if i delete money assistance...?

[Danzifuge]

question is simple. if i delete the entire money assistance section will the ai be smart enough to figure a way to get out of debt? do they disband units and fleets and actually work on economically efficient buildings or will they sink into an absolute collapse because they can't figure out what to do if they can't afford the tens of thousands of men the script originally would allow them? i don't think they deserve these kinds of numbers given the fact a three year old could do more with these armies than the ai.

[Tiberius Nero]

No, the AI never disbands anything and generally doesn't have a clue how to run a healthy economy; the money script is there for a reason and the reason is that core AI behaviour cannot be touched by modders.

[Watchman]

The AI doesn't even know how to disband stuff you know...

I'd rather suggest reducing the numbers the script gives, and/or making use of that graduated income script konny (IIRC) put up in the unofficial mods subforum.

[Danzifuge]

The AI doesn't even know how to disband stuff you know...

I'd rather suggest reducing the numbers the script gives, and/or making use of that graduated income script konny (IIRC) put up in the unofficial mods subforum.

thanks i'll try it out. i was thinking of reducing the numbers myself. its just that i'm seeing a pattern here. and that pattern is:

1. the ai spends all or near all its money on units
2. the ai gets a wad of cash cuz its broke or below a certain amount
3. the ai spends all or near all its money on units
4. the ai gets a wad of cash cuz its broke or below a certain amount
5. the ai spends all or near all its money on units
6. the ai gets a wad of cash cuz its broke or below a certain amount
7. the ai spends all or near all its money on units
8. the ai gets a wad of cash cuz its broke or below a certain amount
9. the ai spends all or near all its money on units

pretty damn soon the ai has freakin tens of thousands of men it could never hope to afford any time soon without a big helping of mula every turn.

a smart ai would think economically what it could afford and only spend that much. its like the ai is only paying attention to the cash at has in hand and not what the maintenance cost would be.

the optimal solution to this very big annoyance is of course to rework the infrastructure of all factions so that they were making a profit or breaking even and eliminate the money assistance all together. then let em duke it out with what they got and if a few factions fall fast, so be it. someones got to lose for someone to win. not this big stalemate of unlimited reinforcements the ai vs. ai is facing now.

an additional option to balance out large factions and smaller ones would be to reduce maintenance and recruitment costs and drastically increase costs of maintenance more than a handful of cities. this way the small factions could afford a decent sized army and the larger factions could only afford perhaps two decent sized armies (this with the reworking of the infrastructure). in ancient times these factions rarely ran around with several armies running amok all over the empire.

[konny]

I'd rather suggest reducing the numbers the script gives, and/or making use of that graduated income script konny (IIRC) put up in the unofficial mods subforum.

This one was never upgraded to EB 1.0, so do not use the script you download to play with but copy and paste the money script part of it into your EB 1.0 script.


When you do not have a money script, a lot of factions won't do anything at all. It is not that the AI can't handle the economy of the game (at least that part of the AI works) but the upkeep of units that is up to 10x higher than the original code intended is far beyond the abilities of the AI.

[Watchman]

a smart ai would think economically what it could afford and only spend that much.

Yeah well, the basic problem is the AI is butt stupid and can't run a decent budget to save its damn hide. Literally, in fact. Left to its own devices it will implode its economy and strip its settlements of able-bodied men.

Hence the money script. Getting it right is another thing, but it's very much necessary to keep the far brainier human player from walking all over the dumb computer.

[Danzifuge]

When you do not have a money script, a lot of factions won't do anything at all. It is not that the AI can't handle the economy of the game (at least that part of the AI works) but the upkeep of units that is up to 10x higher than the original code intended is far beyond the abilities of the AI.

ah ha. so thats where the problem lies... the ai is playing rtw style in an eb game. but i seriously think many of the ai factions won't be able to handle the economy without money assistance. i mean, they can't disband units and are very slow to expand, so how are they gonna get out of debt? these are the only two ways to survive without money assistance.

This one was never upgraded to EB 1.0, so do not use the script you download to play with but copy and paste the money script part of it into your EB 1.0 script.

i'll give it a shot.