Ramblings of Narc

This is part 2 of the ongoing series The Guild 2 Guide. Here’s a link to part one, in case you missed it.

Well, I was going to continue with the class guides, but my attention was correctly drawn to the fact that I haven’t really explained the more general parts of the game — the parts everyone has to deal with, no matter the class. So I’m going to cover all that now: the fun of marriage, politics, and a few more things.

To start us off, let’s look at:

Interface: the hidden (and not so hidden) features

One particularly interesting part you may have noticed already is that “Pause” speed doesn’t really pause. If you’re in-game, go ahead and hit Space or Num – until you get to pause and look closely — see, the carts and people are still moving, just incredibly slowly.

My assumption is that this happens because most of the interface actions require a bit of in-game time to pass before they get processed. For instance, if you have a cart full of stuff and you want to move the stuff from it to your workshop, you will see it takes a second or two while you’re in pause mode. Likewise, if you try to give someone a gift, you have to wait very patiently for the interface to update.

If you really want the game to pause, hit Esc instead to bring up the menu. At that point, the game really is paused and you can walk away from it and do other stuff. And while you’re there, you should probably save, just in case weird shit happens later.

Another often-missed part of the interface is the building list, complete with employees:

When you mouse over a building, you can see all the people associated with it, including the owner (if applicable), and employees working in that building. For instance, here’s my hut with my main character who owns it and lives in it:

The one special building in the list is the market — since there are never any employees associated with it, it expands instead to a list of all the markets on the map, as you can see here:

In all cases, you can click to select, double-click to jump the camera to that building, and hold down the right mouse button for more information. In fact, doing this on markets is particularly interesting:

As you can see, Nottingham currently has 136 inhabitants (this will be important later) and 92 buildings. Unemployment tends to be pretty stable as more workers are generated when the pool runs low as they get hired (making this a good way to grow a town). Religion is almost evenly split between the catholics and protestants, so there are likely no owned second-level churches in town. Finally, the top 5 sales and purchases give you an idea of what to make when you have a choice, but we’ll discuss those more in-depth in the class guides.

The last really interesting part in the main screen of the interface is the action bar at the bottom, otherwise called the measures list (and the actions, as you can guess, are called measures).

Measures are split into several different categories, based on the background color of their icon (though this is not entirely consistent so look carefully before you do anything):

• aggressive measures in red, featuring “attack”, “bribe”, “finish off”, and more:
  
• social measures, in light blue, featuring “court”, “compliment”, “give a gift”, and more:
  
• special extra measures, in orange: “speak” and “give item”. I’ll be explaining them in a bit.
  
• building measures, in green — these are associated with the building you’re in; for instance, in your home you can “train”, “sleep”, “view loans”, or “exit” the building:
  .
  Buildings also have green measures such as “improve building”, “increase level”, and so on:
  
• the general measures with the tan background, featuring “open inventory”, “manage group”, but also “production” (for a workshop) and more:
  
• artifact measures, showing as an icon of the artifact^[1] in question:
  ,
  which allow you to activate the artifact for whatever benefit it provides.
• There are also privilege measures, which have a purple background. We’ll discuss those later on, in the politics section.

For any measure, you can use the right-click-and-hold feature to find out more about it, including some flavor text, duration of effect (if any), and cooldown period (if any):

Now, about the extra measures I mentioned above: these tend to be very situational, and in a single-player game they’re completely unnecessary. “Speak” will make text show up in a speech bubble over your character, and “Give item” will do exactly what it sounds like.

“But wait, Narc, we already have ‘give a gift’, why this ‘give item’ thing?“, you ask. Well, when you give someone a gift, it doesn’t actually go into their inventory — it just gets assessed for suitability to that particular character, and if found acceptable, will give you a relation boost with them. “Give item”, on the other hand, lets you actually hand over part of your inventory to go into the other person’s inventory, making it possible to trade items with other people in multi-player.

There is one other extra measure, “sit”, available when you’re near a usable seat. It does what it says on the tin, and in a tavern it’ll make your character drink — be careful, they can get drunk this way!

An extra note on artifact measures: not all artifacts have a blue background. This is because, when the patches that enabled these items for use came out, nobody bothered to redo the graphics. So, with the right items in your inventory, you get something like this:

Courtship and Marriage

It’s very uncommon to “win” a game during the lifespan of your first character, even if they live to be 150! So, sooner or later, you’ll want to find a spouse and produce the next generation. Personally, I recommend doing this as soon as possible, given that the extra hands tend to come in very useful.

Now, if you’ve read the previous section, you already know the “Court” measure is in the light-blue social measures:
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When you click it, the game asks you to select someone to court. The limitations are: no workers (to prevent you stealing away a competitor’s workers by marrying and quickly divorcing them all), never the last member of a dynasty (but warning: courting dynasty members is buggy anyway as the other dynasty can still take back their member — and the AI dynasties do this a lot!), and nobody who’s already married.

Because these limitations are very restrictive, the game helps you out by providing a list of “The best candidates” in your “Important Units” listing:

Be very careful: other dynasty members will sometimes show up in this list (see note above for why this is bad), and it’s also perfectly possible to court and marry a 108-year-old who’s about to die. Use the right-click-and-hold function to find out about the intended candidates before you go ahead with a time-wasting courtship. Generally, the safe people to marry are ones named “Serf Billy Bob” — the unemployed people in the worker pool for your city (and yes, that does mean a mean competitor can steal your intended by hiring them while you’re in the middle of courting them!).

Anyway, once you’ve decided on a suitable candidate, click “Court”, click the candidate, and you get this:

Note that this is the only way to reliable find out what class your intended is! You also get a couple of paragraphs of suggestions on approaching that particular class, but remember they are not absolutes! Other things may work just as well at certain points in the courtship.

Once you’ve decided on courting that candidate, and accepted the courtship, your character will make her way over to wherever the potential spouse is and ask them if they’ll “walk with [them] a bit”. If the other person accepts, the courtship has officially begun:

From this point forward, use the social actions to get that relationship meter up. Wait, I forgot that part — when a courtship is in progress, you can check how well you’re doing by selecting the other person:

So, anyway, get that relationship meter up by doing whatever you’re supposed to be doing for that class. I almost invariably find myself in a tavern or inn while courting, using the “bathe together”, “sweet talk”, and “dance together” actions to pass the time while the social actions cool down to become available again. I’ve also read it may be a good idea to invest in an engagement ring from a wedding chapel — it should make for a wonderful gift — but have yet to try it, myself. Assuming you’ve done the tutorial, you probably also know what to do when the relationship-o-meter is at the top and “someone has fallen in love with you”:

I’ve yet to test this, but marriage in a chapel should grant some extra XP in exchange for tying your character up for a few minutes walking there and costing money (note: I found out a funny thing about Nottingham while writing this paragraph — Nottingham has no wedding chapel! Hucknall does, though).

Now go and make babies spend the night together, and before you know it, you should have a child, and your dynasty is more or less safe. Word of advice: don’t have too many children — dynasty members you don’t control tend to just wander the city, attending church and visiting the pub, making them excellent targets for pickpockets (and since a pickpocket takes a percentage amount of your cash, you’ll feel it!).

Likewise, though, be careful with your children. Occasionally, an AI dynasty will get a fancy for one of your members and (this has been reported as a bug) will marry them into their dynasty whether you approve it or not. If they do this to your only child, it can end your game pretty quickly. With that said, I’ve rarely had problems with this, probably because I marry my child off as soon as possible. In one game, I had a fourth generation child under player control while First Narc was still alive (the wonders of huge constitution), and he was married and already had a fifth generation child ready for school.

Children

A child will tend to inherit skills (talents) from its parents — my children tend to have Constitution 5 at age 1 — and will also gain a few more random talents from going to school, having an apprenticeship , and (for scholars) going to university for their doctorate. Additionally, the apprenticeship allows you to change your child’s class by sending them to the appropriate workshop, so if you couldn’t find that craftsman you wanted to marry, you can make one instead.

Other than the aforementioned activities, children are pretty much intangible and unimportant — though I have seen them wandering around town, potentially targetable for pickpocketing. Also, it’s perfectly possible to disregard all of the activities, in which case you’ll end up with a (perhaps less talented than he would be) adult of the same class as its same-sex parent.

Politics

Politics: ‘poli’, a Latin word meaning ‘many’, and ‘tics’, meaning blood sucking creatures.

– Robin Williams

Much like in the physical world, and in the above quote, you will find that politics in The Guild 2 eats up medium to large amounts of time and money, especially at first when you’ve got many other things to deal with. With that said, it’s worth going into politics for the benefits certain offices come with. But, before I can get into that, I need to explain the political structure in the game, which varies according to the size of the town you’re in.

Town size

There are five possible sizes a town may have, all determined by the number of people living in it^[2]:

• Village — between 0 and 85 people. Villages have the smallest political structure, made up of only three offices: the village mayor, bailiff, and mediator. It’s perfectly possible for a dynasty to completely control the politics in a village with controllable characters.
• Town — between 60 and 125 people. Towns add a Head Torturer and a Guild Representative.
• City — 110 to 175 people, adds Jailer and Guild Master.
• Free City — 160 to 225 people, adds Executioner and Lease Master.
• Imperial Capital — at least 210 people. The Imperial Capital is special in that there can be only one on a map. It adds the imperial level of offices: King, Cardinal, and Supreme Commander, which may only be applied to by characters who hold the title of Nobleman or higher, and have been Mayor of a town or bigger.

Note that, because towns cannot shrink, the lower bounds here are actually unused — it is perfectly possible to have an Imperial Capital with 5 residents, though it is extremely unlikely, of course. Also note that at most stages of town growth, the offices from the previous level are renamed and gain different privileges: the Sovereign (mayor) of a Free City has immunity, can embezzle public funds, can set the sales tax, banish someone, tear down buildings, and apply at the imperial level; a Village Mayor only has the first three.

Privileges

So, now, let us explain the privileges. Some of them are pretty straightforward: immunity, for instance, means you cannot be prosecuted. Others, less so — the administration mite, for instance. And still others are mildly confusing — commanding the city guard is all well and good, but one must find it!

First things first: when you hold an office with certain privileges, they show up as status modifiers to the right of your selected character’s portrait (these are called “Impacts” in the game code):

And, because they show up there, you can right-click-and-hold on them to find out what they do:

Other privileges, such as embezzling, show up as measures (some context sensitive, some not):

Finally, privileges like “can control informants” let you control some of the special “city hall” workers:

Since the manual is missing a nice listing of all the privileges and their context (if applicable), let’s make one ourselves, starting from the top of an Imperial City and working our way down:

Name	Type (condition)	Notes
Summon Royal Guard	Measure (anywhere)?	Unverified. Understood to be exactly what it says on the tin: clears an area of enemies by spawning super-powerful military men.
Disappropriate	Measure (anywhere)?	Unverified, but should allow you to take over any building in town once every 48 hours.
Fiery Speech	Measure (anywhere)?	Unverified, should increase favor towards you from anyone listening.
Repeal immunity	Measure (anywhere)?	Unverified, but pretty straightforward.
Command inquisitors	Passive (always on)	Exactly what it says on the tin. Inquisitors have a Measure (anywhere) called “Inquisition”, which either converts a person of opposite faith to yours, or kills them.
Lead a crusade	Measure (anywhere)	The manual says: “The Cardinal summons all persons of the same faith within a certain radius”, after which she is free to resume normal work. After 24 hours, you will obtain some result.
Work miracles	Measure (anywhere)	As the manual says, this can be used to end epidemics, fires, and toad excrement attacks in a radius of the Cardinal’s position.
Rage	Measure (anywhere)?	Unverified. According to the manual, it’s a temporary bonus to martial arts.
Train someone as fighter	Measure (anywhere)?	Unverified. The manual says it trains someone of same dynasty (including possibly the Supreme Commander himself) as rogue.
Confiscate goods	Measure (anywhere)?	Unverified. The manual says it will remove all goods in the building’s warehouse and pay you the equivalent value.
Improved command structure	Passive (always on)?	Unverified. Manual says all combat units move 20% faster (agility bonus?).
Immunity	Passive (always on)	While you have immunity, you cannot be prosecuted for crimes. Note that if you ever lose immunity, it’s perfectly possible to be accused afterwards for crimes committed while immune.
Embezzle public funds	Measure (in town hall)	When you’re in town hall, activate this measure for a (somewhat illegal) boost of funds. Amount is based solely on the population of the twn.
Set sales tax	Measure (town hall)	Also when you’re in town hall, activate this to pick between tax rate of 0, 10%, 15%, 20% or 30%. The tax rate affects market prices, and possibly also the amounts gained by the “administration mite” privilege.
Banish	Measure (anywhere)	Allows you to remove someone from your town temporarily (either 16, 20, or 24 hours, depending on town level).
Tear down building	Measure (anywhere)	Allows you to order the razing of a damaged building (hitpoints less than 30%).
Apply at the imperial level	Passive (always on)	Does what it says on the tin. Note that this is (supposed to be) a permanent privilege — once you’ve been mayor, you can apply anytime afterwards, even if you lose the position.
Order Arrest	?	Don’t really know anything about this one yet. Presumably you need to have evidence of the target’s crimes before you can arrest them.
Command City Guard	Passive (always on)	Exactly what it sounds like. Note that the city guardsmen are not the same as the bailiffs you will see running around — those can never be controlled by the player.
Set the severity of the law	Measure (town hall)	Also exactly what it sounds like. Severity of the law determines the difficulty of obtaining death sentences and such in a trial.
Venerability	Passive (always on)	Makes you immune to insults, threats, blackmail, and duels.
Inquisition trial	Passive (always on)	Judges will favor you in a trial, whether you’re accuser or defendant. Additionally, if you’re the accuser, the sentence is treated as if the severity of the law were one step higher than it already is.
Set church tithe	Measure (town hall)	Church tithe is like an additional sales tax, but it varies between 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10%. Church tithe does not modify the market prices, and is paid at the end of the day.
Forgive Sins	Measure (anywhere)	Arguably the most useful privilege afforded by an office, the Bishop’s “Forgive Sins” invalidates all evidence against a person other than himself.
Command informants	Passive (always on)	Lets you command the informants of a town. Informants can only “Ask Around” for evidence, but they are supremely good at this task (and free!).
Flatter	Measure (anywhere)	Greatly increase someone’s favor towards you temporarily.
Make peace	Measure (anywhere)	Lets you make peace between two warring dynasties (but not your own). Resets the favor between them to 50% if currently lower than that.
Throw down a false gauntlet	Measure (anywhere)	Lets you make war between two peaceful dynasties (but not your own).
Command business inspectors	Passive (always on)	Business inspectors are the units that can enforce the next two privileges.
Order business inspection	Measure (anywhere)	Special: actually a measure of the business inspectors. An inspection will shut down a business (hopefully that of a rival!) for 4 hours.
Order sales ban	Measure (anywhere)	Special: actually a measure of the business inspectors. Allows you to shut down a market stall of your choice for 12 hours.
Receives administration mite	Passive (always on)	Uncertain about this one. In the code, it’s called “Unrestricted trading rights” and may mean the sales tax doesn’t apply to you. From the description, it should give you a bit of cash whenever anyone trades at the market.
Commands the dungeon guards	Passive (always on)	The dungeon guards can implement the next two privileges.
Torture Someone	Measure (anywhere)	Special: actually a measure of the dungeon guards. Remove someone from the game for a few hours, and potentially gives you evidence on them if there is any to be had.
Break Will	Measure (anywhere)	Special: actually a measure of the dungeon guards. Makes someone your “friend” for 12 hours. Makes them really angry afterwards.
Rattle the chains[3]	?	Uncertain about this one. Possibly connected to the “frightening” status the dungeon master gains.
Piercing Gaze	Measure (anywhere)	Reduces the target’s Rhetoric for 8 hours.
Development Fee	Passive (always on)	Receive some money for each building newly constructed in town.

Yes, I know, part of that is unverified. As I get around to taking those positions and making things happen, I’ll come back and verify them as needed.

Some notes on markets and prices

This might be too basic, but the question has been asked before. You know when you’re at a market, you see goods with two prices? Well, the top one is the buy price (what it would cost you to buy one), and the bottom one is the sell price (what you will be paid if you sell one). The color determines how good a deal it is, based on the base price: if the buy price is significantly higher than base price, it shows up as a deep red. Significantly lower and it will be a deep green. The reverse is true for sell price.

You’ve also noticed the prices change in response to market conditions — if there are many units in stock, they go down, and vice versa. What you don’t notice is that this happens even if you’re buying or selling multiple units at a time. Let’s say you have 2 units of something that’s currently selling for 324. You’d expect to receive 324 * 2 = 648 for them, right? Well, what you actually get is 632. Why? Because the first unit you sold gave you 324, and then the price went down by 16, and then the second unit you sold only netted you 308, and 324 + 308 = 632. What this means is, there’s no difference in selling one unit at a time versus all 120 units from an oxcart — completely contrary to the assumption we all make, which is that the price we see is the price we will receive.

Incidentally, this is also why the automatic traders tend to sell 3 units of something at a time — you’ve told them not to sell below base price, so they’re selling exactly the number of units needed to bring the market price to base price and no more. This is also why the auto-traders tend to make so little money at first: they spend a lot of money buying raw materials but they aren’t allowed to sell more than a little bit of what they produce at a time. If you wait long enough, they will fill up the workshop with raw materials and produced items and then your workers will sit there and not do anything because they have no storage slots to produce into. The automation control labeled “sale price level of goods” determines at what point above or below base price you’re comfortable selling to the market versus selling through the workshop’s sell slots.

And while we’re on the subject, the base price of a material is the price that material will be sold at when selling through a workshop’s sell slots. There is no way to influence it, in spite of well-meaning forum posters saying the previously-mentioned “sale price level of goods” affecting it.

The final price associated with a material is the production cost, which is automatically calculated by the game for anything you make yourself. I’m not certain how good the algorithm in question is, but if it included workers’ salaries (which it does not seem to), it would determine the absolute lowest sell price you should accept for that material — anything higher than that and you’d be making a profit on the sale.

So, to summarize, here’s an annotated listing of prices for precious stone extracted by First Narc in the current guide game:

Note that the production cost is clearly wrong here — player-controlled characters do not take wages, therefore production cost should be 0.

Wow. That was a lot to digest in a short time, wasn’t it? It’s time for another break. Go, have your coffee or whatever. When we return, we’ll discuss the craftsmen!

Footnotes

• ^[1] — “artifact” is the Guild 2 name for an item you can use, as opposed to consumer goods you can only sell to the general populace. They are usually distinguished by having a blue border, though there are some “hidden” artifacts like clothing: [[shot of clothing artifact]].
• ^[2] — more accurately, towns can grow (but not shrink!) when they surpass a number of residents (these are the numbers actually shown). The code to shrink a town when it’s below a number of residents is commented out but available — it may be turned on in future (or in a mod).
• ^[3] — there is a description in the game files for this: “As dungeon master, of course you really know how to >rattle the chains< . People know how you earn your living in office, and so they will not be too angry with you if you insult, blackmail, or threaten someone - again. If you take one of these actions, you lose only half as much favour with your victim as normally."