Money assistance and inflated AI treasury - is something amiss?

Hello,

Been investigating on money assistance lately and noticed a strange behavior at the beginning of the game, regarding to the ingame "financial" graph.

The EB-MA works like this (or should be...): if the treasury goes under 5K at season 4, the AI is granted 20K; the ai also get an allowance of 1200 mnai per turn witout conditions; the ai can also get an allowance of 300/600/900 mnai if it has under 16/25 settlements and the player has more.

What i observed with money assistance:

1) Many factions skyrocket to 50K in the first twenty turns (baktria, pontos, hayasdan, notice they are factions with mines in their starting cities)
2) some other go down and never go up (arverni, aedui)
3) the big factions have a strong economy and do neither: they remain mostly stable

Those observation completely contradict how the money assistance should work.

1) The emergency 20k should ensure that the AI is never in debt, and the 1200 mnai that it can either build or train - no AI should just remain flat broke.

2) Also, it's completely impossible for some factions to skyrocket to 50k, especially considering the AI never disbands units: all the factions listed go in the red within a 2-3 turns with the initial armies when played by the human, and the "emergency" 20k are only given when the treasury is under 5K, so it cannot "pile up".

But there is more.

I entirely deleted the money assistance section in the EBBS_script and started a campaign.

Some things were different, but one wasnt: the aforementioned skyrocketting factions... also skyrocketed to 25-30K... before going completely down (so at least the script was having an effect, that's reassuring).

So i guess the question would be:
- is there some hardcoding money assistance in the .exe which inflates all the add_money commands for certain AI faction?
- is mining income inflated for the AI?
- maybe the AI has an hardcoded "free upkeep" for the first few turns?

Thanks for your insight :)

All A.I. factions receive additional scripted financial assistance in the first few turns. Did you remove this section of the script as well? I don't know the reason for this, but I imagine it is to compensate for oversized starting garrisons. After a few turns, it can be reasonably assumed the A.I. will have lost some of these. However, one of the later changes to the script was to give such garrisons only to factions bordering the player. It's possible that the starting financial assistance hasn't been compensated accordingly.

EDIT: come to think of it: the extra garrisons are placed by the start-up script (which runs automatically), while financial assistance comes from the user-activated scripts. Maybe these two don't communicate?

As far as I am aware, the A.I. gets no financial perks other than the scripted assistance and, at VH, a 10,000 mnai per turn bonus.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

All A.I. factions receive additional scripted financial assistance in the first few turns. Did you remove this section of the script as well?

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I entirely deleted the "Money assistance" section in the EBBS_script for testing purpose, and still the AI would get 20K at the beginning. But not all factions (the gauls for example were broke within 2 turns, which is in line with what i experienced when playing them) - its not just for the "rought" start as there is no turn limit for this assistance.

Point is, there is no way Pontus, hayasdan or Baktria can get a 20K freebie in the beginning after i deleted money assistance, unless there is something hidden for those faction in another file, or somewhere else in the script, or in the .exe.

I think the AI gets a rediculous bonus over what the human player recieves from mines. I remember reading that once.

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Originally Posted by Brave Brave Sir Robin

I think the AI gets a rediculous bonus over what the human player recieves from mines. I remember reading that once.

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That would definitely explain the discrepancy. In vanillla, didn't mines give something like 20,000 a turn? Maybe there's a holdover from vanilla concerning mines and the AI.

In Vanilla mines gave 200 for silver and 350 for gold IIRC, mines where totally underpowered and I don't believe the AI got much more income from the mines then the player.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Titus Marcellus Scato

That would definitely explain the discrepancy. In vanillla, didn't mines give something like 20,000 a turn? Maybe there's a holdover from vanilla concerning mines and the AI.

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Rahl said it, Vanilla mines were smaller.
ANYWAY, In EB the money you get is always less than what is written in the text of the buildung itself. Maybe the AI gets that number of Mnai?

I think the amount of money from the mine is taken from the area you are, a mine in Iberia or Baktria would give closer to the maximum amount than other mining zones.

So it should be read "Up to 2000", and thus the AI doesn't get the full amount, right?