Too much AI cash?

[Iskandr]

Just my experience, but so far, playing on Med/Med (I just want to see all the pretty buildings and units), it seems that whatever you guys did to give the AI more money, you might have gone a little overboard.

Examples:

1. Playing as Bactria, go to war with Selucia. After first couple of battles, I am now getting spammed with all-cav armies. Every one of these (seen 3 stacks so far of between 5-9 cav plus a handful of assorted trash foot) is as expensive as my entire army. They have also managed to hold on to all of their starting provinces, and expand some in Arabia and Asia Minor. I know they have a big economy, but they have money to burn if they are buying all cav.

2. My spy wandered over to Italy, just because. Scanning Roman stacks, I counted: 15 out of 18 units were triarii...and 2 of the other 3 appeared to be hired mercenaries. Once again, a sure sign the AI is overflowing with cash.

3. Playing as Makedonia the other day, noticed Mytelene get bribed, on average, every other turn for 8 turns (started out mine, then Epeirote, then Greek, then Hayasdan). The Greek one might have been a revolt though. The Hayasdan immediatly bought 19 mercs to hold it!

4. Protectorates- if you make an AI country your protectorate, you get, basically, all the cash you will ever need. Like, 25K+ per turn. This was from a 2 province Pontus. Which also had two full stack armies and at least 10 units in each city.

So, this is on Medium...I shudder to see how much the AI has to waste on VH. I realize that in part, this is an attempt to make up for CAs very weak AI, but maybe something a little less heavy-handed might be more fun? As the Makedonians, I didn't mind, it made it pretty challenging. As the Bactrians, I basically am getting swamped with units- it's not hard, it's annoying.

Iskandr

[edyzmedieval]

Try on Very Hard/Very Hard.

I'm sure you'll like it a lot better.

[Warlord 11]

The AI's Armies don't annoy me. But as the romans, Epeiros bribed all of my cities except Rome and Caupa!:dizzy2:

[bigforearms]

4. Protectorates- if you make an AI country your protectorate, you get, basically, all the cash you will ever need. Like, 25K+ per turn. This was from a 2 province Pontus. Which also had two full stack armies and at least 10 units in each city.

Iskandr


Interesting. I've started (and quit) a few games with Pontos. My games have typically been me capturing two additional cities with ports, then disbanding all of my army and navy except for maybe one or two garrison pikemen (total, not per city), and trying to recover from the 25k debt I incurred capturing those cities. The best I could make was 1-1.5k per turn on the highest stable tax rates. And yeah, I get trade agreements with everyone.

25k per turn would be nice.

[Chester]

Carthage and Iberia have shxt loads of money. It's the year 238 and Iberia has still yet to make one enemy or ally.

The money is growing on trees over there! :juggle2:

[galathas]

Money is not the only problem. I have been playing the Casse and have conquered all of Britain. After that I invaded gaul wich was already mostly under roman rule. The Averni have alrady been annihilated so i thought to help my hard pressed cousins the aedui. I have taken 4 roman cities and the aedui have also taken two with my help. During this war in Gaul i have killed 10 Familiy members. But for every member i take down another one appears.

And these equites singulares are a real pain, not to mention the equites consularii which the romans generales sometimes seem to get.

As for the money issue i have noticed this too. So i would have a question to EB. What about blockading or not giving trade rights to certain AI Factions. If they get cash all the time is there any use in that? Or do they just get x-fold more money from their cities? It would be nice to know. Since blockading a port costs me 1500 for the upkeep of my fleet?

Oh and sorry for my manners. I have posted a few times and have forgotten to say that this is the best mod i have played so far. Awesome skins! When playing the casse i use boatroas, maha guyroas, those caledonians, some champions and golberi mercs and some german mercs, and when i see this army in battle it really looks like i united the tribes. Great work!

[MeroFromVero]

Or do they just get x-fold more money from their cities?

It appears, from opening RomeShell and pressing the up button, that the script processes an add money command every turn (to the tune of 30 thousand Mnai!) for any faction whose treasury goes below a certain threshold... except for yours, of course :P

This means the AI factions have bottomless treasuries, basically.

That explains the protectorate thing. The protectorate goes below the threshold and gets 30K, which then goes to their protector at the end of the turn. Since that means they're still under their threshold, they get another 30K the next turn, which they also pass along as tribute, etc.

As for the family members, galthas, this is a vanilla thing. The game tries to keep every faction at a certain ratio of generals to provinces. If any faction goes below that ratio, the chances for adoption and man of the hour go up. So if you slaughter all their generals but they still have a lot of territory, the game will start throwing adoptees at them.

[Chester]

Update- Iberia is now at war with Carthage and I'm taking advantage! Sorry for doubting you EB!

[galathas]

Thanks mero,
that brings some light into this matter. I am no modder so maybe this is a stupid idea but i ll post it anyway. Is it not possible to regulate AI income differently as player income. Say a player would get 1000 mnai for a certain city could the ai not get 3500 mnai for the same city. Maybe this could be handeled over trade so that a port blockade would still have an effect. I alway liked the idea of ruining trade income of my foes.

The way it is now is sort of awkward. To help the AI i would even say that upkeep cost should be abolished for the AI as long they dont have unlimited money to spend. You cant have a family member of another faction roaming around on your territory because you dont know if he will have a full stack merc army the next turn.

As for the familiy members i understand. But a 100 men strong unit of heavy cav for every roman famimly member is a bit much. i only get 45 or for my casse chariots. I have noticed this to be a balancing problem with rome against other AI factions. After somtime rome alway has a lot of (and i mean 4-5) familiy members with gold chevrons. They beat the crap out of any gaul army.

As i said i have no idea about modding and dont know if my suggestions are possible or not.

[Sdragon]

The main problem I find is that they strip the population from their cities, most of the time when I capture one its got 400 or so pop. Then once they can't spend their money on troops it all goes into the hands of the diplomats.

[LorDBulA]

Please post names of cities with low population.
Not at start of the campaigne but later ofcource.
We have script that should remedy this but as you can see we have some problems with it.

As it is now we add money to AI by province and by threshold.
We just couldnt decide what is better. Its still very much WIP.

[paullus]

The Makedonians bled their populations dry in my game as KH. By the time (about 264 or so) I was able to take the offensive, there were about 400-500 people apiece in Mytilene, Corinth, and Demetrias. The large numbers of 240-man akontistai units in all their armies probably contributed.

[Sdragon]

I can confirm, playing as Greeks the Macedonians stripped ALL of their cities dry. All Seleucid cities near Pontus had between 400 and 1500 people, not sure if that’s normal, I don’t know the starting pops yet.

[jebes]

LorDBulA,
in regards to

"As it is now we add money to AI by province and by threshold.
We just couldnt decide what is better. Its still very much WIP."

What are the pros of giving the AI money by threshold and what are the cons of giving extra money by province? From this thread, it just seems to be an easy decision, but I am sure a lot of thought went into it on your end?
Thanks

This cash problem almost doomed my Aedui Campaign. I started an early war against the Arveni and had beaten them back to one province. I hoped to just hold them there until my coffers refilled enough that I could replace my lost troops. A spy told me their only town had a -10,000 income. So I waited, but they kept sending huge armies at me while my army suffered from each victory. Finally, they bribed Gergovia and lay siege to Bibracte in one turn. Luckily I had enough money at that point to take the war to them and wipe them out, but it wasn't until this thread that I understood how they could survive -10,000 income a turn and still bribe my town.

[wolftrapper78]

I also noticed that factions that I was dominating still had way more money than me.
The Maks had only Pella and Mytillene and my spies said they were making -5000 and -500 respectively and yet they were able to field four armies larger than my one big army. I controlled the whole of Greece and Crete and Calchis and was struggling to make ends meet.

Needless to say this bothered me.

[Divinus Arma]

This cash problem almost doomed my Aedui Campaign. I started an early war against the Arveni and had beaten them back to one province. I hoped to just hold them there until my coffers refilled enough that I could replace my lost troops. A spy told me their only town had a -10,000 income. So I waited, but they kept sending huge armies at me while my army suffered from each victory. Finally, they bribed Gergovia and lay siege to Bibracte in one turn. Luckily I had enough money at that point to take the war to them and wipe them out, but it wasn't until this thread that I understood how they could survive -10,000 income a turn and still bribe my town.

The Aedui Campaign is very very difficult in my opinion. In fact, I would argue that the Arverni and Aedui civil war creates the most difficult starting position in the game. Even more so than KH, and they are a tough start too.

The Aedui and Arverni each have the same death bed problems: Both have a mortal enemy splitting their territory (each other). Worse yet, they have the Sweboz to the east, who are secluded enough to rush some local rebel tribes fast enough to secure a little time. The Sweboz then likely expand East: right to you! The Aedui/Arverni also have the Romans to the South, so that, obviously, presents a huge problem within the first 40-60 turns (10-15 years). Finally, pushing West gives you Iberia and Pushing North runs you into the Casse.

Yep. Most difficult campaign I have experienced yet. I recommend abandoning your southern province if you are the Aedui and go immediately for the rebel city to the South, and the Arverni Capital to the South of that. This will buy you time by creating one border: your eastern border. Allow your southern province to fall after you destroy everything inside. On your first turn, you should raise every heavy infantry unit you can muster with what little cash you have and can generate by abandoning your southern province. This is because you cant raise infantry again for many turns and you need the heavies to stick it out in the fight.

Once you take the Rebel Town just North of the Arverni Capital, and the Arverni Capital as well, now you can push east. Your goal should be to push the Arverni South into Transalpine Gaul in the Northern Itallian peninsula. By doing this, you can block the mountain passes with forts (for a campaign wall to buy you time to bring up the defenses). The result is that Arverni will get eaten alive by the Romans while you consolidate your North Western holdings and establish a seconded blocked border with Iberia at the mountain range there.

With the Alps and the Northern Iberian Mountains acting as your walls, you are free to build your economy, while fending off the Sweboz. The Iberians will stay occupied against Carthage for a little while, and the Arverni will stay occupied with Rome.

I hope this helps!

[swippy]

i have big money problems too!!! i played as the germans and my city makes -4000 gold each turn! its getting very annoying! i think i have -50000 gold right now :(

[Rilder]

dude... EB team i know you wana make the game hard in all...but your also going for realism and giving the AI a bottomless Treasury IS NOT REALISTIC

and some of us find the game hard enough as it was in 1.2 vanilla

[Slartibardfast]

[QUOTE=jebes]LorDBulA,
in regards to


This cash problem almost doomed my Aedui Campaign. I started an early war against the Arveni and had beaten them back to one province.

[Foot]

dude... EB team i know you wana make the game hard in all...but your also going for realism and giving the AI a bottomless Treasury IS NOT REALISTIC

and some of us find the game hard enough as it was in 1.2 vanilla

I guess the EB team made concessions because the AI is definately no historically accurate in their actions or behaviour.

I wouldn't say its perfect but it is understandable. Perhaps make the cash benefits based partly on number of provinces so you dont get the problem of the last province of a faction being able to pull so much money out of its hat.

Foot

[Slartibardfast]

"This cash problem almost doomed my Aedui Campaign. I started an early war against the Arveni and had beaten them back to one province." - Jebes.

Mate I went the other way, as the Arveni, on the same settings. After 4 years I'd reduced the Aedui to two provinces, masacred every Aedui field army, killing 6 of their family menmbers, including their king, and notched up 5 famous victories.

During this time I built one set of roads, one tavern, recruited one foot unit and one diplomat. Despite this and controlling 5 provinces the Arveni privy purse totalled a whopping minus 70,000. At my now promising quarterly profit of +44 per turn I should be in the black in about 380 years.

Similar to your campain, the Aedui bribed both my diplomats and two of my original towns, one of them twice, and had just started sending massive armies from out of no-where.:furious3:

You can imagine the Aedui diplomates sales pitch. "Look, I know your Arveni and you guys hate us and we've been at war for half a century, and right now your high king's wipen' the floor with us really badly right across the map but would you like to join the loosing side for lets say ... what $10,000?" I know the EB team are trying to compenfor a weak AI but is such a result realistic?

My own factions dismal accounts seem to arrise from an system accounting error at the start. The faction income colomn has the right total but lists it as a negative. I checked this for the Aedui, and Casse player campains and its the same for them as well.

On the bright side the mod looks AbFab, has many good ideas and I've learnt more interesting ancient history in 4 hours playing than I did during my entire schooling. TKS to the EB team and I hope the next beta improves on an already promising mod.

[Greek_fire19]

Is there any way you can alter the whole bribing thing so it never happens? Or at least to discourage the Ai from doing it. I can deal with the huge armies but as the seleucids the ptolemaics keep bribing random cities in the far east of my empire, which is really distracting when im trying to fght a war in Phoenecia.

[Malrubius]

Is there any way you can alter the whole bribing thing so it never happens? Or at least to discourage the Ai from doing it. I can deal with the huge armies but as the seleucids the ptolemaics keep bribing random cities in the far east of my empire, which is really distracting when im trying to fght a war in Phoenecia.

If you remove diplomats from the game, there will be no bribery. No diplomacy, either. :no: It cuts out possible exploits, but also cuts out some fun, I think.

[jerby]

the bribery is a pain. but like divinus said. you gusy know how to pick teh hardest factions...
When playing Macedon I got my econmy stable. and ready for expantion. without getting in the red at all...

and my Seleucid campaign is real fun now...It's quiet comfortable to get 10k every turn (but i ahev to sepnd in on 20 city's...)
I can finance a campaigning army of 10 pezhetairoi, 3 thureophori/peltastai/Judiotai taxeiis

but sadly enoug that army alsways gives my generals the contradictign traits : "likes easy victory" wich downs his chances of getting command stars and "clearly victorious"wich ups it...

[Malrubius]

but sadly enoug that army alsways gives my generals the contradictign traits : "likes easy victory" wich downs his chances of getting command stars and "clearly victorious"wich ups it...

They're not contradictory, actually, but describe 2 different things: your battle odds before the battle, and your level of success in the battle (heroic victory, clear victory, close victory, draw, etc). Fighting easy battles makes it harder to get stars. Just as in vanilla, big wins are better than big losses, but the difficulty of the battle is a much bigger component now.

I tried to make these cumulative, to let you "keep score" and see how good your generals perform, but there could be some problems with them.

"Likes easy battles" means your general has the odds in his favor before the battle. If you keep the odds 1:1, you'll get "Even odds fighter". You're likely to see "Perennial Underdog" on AI generals who are outnumbered or if you fight against the odds. "Against All Odds" is the impossible odds, like 5:1. You'd rarely see that one.

For the cumulative victory tallies, you'll see these:
- Barely Victorious: obtained through close victories.
- Normally Victorious: obtained through average victories.
- Clearly Victorious: from clear victories.
- Crushes His Opponents: from heroic victories.

There are versions for defeat, but you shouldn't ever see those, right? ~;)
Your general gets points for fighting battles and his level of victory. The harder the battle and the greater the victory, the more points he gets. The more points, the better his chances of becoming a better tactician or leader (results in command star boosts).

[jerby]

makes sense, thanks.

but (spoiler request?) how much does each of those effect your changes for command-stars.
clearly vict. ups teh chances. and Likes easy vict. downs them. do those two cancell each other out?

to make myself clear. what percentages (if it works that way) do all those traits in/decrease your chances of command-stars?

[khelvan]

dude... EB team i know you wana make the game hard in all...but your also going for realism and giving the AI a bottomless Treasury IS NOT REALISTICNo matter what we do to the AI, IT WILL NOT BE REALISTIC. Realism has nothing to do with the AI. It is dumb as a rock, when some of these factions had the most intelligent leaders of the ancient world, and best generals. Give it money or let it be bankrupt, it still won't reflect reality. If you want to argue against AI assistance, realism is not your answer.

[Malrubius]

makes sense, thanks.

but (spoiler request?) how much does each of those effect your changes for command-stars.
clearly vict. ups teh chances. and Likes easy vict. downs them. do those two cancell each other out?

to make myself clear. what percentages (if it works that way) do all those traits in/decrease your chances of command-stars?

Heh, I won't go into all the details now (I'm at my day job ~;) ), but it's all there in the edct.txt for anybody who wants to look.

The cumulative victory and odds traits are just indicators of your general's history, and don't actually have any effects at this time. The big determinants are the BattleOdds and your general's energy (Vigorous or Langorous). Vigorous generals who lose very hard battles will learn more than Vigorous generals who win easy battles. Langorous generals will have a harder time than Vigorous generals.

[Iskandr]

Well, to get back to the original topic...is there any chance of maybe reducing this bonus bext patch? Or perhaps having it only function when the player has so many provinces/so much money themself? As I said, as Makedonia (or Karthasdan or Roma for that matter), it's not that big a deal. When playing Bactria or one of the other truly dirt-poor factions, it's a real buzzkill seeing your heroic victory that costs you most of your army leads to, if you're lucky, a 2 turn respite from the enemies spam armies.

In a related vein, this talk about "standing armies", while correct in the historical sense, is unfortunately rendered completely unworkable by the CA engine. For example, playing as Bactria, I have been at war with Seluekia for a little over 50 years now, with at least one siege a year. They refuse any sort of peace offer, no matter how many times I defeat them, even if I offer to give them all their cities back. I don't recall any historical examples of this level of aggression. That's not including the massive and constant spam of rebels and brigands. Additionally, the way recruiting and training works in the RTW engine makes "levying" an army for the campaign season, the historical method, impossible. Not only do units cost more to raise than maintain (approx. 4 turns of maintenance = recruitment cost) but they obviously start out as raw recruits again, when for most, if not all factions, soldiers served more than 1 campaign even if they did disband for the Winter. This is made worse by the still ahistorically slow marching rates- even with 4 turns a year, it takes an Army a year to cover what can be covered in reality in 2 months or less. Rates of march have, unsurprisingly, not changed much since the days of Alexander, and he covered vastly greater distances than would be possible using the RTW engine.

Anyway, that's just my thoughts about that...I think that, considering the essentially wrong mechanics of RTW, the EB team has done a tremendous job of making the game more historical, more realistic, more informative and more fun. I just think that in this area, the engine is winning out over the modders, and maybe more work needs to be done, if indeed it can be fixed.

thanks,
Iskandr

[Dunhill]

I've been playing a bit and I noticed that the Romans have the cash thing just about right. The tax is already set at very high at the begining, I think, and you dont go into the red right away.

However, I've tried two Getia games and I go into the red right off the bat, even with careful management I'm down to very low income at best (after deleting most of my standing army). Which I'm fine with, but it seems that without a bit of tweaking you won't live past the Makedonian mother stack that will come when you are just about ready to expand.

So, I'd say some factions might need some start cash tweaking?

Otherwise I'm very happy with the mod. It does need some final touching up, and I think the community will do a great job filling in the missing bits and pieces.

I've had no CTDs at all, and while some of the loads are a bit slow I dont mind.

Great work guys and it came with a few days to spare in my holiday vacation time.

Cheers,

[khelvan]

Sorry, the AI does not get 30,000 per turn. It gets 30,000 on the first turn only.

[galathas]

Sorry, the AI does not get 30,000 per turn. It gets 30,000 on the first turn only.
But they do get extra money dont they? I am a bit confused because most people said there is some sort of threshold. Do they get extra money and if they do how and when and how much do they get?

A second question of mine was why do i get 25 k per turn if a make the aedui my protectorate? They only had two or three provinces, where does all this cash come from?

Sorry a lot of questions but i really have to figure this out.:help:

[khelvan]

The old script gave the AI money based on the number of provinces it had, as well as a bonus on the first turn. The new one will only assist the AI if it is bankrupt, and that may still be overcome by the player causing the AI financial hardship.

[Geoffrey S]

So if I understand correctly, in the new script the AI will receive bonus cash when falling too far into debt, but not so much that it's not possible for human players to force them into making an overall loss every turn? Because thus far, the current cash bonuses for AI factions is the only major problem I've got with the mod, that seemingly thoroughly weakened factions still make enough money to raise large armies despite my best efforts (blockading, besieging etc.); it doesn't instill much feel of progress in a campaign game.

But at least it does mean they present me with interesting field battles, unlike the original RTW.