Moneys!

[bondovic]

Here I go again.

As the title reveals, I want to hear your thoughts on in-game money. Why? Because there are so many different ways to engineer economic models and each model has its own perks and drawbacks. For example, reducing upkeep for royal units to 0 is a very simple model for distribution of wealth. This lets smaller factions, like the Danes, to expand even when keeping 10 uncles.

Another model could be to reduce all units' upkeep while seriously boosting trade income. Or bumping harvest income and reducing build times for farm upgrades, while increasing upkeep for naval units. You get the picture...

The model you choose, obviously, changes the dynamics of the game. These dynamics cannot, in most cases, be said to be inherently good or bad, but must be measured as a means towards an end. This end, most likely, being Gameplay - which should be the operative word in any modding procedure.

So, pretty please with sugar and a cherry on top, if you'd explain your preferred model and explain why you prefer it, that would be absolute gold for me!

Many thanks.

/B

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

I'm no modder, and claim no great insight into MTW, but...

1) I think it's generally accepted that the AI is pretty poor at exploiting trade goods on account of its inability to maintain a 'ship in contiguous sea regions' infrastructure; and

2) By contrast, the AI does a reasonable job of building the farming and mining technologies so getting good returns from these resources.

It seems to me, therefore, that trade income potential should be significantly reduced, and farming and mining income increased.

I would also approve of an increase in the cost of building and maintaining ships, plus making them take longer to build. I feel this is preferable to other strategems to cut down on (or at least make more expensive) teleportation-like long distance naval invasions and vast trading networks

I definitely think artillery should be much harder and more expensive to build.

I sympathise with the desire to help smaller factions, but see this as a forlorn hope. I am inclined to boost the staying power (and challenge) of the larger factions, and rely on revolts and reappearances to keep the smaller factions in the game.

I really really wish the player could gift sums from his treasury to AI factions.

Just my ha'penny worth.

Best regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace

[The Punish-ed]

Hello, I am also no expert, although I do enjoy tinkering around with the files to try and have a different gaming experience. At the moment Im working on allowing all factions to build some units (Cuman Warriors, Rus Spears, Arab Infantry, Camels and suchlike) but with the units affecting the religeon of the poulation - so that, for example, a Catholic army could build Camels, but it would increase the Muslim population in his empire if he did so.

Financially the biggest problem is that hinted at above - anything that improves the AI's income also improves the players, and the player can then make the trade income on top of it, meaning the human almost always benefits more than the AI. Short of using your own rules (like not building traders posts) its not easy to do.

If you almost always go the same faction, you could simply reduce costs on all units that you cannot build or give other leaders discounts on certain troops. This can, unfortunately backfire - as sometimes they will respond by building huge numbers of the cheaper units and less of everything else.

During the Medieval era, trade was MASSIVELY reduced outside of the Eastern Roman areas, so it makes historical as well as gameplay sense to focus on making trade benefit the human less, but the effects are just as easily achieved by refraining from using trade yourself. Same goes for making boats cost more, you'll hurt small factions and achieve the same result by simply altering your own bahaviour. If anything, Id suggest making ships MUCH cheaper and more easily accessible. A committed player will rule the seas without much competition after the first 150 years anyway (I generally have 3-6 provinces churning them out asap and have uncontested mastery of the med after 100 years and the atlantic by 150 years when I go for it) - while it's simple enough to sink a large fleet, it gets annoying to have to constantly pick off little ships - and if my 'compeition' could be spawning new little fast annoying ships every year instead of every 3 - while this would not significanlty alter my own approach or dominance - meaning my trade would suffer a lot more, it'd be harder to invade.

If anything it might be worth redistributing resources a bit - give the Danes, Irish, Scots, Volgos (obviously depends what version / mods you use) either more supplies or make only a select few provinces trade points - rather than a region producing goods; just choose the main hubs of trade and make them have more concentrated groups of 'gathered' trade items - obviously constantinople, Egypt, Syria, Novgorod were places that got a slice of almost all trade heading through them.

As I usually play Byzantines, Greece, Nicaea, Constantinople, Crimea and Bulgaria already have great trade potential from the word go; whereas if we considered that almost all of these goods went where they were going via the Capitol; it might make sense to focus all Byzantine trade goods at the City - making the surrounding provinces poorer.

there is, however, nothing to stop the human grabbing all the hubs and ruling the world anyway - but if you gave specifica advantages to factions and territories that YOU rarely utilise, you can make a better game of it - but you could just as easily not build trading posts.


Again - all these things can be achieved by the player deciding not to use his advantage to full - so im not sure that modding is necessarily the best answer.

P

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

"If anything, Id suggest making ships MUCH cheaper and more easily accessible. A committed player will rule the seas without much competition after the first 150 years anyway (I generally have 3-6 provinces churning them out asap and have uncontested mastery of the med after 100 years and the atlantic by 150 years when I go for it) - while it's simple enough to sink a large fleet, it gets annoying to have to constantly pick off little ships - and if my 'compeition' could be spawning new little fast annoying ships every year instead of every 3 - while this would not significanlty alter my own approach or dominance - meaning my trade would suffer a lot more, it'd be harder to invade."

That makes sense to me.

Regards
Victor

VGB edit:
Plus, if the AI had a lot more ships at sea, and therefore fully populated the sea regions, it might actually start to benefit from trade to a similar degree to the player - sort of by 'accident'.

[wumpus]

I'm so glad that many people still play MTW, as I continue to enjoy it. Talking of money, I discovered a long time ago a good use for it--to bribe unoccupied (or rebel) provinces to my side. I once played Byzantine, then sent off my emissaries to the West, managed to bribe (to buy?) Norway before the Danes succeeded there, and had a powerful army that used a combination of Norse Huscarles supported by Byzantine Cataphracts. You guys try it some time; I wish you great success at it. That's how powerful money is. Hawooh. :-)

[m52nickerson]

The one problem with giving the AI any more money is that larger factions will just spam even more troops then they do already. The smaller factions will not be able to keep up. Perhaps giving those smaller factions, like the Danes, more money to start, or making their home provences much richer would help more.