Script question

[Marcus Ulpius]

From the information gathered here I assume that the script gives all AI factions some amount of gold to improve their competitiveness. The amount depends on the difficulty level. But can someone confirm that AI can recruit unlimited number of units from any city not depleting its population?

If so, is there a way to disable this? I can live with the AI getting money out of nowhere, but I think that if the AI can also produce unlimited units from any town it owns, it throws the whole concept of strategy and attrition war out of the window.

[Ludens]

The EB script will provide all factions with a cash injection during the first few turns and when money runs out. Also, when playing at VH the A.I. will receive 10.000 mnai per turn (hard-coded, so can't be modded).

The A.I. does indeed gets its population refilled. This is because recruitment of large units like phalanxes can deplete a town, thus preventing teching up, but the A.I. has no concept of managing population. You could change this but commenting out the relevant sections of the script.

[Fondor_Yards]

They can't produce unlimited units from a town, as I understood it, if a unit took 240 men it would replace 160-180 doesn't it?

[Marcus Ulpius]

Ludens, what do you mean, when you say that "AI has no concept of managing population"?

Does it mean that the AI doesn't even consider the effects of overrecruiting on the population size?
If that's the case I think it's logical to give back some percentage if the population falls below certain limit. But if the population is restored completely after recruiting a unit I think it's too drastic measure. After all AI should collapse militarily after losing too many soldiers is a war. That would add more accuracy to the game.

[Foot]

Unfortunately we have to play a balancing game with internal and external accuracy. It certainly is not accurate for a faction to never progress up the tech tree, which is what happens. The game is called total war and that is what the ai commits. It doesn't know how to be at peace, it never stops producing units even when there is no need to. If you have ever allowed the AI to control a settlement (what it builds and what it recruits) then you'll understand what it does. You cannot tactically force an enemy into submission through attrition with or without the script as the enemy will do that to itself anyway.

Foot

[konny]

If that's the case I think it's logical to give back some percentage if the population falls below certain limit. But if the population is restored completely after recruiting a unit I think it's too drastic measure. After all AI should collapse militarily after losing too many soldiers is a war. That would add more accuracy to the game.

The problem is that the AI will completely empty its towns without that script. In EB the population growth is much slower than in RTW due to the much lesser base farming level of each province (1-3 in EB vs up to 15 in RTW). So, without the script most AI towns will have not more than 500 inhabitans - something you certainly don't want to have when you conquer those towns.

[Marcus Ulpius]

Well, I see that population management was totally overlooked by RTW developers. If that's the case then the only solution is really to give back to the AI the citizens it enlisted into the army.

It's the lesser of 2 evils, although personally I'd prefer the situation where the enemy can lose the war when he's putting too much pressure on his population and simply can't recruit more troops either because of the depopulation or because of tremendously increasing unrest when recruitment is excessive (especially in type II-IV) provinces. But I'm nearly sure it can't be implemented in a mod.