Idea for mod - Make AI Rome stronger

[siegfriedfr]

Brilliant info, thanks very much! So if I give all Roman units +2 secondary hitpoints on top of what they have now, that should improve them quite a bit without making them overpowered.

Keep us informed of your results, i'm interested.

[Ludens]

I think the problem is that Rome, when not bordering the player, will often attempt to expand north, into Germany. In order to prevent this unrealistic expansion the regenerating Boii armies were added. This, however, does not deter the Rome A.I. from throwing the occasional army up north.

The victory conditions submod encourages the A.I. to expand in the proper direction, although it's not magic bullet. It's also been a while since I used it, so I cannot remember which version of EB it is for.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Well, adding 2 extra secondary HP's to the Roman units did make them too overpowered. So I took it down to just 1 additional secondary HP (same as the horse archers get) and upped the attack and defence of all Roman units by 2 points (+2 attack on both primary and secondary weapons, and +2 on shield value).

I've only done this on units that are purely Roman and can only be recruited by the Roman faction (seleucid and slave in the EDU). Units like Hastati and Rorarii can be recruited by other factions as regional units, so I didn't give them the +1 secondary hp.

This change seems to achieve a good balance. Rome expands more quickly in the first few years of the campaign since they overpower the Eleutheroi around them more easily. By 265 BC, Rome is already attacking Messana, and also going for Massilia too. Rome is also able to take Syracuse quickly, this helps them a lot in Sicily. (Historically, both Massila and Syracuse were Roman allies by 263 BC - Type IV Roman governments in EB terms.)

[ChingizLink]

I have had similar problems with the AI Romans while playing as Parthia or whomever in EB (as well as RTR, et al). Since I discovered those double edged swords known as cheats, however, AI Rome has done a lot better under my watch.

How much better? Well, I managed to squeeze the March of Time out of them in Fall or Winter 271. (yeah, I know, I know: I'm rad. Thank you. Thank you. Really. Thank you....)

And they're destroying Gaul right now, but I am concerned after reading other players' complaints about the tendency of Rome to go north. I think they're in this Mexican stand off with Carthage, who have troops all over S. Italy, like inches away from Roman armies, but since they're both allies with me (and I am chewing up the Seleucids so badly it isn't even funny...it's 269 or 268 and I have everything west to Gerrha, Seleukeia/Babylon, Karkathiokerta, Arbela, Trapezous, and Ami-whatever, and everything east well...everything east. I went into the Eleutheroi territory in the north but just gave all of it north of Khiva to the Saka Rauka in a treaty) I think that its giving the AI cold feet. Anyway, I need to break it off with Carthage for Rome's sake...

I help out other factions by using process_cq to speed up their construction, add_population "seleucid" 4000 for the march of time, add_money "[internal faction name]" 40000, give_trait for their generals, hell, I even use create_unit to give them REAL armies (though you need to cheat them some $$ too when you do that...especially Macedon, AS, Romani, Hai). Especially early with Seleukeia--I really don't care about some wheenie ass army with 3 pantodapoi, 2 archer spearmen, and MAYBE a cavalry unit. I want to fight some ridiculous, oversized, totally high maintenance Hellenistic army, dammit! (Oh yeah, I speed the cataphract reform for my nemesis too. I got that and the Polybian Reform in 270--the latter is weird, since I set the EBBS script to just set it unconditionally after a year or two but its always winter 270!)