Unit upkeep cost balancing

**Great Est.** · 03-24-2008, 23:31

What about completely unbalancing the upkeep aspect by boosting farming income to ludicrously high levels. In effect, this would free the AI to build whatever it wants, whenever it wants. Such AI armies would post a much tougher test to seasoned MTW players. The financial management aspect of the game would suffer, of course, but perhaps this would be an acceptable tradeoff for some.

**Garnier** · 03-24-2008, 23:47

If I could figure out a way to get rid of my money in a balanced way as well.

**Garnier** · 03-25-2008, 14:29

I just went and added 100 to the base income of farms (so instead of 120, 140 etc its 220, 240 etc) and made them all cost 5 florins and 1 turn. I also set the AI priorities to 500 for all situations. Now if I don't build them at all, and destroy them when I take a region with one, hopefully the AI will get lots more money than me.

**Ironside** · 03-25-2008, 19:57

You can also change the import number, from 20(%) to at least 100(%) (I have only gone up to 60though), this will make your trade network boost the income massively for all factions you trade with.

Edit: Oh, caravel has suggested the same thing.

**Garnier** · 03-25-2008, 20:33

You can also change the import number, from 20(%) to at least 100(%) (I have only gone up to 60though), this will make your trade network boost the income massively for all factions you trade with.

What file is this in? I don't see it in the build_prod.

Also I'd like to decrease trade income as well, if you'd tell me how.

EDIT: I found it, in startpos of course..

**caravel** · 03-26-2008, 01:05

You can both lower trade goods values and increase import tax. That way when you establish trade routes you are empowering AI factions. This adds a whole new dynamic to the game. If you use 100% tax the trade become totally bidirectional which helps the AI even more as it means only one of the factions needs to establish the shipping and trading post for both to trade. Also port provinces without their own trade goods can make a lot of money acting as trading hubs.

You can also add more or less goods, or resources in the startpos file and can remove the pretty useless inland trade resources from provinces such as Muscovy. These goods can be relocated to adjacent coastal provinces to represent them being carried across land to the nearest port. Another example of landlocked trade goods are those in Syria. You can remove these but a hardcoded event will always add (I think) spices and another I can't recall at a certain date.

**Garnier** · 03-26-2008, 03:05

I've done this, putting import income at 80. My current game (as the danes...) without using farms at all and with decreased trade (cut in half) is really a challenge. I started in the high period, and now it's 1306 and I've been slowly warring with England most of the time. I kill tons of their men but they always seem to have more. Someday I'll take Mercia and then conquer it altogether..