RTW Vanilla vs. BI vs. Alex

[Cincinnatus Johnson]

A few weeks ago in another of my posts Atraphoenix mentioned his views on the comparable stability of playing EB off of the three different executeables (RTW, BI and Alex). That seemed like a good observation so I'd like to expand the discussion to the broader community. What do you guys think, is EB more stable (i.e. less prone to in-game CTDs) when played from the BI or Alex executeable file? I've played both vanilla RTW & BI but haven't focused my attention on comparing which was more stable. I haven't yet played from ALex yet. Is there something inherently more stable in the last version of the game?
Thanks.
CJ

[Ludens]

Since only the rtw.exe is supported by the team (the BI and alex variants are submods made other people) I am moving this to the submod forum.

[Cincinnatus Johnson]

Ludens,
This raises another follow-on question (in addition to the one I PM'd you with). If you're familiar with Ferromancer's Installer for BI, would that count as a sub-mod? I was thrown off by the name "installer. I haven't installed it but it looks interesting.
CJ

[Ludens]

I haven't used it, but since it's essentially EB repackaged for use with BI.exe, it counts as a submod.

[vartan]

If you think from a software engineer's standpoint, successive iterations of the same game engine should be more optimized and less bugged, or more debugged. That is, there almost always is no excuse for the reverse to occur. It's what you do as an engineer, improving each iteration. Translating this to the three engine iterations, and don't take my word but play with all three and do some performance analysis, and you'll see that almost invariably the engine version 1.9 (ALX) is more optimized than versions 1.6 (BI) and 1.5 (RTW), of which the latter two tend to be quite similar in terms of performance.

EDIT: Just my take on things. I don't know if there's a definitive answer.

[Cincinnatus Johnson]

Ludens, Vartan,
Thanks for responding. In this case I can see Vartan's point ("don't know if there is a definitive answer"). I'll take the fact that no is is condemning any one of the executeables as exceptionally flawed and try all three.
Thanks again.
CJ

[AstroCat]

I'm currently playing my first EB 1.2+Fixes campaign as Romani M/M, Huge unit size, using the RTW.exe Mods added: Win conditions, Force Diplomacy, RS map textures, Naval Start add on (only trade ship and cart), No big trees, New quotes, MC player formations and that's about it. Hope it goes well, I was tempted to uses the minimod with alex plus other mods that work with it, but figured for the first game I should go light on the mods.

I would also like to know if BI or ALEX gives a superior game. I am leaning towards ALEX but am definitely trying to learn about BI as well.

[Cincinnatus Johnson]

I'm currently playing my first EB 1.2+Fixes campaign as Romani M/M, Huge unit size, using the RTW.exe Mods added: Win conditions, Force Diplomacy, RS map textures, Naval Start add on (only trade ship and cart), No big trees, New quotes, MC player formations and that's about it. Hope it goes well, I was tempted to uses the minimod with alex plus other mods that work with it, but figured for the first game I should go light on the mods.

I would also like to know if BI or ALEX gives a superior game. I am leaning towards ALEX but am definitely trying to learn about BI as well.

Astrocat,

I'm still learning about mods to EB. Are all the mods you listed (Win conditions, Force Diplomacy, RS map textures, etc.) found in the 1.2 mini-mod pack?

[AstroCat]

Astrocat,

I'm still learning about mods to EB. Are all the mods you listed (Win conditions, Force Diplomacy, RS map textures, etc.) found in the 1.2 mini-mod pack?

A couple are optional but they are listed and linked in the first post of the minimod, except for the "Get rid of big trees" mod but it can 100% be added to the minimod 1.2 with no problems.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

The Alex engine was tuned for the Alexander campaign, with the AI playing the Persians. So the AI was tweaked to act 'more Persian'. The Persians raised huge armies, so Alex engine retrains its depleted units to regenerate huge armies more quickly. This is also done because Alexander campaign only had 3 factions in total, so you were mostly fighting Persia and no-one else. RTW engine doesn't retrain at all AFAIK, and the BI engine does it only rarely.

I don't like Alex because for me the AI raises too large armies as it is, Alex retraining everything would make the problem even worse - an AI army you've just defeated can retreat into a town, and if it can recruit the unit types it needs, it can, at the end of the turn retrain those units, replace nearly all its losses, completely wiping out the effects of your battlefield victory. For me that's not fun.

However, if you don't mind or actually like the AI retraining its armies, the Alex engine is the most stable of the three, the most efficient, and has the best AI.

[AstroCat]

So, do you use BI? And if so what other mods do you have integrated into BI? Some people have said the naval invasion do not work so good in BI and recommend Alex...

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Yes, I use BI, along with the City Mod to reduce population growth and limit the growth of most cities (especially the barbarian ones.) I'd modded my units file also.

Naval invasions are at least present in BI, they are absent with RTW. But the BI engine generally creates lots of small invasions (the stacks are small) rather than a few big ones, so it's not very historical in that respect. Alex is probably better at it, being a later engine.

[Cincinnatus Johnson]

The Alex engine was tuned for the Alexander campaign, with the AI playing the Persians. So the AI was tweaked to act 'more Persian'. The Persians raised huge armies, so Alex engine retrains its depleted units to regenerate huge armies more quickly. This is also done because Alexander campaign only had 3 factions in total, so you were mostly fighting Persia and no-one else. RTW engine doesn't retrain at all AFAIK, and the BI engine does it only rarely.

I don't like Alex because for me the AI raises too large armies as it is, Alex retraining everything would make the problem even worse - an AI army you've just defeated can retreat into a town, and if it can recruit the unit types it needs, it can, at the end of the turn retrain those units, replace nearly all its losses, completely wiping out the effects of your battlefield victory. For me that's not fun.

However, if you don't mind or actually like the AI retraining its armies, the Alex engine is the most stable of the three, the most efficient, and has the best AI.

Titus,
Thanks for the great info. I'm curious about the city mod. What benefits do you see in limiting your own cities growth?
CJ

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Titus,
Thanks for the great info. I'm curious about the city mod. What benefits do you see in limiting your own cities growth?
CJ

Have a look at the City Mod description here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...79775-City-Mod

It's historically based. Rome was historically a Huge City. Historically, Arpi was not. So in this mod, Arpi can't be a Huge City.

Basically only a minority of cities can grow to Large City size, and only a handful like Rome can grow to Huge City size.

In the 'Hellenic' version of the mod, the barbarian towns can't grow beyond Large Town size. This is so Rome, Greek, Punic or Eastern factions can make them into civilised-looking cities, instead of still looking like barbarian settlements on the map. This version disadvantages the barbarian factions, obviously - but it gives the pathetic Roman AI a fighting chance against the likes of the Aedui and Lusotanns.

[vartan]

Have a look at the City Mod description here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...79775-City-Mod

It's historically based. Rome was historically a Huge City. Historically, Arpi was not. So in this mod, Arpi can't be a Huge City.

Basically only a minority of cities can grow to Large City size, and only a handful like Rome can grow to Huge City size.

In the 'Hellenic' version of the mod, the barbarian towns can't grow beyond Large Town size. This is so Rome, Greek, Punic or Eastern factions can make them into civilised-looking cities, instead of still looking like barbarian settlements on the map. This version disadvantages the barbarian factions, obviously - but it gives the pathetic Roman AI a fighting chance against the likes of the Aedui and Lusotanns.

Essentially, this. In other words, a really nice way of perpetuating the long-held prejudices against ancient non-Latin non-Greek peoples, always making certain that the Greco-Latins are in every sense above--excuse me, "above"--the competition. I mean, anything else would basically be ahistorical, right?

On a more serious note, however, I use the City Mod myself because I'm honestly tired of having to quell public unrest that arises simply due to a huge population size. If, however, you realize that the point of EB is to educate and to represent history, and not to reenact history, then you ought not to use the City Mod. That is, if you realize that the point of Total War games is to recreate history (as opposed to reenact)--and you really have no choice because you will never come too close in any case--then you would naturally want any of your towns to be able to grow to full size, unrestrained, because the whole game would be in effect what it was made to be: one huge play, starring you. (About the colors, I just parsed the post for what would be tags or keywords most pertaining to my reply to the thread; nothing more, nothing less, don't read into it please.)