I have a problem with AI bodyguards. :\

[pezhetairoi]

I've found it rather annoying when I'm playing that my bodyguard units are always smaller than the enemy's. Way smaller. I'm playing baktria, and I'm having to deal with family -members- that have more somatophylakes than my faction -leader-. A Seleukid family member can have as many as 80 riders, and the pahlav even more, with their already powerful enough sahigan pahr inflated into sizes like 90+ to 100 for a family member, not to mention 120 for a leader and heir, sizes which my poor 70 for a leader and heir, 52 or 47 for everyone else, can't handle. I actually tried bribing over some members from other factions just to see what would happen. They all stayed inordinately powerful in Baktrian bodyguard terms! The Parthian fellow with 80 men I bribed still had 80 when he came over to my side! And the Saka family member I bribed with 87 cataphract bodyguards still had 87 somatophylakes when he came over! Needless to say, my faction leader only still had 70+.

And this doesn't happen only in Baktria. As SPQR, I bribed a couple of Epeirote generals, one with 97 and one with 78. They came over with those numbers, and after I put them at the head of the First Army of the Republic and fought a coupla battles, they actually rose in number to 100 and 80... while my True Roman bodyguards stayed at their pathetic 48, 52, 48, 40... Small wonder why in every campaign my armies are led by foreign leaders while my own stay at home.

Any idea why this is so? Surely not another balancing thing to make things more fair for the AI, I hope... there are limits, after all. My generals > their generals, so my general's bodyguard > their bodyguard is only a logical step, especially since they stay the same size after they are bribed over to me instead of having their bodyguards reduced to Baktrian/Roman/human player proportions.

[Watchman]

AFAIK a general's number of bodyguards is based off some arcane formula that chiefly deals with the Influence rating, an obscure bonus for the faction leader and heir, and to some degree the unit's experience level. AI generals tend to have their traits up the Wazoo, so of course they duly have fairly impressive private armies too.

Personally, I've found isolating them, tying them down with something tough (like your own BGs - recall that the AI is chronically incapable of using secondary melee weapons...) and mobbing them with hordes of low-level troops with AP weapons works well. In the case of Baktria, those Daha and Arachosian light cavalry as well as the two types of axe-toting beardy hillmen (particularly effective in woods, as cavalry take major penalties there) are a good choice - pretty much my regular Pahlav general-killers these days. Heck, Ehranshar Arshtabara with proper support have proven themselves perfectly capable of bogging and pinning down the darn Sahigans, and who cares if such cheap and easily retrained troops take some casualties in the process ?

[pezhetairoi]

Well, yeah. I've always done tying them down with BGs and pendulum-charging them to death. But that doesn't work in the cities where they congregate, since the bodyguards in the field are chronically capable of charging straight into my pantodapoi phalangitai, which are the best I've got owing to my reluctance to recruit mercenaries. They always get decimated there. But in the cities, in the cities! I don't think they do primary weapon charges there, just two hundred Sahigan Pahr in Kiat took down practically 80% of my Somatophylakes PLUS one family member, as well as over 300 pantodapoi phalangitai to boot... Erk.

I guess what i'm looking for is, is there any way to either nerf the AI generals' traits, or better my own through scripting?

And anyways, another question: Does '+1 to your bodyguard's valour' mean an addition to bodyguard size, or something other?

[Fondor_Yards]

Gives them 1 exp chevron

[pezhetairoi]

oh. right. Bah, is there no way i can increase my bodyguard size? Perhaps by editing the base unit size in EDB or something? I just feel more comfortable with bigger numbers for my faction at least.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Second, the bodyguard sizes are really annoying. And my personal experience, in melee the cavalry fights better with spears than with kopis.

I have a guy called Perdikkas sitting around in Edessa, he is a really experienced general, and having influence about 4 or 5, and since he fought his last battle a few years ago, he stayed in Edessa with 28 somatophylakes and not got a single one to reinforce his personal corps since then.

[Zaknafien]

just wait around for their influence to raise. I always get romani family members up to 80 or so bodyguards, just got to wait till influence gets to 8 or 9 or 10 or so. i dont use my family members for any type of offense though.

[CaesarAugustus]

80 bodyguard members?!? On what unit size setting?

[Spoofa]

One of my Family Members in my Romani campaign has 100+ bodygaurds, id say he's quite an important person in the Senate...

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Influence increases bodyguard size.

I've heard that things like personal security effects bodyguard size aswell. But not everyone believes that. Since good generals usually get things like "conquering hero", that give negative personal security, if that theory is true, then that may be one reason.

I always thought that command stars influenced bodyguard size. When I asked that once (long ago), I was told 'no it does not'. I still think it does, though...

[BozosLiveHere]

Personal security does in fact affect bodyguard size. I think it's 2 soldiers per point, but I'm not sure.

[Watchman]

So "conquering hero" with its something like -5 pers. sec. mainly puts you in the negative in this regard ? That's not much fun. :shame:

[Thaatu]

So "conquering hero" with its something like -5 pers. sec. mainly puts you in the negative in this regard ? That's not much fun. :shame:
But general's bodyguards should not be used to replace other cavalry units. With a hellenistic faction the general participates in mounted combat, but it's the actual cavalry units that should do the job. It's a cheap way to save money by replacing elite cavalry with FMs, but if one doesn't do this I don't see a huge disadvantage.

If it wouldn't mean AI generals getting slaughtered, reducing bodyguard numbers would be plausible.

[AngryAngelDD]

hmm, i don´t have a problem with the bodyguard sizes as romani.
i play on huge unit size setting

my current Leader has 125 BG size (it won´t go higher i assume).
it is the first FM that get so much BG.

my other FM have between 50-90, depending on their age and how long they sit in a city.
i can´t say which other factors/traits influence the BG size, but i will look for...


one question: does the unit setting influences the size of the BG?
until now i didn´t believe that. IIRC even on large setting my BG could get more than 100 bg.

[pezhetairoi]

Well, I don't do too much replacing of cav with FMs, it's just that I have always brought along 2 family members per institutionalised fullstack army, a long standing army composition rule thing. After all, the generals always fought from the front in good ol' days. I just want more survivability, more than that fella across the battlefield from me with them wavy plumes and big bodyguard. And I just can't afford the time to accrue influence, it takes reaaaaally long, and there isn't even the guarantee that he will get 10 influence always, by a certain period of time.

Ah well. I've found out what I needed to know. I always thought command stars influenced the sizes, seeing some link between all the 9-star and 10-star generals I fought and their huge bodyguards, and seeing how only noob AI family members newly-come-of-age had 40 bodyguards, and not for long...

[Kralizec]

Personal security does in fact affect bodyguard size. I think it's 2 soldiers per point, but I'm not sure.

I thought it was the only thing that affected bodyguard size. Influence itself doesn't AFAIK, though there are several influence-increasing traits that also affect PS. This includes "faction leader" and "faction heir".

[Ludens]

There is a thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=47146) about bodyguard size in the Ludus Magna. It's conclusion was that both influence and security increase the number of guards.

[AngryAngelDD]

i looked for the values in the other thread.

based on collected data from my current romani campaign on huge scale,
i calculated the values.
i doubled the large scale values to get huge scale values.

=> the formula is ROUHGLY correct, but there are still some minor differences.
at least you can get some impression how large the BG size grows.

as said in the other thread, for HUGE Scale that means (large => half number of troopers):

A: Personal Security affects BG size by 4 troopers per 1 Personal Security point
B: Influence affects BG size by 4 troopers per 3 Influence points

so influence and Personal Security are the MAIN values for the BG size.

but as i said the formula has some minor errors and/or there are other values which have a minor effect.

i´ll try to find this out in the next days

AA

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

OK, Perdikkas is a conquering hero and he has got NO influence. But is it possible that the ethnicity of a city has also an influence on the bodyguard size? So, if you are Greek and sit around in an easterner city, you won't get any bodyguard, because there is just nobody around who could enter your service?

[Kralizec]

OK, Perdikkas is a conquering hero and he has got NO influence. But is it possible that the ethnicity of a city has also an influence on the bodyguard size? So, if you are Greek and sit around in an easterner city, you won't get any bodyguard, because there is just nobody around who could enter your service?

No. It might be so that bodyguards regenerate quicker in a settlement then on the field, but the culture of the settlement wouldn't matter.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Ah, thanks. So I think that dude will NEVER EVER get more than 28 bodyguards again during his whole lifetime...

[Kralizec]

There is, he'll need to advance his Personal Security stats (influence apparently works too, but not quickly enough to be useful for this)

PS traits are acquired principally by surviving assanination attempts. A lot easier is getting ancilliaries for your character that increase the rating, like "heroic saviour" and others.

[pezhetairoi]

Well, it's really hard to survive assassination attempts as there aren't many assassins around as is, so I guess that means I'll have to subsist on a base size of 40. Is there some way in which I can actually mod up just my own faction's bodyguard base size so I can at least achieve some parity and negate some of the AI's trait advantages?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Yep, EDU. And then you'll need to delete map.rwm and start you campaign all over again - because changes made to the EDU aren't always save game compatible.

[pezhetairoi]

Oh, bah. I guess I'll just wait out this Baktrian campaign until I've beaten up the Seleukidai and Ptolemaioi first, and the Makedonians to boot, before starting some new campaign or other. Romani again, I think.

[Axelus]

There is one good way to raise the bodyguard numbers. Make them faction heirs. After a few turns, undo the changes (or make another guy you want to have a large army, the heir). This works excellent if you have a bodyguard family member that you want to be effective in combat. The extra bodyguards will have the same chevron value, and the number wont drop if you make some other FM heir. I once had a army consisting of alot of members with atleast 80 bodyguards, just swapping the heir title between them...

[pezhetairoi]

heyyyyy. Now that's something I like. :D Shall try it out! Thanks for the tip!

[atheotes]

In vanilla RTW it would give them a negative trait...'disinherited' i think... I do not remeber its effects.
I guess it can be considered an exploit...so i am not sure what kind of traits it would give in EB...

[Watchman]

Nuttin'. Which is good. The vanilla "Disinherited" trait was annoying, given that the "heirdom" gets more or less randomly (or more or less according to age, don't remember anymore) reassigned when the faction leader changes and habitually ended up on some half-dead useless old coot.

[xerex]

"heirdom" is based on who has the most influence when the current heir takes power.

[pezhetairoi]

Which isn't always the case in history since it was either hereditary, or chosen explicitly by the incumbent. I've been switching heirdoms around. It's fun...

[Pharnakes]

Just my opinion but I think that the conquering traits that at the moment give negative personal security need revision. In my Romani campaign, I am using Cauis Araleuis Cotta as my principal general and he has a trait for -5 personal security, meaning that despite full influence on huge unit scale he has a bodygaurd of 34, which is six less than a complete noob general.

Whilst I am not disagreing with the reasoning behind the conquering trait series I think that the personal security is taken to far. Also I think that the traits should be offest by giving + 1 valour to the general's bodyguard for every -1 personal security that he gets, to represent his men's increased trust and faith in the comander who has given them so many victories. Also would it not be sensible to give prehaps +1 moral for all troops on battle field per two levels of conquering hero traits?

[pezhetairoi]

I have just discovered that switching heirdoms does not permanently increase their bodyguard sizes. Diodotos Baktrios dropped back to 41 after being disinherited, being a 0-influence fellow. Hmm.

[Kralizec]

Are you sure? I thought that if a general loses PS points he keeps the bodyguards that he already had - it just won't fully regenerate after losing some.

[atheotes]

Are you sure? I thought that if a general loses PS points he keeps the bodyguards that he already had - it just won't fully regenerate after losing some.

Thats what i have seen

[atheotes]

"heirdom" is based on who has the most influence when the current heir takes power.

Does anyone know what happens if more than one family member has max influence...
It is moot point though if there are no negative effects for switching around heirdom

[xerex]

I believe it is alphabetical if two suitable heirs have the same influence, but this is totally unconfirmed and is just based on three observations during my Julii campaign. There were 3 times when my leader died and I had two guys with the same influence. Which one became heir was alphabetical everytime, but it could have just been a coincidence.

I suppose this would be easy to test with giving ancs and traits and killing off the king, but I haven't had the time.