Script question

[Marcus Ulpius]

From the information gathered here I assume that the script gives all AI factions some amount of gold to improve their competitiveness. The amount depends on the difficulty level. But can someone confirm that AI can recruit unlimited number of units from any city not depleting its population?

If so, is there a way to disable this? I can live with the AI getting money out of nowhere, but I think that if the AI can also produce unlimited units from any town it owns, it throws the whole concept of strategy and attrition war out of the window.

[Ludens]

The EB script will provide all factions with a cash injection during the first few turns and when money runs out. Also, when playing at VH the A.I. will receive 10.000 mnai per turn (hard-coded, so can't be modded).

The A.I. does indeed gets its population refilled. This is because recruitment of large units like phalanxes can deplete a town, thus preventing teching up, but the A.I. has no concept of managing population. You could change this but commenting out the relevant sections of the script.

[Fondor_Yards]

They can't produce unlimited units from a town, as I understood it, if a unit took 240 men it would replace 160-180 doesn't it?

[Marcus Ulpius]

Ludens, what do you mean, when you say that "AI has no concept of managing population"?

Does it mean that the AI doesn't even consider the effects of overrecruiting on the population size?
If that's the case I think it's logical to give back some percentage if the population falls below certain limit. But if the population is restored completely after recruiting a unit I think it's too drastic measure. After all AI should collapse militarily after losing too many soldiers is a war. That would add more accuracy to the game.

[Foot]

Unfortunately we have to play a balancing game with internal and external accuracy. It certainly is not accurate for a faction to never progress up the tech tree, which is what happens. The game is called total war and that is what the ai commits. It doesn't know how to be at peace, it never stops producing units even when there is no need to. If you have ever allowed the AI to control a settlement (what it builds and what it recruits) then you'll understand what it does. You cannot tactically force an enemy into submission through attrition with or without the script as the enemy will do that to itself anyway.

Foot

[konny]

If that's the case I think it's logical to give back some percentage if the population falls below certain limit. But if the population is restored completely after recruiting a unit I think it's too drastic measure. After all AI should collapse militarily after losing too many soldiers is a war. That would add more accuracy to the game.

The problem is that the AI will completely empty its towns without that script. In EB the population growth is much slower than in RTW due to the much lesser base farming level of each province (1-3 in EB vs up to 15 in RTW). So, without the script most AI towns will have not more than 500 inhabitans - something you certainly don't want to have when you conquer those towns.

[Marcus Ulpius]

Well, I see that population management was totally overlooked by RTW developers. If that's the case then the only solution is really to give back to the AI the citizens it enlisted into the army.

It's the lesser of 2 evils, although personally I'd prefer the situation where the enemy can lose the war when he's putting too much pressure on his population and simply can't recruit more troops either because of the depopulation or because of tremendously increasing unrest when recruitment is excessive (especially in type II-IV) provinces. But I'm nearly sure it can't be implemented in a mod.

[V.T. Marvin]

You may consider that as a sort of beta-test: I have played several (well, three:embarassed:) campaigns on H/H difficulty and Huge unit size (Pahlava, S.P.Q.R. and Pahlava again) on EB 1.0 and 1.1. all of them much over 200 B.C. with the whole population replenishment part of the script deleted and.......it worked rather well!!!

I have not encountered any 500 inhabitants settlement yet. The cities still DO grow, but at a markedly slower rate - which is desirable, IMHO. The results are somewhat similar - if LESS drastic - to MAA´s City mod. Rome, Capua, Alexandreia, Syracusae, Antioch, Seleukeia, Persepolis, Susa and Ekatana invariably reach the Huge city size eventually even under AI. :yes:

I do remember many depleted cities (like that barely 600 people Athens) in RTR - and it is great that the Team has gone to such great lengths to prevent that :bow:. But still, even with the population replenishment script cut off population depletement is not much of problem on EB. Well, I admit that on VH campaign difficulty it might be little bit different, but I am not sure - AI is pretty aggressive on Hard as well.

If the Team is do not wish - and understandably so - to abandon the population replenishment concept, I would still suggest to cut the population replenishment monitors for all unit sizes except Huge (on smaller sizes recruitment has barely any noticeable effect on population) and set the replenisment as half the actual value (i.e. 100 instead of 200). Thus the AI will still gain the benefit, but it will prevent the otherwise uncontrollable population explosion in the later stages of the game. And the script will get shorter and thus very very slightly faster.:2cents:

[bovi]

We tried with 75% of the population replenished in the beta testing run for 1.1. It caused depleted populations.

[V.T. Marvin]

Apparently it all depends on actual level of AI aggresiveness then... :shrug: