Charity

[PershsNhpios]

That's right, charity - helping the little guy.

We all know there are factions out there, in vanilla, in every mod, who just do not stand a chance.
Unless you do something about it. Without wishing to resurrect the turk thread further down this page, I wanted to draw more attention to the central idea of phenomenal achievements among the minor factions.

What are your experiences? Have they proven themselves capable of making it alone? Do you help them? How? What factions do you see crumbling so often and which ones have you helped to survive?

In vanilla it was always the Papacy who I assisted as a faithful catholic, and I often brought his Holiness into the status of a military power by severely reducing his surrounding enemies and then retreating to allow him the reward of taking a province.

Once a faction has a few armies and a profit, they all tend to enjoy a certain bloodlust.

One simply needs to stimulate them!

I also want to improve the lifestyle of the Turkish people in my XL game as the English, as currently they are in fear for their existence.
The only possible way would be to launch a successful crusade to Egypt. That will not happen in my state of affairs.

But I would also enjoy seeing Norway or Bohemia profit, though it is too late for these unless I send spies into Danish territory (and I will!).

As for achieving status of their own accord, I have seen quite some twists of fate which have lead to unusual circumstances, but these have all been due to a minor faction which re-emerged to inherit larger shoes.

I think these little fellows do occasionally have their day, but I probably haven't played enough campaigns to have witnessed them yet!

[Empirate]

There are few things you can do to directly help another faction, short of conquering neighbouring provinces, then abandoning them at very high taxes after destroying all loyalty-inspiring buildings...

A few things I have found will help certain AI factions:

1. Plunge a major neighbour into civil war. This works best for the HRE when you're France, Italy etc. Often Denmark and Poland will pick up some of the pieces, enabling them to actually pay for their armies.

2. Station very large armies along a frontier with a neighbour you'd like to be reduced by your favorite faction. For example, I'm playing the Turks right now and aim to help out the Poles. So I station huge armies in Constantinople (bordering the Hungarians) and Georgia (bordering the Russians; GH and Byz are mostly gone). As I'm neutral with Hun and Rus, both try to keep large forces in Bulgaria and Khazar to watch for any sign of Turkish aggression. Even with me not attacking them, this siphons troops they need for their wars with Poland. Poland has already taken Kiev from Rus and Moldavia from Hun, both of which were inadequately garrisoned.

3. Destroy a naval-oriented nation's fleet. Italy, Sicily and England will usually try to build more ships instead of more troops. This helps their enemies to a certain degree.

4. Siphon troops from your "pet nation"'s neighbours via Crusade/Jihad. Hard to do effectively, but a fifth column of Inquisitors/Grand Imams paving the way for your Crusade/Jihad will at least raise zeal for efficient army draining.

5. Ally with your "pet nation", then send small, sea-bourne armies into neighbouring provinces. Often your allies will support your attack with a larger army of their own, so after victory the province falls to them. This is more of a method to incite an AI faction to attack an enemy, and helping out a little in the actual battle.

Hope you find some of this interesting.

[PershsNhpios]

I find all of it interesting, thank you!

These are strategies which I have never had the position or power to use before, but I will be ready to implement them soon!

Two questions come to mind in light of these strategies:

Firstly, are Orthodox and Muslim factions subject to any disloyalty or disorder when a crusade is declared upon them?

Secondly, under what circumstances can you destroy another factions navy without a war resulting (I have never understood the reasons for this effect)? For example, I destroy Ireland's only ship in the Irish sea, his allies cancel their alliances with me and war is supposedly in effect, yet on the diplomacy screen nothing has changed on the next turn and Ireland is neutral.

I could use these to destroy Byzantion's navy and then launch a crusade for their capital, most likely causing a civil war if there are considerable changes to stability by the latter.

[gollum]

You can do various things to enhance the little league in VI/2.01. Typically the great losers are the Almohads, the Danes, the Aragonese, the Novgorodians and the Turks in early.

The Almohads can be helped by reducing the income of Leon and Castile that frankly is way over the top. The Aragonese could do with more provinces, say Navarre and Valencia and it wouldnt hurt them if you make RK non recruitable and set their maintenance costs to 0. The Dane AI could benefit from having Sweeden and also from non recruitable BGs that cost 0 to maintain.

The Novgorodians could do with Muscovy, or if you want to be more historically accurate Kiev and Pereyaslavl.

The Turks need to be rid of duplicates like vanilla horse archers and vanilla archers and be given out the Desert archers and Turcomans exclusively for those building requirements. turcomans foot should be given out at bowyery2 instead of 3 and Futtuwas delineated from the swordsmith. One of the janissaryu units (say the archers or the infantry) can be dependent only in the bowyery instead of requiring the Military Academy and all janissary units should be made late era. Ghulam cavalry should be given the requirements of mounted seargents ie spearmaker2 and horsebreeder2, as it is (spearmaker3, horsebreeder3 IIRC) they are way too high for the stats of the unit. Giving them Militia Sreargents will also help them a lot. It would be good if the Turks were dissallowed to build the swordsmith that they seldom need (for Futtuwas and JI) but the AI goes and builds everywhere costing them money for nothing (and chicks for three).

Many more changes can be made to make the AI armies more competitive and streamline his production by allowing him to build buildings that get him good units. As it stands in vanilla the AI wastes a lot of money on making buildings that do not really benefit him as say the higher town watches and swordsmiths as the Turks. There are very many other such exampes. XL makes up for this shortcoming by adding too many units, hence every buiding that is made gives actually a new unit for recruitment. However the roster becomes even more bloated than that of vanilla and this is one of teh reasons why i do not play XL.

:bow:

[caravel]

You can also station an emissary (or preferably a bishop as they're less likely to be assassinated) in the smaller faction's provinces and ensure that you can get to their lands by Sea (Denmark, Aragon and the Papacy are all candidates for this). Then if they get invade and besieged you are in a position to break the siege every time. This is also good as it adds to your faction leader's influence.

:bow:

[PershsNhpios]

That sounds like a very indigestible amount of working in Notepad gollum - if I can't help them in game then they really must simply fall under my own banner!
That is after all, the last resort of a desperate desire to liberate.
Perhaps you may have the time one day to compile a list of your own personal mods?

I do also like your advice, Nagamasa, although I fear it would mean a constant war with a power more capable than one's ally, and this is generally an uncomfortable situation even if the war is well without your own borders.

[gollum]

I always play a home modded version of the vanilla game, and after unistalling i delete the "mod". In this way, i get to try new things and sligthly different directions every time. Usually it takes about a week to make it before playing - the more time i have the better - but i can make a very simple version very quickly if impatient to play.

Thanks for the interest but i am not interested in making it publicly available because of the commitment this would require - having to check the thread and reply to people, help them out, hear their ideas, complaints etc i am not interested in that process.

I would be glad to pass it on to you if interested but i am not currently playing or in the process of making it.

[caravel]

Don't worry Glenn, Apparently the Smeagol-Mod v1.0 beta is out next week.

Yes modding your own game is one, thing. Trying to release something for public use is quite another and takes a lot of time and dedication. XL is a good mod, but is overly complex, adding more units where no more were needed. On the plus side, more factions may be a good thing, though only in the east. I think the addition of the Volga Bulgars, Lithuanians and Western Kipchaks was a good move as it stops the Byzantine from sweeping though the steppe as they do in Vanilla. It also means that the Horde have some factions to take on when they arrive. The Kievan Rus would also have been a good faction (I can't remember if they are in XL or not - I don't remember?) as they would have been occupying roughly half of the rebel provinces in the east at the start of the early era.

:bow:

[gollum]

Originally posted by Asai Nagamasa
Don't worry Glenn, Apparently the Smeagol-Mod v1.0 beta is out next week.

I was actually thinking to name it the "Caravel mod" (because you would most likely like it and because no one else would play it besides you and i :laugh4:) or the vanilla mod. But soon after i always think of the "joys" of making it public and promptly decide against :yes:

[PershsNhpios]

Thank you Gollum but one week of modding is somewhat excessive for my situation. I would spend my last free week modding and then have nae time left to enjoy the fruits! I am not so attracted to computers as to do this!

Does anyone have answers for these two questions?

Quote:

"""Firstly, are Orthodox and Muslim factions subject to any disloyalty or disorder when a crusade is declared upon them?

Secondly, under what circumstances can you destroy another factions navy without a war resulting (I have never understood the reasons for this effect)? For example, I destroy Ireland's only ship in the Irish sea, his allies cancel their alliances with me and war is supposedly in effect, yet on the diplomacy screen nothing has changed on the next turn and Ireland is neutral."""

[gollum]

No to the first question.

As to the second, i think that what has happened was that when the hostility occured you went at war so all the allies had to take a stance on the matter, but immediately afterwards you had no contact with that faction (the Irish) by sea or land (sea region/ships, land region). In this case the game automatically declares ceasefire, which is i think what happened in your case.

:bow:

[Empirate]

Automatic ceasefire can be (ab-)used a lot. Whenever you have no contact whatsoever with another faction (you have no adjacent provinces to theirs, you have no navy sharing sea provinces with theirs, your navies are not on their shores, you have no agents in their provinces), you auto-ceasefire. This means you can take a province which is far from the other faction's motherland, then BAM!, on the next turn you're not at war anymore. The AI is incapable of dealing with this in any useful way, so it should be considered an exploit (although I have used it in the past).

The most well-known example is taking Naples from the Byzantines in the beginning of an Early game (playing Sicily or any other close-by faction). Nobody has any great fleets yet, so chances are, you'll be separated from the Byzzies after conquering your little prize. Other examples are Tripoli+Palestine+Cyprus (in High) or only Cyprus (in Late) from the French, playing Egyptians or Turks; Taking Livonia (in Late) from the Danes playing Russians or Poles (beware [read: sink first] their baltic fleets); taking Aragon from the Aragonese (in Late) playing Spanish, Almohads, French, or English; taking Crete from Italians (in Late) playing some nearby faction (again beware their fleets); taking Kiev (iirc) from the Russians (in High), playing Hungarians, before Kiev is joined to the rest of the Russians' lands.
The tactic is generally good for taking islands if the factions possessing them doesn't have many fleets (sink or simply evade them for auto-ceasefire). Before this turns into a mini guide, I'll stop now. Excuse me for derailing this thread!