How do you play Piratii in MP?

[lostangelonline]

Hi guys, in a MP game I created, one player chose to play as Piratii. His Turn 1 message was something like Piratii have not spawned, and indeed his player icon in not on the map, nor any Piratii provinces. From what i remember in SP, much later in game I saw some Piratii events/attacks, also new provinces becoming playable in the Scandinavia and Siberia, controlled by Rapinatore (instead of Independant, not sure if related to pirates). How do you play Piratii in MP?

[loki100]

you can't.

Not even sure you can in SP unless you mod the game.

there are 3 different 'pirate' groups:

a) pirate ships raised by a normal faction that has the trait and has a pirate lair building - these can raid anyone unless the two factions have relations >25;
b) pirates that spawn in the middle of the ocean every now and then - a bit like a maritime independent or slave army, sits around raiding till someone destroys it
c) there is a pirate faction in the database, I guess to model the situation in Cilicia from 80 BCE onwards? But this is disabled and can't spawn.

You could mod the database to allow this to appear, even give it an at start region but given what happened in reality its best modelled as the current game (also remember that everyone in a MP will need to make the same database changes).

Now (a) is fun in MP as you can wind up the more serious/bigger powers by raiding them ... well recommended

[lostangelonline]

Thanks loki100. I agree. So if they are unplayable, why are they available to choose as your nation in MP? The player who chose them quit after Turn1, but I do not want my created challenges to auto-start with Piratii players that "steal" the last available player-place and do not play

[Wulfburk]

I play in a match with a piratii player. He waited dozens of turns just skipping his own turns with nothing to do, but once a piratii fleet spawned he was able to control it as a normal player (or so he told us in the chat). So they are indeed playable, one just has to wait for them to spawn.

I imagine it is the same with Galatia faction.

[lostangelonline]

From now on, in the challenges that I will create, I will disable all nations that can not be played immediately, as those players are likely to leave or just become idle. Can someone list all these nations? The devs should add an option to quickly disable them.

So far:
Piratii
Galatia

[loki100]

Parthia is the other.

I do actually think this is a bug, those factions are not open in SP, so maybe worth reporting in the bug forum so that Pocus sees this?

[Pocus]

I'll make a note about that.

[lostangelonline]

I'll make a note about that.

Thanks Pocus.

Until this is updated, I've made this short list of nations I'l disable (with right-click) on all new challenges I'll create:
Galatia
Piratii
Suiones
Venedae
Slaves
(Parthia was not in the list, or I may have missed it, as the list in not ordered alphabetically - how is it ordered? it is not by nation difficulty as I first thought)

I would also like to restrict/discourage players from choosing to play as 4-5 difficulty nations (is there a list with nations & difficulties? so I can disable those with 4-5), so may I suggest 3 ways of making this possible in the create challenge screen:
1. sort nations by difficulty (desc.) - will discourage
2. add difficulty number/stars near nation name - will discourage
3. add a checkbox for each difficulty and remove nations from the list accordingly - will restrict (strongly recommended, as it allows for many interesting challenges)

[loki100]

some of this you'll need to do using the game files - the 'factions' one is the most relevant. Cols CF/CG show the estimated difficulty/interest so you can sort on this to identify those seen as more difficult. But remember, this was a very subjective allocation made during the beta phase of the game. Patches, and wider gameplay experience, may well have altered the validity of some of those allocations.

The list of late arriving nations is in col CQ (min date exists)

a '-' means it spawns at that date BCE otherwise its a CE date. You'll see a lot of factions that actually fall outside the game period but for eg the Galatians have a date of 280 BCE (-280), Parthians 250 BCE (-250). What I personally would do here is to exclude all that have -400 as their start date (ie those are the ones that exist when the current grand campaign commences).

[lostangelonline]

some of this you'll need to do using the game files - the 'factions' one is the most relevant. Cols CF/CG show the estimated difficulty/interest so you can sort on this to identify those seen as more difficult. But remember, this was a very subjective allocation made during the beta phase of the game. Patches, and wider gameplay experience, may well have altered the validity of some of those allocations.

The list of late arriving nations is in col CQ (min date exists)

a '-' means it spawns at that date BCE otherwise its a CE date. You'll see a lot of factions that actually fall outside the game period but for eg the Galatians have a date of 280 BCE (-280), Parthians 250 BCE (-250). What I personally would do here is to exclude all that have -400 as their start date (ie those are the ones that exist when the current grand campaign commences).

Thanks a lot loki100, this is exactly the list I was looking for.