Ren'Py Seeds of Chaos [v0.4.05 Dev] [Vénus Noire]

[phupdup]

That outside brothel could be a whole spinoff VN. It could be run by another set of twins named Sydney and Sidney who Jezera ran into much earlier in life and has now recruited. It could be a series of vignettes of their trials and tribulations working under a really dark corporate overlord. Working title: Sids of Chaos.....

 

[Rein]

The brothel runs on don't think about it.

 

[New Kid]

The twins have several advantages distinct from Rowan that gives them a leg on prior demon lords.

- The huge tactical and strategic advantage of the portal network that Jezera constructed.
- The relative proximity to the prior war and ability to catch the Solansians with their pants down.
- The fact that there are *two* of them (with complimentary skill sets) and they aren't murdering each other. Unheard of.

But they have distinct disadvantages too.

- Neither is as powerful as their father
- Their half demon heritage gives them trouble recruiting chaos races relative to full demons
- The forces of chaos were also badly harmed by the war.

Is that enough to win without Rowan? Well that's the question, isn't it?

On the advantages, I guess the portal network does give their army a pretty great tactical advantage, assuming they have competent enough people to take advantage of it, which they don't outside of Rowan. Hell, I think Cla Min is the one making the most use of them and mainly for her own benefit, and there hasn't been a single battle yet where teleporting was a turning point. The element of surprise was there with or without Rowan, and they would've blown their cover much earlier if Rowan wasn't there, Andras is flashy enough to make sure of that. Yeah, sure, they aren't murdering each other... yet.

If they didn't need Rowan, they wouldn't have bothered to kidnap Alexia and force him into service, they would just kill one of the Six Heroes and count it as a major victory. Jezera at least could see the sorry state they were in at the beginning of the game, while Andras somehow managed to get injured while taking Raeve's keep if you take the direct assault route.

 

[05841035411]

If they didn't need Rowan, they wouldn't have bothered to kidnap Alexia and force him into service, they would just kill one of the Six Heroes and count it as a major victory. Jezera at least could see the sorry state they were in at the beginning of the game, while Andras somehow managed to get injured while taking Raeve's keep if you take the direct assault route.

They need someone with Rowan's skillsets, but they don't really need Rowan, per se. Jezera could have kidnapped another effective tactician, a steward, a scout, and a representative, and kept going through candidates until one finally agreed. They wouldn't be as effective, and she'd need multiple people instead of having a convenient all-in-one, but she'd get someone to cover the holes eventually.

Or Andras would have got frustrated with the whole thing and insisted they start their plans regardless. One of the two.

(Andras gets himself injured on the infiltration route as well, actually. Or does he get more injured on the direct assault path? I don't think I've ever actually done it that way since, well, I share Jezera's love of unnecessary spycraft.)

 

[phupdup]

I've nerfed the required research points necessary for Fiendish Diplomacy from 120 to 40 since it appears that the dev team meant to move it to so early in the game, but didn't carry through with a proper rebalancing. This should make it much easier to accomplish the early game objective of taking Raeve Keep with a spy instead of using the brute force option. Drop it into game/core. You may need to create the core subfolder if you haven't bothered to un-archive the game's archive.rpa file.

 

[05841035411]

I've nerfed the required research points necessary for Fiendish Diplomacy from 120 to 40 since it appears that the dev team meant to move it to so early in the game, but didn't carry through with a proper rebalancing. This should make it much easier to accomplish the early game objective of taking Raeve Keep with a spy instead of using the brute force option. Drop it into game/core. You may need to create the core subfolder if you haven't bothered to un-archive the game's archive.rpa file.

40 is way too low. Without capturing a single abbey or recruiting a single Cubi, you could capture Raeve Keep by week 11 that way, half the time limit. I think 80 would be pretty generous, lenient enough that a newbie who didn't know the abbey locations or that infiltration takes time could still research another tech first without ruining their chance of an infiltration.

I mean, being able to stage an infiltration is meant to take a fair amount of work still. If there's a balance problem here, it's that the military option seems too easy.

 

[New Kid]

They need someone with Rowan's skillsets, but they don't really need Rowan, per se. Jezera could have kidnapped another effective tactician, a steward, a scout, and a representative, and kept going through candidates until one finally agreed. They wouldn't be as effective, and she'd need multiple people instead of having a convenient all-in-one, but she'd get someone to cover the holes eventually.

Or Andras would have got frustrated with the whole thing and insisted they start their plans regardless. One of the two.

(Andras gets himself injured on the infiltration route as well, actually. Or does he get more injured on the direct assault path? I don't think I've ever actually done it that way since, well, I share Jezera's love of unnecessary spycraft.)

Yes, they could try and get some other random tactcian/diplomat/scout/whatever (damn looking from this angle Rowan is a freaking swiss knife huh), but as you said, it would take a lot of kidnapping and village burning for a lesser result, consuming more time and probably attracting more attention than what they could handle at that point. My bet would be on Andras getting impatient though hahaha.
Kinda unrelated, but I actually count the endings where you fail a deadline from the twins as a "normal end", where Rowan and Alexia die but the twins and their subjects soon follow after their plans are foiled by the kingdom army and possibly some of the other remaining heroes.

Good question, as I haven't played the infiltration route yet because I had other priorities while researching (Cubi and map to get a better army to clear as many capture events as soon as possible) so I couldn't compare. Has been a long while since I last played but IIRC he takes an arrow to the kn chest from Helayna and has to leave to recover after the battle while Jezera takes over the fortress in the direct assault.

 

[05841035411]

Yes, they could try and get some other random tactcian/diplomat/scout/whatever (damn looking from this angle Rowan is a freaking swiss knife huh), but as you said, it would take a lot of kidnapping and village burning for a lesser result, consuming more time and probably attracting more attention than what they could handle at that point. My bet would be on Andras getting impatient though hahaha.
Kinda unrelated, but I actually count the endings where you fail a deadline from the twins as a "normal end", where Rowan and Alexia die but the twins and their subjects soon follow after their plans are foiled by the kingdom army and possibly some of the other remaining heroes.

Well, let's also remember that Rowan at the start is a squeaky-clean exceedingly pure Hero, with no real ambition or inclination towards personal gain. He didn't have much for Jezera to work with but kidnapping his wife.

Other tacticians/diplomats/scouts/darkelfbribes? Are a lot more readily corruptable. She could bribe them, she could seduce them, or, yes, just snatch-and-bag them. It wouldn't need to be nearly as much of a spectacle as the had with Rowan; among other things, they wouldn't need to wait months for Rowan to show up when they could take their target immediately.

And while any given person might not be as competent as Rowan necessarily... There'd probably be a lot of gain from not multitasking all the time. How many headaches would be solved by their Seneschal actually being in the castle all day instead of just weekends? A full-time diplomat handling the Orciad situation? Their tactician working more closely with the troops instead of traipsing about the countryside all day? I don't think the difference in performance would necessarily be inferior - just more of a pain to find the right people. But one thing Jezera is certainly good at is finding people.

But considering how much of an effort Andras made to kill Rowan rather than admit that they could maybe benefit from outside help... Yeah, he probably wouldn't agree to try this with anyone else.

Good question, as I haven't played the infiltration route yet because I had other priorities while researching (Cubi and map to get a better army to clear as many capture events as soon as possible) so I couldn't compare. Has been a long while since I last played but IIRC he takes an arrow to the kn chest from Helayna and has to leave to recover after the battle while Jezera takes over the fortress in the direct assault.

That sounds pretty similar, and glancing at the event text, I don't really notice any significant difference.

I'm not certain whether to crack a joke about Andras here, or a joke about how incompetent the army at Rastadel must have been that they couldn't match the results of a tiny little garrison betrayed by half their members, but... Hey, I get it, bad luck happens. Anyone can catch an unlucky arrow, it's not as though you can see everywhere.

(But avoiding arrows is probably easier if you wear some actual armor. And if you're in an opposing army, you should probably aim for the big red shirtless guy who's killing everyone; you won't all miss.)

 

[phupdup]

If you want to tweak it, it's here at line 301:

    class FiendishDiplomacy(Research):
        uid = 'fiendish_diplomacy'
        name = 'Fiendish diplomacy'
        category = 'diplomacy'
        cost = 40

40 is way too low. Without capturing a single abbey or recruiting a single Cubi, you could capture Raeve Keep by week 11 that way, half the time limit. I think 80 would be pretty generous, lenient enough that a newbie who didn't know the abbey locations or that infiltration takes time could still research another tech first without ruining their chance of an infiltration.

I mean, being able to stage an infiltration is meant to take a fair amount of work still. If there's a balance problem here, it's that the military option seems too easy.

 

[brahhh23]

How come I can't get any Jezera scenes despite taking all the villages?

 

[593322]

How come I can't get any Jezera scenes despite taking all the villages?

I'm not sure what you mean, jezera scenes have little to do with village aquasitions.

 

[diebesgrab]

That outside brothel could be a whole spinoff VN. It could be run by another set of twins named Sydney and Sidney who Jezera ran into much earlier in life and has now recruited. It could be a series of vignettes of their trials and tribulations working under a really dark corporate overlord. Working title: Sids of Chaos.....

Would this be connected in some way to Syd of Valis?

 

[Bulldozer47]

I think this game thread is the only one with most of these long ass explanations.

 

[gamingdevil800]

I'm not sure what you mean, jezera scenes have little to do with village aquasitions.

Not sure if it still is but capturing villages use to be the prerequisite to getting Jezera x Rowan scenes as a "reward". It's buggy though as you may stumble into a village and it's destroyed or something = the village not captured/counting towards the total. Doesn't help considering that there aren't many villages.

 

[phupdup]

I just did a quick look through the four events/village_encounter_x.rpy files since I do remember that capture versus trade with a new village had different dialog with Andras and Jezera afterwards. That's when I discovered that there is an option to infiltrate them instead if you have the spy system up and running with an idle spy. I never had this show up as an option before in any of my playthroughs to date because I always strategized getting them all discovered early on in order to get the most cash flow going for upgrading facilities.

In the current version of events/village_capture.rpy for the generic village options, capture gets you a couple of points with Andras and a couple against with Alexia while increasing guilt, corruption and infamy by 5. Trade may have given you favor with Jezera in the past based on her comments, but it only gains you a couple with Alexia now and knocks 1 off your guilt and corruption. It's only infiltrate that gains you a couple of points with Jezera, and it adds 1 infamy and a couple of guilt and corruption. There's TODO comments in there about these options having an impact on the Realm's military strength in the future.

Also note that the Swamp coven village scenario may have had a relationship change with Jezera in the past if you called her to do her grandstanding act, but it only appears and costs a favor now if you have more than one open with her. It's been quite a while since I've hit that one too, because I usually have that village out of the way well before she asks me to do a little favor of acting as a slave with the Dark Elf VIP.

Not sure if it still is but capturing villages use to be the prerequisite to getting Jezera x Rowan scenes as a "reward". It's buggy though as you may stumble into a village and it's destroyed or something = the village not captured/counting towards the total. Doesn't help considering that there aren't many villages.

 

[diebesgrab]

Also note that the Swamp coven village scenario may have had a relationship change with Jezera in the past if you called her to do her grandstanding act, but it only appears and costs a favor now if you have more than one open with her.

Oh, geez, I’d totally forgotten that was an option. I didn’t know about any of this village-related relationship change stuff, either. I’m not saying they need to show us the raw stats for every little thing, but they need to make some of this more transparent, there’s really no way of knowing what’s going on behind the scenes for most of what you do. Some of it follows logically, but there’s plenty that a player wouldn’t normally assume, and even with the common sense stuff you have no idea the degree to which your stats are going to change.

 

[Rivina]

[Jezera Approves +5]
[Andras Disapproves -15]
[Alexia Approves +5]

 

[05841035411]

Not sure if it still is but capturing villages use to be the prerequisite to getting Jezera x Rowan scenes as a "reward". It's buggy though as you may stumble into a village and it's destroyed or something = the village not captured/counting towards the total. Doesn't help considering that there aren't many villages.

I just did a quick look through the four events/village_encounter_x.rpy files since I do remember that capture versus trade with a new village had different dialog with Andras and Jezera afterwards. That's when I discovered that there is an option to infiltrate them instead if you have the spy system up and running with an idle spy. I never had this show up as an option before in any of my playthroughs to date because I always strategized getting them all discovered early on in order to get the most cash flow going for upgrading facilities.

In the current version of events/village_capture.rpy for the generic village options, capture gets you a couple of points with Andras and a couple against with Alexia while increasing guilt, corruption and infamy by 5. Trade may have given you favor with Jezera in the past based on her comments, but it only gains you a couple with Alexia now and knocks 1 off your guilt and corruption. It's only infiltrate that gains you a couple of points with Jezera, and it adds 1 infamy and a couple of guilt and corruption. There's TODO comments in there about these options having an impact on the Realm's military strength in the future.

Also note that the Swamp coven village scenario may have had a relationship change with Jezera in the past if you called her to do her grandstanding act, but it only appears and costs a favor now if you have more than one open with her. It's been quite a while since I've hit that one too, because I usually have that village out of the way well before she asks me to do a little favor of acting as a slave with the Dark Elf VIP.

Oh, geez, I’d totally forgotten that was an option. I didn’t know about any of this village-related relationship change stuff, either. I’m not saying they need to show us the raw stats for every little thing, but they need to make some of this more transparent, there’s really no way of knowing what’s going on behind the scenes for most of what you do. Some of it follows logically, but there’s plenty that a player wouldn’t normally assume, and even with the common sense stuff you have no idea the degree to which your stats are going to change.

The original poster is probably referring to Jezera's Slave Reward which requires occupying three villages. It's only the one scene, though.

As far as different effects from how you deal with villages, I'm not certain how much it really matters at the moment; the village events change relationship, while almost everything I can think of (certain event choices, and an event) rely on Jezera favor. These are two different systems that don't interact.

(There are a few other things that change your relationship value with Jezera, but I don't think relationship itself affects anything at all at the moment; I assume it's going to be built on more later. As for the village effects on Alexia, that does have a relevant effect, but it's only two points in either direction, so it's a pretty minor influence currently.)

 

[Vrizzaks]

Is there a way to 100% capture rastadel or is it always half-controlled?

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

100% capture is not possible.