Maps and Provinces

Don't know if this helps...

http://www.roangelo.net/valente/conquest.html

It does western :medievalcheers:

So that northern part of Naples would become Spoleto with Assisi as it's castle? That would in fact add a worthwile extra province in a decent loction. I'll look into it, thanks.

I also like the idea of moving around/renaming some of the alpine provinces. Any more detailed maps showing that region?

Thanks.

:bow:

Always happy to help if I can.

How about this for some alpine region maps - esp the French one from 1912 (the one about 9 places down - not the first two). It brings out that the biggest omissions are probably Verona (as also shown in the Italy map I posted), Carinthia and the County of Burgundy (as distinct from the Duchy that sits within France). Switzerland doesn't exist yet of course, and a lot of its future territory - Geneva, Berne etc - is within that County of Burgundy. The Burgundian counts were pretty big players at this time - aside from participating in the first crusade and crusade of 1101, and skirmishing with Milan and the free cities, one of the counts made a bid for independence from the empire and had to be crushed by Lothair and Conrad.


http://www.edmaps.com/html/holy_roman_empire.html

Ok I've finally sat down to do some changes and debugging today.

The issue with agents travelling has been resolved. The western med region was not connected to the atlantic. That's one solved.

I got as far a Turks campaign and gave up near to the High Era. Far too easy so far.

It may be because the Turks have vital space now and do grow with time without having to fight for space against teh Byz or Egypts. Perhaps adding factions or calibrating incomes in the area can change that.

:bow:

Well I'm moving around the starting provinces at the moment and have made the probolem worse for now. But I plan to add another faction or two to that region anyway. I now have the "shipless operation", I'm just trying to decide what to do with provinces such as Crete, Sardinia and Corsica.

My suggestion would be to convert them into coastal/inland major Provinces in whichever area you think they are needed (ie is badly represented or will support more factions in the future).

Regarding income balancing - i suggest multiple hubs of good income to be present within all theaters - and these hubs to be surrounded by provinces of relatively low income. I further suggest that even the lowest income provinces to not be completely worthless (as it hampers the AI factions).

Generally speaking i would suggest a small variation of income between fertile/rich and not-so-fertile/not-so-rich provinces. That is for example say; poor apprx 200 flrns on average, medium apprx 300 flrns on average and rich close to 400 flrns on average. The vanilla differences are a big plus for the human player that quickly occupies the rich provinces at the beginning and since the AI factions seem to view them all as equally important (the AI will fight for rich and poor provinces the same sometimes) they end up in great disadvantage. Some variation is good to create competition in a local level - a lot of variation (ie poor 100 flrns and rich 600 plus flrns as in vanilla) is quite bad for AI progress and so challenge imho.

There is a post of suggestions that i wrote in reply to Garnier regarding king influence in relation to AI faction progress and AI personality - its quite relevant for the PoM and i believe it can be helpful - if you wish me to, i can copy paste that post here too.

:bow:

Gah, sounds all good gollum, now all I need to do is quit my job, get a divorce and move into a monastery... I may actually get something done on this mod then... :wall:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gollum

Generally speaking i would suggest a small variation of income between fertile/rich and not-so-fertile/not-so-rich provinces. That is for example say; poor apprx 200 flrns on average, medium apprx 300 flrns on average and rich close to 400 flrns on average. The vanilla differences are a big plus for the human player that quickly occupies the rich provinces at the beginning and since the AI factions seem to view them all as equally important (the AI will fight for rich and poor provinces the same sometimes) they end up in great disadvantage. Some variation is good to create competition in a local level - a lot of variation (ie poor 100 flrns and rich 600 plus flrns as in vanilla) is quite bad for AI progress and so challenge imho.

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Good idea. I might try this out myself.

Ok here it is;

Quote:

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Originally posted by gollum
One of the things that generally goes unnoticed - is AI factions king influence.

This is one aspect of the game that the GA mode has an advantage over domination in terms of AI performance in vanilla. This is because certain factions (the best example of which is Hungary) get the GA homeland influence bonus every 25 years. Usually even large AI faction empires fall victime to low king influence - and that is a major game breaker (much less challenge).

On top of this the AI faction personnality setting is paramount together with the king influence aspect. The expansionist, naval_expansionist, crusader, crusader_trader, trader for Catholics and the expansionsit, devout for Muslims as well as the expansionsit, stagnant for Orthodox are AI faction killers.

The expansionist AI personalities focuses AI faction on constant attacks - so much so that it burns them out (and also does not leave developed lands behind for the ones that do conquer them eventually).

The crusader AI personalities, are litterally a curse for the long term as they set Crusading as a focus. AI crusades often fail and this in turn instigates civil wars that destroy a blossoming French kingdom or HRE say. This actually is a very significant long term effect and i noticed it while playing vanilla GA camaigns to the end. The end rival whoever i played in GA mode were the Hungarians (unless i played one of their immediate neighbours like the Byz or HRE). This is because the Hungarians are set to CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE, cannot crusade and do take the homeland GA points (they start with them) that yield influence so they always have the best chances of survival.

Actually the DEFENSIVE AI personnality is the Best for AI factions unless they start too small and/or surrounded (say Turks, Danes, Novgorodians and Aragonese in early). For all other factions that have enough starting land/income DFENSIVE is best long term. In Defensive the AI factions do still crusade, but not as assiduously as when set to Crusader. They use more sense and when they do Crusade they have more focus as it is apparently regarded as a luxury and its done only when the AI is really rich and stable.

For the Turks in vanilla early (as example of situation) EXPANSIONIST is best - time is against them otherwise. They will get swallowed by their powerful neighbours if they just sit back.

For the Danes, Novgorodians and Aragonese (in vanilla early) EXPANSIONIST is also best (otherwise they fade out - too low starting income). Otherwise they get swallowed.

The equivalent of DEFENSIVE for Muslims is PEACEFUL. DEVOUT muslims make too many Jihads that melt them through influence hits. EXPANSIONIST burns them out. For the Almohads and Egyptians PEACEFUL is best in vanilla early.

All in all i suggest to try setting everyone unless too small or sandwitched between powerful neighbours like the Turks in DEFENSIVE, particularly in long games (early/high era) - challenge should rise.

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:bow:

Thanks gollum. Very useful for me as well. :thumbsup:

Good Smeagal always helps

:bow: