Fast Relationship Decline in a Clique to Disintegration

[Grue]

Not sure what's going on with the very large Aranaz based clique (with some sniped key students from colleges that are not rivals) I built but I'm getting a steady relationship drop between certain students without any of the involved (informed) students taking an action to knock down the relationships in question.

Basically the root of it seems to be Rikildis von Kiep (who generally can be troublesome but again...no visible action to cause a relationship hit listed in the logs) and Basia Rydz vs Ana Flavia Bessa and Asmita Tidar.  From the looks of things, they are getting hit with -1 relationship a day.  I'm still mostly early game (week 5 and starting in with Cleanse & Remake), so the only way I have to boost relationships between students is the Gossip action (and that's a losing fight).

I like to get informed of Morvidus first to keep an eye on everyone's favorite bullies, but I don't think there's a spell or action/ability that would be available this early in the game that would cause such a steady relationship hit, and I've never seen any AI behavior or similar mechanic in prior games where I've built a very large clique.

The other oddity is that my Character's charm stat should be getting a +2 bonus from 'Emilia's Gift' and the 'Aura of Attraction' as well as the other stat/skill booster clique abilities like Vincent Ein's 'Cloud of Luck' or 'Theory over Practice' but they seemed to have konked out about he same time the clique infighting problem started (though I haven't lost access\bonuses from other clique abilities that take an action like 'Intense Studier').  These abilities were working before but not sure if some global mechanic/penalty is at play (that I have never seen before though with a lot of playthroughs).

Hrm....on top of that I've seen to have lost a modifier from a Favor (-3% Chance of Discovery).

Any ideas?  Mechanic, bug, or some action I'm not seeing (the only emotion the character has is 'Alert' and I'm not sure where to find active hostile spell effects)?

 

Edit- Weird.  I had a save from the day after I successfully cast Cleanse & Remake (Intense Studier plus Durand's Grove makes that an auto roll even with crap starting stats) and under Matters of Concern to You I received the notice Warning: Your clique will break up due to low relationships.  The only negative relationship between any clique members at that point was between Rikildis and Ana Flavia Bessa at a grand total of -1.  My Character's relationships were at average 2 throughout the clique (and 1s but a few 4+s), and Rikildis and Ana had a 0 relationship on Athonos 28.  On Pramidi 3 (the day after the Warning) all the passive clique boosts were removed (and the Character also lost the -3% Chance of Discovery bump from Favor as well).

If it's an intentional mechanic, it just seems very punitive but still not sure what's going on after looking over the log.

[Schwarzbart]

Maybe a unreported clique infighting have started and you got sorted to the neutral group. At last this would explain that you lost 2 abilities from your clique member. 

And yes as soon even one of your clique member have a relationship of lower then 0 there is a good chance they break up. It happen to me with in my current  game with a 100% chance when Vettor joined the clique, who had a relationship of -2 to Anna Flavia, the next day after he joined. Even bringing the relationship to -1 was not enough I had to bring the relationship to 0 to prevent it.

Although I play DLC 16 I don't think this mechanic was much changed to DLC 17 / the new CP.

[Marcus]

Wait... Emilia Picotti, Neta Xemutre, Vincent Eins, Rikildis von Kiep, Basia van Rydz,Ana Flavia Bessa and Asmita Tider all in one clique? That's not a clique, that's an army!

Kinda impressive, but with the number of cross-college members and the sheer number of members I wouldn't be surprised if the break up wasn't a bug. Odd that it apparently went unreported though.

[Grue]

Well looking through it the Character lost all passive clique bonuses.  The clique bonuses are still listed but just not applied to the score.  And that still doesn't account how a 10 pt favor ability just disappeared (the -3% Chance of Detection).

I'm not too far into the game (except for a little early save scumming to get the initial stage set up) so I'm thinking of just restarting anyway, but it seems odd that neither Ana or Rikildis took any action the prior day that would have knocked down that relationship by -1 (and it popped the first time I used Cleanse & Remake though that could be coincidental).

[Schwarzbart]

That is the big risk if you not look at the relationship of your clique members because a relationship of 0 between two means the clique is just one step away from a infight.

This -1 to the relationship can come from a skill increase, from other students or even from the clique member them self.

[Grue]

35 minutes ago, Marcus said:

Wait... Emilia Picotti, Neta Xemutre, Vincent Eins, Rikildis von Kiep, Basia van Rydz,Ana Flavia Bessa and Asmita Tider all in one clique? That's not a clique, that's an army!

Kinda impressive, but with the number of cross-college members and the sheer number of members I wouldn't be surprised if the break up wasn't a bug. Odd that it apparently went unreported though.

I'm very careful not to take rival colleges into the clique...so all of Aranaz with some Avila, Hedi, & Vernin.... so no Durand, Morvidus or Godina (though Honors snuck in after I had the clique built, and I have no idea how that roll succeeded).  There's like 2 Aranaz students that can be a bit...bitchy...but from the other colleges I generally look for Students that like the befriend action that I don't think generally have some hard coded rivalry going on with other students in the clique (the Vernin kids are tough as they generally are coded to run the merit race and boost Vernin though and this is a Aranaz uber alles clique;-).

Ausdauer Mollers is always my first recruit for the Pass on Information and then Neta for the Aura to bump up Befriend actions.  With the Prodigy: Social Background and Great Gate, Befriend actions get a +48% CoS so then it just becomes a question of grabbing the core clique before they form cliques of their own.

After that I rush Cleanse & Remake and then onto Mastery (to ride Philippe and Joanna into the ground with Control), but after Mastery, the merit race is essentially over.  By late game everyone in the clique has the 'Train Your Company' ability which they are mastered to use three times a day on a rotating basis....leading towards a very boosted group of students.

[Grue]

6 minutes ago, Schwarzbart said:

That is the big risk if you not look at the relationship of your clique members because a relationship of 0 between two means the clique is just one step away from a infight.

This -1 to the relationship can come from a skill increase, from other students or even from the clique member them self.

Well I have a save just after it started so I'm going to see if that solves the issue, but I never got a dialogue box for the infighting factions until they hit the -5 level (and broke).

[Marcus]

1 minute ago, Grue said:

I'm very careful not to take rival colleges into the clique...so all of Aranaz with some Avila, Hedi, & Vernin.... so no Durand, Morvidus or Godina (though Honors snuck in after I had the clique built, and I have no idea how that roll succeeded).  There's like 2 Aranaz students that can be a bit...bitchy...but from the other colleges I generally look for Students that like the befriend action that I don't think generally have some hard coded rivalry going on with other students in the clique (the Vernin kids are tough as they generally are coded to run the merit race and boost Vernin though and this is a Aranaz uber alles clique;-).

Pretty much the same logic I use, although I kept a very close eye that no "outsiders" snuck in. My clique consists of five members, plus myself; 3 Hedi, 1 Vernin, 1 Avila, and the oddball myself from Durand.

3 minutes ago, Schwarzbart said:

That is the big risk if you not look at the relationship of your clique members because a relationship of 0 between two means the clique is just one step away from a infight.

This -1 to the relationship can come from a skill increase, from other students or even from the clique member them self.

This seems a likely assumption. Would also explain why it went unreported.

[Grue]

13 hours ago, Marcus said:

This seems a likely assumption. Would also explain why it went unreported.

Well jumping on it a bit more forcefully worked to put out the fire.  It's just the relationship loss is a bit of a mystery....both of them only attended classes and added a study level (pretty sure there is no relationship hit in study levels or in the skill levels from courses).

Could have been a hostile action outside of the students that I had information on....but considering Rikildis was sick the following day, I'm curious what hostile action dings vitality stress (by alot and early game thought there might be a student ability that does it) and a relationship point with another student.  Do npc students get events?

[Marcus]

32 minutes ago, Grue said:

Well jumping on it a bit more forcefully worked to put out the fire.  It's just the relationship loss is a bit of a mystery....both of them only attended classes and added a study level (pretty sure there is no relationship hit in study levels or in the skill levels from courses).

Could have been a hostile action outside of the students that I had information on....but considering Rikildis was sick the following day, I'm curious what hostile action takes dings vitality and a relationship point with another student.  Do npc students get events?

Pretty sure npcs can do/get most of the things the PC can, just not adventures. So with a bit of bad luck your clique can get broken, with no fault of your own... does sound a bit broken.

Sneaky edit:

On 6/14/2012 at 9:13 AM, Legate of Mineta said:

Yeah, the Students can do almost everything you can- originally they could do Events and Adventures, too. That functionality may end up returning, but I doubt for Year 2.

 

Memory growth...mmm...going to have to optimize, for sure.

Actually, that's a no. So it pretty much had to have come from a skill increase.