New hints ???????????????

[caravel]

It sounds like an interesting campaign. The Italians are always a good challenge due to their positioning on the map. The Sicilians and Hungarians will always be breathing down your kneck, but in many campaigns where I've been hard at it fending them off, the French and HRE have stabbed me in the back as well. Then if you're really unlucky you either get excommunicated or the Papacy invade... personally I like those kinds of campaigns - plenty of battles and surviving against the odds.

[Jxrc]

The Sicilians and Hungarians will always be breathing down your kneck, but in many campaigns where I've been hard at it fending them off, the French and HRE have stabbed me in the back as well.

In the case at hand, I have only two allies in the nearby provinces, the Pope and the HRE that is already at war with the Hungarian (all my other allies abandoned me when the Hungarian attacked). They only have three provinces left (Tyrol, Burgundy and Switzerland) and are trying to regain control of Austria for the Hungarian. The former other HRE holding are now owned by the French and Polish (don't know the exact repartition). The French send me emissaries every two turns so I might be tempted to switch side and take Burgundy and Tyrol (I already have Provence) before the French do (the AI apparently loves to build a chapter house in Burgundy). Then I will only have to take Austria from the Hungarian when the papal warning expires to get Venice and Milan out of harm's way. If other catholic factions leave me alone, it will be time to send crusade from Malta to get the bonus for knights hospitaller (I bet that the first two crusades I launch will be made of Order foot soldiers just to mess with me but whatever ...). I nevertheless have to restrain myself otherwise the campaign might be basically over before the GH appears.

[caravel]

The French send me emissaries every two turns so I might be tempted to switch side and take Burgundy and Tyrol (I already have Provence) before the French do (the AI apparently loves to build a chapter house in Burgundy).

Could be worthwhile. Don't accept their offers yet, but check if you have heirs that need marrying and if the French have available princesses.

I nevertheless have to restrain myself otherwise the campaign might be basically over before the GH appears

Spoken like a true master.

[Jxrc]

Spoken like a true master.

You're way too kind :))

Could be worthwhile. Don't accept their offers yet, but check if you have heirs that need marrying and if the French have available princesses.

Never got the chance. Not that the French smashed the HRE as expected but the English did backstab the French and erased them from the map ... (the French did help out by sending crusades that never made it since the English took the chapter house each time ....)
Did pretty much nothing myself for about 60 years except taking Austria, Tyrol and Hungary from the Hungarian (routing armies of jobbagys is not really that hard ...), Ireland and Livonia. My influence suffered as a result and since the English were smashing the Spaniards quite easily (why the Spaniards almost never think of building a few barques to have only two provinces to guard is beyond me ...), I started to take the Elmo holdings (from Cordoba to Tunisia - having arbs make it so much easier to deal with AUM). The GH did show up but it was a mini-GH (between 8,000 and 9,000) so that they reach Lithuania and are slowly reduced to piece by the Byz and Polish (they had their and so full that the never made a single attempt to take livonia from me). Brits have done well in the meantime and have destroyed the Spaniards and taken Norway, Sweden, a big chunk of what was Germany and three-four provinces in the middle East (IIRC Palestine, Antioch and Tripoli not sure about non-coastal provinces).

They have large stack and generals with loads of stars (I no longer use inquisitors except when I play as the HRE) but due to the kind of tactic used in inter-AI wars (attack, counter, attack, re-counter, etc ...) all they best general have the "retreats very often v&v" so it should be a not too easy task to get the British empire to collapse after a few defeats . But that is my assignment for next week-end ... Yes, life is indeed hard ....

[caravel]

Did pretty much nothing myself for about 60 years except taking Austria, Tyrol and Hungary from the Hungarian (routing armies of jobbagys is not really that hard ...), Ireland and Livonia.

That's the problem with the Hungarians - they tend to train too many of the Slav Warriors, Javelinmen and Jobbagy units. The slavs are too weak and the javelins are overpowered for the player but underpowered for the AI as they do badly in autocalc battles and the AI cannot deploy them properly in human vs AI battles. The same goes for Spanish Jinetes - great for the player but the AI rarely puts them to good use. Slav warriors can be improved with some modding. The best option is to turn them into light spearmen. Javelin types are harder to balance, if not impossible. One option is to cut their ammo down to a minimum and up their charge and morale a few points, with the "uncontrolled" discipline type as another possibility. This turns them into "throw and charge" flanking types.

My influence suffered as a result and since the English were smashing the Spaniards quite easily (why the Spaniards almost never think of building a few barques to have only two provinces to guard is beyond me ...)

The AI cannot manage navies effectively. It moves fleets around the map with no real purpose in mind (totally random). The only real remedy for this is to remove fleets and shipping from the game altogether.

[Jxrc]

That's the problem with the Hungarians - they tend to train too many of the Slav Warriors, Javelinmen and Jobbagy units. The slavs are too weak and the javelins are overpowered for the player but underpowered for the AI as they do badly in autocalc battles and the AI cannot deploy them properly in human vs AI battles. The same goes for Spanish Jinetes - great for the player but the AI rarely puts them to good use. Slav warriors can be improved with some modding. The best option is to turn them into light spearmen. Javelin types are harder to balance, if not impossible. One option is to cut their ammo down to a minimum and up their charge and morale a few points, with the "uncontrolled" discipline type as another possibility. This turns them into "throw and charge" flanking types..

I long thought that slav warriors were spear unit but found out recently that they were sword units (https://forums.totalwar.org/wiki/ind..._Slav_Warriors) ... I have not checked but it seems weird if you look at the combat animation (I almost never use them, too prone to rout). It's true that they cannot fight against horses but they only beat archers and peasants AFIK so it's not really a surprise ...

The AI cannot manage navies effectively. It moves fleets around the map with no real purpose in mind (totally random). The only real remedy for this is to remove fleets and shipping from the game altogether.

Fair enough but if you do that:

- how do you invade islands ? Do you create a imaginary land route to just like they did between Wessex and Flanders ? How does the AI cope with that addition ? Does it still leave a single unit to guard the province or does it react accordingly ?

- what about trade income ? Does it imply that you give a trade bonus once a port is build without taking into account the number of trade routes ? If building the port has the same effect as covering the entire sea with ships, the bonus for naval trade needs to be adapted if faction with access to sea provinces are not to be overpowered.

Finally how do you do that ?

[caravel]

I long thought that slav warriors were spear unit but found out recently that they were sword units (https://forums.totalwar.org/wiki/ind..._Slav_Warriors) ... I have not checked but it seems weird if you look at the combat animation (I almost never use them, too prone to rout). It's true that they cannot fight against horses but they only beat archers and peasants AFIK so it's not really a surprise ...

Slav Warriors were probably intended to be spearmen, but definitely do not function as spearmen. Plans must have changed... It's easy enough to change their stats and reassign them as an eastern version of vanilla spears, though it's debatable if this is needed as the Round Shield Spearmen fit this role anyway.

Fair enough but if you do that:

- how do you invade islands ? Do you create a imaginary land route to just like they did between Wessex and Flanders ? How does the AI cope with that addition ? Does it still leave a single unit to guard the province or does it react accordingly ?

Yes, you can create landbridges to all the islands, namely:

Genoa/Corsica (or Tuscany)
Ireland/Scotland (and/or Wales)
Malta/Sicily
Rhodes/Nicaea
Crete/Greece
Cyprus/Antioch (or other neighbouring provinces)

This actually works best and does not cripple the AI. The AI sees no difference between a landbridged province and an adjacent province. i.e. to the AI there is no difference between the existing wessex/flanders connection and the wessex/mercia connection. The AI benefits from this arrangement. How many times have you seen the Sicilian or Byzantine factions reappearing in force... in Malta/Crete/Rhodes/Cyprus without a port? (I've also seen the French or English reappear in Ireland, totally cut off)

- what about trade income ? Does it imply that you give a trade bonus once a port is build without taking into account the number of trade routes ? If building the port has the same effect as covering the entire sea with ships, the bonus for naval trade needs to be adapted if faction with access to sea provinces are not to be overpowered.

Finally how do you do that ?

Trade ceases to function as it once did. There are numerous alternatives however. The first and most obvious is to improve farming income. Trade can also be replaced by giving ports a fixed income, then adding fixed incomes to the trader buildings and their upgrades. This gives a stable and unfluctuating income to the AI.

Another method is to exploit the "local trade" income that already exists but has little effect. This is a single income generated for a single trade goods type within a single province. This can be boosted by editing the values for the goods. This means that the traders will produce differing incomes depending on the goods found in the province, but the incomes will be static. In this way landlocked provinces with trade goods could also benefit from trade - whereas in the vanilla game building traders in such provinces is a waste of time and florins.

It can be achieved with a little time, effort and editing of text files. The next time I get MTW up and running I will be making these changes as a standard, so I can send you the files.

The gains IMHO are great, the losses are small in comparison. The loss of shipping doesn't bother me, nor does the loss of the huge bloated trade income that the player can exploit so easily, but the AI is hopeless inept at managing. Transportation isn't a factor either. As it is, it doesn't work: Too many Almohads in Scotland or Byzantine in Flanders scenarios for my liking. This is the problem with shipping - the AI views a link of shipping from Egypt to Sweden in exactly the same way it views travelling from Egypt to Sinai. The AI does not give any thought to the possibility that the route may be cut off next year... By removing shipping, AI factions get better territorial integrity and stability which is compromised by the shipping in the vanilla game.