#thanks the mod that allowed me to cheat on this because otherwise my kingdom would have ended into a hell for everyone

[lairofsentinel]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker opinions: [Spoilers ahead] At least, spoilers until the point before reaching Pitax. A place you can’t never go in because bugs. Yay.

Meh, the Lore and the main concept of the game is not my cup of tea. “Becoming king/queen and destined to rule lands”, meh, too overused in games... it’s something soooo colonialist to my taste now. I prefer to be part of rebel groups and punks (which are also overused, but what’s not at this moment in the videogame industry?). But well, the narrative was nice, and I was not so bored with the game after the first chapter (the first chapter was horribly slow and you need to endure boredom at deadly doses). 

The resource management got my nerves. So I got some mods to cheat it, because it’s super annoying to lose a loooot of quests and missions just because you are spending time with one of your advisors.  And everything takes so many days to be solved, that you forget completely. And you spend more time in front of a fucking table than playing the RPG. 

That Amiri, omg. She is like Cassandra Pentaghast but completely savage without fucking Andraste and churches and Makers. She’s wildly perfect.... except, she is non-romanceable for my Baroness. Of COURSE!. Never let me get my perfect lesbian couple in any fucking game!. Why games keep doing this to me?, first Aveline, then Cassandra, now Amiri. Let me romance a fucking butch!. Anyway, I took another try with my Baron. I was looking at Tristian, and of course, the cutest softest cuchicuchi priest in the game is straight. He is not even human! for fuck’s sake, why he needs to be hetero? He is willingly to fuck a lesser creature than himself, what would he care about the gender?. It’s the same nonsense that in Mass Effect. Tired, I check the only 2 possible gay options.... and BOTH are bisexuals in a relationship with each other. Which is horrible. Like... seriously? I need to destroy their relationship to have my gay content? Or I have to end up in a polyamory relationship which is not my cup of tea?. [though, I have to praise, this is the first game I play where polyamory is actually a decent option (probably a better option than any gay option) but only with these 2 characters]. In fact, it’s not my cup of tea, but... the hell, probably I will head into it. 

When you check the studio’s explanation of this situation (why they did not offered gay options), they say that they did it in this way because “they didn't have time”. And sure, we can’t have more content because **time**... but it’s always gay/bi content which is cut off. I never fucking heard once “no, look, we could not make more hetero chars because we lacked of resources”.  No. Gayness is just a DLC, always.

It’s funny because, man, they didn't have time to finish the last chapter either, lol!. I’m fucking stuck in Pitax. There were a terrible amount of bugs that prevent you to follow the main quest. So I’m there, unable to play because I always get my kingdom destroyed thanks to the bugs.

Also, the whole design, the style of narrative, the interactions... everything tastes to me to Pillars of Eternity. There are a lot of spell icons that are from PoE. I was surprised. They had no time to even redesign the icons?. Wow. why this game was released then? After chapter 4 it’s a pain in the ass with the amount of bugs. You can’t continue the main quest, nor the companion quests. It breaks the narrative so horribly. 

Regongar is so traumatized. I was not expecting to like him. Even though he is Evil neutral, and I don’t like any kind of “evil” alignment usually, this char gets you. His mind is so fucked up due to the tortures, and still yet, more or less, he tries to be kind of... a decent person. Considering circumstances, of course. 

Octavia was meh. Maybe too coquettish to my style, but I can’t see her background because Pitax is bugged as fuck and I can’t follow her quest, so, I don’t know what’s her true background.  However, the way she and Regongar interact is so cute. And thinking about it, how they could not be that way?, they kept their sanity through years of slavery and torture thanks to their mutual support. Encouraging them to break is really evil. Making Regongar a bit less fucked up with his “my Octavia” thingie would be better.  But I don’t know where that goes. Thanks horrible bugs.

Now, the char that completely got me without even realising about it was Jubilost. Like... the asshole was an annoyance, and make you infuriate most of the time with his attitude of being high in a horse, and now I totally like him to the point to wish a romance with this asshole. Because he is an asshole, that has a lot of material to show off and being a “proper” educated asshole, but at the same time, he is an asshole to himself. He doesn’t go easy when it comes to criticize himself. He sticks so much to the truth that applies it even against him. I totally love those ruthless chars that give a shit about their own emotions in pos of the truth. Jubilost got my complete attention now. Besides, he is a brilliant economist. The kingdom is so fuckign efficient with him. I want to romance this asshole gnome.

[glowyjellyfish]

I started writing down an updated collection of thoughts and plans about my Megakingdom project, but they got very rambly and so I am beginning anew.

And no, I have not forgotten about Grimwood Abbey, but for my undiagnosed but likely adhd brain I gotta follow the fixations where they lead. It’s actually quite helpful to have several different Medieval Sims 2 concepts I want to play with while working on the excruciatingly long CC Sorting portion of the project, because I can bounce around from one to the other to find fresh things to think about without abandoning the CC project. I got through all the Teen and Child clothing, and everything in Buy Mode! I am halfway through Walls in Build Mode! I have some broken things to identify, some Star Factory stuff to check on updating (accidentally overwrote my fresh install of all those with some older duplicates and could not actually undo, Mia culpa), and a bunch of empty folders to check and remove. Then comes the real sorting. And a backup.

But today I am here to talk about the Megakingdom. I have realized I can’t just play it as a straight MCC, because I already have a king. And yet the Warwickshire rules are wayyyy too complicated for somebody who has yet to complete an MCC. So I am going to play mostly MCC, with a few Warwickshire rules incorporated early, using the advancements to replace unthematic community lots and make sure the community gets well-rounded. I’ll also be using the social advancement rules to earn sims the right to fill in a few empty class spots (for example, Pleasantview currently has no Gentry). I will probably start using some of the Warwickshire title guidelines once each subhood has a reasonable amount of sims in each class and sims start purchasing titles outside the basic ones. And I am thinking I might roll a THS for babies born in-game, but avoid randomized health hits and pregnancy health concerns until I get used to the system and/or those babies grow into adults.

The big difference I am planning from both rule systems is… frankly, I want to use the colleges and the college sims. The college sims are going to be a flexible marriage pool, but also, three is too many for just a couple of social classes to attend, and it really bugs me that college sims get more lifespan than non-college sims. So each college is open to a different selection of social classes. Academie Le Tour is the upper class university, and only royalty, nobility, and heir/firstborn gentry may attend. La Fiesta Tech is for non-heir gentry and merchants, and Sim State University is the trade school for yeomen and peasants who are sponsored by a noble. I’m not sure yet about the other two colleges, but SSU will for sure have a strong tuition fee, which peasants may request from a noble in exchange for becoming their serf. There will absolutely be many sims who still cannot afford to attend, and for those I’ll get some YA mods, but this plan will ease me into that play method AND will prep up some serfs for the megahood.

(I… will have to reread up on the lower classes and determine exactly how and who I want to set up as serfs, if I feel I need to start with any. For some reasons, I am constantly assuming that the lowest classes in these challenges do not automatically equal serfs and I might also just be wrong on that, and if I am I’ll figure it out.)

Some story plans and concepts:

Faith and Herbert Goodie are going to be church sims, with the Newsons moving in as a collection of orphans being raised by the church. Coral Oldie, meanwhile, is going to be a midwife (probably not the only one, but I haven’t identified anyone else for the role yet); I have set the Oldies as Merchant class, and so I might have Herb run a small business that complements her midwifery, perhaps selling herbs they grow or something.

I’m trying to figure out what’s to be done with Jessica Peterson; without the game lore she’s just an obvious peasant, but with it she’s divorced from Armand DeBateau, a duke, and therefore must be at least Gentry. I feel like the thematic way to handle this would be having her join the church or become an outcast, but I haven’t decided yet. By a similar token, I really want to keep Alexandra Teatherton nee O’Mackey’s “left family to become a pirate” story, but then I’d have to set up pirates and junk. Otherwise, she’s in the same position as Jessica.

Cassandra Goth is betrothed to King Malcolm Landgraab IV. I think that Don Lothario, a yeoman at best, has been trying to seduce her and making all kinds of promises in his efforts to bed her, but he never intended to actually try to marry her and is shocked at how seriously she took all his talk of running away together. That is way too permanent for Don Lothario, he just wanted to WooHoo her.

I did this same basic setup for a Steampunk Strangetown I played a while back, but I think the quickest and most interesting way to set up a kingdom in Strangetown is a. Olive Specter is the ruler, b. Ophelia has been raised as her heir, but c. Nervous is the true heir, kept secret because of his parentage but Olive plans to officially recognize him before she dies, and d. Loki learned the secret a while back and has been holding Nervous hostage in an attempt to either marry Nervous to Loki’s sister Erin or otherwise gain power. So that’s essentially what is happening here, Olive is the Duchess, Nervous is her heir, Loki is a mere Gentry trying some ruthless means of acquiring power and advancing his family’s status. Erin is a viable match for Nervous, but in my experience they usually don’t like one another; I think generally speaking I’m not going to force sims with X attraction to marry just because they’re a good match. Maybe for story purposes or if the pickings are too slim, but not in round one.

Oh, and I have designated a few ladies to be Duchesses of their subhoods, and a Gentry lady heiress here and there, but for the most part I will be sticking to full classic primogeniture. This is mainly for setup; I just picked the best/most interesting choices to rule each subhood. I.E., I’m not gonna make the Roths be the Ducal family of Riverblossom Hills when the Goths are right there ruling over Pleasantview, that is dumb, and Catherine Viejo makes a very interesting setup. Is Betty Goldstein her secret lover and/or lady in waiting? Is Andrew Martin her secret lover and/or gardener/serving man/serf? ...so Cleo Shikibu, heiress to the Duchy of Riverblossom Hills, and Florence Delarosa, Lady of Bluewater Village, will both have to find second sons or college sims to marry in order to preserve their respective inheritances (meaning, basically, they can marry Kent Capp or a college boy, because maxis families are really light on siblings generally). Olive Specter is technically another example, but since she has a male heir in Nervous, Ophelia is not being treated as an heiress and will just get married off wherever. (...not to Johnny, unfortunately for them. Johnny is a merchant. And thanks to Johnny’s heritage, it will be Difficult to cheat discretely. Sounds like Fun!) But I will be avoiding situations like this in the future, and will only allow heiresses if there is no possible male heir, and even then her duty is to marry a hapless guy and produce a male heir as soon as she can to preserve her family line.

I’m also pretty excited about my spreadsheet for the Megakingdom, making pages for simple round info, a full resident census, individual families and family trees, records of deceased sims and events, the neighborhood and treasury, maybe one day including full economic notes on sensible pricing for SMSF goods. And charts on viable marriage prospects for each class, which I am pretty proud of. They’re sorted by rank, red means not allowed, bright green is preferred, and light green is allowed. Generally speaking, sims get bright green within the same age group and light green outside it, making it easy to prioritize same age marriages over, say, adult-teen marriages or teen-child betrothals. Both of those are allowed but not preferred. And these charts will change as sims age, and sims will be removed when they get married and added when new sims are born or rolled.

I am very excited. The spreadsheets also give me something I can work on during down time at work!