View Full Version : The QUEST against ALL-ELITE armies
After a good few campaigns there's a common theme that unfolds as the human plays.
1. The start involves struggling to raise effective armies and balancing one's tight finances between building troops and infrastructure. Mounting any kind of offensive campaign requires a good deal of thought and having more than one neighbouring enemy can be fatal.
2. THe mid game is somewhere between 1 above and 3 below.
3. The late game involves more money than one knows what to do with, the ability to field several ALL-elite armies, and all the while affording to build any infrastructure that's considered worthwhile at this stage. In fact, having such staggering earnings means that the subtle differences in unit price and upkeep, which seemed to make a noticeable difference at the start, no longer have any relevance (e.g. if you have 50K florins, a knight unit costing 900 is no different to a town militia costing 300). Typically, at this stage one is also at war on several fronts and able to cope admirably.
Somewhere the good balance that existed at the start, which made the human have to think strategically about what was more critical to build and who to attack, gets lost as the game progresses. I've certainly experienced the end game enough to know there's little strategy when choosing what units to build; I just triple click on all the best units I can from each castle I own.
So how can this be combatted without drastically altering the early game too much? Well here are a few thoughts for discussion:
a) Proportionally increasing the cost of units, such that the mid range get a modest hike and the elites get a larger hike?
b) Proportionally increasing the upkeep of units in the same way?
c) Maybe something different altogether like increasing the effect of corruption as the empire grows.
Either way, clearly all these will affect the AI as well as the human, but which one would you consider the most appropriate and why? Or, is there another option that's more appropriate?
Of them all, (c) probably affects the AI least since the AI is far less likely to forge a large empire. However, I'm also interested in the other two. (a) would make building units more difficult and taking care of them more important, but making them too pricy might inadvertantly discourage the AI from building them at all. (b) would punish someone for having too many sitting around doing nothing, but might make someone use them more suicidally, since the high upkeep would encourage them to be used and destroyed rather than kept and maintained. Plus if the cost is still minimal, then building a new unit isn't a problem.
Regards
I went for C in my LTC mod, as well as reducing the recruitment pools and replensihment rate for elite units.
I hoped the unit caps would help deal with this problem, but they are not really binding enough to do so. If they were tighter (like the one merchant per settlement cap), they could help.
However, I am not sure the all-elite armies issue is a big problem for SP as the player can just use some self-discipline and the AI does not go over board on elites in my experience (and when it does, it might be terrific fun to fight - some of the early AI Danish armies I have fought have been seriously hardcore).
I normally hate "self-discipline" as a solution to a game problem. This is because I don't have any self-discipline. For example, in MTW, it would really hurt me not to spam a sea-wide trade network, even though the AI never does and the lucrative money breaks the game.
However, in the case of army composition, it is easier to apply self-discipline because you can look at historical army compositions and get an external standard that is not arbitrary.
For example, on the RTR forums, there is a wonderful thread giving illustrative historical armies for each faction. Playing with a genuine pre-Marian army is so much more fun that just spamming principes and funditores.
It's a little harder in M2TW, as armies were much less uniform than a Roman legion and there really is no one historical army composition for each faction. But some simple rules of thumb are not hard to conceive. For example, only take one Scots Guard if French etc.
To be honest, I have not found the "all-elites" problem a big issue in my SP England game, as England does not really seem to have notable elites. Knights seems much of a muchness, regardless of era. Armoured swordsmen seem the best infantry, but are not that "elite". There are various longbowmen, but they all do the job. The spears are weak, but you may as well take a few as meatshields against an AI cav charge. You end up with an army that is not a million miles away from a historical English army. Historically, the Hundred Years War English army was fairly "elite" or at least semi-professional - they did not bother to ship loads of militia to France. The French tended to load up more on feudal foot, as it was easily available. I can see the "all-elites" being a bigger problem for factions with truly elite and rare units like Varangians, JHI, etc.
I'd be interested to hear people's suggestions on what would constitute historical army compositions for M2TW factions. It's one thing we debated a little for the HRE PBM we have started in the Throne Room. This is what we came up with for house rules to try to make our HRE armies look historical:
The following rules apply for field armies of 15+ or more units.
Generals - max 2 units
Knights - cavalry or foot, max 8 units inc. generals
[The class of knights is therefore: Dismtd Feudal knights; Dismtd Imperial knights; Dismtd Gothic knights; Mailed knights; Feudal knights; Imperial knights; Teutonic knights; General’s bodyguard; Gothic knights; plus any mercenary knights included those great dismounted knights you get in the Holy Land.)
Total cavalry - maximum 8 units, inc mounted knights and generals
[Non-knightly cavalry includes: Mounted crossbowmen ; Reiters; Merchant cavalry; Mounted sergeants]
Artillery - maximum 2 units (5 in a siege - if caught in a field battle immediately withdraw excess of over two)
Foot missiles - maximum 6 units including artillery
[Foot missiles include: Peasant archers; Peasant crossbowmen; Crossbow militia; Pavisse crossbowmen; Arquebusiers; Handgunners ]
Total elite heavy infantry - max 6
[Elite infantry comprises Zweihander; Forlorn Hope; Landsknechts; dismounted knights and equivalent mercs - e.g. Galllowglass?]
Other spears & feudal foot - unlimited
[This includes: Peasants; Town militia; Halberd militia; Spear militia; Sergeant spearmen; Armoured spearmen; Crusader sergeants; Pike militia]
For armies of size 7-14, the above limits are halved.
No more than half an army can be mercenary. Crusader mercenaries (crusader sergeants, crusader knights, pilgrims, fanatics) can count as natives.
grinningman
01-18-2007, 13:06
The problem is that you earn too much cash as your empire expands. Civ4 tried to solve this problem by charging a city maintenance cost that increased as you built more cities. Would it be possible to introduce a similar upkeep cost per province that increases with total empire size, representing the cost of a bureaucracy?
The problem is that you earn too much cash as your empire expands. Civ4 tried to solve this problem by charging a city maintenance cost that increased as you built more cities. Would it be possible to introduce a similar upkeep cost per province that increases with total empire size, representing the cost of a bureaucracy?
Possibly through scripting. In my LTC mod i just made corrpution and other settlement factors more important so it ws not as easy to make lots of cash.
grinningman
01-18-2007, 13:26
Yeah, that's one way to balance it. But since the cost per province doesn't increase as you capture more provinces, you'll always eventually get to a point where you have too much money as your empire grows.
Scaling the individual province upkeep cost with the number of provinces in your empire means that capturing more provinces isn't always a good thing, like it is now. It sounds like there will be lots of interesting possibilities with scripting...
Lusted, how much did you modify the SIF_corruption pip modifier by? And is it just affected by distance to capital or is it also related to number of settlements?
Yeah, I also agree that the vanilla unit caps and replenishment rates have absolutely no impact on what units you want to build. The fact that so many are available in 3's straight from a castle upgrade almost negates the need to build the corresponding barracks which will enable another 3. I'm considering a major overhaul of the recruitment system with regards to castles to encourage the building of the stables and barracks line of buildings more. I'm sure the AI wastes plenty of money on these buildings when in reality, in vanilla, they're not even necessary half the time.
Lusted, when you were modifying the castle recruitment pools were there any units specific to the castle upgrades that would be lost if all unit entries were simply deleted? Or are all units at least replicated somewhere in the barracks/stables upgrade lines?
Jambo i removed all units from the castles/alls buildings and moved them to barrakcs/stables so the ai has to build them.
I just increased corruption, and the distance to capital penalty, as well as religious unrest and tweaked some other things.
a) Proportionally increasing the cost of units, such that the mid range get a modest hike and the elites get a larger hike?
b) Proportionally increasing the upkeep of units in the same way?
Unfortunately this solution, as well as lowering the ability to recruit elites and/or cavalry, hurts the AI recruitment more than it's going to hurt me as a player. I'll wait to get the units I want in my army, but the AI won't, it will recruit whatever it can and waste money on garbage. So I'll just end up fighting lots of low-class armies, which is no fun. I therefore increased the availability of good troops in higher tier buildings, and eliminated some of the garbage units altogether from those buildings too, while I balance my own armies through self-restraint (that is, based on my ideas of combined arms). For now it seems to result in a much more entertaining game.
Personally I don't find money or all-elite armies to be too much of an issue, but I tend to rapidly expand rather than turtle. The burden of assimilating a large amount of new territory is a financial drain that also ties down a lot of troops, and seems very historically accurate too.
Right now I'm playing as the Holy Roman Empire and I've wiped most other factions off the map - I control all of Western and Central Europe, to the Balkans and Lithuania, and Africa to the edge of Egypt. Most turns I have enough money to start building in all my cities, but not every turn, and that doesn't include what I need for army recruitment. I still have the Holy Land and the steppe to crack, which will be difficult because I'll need an army of priests to assist me in addition to my own armies. Speaking of armies, they're far from just Reiters and Gothic Knights - they vary widely based on what area of the map they're deployed in. I try to establish troop production regions, with Italy a base for militia types, further north for heavy cavalry and infantry, and my heartland in Germany for artillery, but I move so quickly that it's impractical to do anything but build a few units and ship them off as reinforcements. So just through circumstance, I have lots of low-tier units supported by a few elites, and I fight a lot of pitched battles - if I waited until I had overwhelming supremacy in every single fight I'd probably still be mucking about in France. BTW, it's only about 1330 in my game, so I have not spent any time turtling. So for me, the key seems to be to be aggressive, and the game ends up finding an equilibrium.
Unfortunately this solution, as well as lowering the ability to recruit elites and/or cavalry, hurts the AI recruitment more than it's going to hurt me as a player. I'll wait to get the units I want in my army, but the AI won't, it will recruit whatever it can and waste money on garbage. So I'll just end up fighting lots of low-class armies, which is no fun. I therefore increased the availability of good troops in higher tier buildings, and eliminated some of the garbage units altogether from those buildings too, while I balance my own armies through self-restraint (that is, based on my ideas of combined arms). For now it seems to result in a much more entertaining game.
In terms of (a) then yes I agree. Increasing the cost of units can and probably will deter the AI from building them, period. However, I'm not sure the AI factors in upkeep when it builds units. If the AI has less elite units which it invariably does, then (b) would hurt the player far more than the AI.
I've never been one for self-restraint unfortunately. I get bored extremely quickly if I find myself beginning to compromise my strategies to accommodate a lacklustre AI. I'd much rather pump the AI up and really have to fight tooth and nail to win.
The idea of reducing the number of low tier units in higher tier buildings interests me though. Quite a tricky and time-consuming one to mod though given the size and complexity of the EDB file.
In terms of (a) then yes I agree. Increasing the cost of units can and probably will deter the AI from building them, period. However, I'm not sure the AI factors in upkeep when it builds units. If the AI has less elite units which it invariably does, then (b) would hurt the player far more than the AI.
I've never been one for self-restraint unfortunately. I get bored extremely quickly if I find myself beginning to compromise my strategies to accommodate a lacklustre AI. I'd much rather pump the AI up and really have to fight tooth and nail to win.
The idea of reducing the number of low tier units in higher tier buildings interests me though. Quite a tricky and time-consuming one to mod though given the size and complexity of the EDB file.
Upkeep will eat up AI finances as well, meaning it will have less money, and recruit cheaper units. I don't know 100% that this is how things work, but I believe that they in fact do.
I am not accommodating the lackluster AI, I just want to field armies that feature combined arms. It's more fun for me to have a well balanced diverse army than to have an all-gothic knight army. Of course I want better quality units in my armies, but for me it's boring to have a single unit type army in the first place.
Yep, it took me one whole evening to mod EDB, but I think it was worth the time. I really want to play and enjoy the game according to what feels right for me.
Von Nanega
01-18-2007, 14:42
I think the best way to "slow" down unit production is to have a time set for recruiting elite type units. I you just captured a castle in the Holy Land that was a Muslim factions troop production center, it seems to be unlikely that a significant number of dismounted foot knights would be available for recruitment. Just the month before the castle was putting out islamic troop types! I have made my house rule be that untill I have owned the territory for ten turns I will not produce elite units. That makes things harder as to retrain, I have to sail them home, or wait ten turns!
Upkeep will eat up AI finances as well, meaning it will have less money, and recruit cheaper units. I don't know 100% that this is how things work, but I believe that they in fact do.
True, but to combat that I've made a campaign script to give the AI a cash boost every turn. :)
I'm loathe to go into the unrest and public order modifiers since they just irritate me if they become to involved. Doubling or trebling the corruption modifier however, seems like a neat way to combat the wealth of large empires.
Shogun and Medieval 1 dealt admirably with this problem.
Sort of. Since it had a "risk province map" going into war meant potentially facing the entire armed forces of your opponent, or a great part of it. So you didn't attack or declared war if you couldn't take the counter-attack, sea-invasions or the multiple stacks.
Since RTW, with the change to the 3D map, it doesn't work like this anymore. The Armies are spread all over the territory and you usually face no more than 2 stacks at a time. Sometimes, later in the game or in the case of the Mongols/Timurids, more stacks roam around together, but it's never a win-or-loose situation. You can beat the enemy and take a town, no matter, he will rebuild granted there is still something left. You can also loose your men, you will have time to rebuild aswell and re-capture any lost territory.
I consider the move to the new map very stupid. As beautiful as it is and as cool as it is to move around with the stacks, the strategic element was destroyed and it became a loooooooong game of attrition. Note well, the point here is not about the game lasting long, but that the game becomes reduced to a prolonged battle of attrition where strategy is irrelevant as long as you can win the tactical battles (diplomacy, what for? Decision, what for?). Since you are guaranteed to win most tactical battles, unless you fight severely outnumbered on purpose, only the initial years offer any strategic gameplay value where your decisions matter. To attack or not to attack later on is meaningless.
We seriously need to rethink the strategic map. The strategic element of the old map needs to return. When you declare war on somebody, you must face consequences.
Philbert
01-18-2007, 15:26
To be honest, I don't see what you describe exactly as a problem. I love the latter stages of the game, where I rule supreme and are the scourge of the world. Because of the struggling in the beginning, I also have a sense that I have earned it.
This is also the reason I am mostly a medium/medium player...
Shogun and Medieval 1 dealt admirably with this problem.
Sort of. Since it had a "risk province map" going into war meant potentially facing the entire armed forces of your opponent, or a great part of it. So you didn't attack or declared war if you couldn't take the counter-attack, sea-invasions or the multiple stacks.
Since RTW, with the change to the 3D map, it doesn't work like this anymore. The Armies are spread all over the territory and you usually face no more than 2 stacks at a time. Sometimes, later in the game or in the case of the Mongols/Timurids, more stacks roam around together, but it's never a win-or-loose situation. You can beat the enemy and take a town, no matter, he will rebuild granted there is still something left. You can also loose your men, you will have time to rebuild aswell and re-capture any lost territory.
I consider the move to the new map very stupid. As beautiful as it is and as cool as it is to move around with the stacks, the strategic element was destroyed and it became a loooooooong game of attrition. Note well, the point here is not about the game lasting long, but that the game becomes reduced to a prolonged battle of attrition where strategy is irrelevant as long as you can win the tactical battles (diplomacy, what for? Decision, what for?). Since you are guaranteed to win most tactical battles, unless you fight severely outnumbered on purpose, only the initial years offer any strategic gameplay value where your decisions matter. To attack or not to attack later on is meaningless.
We seriously need to rethink the strategic map. The strategic element of the old map needs to return. When you declare war on somebody, you must face consequences.
I agree 100% with that post. The AI is simply too easy in too many ways, for this reason: The game was made too complicated for the AI to handle as well as the player. Giving the AI piles of money each turn seems to get them to recruit stacks of town militia, and I can't think of any way to fix this, Ive tried doubling the cost of the cheap militia units and making their recruitment pools slow to replenish and not very big, but they just ended up having LESS stacks then before, but the existing stacks were made up of town militia primarily.
I think I will be going back to SPQR TW again until a mod comes that solidly fixes the difficulty problem and makes the game interesting.
I think the City/castle system was poorly implemented especially as the AI is concerned.
Lord_hazard
01-18-2007, 16:55
Shogun and Medieval 1 dealt admirably with this problem.
Sort of. Since it had a "risk province map" going into war meant potentially facing the entire armed forces of your opponent, or a great part of it. So you didn't attack or declared war if you couldn't take the counter-attack, sea-invasions or the multiple stacks.
Since RTW, with the change to the 3D map, it doesn't work like this anymore. The Armies are spread all over the territory and you usually face no more than 2 stacks at a time. Sometimes, later in the game or in the case of the Mongols/Timurids, more stacks roam around together, but it's never a win-or-loose situation. You can beat the enemy and take a town, no matter, he will rebuild granted there is still something left. You can also loose your men, you will have time to rebuild aswell and re-capture any lost territory.
I consider the move to the new map very stupid. As beautiful as it is and as cool as it is to move around with the stacks, the strategic element was destroyed and it became a loooooooong game of attrition. Note well, the point here is not about the game lasting long, but that the game becomes reduced to a prolonged battle of attrition where strategy is irrelevant as long as you can win the tactical battles (diplomacy, what for? Decision, what for?). Since you are guaranteed to win most tactical battles, unless you fight severely outnumbered on purpose, only the initial years offer any strategic gameplay value where your decisions matter. To attack or not to attack later on is meaningless.
We seriously need to rethink the strategic map. The strategic element of the old map needs to return. When you declare war on somebody, you must face consequences.
Totally agree, when i play RTW and M2TW i feel that something is different like theres something missing, i didnt get the totalwar feeling when playing RTW and M2TW as when i played Shogun and MTW, and now i think i know why.
But to deal with the elite army issue, something ive been against from day one, maybe a simple limit to how many you can have in an army? Because having a limit similar to the one with the merchants wont eliminate elite armies simple make it so you can only have one elite army, which is one too many. Units like the scots guard should have a limit of one unit per army, etc.
In trying to make the end-game (by which I mean the part of the game during which you control most of the world and have crushed anyone who ever had any chance of stopping you and are an invincible military power in the final stages of achieving your goals) more challenging, I believe you're ignoring another important part of the game which is way to easy: the AFTER-game.
Someone should write a script where, after you've achieved your campaign goals, finished the game, watched the ending, read the credits, and turned off your computer, a group of very large, hairy men with axes and funny accents break down your door and attack your home, and you have to defeat them with, uh, tactics, or something.
Also, enemy units should be able to fly, cavalry should be vulnerable to tall grass, and all computer factions should use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch against you at least once a battle.
These good enough ai stacks for you?(all taken from LTC 2.0 with edited recruitment pools, no units recruitable from walls/castle building, and edited unit csots).
https://img92.imageshack.us/img92/8797/denmark1rx3.jpg
https://img186.imageshack.us/img186/9448/egypt1rg2.jpg
https://img92.imageshack.us/img92/7955/france1ka4.jpg
https://img442.imageshack.us/img442/8845/france2wm1.jpg
https://img179.imageshack.us/img179/9402/france3nv9.jpg
https://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7875/france4df9.jpg
https://img154.imageshack.us/img154/2715/france5xi4.jpg
https://img170.imageshack.us/img170/5029/hre1ll0.jpg
https://img159.imageshack.us/img159/5814/hre2ct2.jpg
https://img170.imageshack.us/img170/8717/hre3le2.jpg
https://img159.imageshack.us/img159/8510/spain1ej0.jpg
There are still some militia stacks running around but you cannot prevent that if the ai mostly has cities as all it can produce in cities is militia. This is the main reason behind milans milita spam.
ArchieGremlin
01-18-2007, 19:12
Personally I find that the problem is not that I build elite armies but that the AI fields trash.
Econ's house rules are very similar to my rules of thumb for constructing armies. They give me a well balanced force that's ready to take on anything the AI can throw at it. i.e. roughly 1/4 missile, 1/4 cav and 1/2 line infantry.
I just wish the AI would follow some sort of similar guidelines to limit the mix of troops in a stack. At the moment, it nearly always fields armies that are hopelessly out of whack. I'm sure you've all seen this sort of thing:
1. Milanese armies containing nothing but crossbowmen and siege weapons.
2. Danish armies composed of 1 unit of cav, 1 unit of archers and 12 units of heavy infantry.
3. Egyptian armies consisting of nothing but cavalry and a few peasants
Once the AI gets these armies in the field it then tends to walk around until it loses all cohesion. This begs the human player to defeat each part of the army in detail.
These battles are by far the most common in the few campaigns I've played. It's got to stage where I feel that I've failed if the AI escapes with more than 20 men or the kill ratio is worse than 10:1.
And yet... if I set up a custom battle and give the AI a decent army it can actually do a lot of damage. I usually win but only after taking a lot of losses. (Partly because I have no experience of fighting fair battles.) In these sorts of engagements the AI can kill half my force.
To come back to the original post, I think the reason it's tougher at the start of the campaign is that it's the only time that the AI armies contain a reasonable mixture of unit types. Once you destroy them the AI just replaces them with whatever's cheap and available.
The AI needs to be re-designed so it does what people do: field well balanced stacks containing the finest quality troops available. Unless it does that, it can't hope to compete 'cos even a mediocre army beats a rubbish one.
FWIW My campaigns have been vanilla 1.1.
It would be really nice if CA could allow for AI plugins that would allow the modders full control of both the battle and campaign AIs. I'm sure Lusted and the other mods could produce some truly stunning AIs. As Lusted pointed out elsewhere, we've got more time than the devs.
cheers,
Archie
I'm sure Lusted and the other mods could produce some truly stunning AIs. As Lusted pointed out elsewhere, we've got more time than the devs.
See post above to see what i've been able to make the ai do.
ArchieGremlin
01-18-2007, 19:21
These good enough ai stacks for you?(all taken from LTC 2.0 with edited recruitment pools, no units recruitable from walls/castle building, and edited unit csots).
They look pretty good. Nice one. :~)
By the way, I didn't see this until after I posted my last reply. I hope no one thought I was having a go at you.
Hmmm. This leaves me with a tough question. Do I go for a LTC campaign now or wait for the patch. Sadly, I haven't got time for both. :~(
cheers,
Archie
I just thought of something.
I will try making cities only able to recruit 2 units per turn, but castles be able to produce 4,5,6,7,8 depending on the level of development. This should induce them to recruit castle units should it not? I will test it I guess.
That does help a bit, but if the ai only controls cities it can only produce miltia. And if it controls mostly cities it will produce mostly militia with 1 or 2 castle units mixed in. But if it controls a good mix it produces very nicely balanced armies.
Since the AI doesnt convert cities to castles and vice versa (at least not that I know of) I have used a houserule that I dont do it either.
The city/castle system is simply badly implemented... ugh
Btw, as to those AI army pics you showed, yes they will get to those kinds of armies eventually, but I am always too many steps ahead of them, despite letting the AI control construction.
Btw, the AI uses military build policy on almost all of its provinces. A few cities use balanced, but thats it.
I will try to play a campaign of LTC 2.0 I guess... Do you think it would severely unbalance things to remove siege weapons and make castles be able to recruit lots of units per turn?
Shogun and Medieval 1 dealt admirably with this problem.
Sort of. Since it had a "risk province map" going into war meant potentially facing the entire armed forces of your opponent, or a great part of it. So you didn't attack or declared war if you couldn't take the counter-attack, sea-invasions or the multiple stacks.
Since RTW, with the change to the 3D map, it doesn't work like this anymore. The Armies are spread all over the territory and you usually face no more than 2 stacks at a time. Sometimes, later in the game or in the case of the Mongols/Timurids, more stacks roam around together, but it's never a win-or-loose situation. You can beat the enemy and take a town, no matter, he will rebuild granted there is still something left. You can also loose your men, you will have time to rebuild aswell and re-capture any lost territory.
I consider the move to the new map very stupid. As beautiful as it is and as cool as it is to move around with the stacks, the strategic element was destroyed and it became a loooooooong game of attrition. Note well, the point here is not about the game lasting long, but that the game becomes reduced to a prolonged battle of attrition where strategy is irrelevant as long as you can win the tactical battles (diplomacy, what for? Decision, what for?). Since you are guaranteed to win most tactical battles, unless you fight severely outnumbered on purpose, only the initial years offer any strategic gameplay value where your decisions matter. To attack or not to attack later on is meaningless.
We seriously need to rethink the strategic map. The strategic element of the old map needs to return. When you declare war on somebody, you must face consequences.
Thats it! Thats what my problem with RTW is. It really is one long war of attrition, which the player will inevitably dominate, even if he doesn't meet the objective. What is the point of playing if the end is already known and the path there is a drag?
Yeah they do need to bring back the risk-style map in the next game for a good change. Though its not likely to happen as this is supposedly an improvement.
I suppose they could make it so that in a battle, all armies within a certain radius can arrive over time, depending on how far away they are.
antisocialmunky
01-18-2007, 20:54
The risk style map was fun but that doesn't mean it is better. I think that it's implementation was better than the 3D map implementation. If they put some decent effort into the campaign map AI in the next iteration of Total War so that it'll recognize bottle necks and be able to concentrate force effectively, then I think that the 3D map will be much more interesting than the risk map.
In fact, that's the the main problem with TW, crappy AI. There's been a definite trend of AI not keeping up with the rest of the game design whether it be the sheer quanity of units and weaker RPS system in MTW or the shift to the 3D engine in RTW and M2:TW. It has always been the weakest link in a great franchise.
The problem is the movment rates. In reality an army could march the length on England in a month easy. In game it's a 10+ year slog. If armies could move 5 times as far each turn you could get a lot more armies to trouble spots a lot faster and so could the enemy, thus aiding defence. Whilst offence would be limited by the need to stop to seige every city. Especially if it was made so that an attack on a city prevented and army from moving furthar that turn, that way you couldn't use spies to make multipiule conquests per army per turn.
In a broad perspective, I'd say that the game suffer from two major problems regarding this issue:
*the way recruitment works
*the linear design of the game
The problem with recruitment is that the players hoard units. If you recruit elite units these are always around, potentially for hundreds of years, if you have the cash to pay the upkeep. This creates a situation where everyone have large standing armies in a time in history when few had more than a handful of troops permanently armed. A better and more realistic solution would be to create a "draft" instead, where unit recruitment might be cheaper but upkeep is horrendous, and of course elites are limited.
The linear design of the game means that everyone start off piss weak and work themselves up to a sort of permanent glory. Once a citadel always a citadel, with the units and income that comes with that. That doesn't create a long-term interesting game but rather a "try-to-win-as-fast-as-you-can" game where by each turn the game becomes easier. A more dynamic design where the realms actually rise and fall would create a longer and more fun game.
If the AI could work with the recruitment system that had equal purchase cost and upkeep cost (so you couldnt recruit men and disband them in the same turn) then that would be awesome, but the AI currently cant be made to disband units. So basically this is impossible.
Erm, I don't mean to derail this thread, but I would like to put forth my dissenting opinion about the subject in question. Will try to be concise but this is still going to be long.
While providing a challenge is important, part of what happens with M2TW and games that involve some role-playing-ish elements involves the gaining and exercise of power. Hand in hand with this is the relative difficulty throughout the spanse of the game. I prefer games that do not "scale" per se, and that will let me choose if I wish to "grind" (or turtle, or whatever term you prefer) and become as godlike as I wish, then proceeding on with the plot or mission. Likewise, should I wish I can just embark on my mission/crusade/plot/whatever and try to take it as it comes, thus gaining in abilities/power/money/wealth/all that great crap as the game "intended" through basic unplanned gameplay.
Now, I have two games to use as examples of how I think this is well done and poorly done, sorry in advance if you don't like my opinions or analogies. :grin: Also please keep in mind the general concept that I'm getting at here, and don't get sidetracked by the fact that these are RPG'ss and not RTS's. These two games are Morrowind and Oblivion. I think Morrowind is the example of how to do this RIGHT, in that the game can be incredibly challenging if you just blindly set off and try to go about your quest without any planning or forethought. Even with planning, it can still be a great challenge. The game rewards players who try to think in advance about how to develop their characters, and who explore and do sidequests for items and experience. You can become a god very early on in the game if you want to, and then set off and the game will be very easy. The game does not SCALE to you, it's there and set. Some things will be inately easy, others impossible without the right equipment or stats. Thus the point is, the ability to gain relative power is there, and should you choose to do it, you will be rewarded and can exercise that power in whatever way you see fit. In Oblivion, almost the entire game scales with you. While you can become a "god" so to speak, your relative power and the effort put into gaining your abilities is generally offset by the game scaling it's difficulty to you. Therefore where you were once fighting rats in a dungeon, you'll come back to find out it's infested with the most powerful zombies and undead in the game. I positively hate this. If I take the time to put the effort into my character/game/whatever to increase my relative power, then I should be rewarded and be able to wield that as I see fit.
Now, how does this relate to M2TW and the TW games in general? Again it's about relative power. If I spend the time and work at it, tech up, turtle and make the best troops I can, train on rebel stacks, etc, I should be rewarded appropriately and be able to bulldoze all in my path (with proper skill of course). The scaling with the TW games in my experience comes with managing a large empire once you've carved it out. Micromanagement is required and can be a pain, but then again if you don't like micromanagement, what are you doing playing an RTS? :) Much less the TW series....
At any rate. I do NOT want to see any changes that increase difficulty through any means in this game now or in any future patches. I'm not that great of a player, so normal is fine for me. If I build an all-elite army, then by the gods I should be rewarded for my efforts and mulch away. :)
Cheers!
Hochmeister
01-18-2007, 21:47
Just trying to think what MTW did better apart from the "risk" map. One thing I have noticed about western european factions is that you can win the game easily without coming into contact with either the Mongols or the Timurids. Maybe if we had a very powerful Switzerland and or the Burgundian uprising with large elite armies it would create more of a challenge late game??
General Zhukov
01-18-2007, 22:10
At any rate. I do NOT want to see any changes that increase difficulty through any means in this game now or in any future patches. I'm not that great of a player, so normal is fine for me. If I build an all-elite army, then by the gods I should be rewarded for my efforts and mulch away. :)
I think all-elite armies are okay. Sort of unfair to the AI if the player does that, but only because the enemy won't match it. Higher difficulties should not just be about the AI being stubborn in diplomacy. On the higher difficulties, the AI really should be smart enough to field armies full of as many top-notch units as they can recruit. Imagine my suprise and delight if I saw an enemy stack with 10-12 of their most powerful knights in it, or a Turkish stack full of their great early horse archers. 1/3 of the way into my Byzantine campaign, on Hard difficulty, usually the Turks just build small stacks of spear militia. They must think they're playing a mod by Carl or something. :laugh4:
About the late game difficulty. It does become too easy. But one can't expect the AI to ever do as well as a competent human player given the same resources. So, maybe a page from other games should be taken (like Civ) and give the AI cash bonuses, reduced upkeeps, and other assorted advantages. And what about the computer choosing one to three factions to become "top dogs"? Those factions would expand more aggressively, avoid empire bloat easier, and perhaps get other advantages like fudged dice rolls on autocalcs against other AI factions. The whole point of which would be to ensure that a least a few factions develop into true threats for the player to deal with.
The historian
01-18-2007, 22:10
i think the main problem with late game is not that you can have all elite armies after all at that point you usually have an empire 25-30 regions at least so iti is pretty realistic the problem is the ai is usually not capable of presenting a similar foe to fight.Now i won two long campaigns one with the venetians and one with the danish. In the one with the danes i had a lot of fun late game fighting two ai empires hungary in the east and spain in the vest i actually lost some towns to the ai had to send reinforcemenets fight battles against full elite hungarain armies with feudal knights even tougher was fighting spanish chilvaric knights point is i had none as i di not upgrade that far.i belive that were i to continue that game i wpuld have to pull out of northern france and north italy as i do not have them men to fight the spanish and the towns are just conquered.
So the late game can be very nice if the ai is able to create a real competitor.:juggle2:
In my case i owned the her england , poland and western russia and everythingt to constantinople after crushing the hunagarian toolk long enough mind you.
while the spanish have all of france to the loire the iberian peninsula and all of north africa.
About the late game difficulty. It does become too easy. But one can't expect the AI to ever do as well as a competent human player given the same resources. So, maybe a page from other games should be taken (like Civ) and give the AI cash bonuses, reduced upkeeps, and other assorted advantages. And what about the computer choosing one to three factions to become "top dogs"? Those factions would expand more aggressively, avoid empire bloat easier, and perhaps get other advantages like fudged dice rolls on autocalcs against other AI factions. The whole point of which would be to ensure that a least a few factions developed into true threats for the player to deal with.
Hi Mate. This is somewhat my point exactly. The end game IS generally going to be easy, because you've carved out a huge empire and can afford to field numerous elite-filled armies. Again this is the "usages of power" thing I was talking about. If you take the time and effort to build that up, you should be rewarded. That's what I meant when I made my last little paragraph there. I don't want to see the AI get any special bonuses or crap end game just to make it that much easier, I want them to continue as normal, and if/when I choose to crush them, I should be able to do with the relative ease that I choose, as I've worked at and earned that ability. The ONLY thing I can think of that I personally would be ok with this something like the original MTW "once you're this big and have so many provinces, everyone hates you and attacks you". On the other side of that argument, it would arguably be more prudent to ally with the larger guy then piss him off and have him bulldoze you in short order. :grin:
@The Historian
I agree in general that I'd like to see that form of Darwinism play itself out such that the player is provided with a number of significant factions as opponents throughout the game. Moreso I'd like to see this achieved randomly, such that you don't always go up against a huge Byzantine empire, or the Mongols don't always own Eastern Europe, or the Moors always bulldoze Iberia, or the HRE doesn't always get swallowed up, etc etc etc. My point was, I don't want to see the AI "cheating" to do this, or to be more competitive late game.
Cheers!
The ONLY thing I can think of that I personally would be ok with this something like the original MTW "once you're this big and have so many provinces, everyone hates you and attacks you".
I think M2TW has introduced this feature. At least, that is what I heard in the pre-release discussion.
Personally, I hate it - we've moved from modelling human diplomacy to dreaming up a psycho lemming land - but whatcha gonna do?
I think M2TW has introduced this feature. At least, that is what I heard in the pre-release discussion.
Personally, I hate it - we've moved from modelling human diplomacy to dreaming up a psycho lemming land - but whatcha gonna do?
I hate it too. I don't know if you already knew this (and I apologize if you did), but you can at least partially mod it out. Go to descr_faction_standing.txt and just delete triggers 0086, 0087, and 0088. Now your standing with other factions will not drop just because you're successful. I think is very frustrating when the game is in fact punishing you for doing well: shouldn't it be the opposite, at least in things we do for fun and relaxation?
antisocialmunky
01-19-2007, 00:02
I'd rather see the game time scale adjusted to months or two months/ turn and all the buildings, units, growth rates, and income adjusted to it. If you increase movement rates then you'd make armies be able to advance really deep into enemy territory and it would be impossible to defend unless you could find a choke.
Well I have a few ideas to throw into the mix, firstly what if the AI had templates for its army stacks such as x amount of cav, x amount of infantry, x amount of archers. Before sending the army into the field it has to meet minimum requirements for a stack.
This could also mean less small stacks wandering the map and when the AI does attack it would have a more threatning army with better composition.
This could be themed according to the faction, france prefers more cavalry, danes prefer infantry, eastern factions use lots of HAs.
The big problem here is if the AI doesnt have the troops avaliable, eg. no castles, hasnt upgraded the right buildings.
Another idea that has been brought up already is creating strong late AI factions. Why is it that the human player should always dominate and own half the map when the AI seems to still be fighting over the same settlements.
By creating a few large, strong AI factions that increase the size of their empire alongside the human player there would be a much larger challenge in the end game. This would directly affect the composition of AI armies as it would have a much larger recruitment base to draw from, it would certainly have a good mix of castes and cities if it has 20+ provinces.
kallistus
01-19-2007, 02:29
Another idea that has been brought up already is creating strong late AI factions. Why is it that the human player should always dominate and own half the map when the AI seems to still be fighting over the same settlements.
By creating a few large, strong AI factions that increase the size of their empire alongside the human player there would be a much larger challenge in the end game. This would directly affect the composition of AI armies as it would have a much larger recruitment base to draw from, it would certainly have a good mix of castes and cities if it has 20+ provinces.
I believe CA tried to build that (the 'strong AI faction') into the game; that was the point of having the Mongols and Timurids turns up – the player spends the first half of the game creating their empire, then they have a powerful enemy force in the East to test themselves against.
The end game is always a problem in these sorts of empire building strategy games because power begets power. Once you get above a certain level, or critical mass, you tend to get enough inertia on to start steamrolling. CA have tried to address this with the Mongols, Timurids, and to a lesser extent the Aztecs.
The difficulty of the endgame varies with nation to nation tho. As Russia I had a great late game with my Dvor archers near Constantinople, screaming for more ammo against Mongol horde after horde; while in the East hordes of Kazaks rode round and round the Panzerjaeger VI ‘Elefant’ assault guns, bouncing arrows off them. Holding off the Mongols and Timurids at the same time was a titanic struggle and made the end game really challenging.
However, the Western nations can carve out a big empire, build up, then descend on Jerusalem en masse and avoid much of a fight with the Mongols if they want.
Separating the settlements into the economic cities and the military castles is a good idea from a human perspective (that is, it adds a different dimension to planning your empire), but it just makes it that much harder for the AI to get its act together; now the AI has to create troops then assemble those troops into balanced armies in the field. Which it is not good at.
And the rarest unit in an English AI army seems to be a Longbowman... :inquisitive:
CountMRVHS
01-19-2007, 05:11
Really quick: I didn't notice a lot of these endgame problems in my VH/VH Poland campaign, probably for a couple of reasons: 1) the 3-way slam I took from Denmark, Hungary, and Russia really slowed down production; 2) the Timurids emerged just as I was finishing with Russia and kicked me back to the Baltic; 3) I was sort of racing through those last several turns as I was desperate to get to America and see what that was like. When I *did* get there, the Aztecs were waiting, very powerful. :2thumbsup:
However, Poland might not be a fair case as it's over in eastern Europe where things tend to be more exciting. At any rate, to be fair, this endgame ennui is nothing new to me; I experienced it in RTW and in the original MTW. The Risk-style map did make for a climactic last battle with a cornered AI faction, but don't forget that those last battles were sometimes more tedious than fun -- especially if it consisted of many stacks of crap units. I remember autocalcing several of those "last stands" once my empire had grown too big for me to really care -- I knew I'd win the war eventually, so the individual battle was no longer as interesting. At that point, interest in the game itself begins to fade and you start to think about trying a new faction.
The point about inertia was well-made. My solution in MTW was to *only play GA games*. I was very quickly turned off by the idea of England owning 2/3 of Europe, so I started playing a restrained, turtling GA type of game. The "short campaigns" of RTW and M2TW are an attempt to throw a bone in that direction, but the name "short" campaign means it doesn't live up to the kind of game I'd like to actually play -- it's not that I want my campaign to end faster, it's that I want a chance to continue playing as a smaller kingdom, with all the challenges that entails. Playing a strict GA game in MTW allowed you to do just that, and if you survived to 1453 with the most points after observing whateve house rules you set for yourself, it was a cool accomplishment. The short campaign of RTW and M2 is a very different beast, more suited for blitzing your neighbors to get a feel for a particular faction. However, now that I mention it, that Polish campaign actually began as a "short" campaign -- that lasted until the discovery of America with no winner (Russia and Hungary were still around).
Anyway, my main point was that this sort of endgame feeling isn't new to RTW or M2TW -- I know I felt it in MTW. Probably anothe reason I loved the VI game so much: smaller map, less boredom with a huge empire.
CountMRVHS
I might point out that the 'shiny' factor means some people do want to build armies composed of nothing but elites, and historical accuracy can go hang. Which is shinier: 10 units of Lancers, or 1 unit of Lancers trying to maintain their dignity alongside 9 units of smelly peasants?
Besides which, many Medieval armies were small enough to be just knights, or mostly longbowmen or horse archers or whatever. Not that unusual. The French army at Agincourt was mostly men-at-arms with some crossbowmen and cannon. No proper observation of the 1:10 ratio (elites to normal troops) at that battle, nor is there any sign of 'balanced' battlelines. The English army were all professionals as well (retinue longbowmen and dismounted EK in game terms). There would be a lot of peasants and camp followers and servants as 'baggage', but these were often not involved in the actual fighting.
another thing about big empires, should be it is hard to defend. Typically, the AI only try to attack the border cities/castles. So we, the human player, stuffs it up with troops for defence. For our 'inner' empire, we do not have much of a defence. If the AI will attack with full stack through a backdoor into our 'inner empire', we'd be forced to maintain a huge force just to keep our cities. then the money factor may be more balanced.
Hochmeister
01-19-2007, 08:25
I believe CA tried to build that (the 'strong AI faction') into the game; that was the point of having the Mongols and Timurids turns up – the player spends the first half of the game creating their empire, then they have a powerful enemy force in the East to test themselves against.
However, the Western nations can carve out a big empire, build up, then descend on Jerusalem en masse and avoid much of a fight with the Mongols if they want.
Yes I had this in my first campaign. Hadnt seen a Mongol yet & had my 45 territories so my final act was a massive crusade to Jerusalem supported by several elite stacks. When my massive military operation landed on the shores of Israel I promptly besieged the city only to find that it was garrisoned by one unit!! I was so horrified I autocalced for the campaign victory. Talk about a let down:furious3:
That is why I suggested earlier that maybe a central european "swiss or Burgundian" type uprising might make what is the most popular factions to play more challenging.
It would be nice if each AI had specific build and expansion strategies a bit akin to Civ.
Along with this would be a recruitment and army composition code
eg. HRE - overall want to expand towards italy to consolidate its borders
- it wants x number of cities and x castles
- it makes units x,y,z from the castle and puts them with a,b,c from the city and 1 general
once it completes level 1 of its build code
it then recruits x2,y2,z2, and combines with a2,b2,c2
its a fairly tough ask to code this and have each nation have specific goals, characteristics
something that used to be nice in MTW was the province specific unit bonuses
at the moment once you get past a mid sized empire - the castles and citys all just become the same
the nations and regions need a little more distinction IMO
edit : and a garrison code would be nice to have too
Von Nanega
01-19-2007, 12:51
Yes I had this in my first campaign. Hadnt seen a Mongol yet & had my 45 territories so my final act was a massive crusade to Jerusalem supported by several elite stacks. When my massive military operation landed on the shores of Israel I promptly besieged the city only to find that it was garrisoned by one unit!! I was so horrified I autocalced for the campaign victory. Talk about a let down:furious3:
That is why I suggested earlier that maybe a central european "swiss or Burgundian" type uprising might make what is the most popular factions to play more challenging.
I fully agree that a Swiss nation showing up, regardless of who owns the territory, or Burgundians showing in the proper place could make thing get real interesting later in the game. That is the one thing I miss from MTW is the new factions apearring in the game.
pike master
01-19-2007, 23:20
what about a playable swiss faction ?
I think one problem is that there are no longer revolts to make things more difficult for the player. Medieval history was full of rebellions by lords/generals seeking to take power for themselves. Yet this seems totally ignored in the game. If we actually have to fight off half a dozen rebellions in 400 years that might slow the humans down.
Yep, the whole point of loyalty seems to be lost in M2TW. I've yet to have a general defect and therefore loyalty doesn't seem to represent an issue at all. Maybe lowering some of the bribe modifiers in the campaign_ai file would help...?
I have generals defect all the time. Your king's authority affects the chances of revolt. Too bad they just go rebel and not march on your capital to stage a coup or something. In BI they joined a specific Roman rebels faction, I think, which made things very interesting because it was a regular faction that could invade your lands, take settlements from you, and so on. In effect, the rebels could do everything you could, plus they had a chance of acquiring and using your own armies against you.
Suggestion: Making a separate rebel faction for every regular faction is impractical. How about just making the generic rebel faction more active? The code governing rebel AI is editable, I think. It currently stops them from doing much more than sit around and defend themselves, but that could be changed to make them use the regular AI code.
Frankmuddy
01-21-2007, 12:04
Hi Mate. This is somewhat my point exactly. The end game IS generally going to be easy, because you've carved out a huge empire and can afford to field numerous elite-filled armies. Again this is the "usages of power" thing I was talking about. If you take the time and effort to build that up, you should be rewarded.
It seems that the game as it is currently structured is does not build to a climax. Conservative and intelligent play will almost garuntee victory. From a properly dramatic point of view the end game should see the nacent imperial powers facing off against each other for ever higher stakes. Towards the end of the game you should have tremendous power to dispose of, but similarly face tremendous risks. It would be more rewarding, for myself and others, to face real challenge towards the end period of the game. Not from contrived advantages, of course, but from credible threats and enemies.
The rebels could be expanded on. I'm not sure of the code, but it seems to me that having two rebel factions - one passive one for the garrisons of rebel cities that you race to get to, and one active one to which people defect and which actually attacks and tries to get your cities. It's always puzzled me that my navies get attacked by pirates all the time, but my armies can stand right next to a rebel stack for years and not be in any danger.
General Zhukov
01-21-2007, 14:15
It would be more rewarding, for myself and others, to face real challenge towards the end period of the game. Not from contrived advantages, of course, but from credible threats and enemies.
If you faced powerful empires that posed credible threats in the endgame, would you really care if the AI advantages had been contrived or not?
I recall playing a player made scenario for Civilization II called Red Front. It was about the German onslaught on Russia during World War Two. And you were playing Russia... The scenario was the hardest and funnest experience I ever had on that great game. And you wondered while playing it how the AI could plan and perform the overwhelming blitzkrieg it did, something the AI could never do in a normal game of Civ. As it turns out, the AI was using scripts to get huge numbers of free units every turn, free money etc. The computer was using contrived advantages in the interest of giving the player a really hard challenge. But knowing that didn't spoil the experience. It was still an absolute blast.
The computer is just not going to match a skilled player when given equal resources. So, with all the above in mind, I think M2TW should take a page from Civ and give the AI more contrived advantages as the difficulty goes higher. From what I can tell, all that changes with increased difficulty now is that the AI gets more and more stubborn in diplomacy. :shame:
Total War does do that, but in the reverse way. It gives YOU more penalties as the game goes on (aka bloated empire). Drove me mad in MTW how I'd build the second Roman Empire and then every single governor starts picking up bad traits in the endgame. The traits update message at the beginning of every turn would run on and on and all of it would be bad. Incest would suddenly become the in thing. Every single governor would simultaneously be afflicted with genetic disorders. Orchestrated mass disobedience would manifest itself with a wave of corruption. Add to that the fact that you lose a massive amount of income from conquering your trading partners and maintaining an empire becomes incredibly frustrating.
Lord_hazard
01-21-2007, 16:05
In a broad perspective, I'd say that the game suffer from two major problems regarding this issue:
*the way recruitment works
*the linear design of the game
The problem with recruitment is that the players hoard units. If you recruit elite units these are always around, potentially for hundreds of years, if you have the cash to pay the upkeep. This creates a situation where everyone have large standing armies in a time in history when few had more than a handful of troops permanently armed. A better and more realistic solution would be to create a "draft" instead, where unit recruitment might be cheaper but upkeep is horrendous, and of course elites are limited.
The linear design of the game means that everyone start off piss weak and work themselves up to a sort of permanent glory. Once a citadel always a citadel, with the units and income that comes with that. That doesn't create a long-term interesting game but rather a "try-to-win-as-fast-as-you-can" game where by each turn the game becomes easier. A more dynamic design where the realms actually rise and fall would create a longer and more fun game.
Agreed. I would love to see the totalwar games take a turn for the more realistic.
I see your point but from the games I've played RTW and M2TW are the most realistic battle simulators I've ever seen. But also playable. Units, generally, have the same advantages and disadvantages as hsitory. The tactics that worked historically work in game (generally). Credit where credit's due.
Yes massed armoured cavalry is pretty supreme in the west. But it was. So we develop pikes. But pikes are slow so....etc etc etc Don't forget we can sit and do 5 test battles before we fight the AI, losing hundreds of men and 4battles to test units - not sure henry v had that option....
There's no uber, unstoppable unit (except maybe HA :beam: )
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