Just Curious

[Sir Toma of Spain]

In the time i have spent playing total war i have noticed a few reccuring things.
1) The Byzantines and Egyptians gang up on the turks, destroying them and then fight each other
2)The sicilians and the pope fight over naples after one of them takes it
3) The spanish alway crush the almohads and the aragonese and sometimes the Egyptians aswell
4) The french always bulldoze the english and germans and end up owning all of the british isles and half of germany
5) The russians and danes don't do any thing (in some games the russians conquer some of the steepes)
6) Germany is hit on the other side by poland and hungary
7) In most games, by the start of the high period the byzantines own all of the steepes, poland and the turkish provinces

i was wondering if anyone had found anything similar

note: i always start in the early period

[PseRamesses]

I concur with all of the above with the vanilla game although I´ve never seen the French kick out the English since I´ve started to play first MedMod and then the XL-mod.
In XL 2 new provs in the Iberian penninsula and the adding of the Portugese keeps the Spanish busy. The French still is keen on HRE, HRE still collapses most of the times though, The Danes and the new Swedes and Norwegians are really active and so is the new Bohemians. The Byz and Eggys still team up on the Turks but Byz expansion north is twarthed by the new Cumans, V-Bulgarians, Russians, Lithuanians and Novgorods. The only to main "flaws" is that the French like to kick the HRE-ass rather than the English and that HRE still is unstable.
Some players also like BKB´s mod but I haven´t tried it yet due to lack of time but many recommend it.

[katank]

the almos also invariably have a civil war around 1120-1140, making it possible to bribe Tunisia from the rebels for GA and still keep trade intact for Sicilians.

The Germans regularly undergo civil war.

In the first few years of High, the French get mauled by the Brits and undergo a civil war but often loyalist rebellions and the overexpanded Brits hit by Germans, Aragonese and Spanish make for a reversal of fortunes.

[Servius]

yep, we see the same thing. I almost always stop playing and start a new game shortly into High because, the way I see it, half the empires are gone, the rest don't move much, or at least not very wisely (they don't tech up, nor do they choose provinces with an eye to keeping a short front line, and not if all the empires ganged up on me at once could they beat me.

Once I can't lose and there aren't any underdogs to prop up anymore, I can't find any challenges.

I think for my next game I'll try to save the Germans. I play England so I can save anyone who's empire is mostly coastal very easily. Helping Germany will require deep incursions into Central and Eastern Europe, gutting the military and economic buildings of the Huns and Poles probably.

[Lonewarrior]

I always see the same thing except, that in my game almost always the Almohads destroy the spanish, and try to take over france. Weird, but the solution is, I always interfere in the middle because I'm always the italians. ~:idea:

[katank]

in 1.0 it seems that almos win but ever since I got VI, the Spanish always seem to trounce the Almos.

[Servius]

I think the deciding factor in the Iberian penninsula is whether Aragon takes Valencia. If the Spanish take it, they'll generate enough money to eventually beat the Elmos in Cordoba.

Another is who goes for Portugal and when. If the Spanish go for it before they take Cordoba they're in trouble cause they never go with enough force to supress the rebellions and Portugal just eats up their armies. If they go for Portugal after taking Cordoba, they're usually okay eventually.

The Elmos only seem to take Portugal and survive if the Egys are too distracted with the Turks and Byz to pressure the Elmo's eastern frontier.

[katank]

I've almost never seen the Eggy attack the Almos unless to grab before imminent collapse but the Almos do expend huge stacks in trying to keep down Portugal.

[Sir Toma of Spain]

Everything i have said has not applied to the game i am playing as the turks.
The english and germans crushed france the italians own half of spain as well as sicily, malta and naples the almohads were killing the spanish untill me and the italians stepped in. it is so crazy

[Ulair]

My current game (Italian GA, High, Normal) has had a very different pattern so far.
1) Russia dominated the east and fought off the Horde really well, earning zillions of GA points (they had to go, of course ~:) )
2) Denmark put together a nice little Scandinavian Empire down the western Fench coast, until beaten by...
3) The English, dominating the western side of the map, pushing France inland and conquering Spain (they had to go too, naturally...)
4) The Aragonese have a neat little empire in Aragon, Navarre, Toulouse, Aquitaine and, er, Poland and Pereslavl (crusades ~:dizzy: ).
5) Germany has survived pretty much intact from day 1 - lost Burgundy to France and Pomerania to Russia but apart from that no change.

It's been great to see some real variation in factions doing well. This is my first High (and indeed GA) game - is this typical High behaviour? Certainly in Early the Danes and Novgorodians seemed to sit and do nothing.

For sure the Turks got squashed early on, and I did have to invade Algeria to stop the Spanish bulldozing all the way to Egypt.

Cheers,
Ulair

[Sir Toma of Spain]

@Ulair In the high period everything is different. Sometimes the Turks do well sometimes the Horde beat the Russians etc.
But it still has a bit of a pattern

[Sociopsychoactive]

Well, in my most recent game (early, normal, spain, GA, medmod abbey road version) it;s a completely different story. Much of this can be put down to the medmod (this is the one that doesn't change unit stats much at all, but gives the AI lots of helping hands to play well).

The english and french have never ladi a finger on each other, the english lands in france are still help, and both have advanced on german lands a little but they have never been to war with each other in the past 100 years.

The poles and hungarians ganged up on the germans (with help from both french and itialians) and wiped them out, then bickered over their lands untill I cam along and smashed them both into one province each. They are still fighting each other.

The egyptians and turks have squabbled a little, but now the egyptians are concertrating on trying to retake the crusader provinces (one held by france, one by england and one by me, the other is still egyptian) while the turks and byzants are still duking it out, sometimes reaching to constantinople while the byzants have expanded into formerly polish lands, and a little north aswell.

The novogrods (called kievins in abbey road medmod) have done amazing things. They lost most northlands to rebellions, and immediately proceeded south to take on the byzants, most of the polish lands and even striking out against the turks. This may all change when the horde arrives, but they have the strength to hold out for a while.

The danes actually took norway and finland, had a few german lands breifly, but have moved back and are actually trading.

The itallians almost wiped out the almohands and would have kicked the egyptians had I not stepped in, they also took ALL the italian penisular apart from malta and have been bickeing with the pope for quite some time though I put a stop to that.

The aragonese have been fighting for control of naples for over two decades against the itialians, and have not once attacked me (the spanish).

And EVERY faction has at least 5 boats in differnt sea regions, some (the itialians and french mostly) have nearly as big a fleet as me, but are not fighting naval wars unless excomunicated or against me.

[AssasinsShadow]

The Danes are one of my favorite factions, and to see them sitting around doing nothing made me mad. So I decided to experiment. I reduced the upkeep cost on royal knights to 1 florin, and the Danes exploded into action. They took all of Scandinavia, as well as rebellious providences here and there. They had most of northern Germany, but I saw the potential threat, and my Polish army cut them down a few sizes. However, this brings the problem of being able to train hundreds of units of royal cav as a much bigger faction in the beginning and just bulldozing everyone. In the end, I just switched it back and watched them ever so slowly make progress.

[Servius]

well, you got a neat idea going though. What if...

a) you reduced RK upkeep to 1 again
b) removed the buildings column for RKs (so that no one could build new ones)
c) we found a way to make the RK units for heirs automatically rebuild over time like the king's unit does

That would present a situation where Denmark wouldn't bankrupt itself because of all those male heirs the Danes have early on in Early, but it would also prevent other AIs from building them and ruling the game.

I'm going to go ask in teh mod forums whether anyone has found the on/off switch for that auto-refill ability of the king's units, and whether or not it can be given to other units or only the king.

[Sinner]

I run using the -ian switch so that I can give the AI factions an occasional helping hand: deleting obsolete or severely depleted & untrainable units; re-training for upgrades and replacements; guiding the building queues down more logical and useful paths; and - especially for the Danes! - invading neighboring rebel or enemy provinces that are just sitting targets.

On the latter point, I never start a war, so if there aren't any available rebel provinces the faction may still stall even with my help. For the Danes, I find simply taking Sweden tends to kickstart them into expanding, with Norway swiftly following then either invading across the Baltic or down through Saxony.

Another useful method is to simply give the factions more starting money. This greatly improves their ability to challenge you, especially if you leave your chosen faction's money as per standard, and you don't have to interfear much or otherwise potentially unbalance the game.

As for the refill ability of the King's bodyguard, that is hardcoded and linked purely to the King. Another idea to do roughly what you suggest is to increase the build cost for the RK until it's prohibitively high while keeping the support cost low so as not to bankrupt factions like the Danes and Aragonese. This way you can still re-train the RK for prince/ex-prince units, but the AI will tend not build them.

[AssasinsShadow]

Thanks Servius, I'll have to try that. I've also thought about tinkering with each faction's "character" (crusader_trader, naval_expansionist, etc.). Wondering if, by changing those, if I could somehow effect gameplay. I'm not sure what to change though, cause Byz are Orthodox stagnant, but they always expanding, and HRE is Catholic Stagnant, and they never expand. Must be surrounding factions. I was thinking about making Denmark Catholic expansionist, just to be funny. But then again, Novgorod is expansionist, and they do jack squat, most of the time.

[Marquis de Said]

@AssassinShadow

I've toyed with the idea of helping out the Danes, by making Viking Huscarles their king's unit, just like the Swiss have SAP as their king's unit. And making Viking Huscarles buildable in all ages, or at least in early and high, and then switching to Late RK's in late (just like Turks have Ghulams in early and high and Sipahis of the Porte in late). You could also reduce upkeep for Huscarles. That might help them, as a stack with 7-8 Viking Huscarles would probably beat most opposition unless highly outnumbered. I haven't tried it, but I think it would be quite easy to mod.
I have been thinking about changing the king's unit for some other factions as well, such as Polish Retainers for the Poles, but for now I find Viking Huscarles for the Danes the most plausible.
Just a thought.

Marquis de Said

[Sociopsychoactive]

Unfortunately that may werll not work as the upkeep on huscies is still high, and while they are formidable, the danes never use all their royal units, they sit and build and wait, while ending up loosing money from heir upkeep.

The lowering of upkeep for RK is the way to go, or something of that ilk. Maybe just reduce it a little and see whether they boom, as once they do they are near unstoppable.

[DisruptorX]

Also note that the Byzantines will put all of their strength into capturing eastern Europe, while allowing the turks/egyptians to take all of their lucrative provences in Turkey, including constantinople itself. ~:shock:

The Aragonese sit in their territory the whole game and might as well be rebels.

[Procrustes]

Twice while playing as the Danes I have seen the French expand across the British Isles and HRE, only to be taken out later by the Spanish after they finished off the Almohads. (The last game France re-emerged in Scotland....)

Playing as the French, I'm often attacked by the Aragonese at some point, though they have never expanded before that and they always get their asses kicked.

[lars573]

I've seen the Sicilians conquer most of the balkans only to be run out by the hungarians when they tried to move into croatia. I've also seen the sicilians reduced to just Malta by the papacy. The Sicilians invaded rome and the papal states from naples and when the papcy returned they moved into naples then sicily.

The Byzantines have been forced to found a new empire in the keiv and kazar steppes. As the turks hungary and sicilian have over run the asia minor and balkan parts.

I've seen the Italians conquer most of the british isles. As the english kings were trapped in southern France and england proper rebeled then the Italians moved in and knocked off the rebels, with France taking wessex. Also sometimes the Russians conquer the steppe areas but they usually get distracted with Finland. Then Livonia and Lithuania

[katank]

Byz seem to love to ship itself over to Crimea/Khazar using a ship in the Black Sea and leaving the big C entirely open.

The Aragonese actually go for Navarre and Toulouse very frequently.

The Danes do go for Sweden when I bribe into there without too much forces.

I did park my viks in a forest and kill off the entire royal family on occasion and make all of denmark rebel which gives me a keep when I bribe it in most cases.

[Blodrast]

I usually try to cover the map as early as possible with agents to see what's going on everywhere...
what I find weird is that sometimes I just sit and watch trying to decide whom to help and whom to sabotage, and NOTHING happens for many many decades... I mean I've had more than half a century without anybody attacking anybody else...it's like a big *** happy family and it's driving me nuts !!

Most of the time, the French and the English do eventually get into a conflict, but not always "the natural way", but often caused by some civil war or rebellions in one or the other's provinces.

However, the Spanish, Almos, and Aragonese exasperate me most of the time !
I've watched them in several games being happy and at peace and the best of friends !
I mean, wth, is this "Total Peace" ?
I lost all hope for the Aragonese, even if they do get Toulouse, they do nothing else afterwards. They just sit there in their two lousy provinces waiting for the end of the world to come....duh.
I tried several times to instigate wars between Almos and Spaniards, but they were both damn stubborn...killing their leaders, converting one's population to the other's religion (tried this both with catholics and with muslims), but no, it's like a centuries-old friendship...and they both raise huge, huge stacks in Cordoba and Granada and Valencia and Castille, and play checkers at the border.

There is more action in the Middle East most of the time. Eggys are nicely aggressive and they make sure they eat up everybody else in that area...

HRE and central europe are usually quite stagnant. Yes, the HRE does get beaten to a pulp by pretty much everybody, but, strangely enough, they are not wiped out (except accidentally, by rebellions, civil wars, etc). The Poles, Hungarians and French seem content to let the Germans muddle in one or two crappy provinces...boggle.

Also, the Byzantines seem to be strangely weak occasionally...not because of military inefficiencies, but rather from political circumstances. I usually play High, and in High they kinda get kicked big time by the GH...hard to counter an army of HA when your main strongpoint is slow heavy cav...

I think that while the leading features of the AI are respected (i.e., trading nations do get a decent fleet, see Italians, Sicilians, sometimes even the Danes when they manage to get out of their hole, crusading nations do crusade (even though stupidly so at times, but that's another issue), etc), they tend to be strangely limited.
For instance, I've seen the Russians (who are not aggressive) get like all of Eastern Europe, and then simply stop expanding, for no obvious reason. They were not threatened by anybody at all. They just sat and sat and sat until the Eggy reached them and swallowed them whole. Sure, they put up a fight, but the Eggy _were_ expansionist...
I've noticed this with several other nations, like Hungarians or Poles. The non-expansionist ones seemed to stop after getting a relatively decent size of the pie...has anybody else noticed this ?

Ok, long post as it is. Enough already.

[HopAlongBunny]

Actually, I have seen quite a variation of Empires.

My latest game (Early; English) has the Byz as solid superpower #2. They hold all of their original possessions except Rhodes and everything south as far as Syria; Italy except Venice, Naples and Sicily; Finland, Novgorod, Smolensk, Muscovy; and everything in Africa between my bookends of Morocco and Egypt.

The year is 1320. The only faction either of us have anything to worry about is the ever re-emerging Pope ~:joker:

I'm playing to see if this alliance will hold from beginning to end in GA ~:)

[CherryDanish]

In the games I've played I've noted very few absolutes, largely because I like to play as different factions and I alternate the storyline based on the fact that I tend to dominate my region. What I have noted:

1) eggys ALWAYS end up as the #2 power and sometimes hold the #1 spot a while, even when I played the Elmos I went after spain and argon first then fought of the parade of crusades from france.
2) the feared golden horde always retreat when challenged and rarely threaten anyone after they take the steppes.
3) The Danes, the Pope, Aragonesse and the rebels all stay relatively passive and rarely threaten even exposed flanks. They take no terittories.
4) Turks are always in the top 3-4 factions to get greased.
5) Byz always end up on Crete and/or Cyprus.
6) Huns always turn on the Poles and always kick their butt.
7) If England doesn't attack France, the HRE dies.
8) the russians always seem to lose and retake Livona from the rebels.

Aside from these re-occuring themes I'm suprised and pleased by the dynamic outcomes of the games I've played.

[katank]

In my current English GA game, I established a border at Flanders early on and also kept Aquitaine but gave up Anjou and Normandy to the rebels.

I took Toulouse and then Aragon and remained relatively peaceful except for taking Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and the 3 Southern steppe provinces and also crusading for all 4 crusader states and Syria.

The HRE actually beat up on the French but only after I got agents did I find that Hungary has essentially displaced the HRE and the HRE was cannabalizing the French to stay alive.

So the HRE ended in Normandy and Anjou but the French died without heirs and so Ile-de-France and Champagne has been rebel for 60 years without a reemergence! Guess the suicidal heir that died on a fyrdmen's spear was their last hope---sad.

the Huns ended up in Anjour and I took Brittany and Normandy.

Now the Sicilians have ships in half the sea zones and 6 stacks waiting in Provence to gather courage to attack my 4 in Toulouse.

kinda interesting but I'm waiting for High for longbows and the mongols to arrive. jomsvikings now available to build. muwahahaha

weird campaign

[solypsist]

1) The Byzantines and Egyptians gang up on the turks, destroying them and then fight each other

The Byz and Egyptians rate as "easy" on playability, which means they start with more advantages (resources) than the Turks, who rate Hard. Naturally, the computer mathematically calculates that fighting the Turks would be more advantageous than fighting anyoen else.

2)The sicilians and the pope fight over naples after one of them takes it

Sharing the same peninsula, this will eventually have to happen, it's just like that one French territory surrounded by English territories on the campaign map.

3) The spanish alway crush the almohads and the aragonese and sometimes the Egyptians aswell

Sometimes, but not always.

4) The french always bulldoze the english and germans and end up owning all of the british isles and half of germany

Not in my games. With the French and Germans, it largely depends on who gets excommunicated first.


5) The russians and danes don't do any thing (in some games the russians conquer some of the steepes)

They get too many heirs early in the game and their upkeep soon begins to eat away at the economy. Also, they start with less territory, which means less income per turn, until alot of time has passed and farms are upgraded. Of course, the AI doesn't understand this too well, and so instead spends its money on seige workshops, etc. up front instead of on farms, and eventually the diminishing returns bankrupt the faction.


6) Germany is hit on the other side by poland and hungary

Theyy tend to ally more often than not, like the Almos and Egyptians do.

7) In most games, by the start of the high period the byzantines own all of the steepes, poland and the turkish provinces

Again, not always. And usually if they do, the Mongols and Sicilians start to take a good chunk of that away.

[Lonewarrior]

I just noticed something in my game. IN the ever struggle between the Russians and Mongols, the mongols always leave the russian with a small manpower force. But yet they never finish the russians off. But to they never finish russia because they must take over hungary and show of their power to the european warlords? ~:confused: ~:confused: ~:confused:

[katank]

perhaps, the expansion AI is a bit flawed.

with a few hundred guys in surrounding provinces, the Mongols will still be content to hurl themselves at a heavily fortified Kiev in bridge battle turn after turn.

they don't expand to the north far enough to kill off the Russians and I've never seen a mongol force in Finland yet (final Russian refuge in some cases).