ETW Economy Modding Ideas

Hello all,

Just wanted to share my ideas of modding ETW economy.

I do not have a Pack file to share as I have modded my game on top of other mods, specially AUM for Vanilla - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=250655 -. However this may interest some in making the game's economy flow in a more fun way with any mod.

I used the DBEditor Tool to do these modifications. (I am assuming you have modded ETW before).

So the first thing I did was to reduce all unit Upkeep Costs by a Factor of 10, the original Hiring costs were left untouched.

Second, I raised all Building construction costs by a factor of 2, and reduced building time by a factor of 2 (rounding up) for all structures.

In other words, Units require less money to maintain once hired, and Building Structures requires more money to be built and build faster.

For the third part, I used ESFeditor an doubled all of the factions Starting Money.

Game play Effects:

The effects of lowering Upkeep costs were that you can maintain fairly Large Armies and Fleets that you build. The AI does the same, so expect full blown battles. - In my book this is FUN.

At the same time, raising structure costs insures that you or the AI do not progress too quickly.

Your Turn income ranges from 10k to 15k, this is a nice budget per turn, in order for the player to make choices, prioritizing where needed, either on units or structures, but also leaves you some breathing room for Diplomatic activities. Most importantly however this way you will not go in the red and in to a negative balance.

The idea of a total war is well, being able to fight battles, how is it a total war when you can't?

On the other hand, attrition is still preserved, but it is differently expressed. You will not always be able to starve the enemy by simply blockading all their ports.

But you will be able to starve the enemy via a combination of strategical and tactical moves. In other words, your blockades and Privateering (Attacking Trade routes) will reduce the enemies capacity to raise armies, and in combination to your own military success then you achieve the same goal.

In other words, your success in battles counts more under such an economy than before. If you lose a full stacked Army, it hurts and it cannot be rebuilt quickly. Same applies for the AI.

You will notice in the advanced game that the AI will have 2-3 full stacks of armies in their territories, the key here is not to attack and overwhelm directly them but rather to draw them out in a series of battles in terrain of your choosing to better your chances of success. Follow up with reinforcement armies, retreating and replenishing as needed. Multi-vector Campaigns are possible and fulfilling. And also Fort Placement is much more important too.

In other words, a Strategic and Tactical Campaign, and thus battle after battle, you weaken the enemy, and then at the right moment you are presented with the choice of moving in for the taking.

A good side effect to all this is that the AI does not send stacks of two armies all other the place trying to damage your farms and other buildings, I found this always so annoying mechanic, when the enemy faction attacks, you can expect a full blown total war in your hands, so be ready and papered.

Finally how intense you want all this to be in your games can be adjusted by the in game difficulty sliders. I play tested this approach for 55 turns with two different factions, and I have been having a blast!

That is about it, if you like that style of play as me, wishing you lots of Fun as I have been having :)

Cheers!

Thanks to all moders and tool makers for making the tools that made this possible, if it were not for you this game would have just accumulated dust. Not to demean CA's efforts in bringing us this wonderful series all these years either, because without the game there would not be modding tools, mods and modders either.