VH setting and faction balance...

Hello All,

I just finished playing a VH/H game as Baktria using 1.1. Generally, my play style is to play several different strategies for an hour or two until I hit on something that works. The strategy adopted was immediately going to war with AS, which lasted almost 70 years in the end. One thing that surprised me is that while the war in the East was going poorly, AS had managed to drive Egypt back to Africa and destroy Pontos and claim just about all of Asia Minor. Another big surprise was that Lusothana had conquered all of the Gauls, the Germania, and the Helvetii. Also, they were halfway down Italy and were about to collide with the Carthaginians, who had conquered most of southern Italy.

My question is: On the VH setting, do some factions benefit more than others? My guess is that the money would most benefit those with large empires (AS) or those in isolated ares. Factions that wind up immediately fighting other factions would not benefit as much because their opponents would have more cash as well leading to no net advantage. Thus, I would expect the KH, Epirios, and Makedonians not to benefit as much. Have others come to similar conclusions?

Well no, everything should remain 'relatively equal' from E to VH. But people have argued that the factions most dangerous/annoying/hostile to the player are more equal than others in VH.

To be honest, I have only played just afew times with VH campaign setting (back with version 0.81) as the KH. I found out trough my personal experience, as well as reading from the forums, that in VH the AI gets an extra money cash (10.000 mnai, IIRC) as well as more agressiveness. This means more armies in less time and, consecutively, more factions becoming superpower early on.

Now imagine an AS or Ptolemaioi becoming a huge superpower before any other smaller factions surrounding them (Pontos, Armenia, Baktria, Pahlava) could propery develop any infrastructure or/and raise any able army to mach their aggressors. What is the logical consequent of something like that? Lesser factions dying more easily and having more power-hungry superpowers.

That's the exact reason I prefer Hard instead of Very Hard, as the AI is less aggressive (though not passive), doesn't get the 10.000 mnai bonus (meaning no infinite stacks or very powerful enemies early-on), meaning you can have a more balanced and slow gameplay. Of course there are people who enjoy the carnage and want to play difficult, I have no problem with that at all.

Maion

P.S.: Another thing you get in VH, is aggressive rebels. They tend to even attack your armies or/and cities, but appearantly only rebel armies that are present from the beggining of your campaign, according to Foot IIRC.

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Originally Posted by Maion Maroneios

P.S.: Another thing you get in VH, is aggressive rebels. They tend to even attack your armies or/and cities, but appearantly only rebel armies that are present from the beggining of your campaign, according to Foot IIRC.

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Rebels do sometimes attack cities even on Hard, it's just rare. It's not only the starting rebels that attack cities, in VH every rebel army can do that. I've had some difficulties with indian cities where I had just a small garnison and was a attacked by rebel half-stacks with archers and elephants. It's also risky not to have any walls in VH...

Aha, I see. Thank you for this nice piece of information!

Maion

I'm playing a romani campaign on H atm (with lots of house rules to make my life hard) and I've been going ninja in giving money to the rebels via console. It seems to be the money issue that decides the aggressiveness of the rebels as they're right now warring with the lusotanans...literally attacking and sieging them (the guy from Numantia went out of his province and took out half the luso's armies). The rebel spawns sometimes siege me if the garrison is weak enough and sometimes they join with other spawns to become bigger stacks. The problem though is that AS tends to get walloped as Batria prefers the softer west than the roaming elephant armies of india...

So, according to your theory, if someone could make a script which would give the Eleutheroi lots of cash bonus, they would be more aggressive even on E/M/H (the latter at least)? As for giving them money, I suppose you did that with the give_money cheat?

Maion

yep, i go 'add_money slave, 40000' x20 every 5-6 turns or so...yes thats a LOT of cash...

it makes it fun as i can actually simulate the roman assimulation of iberia and the wars against those annoying numidians after i reduced carthage to just Kart-hadast. India became a mini power of it's own, occasionally gnawing at the AS and now blue death... Gaul remains a ununited rabble, with the sweboz, arverni and aedui waging a near zero-sum war on each other.

btw, Satres and surrounding alpine stacks and literally whooping the sweboz...but my spies notice him and 3 stacks are massing near patavium......i may get attacked soon...

But on VH campaign difficulty, don't the AI factions generally just gain up on the player faction? A little unfair, especially if you're not even a large threat...
:help:

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Originally Posted by Methuselah

But on VH campaign difficulty, don't the AI factions generally just gain up on the player faction? A little unfair, especially if you're not even a large threat...
:help:

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IMHO if you can play on H or VH, you are a huge threat to any AI faction that shares borders with you. So basically, every neighbouring faction will eventually attack you.

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Originally Posted by satalexton

yep, i go 'add_money slave, 40000' x20 every 5-6 turns or so...yes thats a LOT of cash...

it makes it fun as i can actually simulate the roman assimulation of iberia and the wars against those annoying numidians after i reduced carthage to just Kart-hadast. India became a mini power of it's own, occasionally gnawing at the AS and now blue death... Gaul remains a ununited rabble, with the sweboz, arverni and aedui waging a near zero-sum war on each other.

btw, Satres and surrounding alpine stacks and literally whooping the sweboz...but my spies notice him and 3 stacks are massing near patavium......i may get attacked soon...

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Very interesting! I will do the saem and see the results myself, the part of the Indian mini-power seems especially nice:yes:

Maion