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

[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.