I've edited in a reply you might want to look at. not complete yet, I'll edit the rest of it onto the end of this post.
But the first part is here
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Okay, point one is valid. And this may be partly to compensate for them taking the bludgeon of the hordes full in the face. I haven't tried the Western factions to see how their money supply works here.
And I agree the growth is very high, at least where there are governors. I'm not seeing my castle grow well, but that MAY also be regional. And it may be relative to cities. I think fertility is not THE issue. I think the chivalry bonuses for cities may be too high. Don't cripple the AI by cutting its benefits for growth. It won't "grow" great governors as much, I suspect. Though it does park generals in cities as garrisons a lot, so maybe I'm wrong there.
Seeing some broke AI factions and some very rich at turn 30 does worry me that something is off. Yeah, Venice is often rich. But so are the Byz, and the latter were not. Hungary I can understand as poor. And Turkey if they don't grab the Holy Land.
Might be a better idea, i THINK I've found the appropriate file but I'm having a touch of trouble understanding it, if I'm right though, each point of Chivalry adds 1% to the overall growth rate, (OUCH), with Governor Kings often having 2-3 from StrategyChivalry and the same from HonestRuler thats a good +5/+6% growth. Castles grow at half the rate though and get half the bonuses Cities do.
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(2) If the money script is broke, that would explain the divergence of treasuries early. That should normalize the faction treasuries SOME. If they don't expand fast, they can't spend it all. They should rarely show as bankrupt.
Something is up with the rebel attacks. And I'm not convinced buffing their armies is the answer to the problem. The AI just needs to be more aggressive towards rebels very early. That will pressure the player, and it will tend to mean earlier wars too, even with the diplo changes. The player will need to pick a fight somewhere to expand. Or the AI will. I don't particularly like those starting forces being uber, then rebel after that are back to normal levels. Feels wrong, and I reiterate, it hurts the AI a lot more than it slows the player. Flanders is a special case. I've seen that last to past turn 20 in 1.13. Those pikes are just nasty.
Yeah, the broken script probably explains the divergences in money.
What i meant with army buffing was that the AI attacking the rebels needs bigger stacks to deal with them than it is able to build with default money. So by upping the money the AI gets it should be able to get it's big stacks out and tackle the provinces with less issues.
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The problem here is those "wasted attacks" are not wasted. They wear down the rebels. The factions can replace those troops and try again. They typically do fail once on a lot of those cities (to wit, Zaragoza, Rennes). The net effect is they do better, far better, than I'm seeing in 1.2. I think the decrease in sacking will be a brake on blitzing, but there's another factor in play: diplomacy. If alliances hold better, there's less incentive to blitz. Those of us who prefer not to (except in the rebel grab phase), can turtle better. And we face less multi-frontal war in later game and more alliance play. We don't know how that will play out, yet, but it will discourage me from blitzing because I prefer that environment to "I must keep taking cities or I die."
Can we try it without the rebel buffs, but with the rest, and see what happens to the AI factions? You're slowing the player about 5 turns, I'd say, because there's more force buildup required. But that's it. Once those turns are past the rebel blitz is as before. But the AI appears to be slowed by at least 10 turns. That's a net loss of 5 turns to the AI.
I found (before I modified the AI), that the rebel defenders where so good that the AI was literally losing entire half stacks whilst killing less than 10% of the rebels. On the other hand i think it does need to go back in, it's slowing the AI down too much. I'll edit it back to how it was.
I raised rebel power to help deal with a couple of aspects of Blitzing, let me explain the complaints Blitzers often had:
1. Due to low aggressiveness on the AI's part and the weak rebels Garrisons it was possible for them to attack 2-3 rebel provinces a turn from the second turn onwards. The AI rarely got any rebel provinces because of that as all the one near the player where gone by turn 5.
2. Sacking money was so high they could easily develop cities off it and have money to spare.
3. Because they had so much money they could easily retrain losses and move on, the sacking also cut into the PO problems meaning you could leave minimal garrisons.
4. Because you'd taken all the rebel province, and done so so fast the AI was often extremely weak by comparison, this made them simple pushovers at this point, with a couple of major AI power out of the way the income was now enough that even without sacking you could go on a rampage without issue.
Reduced sacking money cuts into points 2 and 4 somewhat. But the better rebels and money script where meant to cut into 1 and 3. Here's how:
1. The better rebels mean you not only have to build up before you can conquer anything, you also can't really try to hit more than one province at once.
2. Now that you suffer higher losses and get less money you can usually afford to retrain losses and thats it.
3. the AI with it's money script will be able to build bigger armies faster early on, and get it's economy going for when the money script drops down. That means it can easily capture provinces at the same rate as the player despite being less aggressive.
4. with less total provinces captured, more captured by the AI and lower total money the typical Blitzer now has to work like the devil to get any further as he's facing stronger AI's, and has less to work with.
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I definitely exceeded this and the only monk I saw was on an imam built and forgotten in a city. And still no skill upgrades except for burning. That means if my start imam dies, no more jihads.
I'll look into it as I'm getting issues with orthodox priests too.
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Hmm, annoying. CA issue. Siege gear should be ratio limited. No more than x% of an army should be siege gear for AI factions. If they meet or exceed that ratio, they should stop building it. But maybe we can influence it early on by playing with the building availability. If we up the price of the building, will they build it later? Or is price not a factor? Is there a priority list on which building gets built? I keep thinking that's AI personality related. Maybe we need to remove the guilty personality from the mix. (Who loved artillery? While Nappy did, he SHOULD have a personality that isn't requiring that much.)
The problem is the AI auto-manages all settlements, and uses Military build policy, so it always puts a high priority on barracks and siege stuff, unfortunately I doubt we could increase the price too much without handicapping the player more than the AI. If anyone has any ideas I'm game.
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By the way, Carl, I think you have a fetish with one-unit-added-per-level.
Vanilla adds more than one, so the design is intended to allow that. And it makes sense in cases. I still argue that it's better to do that but control the rates. Give the "better" (in your eyes) unit a low rate to pop 1. Thus until a lot of castles are up (assuming the player chooses to keep a lot, which I typically do not) and have the basic building, the stream will be very skinny. Or until the "proper" tier stable is in place. If the unit is being thrown into battle a lot, the flow will be used just to replenish a few units. A lot of units can't exist until the number of stables, or the tier, increases.
Yeah, that and I got some units mixed up thinking they where late/mid units when they are actually earlier. had a basic strategy of no more than one unit of a given TYPE being added to the tech tree per level, so that spread the HA out a lot, sadly that was too big a spread~:(. Will fix of course now I understand things better.
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On the Mamluks, the issue is major to me because HA <> HJ. Desert cav is a very different beast than a horse archer unit. The former is much better at killing armored units, but it's not really all that useful as missile cav per se. Not enough ammo for that role. It's not a good strategic denial unit. Javcav fight, they don't do "death by 1000 needles," withdraw and repeat another day. The two do complement each other in pure cav armies, but neither is much use on even combined in taking cities except if you starve the garrison into sallying.
Thanks for that, I was just treating Jav Cav as shorter ranged but harder hitting HA's TBH.
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But CA does rate Egypt as an early game power, not a late one. So delaying those HA doesn't HELP Egypt in that regard, it hurts it because it can't expand as well (nor defend as well) against the early game factions and hordes. And don't forget they have to fend off crusades, which tend to get both beefy (for that stage) heavy cav and lots of missile-vulnerable trash that HA are really good at handling.
In effect the Egyptians (and to a degree the Turks) are guaranteed multi-faction wars in the early going. Few other factions are in this position. Egypt cannot prevent crusades from being called. They will happen. They will even break alliances.
(And I have a fetish for horse archers! I do, I do! But longbows are nice too.)
Don't know what happened to my quote tags in last post. I cut & pasted them from your reply. Odd.
Oh, and I should add a point on timing the arrival of these units. If they start coming in at turn 30, they lose 20 turns or so of potential experience gain which makes them better units. So it's no a simple 20-turn delay of the unit, that's at issue, it's the who process that's slowed. Egypt will arrive at turn 100 with less experienced Mamluks when they are starting to really need more punch. With the ability to pump out lots early, and protect their cadre, Egypt's HA "grow" with their role until finally outclassed completely with gunpowder units Egypt just can't match. But they can come closer with more experienced earlier units. They can hold out longer. They remain a win early or not at all faction. That's historical. When the real crusades with lots of advanced Westerners start coming, they are in trouble, especially if the hordes weakened them.
Actually I don't think they ARE, (Turks Egypt), a win early or not at all faction. he thing is they switch over from HA to excellent infantry late on. Let me explain.
JHI are the 2nd best 2-Hander, (in the game), Tabardariyya are the joint 6th, (along with Vargarian guard and Highland Nobles), ME_Halberd Militia are the 9th. For Ibireians the DPK are 5th best 2-Hander.
Dismounted Arab Cav, Dismounted Saiph's and Dismounted Heavy Lancer are all Joint 2nd Best Spears in the Game, and Scarecen Militia are Joint 3rd best.
Dismounted Christian Guard are the Best swords in the Game, with Dismounted Conquistadors at 2nd, Sword and Buckler men at 4t, and Urban Militia (because it's in cities), at 5th.
Dismounted Dovor are the best non-Gunpowder Archers, with Janissary Archers at 7th, and Desert Archers/Ottoman Infantry at 8th. Peasant Crossbows are pretty hot too.
Janissary/Cossack Musketeers are the best gunpowder infantry bar non, and Portuguese Arqubusiears/Sudanese Gunners follow in at joint 3rd, followed closely at 4th by Naffutmen.
In reality not only do Islamic/Iberian/Orthodox (bar Russia), have half the top 10 great infantry t themselves, but they also have most of the upper top 10 to themselves, Pikes and good heavy Cav are the only Big equalizer here for western factions.
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Unless this is an Egypt thing (and it may be), I don't rate this harder than 1.13
Most people say Egypt is easy in vanilla due to a near endless income, even when outclassed on units you tend to be able to spam so many unit without even slightly effecting your Treasury that it's easy indeed. I've never played hem but both Cairo and Alexandria have the joint highest fertility in the game so thats a massive income boost, (double the fertility of most regions in the game).
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Also, while I like the concept of the diplomatic change, I think it needs to be turned down a notch or two. It's too easy to get a great diplo status early. Just don't be bad. Should take longer in the greater scheme. Twice as long, say. There are 450 turns, 50-60 to get to Immaculate would be better than 35. That will help trim the economic effects too. Should also scale based on how many cultures you are in contact with. I've contacted about 2/3 so far. If there's a way to scale the effect to how many are "in play," that might solve the problem. You shouldn't be able to have a great universal rep if you just aren't known except in your corner. But... I can see where that might he hard or impossible with the tools we have.
It's partly to do with the Alliance/War Rep triggers, I made alliances give a lot more back before I added the Chivalry/Dread triggers. Now the alliance needs toning down and the war one up. Plus sacking/externminating/executing/starting wars give very big rep hits by default, you haven't done many so it's hardly surprising your reps going up.
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So, keep in mind that forcing most good units to castles also delays them (on the whole) due to slower growth of castles. They need less pop per tier, but it comes more slowly usually too. This affects the AI more than the player, again. The player can be wiley. I can switch Antioch to a castle and be at max pop right away, but still need to build the stables. Still, it's faster than growing a castle.
Good point.
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Cagliari is still rebel at turn 39. Heh, diplomatic front geting more interesting. France and Portugal were allies, then one made the other a vassal, now they are at war with each other. Looks (from the French maps I just got) like no one has taken Rennes (wimpyish), Antwerp or Bruges so far. And Bern and Prague look rebel still too, unless my maps are recently outdated. I bet Valencia is still rebel too .
Really need to make the AI more aggressive to rebels.
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Okay, finally see some skill increases on my imams, Battler of heresy line. Seems way too slow. Did one of those variables in that xml file change the rate of gain somehow? I have about 10 working as a team now. They allo got that one the same turn, so the trigger must be 100% under a certain condition. Turn 41. No heresy at all in that region, so maybe they cleaned it out and that's the trigger. It's 90% islam, 10% ortho.
Thanks for that.
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I haven't been up to check on the Russkis, but that pretty much is the situation I'm seeing with the Turks. But the Byzzies haven't been bees either. They and the Venals are getting into some skirmishes off and on though. Hungary appears paralysed too (another HA culture). It's normally fairly aggressive. I wonder if they are programmed to value HA higher due to the differences in style, and thus they are undervaluing their infantry/archer stacks?
I think it's because the AI is handling Frontline strength differently to how i thought. Instead of going "is my forces in this province more than X times larger than the forces in that province" it's going "are the forces in all my provinces bordering the enemy provinces stronger than those in all the enemy provinces bordering mine overall".
So with the equivalent (strength wise), of 3 stacks of militia surrounding Russia's starting location it considers 2 full stacks of militia too weak to launch an attack.
I'll deal with it by including a simple trigger to make the AI attack any rebels nearby as often as it can with whatever it can scrape together and give it a really high priority.
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Those numbers look like what I'm seeing in game. My big sultan (before he died of old age) was a HUGE boost at Antioch. I knew he was affecting happiness, but didn't notice the large growth boost until later. He had like 9-10 in chivalry and piety. Love jihads for piety and chivalry! Then there was the nice guy boost from being a good ruler too.
Let's see... Saladin of Zagazig is 5 chiv, 7 piety: Edessa is 1.5% growth without him, 1024 income, 85% order. With it's 5% growth, 1234 income, 130 order. Big swing. No other major trait factors (aside from those playing into the numbers above for chiv and piety) except active uilder (squalor cut) and architect (ditto, for -3 total). No trade or tax bonuses or cuts aside from those from piety/chiv either.
Aleppo, a fort, CP Shehata is 2 chiv, 4 piety. No applicable traits. With him it's 1081 income, 205 order, 4% growth. Without him it's 987 income, 195 order, 3% growth.
Thanks for those.