Snowball effect and EBII

[Zarax]

Hi,
One of the common gripes with EB (and most mods) was the late game, where you and few AIs would be swimming in money and able to just throw elite stack after elite stack at each other.
This is commonly referred as snowball effect and tends to ruin the realism in advanced games.

Is the EB team planning to do anything about it for EBII?

[satalexton]

well thats funny, in my Mak game, only the AS, Saba, Romans and sweboz and Saka are left, and they resort to throwing jews, arabians, vigiles, levies and pantodapoi at me, stack after stack....

[Megas Methuselah]

The EB Team has revealed on many different occasions of its goal to make the management of a large empire quite difficult. Whether this applies to the AI also is beyond my knowledge.

[We shall fwee...Wodewick]

Surely with the M2:TW recruitment system you can limit the amount of elites you can hire and force the AI to make more realistic armies.

[antisocialmunky]

That is true. However: More Territories = More Recruitment Queues + More Unit Queues = The Same Thing.

It is too bad you can't scale unit upkeep costs depending if they were in a well developed area/hostile territory/rural area to show logistics.

[Megas Methuselah]

Well, in large empires, I'm sure you'll be spending a lot of those pretty, peacock elites on quelling internal rebellions and noble revolts, among other civil disputes common within an overly-large empire.

[antisocialmunky]

Surely you're forgetting the Leave -> Rebel -> Re-Capture -> Exterminate loop :-p

[Megas Methuselah]

Well, I wasn't ever stupid enough to fall for that one. Excluding cities near the heartland of my empire or of the same culture slot as my own, I always exterminated upon my first capture of each city.

[Ludens]

I suppose Basileos ton Ellenon's faction zeal suggestion would help with this.

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

i believe Byg´s grim reality is a nice way to solve this problem.

[antisocialmunky]

I think that EB is a little more complicated than that. I mean, those were proto-nation states. Most of the factions in EB are most definitely not that. And how would you model Rome? It could be considered zealous and ambitious the whole timeframe of EB. Also, Stainless Steel's BYG's Grim Reality system is good but for the human player, it doesn't really mean anything because I can get around it.

Added to that, it is just plain iritating because I can't seem to get any war council members so I'm stuck recruiting form like 2 places on the whole map so most of my armies are levies. I can't even logistically afford to field anything remotely elite because they get shredded after one or two battles and I can't even retrain them unless I ship them all the way across the map AND wait about 10 turns for the unit pool to spawn one guy. And faction zeal and recruitment restrictions don't fix the primary problem which is exponentially growing income. In fact it just exaccerbates it because you can't sink them into elites. You just end up with huge stacks of the best militia you can afford.

I think that the EB team should just figure out a way to make it so that newly conquered towns don't pay for themselves. You have to sink a lot of money into them to make them functional and even more to make it make money for you just like in real life. That way there's no way you can just continue to expand. You have to expand, consolidate, expand, and consolidate... much like the Civ 4 model in fact rather than balloon at a ridiculous rate through exponential growth like in TW.

[Megas Methuselah]

Well, just remember: we have the EB Team to look to. They solved our worries in the past, and they will continue to do so. They promised it would be difficult to handle a large empire, and I have no doubt that it will be.

[mikil100]

To me, if EB used something like Grim reality, they would be doing a huge disservice to the EB fans. I'm sure they will come up with their own system that runs much smoother. Waiting 5 turns for a unit to come available is extremely unrealistic... ESPECIALLY for M2TW because 1 turn = a year.... the war council also seems silly to me. EBS AoR system and a restriction on elite units would be fine in my opinion.

[Elmetiacos]

I think that the EB team should just figure out a way to make it so that newly conquered towns don't pay for themselves. You have to sink a lot of money into them to make them functional and even more to make it make money for you just like in real life. That way there's no way you can just continue to expand. You have to expand, consolidate, expand, and consolidate... much like the Civ 4 model in fact rather than balloon at a ridiculous rate through exponential growth like in TW.

The Civ AI does give you periods of peace to consolidate in, whereas the RTW AI constantly attacks you. This is why you have to expand: because the incessant warfare gives you no choice but to kill or be killed. Unless there's some workaround that will make the AI be more reasonable this is always going to be the case - it isn't really designed for a grand strategy game at all, but a system for generating more battles.

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

EBII probaably will come with something better than BRG reality mod. But BRG has some good ideas that could be worked out and upgraded with EB brillancy.

BYG has a new feature, now the generals have their personal wealth that they must use to training units, buy supplies... i was wondering could something like this be used to represent the Marian reforms when the Generals begin to "pay" the soldiers.

[Cartaphilus]

Also, Stainless Steel's BYG's Grim Reality system is good but for the human player, it doesn't really mean anything because I can get around it.

Added to that, it is just plain iritating because I can't seem to get any war council members so I'm stuck recruiting form like 2 places on the whole map so most of my armies are levies. I can't even logistically afford to field anything remotely elite because they get shredded after one or two battles and I can't even retrain them unless I ship them all the way across the map AND wait about 10 turns for the unit pool to spawn one guy. And faction zeal and recruitment restrictions don't fix the primary problem which is exponentially growing income. In fact it just exaccerbates it because you can't sink them into elites. You just end up with huge stacks of the best militia you can afford.

I've stopped to play Stainless Steel for all of that.

[eddy_purpus]

I think that EB is a little more complicated than that. I mean, those were proto-nation states. Most of the factions in EB are most definitely not that. And how would you model Rome? It could be considered zealous and ambitious the whole timeframe of EB. Also, Stainless Steel's BYG's Grim Reality system is good but for the human player, it doesn't really mean anything because I can get around it.

Added to that, it is just plain iritating because I can't seem to get any war council members so I'm stuck recruiting form like 2 places on the whole map so most of my armies are levies. I can't even logistically afford to field anything remotely elite because they get shredded after one or two battles and I can't even retrain them unless I ship them all the way across the map AND wait about 10 turns for the unit pool to spawn one guy. And faction zeal and recruitment restrictions don't fix the primary problem which is exponentially growing income. In fact it just exaccerbates it because you can't sink them into elites. You just end up with huge stacks of the best militia you can afford.

I think that the EB team should just figure out a way to make it so that newly conquered towns don't pay for themselves. You have to sink a lot of money into them to make them functional and even more to make it make money for you just like in real life. That way there's no way you can just continue to expand. You have to expand, consolidate, expand, and consolidate... much like the Civ 4 model in fact rather than balloon at a ridiculous rate through exponential growth like in TW.

i agree with this post ..
Why not make _elite units_ far more expensive to recruit in many places than making them cheap in only one place ( capital maybe ) ..?

[antisocialmunky]

You usually can't recruit elite untis everywhere.

[eddy_purpus]

You usually can't recruit elite untis everywhere.

is that because of the regional recruitment rule
if it is, then
its far more realistic , but ,
shipping your elite units to your capital region like from iberia to italia is more than 7 turns to ship them then retrain them and get them back into line

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, its annoying. I hope armies have higher heal rates in EBII so successful armies won't be as badly mauled.

[Megas Methuselah]

Yes. In M2TW especially, even victorious armies tend to lose a surprisingly large amount of troops. The bloodbath of a battle is vastly overestimated in terms of percentage of kills...

[Xtiaan72]

From what I've seen of the MTW2 mods, there's a lot there to ease the late game EB2 woes. Some of the MTW2 even have unit recruitment limits based on the quality of units and the # and type of settlements you have....

In other words, the more 'Elite' the unit, the more it costs toward your unit cap. This works pretty well in DLV.

Also Med2 patched up to Kingdoms is a vast improvement over Rome, diplomacy wise. There is no reason at all why there shouldn't be more dependable alliances and periods of peace to pull your empire back together in EB2.

That's my biggest problem with long EB games ( or any Rome game really). Every war is a war to end all wars and that really is tedious when a 50 province empire attacks you. It's not the EB teams fault, it's just the nature of the Rome hard-coded beast.

This should definitely not be the case with EB2. There really is a lot more to work with in it's Diplomacy model.

[antisocialmunky]

The Civ AI does give you periods of peace to consolidate in, whereas the RTW AI constantly attacks you. This is why you have to expand: because the incessant warfare gives you no choice but to kill or be killed. Unless there's some workaround that will make the AI be more reasonable this is always going to be the case - it isn't really designed for a grand strategy game at all, but a system for generating more battles.

That's true, but Stainless Steel has a pretty good modded AI. I mean, I played a Milan campaign and made an alliance with Venice. They stayed loyal for most of the whole game. On the other hand, there were the Normans from Sicily. They continually back stabbed me and made peace after they got whooped bad enough. They still did stupid things like go after one town with all their might but after I beat enough of them, I would be able to get peace. We ended up fighting a series of wars. Eventually the Venetians joined of their own accord with me until we finally kicked them out of Italy and into greece.

That was genuinely fun and surprisingly realistic of the AI.

[Megas Methuselah]

You just had to rub that into my face, didn't you Munky? I never experienced an AI like that.

But I'm sure EB2 will change that and take away my "smart AI virginity." I actually look forward to lasting alliances in EB2 as Makedonia with the Seleucids. Maybe they'll stop backstabbing me for once in their pathetic lives?

[antisocialmunky]

Well, the AI sitll does some stupid things because its diplomacy AI and war AI are decoupled. Also, it does sometimes do that thing where it strips garrisons clean. However, I didn't run into that very much at all.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

I've never said that EB2 should adopt Byg's mod on its entirety. I was rather focused upon the loyalty and zeal concepts than the War Council, which will probably have no place under EB's AOR system; what is really interesting in Byg and that would be nice to implement would be Zeal properly and how the loyalty of your generals goes down with expansion increasing the chances of rebellion and dissent.

[Subotan]

That was genuinely fun and surprisingly realistic of the AI.

Eh, I wouldn't be so certain. Have you taken a look at Medieval Italy? Freakin' madhouse. First 20 pages of the Prince by Machiavelli should give you an idea of how backstabbingly vile everyone was.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, Sicily kept back stabbing me and I let Venice lose 2 stacks sieging Milan before I waltzed into it. Then we became buddies and I killed a pope to get them in good with the new pope(MY pope) after Venice excommed itself with a protracted war with Hungary. Venice then took basically all the area around my borders so I'm surrounded by a ring of Venetian that do all the fighting against Europe. What's your point?

[Subotan]

Oh, sweet. Very skilful diplomacy. Machiavelli would have been proud.

[Roka]

is that because of the regional recruitment rule
if it is, then
its far more realistic , but ,
shipping your elite units to your capital region like from iberia to italia is more than 7 turns to ship them then retrain them and get them back into line

maybe you should recruit more units than you need and ship them all to your current theatre of war, then merge the unused units into your depleted units

this is far more realistic as with new recruits enterign the fray the experience level of the unit should not remain as high