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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Adrian XXIV said:
Like, "No Teleports in Battle" is one thing that creators of TWW are consistent about (even Snikch's smoke bombs only "teleport" him short distance and have relatively long cooldown)
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I mean, given the prevalence of "spawn an entire free unit anywhere on the map at any time" abilities, I don't think "no teleports in battle" really makes sense as a balance rule. Same goes for the "cast a nuke spell anywhere on the map at any time" abilities. That ship has long since sailed.
 
SaltyWaffles said:
I mean, given the prevalence of "spawn an entire free unit anywhere on the map at any time" abilities, I don't think "no teleports in battle" really makes sense as a balance rule. Same goes for the "cast a nuke spell anywhere on the map at any time" abilities. That ship has long since sailed.
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I don't think it's a balance thing, I think it's a 'this engine was designed for blocks of dudes fighting blocks of dudes, teleportation is really out there'.
 
When talking about setbacks in the Waystone Project, or the lack thereof, I think it comes down to that rarest of possible things in a quest: the players actually making good decisions. (Less rarely, not entirely on purpose.)

Internal political problems from Laurelorn? The thread made a conscious decision to shore up anti-isolationist support not just in bringing elves onto the Project, but bringing other Houses onside by way of trade.

External political problems from Imperial factions? We're based in an isolationist faction they aren't even allowed into. I think it's quite likely that the first time the Cult of Sigmar had even heard of the Waystone Project, was when we were rolling Waystones out across Praag, Sylvania, and Black Water.

Internal political problems within the Project? We actually knocked this one out of the park more or less by accident. We had what seemed to be a mostly-flavour vote on how much money to spend on doing up the Project's building. We decided that Mathilde's never heard of a Vow of Poverty she respected, and dropped 600 gold on the nice curtains. IIRC Boney later revealed that members of the Project who didn't get on could just avoid each other in comfort because we'd essentially outfitted a mansion in luxury.

Political problems with the rollout? We've started by dropping Waystones in a bunch of the most heavily corrupted areas possible, across multiple polities, dodging plausible grumbling about favouritism.

The possible threat of enemy action? This one isn't a decision we made, but an ongoing decision by possible antagonists that long-term infrastructure projects aren't their problem.

Ulthuan not being too upset about us poking the Network is about the only thing that could feasibly have gone poorly. That it was first noticed by Teclis, who likes humans might have helped - or might not have, given Teclis' famous charisma. Eltharion taking an interest was admittedly very much lucky there, but no one involved was going to listen to Ulthuan if they'd tried to say "no", and by that point we were already producing results, making possible Asur bribes less tempting.

Apparently we might expect more politics when we do further rollouts. If we want to do a clean sweep of good decision making defanging opposition, I'd suggest continuing to pick multiple locations to deploy to each turn, so people don't complain they're getting passed over.
 
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One possible tension point could be Bretonnia, if they decide that their wounded pride at being snubbed and excluded from the project is more important than, you know, actually having waystones.

I don't think it's likely, but honour is a strange thing.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
One possible tension point could be Bretonnia, if they decide that their wounded pride at being snubbed and excluded from the project is more important than, you know, actually having waystones.

I don't think it's likely, but honour is a strange thing.
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Waystones? No, no. They have the Lady and Damsels for that, truly. We'd be selling them artisan sculptures to spruce up their domains. A rare collaboration between Dwarf and Elf at that! Which naturally demands a high price. The fact the collection requires very specific placements to truly shine is just one of those funny quirks of fine art! Good conversation starter as well, probably.
 
Leolu said:
Waystones? No, no. They have the Lady and Damsels for that, truly. We'd be selling them artisan sculptures to spruce up their domains. A rare collaboration between Dwarf and Elf at that! Which naturally demands a high price. The fact the collection requires very specific placements to truly shine is just one of those funny quirks of fine art! Good conversation starter as well, probably.
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I really hope we explore the Brettonian double talking and double thinking at some point. An apparent mix of honour and not inquiring too closely into anything which could lead to a loss of honour or contradiction of another's public persona. I'd think it would appeal to Mathilde's grey wizard side, though she might find it very odd after her experience of living for so long with dwarfs.
 
In terms of political trouble, Nordland's been relatively quiet while we've been making moves, so my bet would be on them making some noise once they feel it's the right time to do so.
 
Another factor in external political pressures: one of the noted downsides of using Laurelorn as headquarters was that the Cult of Sigmar might object. But I guess WEB-MAT's charter and bringing Thorek aboard completely neutered those concerns.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Internal political problems within the Project? We actually knocked this one out of the park more or less by accident. We had what seemed to be a mostly-flavour vote on how much money to spend on doing up the Project's building. We decided that Mathilde's never heard of a Vow of Poverty she respected, and dropped 600 gold on the nice curtains. IIRC Boney later revealed that members of the Project who didn't get on could just avoid each other in comfort because we'd essentially outfitted a mansion in luxury.
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I just find this so hilarious getting the fancy thick, noise canceling curtains being a factor in the project success. Truly a lesson in the dangers of cheaping out. Who knows what could've been achieved with proper silk sheets alas.


Leolu said:
Waystones? No, no. They have the Lady and Damsels for that, truly. We'd be selling them artisan sculptures to spruce up their domains. A rare collaboration between Dwarf and Elf at that! Which naturally demands a high price. The fact the collection requires very specific placements to truly shine is just one of those funny quirks of fine art! Good conversation starter as well, probably.
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Pfft hey--
Boney said:
Quirks:
Octagonal Pyramidion
Aesthetically Offensive (hidden by cladding)
Visibly Dwarven Rune
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--oh no
 
ReImagined said:
In terms of political trouble, Nordland's been relatively quiet while we've been making moves, so my bet would be on them making some noise once they feel it's the right time to do so.
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I've been getting more and more into the notion of an EIC infiltration of Nordland next turn for this reason, now that the fog bridge is done.
 
One important factor is that nobody expected her to succeed, much less in under a decade before broad rollout

One advantage of taking on impossible tasks is that they're considered impossible and so people don't work to make you fail.
Parabola said:
Another factor in external political pressures: one of the noted downsides of using Laurelorn as headquarters was that the Cult of Sigmar might object. But I guess WEB-MAT's charter and bringing Thorek aboard completely neutered those concerns.
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Mathilde being the dwarf friend helps a lot. Also, the project was a dwarf project from the start, Mathilde is kind of K8Ps contribution, at least if it would've been convenient.

Starting a fight with the dwarfs, Middenland, the Ar-Ulric and the elfs, with at best middling support from the Ulrican Nordland just isn't sensible.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
When talking about setbacks in the Waystone Project, or the lack thereof, I think it comes down to that rarest of possible things in a quest: the players actually making good decisions. (Less rarely, not entirely on purpose.)

Internal political problems from Laurelorn? The thread made a conscious decision to shore up anti-isolationist support not just in bringing elves onto the Project, but bringing other Houses onside by way of trade.

External political problems from Imperial factions? We're based in an isolationist faction they aren't even allowed into. I think it's quite likely that the first time the Cult of Sigmar had even heard of the Waystone Project, was when we were rolling Waystones out across Praag, Sylvania, and Black Water.

Internal political problems within the Project? We actually knocked this one out of the park more or less by accident. We had what seemed to be a mostly-flavour vote on how much money to spend on doing up the Project's building. We decided that Mathilde's never heard of a Vow of Poverty she respected, and dropped 600 gold on the nice curtains. IIRC Boney later revealed that members of the Project who didn't get on could just avoid each other in comfort because we'd essentially outfitted a mansion in luxury.

Political problems with the rollout? We've started by dropping Waystones in a bunch of the most heavily corrupted areas possible, across multiple polities, dodging plausible grumbling about favouritism.

The possible threat of enemy action? This one isn't a decision we made, but an ongoing decision by possible antagonists that long-term infrastructure projects aren't their problem.

Ulthuan not being too upset about us poking the Network is about the only thing that could feasibly have gone poorly. That it was first noticed by Teclis, who likes humans might have helped - or might not have, given Teclis' famous charisma. Eltharion taking an interest was admittedly very much lucky there, but no one involved was going to listen to Ulthuan if they'd tried to say "no", and by that point we were already producing results, making possible Asur bribes less tempting.

Apparently we might expect more politics when we do further rollouts. If we want to do a clean sweep of good decision making defanging opposition, I'd suggest continuing to pick multiple locations to deploy to each turn, so people don't complain they're getting passed over.
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There's also the fact that we chose a polity to host the project that had a strong interest in the project going well, or at least making progress, even if the loftier goals weren't achieved. And by elven standards, the project has proceeded at a blistering pace. We also arranged things so that our backers and the participants in general were benefiting from the project itself before it even bore any fruit.

The greatest potential hurdle--aside from getting the various parties to participate in the first place--was always going to be getting the various groups to share at least most of their Waystone secrets so progress could be made. We dealt with that by using the project to investigate and reverse-engineer each part of the waystones from scratch, using the combined expertise rather than relying on the various parties already having secrets they didn't want to share for nothing.

Until the waystones started rolling out, it was just a research project. Now that waystones are rolling out, it's a lucrative infrastructure project with the stamp of approval of a lot of big players from all over.
 
Andres said:
Is it called the Throne of Power because it manages the power supply of the Karaz Ankor?
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Most likely, considering it was crafted by Grungi it is most likely the solution when the realization that the Ancestor Gods wouldn't be around forever. They don't need to understand the works, just maintain them and having the High King get readouts about power and the current situation across the Karaz Ankor seems like a pretty good solution.

Considering Thorgrim was able to power the lift gas of eight peaks (I would assume he shut something else off), it is safe to say that they are able to control everything that relies on the power of the Karaz Ankor. We do know that the throne is similar to a rune of memory based off what Kragg said about Alaric.
Boney said:
"One of the soul runes is the Rune of Obedience, the one that makes Gronti obey orders. That's usually linked directly into the Rune of Animation or its variants, but in this case it's tied into... by the shape and location of it must be some sort of memory Rune. Alaric started off trying to rediscover that sort of thing with his Master Rune of Ages, before he realized that the ultimate example of that sort of Rune is the Rune of Eternity and started trying to rediscover that instead.
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picklepikkl said:
I've been getting more and more into the notion of an EIC infiltration of Nordland next turn for this reason, now that the fog bridge is done.
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Doesn't that still run into the issue of us not having much of a presence there to work with?

The EIC action I'm currently leaning towards is probably going to be the auditors division, since trade is going to be expanding massively with the canals and fog path and silk weaving completions, plus we can have Eike tag along and hopefully develop more of her Stewardship/Intrigue.
 
I think Nordland at this point can't really risk to interfere with Laurelorn or they might anger literally all the signatories of the Bohka Palace Accords, so while it might be nice to get some agents in Nordland eventually (to help with the eventual expansion into the Forest of Shadows), I think it's probably fine to instead focus on something else with the EIC like making an auditor's division or something.

Between the fog road and silk coming online, now's about as good a time as any to check on the naughtiness of the EIC.
 
Parabola said:
I think Nordland at this point can't really risk to interfere with Laurelorn or they might anger literally all the signatories of the Bohka Palace Accords, so while it might be nice to get some agents in Nordland eventually (to help with the eventual expansion into the Forest of Shadows), I think it's probably fine to instead focus on something else with the EIC like making an auditor's division or something.

Between the fog road and silk coming online, now's about as good a time as any to check on the naughtiness of the EIC.
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Auditors division is a must at this point, Wilhelmina is pile driving onto the canals and is now expanding into Kislev. If the EIC is able to prove that it's better than the merchants of Erengrad (not hard considering even Ice witches commented on it) and more reliable for campaigns and basics than the boyars. It wouldn't surprise me if the EIC could dominate all governmental contracts in Kislev.
 
hugo239111 said:
Auditors division is a must at this point, Wilhelmina is pile driving onto the canals and is now expanding into Kislev. If the EIC is able to prove that it's better than the merchants of Erengrad (not hard considering even Ice witches commented on it) and more reliable for campaigns and basics than the boyars. It wouldn't surprise me if the EIC could dominate all governmental contracts in Kislev.
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I don't think I would go that far, given that we've only made the EIC loyal to the Empire first and to always be honest when dealing with dwarfs. At no point did we go 'be scrupulously honest in general'.

The EIC is probably not going to be a gigantic powerhouse in Kislev overall... but it doesn't have to be to make out like thieves. Even just having a major presence in one of the cities would be huge given that, you know, they only have three of them. Between that and the associated reputation of Mathilde, the EIC is overall in the right position to benefit.
 
Boney said:
It also plays to the individual strengths and avoids the most prominent weaknesses of the involved forces. Resvynhaf, Rakhov, Volstara and Resov are all woodcutting stanitsas, so they would have a familiarity with forests that the other rotas would lack, so they would be the ones most able and equipped to act as lumberjacks and the ones most likely to be able to deal with any reaction their clear-cutting might provoke. The krugs of the southern oblast are likewise used to the forests that hem in their lands, and would have honed their ability to be able to negotiate the forest on horseback while hunting in them. And the rotas from the city and from the unforested stanitsas are, like most Kislevites, largely ignorant of acting in forests, so they will be patrolling the cleared path and otherwise being kept in reserve until battle is joined, at which point they can travel along the path most of the way and dismount and engage the enemy on foot.
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'...able to navigate* the forest...'
 
For the Total War teleport thing it's possible they tried it but found during playtesting that it altered the feel of gameplay too much. Traditional Total War is a game where groups of units walk up to an enemy unit, traveling through all the intervening distance, and whack it either in melee or at a small distance using projectiles. Adding teleportation probably could be made to be a balanced game mechanic if it's nerfed enough but its very existence might have altered the gameplay dynamics so much that it didn't feel like a Total War game anymore, which would explain why they never implemented it in any final release.
hugo239111 said:
Considering Thorgrim was able to power the lift gas of eight peaks (I would assume he shut something else off)
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He wouldn't have needed to turn anything off, he just would have needed to dip in the Throne of Power's energy reserves again for a bit, it would have reactivated the energy deficit klaxon temporarily but Thorgrim has eighteen decades of experience in tuning that out.
 
Parabola said:
I don't think I would go that far, given that we've only made the EIC loyal to the Empire first and to always be honest when dealing with dwarfs. At no point did we go 'be scrupulously honest in general'.

The EIC is probably not going to be a gigantic powerhouse in Kislev overall... but it doesn't have to be to make out like thieves. Even just having a major presence in one of the cities would be huge given that, you know, they only have three of them. Between that and the associated reputation of Mathilde, the EIC is overall in the right position to benefit.
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Hence I focused on governmental contracts. I don't think the EIC will ever be a powerhouse in Kislev what with their whole "kislev is the land, we are kislev" attitude shown. But we also have a trade organization geared towards small profits over one time windfalls, one that has a grey order handler, with the possibility (hopefully soon) of an auditors division.

The Boyars and merchants of Kislev so far have been broadly painted as extremely self interested, with some exceptions. Supplying the Kreml guard with arms and armor, rations and supplies would be huge. The Strelsi need gunpowder and with an active Tzar there is the possibility of an expansion of the weaponry. Having such an example of (hopefully) good behavior would help Kislev and Mathilde. Similar to the Illithmar strategy of one person doing so causes others to do so.

Honestly it could be worth it to offer as help to Boris even without the whole good of the Empire/be honest to dwarfs policy I have a feeling Wilhelmina and the hochlander would be breathing down their neck in Kislev. It appears that between Eike's earlier charcoal adventure and the canal being near it Erengrad is likely the outpost the EIC would end up in. Considering the words of the Ice witches and Boris having a foreign merchant company down the street might make the guilds more cooperative to him and Boris more grateful to us...
 
Parabola said:
I don't think I would go that far, given that we've only made the EIC loyal to the Empire first and to always be honest when dealing with dwarfs. At no point did we go 'be scrupulously honest in general'.

The EIC is probably not going to be a gigantic powerhouse in Kislev overall... but it doesn't have to be to make out like thieves. Even just having a major presence in one of the cities would be huge given that, you know, they only have three of them. Between that and the associated reputation of Mathilde, the EIC is overall in the right position to benefit.
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They don't even need to be in the cities; depending on how dominant they can be on the river and canal route, they could effectively be the ones doing all the long haul shipping then sell to Kislev companies or nobles and let them handle their own local distribution. With a bit of work I could see them becoming the go-to supplier for a fairly impressive fraction of canal going imports, without ever having to directly compete with the locals. Business partners rather than rivals, the same way someone operating cargo planes isn't a direct rival to a person with a fleet of delivery trucks.
 
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