Steppe expansion

I've been thinking about how much I'm not a big fan of factions expanding into the steppe - especially settled factions. I mean, there's gotta be a reason that that never happened in real life. I'd also be keen on seeing a bit more ebb and flow between coloured factions and the eleutheroi.

I'm thinking of two options.

The first is to randomly spawn deadly steppe armies that will roam around the map, occasionally replenishing themselves until they are conclusively defeated. These steppe armies might even belong to steppe factions, provided that the faction is controlled by the AI. This'd be a useful simulation of both raiding behaviour and the sudden explosive growth that a steppe empire could sometimes have.

The second is to create a small chance every turn that a steppe province will simply revert to the eleutheroi.

What do y'all think? Realistic ideas that could improve the historicity of gameplay, or tiresome ersatz Mongol Invasion?

Settled factions have no trouble expanding into the steppes because horse archers suck in autocalc (quite opposite to tactical battles where they rock). Solution is simple: for every horse archer in EDU replace string "stat_health 1,0" to something like "stat_health 1,2" for weak bows and "stat_health 1,3" for strong bows. This does NOT affect tactical battles, autocalc only! Already tested and implemented in XGM on my suggestion recently (check twcenter forum for details), but maybe exact numbers in EB should be one point less (cuz all missiles are weaker here), it's depends on balance desired. Hope EB team will consider this for EB 1.1

P.S. Also exceptional quality javelin cavalry like numidians deserve at lest "stat_health 1,1" imo.

Looks like a good tip. I've always groaned whenever I've had to fight a battle against HAs, and am occasionally tempted to auto-resolve them for this exact reason.

We will give it a spin, thanks for the suggestion Lgk!

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Originally Posted by Lgk

Settled factions have no trouble expanding into the steppes because horse archers suck in autocalc (quite opposite to tactical battles where they rock). Solution is simple: for every horse archer in EDU replace string "stat_health 1,0" to something like "stat_health 1,2" for weak bows and "stat_health 1,3" for strong bows. This does NOT affect tactical battles, autocalc only! Already tested and implemented in XGM on my suggestion recently (check twcenter forum for details), but maybe exact numbers in EB should be one point less (cuz all missiles are weaker here), it's depends on balance desired. Hope EB team will consider this for EB 1.1

P.S. Also exceptional quality javelin cavalry like numidians deserve at lest "stat_health 1,1" imo.

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wow, awesome! wish it was implemented already.
and great to see a team member spotted it:beam:
thanks

.
Looking forward to! :jumping: Hate seeing the Grey Death conquer the entire steppes without any panalties. :no:
.

Also with these HA improvements steppe factions personalities have to be changed back to "genghis". Well, maybe "henry" is still acceptable for Pahlava... but afaik even late settled parthians never used much infantry anyway, so same "genghis" can suit them better. Too bad we can't change personalities mid-game.

Has anyone achieved the same results with the change to the EDU?

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Originally Posted by mrtwisties

What do y'all think? Realistic ideas that could improve the historicity of gameplay, or tiresome ersatz Mongol Invasion?

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I have had some good results by asigning Baktria and Armenia only victory towns south of their starting position. They were both pushing into AS territory and the (settled) rebell towns around but did not cross the mountains, save for one shortlived adventure of a Baktrian China (that province where the Yuehzi might appear).

Parthia is always going North, both for the rebell towns and the Saka, regardless what the VCs tell them. Their problem is that they can't do different as long as they are not at war with AS. The other two have a couple of towns around their starting position that they can take in the first turns. Maybe changing the Parthian stance to war with AS and peace or alliance with Saka might help?

I think the steppe people themselves should be free to move where they want. That will add some random elements to the game.

Wasn't there something in a mod thread about adding in secondary armor to classical hoplites, thus changing the AI auto calculations?

Is it the same for elephants or chariots, by the way? I looked through XGM's EDU and elephants and chariots have stat_health values like 1, 4 and 1, 12 while EB has significantly lower values there.

For elephants and chariots the first number is the hitpoints of the "driver" and the second is for the "beast". So 1,4 would mean the driver has one hitpoint, and the elephant has 4.

How do I figgure out which havae weak and which have strong bows?

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Originally Posted by Ower

How do I figgure out which havae weak and which have strong bows?

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The point is to make 1,2 for Horse Archers and 1,3 for Horsmen that use bow as a primary arm and have high morale (like, in the stepe, we all know that most of cavarly we are talking here about ussualy use 'shock' arrow 'spin' and then charge the hell out of the enemy - well, those are nobles mostly, so they deserve 1,3 hp)

Anyway, I will just say that in ALX team tests the stepe expansion is 'fixed' (balanced) by those simple EDU tweaks - now, it is very unlikely that any faction will just as easy as before take control over that vast 'Rusland' :san_grin: