View Full Version : V1.21 Rebuild-ProblemFixer BETA testing thread
Heh, the next turn the Egyptians are begging a ceasefire. I guess they miscalculated.
The Navel Invashions seem to follow a diffrent logic to land invashions so they'll start wars with Navel attacks when they have no hope of winning the war. As soon as they realise that, (i.e. next turn), they come begging for peace.
Lookit them kilties go!
:smash:, not bad~;p.
And the Danes just made the Fwench vassals. I think you have the Fwench working right now. The first I hear from them they are surrendering!
:laugh4:.
If you can grab Sarskel and try to Buy/grab Bulgar off the ruskies, it's worth a small fortune with the gold up their.
Well, the Eggies besieged Damascus the same turn, so it wasn't a purely naval thing. Then two turns later they lifted the siege and moved to Aleppo... or tried. Now their remnants are wandering the desert for 40 years.
Trying to make my co-religionists my pals. I need to go give them some foreign aid, I think. They are making inroads around the Baltic, I see, at Poland expense. Maybe they can counter the Danes some.
Very odd. For some reason all the Eggie armies are moving south or west. The jihad is on Jerusalem, and that army pulled up tents and headed to Alexandria (maybe good spies ~;) ) and another stack and some is heading to Jedda which they own. Are they trying to play defense? I am finally putting together a field army to beat up on them and they run off!
It's a bit of a crash army, not my planned one quite:
8 Byz Archers, 5 Byz Spears, 4 Byz Cav, 2 Varangian Guard, 1 10 star general ~;). Gotta love those faction sons. I need to get some heavy cav cranking out, but haven't gotten that high on stables yet. Crashed for the archers as they are my Mongol defenders of castles and cities in the east. Since those archers can double nicely as assault infantry, I am gonna stay heavy on them, I think. And Byz Cav is pretty decent in a charge, especially into flanks and rear. But a couple heavy kats would be nice. Just to do some line crashing for a change. ...OH! That jihad army is Moorish, not Eggie. But the Eggs did haul off to Jedda. Odd.
Are dips supposed to get the Marco Polo ancilliary too? Mine has him.
Ooo, first time every I've heard a Scoootish princess. She's 9 charm too. And Egypt is back begging for peace. I haven't even taken a region from them yet, silly eggs.
Sheesh, 39% hereticism in one turn in Constantinople. I think it was an event of some sort. There's a 5 skill heretic there that I have no clue where he came from.
Something up with Mosul too. It shows as a castle on the building panel, but a fortress on the map, and it's not allowing the citadel upgrade. Wait, may just be a display issue. 9k for citadel, not there yet. But there is a mismatch on buildings versus map.
Well, the Eggies besieged Damascus the same turn, so it wasn't a purely naval thing.
The AI does navel stuff before land stuff so it will have started the war because of the messed up navel AI and then the land A will have kicked in and made them send the micro stack.
Those armies moving around will be because Egypt probably doesn't have enough troops for an invasion, (when considered from the AI decisions point of view), so they are moving to take up defensive positions.
Are dips supposed to get the Marco Polo ancillary too? Mine has him.
No, i thought that had been fixed GARRRRRR.
Ooo, first time every I've heard a Scottish princess. She's 9 charm too.
Cute aren't they :laugh4:.
Personally I love the Scots just for their voices myself.
Something up with Mosul too. It shows as a castle on the building panel, but a fortress on the map, and it's not allowing the citadel upgrade.
I'll look into it.
Started a vh/vh campaign as Poland. Took the king and his troops north to besiege thorn, and the other two generals south to Iazi. Starved them both out. Council wanted me to take Vilnius so got a crusade against it -- took the king's stack + some Polish nobles over and starved it out too (king is now 10/10/10/10 with 2 named ancillaries). Russia had softened Vilnius and had another stack on the way... it'll be interesting to see how they respond now. Took the other two generals up to Kiev and began the process of starving it out. Its around turn 15 now.
Plan is hold Russia back from the valuable lands on the North Sea and to have them stagnate with control of the NE corner. Giving 100/turn to HRE + Denmark with diplomats to try to form two trusted alliances to hold my western borders. My expansion plan is to roll over Hungary (hopefully after they aggress) and to eventually expand far enough to take Constantinople. Essentially, I want the western Baltic and the North Eastern Med, leaving the Mongols and the Timurids to the Russians and the Turks.
So, thoughts:
- Growth seems very reasonable -- Castles and cities with basic farming and trading improvements get 2-2.5% with normal taxes and no governor... feels right.
- With the larger rebel garrisons and the murderous siege fortications of eastern europe (the inset castle gate covered by four towers), starving out the enemy is an extremely attractive proposition. Is it possible for you to increase the number of turns needed to starve out a city? As it is, even with the siege work, I'd prefer to force a sally, which I usually can deal with losing only 20-30 men, as opposed to 200-300 for storming.
- Some thing is odd with priests at the moment. I have currently have 2 small churches and two chapels and can only support two priests (the starting cardinal + 1 other). Did you maybe forget to have chapels add to the agent limit? It hurts a bit due to the starting paganism in Eastern Europe.
- Starting cash from normal sources is decent (500-1000 turn profit), but the diplomacy is making it too easy. I've gone to all the other Catholic factions (except Hungary, who I'm planning on taking out eventually) and given Alliance/Trade Rights/Map Info for 500 florins for 5 turns. To date, this has been giving me usually an extra 2000 florins/turn or so and has made recruitment very easy (I have filled up all my free garrisons and have a half stack of Polish nobles between my two armies). Can the AI be made a bit more tight-fisted?
- Lastly, polish nobles really shouldn't be available until post-Fortress. They're just way too good to get at the basic Castle level. The other early polish troops are plenty good (archers with stakes, competent militias, other light cav).
Having a blast. Thanks for all your hard work.
Aaron
Plan is hold Russia back from the valuable lands on the North Sea and to have them stagnate with control of the NE corner.
Be aware that Bulgar has Gold deposits and starts as a town, so between trade, mines, and merchants the Rus could easily make 4-5K a turn up that way, so your going to have a hard time making them stagnate.
- With the larger rebel garrisons and the murderous siege fortifications of eastern Europe (the inset castle gate covered by four towers), starving out the enemy is an extremely attractive proposition. Is it possible for you to increase the number of turns needed to starve out a city? As it is, even with the siege work, I'd prefer to force a sally, which I usually can deal with losing only 20-30 men, as opposed to 200-300 for storming.
I'll find out if I can.
- Some thing is odd with priests at the moment. I have currently have 2 small churches and two chapels and can only support two priests (the starting cardinal + 1 other). Did you maybe forget to have chapels add to the agent limit? It hurts a bit due to the starting paganism in Eastern Europe.
Chapels purposefully don't add to the priest limit, but higher level City Church levels do. 6 total for a huge Cathedral I think, maybe 7. So build the next level of Churches in 2 settlements and you'll get another 2 priests available.
- Starting cash from normal sources is decent (500-1000 turn profit), but the diplomacy is making it too easy. I've gone to all the other Catholic factions (except Hungary, who I'm planning on taking out eventually) and given Alliance/Trade Rights/Map Info for 500 florins for 5 turns. To date, this has been giving me usually an extra 2000 florins/turn or so and has made recruitment very easy (I have filled up all my free garrisons and have a half stack of Polish nobles between my two armies). Can the AI be made a bit more tight-fisted?
The 1.2 patch unofficial files have given me a few ideas on how diplomacy works, so I should be able to make it more tight fisted now but I want to wait and see what 1.2 does here first.
- Lastly, polish nobles really shouldn't be available until post-Fortress. They're just way too good to get at the basic Castle level. The other early polish troops are plenty good (archers with stakes, competent militias, other light Cav).
Thanks for the warning. What do you suggest i put their instead then?
Heh, so I take Alexandria. The usual one general garrison. I even sack it. Still has 25k pop. My army is stuck there for a while I guess. The whole army is a mere 50% garrison force. Should have killed all those muslims!
The general is a corrupt, slave to superstition, utterly stoic, bender of the truth with 10 stars and 1 piety. He may be 4 chivalry, but I think he could handle the guilt... what guilt?
On the starve them out thing, since you're increasing the number of turns, you could increase the siege-to-starve limit proportionately... assuming you CAN change it.
assuming you CAN change it.
Thats the problem, I don't know if you can, and if you can I don't know how.
I've dropped a question in the modding forums though.
Did you slip in some 1.2 pre-release files? The Morco Polo thing is unfixed in that, if so. I just saw it remains a bug in 1.2.
Nope, I've actually created my own Traits file that is 1.2 compatible and that is a mix of the existing one and the 1.2 patch file as the 1.2 patch misses a few things that are bugs and includes a lot of "dubious" stuff. However I have included elements of the 1.2 pre-release files too.
However this edited file is NOT in V1.24 as it removes the anti-traits fix which the 1.2 patch now fixes itself in the hardocde.
Bob the Insane
04-12-2007, 01:43
What in the world did you do to the Scotish?
I am trying a game as the English and Scotland had a go at York and Dublin, and they are at war with the French having taken Antwerp and Burges!!
He fed them haggis. Makes them ornery.
Turn 70 World Sitrep:
http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/6564/0008is3.jpg
Waiting on you know who to see how they act. Meanwhile, picking on Egypt. Had one big battle with just BI and a general. That didn't go so well ~;). The Eggies had more balance and it showed. And my state of accustomization to HA didn't help either. BI just don't get around like HA do!
But I wanted to get rid of all that infantry anyway, so I attritted it away trading it for dismounted arab cav mostly. You'll be happy to hear the Eggies are certainly building siege gear. They just aren't using it very well... like in sieges. It gave me some trouble in that battle. They had a lot of cats and trebs and I didn't have any cav except my general.
Heh, I didnt choose the battle. I besieged Gaza and they pulled a part stack over to lift the siege. Oops.
That was my only land loss so far. 2 sea losses. 109 wins. (I told you Byz is easy!)
Turn 73: The Mongols are coming! The Mongols are coming!
Just a stack and a piece of another so far, came in at Baghdad. Wandering, as usual. I'm fairly ready for them. Wall, garrisons, etc.
But the crusade took Jerusalem. The Danes did it. They had two full stacks there, with Venice close with another. They promptly turned and attacked Acre, so things are heating up. I happened to have a full army just offshore (was on the way to Dongola) so I landed behind them and did a night attack (so I didn't pull my garrison as reinforcements). It was a lovely battle. They had a good stack, crusader Frankish knights, Alan light cav, turcopoles, some crusader sergeants, archers, and crusader riffraff. I had the 8 BA, 5 BS, 4 BC, 2 Latinkon, 2 VG plus general. Chewed them up and ran them off. I lost about 50 to their 600. But it was dicey for a bit with their cav trying to flank everywhere. They had me outnumbered in cav for I was kept micromanaging mine.
Now to see how that army does on Mongols. Probably be tougher. May have to set up in an inverted U instead of a line. The Byz spears stop the charges cold though. And the VG and BA slice and dice them nicely.
Some combination of diplomacy in the hinterlands forced a ceasefire with Egypt on me. So I have all these Egyptian remnants parked all over my new conquests that I can't get rid of since I won't start the war. I can't figure out exactly how that one happened. Annoying. I was hoping to finish that so I could focus on the Mongols. But I'm fated to a three-way war, it appears. At least.
Heh, pulled a fast one on the Danes. Venice's stack was still standing there, so I besieged Jerusalem and the Venetians were forced to help as my allies. ~;) Also puts Venice at war with Denmark too. Set up slush funds for Venice and Hungary to try to sweeten them up to me. But shared enemies won't hurt either. So far, All's Quiet on the Western Front. If only it stays that way.
Turn 80 World Sitrep:
https://img452.imageshack.us/img452/5277/0009yv6.jpg
Two more stacks of Mongols came in at Baghdad. I stuck with a locally made garrison of Archer Militia and Spear Militia only there (but quite a lot of it) to see if they would hold with large stone walls. Assuming the Mongols decide to attack.
All the other eastern regions are fortresses with all the free upkeep Peasant Archers, 4 BA, 3 BS, at least. No attack armies there yet. Want to deal with these Dane stacks (still 1.5 left) and maybe the Eggies first. The Eggies should attack soon. I may have to tease them.
So, its 1103. I've starved out Kiev and Riga, and Caffa will fall to starvation next turn. HRE and Denmark are both up to Very Good relations through persistent gifting, though my reputation remains mired at mixed (I've occupied every city I've taken, released every rebel prisoner, never attacked an AI faction or trespassed a border -- what are the triggers for helping the reputation out a little?). No significant battles yet... every garrison has fallen with <50 friendly losses and there have been no clashes with AI factions.
My economy took a hit after all the tributes ran out, but its been doing fine (if barely). I'm able to keep building in all my cities (though not always the most expensive building) and I'm to fully staff the free garrison slots, a half stack of troops sieging Caffa, and some reserves in the castles for dealing with rebels.
Growth really feels good -- the castle with the 10 chivalry king is doing great and everywhere else is still at 2-2.5%. I've been a little surprised that farming doesn't seem to help growth more -- even with Communal farming I don't seem to get about 2.5%. But this way I do have stretches where I can't build anything at a town (while I wait for it to grow) but it really seems to take too long for the growth notification to come around. The pacing seems spot on to me (though bear in mind this is not an overly fertile area).
At this point, I need to spend a significant amount of time consolidating. I've got to get religion heading upwards in all of these ortho-pagan provinces, get the economy on better footing, lay down a network of watchtowers to cover my land, and get a solid field army or two going to pound the Hungarians with. My current empire is very nicely laid out geographically though -- to the west and east I have bridges blocking entry to my territory, and I have a good castle/city ratio -- 3 castles, 5 cities, nicely spaced so Thorn holds the western border (HRE and Denmark) and supplies one city, Riga holds the northwest (Russia) and supplies two cities, and the starting castle holds the southwest (Hungary) and supplies two cities.
Other thoughts:
- Polish retainers should have their pool size cut to 2 at Castle stables and revert to normal at Fortress stables (they are basically extra-strength Jinetes -- +2 attack, +2 missile attack, +2 defense, +1 charge) but should be ok if they can't be spammed so easily.
- Religion penalties seem to be too small. I've had Kiev stay at 6% Catholicism for several turns now and the happiness is fine (90%) with a 4 unit garrison, normal taxes, and no general. I probably shouldn't be able to hold the place without a half stack when the religion is that bad.
- Merchants are definitely too good a deal at the moment. I've got 3 merchants pulling down 1k a turn total in northern Italy at the moment. They are so fast and they can pay for themselves in under two turns -- probably the speed or income potential should come down.
Thanks!
S
- Religion penalties seem to be too small. I've had Kiev stay at 6% Catholicism for several turns now and the happiness is fine (90%) with a 4 unit garrison, normal taxes, and no general. I probably shouldn't be able to hold the place without a half stack when the religion is that bad.
I think that's because you have low populations still. The religion penalty feels a lot greater when the city has 20k and you can't get it to blue with a full stack due to the wrong religion. But watch out for the heresy penalty. Ouch. Kill heretics dead very fast. Two turns can mean serious problems if the heretic has any skill. Takes a long time to root it all out too.
Carl,
You see this post by Foz? Good stuff. Suspect you're already thinking the same way, but just in case you aren't:
Third Post (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=83171)
Sorry, I think I was half asleep when I wrote my last post. Let me clarify a few things.
- Growth seems good. I'm surprised that farming improvements have little noticeable impact, but overall I'm very pleased.
- Polish nobles (not retainers) are too numerous for their strength and tech level. Pool size at Castle stables should be cut in half (otherwise, they're fine -- it'd be awkward to get no new units with the Castle stable).
- One other thing I forgot to add -- generals seem sparser. I have 7 provinces and still only my three starting generals... I'm not getting adoption requests, babies, men of the hour, or anything.
Bob the Insane
04-12-2007, 16:09
- Polish nobles (not retainers) are too numerous for their strength and tech level. Pool size at Castle stables should be cut in half (otherwise, they're fine -- it'd be awkward to get no new units with the Castle stable).
I have to agree that would slow down Polish a bit. However I rarely built Polish Nobles when I tried Poland because they where the unit of choice to be given away by the council for succeeding in missions...
I played a Hungary campaign to turn 50 and playing the good guy, getting alliances and such (plus an early grab of Zagreb and Iasi) made for a pretty easy start... It is easy to end up with Budapest, Barn, Iasi and Bucharest, plus if you grab Zagrab that is three cities and two castles (Sofia is also possible if you are especially quick) by turn 30... It is a pretty flexible faction, with the archers and infantry (and knights) for fighting in Western Europe and the HA's necessary for controlling the steps... The down side is if Poland gets Kiev (oe worse Iasi) you get bottled up really quickly. Anyway conflicted started with the Byz attacking us, but it was half hearted and they quickly agreed to peace and backed off once Venice attacked them.
One odd thing though, had an Alliance with HRE from the start (in fact with HRE, Poland, Venice, Milan, Sicily, the Pope, Denmark and France) and made particular effert to suck up to Poland and the HRE (thinking to make the steps and the Byz my target). I did get the HRE relationship to Very Good and my faction as Trustworthy. It was then that I was attacked/betrayed by the HRE! I was curious as to how this Trusted Alliance thing works?
Anyway a couple of blocks developed with Venice and the HRE on one side and Hungary, Poland, Pope, on the other... The HRE got themselves discommunicated so we really stirred things up by have a crusade called against Vienna (HRE)... That battle was awesom... Three crusader stacks; mine (Hungary), Poland and Denmark and they are both my allies. I had two catapults and a balista (not that it is any use in a siege), Poland had one catapult and Denmark hand no artillery. I used a tactic of destroying the towers and then using a ram to open the gate. The Polish ignored the towers and knocked holes in the wall either side of the towers. The Danes simply waited around for someone else to break in, however they waited a little to close and took a lot of casualties from the towers.
I noticed Scotland had gone a bit wild so I thought I would try a game as the English... The Scots have taken a serious dislike to the French!
Sorry for taking an age to get back, i was dropping a reply into the thread Vonsch linked to.
Definitely on the same thought track, and putting some limits on heavy melee Cav might not be a bad idea for some factions, although i do need to think about it a bit more ATM.
I am trying a game as the English and Scotland had a go at York and Dublin, and they are at war with the French having taken Antwerp and Burges!!
Thats actually pretty aggressive for them in my experience. But they are a strong factions, primarily because they get some excellent early infantry units, so as soon as they get a castle up and running they can get access to Highland Nobles, they're vulnerable to missiles, but otherwise extremely deadly melee troops. In truth their isn't anything of a comparable tech level that is their equal, they're only slightly worse than DEK.
When you combined that with Border Horse and Highland Archers the Scots have a powerful early force that can do a lot of damage. It's largest weakness is it's vulnerability to Cav and missile fire. If you can get around that weakness though, you have one of the most powerful individual infantry forces in the game at ANY point, and it only gets better later on with Noble Swordsmen and Pikes.
In effect if they actually do go ultra aggressive and they can build enough units, they DO have the forces to beat their opponents pretty badly unless they pack a lot of Heavy Cav/Missiles. Since most AI factions don't include much Cav that really limits the AI's ability to intercept Scotland.
Just a stack and a piece of another so far, came in at Baghdad. Wandering, as usual. I'm fairly ready for them. Wall, garrisons, etc.
Thats just a kind of spawning force so the Mongols actually exist, the main forces won't show up for another few turns as you noticed a bit later.
Two more stacks of Mongols came in at Baghdad.
It should have been three as that is the "main" first wave.
Had one big battle with just BI and a general. That didn't go so well . The Eggies had more balance and it showed. And my state of accustomization to HA didn't help either. BI just don't get around like HA do!
But I wanted to get rid of all that infantry anyway, so I attritted it away trading it for dismounted Arab Cav mostly. You'll be happy to hear the Eggies are certainly building siege gear. They just aren't using it very well... like in sieges. It gave me some trouble in that battle. They had a lot of cats and trebs and I didn't have any Cav except my general.
How did the BI perform when they actually hit combat? Where they decent if less than spectacular, (as intended), or where they just lain weak. You initial description seems to go for decent but outclassed.
Growth really feels good -- the castle with the 10 chivalry king is doing great and everywhere else is still at 2-2.5%. I've been a little surprised that farming doesn't seem to help growth more -- even with Communal farming I don't seem to get about 2.5%. But this way I do have stretches where I can't build anything at a town (while I wait for it to grow) but it really seems to take too long for the growth notification to come around. The pacing seems spot on to me (though bear in mind this is not an overly fertile area).
Growth should be 0.5% per level of farm buildings.
- Merchants are definitely too good a deal at the moment. I've got 3 merchants pulling down 1k a turn total in northern Italy at the moment. They are so fast and they can pay for themselves in under two turns -- probably the speed or income potential should come down.
Bear i mind the rapid payoff is partly because i'm trying to make all recourses useful. Dyes/Wine/Timber/e.t.c. aren't worth much and your average merchant lifetime is 40-50 turns so he doesn't have long to make money back in. The other point is merchants are supposed to pay for themselves fast just because it's no good if it takes 10 turns to get your money back, by and large that small a total merchant income just won't mean anything past turn 40 or so. I'm trying to get it so that from around turn 80-100 onwards merchant income, (depending on faction obviously), makes up approximately 15-20% of the total income of a faction, it's MEANT to be as big a source of income as ordinary trade/farming/mining/taxes. It's just that early on the amounts ARE rather high by comparison to normal income.
- Polish nobles (not retainers) are too numerous for their strength and tech level. Pool size at Castle stables should be cut in half (otherwise, they're fine -- it'd be awkward to get no new units with the Castle stable).
Good idea.
- One other thing I forgot to add -- generals seem sparser. I have 7 provinces and still only my three starting generals... I'm not getting adoption requests, babies, men of the hour, or anything.
Don't look at me, I haven't done anything wrong your Honor:laugh4:.
I'm a bit clueless as to why this is happening...
- Religion penalties seem to be too small. I've had Kiev stay at 6% Catholicism for several turns now and the happiness is fine (90%) with a 4 unit garrison, normal taxes, and no general. I probably shouldn't be able to hold the place without a half stack when the religion is that bad.
As Vonsch said, bigger populations seem to mean more unrest.
Be aware guys, theirs a Little trait bug in the build, i'm not sure why but a special AI only trait is getting given to players generals too, but only when they come of age, probably a bad trigger.
Pleased to see people having fun with the new patch.
have DL'd the fix for the patch (says only 1 other person has DL'd it?)
My copy of the v1.24 should arrive by Saturday so let me know of any factions you want testing.
cheers
R.
- One other thing I forgot to add -- generals seem sparser. I have 7 provinces and still only my three starting generals... I'm not getting adoption requests, babies, men of the hour, or anything.
Check your family tree. Are there a lot of underaged boys there? That will prevent adoptions and such. I don't like the way that all works so I tend to get grumpy and not let any of the men marry in the early game (the girls can if they bring me a good husband). That keeps me where I am choosing which of the offers I take when the count is low. Later, of course, everyone marries anyway. The game forces it once they hit a certain age. But it gets me past the early period where sometimes things get choked if you're turtling.
On the topic of Bzy Inf, Carl, they perfom fine. My problem in that battle was it was a pure "throw them at the walls" siege stack. The Eggs had a better stack, with a mix of stuff, and the combined arms wore me down. And they came in two waves which meant the second one hit me a bit disorganized still. Those cats and trebs had me a little scattered to deal with them fast. BI seems to have solid morale. They fought until they were down to 10 or so. And they tended to rally behind the lines on their own.
But they are a good early all-arounder. Not so good once I'm actually making armies. I prefer BA for holding walls, BS for the anvil, VG for the infantry hammer, etc. In fact, those three with a bit of cav support makes for a nice tough army so far.
here's (http://files.filefront.com//;7221361;;/) to the trait Hotfix.
Once again it is not save game compatible. But again, if you wish, continue with your current campaigns.
Just be aware that your gens are getting significant growth and command bonuses as well as PO bonuses from this error.
On the topic of Bzy Inf, Carl, they perform fine. My problem in that battle was it was a pure "throw them at the walls" siege stack. The Eggs had a better stack, with a mix of stuff, and the combined arms wore me down. And they came in two waves which meant the second one hit me a bit disorganized still. Those cats and trebs had me a little scattered to deal with them fast. BI seems to have solid morale. They fought until they were down to 10 or so. And they tended to rally behind the lines on their own.
But they are a good early all-rounder. Not so good once I'm actually making armies. I prefer BA for holding walls, BS for the anvil, VG for the infantry hammer, etc. In fact, those three with a bit of Cav support makes for a nice tough army so far.
Thats more or less what i hoped for, just wanted to check i understood your comment correctly.
Wow, Scotland came and offered ME an alliance at this stage. Haven't seen that before. Diplomatic situation is interesting. PS sided with Denmark over me (understandably, since Denmark is Catholic and I'm not, but I had perfect relations with Pope at the time), but a lot of Catholic allies have hung in there with me over the Pope! Heh, Venice got a ceasefire from the Danes fast though after I pulled them in (bad me!)
Four and a small piece Mongol stacks now. Danes seem to be running home. Thye remainders are up at Antioch from Jerusalem. But they're running into the Caesarea region which means nice close replacements for me, so I will kill them off. And I'm trying to tempt the Eggies to attack Cairo again.
Okay, Hungary was sending a small army towards Thessalonika, so I worked the relationship with them up to Outstanding to see if that keeps them off my back. And there's a tribute of 100 per turn for 19 more turns running too to keep it up.
Nit: "armoury" is not capitalized like the other buildings.
I wish these three stacks of 'gols at Baghdad would toughen it up and besiege it. I want to see if my militia can hold them off!
Bongaroo
04-12-2007, 19:45
Sicilian Campaign is heating up. I've taken Jerusalem on a crusade and found some cool relics. Egyptians keep marching through my lands with all kinds of troops but haven't attacked and they even offered an alliance. I turned it down in favor of allying with the Danes who took Acre. Danes sent emissary the same turn seeking an alliance which I accepted with a few financial provisions.
The Moors and HRE went to war with me with the Germans quickly accepting a ceasfire due to the Pope excomunicating them. The Moors have been on the attack until recently, I'm preparing a mighty invasion force to claim so turf along the North-West African coast.
Lots of war and truces being called. Things are starting to really heat up and the Mongels are due to arrive soon. Hope they really cause some shakeups too!
Installed the hotfix (all those bonuses felt unfair :/), started new vh/vh campaign as Russia. Took starting three generals and 1-2 militia units each and besieged Vilnius, Riga, and Smolsek (sp?). Got sallied against at Riga and won a heroic victory (general went up to 2 gold chevrons due to killing/capturing 400 militia). Starved out Vilnius and Smolsek. Took the faction leader to Kiev (alone) and the other two generals took some units and headed towards Moscow. Kiev's garrison sallied and was totally destroyed by the faction leader, who won the fight with 4 men left total. I'm happy with my western border now (except maybe Iasi) and plan to backfill through the northern black sea and the NE corner next.
Economically, turned Smolsek and starting castle into cities, made merchants, and headed straight for that gold you'd told me about. Headed around the map and got tribute from everyone. I have about 30k in the bank and I am continuously building.
Again, no generals for me past the starting three and Russia's early units (until Boyar's sons) are awful. I'm putting down rebel units with Viking raiders / Norse swordsmen with archer and spear militia, which requires a heavy numbers advantage. Still, the territorial position is good, the trade resources are good, and castle stables isn't too hard to get to -- I think the bad units are OK.
Suggestions:
- Maybe give every rebel garrison (sorry, sorry) one well-armoured spear unit (either a fully upgraded militia unit or something in the armoured spearman family). The generals are just too effective in the sally battles, which allows blitzing to still be moderately effective. If I couldn't starve them out or couldn't risk the calvary charge, I'd probably have captured two provinces now, instead of 5. The expansion even without sacking does fuel itself to a degree -- it allows more merchants and more cash producing farms to be built.
- Can Russia start with 2 cities instead of 1 city + 1 castle? That castle is almost in the worst possible position -- it takes so long to move troops to anywhere useful from it. Or else maybe give Russia the smolsek castle to start with and leave that one rebel (hey, the Danes might take it).
Thanks,
S
Okay, finally played a bit more.
Turn 90 World Sitrep:
https://img261.imageshack.us/img261/1246/0014sm4.jpg
The Mongols are a bit more aggressive this time. After wandering until about turn 85, mostly west, they decided to pick a fight with a couple of my armies herding them around. But they first picked one on a bridge. So that stack (of theirs) died. The second (with a short stack of reinforcements) picked a fight at a river crossing. So those stacks died. I then tried attacking a depleted stack in the open desert. But it played good defense (refused to attack me) and I wasn't in a good position to press them with my mixed army, so I let the timer run out and took the loss.
Then they besieged Antioch with about 2.5 stacks. After two turns of not assaulting, I threw an army at them in the open, pulled 2 of the 3 stacks (it was 2 short stacks though) and whupped them! First major victory for me over Mongols in the open field 1:1 odds with me as attacker. (I'm learning!) I think they are fine, though I do wish they'd be a bit more aggressive. Are they gonna try to starve out Antioch?
Oh, they are making me rich too! Heh, they paid ransom for the FL and FH.
Meanwhile, Hungary, with whom I was at Outstanding relations and me with an Immaculate rep, backstabbed me. So I guess that trusted alliances still aren't. They will pay. It's no threat to me. They sent a stack of three units to besiege Constantinople. I laugh in their general direction!
I think I'll take Sophia and make that my new border while I'm swatting these pesky Mongols ~;). I still haven't gotten them to assualt a wall. They are smarter than most factions, I guess.
This field army composition is working nicely. It's flexible. It's just not as easy to move around as HA armies. And the stupid group movement is bugged, which makes moving to attack at the tactical level with a unified force is very risky. I got luck in the big battle. They didn't charge with my formation disordered in the process of one move. I had to rebuild it. But I was a ways off and on a hill, so it wasn't a huge risk.
I got another message that more have arrived, but haven't seen them yet. That should have been the second wave. The first came in two parts, as I already mentioned, about 2 turns apart. This last message was around turn 85 or so. Let me check with fow off a min. Nope, no sign of second wave.
Byz Spears hold very nicely. ByzCav can't stand up to Mongol HA, but they do fine in a support/screening role. I let them sucker some Mongol cav back along my flanks, then charge the heavy cav into their flank. Most of the Mongol generals get killed or captured that way. My BC skirmishes until a bit behind my lines, then I have them charge the advancing cav to pin it. Then my general or knights crash into their flank. Short melee. BC does okay in the melee too, better than trying to exchange arrows. VG are deadly if I can pin something on my spears, and the BA rack up their share of kills burning off a lot of arrows. I had two units on hold in front of my spears (suckering the Mongols into attacking me) that accepted charges from heavy cav and survived to pin them a long time. One ended up routing off the map, but the other stuck around. Makes for some interesting battles. Just bridge and ford battles get so... ho hum.
Gonna switch from Latinkon to kats, though. I prefer the bigger melee to the charge. With Mongols, a good charge is hard because things tend to get really messy fast. Better to be able to wade in and dominate those melees.
https://img261.imageshack.us/img261/1594/0010nz0.th.jpg (https://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?image=0010nz0.jpg)
Ho hum... Another bridge victory. ~;)
https://img261.imageshack.us/img261/1628/0013yo9.th.jpg (https://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?image=0013yo9.jpg)
This was the open field metting engagement, much more challenging.
The campaign as Russia continues... its 1122.
I've expanded to take the whole NE corner, from Sarkel north to Bulger, and Iazi north to Riga (all through starving out rebels with general(s) and then slaughtering them in the sally).
I allied with everyone in the world (this needs to be harder :) ), though Poland broke our alliance around 1110 and attacked. Stack composition was fairly good on troops (polish nobles, peasant archers, and spearmen) but had far too many siege engines (about half the stack). This is the main AI problem I'm seeing right now -- too many siege engines being built, and it makes their stacks very vulnerable to interception by field armies. Anyway, I beat off a few of their stacks before they could lay siege, after which they voluntarily withdrew their remaining troops from my lands. I sent a diplomat for a chat and they agreed to be my vassal (even though they held 4 territories and I hadn't ever entered their lands). I was surprised.
AI expansion looks very good. Scotland has the British isles, the Moors have half of Iberia and all of north africa all the way over to Tunis, Egypt has half the holy land and the Nile, Denmark has all the coastal provinces in northern Europe, HRE has the central core of Europe, Milan has most of western europe, and the Byzantines hold all of Greece (including Zagreb). All of those factions are at 5+ regions I think.
Rebel spawning is very good this version -- lots of rebels with generals appearing, makes things more interesting. Get a stack somewhere in Russia every other turn or so, so frequency is good.
Growth is pretty good, maybe just a touch slow. I have nothing larger than a castle or a minor city yet, despite prioritizing growth improvements and trying for high chiv generals. Still, this keeps the battles more competitive.
Thats most of my thoughts for now.
Thanks,
S
Thanks for the updates guys, sorry for being so slow with the replies, caught that blasted cold again, (off my mum no less who caught it off me when I had it the first time):laugh4:.
@Vonsch: Thanks for the Mongol Stuff, what would you say was the biggest contributer to victory for you in your Mongols battles, (besides the obvious terrain in many cases), Byz Spears? The Heavy Cav?
Also i'm working on the Mongol AI too BTW.
Regarding Trusted alliances sometimes going poof, I've noticed this too, not 100% sure what triggers it but I think it happens when trusted alliances are effectively preventing the AI from attacking anything, it breaks one to break the deadlock and prefers the player to anything else normally.
@Saurial:
Thanks for the economics warning. and the patch should fix alliances with any luck, I just wish they'd hurry up~:(.
Glad the AI seems to be doing Okay for you, also good to hear the rebel spawn rate is about right.
@Vonsch: Thanks for the Mongol Stuff, what would you say was the biggest contributer to victory for you in your Mongols battles, (besides the obvious terrain in many cases), Byz Spears? The Heavy Cav?
None of the above. Or more accurately, all of the above and more: effective application of combined arms. The archers got most of the kills. But archers without all the backup can't do their jobs. Cav is the counter to their flanking heavier cav, is all. Spears prevent the headon charges. Cold. VG make them pay if they get into pin range (the pin is done by the spear or even archers charging out at closer forces that pulled up short of spears). The ByzCav and archers are great bait. They LOVE charging both.
If I have to move a long way, can't bait them to attack me, it's MUCH harder. I get there more tired (not a huge deal usually on its own) and it's a lot harder to hold formation. They can charge fast, so have to move in small pulses. And the bugs with moving as a group can be a royal pain. When I get close I go to moving one subgroup at a time to prevent total collapse if I get charged.
So I don't see anything major wrong with the Mongols on the field (aside from known bugs like passivity in some situations). They aren't smart about actually assaulting cities though. When they had 3-4 stacks at Antioch they should have tried an assault the first turn that they could. And they bypassed much easier targets to besiege that.
I could do the same thing with the Turks that I'm doing with the Byz, except better. Those stakes really help. But Turks give me the luxury of doing more HA on HA too. At a price. Eggies should be pretty good with all Mamluks and some heavy cav too. Just out Mongol the Mongols.
Some factions will have it tougher as they don't have the good foot archers. Range is a major factor there. But I'd think pavise crossbows would work with their increased resistance to return fire and the large target profiles of HA.
It probably didn't hurt a bit that my generals were decent chivalry and in the 8-10 star range either. The Catholics and Muslims would have a significant advantage in chivalry, but the Byz get some mightly fine generals to work with in command ratings. It is significantly harder to pump chivalry for Russia and Byz. Oh, the FL can do it, and governors to a lesser degree, but generals in the field don't have jihad nor crusade for the nice boosts.
As to the trusted alliance thing... Hungary was already at war with others. It's just BAD strategic AI. Opening a new front when at war is silly. I didn't even have significant forces (just garrisons) on that frontier. Considering the attack didn't even match my garrison in size, I find it hard to believe it saw me as weak... and shouldn't have seen me as a major threat there either. Overall I probably had 4 times to combat power of Hungary though, or more. The only "weak" indicator might have been that I was at war with the Mongols.
What I think is going on is the programmed enmity between Hungary and Byz kicked in. It disregards "trusted alliances," I think. If you want a real trusted ally, don't choose one that fits the usual criteria of "prime enemy." I suspect Turkey, Hungary and Venice are all impossible as trusted allies for Byz. And that's ignoring the expected issues of trying for a trusted alliance with Catholic factions who will crusade on you, and jihad issues for muslims in the same fashion.
I'm not complaining about the attack. I did expect it. I was just noting that it didn't meet your published expectation that it would be a "trusted alliance." Still, it held Hungary off until turn 85 or so. That's a pretty long tme there.
Another thought: It may be the the "war" decision happened before the alliance got to trusted status and cannot be aborted. When I saw Hungary take Sophia and start shuffling small stacks along and over the border, I sent a diplomat to set up a slush fund to keep them sweet (and bought them up that turn too). That may have already been too late, even though it took them 10-20 turns to actually attack (not sure how long it was... probably can figure it out from the old posts).
Bob the Insane
04-17-2007, 13:24
Continuing my campaign as the English I have taken Bordeaux and Ireland and have given myself a good base. The Scots are still Allied to me and are busy attacking the French now that they hold Antwerp...
I would love to see what would happen to the Scots if you took their starting boats away and forced them to concentrate on the English.
A crusade was finally called in 1123 but to my surprise it was against Toulouse and the French. We I guess I will have to claim those lands for the English crown and save the people from their heretical overlords... :2thumbsup:
The pope must really love the English because the French's allies, the Portugese, just attacked us and got themselve immediately excommunicated!
OK
up to speed again.
Played up to year 1200 (or thereabouts) as The Pope. Just to see what it was like from the inside so to speak.
Start with Rome (no surprises there then) and it's away we go - ahhggh. Pope has a very expensive army to maintain - we'd better go conquer places. quick or we'll end up with no settllements and no army.
Gather army, capture Florence. - (Florence was surely more than a village at this time wasn't it?) Turn 3 and I'm in the red already. Disband some damaged units (3 gold chevs all very well, but i need cheap garrison troops), gather up the forces to attack naples - no we have to capture Ajaccio first or else we don't get any sweeties. Stuff that - grabbed Naples (Sicily immediately excommunicated!) and with remaining troops got to Corsica in time to complete mission (having waited a couple of turns to be able to build a boat.
After which the Italian peninsular became something of a free-for-all, Venice took Bologna, Milan took Genoa, I took Durazzo (as per instructions of the council of nobles) and then we got stuck in to a long war of attrition.
Eventually grabbed Milan, Milan being busy elsewhere in France - eventually destroying said faction; and later I took Marseilles and Toulouse; His Popeyness also took Cagliari and Palermo giving him almost complete control of the peninsular when the venetians launched a deadly attack. Grabbed Florence - hopelessly underdefended and I held on to Rome by the skin of my teeth. (Actually quite easy as stone walls and militia troops proved adequate for the purposes.)
I noticed Venice had some advanced infantry - DCKs ? and so I reasoned they had to come from a big castle - which could only mean Ragusa had been built up quite quickly. And so it had - but (such dummies) with only a tiny garrison so I took some troops from naples plus a few from Durazzo and promptly bagged myself a facility to build some tasty troops.
Crusades - only been one (nothing to do with me - they happen automatically, the Pope don't get to say yay or nay.) Which failed despite the valiant attempts of Poles, Danes and French armies. I sent the Pope himself with an army to conquer Jerusalem (well I had to, to maintain my reputation with myself) but just as they were disembarking, the fool died and the army disbanded. :wall: Couldn't get another army ready in time to qualify.
haven't started any crusades yet - should do especially if I can get my allies England and HRE to do the donkey work. I don't think my allies the Moors, Egypt and Turkey would be interested though.
Being Pope means you get to control Inquisitors - well some of the time. They have "their" turn and then you get to control them. They appear out of nowhere and disappear as well. By the end of my stint there were no active Inquisitors. nb they get traits and retinue like other priests. (Talking of retinue -how come the first pope gets martin luther as retinue!!)
Obviously as the Pope isn't meant to be a playable faction you can get sillinesses:
at one point the Pope requested a donation from me - which the game sorted out automatically - I'd have had no idea how to give myself money!
Also if you vote for the wrong Pope (as the Pope is the faction leader then if you're dead how come you get to have a vote?) you can be very disappointed with your (former) self. Haven't worked out the tactics of voting -might be better to vote an enemy faction cardinal as Pope - takes one away from them and allows your others to roam around. But then it's be better if you knew their traits and retinues before voting for them.
Other than that the game much the same as any faction, you never seem to have enough money and the 3 gold chevey units tend to get dispersed over time.
Discover the venetians like building forts so I attacked one they had between Milan and Venice - oh dear, not a good idea to fill forts with troops if the attackers have bombards and catapults. Mucho carnage. 2 cats and a bombard killed over 50% of the defenders in 1 attack (although I tried to repeat the feat on another and they got clobbered by defenders ballistae and cat - had to rely on old-fashioned steel to win that one.)
Attacking settlements (and with my provisos from earlier posts) is fun - managed to take venice from a full-stack defending Venetian army - silenced the towers with my trusty siege train (now silver chevron units - all 3 of them) and then piled in with a motley crew of papal guards, cavalry, crossbows and anyone who could wield a sword. Took some casualties from
a tower I had trouble neutralising as the unit that controlled it was half hidden in back alley - and my cavalry couldn't attack them even when placed next to them. Luckily they unstuck themselves and were duly cut down and the tower ceased firing on me.
So playing Pope - fun and not as easy as it might seem. Some Pope functions (incl ex-comms) are partly out of the players control but there's enough there to make for an interesting game.
Anything else you might want to know?
Bob the Insane
04-17-2007, 18:54
Carl - Have you done any work against the leak 1.2 patch?
If so I, and I am sure the others here, would be happy to test that work for you to try and get ahead of the game for the 1.2 official release...
Happy testing 1.24b at present but I was just offereing...
Yeah, i've got most of the work done, I need it testing but thats it. (I haven't installed the unofficol 1.24, not familiar with torrents and I want to be on the same vershion as the majority of people are when testing as the 1.2 patch changes a few things with it's fixes).
I tell you what I'll send you a link for the 1.25 vershion which is the 1.2 patch compatibale vershion ATM.
p.s. just to be a show of and brag:laugh4:, i got all the work on 1.25 bar a few bits, (bassiclly suggestions from 1.24), done within a wekk of the patch leaking out LOL~;p.
Bob the Insane
04-17-2007, 20:20
Cool...
P.S. I grabbed the leaked 1.2 from here, no torrent...
http://files.filefront.com/MIITW_Update2_Final_EFIGSexe/;7194312;/fileinfo.html
Bob the Insane
04-19-2007, 14:17
Well I got the 1.02 leaked patch working and applied 1.25 (Problemfixer.exe).
One note in this release you do not have any of your config file, batch file and shortcut stuff so I canabalised them from the 1.24 release.
Started as England... The 2-hander fix has not come into effect this early (no 2-handed units yet). The shield fix is nice, but as the early siege battles generally involve you facing the enemy archers and walls and little manouvering, it has little effect so far.
The differences so far are diplomatic, Venice and Sicily have gotten into a war already, in like the year 1097, only 17 turns in... You now get that old message (think MTW) for when two allies start fighting, you are asked which one you want to support and you lose the alliance with the one you do not chose. This has happened in every instance of allies going to war so far. It seems that power blocks form quite quickly around waring factions because the allies involved have to chose sides and that rolls around pretty quickly.
I noticed that my relations impoved really quickly. I gained an alliance and trade rights with the Scotish at start with marrage of our princess to their faction heir. I had no further interaction but our relations have moved up to Perfect with them in only 20 or so turns...
Bongaroo
04-19-2007, 14:36
No pics this time but after the last hotfix I started another polish campaign. After the initial rebel province capture rush I had the Germans, Hungarians, French, Spainish, and Potuguese as allies with relations at perfect for the Hungarians and Germans. I think that the danes attacking me screwed up my relations with the HRE. They attacked, and so did the Hungarians! I just got super backstabbed. But I'm actually looking forward to it. I'll be going to war on 3 fronts now while holding Jerusalem from a crusade. Very interesting.
Had a campaign as the french.
used the ballista/cannon fix file which i used instead of problemfixer descr-walls.txt. Didn't get far enough into the campaign to see if it worked but it sorted out the "problem" with the machine gun nests in towers:yes:
Well the French get a shed-load of settlements so it's heads-down send the princess out to build alliances etc. (nobody paid for map information but everyone joined in the grande alliance.) With the aid of a diplomat got every Xtian faction onside.
Meanwhile it was build up the economic buildings, and do what the council of nobles asked. (By some co-incidence they always seemed to ask me to take places nearest to a stack I was building for that very purpose. which was nice.)
No great problems with attacking settlements / castles. Alliances held fior a while until we were running out of rebel places to take. Inevitably Milan brokie cover first (and was eliminated - they built forts on the eastern and western approaches to milan so I simply attacked from the south thereby neutralising their 2 full-stack armies in the forts.) After that England and Portugal also broke ranks.
As I seemed to be the only one building priests in any quantity I was able to replace Popes with regularity. Up to mid 1150's no other faction had made any other alliances at all. But eventually they got going.
Ditto merchants - I had about 10 bringing in large amounts of money (someone's tweaked them haven't they!).
Crusades - went on both and took Jerusalem and Lisbon (Portugal having excomm'd for attacking me!) Jerusalem fell despite the 3 gold chev army inside - didn't even need the Venetian army (allies) to help out. TBH - I don't see the point of making the defenders so powerful if it makes no difference.
Jihad. Something odd happened - either I missed the notification or it went ahead without it. Anyway I wondered why I had 2 jihad armies parked outside Jerusalem for years - Turks and Moors (IIRC) - until the failed jihad message appeared. Don't know why they didn't attack me?
As Egyptian later on in the game I had a full-stack army invade Corsica (mine) with the faction leader in control. Again although at war with them they didn't attack, so i left them alone.
Mongols arrived on cue and took Antioch (from Venetians who had kept their crusade army in the Holy Land until a new crusade was called!) But their surviving armies had yet to approach Jerusalem. (Shame as I had upgraded the walls to include cannon towers and I wanted to test them out!)
Due to winning the papal elections and winning 2 crusades and not attacking any allies my reputation was "impeccable" at the end of the session (c. 1180).
Didn't notice any weirdness in battles, apart from passive AI - having blown several holes in the wall of one of my settlements a milan army with carrocchio standard and some artillery just sat out the end of the battle being shot to pieces by 3 units of crossbows and then ridden down by 2 units of cav. If AI had any sense if it wasn't going to attack it should withdraw rather than get annihilated.
(Noticed that portugese diplomats all had arabic names and pictures - is that in vanilla or an error somewhere?)
Also Rennes wouldn't expand beyond "town" so had to convert to castle.
In terms of making it difficult giving France so many settlements at the outset seems counter-productive. Maybe lose Marseilles ?
Bob the Insane
04-20-2007, 15:00
Some with 1.25... There is really something a little odd with relations... I am at war with France and my relations with them still keep improving??
I selected Hard for the campaign difficulty...
Battles are lots of fun, had an excellent siege battle, I was defending, against a near full French stack at Bordeaux. The French had catapults and a Trebuchet. We also had a near full stack plus some catapults as we had just taken Bordeaux and only just had time to repair the castle before the French tried to take it back.
It would have been a fanstastic battle but for the AI going passive for a bit... This meant it only opened a breach in one castle wall and damaged another before it stopped shooting. I push out some of my own troops and the AI burst into life trying to assault the castle (for some reason is switched the Trebuchet to "cow" mode for the rest of the battle).
If I had fewer troops there would have been a real problem but as it was I blocked up the breach with spearmen and still had enough left to cover the walls where ladders where used. The AI had two siege towers but they didn't get anywhere near the walls. The AI put up a tremendous fight in the breach but the steadfastness of my spearmen and the constant rain of flaming arrows eventually broke the attackers. If I had a minimal garrison in there rather than the full stack with general, I would have lost Bordeaux to the counter attack...
Continued French campaign
The grande alliance fell apart. As soon as I destroyed England, the Scots attacked me; Venice attacked once Milan was out of the way. Then the Danes piled in. (dammit I lost Antwerp to them due to not re-inforcing the garrison in time - those obudshaer (sp?) destroy spear militia. Managed to hang onto Metz though - the obudshaer killed my spears but the peasant archer units were too quick to be caught so were able to keep their distance and eventually killed the 2 obuddies without significant loss. Shame about my king though!
Still allied to Pope, HRE, Sicily, Byzzies. HRE even sent a small stack of pavise crossbowmen to help defend Milan - I sallied forth (with a catapult - did great damage) but waitied for the x-bowmen to trudge from the ooposite side of the map to defend the front of my settlement. Where they set-up and caused great carnage. So nice of the venetians to just stand there and be sued for target practice (although one unit did actually attack one of the x-bowmen who had got too close!)
Had a brill battle against 2 full venetian stacks. I attacked with a single unit of merchant cavalry. And won a heroic victory, killing and capturing nearly 500 troops. OK the Pope helped by attacking with a full-stack crusader army that just happened to be standing next to me. Still -great watching the AI fight against itself with me just mopping up routing units :laugh4:
In the East the Mongol hordes came up against my cannon towers of Jerusalem. And perished. Well 2 and half stacks have so far. Credit to the third one though - all cavalry and despite my cannons blasting away they stood their ground and the siege continues. Just hope they don't bring up any siege equipment and infantry as re-inforcements too soon! Good to see the cannon / ballista fix works though!
The Egyptians camped outside Ajaccio eventually got bored and went home.
@Bob: sounds like theirs a bug in the faction standings file.
@everyone else: 'm stil around and loving the feedback,. but i'm stuck in a kind of limbo as I can't really do much else to V1.25 without the patch to test things on.
Keep the feedback coming though.
You still playing vonsch, (play what you like now, i've nothing pressing that needs doing)?
@Bob: sounds like theirs a bug in the faction standings file.
@everyone else: 'm stil around and loving the feedback,. but i'm stuck in a kind of limbo as I can't really do much else to V1.25 without the patch to test things on.
Keep the feedback coming though.
You still playing vonsch, (play what you like now, i've nothing pressing that needs doing)?
Haven't played in days, no. Been reading instead, and waiting for 1.2 also. I don't feel like upgrading/patching until it's official.
Sort of stressing out waiting to hear if I'm employed again too ~;). Supposed to hear on two potential conflicts any day. If they come through my play time will plummet though.
Thnx for the update Vonsch, and TBH i haven't played a single game of M2TW since the early part of the wee either. Been playing Star Wars X-Wing Alliance or reading too, (have about 300-400 books to choose from so got plenty to go at :laugh4:).
Don't worry about the possible drop off in playing time, it's one of those things and I hope you get the job myself.
I'm actually in the same boat, waiting for a letter saying i have an interview. (Should get one though as it was the concentrate that set it up and they told them they where interested in interviewing me, they just need to get a few more candidates so the make sure they've got a decent number of people to interview).
Chugging away with the French campaign - quite an enjoyable campaign it is too!
Noticed problem with French unit roster : have Noble Knights and Chivalric Knights available - but they have exactly the same stats, apart from the Noble ones being more expensive in the upkeep department. (Shurley shome mishtake?)
Also Unhorsed knights are just crusader foot knights - dammit they even reply "crusaders" when you click on them.
merchants - only rarely see anyone else's - which is odd considering the vast amounts they bring in in the v1.24 mod.
Mongols and Egyptians keep attacking jerusalem - well the Mongols seem to have given up after I destroyed 4 stacks with my tower cannon fire.
Noticed both when attacking and defending that artillery seems to be radar controlled - rarely misses even on first shot. In one battle I was defending a settlement - Edinburgh - from a Scottish army that materialised out of nowhere - complete with trebs, cats, mortars, bombard and siege equipment. I had the best part of a well-equipped army to defend the place but didn't bother putting people on the walls thinking they'd get shot to pieces by all the scottish guns.
Not so, the grande bombard wheeled itself out the front door, and destroyed the trebs, cats, bombard and most of the mortars without taking a hit. Every shot was a direct hit on target. Also took out the 2 siege towers before the remaining scottish infantry attacked behind a single ram. (and therefore were so slow that I retreated my GB inside the settlement before it could be overrun.) Meanwhile I rushed all my infantry to the gate and missiles to the walls, where after a hard struggle the scots were destroyed.
Elsewhere Ragusa fell (to me) after a long siege, I tried attacking with my siege artillery but after getting a catapult destroyed by cannon fire from the towers before it could get within range I quit and decided to sit it out. The Danes have been driven from Hamburg and Arhus, Metz remains in my hands and Antwerp has survived another murderous attack - the Danes make excellent attacking forces! The Sots are eliminated, Venice now only has Durrazzo (sp?)
The Mongols are spreading north from Antioch, Egypt stays in Egypt (and Acre) and now the Timurids have been announced. Hopefully they'll see off the Mongols but at a heavy price! HRE, Sicily, Byzzies and the Pope remain my friends and Spain, Portugal and myself share Iberia. Poland, Russia are still in the game too.
Regarding Noble Knights: they'll be getting AP secondary melee attacks in the next version.
Regarding artillery: The flaming/exploding shots of all cannon/bombard types ARE 100% accurate ATM, the trouble is that if you set it to even 95% it misses so much that the anti-infantry power is virtually pointless.
Bombards DO have a small area of effect though so it's infantry killing power isn't as high as you'd think.
However as noted, siege engines appear to be easily hit, I'll look into this.
minor point
noticed that there's a wee lake next to oslo - can sail a ship into it, but it won't come out again! Had to disband it.
otherwise campaign continuing - egypt and mongols still haven't been able to get close to Jerusalem, the only way to fight a proper battle is to let them besiege it and not use the sallying forth / let the cannon towers do the work tactic. Mind you, I lost my king last night - sallied forth to run down some routing Mongol archers and got himself killed - the only loss from his bodyguard and a unit of lancers :oops:
Have now captured Tunis, tripoli and Alexandria from the egyptians and Algiers from the Moors. Mongols and Timurids are circling around eachother around mosul, and baghdad. According to the map the Timurids won an heroic battle against the Mongols out that way. Have upgraded units in Jerusalem to arquebusiers and voulgier and lancers, but kept some crossbow and spear units as well.
Elsewhere Denmark is reduced to Frankfurt with a full-stack garrison and full-stack army alongside. not looking forward to fighting them. Sicily has woken up (c 1240) by attacking HRE in Bologna - after HRE removed the 2 full-stack armies it had stationed there. Don't know where they went. Pope has been quiet, not much by way of ex-comms. Seen a few more merchants from other factions. Mongol diplomats are definite pain - have bribed 2 of my armies so far in Europe but no garrisons. Portugal has Marrakesh and much of Iberia. Spain has Toledo. venice is left with Thessalonika (I think) Out east Russia and Poland continue (Hungary has been eliminated.) Not sure how far the mongols stretch into the balkans, but Turkey and the Byzzies are still in the game.
next on the to-do list - finish off the Moors and Egypt and capture crete (still held by rebels) and Frankfurt. If can also hang onto Jerusalem as well that should see me to the 45 regions I need to capture.
Bongaroo
04-24-2007, 16:13
scotland is an easy campaign. I quit the polish one from shear frustration. I autoresolved a defensive battle (stupid me) and lost my only port. I was basicly losing money and at war with everyone. Was fun to fight for survival and go guerrilla but after a while I was losing the war of attrition. Got boring after a lot of turns of that over and over.
So I started a Scottish campaign. I've kicked the English off the island and am currently raking in money and preparing a mainlain invasion of scottish hordes. lol.
Bob the Insane
04-25-2007, 12:13
I have been thinking on the whole Trusted Alliances thing...
Basically I think it is a great idea, but I am not sure why it is linked to reputation. Sure you need a good reputation to get alliances and other agreements in the first place, but once you have the alliance, if you do the things necessary to keep the relationship with that faction at excellent or above (for example) then surely that should be enough for a trusted alliance. I mean you could have a bad overall reputation but if you have maintained any alliance for many turns and done the things necessary to keep the relationship rating up then surely if does not matter that your reputation has dropped to deceitful, I mean to order to maintain the relationship you can't have done anything bad to your ally right?
I an just thinking with the AI tending to go the bad guy route it might help to disasociate reputation with the Trusted Alliance. Sure make it really hard to get any alliance with you are deceitful or worse, but once it is in place I fell that the individual relationship with your ally should take precidence over your universal reputation...
If possible you could also link a bad reputation to a continual decline in relationships. This would still make life harder for the dread path and again could make things to hard for the AI...
Just a thought...
Hurrah - sort of.
Completed the big campaign as France in year 1245AD
My huge battle against the danes turned out to be a walk-over.
Killed the faction heir in a skirmish, fought on some amazing mountain terrain NE of metz, s of frankfurt.
Then sandwiched the faction leader and his full-stack army outside Frankfurt between 2 full-stack armies of my own (having besieged Frankfurt itself.) Let the pootah control the 2nd French army whilst took control of the 1st. Lined up my army - with lots of scotch guard and aventarios (sp?) in front and faced the danes, whilst the 2nd army bombarded them with catapult fire from behind. Killed 97% of the Danish army with missile fire. Total casualties (mine) 7 - of which 4 were from "friendly fire" when I sent my cav in pursuit of the routing remnants. Frankfurt then became a rebel settlement which meant it was a simple job to take it.
My grand plans (above) from expanding my empire were put to one side when the Pope ex-comm'ed HRE. So I simply mopped up 4 German cities and settlements and hey presto - Victory.
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Overall comments.
If Problemfixer 1.24 is meant to make the game more challenging then I think it fails. For the following reasons:
1) Cannon towers, once these are introduced it becomes impractical for the either the human player or the AI to attack anywhere with them. Unless you auto-resolve, in which case they are ignored. Takes the fun out of attacking places. From a human player's PoV, what I think is required is the possibility of success or failure in evenly matched battles. Reducing the accuracy of cannon towers and artillery firing flaming shot would help balance the battles.
2) The rapid-fire arrow towers can be dealt with by using the ballista / cannon tower tower fix. This looks and feels so much better, and makes for a better battle. From a player's PoV the fun is in controlling your troops, not in letting the walls and towers do the work for you.
3) Merchants. The amount of florins one gets has been massively boosted in ProblemFixer. Bad move. Main reason being that once you have built enough trade buildings and merchants and discovered where the most lucrative places are you can rake in 30,000+ florins a turn just from merchants. By the end of the game I was building in every settlement and recruiting troops just to spend the money. Means the human player can build several full-stack armies and rebuild damaged units almost immediately. The end-game becomes too easy.
4) Good points - well the alliances and diplomacy seems more sensible, ie the non-human controlled factions tend to keep more to alliances - Mine held with the Byzzies, Poland, Russia, Sicily, Spain and Pope right through the game. Ceasefires worked well too - even the Mongols negotiated one with me when they were attacked by the Timurids (these latter however never really got going, just wandering around outside Baghdad and Mosul, having the odd battle with the Mongols. They even let the Egyptians conquer Baghdad in a jihad.) However one could say this reliability makes for a more predictable game. More randomness might make for interesting strategy.
5) Open field battles are sensible (ie the balance between units seems OK, there's no nasty surprises from under-powered units destroying units that should be superior.) Passive AI is still a problem though (eg the Mongol cavalry army that simply stood still for an entire battle rather than attack an inferior army, and the danish army that sat down next to the central plaza rather than attack the remaining defenders.) Chasing down routing units can still be a pain, especially if the routing unit is thinly spread out over a large distance. And too often cavalry will simply tickle retreating units with their pointed sticks rather than charge home.
6) If you want to make for a more difficult challenge, then limiting all factions to 1 settlement to begin with might be interesting. Secondly make rebel settlements grow and develop more rapidly. Overloading key settlements with massive garrisons seems retrograde. But they should increase the garrisons by the same amount as a human player would (ie limited by what buildings are available.) (Don't know how feasible that is.) Definitely need to sort out the problem of settlements that can't grow properly - Rennes, Zagreb and Stockholm have all had that problem.
7) The turns / years problem is difficult to sort out. Personally I like the idea of characters ageing in line with the game time. However this means you have to sort out the time it takes for buildings to be created, movement allowances etc in line. The increased movement allowance for characters in problemFixer look reasonable, if maybe even a little overgenerous. I'd even like the time taken to build buildings to more directly related to size of population, with more fine tuning, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth and maybe not even do-able.
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Anyway, that's all by the by, as once the official 1.2 patch is out we'll all have anew baseline from which to suggest / make / test mods.
Bob the Insane
04-26-2007, 17:18
@Bob: sounds like theirs a bug in the faction standings file.
I am not sure that is the case...
I have been playing an unmodded campaign as Venice for reference and I have noted in that your relationship with your allies appears to continually improve over time (though not as quickly as in your 1.25)...
1) Cannon towers, once these are introduced it becomes impractical for the either the human player or the AI to attack anywhere with them. Unless you auto-resolve, in which case they are ignored. Takes the fun out of attacking places. From a human player's PoV, what I think is required is the possibility of success or failure in evenly matched battles. Reducing the accuracy of cannon towers and artillery firing flaming shot would help balance the battles.
Just FYI the 1.25 build appears to introduce a little more inaccuracy back into the siege engines...
One point I think is interesting is whether making sieges harder is making the game harder... Playing vanilla (well with 1.02) I suddenly find myself losing settlements to the AI again because if you do not maintain a sufficiently large garrison then that one ladder and RAM could be enough to get them enemy force inside (cities and small castles). At which point 3 or 4 untis of Town Militia just don't cut it... I would be interested in see the effect of reducing the fire output of the towers again but leaving the activation radius in place (as it is nice to have the defenses doing something without having a large garrison).
Ladders are really the most insidious element as the are all but impossible to destroy on the way in...
An interesting point about what is needed to make the game harder. (or just make it last longer?)
(Am waiting for the official 1.2 patch BTW as I have to get someone to DL for me)
For me the game lasts longer if the player plays out most of the battles - and it means more player involvement. In a sense it's not so much the number of turns as the hours it takes. Therefore if the game is such that battles will tend to autoresolved then that makes for a shorter game, and one that isn't so much fun.
Now you can't write the game so that the player will always be facing an equal or better army, but making sieges (for example) difficult but winnable by having AI garrisons that are at least half-stack but having vanilla towers means the player thinks that it's worth playing the battle out. Equally the player should take the time and effort to defend their settlements /castles with a reasonable force and not rely on the walls and towers to do all the work.
Another point if you want to make the game more difficult then an obvious way is to limit the number of units the player can recruit / rebuild each turn and the number of free units. Equally keeping the revenue from merchants lower means the player has to make more difficult choices on how to spend their money. I suspect people will also take more "care" over their armies if they can't simply rebuild them immediately after each battle. FWIW I'd prefer a lower limit on the number of elite units that can be recruited - say 1 of each type at any one time from any 1 castle. Would also stop the spamming of specialist elite units and force players to utilise a wider range of troop types, making for more interesting battles.
Realise that getting any balance right is very difficult, especially if the AI has to play by the same rules as the human player. makes you realise also that CA had a near impossible job trying to balance the various game elements in a way that pleased every player.
Just dropping a comment in to let you know I'm still watching things. Just can't do much without a new version and I can't do that without the damm patch, shouldn't be long though now with a bit of luck.
Regarding easy siege defenses, it's a double edged sword. I specifically WANTED defenses to be easy, (although the thing about cannon towers IS worrying), primarily because it would make life harder on the player when they where ATTACKING the AI. The problem is the auto-resolve bug lets you auto-resolve your way around the worst of the losses. If auto-resolving was more costly as well when I buffed the towers it would work.
On the other hand, I DO still think towers are a bit OTT in defense, so a Nerf is still in order.
As mentioned before, without 2-3 units of Trebs you aren't really expected to be able to get through Large/Huge Stone walls with just one stack, the trouble is the AI still isn't using enough artillery. 1.2 might help their too though as I hear the AI is much smarter about army composition.
Regarding overmuch money, thats an ongoing issue with vanilla too. What percentage of your income where merchants making up? If it was 20% or less then i'm not too worried, (allthough overall income does need to drop as you mentioned), if it was more we have an issue.
Been playing moors.
6 regions to start with - off to a flier and grab spain and portugal before they get started, and take tunis and tripoli.
within about 20 turns one has got a complete corner of the map (before the new world appears anyway)
noticed that there's some weird unit symbols down timbuktu and arguin way. looks like roman peasants have been recruited to stand in for sudanese archers? (Soz - should have loaded the game up and checked exact units)
Anyway after a couple of sessions England is destroyed and I'm at war with France and Scotland.
Noticed that the ballista / cannon fix totally silences archer towers - ie they don't seem to fire at all on citadels and fortresses?
Had a quick read through the modding article on path-finding -
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=82397
fascinating stuff. many moons ago i was trying to program a much simpler version of this sort of game using QLBasic and getting into a terrible muddle in trying to work out pathing algorithms. I really should have done a comp sci degree.
Shame CA don't spell out exactly how they do things like this - maybe they don't want competitors to copy their work.
anyway enjoying the moorish challenge - missed out on jihad, the egyptians got to baghdad before me.
More on the Moorish campaign.
1) make that nubian archers being roman peasants in disguise.
2) AAArggh - Them blooming danes again. Had a full-stack army in Dijon, got destroyed by a full-stack Danish army - simply there's nothing I have as Moors that can stand up to Obershaer, especially in town battles. At least in citadels etc one had multiple levels of walls which help, but with only one level of walls, once a breach is made (and assuming the attacking army doesn't go to sleep) there's very little I can do to stop them. (Apart from capture their settlements and citadels - dumb AI left Arhus completely empty and had 1 unit garrisoning Hamburg. Don't know if the new patch fixes this but it needs sorting out.)
3) Bridge battles -could someone please tell the AI not to push catapults over the blooming bridge but set them up on the opposite bank to the human player and pound the daylights out of the defending forces. Ditto xbowman. OK it's nice to get a heroic victory destroying 2 armies for the loss of 70 men as the Moors but even so..
4) notice someone has come up with a fix for the AI standing in range of towers
You can mod this by the way. In config_ai_battle look for this line:
Code:
<defend-sally-out>
<!-- reform to this amount times the tower range --> <tower-range-scale>1.5</tower-range-scale>
</defend-sally-out>
by jambo in thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=84399
Grinding on with the Moors
Got 35 regions so not doing badly but am getting seriously bogged down in central europe fighting Milan and the Pope and Denmark.
Further to the cannon /ballista tower bug fix. Definitely doesn't work properly with problemfixer as I've had ocassions when the towers have totally refused to fire anything even if there are troops on the walls. You can even see the ballistas sticking out the towers but nothing happens.
Had a totally insane battle with the Pope over Genoa. Settlement had been battered by Milan several times but managed to hang on but the units were pretty ragged and I couldn't get many reinforcements in at any one time.
Anyway the Pope attacks with a full stack of heavy duty infantry - papal guard, unhorsed knights etc. My militia spears put up heroic resistance at the walls but got overwhelmed. I was left with the remnants of about 10 units back at the plaza, with 80% losses. The Pope had only taken about 25% losses. So he sends 1 unit of papal guard to take the central plaza. The rest hang around the main gate, partaking of refreshments, sight-seeing etc.
Anyway the single unit of papal guard slowly destroys what's left of my army in the central plaza. Until there is a 4 man desert archer unit left. At which point the papal guard unit turns around and leaves the plaza. Thinks about it and attacks, killing another archer, stops, retires and then stops. Comes back a third time and attacks the 2 remaining archers. Having killed one (and leaving me with a single bod in the plaza) they decide it's time for tea, everyone back to the main gate and off they march. Soon after the game times out and I've won a close victory. No idea what in the AI makes it do this but it is really dumb.
Apart from that I'm hanging on to Metz, but have lost Dijon to the danes and no sign of recovering it either. Scotland, at least is no more and I've taken oslo, so Stockholm will be next. Luckily I've upgraded my spanish settlements so they can churn out urban militia - hope they can take on Europe's finest.
Having sent everyone to sleep with my postings I'll keep this one short:
The official 1.2 patch has now been released into the wild.
I hope to get a copy sent to me sometime next week, at which point I can get the new and improved problemfixer!
(Oh forgot to mention in my Moorish campaign - had 2 full-stack armies besieging the last Scottish castle - nottingham. it had the king and mix of artillery and average infantry. According to the pre-battle screen I had 70-80% superiority so I auto-resolved and got a crushing defeat both times. So I played it out, not letting the AI control my reinforcements. I walked it, didn't even need the 2nd army. Must be something somewhere that gives extra bonus to defenders if last settlement or has king in control?
academic but the cannon/ballista fix did work with cannon towers.
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perhaps we need a new thread for the post-1.2 patch (official) problem fixer?)
perhaps we need a new thread for the post-1.2 patch (official) problem fixer?)
Good idea, I'm just downloading the patch now though. Should be 24 hours or so to get the patch installed an check the current 1.2 compatbile vershion for bugs.
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