Making your game more challenging without turtling
Hello fellow Citadel readers.
I've recently read a lot of topics about how the AI is useless and never expands properly or even gets steamrolled too easily, and of course have had the same experiences. As such, I've been looking into fixing files so the AI can stand more of a chance even against players who like to constantly expand, such as I do.
Now, there are quite a few things you can do, but the very simplest method is to allow the AI to have more money. You can achieve this by editing your descr_strat file and searching for a term called 'kings purse'.
This basically is the amount a faction gets at the start of each turn.
Note that the descr_strat is only read when you start a new game, so it will not impact current games.
What you should be doing there is to change the purse for playable factions (there is no point to change it for mongols, timurids, aztecs, rebels and the pope as they firstly have a higher than usual purse and will not need any florins anyway) from their current value, which ranges from 1500 to 3000 to 5000.
While this may seem a tiny increase, you can trust me that this is actually a lot and you will hardly ever find yourself on top of the finance ratings this way unless you keep sabotaging the AI with assassins.
The downside of this is, that almost all AI characters will pick up bad traits such as Gambling, ExpensiveTastes, Embezzler, Corrupt and the like. Those don't affect combat and their behavior much however so can be safely ignored.
If you want to make your game even more challenging, you can adjust the maximum amount of turns for the game downward in the same file. That is, change the end date to less than 1530. With a lower max turn count, the AI plays a lot more aggressively and actually takes the rebel settlements quicker instead of ignoring them. If you change the end date, you probably want to change when events occur as well as you might otherwise miss out on things like the new world or gunpowder. Instructions on how to do that you can find in my signature.
Further methods you can use are to go into files you need to unpack such as faction_standings and campaign_db_ai, but that is only advisable for those experienced with modifying them. Those also only have minor effects, but you can influence how quickly relations deteriorate and how long the AI will stay passive at the start before it starts waging wars against other factions. If you really want to know how to do that, read the spoiler:
That is the default code in the campaign_db_ai. It is also there about 4 or 5 times so you need to change each entry to have a notable and unambiguous effect. 10 basically means for the first 10 turns at the start of the game the AI will only attack rebels unless they are at war. If you change this number down to say 1, once you end your very first turn, the AI will start massing its armies to attack other AI factions or you. It also means that it will pursue rebels less allowing you to take extra settlements. I would actually advise increasing that number to say 12 or 14 so the AI will consider getting some far away rebel settlements too early on, such as those in eastern europe or the middle east. However, you can also decrease that number and increase the following instead:
Change the above to 40 or 50 and this means the AI will also attack rebel settlements after turn 30 and thus be able to pump out more troops.
For the faction_standing file, you can also change how the pope views your actions against fellow catholics. The code in the spoiler tags will make him hate you quite a bit more for aggressions. Just replace the sections in your own faction_standing file with the one here:
Note that except for changing files found directly in the data directory by default, most others are only loaded when you start a new game. So you can actually change stuff like character traits and the ai for a running game!
There certainly are a lot more things you can do to improve the AI, but that would take extensive modding of how traits are allocated and what buildings do etc.
What I posted is a good start to boost the fun level you get out of campaigns and should even make things challenging if you steamroll.
In my semi-steamroll campaign as the French, the Hungarians for example are much further ahead in technology due to the money they have available and are fielding chivalric knights fairly early.
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
Nice tip. Thanks for the info. :smash:
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
You mentioned something about how money is not an issue for the Papal States. Hmm, for some reason in many of my campaigns, His Hatness usually goes bankrupt before turn 20 rolls around. Is it because I'm playing on Medium?
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
There is a mod called Stainless Steel that reduces the amount of lower quality troops available when higher quality troops can be built. It also adds a money script to the AI factions.
This forces them to build high tech units on par with what you are building. Within 10 or 20 turns, you will be facing an AI army with lots of mailed knights and dismounted feudal knights rather than solid town militia and ballistas.
Fighting against decent forces also raises the challenge significantly. Sorry I can't tell you what files to change or exactly what to change it to, but if you are a modder at all, I'm sure you could figure it out.
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
The papal states usually never enters into wars and only has one city so they just sit around turn after turn just earning money. The player would sometimes just give money to the pope for relations too so they can get rich really quickly
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
I donate tons of cash the Hatness. often 1000 per turn, plus the regular tribute. thats usually 100-150 per turn.
he loves me, and ignores when i wantonly slaughter fellow christians. never been excommunicated. yet.
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
One of the problems that I find is the lack of a challenge in the mid to late game. This is mainly due to the fact that whilst you are busy expanding your empire at the start of the game the AI is much slower. They spend too must time / resources fighting amongst themselves. Soon you find you have 20 provinces whilst the biggest AI fraction has only 6 or 7.
What we need is fewer, but bigger fractions. Your mods above should help to make the AI fraction more aggressive but this would be wasted if they are all evenly balanced and still fight amongst themselves.
I don'nt know if it could be done but one thought I had was to mod one of the files to make all the starting generals about 70 years. At the end of the first turn a lot of the faction leaders would die. For these faction some of the heir would also die. That faction would then be destroyed, the settlement would then turn to rebels, thus giving the remaining AI faction room to expand. The AI would have less competition to waste the extra resources that your mod would provide.
Since the death due to old age is random, every time you start a new game even with the same faction you would face a different set of adversaries.
Unless of course it was your faction leader / heir that died.
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
I've found that 'relocating' a faction at the start of the game greatly increases the challenge. For instance, take the Turks, put all family members and a decent army on some boats and sail them to England. When you capture a city, abandon all of your old lands in the Middle East and play as the Turks in England. Going the other way also works. Take any Catholic faction, journey to the Middle East, then abandon all your old lands.
The latter is particularly difficult because you have to spend a lot of time converting the cities to Catholicism to keep order. Just when you have finally gotten yourself comfortable, the Mongols show up and become a major pain. With these things on top of a 'slow' start, other factions grow pretty strong and you see power blocs that you would not otherwise have encountered.
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
LOL I love to relocate at the start. :)
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
usually the popes wealth says boundless or something when i play...on hard difficulty if you want the ai to have lots of money just play on VH, they sawrm me with stacks on that level it seems...i am unsure of the boost they get in actual numbers
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
Tried the money bit, and it worked very well. Started a campaign as the french, and took Dijon, Metz and Bordeaux. Once I had done that, the sicilians attack me with 15 units in Marseille, and the HRE with the same in Metz. My forces are too small to sally, and they are waiting the siege out...
Didn't get to see the result though, I've wrestled the patch since then...
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
Yup, the money bit is the most important really, as extra money means the AI will actually upgrade its cities and castles preferentially and train higher quality troops instead of purely militia (as long they can be built)
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
Never sacking nor exterminating helps keep things challenging. I know mid-game, sacking a big city can give enormous lump sums.
Also, obeying the Pope's ceasefire demands and starving out settlements rather than storming them gives the AI time to build up.
Re: Making your game more challenging without turtling
Quote:
Originally Posted by econ21
Never sacking nor exterminating helps keep things challenging. I know mid-game, sacking a big city can give enormous lump sums.
Also, obeying the Pope's ceasefire demands and starving out settlements rather than storming them gives the AI time to build up.
that kind of makes building up large armies redundant except to stop the ai from countering your siege.
