How will Caravel mod the game when he starts playing again?

[caravel]

Vantek: you may be right, the AI would do this, although there might be a choice to alter that behaviour by the declaration of the unit type and the unit type behaviour. I remember very well that Caravel's pocket mod had crossbows that did not skirmish back and forth and took shot in the face of even charging heavy cavalry and knights. I am quite hopeful that with a bit of modding work, artillery could stay in with being more meaningful and less overproduced for the AI.

Errm...? Well if it did work like that, it certainly wasn't by design (). In fact some time ago I was interested in finding out what controlled the default skirmish/hold formation/engage at will behaviour of units. Basically I wanted to remove spears from the game altogether and have them behave like swords (or to be more specific, like more defensively oriented versions of halbs/bills/jhi), in 60/120 units as well, defaulting to engage at will as swords do (making them more like YS/YA in STW). I have never worked out how to do it. Just changing "spear" to "sword" in the unit prod file doesn't work.

Gaiseric: i am pretty sure that you can keep changing factions while a turn lasts and do actions for them - however you would certainly play only the faction that you end the turn with. Its also possible that the AI would still do his actions with all other factions other than the one you end the turn with, but i cannot vouch for this its pure speculation.

You need to make changes (build/train/move/agent missions) then end the turn for only one faction. If you make changes for more than one and end the turn, only the last faction's changes will take effect. The AI will undo all of the others and do it's own thing.

I tried recently to play rulers instead of factions, but i found out that a single ruler per faction was too little. Two could also be too little because the succession order can include aging brothers etc - but three gives a play time from 50 to 80 years approx per faction.I played an early campaign by playing in turn the Turks, the Byzantines and the French. It was really fun. While playing factions i had to pay more attention to faction stability and to the Royal family and line - there was more room for roleplaying in this way because there was not unlimited time to design things to the player's will.

Anyway, just thought to share :)

A very interesting mode of play.