AI, economy, unit size and missile attack questions

[Ludens]

According to the Recruitment Viewever (which is a little outdated, I guess, but should still provide roughly reliable information) Armenia or Hayasdan, as you like it, is openly discriminated against! :-)

EB tries to simulate history as much as it can within the constraints of the engine. As such, it makes sense that Rome can obtain heavy infantry cheaper and easier than Armenia. Rome has a tradition citizen heavy infantry while Armenia drew her main warriors from the nobility, who were horsemen. On the other hand, Rome's cavalry is generally bad and overpriced while the Armenians have access to some of the best cavalry units in the game.

That's not to say the mod is entirely realistic. Historically, the Seleucids would never focus on Armenia like they do in the game, because they would be distracted by other threads, but the A.I. is programmed to hate the player. As result, once the war starts it will be almost impossible to stop it, and the Seleucids can and will throw army after army at you. Hence Armenia is marked as nigh-impossible.

[Cortex]

I would like you to make it but it's like they say in the first matrix: nobody makes it the first time

Thank you, I have survived so far, although I don't play every day, so it has been only a couple of turns

EB tries to simulate history as much as it can within the constraints of the engine. As such, it makes sense that Rome can obtain heavy infantry cheaper and easier than Armenia. Rome has a tradition citizen heavy infantry while Armenia drew her main warriors from the nobility, who were horsemen. On the other hand, Rome's cavalry is generally bad and overpriced while the Armenians have access to some of the best cavalry units in the game.

I understand the motives, as I wrote earlier in this thread, I have no problem with Rome having cheaper infantry, what seems slightly unfair is that Rome's hastati/principes/triarii are available to her from MIC 3, I have to wait for my Cataphracht Horse Archers until level 4 and for Cataphracts until level 5. Sure I have Armenian Medium Cavalry available from level 3 and Armenian Skirmish Cavalry from level 2, if I am not mistaken, and yes I can win battles quite safely with them, but it would be nice to be able to add a unit of cataphracts, just for the feeling. I mean I certainly wouldn't spam them since they cost some 4000 mnai to recruit.

[heldelance]

Well, that's because the infantry that make the bulk of Rome's forces were recruitable from pretty much EVERY Roman city, Their infantry is made up of the people not just nobles. With the Hai, the cataphracts you're talking about were recruited from the nobility which would only really reside within the capital of the faction, I guess that the reason why you can only get them when you develop your city to a pretty high level is because it reflects the idea that unless your city becomes big enough and attractive enough to the nobility, they aren't going to be moving there. You can get skirmisher cavalry and lighter cavalry earlier on because they don't really depend on super rich noble families, they only need a person that can buy a horse and afford some light armor.

[LordCurlyton]

Thank you, I have survived so far, although I don't play every day, so it has been only a couple of turns


I understand the motives, as I wrote earlier in this thread, I have no problem with Rome having cheaper infantry, what seems slightly unfair is that Rome's hastati/principes/triarii are available to her from MIC 3, I have to wait for my Cataphracht Horse Archers until level 4 and for Cataphracts until level 5. Sure I have Armenian Medium Cavalry available from level 3 and Armenian Skirmish Cavalry from level 2, if I am not mistaken, and yes I can win battles quite safely with them, but it would be nice to be able to add a unit of cataphracts, just for the feeling. I mean I certainly wouldn't spam them since they cost some 4000 mnai to recruit.

And in what way is that unfair? Cataphracts are supposed to be rare. Even playing as Pahlava you aren't going to be fielding large amounts, unless you like crushing debt. Catas and the like are elite units and are priced such, and also are only made available from higher tiers. Conversely, the units that you say Rome "unfairly" gets at "only" MIC 3 are the backbone of EVERY SINGLE Republican army made. Besides, even in the Polybians you can only build Rome's Factional MIC in Italy proper (not even Sicily), which forces a Roman player to either continually ship troops from the mainland and/or make heavy use of regionals.
The issue is that catas are a true elite unit, something Rome truly lacks. Rome just has a very solid line of "very good" units to compensate. You want catas, then build your economy up. Remember, in the beginning Hayasdan does not start as a powerful independent kingdom; they are merely another rebellious satrapy to the AS (starting diplomacy reflects this). An under-developed backwoods primarily. Survive lone enough to get some of the Hayasdan government reforms and your situation improves dramatically. Notice how you don't have Homeland or Expansion provinces to start? That right there will keep you from ever seeing catas. First (and this is in the FAQ) you need to build up your starting province to trigger the Homeland resource, allowing you to make Type I Gov. then you need to conquer basically all the adjacent provinces (even the AS ones) and build a Type III in all to trigger the next step, allowing more Expansion and Homeland resources. And so on. As far as the number of provinces that can actually recruit the catas, EB generally tries to restrict them to historical locales. Armenian catas, being Armenian, will naturally be restricted only to locations that had both what would have constituted the ethnic Armenian nobility and been rich/productive enough to have made such units in a viable quantity. Roman Hastati/Principes/Triarii, on the other hand, were drawn from the citizenry, a far vaster body to draw from. Just look at the Punic Wars to see just how deep and how willing Rome was to draw up ever available man to fight (though the 2nd War basically bled a vast part of that generation away).
IMHO, the Hai unit roster is basically Pahlava's just not as diverse and widespread. Coupled with a MUCH more difficult starting position I'll play Pahlava any time I get the HA/Cata itch. If I ever try Hai again I'm just going to use Scythian HA regionals and play as a pseudo-HA faction until I can attrition the AS and have an actual economy. Hai infantry will get decimated once the AS and its AI money start churning out all-phalanx stacks.

[jhhowell]

What do you mean "pseudo" HA faction? Do people actually play Hayasdan without taking full advantage of the Scythians? Maybe that's why so many people have been calling it "near-impossible"...

Cortex, don't worry so much about the MIC 5 cataphracts, it's better to use Kinsmen (MIC 4, and very widespread). They're both powerful, extremely heavy cavalry, and the few extra points of armor on the cataphracts just aren't worth the significant cost increase and tiny recruitment area, IMHO.

[Cortex]

And in what way is that unfair? Cataphracts are supposed to be rare. Even playing as Pahlava you aren't going to be fielding large amounts, unless you like crushing debt. Catas and the like are elite units and are priced such, and also are only made available from higher tiers. Conversely, the units that you say Rome "unfairly" gets at "only" MIC 3 are the backbone of EVERY SINGLE Republican army made. Besides, even in the Polybians you can only build Rome's Factional MIC in Italy proper (not even Sicily), which forces a Roman player to either continually ship troops from the mainland and/or make heavy use of regionals.
The issue is that catas are a true elite unit, something Rome truly lacks. Rome just has a very solid line of "very good" units to compensate. You want catas, then build your economy up. Remember, in the beginning Hayasdan does not start as a powerful independent kingdom; they are merely another rebellious satrapy to the AS (starting diplomacy reflects this). An under-developed backwoods primarily. Survive lone enough to get some of the Hayasdan government reforms and your situation improves dramatically. Notice how you don't have Homeland or Expansion provinces to start? That right there will keep you from ever seeing catas. First (and this is in the FAQ) you need to build up your starting province to trigger the Homeland resource, allowing you to make Type I Gov. then you need to conquer basically all the adjacent provinces (even the AS ones) and build a Type III in all to trigger the next step, allowing more Expansion and Homeland resources. And so on. As far as the number of provinces that can actually recruit the catas, EB generally tries to restrict them to historical locales. Armenian catas, being Armenian, will naturally be restricted only to locations that had both what would have constituted the ethnic Armenian nobility and been rich/productive enough to have made such units in a viable quantity. Roman Hastati/Principes/Triarii, on the other hand, were drawn from the citizenry, a far vaster body to draw from. Just look at the Punic Wars to see just how deep and how willing Rome was to draw up ever available man to fight (though the 2nd War basically bled a vast part of that generation away).
IMHO, the Hai unit roster is basically Pahlava's just not as diverse and widespread. Coupled with a MUCH more difficult starting position I'll play Pahlava any time I get the HA/Cata itch. If I ever try Hai again I'm just going to use Scythian HA regionals and play as a pseudo-HA faction until I can attrition the AS and have an actual economy. Hai infantry will get decimated once the AS and its AI money start churning out all-phalanx stacks.

I don't challenge the fact that they should be rare. Of course they should, from both historical perspective and from the perspective that playing with a full stack of cataphracts would get boring in 10 turns, if not sooner.

But, just as Hastati and co. are available to Romans quite soon because they are recruited from citizens, the cataphracts or any other heavy cavalry are recruited from nobility, both of them are somewhat inherent to the country. It's not like it was some peasant commune, is it?

The rarity is secured by the exorbitant recruit/upkeep price, like you said yourself, even as Pahlava, one doesn't use them massively, that's how it should be, but he can use them if he wants

And I do know about the reforms, I am not that retarded ;-)

jhhowell: yeah, I have kind of found out already, but thanks :-)


And generally here's a thought: the whole barracks/stables/MIC/whatever idea seems somewhat weird to me. They didn't need a complexes as expensive as temples to recruit soldiers, did they? If I recall correctly the Romans for example just assemblied the recruits at the Campus Martius and trained them there.

And as with the recruit/upkeep prices: if I understand it well, the recruit price is always quadruple of the upkeep price now. Wouldn't it make more sense to express the price of gear - weapons, armour, shield in the recruit price and the costs of feeding and paying the unit in the upkeep price? Say that there would be a base upkeep price of 100 mnai to represent the food which would be the same for every unit and then some extra costs to represent the solider's pay which would vary according to the skills of a unit. So, it could (and should if you ask me) happen that e.g. Kazvkaza Sparabara would be cheaper to recruit than to upkeep, this would allow the player to wage a really defensive war, summoning militia for a turn or two to fight off the invading army and then disband them. No major impact on the popuation, relatively cheap. I think it would be especially worth considering in the M2TW engine, in which you can recruit more units at the same time.

What do you think?

[desert]

I read this some time ago, and I can't remember the exact figures, but I think you need half a mnai just to feed a single man for an EB turn.


And in Greece, say they get payed a drachma a day. A turn = about 90 drachmae. Now, there are 100 drachmae in a mnai. So just for a single man you need a mnai to pay him for a turn, and perhaps up to two mnai to include food, repairs, etc. And these are just for hoplites. Nobles, now were talking exorbitant sums!

That's quite a bit of money. Probably the EB units should cost much more, but the economy would have to be tweaked accordingly (factions got a lot more money than you see in-game), or else one would barely be able to afford a unit of pantodapoi.

[Cortex]

I read this some time ago, and I can't remember the exact figures, but I think you need half a mnai just to feed a single man for an EB turn.


And in Greece, say they get payed a drachma a day. A turn = about 90 drachmae. Now, there are 100 drachmae in a mnai. So just for a single man you need a mnai to pay him for a turn, and perhaps up to two mnai to include food, repairs, etc. And these are just for hoplites. Nobles, now were talking exorbitant sums!

That's quite a bit of money. Probably the EB units should cost much more, but the economy would have to be tweaked accordingly (factions got a lot more money than you see in-game), or else one would barely be able to afford a unit of pantodapoi.

I am not a historian, so I don't know the exact figures. However, I think that the prices are the same regardless of chosen unit size, so you can imagine it stands for the small size, or the income could be tweaked as you suggested.

Furthermore, I understand the desire to keep things as historical as possible, after all, that's what makes this mod so great, but there are certain limits. If I (again) recall correctly, if you wanted to be strictly historical, you should have the recruit price of Camillan and Polybian zero as it was a civic duty to serve ten campaigns in the army. Of course you cannot force the AI to disband the units after ten campaigns, thus the recruit price to compensate it.

So, leaving the exact figures aside for the moment, what do you think about the idea in general?

[Tolg]

is it even possible to change the relation between upkeep and recruitment costs?


If it is then I don't understand why an unit of artillery has a higher upkeep than a unit of elephants...

[desert]

Well, they're trying a lot of new stuff in EB 2, like 0 turn recruitment and free upkeep for some units. So some of your ideas might come to fruition in one form or another.