Way To Many Armies !!!!

Once you are 200 + turns in theres factions with 1 city and ten armies , maybe this is the recruitment options being to high or just to much money but it could definitely be cut in half just to start , I did notice ass Macedon I could recruit like 40 Phalanx in the winter while just owning the Greece area , maybe all the cap limit should be put to 2 or even 1 lol.

Do you have to modify the decr_building to limit the cap or can this be done in the desr_unit?

Yep you have to modify the decr_building , as I am looking in there I don't see any crazy amounts being able to be recruited , so is it they are being stacked , this gives 2 that 1 gives 3 and so on?

I am looking through all the building files and unit , & the script , I can not figure out what is giving a faction the ability to raise ten armies with 1 city that makes 500 a turn , I see faction getting a 1000 bonus if losing money , does this mean they go to zero than get 1000 every turn?

I just cant get past 200 turns or 300 because I run into the faction that has unlimited 10 full flags every turn
or some random faction has built 10-15 armies in 1 province I would like to take .

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType f_rome
and IsFactionAIControlled
and Treasury < 600
if I_LosingMoney f_rome
increment_kings_purse f_rome 100
end_if
if not I_LosingMoney f_rome
console_command add_money f_rome, 100
end_if
end_monitor

in this section of the script I reduced the money bonus for all factions to this , it was 1000 & 400 before and now is 100 & 100

This is easy to do just look for this , sc down a bit you will see it , its in world/maps/campaign/imperialcampaign , then the campaignscript

Either in EB2 the AI dosent have to pay for buildings or there money goes to 0 at every turn , not sure what it is , I think 200 & 200 or 3-400 would be good enough along with beefing up the rebels to create hinge points to stop blitzing of the AI.

I would make a descr_strat for people but just adding troops to towns is much faster and you can customize your campaign to how ever you want , editing all the rebel towns would be very time consuming and I'm not sure I have found the right balance yet.

https://i61.tinypic.com/rtqaro.jpg

this is after 60 turns , normally the Areuakoi would have 10 armies by now and took all of Gaul , I didn't add any troops to Rebel towns in this test but I think it would work perfectly along with the reduction in income .

Adding troops to rebel towns can be done with this command in ~ in game create_unit Tolosa "celtic infantry bataroas" 6 6 6 6
You can use something different but that's what I add , super celts.


After a lot of testing a campaign I am still on in turn 300+ I think 150 & 150 would be perfect .
And also add rebels to slow down AI expansion with create_unit Tolosa "celtic infantry bataroas" 6 6 6 6
you have type whatever town you want to add 2 , I used Tolosa as an example.




I got lots of SC in below posts

https://i62.tinypic.com/2hzjng2.jpg


I would like for this kind of thing to mean something , they had another 25 stacks after that , I just did that for fun.

What mods are you using? Anybody else seeing this?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kull

What mods are you using? Anybody else seeing this?

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There can be quite a lot of stacks latter in the campaign kull , but....im happy that the AI is building stacks at this moment imo thats always been a complaint about tw that it doesnt build stacks . ...i see this as a good problem that we can tone down to our satisfaction over time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kull

What mods are you using? Anybody else seeing this?

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nothing special , I mod the command stars a bit adding Loyalty & Command to blooded and so on , that's all though

Are you wondering about all the Jite? LOL just take a guy over to Greece theres 4 there and you can pick up 1 or 2 in sicily , just gota keep going every 5-10 turns till you have enough including guys for replacing

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GRANTO

There can be quite a lot of stacks latter in the campaign kull , but....im happy that the AI is building stacks at this moment imo thats always been a complaint about tw that it doesnt build stacks . ...i see this as a good problem that we can tone down to our satisfaction over time.

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I don't mind a lot of armies , usually when I start a fresh campaign I add super rebels to all the towns in Iberia because if I don't what ever faction wins in Iberia which is normally 30-50 turns takes of of Gaul Germany Italy in 150 turns .
I just cant understand what is giving the ability to allow them to build 15 armies when owning 1 town? It seems there is no limit , i don't know how far you guys have gotten into a campaign but times the 10-15 by however many towns the faction has later on , is kinda overkill.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rovert

I don't mind a lot of armies , usually when I start a fresh campaign I add super rebels to all the towns in Iberia because if I don't what ever faction wins in Iberia which is normally 30-50 turns takes of of Gaul Germany Italy in 150 turns .
I just cant understand what is giving the ability to allow them to build 15 armies when owning 1 town? It seems there is no limit , i don't know how far you guys have gotten into a campaign but times the 10-15 by however many towns the faction has later on , is kinda overkill.

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yes i know iv played a lot af campaigns recently {auto resolves} up to 300 turns and 400 turns , iv seen some massive stack battles , stacks is a good thing though ...it just needs tamed...in most total war games and even CA struggle to get stacks together in the Campaign.

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType f_rome
and IsFactionAIControlled
and Treasury < 600
if I_LosingMoney f_rome
increment_kings_purse f_rome 100
end_if
if not I_LosingMoney f_rome
console_command add_money f_rome, 100
end_if
end_monitor

in this section of the script I reduced the money bonus for all factions to this , it was 1000 & 400 before and now is 100 & 100

This is easy to do just look for this , sc down a bit you will see it , its in world/maps/campaign/imperialcampaign , then the campaignscript

Either in EB2 the AI dosent have to pay for buildings or there money goes to 0 at every turn , not sure what it is , I think 200 & 200 or 3-400 would be good enough along with beefing up the rebels to create hinge points to stop blitzing of the AI.

I would make a descr_strat for people but just adding troops to towns is much faster and you can customize your campaign to how ever you want , editing all the rebel towns would be very time consuming and I'm not sure I have found the right balance yet.

https://i61.tinypic.com/rtqaro.jpg

this is after 60 turns , normally the Areuakoi would have 10 armies by now and took all of Gaul , I didn't add any troops to Rebel towns in this test but I think it would work perfectly along with the reduction in income .

Adding troops to rebel towns can be done with this command in ~ in game create_unit Tolosa "celtic infantry bataroas" 6 6 6 6
You can use something different but that's what I add , super celts.

I feel you, Rovert. The dozens of stacks most factions field (but surprisingly not all of them, see below) is one of the very few points I don't like about EB 2.01.

The usual superpowers in terms of armies (in my campaigns) are: Arche Seleukeia (usually 30 or more stacks aside of the garrisons), Sweboz (who field a lot of stacks too, especially after their conquest of the Lougiones), the Arevaci if they win in Iberia, Makedonia (that always wins the battle for Greece/Illyria/Dacia/Thracia eventually), Pergamon (unless it gets destroyed out of the blue with no apparent reason within the first 100 turns), Pritanoi once they united the island, Romani (if they manage to take Sicily and kick out the Epirotes).

Then there are factions who are powerful but don't field several stacks per province even if they grow larger: Aedui/Aruernoi, KartHadastim (who owned all of Africa up to Kyrene, Sicily/Italy up to Arretium and Iberia up to Tolosa in one campaign, but they had "only" 8 or 9 stacks, garrisons not taken into account), Baktria (even with the entire east from Chigu to Antiocheia-Margiane to Pura under their control, they rarely field more than 10 stacks).

And then you have factions like Saba, Taksashila or Hayasdan who are rather passive, need a lot of time to expand at all, and if they do they suddenly have no armies at all anymore, except 4 or 5 units as garrison per city. Odd.

Part of the problem may (!) be that the current money script is encouraging the building of lots of units because it basically does the following:

It checks if the AI is losing money. If yes, the kings purse is increased by 1000. If this ever means that the AI has 20k mnai and is not losing money anymore, the script reduces the kings purse by 1000 mnai again.

In theory (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...s-Purse-script - look at Konnys post #3) this would mean that eventually a balance is reached. But the script doesn't account for the AI building units first and everything else after that. It's assuming a fixed amount of expenses (=upkeep/corruption, mainly). But the AI use the additional money to recruit more troops and to expand, therefore the kings purse is raised further because the expenses (upkeep/corruption) have grown, the AI uses the money again to recruit troops and so on.

And if they send out a stack which rebels then, things get even worse. A fullstack costs way more than 1000 mnai/turn upkeep, regardless of the units. So if that upkeep suddenly is no more, they money the AI faction is getting per turn is rising significantly and suddenly, too. What does the AI do with additional money? Right, train more troops. The purse is eventually (when the treasury exceeds 20k at turn start) reduced by 1000 per turn, this means it's several turns until the kings purse is reduced by the amount the rebelled stack costed. Several turns with more money available means that faction ends with more troops than before the defection (thumb rule/common sense, I can't give exact numbers).

In the end the current script is an infinite source of troops. And factions like the Arche Seleukeia (which isn't attacked by anyone but instead takes out the surrounding factions one by one) or Pergamon (which doesn't attack, except the rare cases where they go and conquer Ephesus and Halikarnassos to be destroyed by Makedonia after that) just build up army after army after army.

So how to address that? I can think of several possible solutions (which ideally would work in combination):

(1) Reduce the refreshment times of units. At the moment you (and the AI, too, of course) can build up several full stacks of units within 20 turns even with a smaller faction (especially when you play on hard or very hard and the AI recruits mercenaries). Also lower the cap of maximum units of a certain type available (the max cap of a built-up Pergamon in the very first era is 8 phalangitai! :inquisitive: Wouldn't 3 or 4 suffice, too? * )

(2) Increase the recruitment costs. Not necessarily the upkeep, though. This would perhaps encourage the AI to invest in other developments rather than the one hundred and first Hoplite.

(3) Change the money script from the current system I described above to something like this:

Give every AI faction that has less or equal the number of provinces it owned at the game start a fixed kings purse bonus of, say, 4000 mnai. (So instead of "increment kings purse", use "set kings purse"). You can even tie this to the chosen campaign difficulty (6000 at hard, 10000 at very hard, for example). Lower this bonus when the faction expands - decrease the bonus by 500 for every settlement gained.
Example: # of starting provinces is 5 for the Romani, iirc. If they own 5 provinces, they get the 4000 bonus. If they conquer Taras, they now get 3500. If they also conquer Rhegion, they only get 3000 anymore. If they also conquer whole Sicily (3 provinces) and whole Cisalpine Gaul (another 4), they get no bonus at all anymore. I'd not advice to decrease the bonus even further (except perhaps a penalty after growing beyond 40 settlements, to prevent 3 or 4 AI superpowers owning the whole map?)
This system can be used for the player too, but in this case I'd vote for a steady decrease of the Kings Purse bonus even below zero; cumulatively -500 mnai for every province the player faction conquers.

(4) Only slightly related, but I'd like to see the AI struggling with keeping public order in far away provinces. At the moment there are a choses few provinces the AI tends to struggle with/lose - Baktria always loses Marakanda, the Romani often lose the Cisalpine settlements or Taras - but in most cases the AI conquers the settlement and the next turn walks on with the whole army except a single unit (and not even a general) without the settlement revolting. As much of a challenge keeping public order is for the player, as laughable it is for the AI, it seems.
If they'd need more troops to maintian public order, they'd have less stacks steamrolling their neighbours.
(I'm not sure if the AI is scriptable to not just lose the settlement due to revolt then, though. I remember revolting of core provinces even was/isa common occurance in many mods. And while I don't like the thought of a Yellow/Grey/Red/xxx death much, I also don't want the AI to be crippled.)


[* I know that these high numbers are most probably a consequence of the high number of units not yet finished. It's just that especially phalangitai are still the winning force in autoresolve. It's why the KH and the Getai never stand a chance against Makedonia, why Pontos never conquers Sinope or Nikaia, why AS is steamrolling every faction they attack. :no: So please don't receive this statement as a complaint-like "this is so wrong, dammit!", I'm rather trying to find a solution towards a challenging yet interesting and somewhat "fair" gameplay experience. :yes: ]

well I tried this , changing the money in the script from 1000 & 400 to 200&200

https://i57.tinypic.com/2qmgsxt.jpg


so far so good , i'll keep posting more as I go

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GRANTO

yes i know iv played a lot af campaigns recently {auto resolves} up to 300 turns and 400 turns , iv seen some massive stack battles , stacks is a good thing though ...it just needs tamed...in most total war games and even CA struggle to get stacks together in the Campaign.

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stack consolidation is great, well done, Granto! what Rovert meant though, assuming i understood him correctly, is stack spam - way too many stacks that make little sense in relation to the faction size. would it help modifying the script as was suggested above (to reduce the amount of stacks) but also including garrison script (to increase factions survivability)?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sarkiss

stack consolidation is great, well done, Granto! what Rovert meant though, assuming i understood him correctly, is stack spam - way too many stacks that make little sense in relation to the faction size. would it help modifying the script as was suggested above (to reduce the amount of stacks) but also including garrison script (to increase factions survivability)?

---

Yes it is all being worked on.

I'm very appreciative of the stack consolidation that goes on in CAI v3a, it means when the AI comes for you, they do it in force, not piecemeal.

However, something that still isn't quite there is the conflict between neighbouring factions. I'm up to turn 70 in my present game, and the Aedui and Aruernoi are both growing rapidly, yet are at peace, concentrating entirely on rebel provinces around them and completely ignoring each other. The Sweboz and Lugiones are doing the same. Areuakoi and Lusotannan same again. Even when they're less well-defended than the Eleutheroi settlements, they still ignore each other.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sarkiss

stack consolidation is great, well done, Granto! what Rovert meant though, assuming i understood him correctly, is stack spam - way too many stacks that make little sense in relation to the faction size. would it help modifying the script as was suggested above (to reduce the amount of stacks) but also including garrison script (to increase factions survivability)?

---

well so far it has worked for me , small factions are still alive just cant field 10-15 armies with 1 town


https://i60.tinypic.com/2m5bg2x.jpg

https://i60.tinypic.com/91durn.jpg

https://i62.tinypic.com/317ies5.jpg

https://i60.tinypic.com/4ryems.jpg

as you can see the areuakoi are still there but changed big time , they can defend themselves just cant field 50 armies and take everything in 10 turns , losing big battles actually matters now .

and the other 1 is me just about to punish the Getai for sending quiff to my lands and annoying me so I will kill everything they have at once or maybe not I will SC the results.

https://i60.tinypic.com/1zcl4zl.jpg

https://i62.tinypic.com/2vcwzuc.jpg

https://i60.tinypic.com/2466ntd.jpg

https://i60.tinypic.com/4rx5bn.jpg

They wernt able to attack with everything at once , they got dicked.

https://i61.tinypic.com/aoq0xf.jpg

https://i58.tinypic.com/y1m54.jpg

how many factions have died?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GRANTO

how many factions have died?

---

I think just 2 -3 , but im close to turn 200 now i'll post some more SC

https://i57.tinypic.com/awq97l.jpg


that's the current , I think Baktria is gone & Lugoines I think that's all though , im a weird situation I have allies on both sides and crazy all out war in Anatolia. I might take Dalminion but that might put me against Rome .

I'm on VH/M btw so I can't afford multiple armies I have 3 and am still able to build constant.
Ally with Rome & Yellow Death for over 100 Turns

Roman Sicily ? You got a punic war ? Nice !

https://i59.tinypic.com/2mmg4j.jpg

https://i57.tinypic.com/50iqah.jpg

so I have been Waring with the Gray death non stop & Getai are really annoying , so I have a new tatic take there shit and give it to other factions , this is my third time giving 1 of there towns to another faction hopefully my ally can hold it.


it has been really good so far , I'm not built up enough to really take more ground off Gray death yet , I am fielding 4 armies and still building pretty good , once I can field 1 more for Anatolia I can get them , they just have to much there .

https://i58.tinypic.com/2j44rx3.jpg

and I really love the ally stuff , this battle was really laggy but still just amazing , just couldn't get this on the Rome engine.

https://i62.tinypic.com/10yntdf.jpg

https://i57.tinypic.com/ev3lgh.jpg

https://i57.tinypic.com/wqzi1l.jpg

this is more for late campaign play , I'm sure later releases will be more balanced but with the current build this has made it really enjoyable.

https://i58.tinypic.com/io13jc.jpg still allied from turn 50 or so

https://i60.tinypic.com/2dhbont.jpg this is how bad the family got , all antigonid guys all got to 50 and 60 then had a couple kids , I was down to 3 60's & 1 30 year old , this guy was the young 1 .



Finally pushed back the Gray Death , I took a lot of there income there are no longer a ten army fielding gongshow.

You really do miss all the units from EB1 when you get going , I always liked to put local troops in my armies wherever I was fighting as support but just not that much to choose from , along with the different style building , do miss the local and factional barracks.

Just a quick question/suggestion: Does campaign difficulty level have a role in this? I know it had in EBI/rtw. In EBI I stopped playing on VH because the AI spammed out ludacris amounts of random-stack armies.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ziegenpeter

Just a quick question/suggestion: Does campaign difficulty level have a role in this? I know it had in EBI/rtw. In EBI I stopped playing on VH because the AI spammed out ludacris amounts of random-stack armies.

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with not all the units being done , I cant really tell with them fielding better armies as in EB1 , the money definitely takes a hit for you as the player but it dosent seem to have an effect on AI boost , I only play on VH so its actually hard for me to afford what the AI has .

I only play on M/M and I've never seen the sorts of armies you're reporting. There must be hardcoded bonuses to AI faction's treasuries with higher difficulty levels.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius

I only play on M/M and I've never seen the sorts of armies you're reporting. There must be hardcoded bonuses to AI faction's treasuries with higher difficulty levels.

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yes m/m it should be for CAI 3a

​

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bisthebis

Roman Sicily ? You got a punic war ? Nice !

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Changing Rome's standing with Carthage to - 0.90 and that with European factions to 0.20/0.30 does that. (Plus stacking up the Cisalpine towns to the brim.) :yes:
​

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shadowwalker

In the end the current script is an infinite source of troops. And factions like the Arche Seleukeia (which isn't attacked by anyone but instead takes out the surrounding factions one by one) or Pergamon (which doesn't attack, except the rare cases where they go and conquer Ephesus and Halikarnassos to be destroyed by Makedonia after that) just build up army after army after army.

So how to address that? I can think of several possible solutions (which ideally would work in combination):

(2) Increase the recruitment costs. Not necessarily the upkeep, though. This would perhaps encourage the AI to invest in other developments rather than the one hundred and first Hoplite.

---

(2) is IMO the only way to balance Total War games, even though no mod implements this. Upkeep should actually be much lower. I edited both EB1 and Stainless Steel this way with splendid results. This way every battle has strategic results. With balance relying on high upkeep cost losing battles is meaningless, if not beneficial.

Effects:

- enables defensive wars, the Holy Grail of TW balancing

- buildings are cheaper than armies, the ai actually wants to build them and a complicated money-script might not be necessary

- makes war dangerous: m2tw ai takes army strenght into account for diplomacy. Attack one neighbour and your loses might encourage another thinking you're easy prey. And he would be right. In my SS game I eventually reached a stage where it was better to buy peace with everyone than risk my army in a potentially devastating campaign.

- one province Macedon sitting on it's rich home province will still build up big armies. But you only have to face them once. And it would occur much slower giving you the option to destroy them before they become powerful. This was afterall why the Romans started the 3rd Macedonian War. Of course with this setting ai can be set to be more aggressive as the loss of it's armies and it's inability to rebuild them will naturally prompt it to seek peace.

- punish fast expansion

All mods decided for low recruitment costs and high upkeep, but why?

Which file can I find the recruitment costs in?

Reduced income from cities.

If the bonuses for the AI is not exaggerated, it should help. Unzip to a folder eb2
http://ge.tt/6IiYUv02/v/0

Quote:

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Originally Posted by roastedpekingduck

Which file can I find the recruitment costs in?

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They're in the [Your M2TW folder]\mods\EBII\data\export_descr_unit.txt, in the stat_cost line.

So I'm trying to come up with a way to just multiply the recruitment costs in export_descr_unit.txt. With two recruitment costs and the comma separation between the recruitment and upkeep costs, how would one multiply just the recruitment costs on all the stat_cost lines?

I am sure that team_kramnik did not just edit the lines one by one.

I always do it that way. Maybe I'm just stupid but I never found a way to tell the file to just increase the recruitment cost automatically. So I usually spend 2 hours on manual editing. :creep:

By the way: just increasing the recruitment costs does nothing significant to change the number of units/stacks the AI factions field.

I did a test campaign with Saba and tripled the recruitment costs, while not touching anything else (left the number of available units, upkeep, AI money script etc all unchanged).

The only consequences of this are two things:

(1) Smaller factions (especially all the one-province factions) need longer to do anything, if they do anything at all and get destroyed by the larger factions even more easily.

(2) The AI generally needs more time to build up the first full stacks.

But once you're 200+ turns into the campaign the situation is the same as if you didn't change anthing, just with the difference that you have less factions alive and those factions are a bit larger usually (given they were large at campaign start - i.e. Qart-Hadasht, Rome, Seleukids etc).

I have little time at the moment, I'll get back to this topic later and share what I found out in the last weeks. :)

Thanks for checking that out, Shadowwalker. Perhaps unit costs and upkeep both need to be stepped up? My feeling is that eventually, because of hardcoded AI behavior, the AI will always prioritize units even when not financially feasible in the long-term.

Man, I'm sure there has to be a clever regexp that pulls it off in Vim. I have just not been able to factor in the commas in the regexp.