... nothing. Does the Persian fuck have to be in the school? If so that's fucking bullshit, because he walks in and out of the school every damn turn.

You are doing it wrong then, it works perfectly for me. Try this: Right-click on the person, then select assassinate/duel and stuff happens.

[Vympel]

You are doing it wrong then, it works perfectly for me. Try this: Right-click on the person, then select assassinate/duel and stuff happens.

To be clear, here's what happens. I have two gentlemen in a college. A Persian Scholar is outside, in the same territory, within travel distance.

When I take the gentleman outside of the college, the duel icon on his tab lights up. I click it. Nothing happens. At all. I put the icon over the scholar, nothing happens, at all. Who do I right click on? The Persian? This is weird.

[Kryten]

If I remember rightly, eastern scholars can't be dueled. It's a feature, not a bug.

[Thanas]

When I take the gentleman outside of the college, the duel icon on his tab lights up. I click it. Nothing happens. At all. I put the icon over the scholar, nothing happens, at all. Who do I right click on? The Persian? This is weird.

My god. RTFM, man.

You select your scholar. Right click on the other scholar. Select Duel. Fun happens.

[Vympel]

My god. RTFM, man.

The manual doesn't have anything about this.

You select your scholar. Right click on the other scholar. Select Duel. Fun happens.

This doesn't happen. You can't right click a scholar with a gentleman. If what Kryten says is correct, it's not supposed to happen - whch is such fucking bullshit, because all my Rakes are nowhre near my capital region. Grrr.

So it looks like I can't do anything about Eastern powers just fart assing about my colleges stealing my tech without assassinating them

Google agrees:-

As a laundry list of the more frustrating game-play bugs and annoyances:

- “Gentleman” are supposed to be able to engage in duels with rival faction “Gentlemen”. No one bothers to tell you that Scholars of the Ottoman Empire cannot engage in duels and will over-run your country stealing all your technological research until you use your “rakes” to assassinate them.

[Thanas]

It's funny. I manage to do it all the time.

[Vympel]

That's bizarre. I certainly can't, and there are multiple comments on the internet saying its not possible either.

[CmdrWilkens]

You CANNOT duel an Eastern Scholar (they don't duel) but you CAN duel another Gentleman OR, if you discover them, a Rake.

The text underneath the description of the eastern scholar makes it clear that the game regards them as bystanders who do not engage in any duels and I've never been able to duel one so I'm pretty sure you can't.


*Small edit to clairfy some additional things*

-The Scholar can only steal tech if they remain in the university over the entire turn break. What the computer usually does is have the scholar enter the University, look at your techs, and then leave before the end of its computer turn. Thus the computer knows which techs you have but it does not attempt to steal them, it can only do so if the scholar/gentleman remains in place for the whole turn break. At the end of which you should either get a notice of tech stolen or a "you have discovered a nefarious evildoer" text similar to what happens when you find and/or execute an enemy Rake.

[Vympel]

Ahhhh I see. Well good to see I'm overreacting, and Thanas is hallucinating his TW sessions

[Thanas]

Ah, that explains it. I have been equating gentlemen=scholar. My apologies, Vympel.

[Vympel]

That's no problem. When you replenish depleted units (thank god they added functionality so you don't need to walk all the way back to a friendly city to do that) do they lose some of their veterancy?

[CmdrWilkens]

That's no problem. When you replenish depleted units (thank god they added functionality so you don't need to walk all the way back to a friendly city to do that) do they lose some of their veterancy?

Near as I can tell they don't nor do they lose veterancy when you merge other units in. In other words I love the replenishment function since it allows me to rebuild armies in the field without having to send units from a distant base OR capture and subdue a belligerent city to replenish.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Merging/reinforcing under-strength units does lower their veterancy, actually, but it's easy to abuse -

Basically, if there are more troops with less veterancy being added to the unit than there are with more veterancy, the unit's overall veterancy goes down. The game does not appear to track individual soldier veterancy the way Rome and Medieval 2 did, and instead uses a much simpler algorithm. Levels of veterancy have 'weight' however and skew the formula. For example:

Ultra line infantry has 160 men. Through the course of battle, a unit is depleted to 81 soldiers and gains 1 rank of veterancy. This unit can be freely replaced or merged with existing troops of zero veterancy and still retain their single chevron. However, if they had 79 men left, they would lose it upon being returned to full strength. You could instead merge the 79-strong unit with a zero-veterancy unit of 30, upping them to 109, and they would still retain the chevron. You could then merge/reinforce the now-109-strong unit with anything and retain the rank 1 veterancy.

It gets trickier with multiple levels of differing veterancy. An 80-strong rank 3 unit would lose some veterancy if it was restored to 160 in one go, but it would lose less if reinforced with rank 1 or rank 2 troops (especially if you do it carefully with small increments - it's possible to get them back up to 160 without losing any veterancy at all if you have sufficiently small other units to merge).

Via careful abuse of the system it's not too hard to retain crack troops, as long as you're willing to 'consume' other existing high-veterancy units to carefully merge in.

[Vympel]

Bah. Seems like way too much trouble to bother trying to abuse it. It's realistic that they should lose some of their veterancy when reinforced with green troops anyway. Besides, the way my battles go against the PC I don't often take particularly heavy losses unless I've been in multiple battles consecutively without a rest.

Took Constantinople - true to form a rebellion is definitely going to happen, the unhappiness is big. Once I crush the rebellion, does unhappiness go down?

[Artemas]

Yeah, there is a happiness bonus gained from crushing rebellious forces in the field.

[Vympel]

Just dealt with simultaneous rebellions in Azerbaijan and Rumelia (Constantinople) - it's annoying that you don't get the happiness bonus unless you completely annihilate the rebels - you'd figure a pitched battle in which the rebels are thoroughly crushed and reduced to a fraction of their original size would be sufficient to achieve this. As it is, I managed to annihilate the Rumelia rebels, but the Azerbaijan ones got away with some 100 men from the original 800 and I need to finish them off in the next turn.

Money is a serious issue now. Need to get these regions under control so I can get their income and improve my regions.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Make sure you have trade agreements with everyone who will accept (and they often will even if Hostile to you), and try to get at least some overseas mercantile efforts going. Believe me, I know it's hard to prioritize such an endeavor as a weak naval power (I have a Prussia game with the same problem), but merchant fleets in the trade theaters really do pay off.

[Vympel]

Yeah, I've not done any naval research at all yet (I'm at turn 38) and my trade agreements are maxed because the only ports I have is the one at St Petersburg and in the Crimea. Well now I've got Constantinople so that's something ...

[The Yosemite Bear]

it's some fun, and now harder to play as India, as the region I need to conquer to the south, doesn't go suicidal and declare war on me right in the beginning...

and If I declare war on them, britan will declare war on me....

[Vympel]

It's very cool that cities with virtually no defence actually agree to your demands for surrender. I smashed two Swedish half-stacks that attacked Karelia in the space of two turns, and then attacked into Finland - the city was only 'defended' by one demi-cannon, and so they gave up. Oddly enough however, the demi-cannon evacuated the city. I guess 'surrender' terms in the game mean the army defending the city gets to evacuate.

One thing that they should've implemented is capturing cannon. Whenever you read accounts of battle in the era you read about how the victorious side captured x many cannon.

Another thing that bothers me - at least going from Wikipedia (no idea how accurate it is) - why is bayonet research even there? From what I can gather, socket bayonets were around before 1700. Plug bayonets are mentioned as appearing with the French way back in 1671. Ring bayonets in 1678, and socket bayonets no later than 1703.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Oddly enough however, the demi-cannon evacuated the city. I guess 'surrender' terms in the game mean the army defending the city gets to evacuate.

Yes. The terms of surrender dictate that the surrendered forces are allowed to leave the field unharmed.

And yeah, I wish they'd made guns a bit more dynamic in that respect, or even tracked better in a logistical sense (i.e., if a gun is destroyed it's gone until you reinforce and can be replaced with enemy guns and so on).

[Vympel]

I've had two fishing villages develop enough that I can turn them into fully fledged ports - given I already had one shipyard (which I figure at this stage is all I'll need) I turned them both into trading ports - I have trade agreements with the Mughals, but no money is on the trade route - how do Indiamen work? Do I have to build them and send them to another port?

Otherwise, I'm still firmly on the landpower route. Constantinople/ Rumelia is finally pacified, and I'm besieging the Persian capital region. I'm not sure how many schools I should build - it's best to only build them in capital regions, for some reason?

Once you hit the end of the research tree for everything, do those schools serve any purpose anymore? (thinking ahead - I'm only on Turn 42 or so).

[CmdrWilkens]

I've had two fishing villages develop enough that I can turn them into fully fledged ports - given I already had one shipyard (which I figure at this stage is all I'll need) I turned them both into trading ports - I have trade agreements with the Mughals, but no money is on the trade route - how do Indiamen work? Do I have to build them and send them to another port?

Otherwise, I'm still firmly on the landpower route. Constantinople/ Rumelia is finally pacified, and I'm besieging the Persian capital region. I'm not sure how many schools I should build - it's best to only build them in capital regions, for some reason?

Once you hit the end of the research tree for everything, do those schools serve any purpose anymore? (thinking ahead - I'm only on Turn 42 or so).

Okay one thing at a time

- If there is no money on the trade route there are two possible causes:

• Your home port is damaged or blockaded (so you need to fix it or drive off the enemy fleet)
  HIS home port is damaged or blockaded (you can do nothing for repairs but you can drive off a blockading fleet)
  
  
  - Indiamen in order to trade must be sent to an available trade port. That means shipping them off to West Africa, East Africa, the East Indies or the Coast of Brazil. At each of those locations there are 5 trade ports (yellow circles with anchor icons) which may or may not already be occupied. If it is unoccupied you can send your Indiaman to the location and begin trading in the local trade good (Ivory for the African coasts, spices in the Indies and sugar for Brazil).
  
  - Once you hit the end of all research (I've never done it before about turn 160 or so) the schools serve no purpose. Likewise having royal observatories isn't nearly as useful as great museums because they provide less of a +happy. Usually after I'm done researching I bulldoze all of my schools and all of my observatories then re-build the later as museums.