How often do you guys use cheats?

[Hybr1d]

I use the add_money cheat quite often. The only reason I use it is if my mnai drops to negative or if I need to build something in my cities... i always try to keep to keep my cities building something.

So.. how often do you guys cheat?

[The_Blacksmith]

Well, in my current Pahlava Campaign im using toggle_fow because im new to EB and to see how the AI expands

And in my Romani Campaign, well.. i have to use the add_money -2000/3000 to ensure my FMs dont get corrupt and so on...

[Ca Putt]

auto_win on battles I eiter don't have the time or motivation to fight myself but I'm sure I'd win.

[stratigos vasilios]

I just use toggle_fow. Otherwise it's a ton of watchtowers ftw!

[Valion]

The only cheat i ever used is toggle_fow and give_trait to remove traits i think are conflicting to my FM's Other Traits like Devout to a Utterly Pragmatic FM :D

I Never use the money cheat since imo it makes the game less fun if you can build anything you want any time...

[Olaf The Great]

I use add_money sometimes, but I try not to actively "cheat" with it. I always use toggle_fow to check up on the AI's progression, and I always try to use move_character to get the AI to do stuff.
The only real "cheat" I've done is halve the cost of every single fleet to encourage the AI to actually do something....and so I can build poliremes...

[Duguntz]

No cheat at all... never.

[Jebivjetar]

Last time i've cheated was in my Hayasdan campaign when i wanted to build homeland province in Armavir. I quit that campaign anyway.
Before this, i don't recall my last cheating.

EDIT: toggle_fow : i use it just in order to see what The AI is doing.

[Cute Wolf]

EDIT: process_cq : i use it just in order to see what The AI is doing.

add_population "insert random roman city in italia" 50000
add_population "insert random roman city in italia" 50000
add_population "insert random roman city in italia" 50000
add_population "insert random roman city in italia" 50000
add_population "insert random roman city in italia" 50000
add_population "insert random roman city in italia" 50000
process_cq "insert random roman city in italia"

wait 1 turn
process_cq "insert random roman city in italia"

repeat until marian reform (EB March Of Time) happened

[Jebivjetar]

Silly me, i typed process_cq instead of toggle_fow

Btw, Wolfy: what's the purpose of process_cqing Romaioi cities in order to gave them Marian reforms?

[Cute Wolf]

Silly me, i typed process_cq instead of toggle_fow

Btw, Wolfy: what's the purpose of process_cqing Romaioi cities in order to gave them Marian reforms?

so I can get the new bodyguard without manually changing the EDU... most often, I do this on the very last Romaioi city before I march and enslave them...

[Julianus]

I use auto_win in navy battles when my fleet is not significantly weaker than the enemy, the logic is I would never lose such a battle if only given a chance to command it.

[Cute Wolf]

I use auto_win in navy battles when my fleet is not significantly weaker than the enemy, the logic is I would never lose such a battle if only given a chance to command it.

well, you could doing a naval battle in RTW derived engine.... some guys in this submod are doing this....
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1469

and you could must assume someone also try hard to dig out their secret....

[Randal]

I use the auto_win cheat if there is a crash to the disk after I win a tactical battle. I don't want to play it all over again, so I'll use the cheat as I won it already anyway.

I occasionally toggle the FoW to see how the factions are doing.

[sherman0815]

I never cheat, for it only shows you your own incompetence. ;)

[Julianus]

I use auto_win in navy battles when my fleet is not significantly weaker than the enemy, the logic is I would never lose such a battle if only given a chance to command it.

Well, after another thought, I find that from a RP point ot view I should not be able to command every battle anyway, as king, if I'm not present on the battle field myself, especially navy battles.
So has anyone tried this RP approach: only mannually command battles when the king himself is in the army and auto_resove all the others?
I mean, even if you're a tactical genius, you cannot determine the outcome of a battle if you're not there. I remember even Alexander had one of his lesser army destroyed by the nomads when he sent them to reinforce a besieged settlement.
This must be quite interesting.

[stratigos vasilios]

Sometimes I'll process_cq an AI factions city to give them a boost. Just to see how interesting it can become.

[vartan]

Once every blue moon.

[Olaf The Great]

Oh, and I use force diplomacy, but Diplomacy sucks in rome total war so I can't be blamed for it

[DaciaJC]

I use add_money sometimes to give other factions money.

If I win a crushing victory against an enemy (wiping them out while suffering few losses), and I thereafter CTD ... I will use show_cursorstat and move_character to move the offending enemy army into some obscure territory, move one of my lowly units into the same province, use auto_win attacker to eliminate them, and then disband my unit.

And, of course, I use toggle_fow, but only once I have conquered a certain number of territories.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
I cheat in the following conditions:
In naval battles. The auto-calculate mechanism is a shame for programming so I do my own and pre-decide the result according to the correspondent powers of the navies and the skills of the admirals.
To transport agents. It's nonsensical having to have a navy to move a diplomat or spy so I walk them to a nearby port and beam them across.
To get rid of nuisance rebels and navies (Not the scripted, powerful rebel armies representing unrepresented factions). The first type off to Eremos and the second to the Caspian.

ADDENDVM: FOW is toggled off in my preferences. This is not Starcraft for crying out loud!
.

[Suraknar]

I raise the starting money to 5000000 mnai or denari for the faction I choose for a given campaign...and that is about it, no other advantages.

I never liked to be out of money in these games, because in reality money was not needed to build anything back then (with some exceptions), they forced people to work back then (slavery). And while today we do not Tolerate it, and I would not condone it either (being a humanist and all), it is still how things worked Historically and I like to play with the then rules rather than today's rules when I play a game set in the then era.

I still play carefully as to not have a negative balance most of the time, yet i can have cities constantly building something like that, I really hate the wait past a certain point, 6+ turns to build a single building in one city is a boring eternity for me.

[vartan]

I raise the starting money to 5000000 mnai or denari for the faction I choose for a given campaign...and that is about it, no other advantages.

I never liked to be out of money in these games, because in reality money was not needed to build anything back then (with some exceptions), they forced people to work back then (slavery). And while today we do not Tolerate it, and I would not condone it either (being a humanist and all), it is still how things worked Historically and I like to play with the then rules rather than today's rules when I play a game set in the then era.

I still play carefully as to not have a negative balance most of the time, yet i can have cities constantly building something like that, I really hate the wait past a certain point, 6+ turns to build a single building in one city is a boring eternity for me.
I'm glad you said 'not needed to build anything' instead of 'train anyone' because not all soldiers were slaves.

[Randal]

Great wealth was still needed to construct things. First there's the materials, which may well have been the most important thing. Slaves themselves were hardly free, needing to be purchased, fed and equipped with tools. And construction incidentally was one of the few areas where free labour was used far more than slaves, because of its seasonal nature. It was not good value for money to buy a whole bunch of slaves that then only can work in summer. Free poor men were cheaper, you could pay them and then send them on their way to fend for themselves.

And that Cicero quote about the nerves of war being infinite money wasn't there for nothing either.

[Cambyses]

I use auto_win if a CTD means I need to refight the same battle. Or if I get some random rebels pop up in my lands that i would own with a proper army. And lastly if I am assaulting a settlement with odds of 4-1 or more in my favour I auto_win. Ive found the AI can be funny about that sometimes - especially if there is a FM in the settlement. I have also occassionally used the move character cheat for agents and single characters stuck on islands etc. But never armies.

[Suraknar]

Great wealth was still needed to construct things. First there's the materials, which may well have been the most important thing. Slaves themselves were hardly free, needing to be purchased, fed and equipped with tools. And construction incidentally was one of the few areas where free labour was used far more than slaves, because of its seasonal nature. It was not good value for money to buy a whole bunch of slaves that then only can work in summer. Free poor men were cheaper, you could pay them and then send them on their way to fend for themselves.

And that Cicero quote about the nerves of war being infinite money wasn't there for nothing either.

Oh I am not saying everything was free, some armies as you pointed out were professional, even in citizen armies the citizens had to afford their own gear, that much is clear, yet, building a stable could be a community affair, the king or emperor would not be sending funds for things like that in remote cities, building a palace and raising a personal army specially a professional one would indeed require much.

Food is the commodity people would pay for most of the time, grain to feed armies etc. That much is certain. It is why I just did not mod everything down to 0 cost (as well as the fact that the game would be unbalanced), but striving every turn to build one stable building or a blacksmith in one city amongst 20, I found that game breaking from this point of view. It makes no sense to me that you can have en empire with hundreds of thousands of citizens (and slaves) and not enough money to build a barracks...

The game has us assume the lead of Empires and Kingdoms yet the royal treasury is literally empty. I just do not think that this much micromanagement is fun under this premise, so I fill up the treasury and apply macroeconomics instead permitting me to focus on Diplomacy, and Warefare in a higher degree, which to me become more representative of the role that Kings and Emperors back then would fill. It makes for a more enjoyable game for me that way.

maybe there is a better way to balance the game, instead of having to do this, but I do not know where to change it, to raise for instance the amount of money coming from taxes per citizen until an economical equilibrium is reached necessary for the undertakings of the game.

The alternative would be to mod all costs down by a factor of 10 or more to reach that kind of macroeconomic equilibrium, and then the starting treasure would actually represent an Empires capital in a more realistic manner.

It is faster to raise one number thought rather than try to balance all costs.

[Randal]

I think the current system makes sense.

History shows that time and time again kings were desperately short of money. In the middle ages they had to borrow left and right and grant privileges to the cities to pay for their wars and building projects. In early modern times the kingdom of Spain went bankrupt... I don't know how many times, but a lot. In antiquity it happened that city-states or the Roman republic had to borrow money from the temples. In medieval times they borrowed from the church and monasteries.

It makes perfect sense to me that if you run a country and want a barracks constructed that it will take some months to raise the money, especially if your kingdom is a poor one. And if you're running a deficit because you have a large army and it's the start of the game... well, then you're obviously too preoccupied with trying to feed that huge army to be able to afford any grand new building projects.

[Suraknar]

If only we had a time machine we could confirm our views. Since we do not, we both have to enjoy the game our own way. It is why its a "cheats thread" after all. :)

[A_Dane]

I use toggle_fow to see how the world is evolving. Before i do it however, i march my armies to exhaustion, and map out where they'll go next.
If there's an enemy army, it's just too bad for me.

I use auto-win if i crash after winning a long exhausting battle, that i don't feel like doing over.

other than that, i occasionally transport AI characters/armies to somewhere else, if it's being ridicolous.

(in my hayasdan campaign, i was fighting the seleucids and Ptollies, sharing only borders with those 2, samartia and Pontos. Out of nowhere, a parthian army appears and besiege one of my cities. Now parthia is fighting for it's life vs the Seleucids, i got the place heavily defended, and an army nearby. Makes no sense, for them to start up a new front, with a nation they share no border with AND is helping them fighting the nation trying to exterminate them)

[Biowulf]

That's the AI for ya. It just went :idea2: and attacked you.

OT, the only thing I have is FOW off all the time using the game files. Otherwise if I crash or run out of money I have to work at getting back on track the hard way. My RTW console doesn't work. The M2TW console on the other hand works perfectly, so go figure.

[QuintusSertorius]

I cheat all the time, usually to make the game more interesting, rather than my own benefit. I play for my own entertainment, not "challenge", and I play nice and slow (none of this "beat the game in 100 turns" nonsense). Since I like playing one faction as though it were another of my choice (Epeiros as Pergamon), I have to cheat at the start to set myself up with one province and get rid of the old holdings of the previous faction. That involves teleporting armies and judicious use of an auto_win, as well as create_unit to make my new starting army.

After that I often use create_unit to make proper stacks of attacking enemies and add_money to boost AI factions who are lagging.

[Brennus]

I often use toggle_fow to see how everyone is doing on the map and add_money to keep the Seleucids in play for longer (unless I am the Seleucids or opposing them) I just think its innacurate to have a Ptolemaic empire stretching to Armenia or a Bactrian empire which reaches Anatolia.

I will confess to having used the move characted cheat the other week. I was playing as Carthage and the Ptolemies attacked me I will admit I couldn't have beaten the army they sent against me but my motivation instead was to preserve historical accuracy. As far as I am aware Carthage and Ptolemaic Egypt never fought each other. It also made little sense to me to be at war with Egypt as at the time they were struggling to keep the Seleucids out of the Nile Valley, the only reason they attacked was the games AI kicking in once my empire had passed a certain size and level of power.

[vartan]

It also made little sense to me to be at war with Egypt as at the time they were struggling to keep the Seleucids out of the Nile Valley, the only reason they attacked was the games AI kicking in once my empire had passed a certain size and level of power.
Are you sure it wasn't over Kyrene? Because that's part of the little Egypt-Carthage script pop-up event in EB.

[QuintusSertorius]

I seem to get an error on the console whenever I try to use auto_win (which I was doing to save time). Strange.

[Brennus]

Are you sure it wasn't over Kyrene? Because that's part of the little Egypt-Carthage script pop-up event in EB.

I was nowhere near Kyrene, I didn't go anymore east than Syrthim.

[SaigonSaddler]

Never cheat. I am tied to the faction through thick and thin. Anyway, a glorious victory and acquisition of new provinces actual mean something.

[ChingizLink]

so I can get the new bodyguard without manually changing the EDU... most often, I do this on the very last Romaioi city before I march and enslave them...

also so that, if you're playing as an eastern faction, you face the other Eastern factions with their best BGs, and the Hellenistic factions with the phalangists they seem to prefer and use more. (they never seem to use Pezhetairoi, but also use frickin' pantodapoi...grrrr....)

[Madoushi]

I use the auto_win cheat if there is a crash to the disk after I win a tactical battle. I don't want to play it all over again, so I'll use the cheat as I won it already anyway.

I occasionally toggle the FoW to see how the factions are doing.

I had a game in my Roman Campaign where the Carthagininians has three FMs in a stack on Sardinia, and every time I would defeat it, my game would crash no matter how long I waited after the battle results. Not only that, but it would also corrupt my most recent save so it would crash on loading. Maybe I should try doing that.

IRT Topic: I abuse the hell out of the pause feature in combat, I use toggle_fow once I've scouted the whole map, just to save myself the hassle of having to move dozens of agents every turn to have up-to-date map info, and when I ply as any of the Steppe factions, I use the add_money cheat if I've gone too deep in debt to defend my empire once I've finally started to get positive cashflow.

As the Sauros I positively have to add-money if the Sakas or Hai start attacking me, otherwise they just destroy me and there's nothing I can do about it. :(

[rotten]

Sack cities. Maybe you can nail Ekbatana (sp?) with a Forager if you're lucky, that's about 27k mnai without destroying the wonder (44 if you do). But you need foot archers for that, so you'll take that much longer to cross through Armenia.

[SaigonSaddler]

I have now started cheating using the auto_win cheat.