Blockading doesn't work?

[Cataphract_Of_The_City]

I was playing a Kart-Hadast campaign a couple of days ago. I had all north Africa west of Kyrene, all of Spain except Velica and all Sicily. The Romans had all Italy except Mediolanum plus Segestica. Their treasury was around 700k mnai. I had an army on the Sicily-Italy landbridge because they just kept sending army after army every turn in Sicily. I decided to stop this by hitting their economy. I blockaded ALL their ports in the west Med and in the Adriatic. By checking the income of every one of their cities I knew they had a loss of 17k mnai/turn. I kept this up for 10 turns before checking their treasury again. I thought by that time they would have lost 170k directly and some more money from training new units. Nothing of the kind. Their income reached 750k. At that point I stopped the campaign. If you cant actually damage the enemy's economy, what's the point of blockading a port or even building ships.

[shlin28]

Blockading doesnt work because the stupid AI gets cash injections every time they lose money, so they always get a lot of money. ( a lot a lot)

Same thing happened in my carthage campaign, except there I just kept crushing their full stacks, great fun, bit repetitive though...

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Maybe our script guys could tell you what part of the file needs to be changed if you don't want money given to AI factions. Then make the very very minor text change and play the mod your own way. That's really much more simple than stopping a campaign or stopping playing the mod because one doesn't like one of the ways we try to make the AI factions more dangerous.

[Cataphract_Of_The_City]

I am not against helping the AI but having everyone of their ports while they pump out armies AND getting a massive income is ridiculous. Helping the AI should only get them so far.

[Lord Gruffles]

Don't blame EB, blame RTW (as much as I enjoy it). The game engine only lets you do so much to improve the otherwise completely incompetent AI. I wish CA would spend alot more on AI improvments and a lot less on eye candy (again, as much as I enjoy that aswell).

[Atilius]

Maybe our script guys could tell you what part of the file needs to be changed if you don't want money given to AI factions...

This issue was raised during our active scripters' weekly meeting. Resources were assigned to organize a work group tasked with initiating a project intended to determine the effect on our schedule of investigating this problem. Consensus was achieved. Grievances were aired. Adjustments to our compensation package were proposed. The executive council...

What was the question?

[Atilius]

Seriously, the script is not at fault here. In the first 20 turns of the game, the script awards hefty monetary grants to any non-player faction controlling fewer than 4 settlements and with a treasury less than 3000 mnai.

After that, a flat amount of money is given to all non-player factions - a tiny fraction of 17,000 mnai.

Cataphract_Of_The_City, I can't explain what you're seeing. All I can say is that money will be more scarce in the 0.81 release. Changes to base farming levels make population growth and farming income lower.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Could be some diplomatic shenanigans. Those diplomats are always doing wacky things like that.

[PantsToucher]

VH campaign difficulty also gives the AI money I belive, something around 10,000 if I remember correctly.

[Foot]

Could be some diplomatic shenanigans. Those diplomats are always doing wacky things like that.

Or mines.

Foot

[Zarax]

Have you ever considered using the building approach?
Basically it's having an AI building placed at game start by the script that gives training and building discounts to the factions so that they have some economical advantages but economical warfare still works (not perfectly though)...

[Atilius]

Pardon me everyone,

The amount of money granted to each non-player faction every turn is given on a per-settlement basis. So if Rome controls all of Italy, this amounts to something approaching the 17,000 mnai deficit that Cataphract_Of_The_City said was being mysteriously compensated for.

This code is in Section 4b.

I'll consider putting a simple switch at the top of the file to turn this off.