The Caravel Mod

[PershsNhpios]

Here's a little centerpiece for the conversation, my project while I'm pursuing that graphics issue with the AAR:



Hard & Huge. Most of what I have done so far should be clear from the picture. I am quite surprised by how addicted I am to the strategy of blitzkrieg. I really have no trust of my early neighbours, and whether Scot, English, Aragonese, or German, and whatever mod it may be, I always find myself devoting everything towards a war with France...

I stopped just short of being excommunicated in 1105, and now I am taking steps to put ships to sea and trade with Denmark and the HRE. I like the idea of the HRE being an entity for once.

My income is only 300, so I am attending this for now. Next will be swordsmiths in places such as Flanders, Wessex, Normandy and Mercia whereafter are large call to arms will occur, and then the frogs will be wiped out.

In the beginning I neglected Anjou and Aquitaine as I thought it would be only a matter of time until the Aragonese or French took them. I am still not building anything in Aquitaine until I am ready to garrison the region, which will be after the next war with France.

Aragon is building rather than recruiting, France is very determined to create many crossbowmen and upgrade siege and bowyer workshops. I don't know anything of the other factions yet.

I am on my toes!

[gollum]

Thank you for your campaign account Glenn

Taking Flanders as you did, is of course the key to taking France as teh English, as in vanilla.

You are aggressive alright, but i wouldn't say you blitz; you have built already 4 keeps! In "blitzing" you are better off putting all money to have a continuous flow of (the loewst class units you have - hence fort for the beginning of a camp) units instead of buildings (as required) and rush with them the enemy until you have reached your blitzing goal (say all of France), past that you can slow down and start building keeps for ships, men-at-arms, the occasional xbowman and perhaps one Castle for feudal knights.

In the mod, Feudal knights can dismount in battle, as can Chiv Knights as can Hospitallers and Gothic Knights. No other unit can dismountl. Basically only those that were given dismounted versions from the game.

If you go blitz all the way, you'll find out that even if you don;'t build keeps/castles is alright, because if your blitz is continuous and succesful, you'll eventually end up taking the castles other factions have built :) This is a common TW games feature, not a feature of the mod, by any means.

The AI factions can and do at times collapse the Germans, but that is less of a possibility when the player takes teh French or the English that are neighbours (as in vanilla), because the AI faction performance is skewed by what faction the player chooses.

The Aragonese are expansoinists, and sometimes they do make a move to southern France especially if you have too small a garisson in Toulouse/Aquitaine. Yet sometimes, teh AI of the 1 province factions prefers to go for a keep there instead for some reason - be it better cashflow or otherwise.

The French AI is basically left in a very bad shape in terms of cash flow and development once he loses Flanders at the beginning of teh game. Unlikely they recover now.

[Belisario]

Good find in the column 53 Gollum, alone charges of BGs never again! And thanks to Raz for his suggestion.

Are you sure v2.2 will be the last version :)? Anyway give you a well deserved rest after this splendid modding urge.

[gollum]

I am saying it will be so, Belisrio, so that i can maybe believe it and stop searching the files

That's one of the good things of getting something done - or trying to get it done: once you stop wondering abuot the usual same old-same old (eg what should be the building requirements of Ghulam Cav? How should i do teh BGs? etc etc) you reach a step further because you can see how the changes you made work as a whole. You can endlessly speculate how you "want it" at a basic level decision, but once certain decisions are set on stone, then you can go about see how they interact and polish/tweak/improve that to make more finetuned difference, and in this way it can take you a step further in fixing things you never bothered before because you were too busy with thinking all the initial stuff.

In a sense, this was the reason why i wanted to keep to the vanilla format. It simplified decisions for me as i had a constant standard by which to say thisway/thatway, and then the mod could be furthered.

About col 53, i noticed that missiles and cavalry had very different values, and such that matched their positions/behaviour i knew from the battles, hence i got the hint that its actually used and the idea to tweak that. It immediately had an effect in the battle tests i did, and that confirmed it.

Thank you for the credit you give me and your kind words. After a month+ of quite some hard work on the mod (the hardest being playtesting) i am feeling that it will take at least 2-3 months before i can see MTW as entertainment again - in fact i just started a STW v1.12 (this choice is NOT by chance :): its the only TW game version that i feel it doesn't really need any tweaks - not that you can make any anyway, but for me its absolutely perfect as is) campaign and feeling much better now

[drone]

That is a great find. It's a final justification to go with untrainable BG units for a better game.

[gollum]

Thank you drone

It can also prove useful in tweaking other units to more satisfying roles/positions etc.

For example, another (it was meant to be secret, but let's spill it out :) unit i tweaked in this way in vesion 2.2 (shortly to be available) are the naptha throwers. In the Caravel mod, naffatuns have slightly better range and accuracy - they are reasonably dangerous now if used properly and they can be used from behind your lines without too much danger of blowing up your own melee line (the rout, the frustration, the drama etc etc etc).

So i tweaked them to be used with the main body of teh AI armies, in a reserve position and for assault cover, that, hopefully should make teh Muslim factions more "explosive", so to speak, opponents on the battlefield :)

I will eventually attempt/experiment to fix the xbows/arbs for the AI - if i (or anyone else for that matter) manage that, the battles will become considerably better against armies with xbows/arbs, but i am pretty much burned out for the moment with MTW - sometime later. Any other(s) of course may have done it by then, and it'll be good news to know.

[gollum]

Two more primary candidates for such tweakings: catholic handgunners and arquebusiers. The former are too good in melee to skirmish like lightly armoured troops and the latter suffer from the same AI use as the xbows/arbs.

Basically these strong shot/long reload missile units need to be closer to the melee line and stay more put to keep firing.

[Durango]

Just play Shogun for a while, Dear Gollum, so that your head does not explode and you start chewing the furniture
trying to fix MTW. Consider it a stint in a rehab clinic.

[caravel]

If you haven't already done so, set all your bodyguard units to disciplined - should stop them charging without orders.

[gollum]

Caravel: Haven't even thought about it, thanks :)

Durango: there is no way "fixing" MTW unfortunately (or fortunately), imo. There is a lot of margin for different cooking of what can be altered in MTW. My sanity line to navigate the sea of possibilities was "keep it vanilla", that's why you hear me repeating it over and over

[gollum]

Ok, v2.2 is now available. Thank you TosaInu and org.

Enjoy

[PershsNhpios]

Congratulations, noble architect!

I will download this tonight, but understandably play it a little later on.

For the first time ever, for this occasion, I will make use of the toasting smiley:




ΓΕΙΆ ΣΟΥ!

[gollum]

Cheers and thanks Glenn

Mission accomplished - its always good feeling.

[Stazi]

The mod plays slower for the AI, especially if you put it @180 loyalty with -ian (as reccomended). If you want teh AI taking more initiatives and pester you more and take opportunities, you can drop that to loyalty:150 i'd say.

This quote is from "Deus nolt!" thread but it fits better here. gollum, do you know the default setting for the loyalty? Is it 100 or maybe any other value? I'd like to compare how the AI acts and it would be good to start from a base value.

[gollum]

Indeed it fits better here Stazi.

The default i think is 120. It gets on without you having to specify it in the -ian bit.

If you go for the default, i'd reccomend to put more factions to defensive or equivalent personalities (saythe English the Spanish teh Hungarians, but not the little ones). The AI at expansionist can fare better in the short term - that is he can set up and conquer quicker, but, he is also much more fragile in the long term especially at low loyalty settings.

Perhaps there is a golden ratio there, for the start position of vanilla/the mod. I mean a "best" setting for the loyalty of teh AI that compromises succesfully between short term climb and long term survivability. Maybe its around 140-150 loyalty or there abouts. 180 is really good once the AI factions pick up, but it slows them down as they take less chances in the short term, admittedly.

[Durango]

Gollum, what is your stance on restricting units to specific eras only? I'm seriously considering it now, since I'm
tired of fighting outdated units. The Medmod, IIRC, had a similar setup. But the danger is of course, that the
AI (thanks to its stupidity) will just lack the tech to build up to date units...

Also, I'm just generally sick of the AI having larger stacks than necessary, due to the cheap trash units.

[Stazi]

I'm certainly not gollum ;) but I think I can share some of my ideas/possible choices:

1. Restrict units to the specific eras and risk the lack of units for the AI to build. Eventually make some basic units available for all eras.
2. Give the AI some time (HIGH era) to build required buildings - some units EARLY, HIGH and others HIGH, LATE. I'm not sure if the AI can understand and follow this idea.
3. Make new units have the same or very similar requirements as older units.
4. Make 3 versions of the same unit - restrict each version to one era only. Raise the cost and upkeep for the unit in later eras. This should force the AI to develop and build newer and cheaper units.
5. Try to modify 15th column "Unit choices (AI)". btw does anyone know what the number in the brackets exactly means (e.g. POVERTY_STRICKEN(75.75)). It's 75 and three quarters or 75 and 75 (whatever it means)?

They are only the ideas. I don't know which of them will be really useful but you have something to think and test.

[Durango]

I'm certainly not gollum ;) but I think I can share some of my ideas/possible choices:

1. Restrict units to the specific eras and risk the lack of units for the AI to build. Eventually make some basic units available for all eras.
2. Give the AI some time (HIGH era) to build required buildings - some units EARLY, HIGH and others HIGH, LATE. I'm not sure if the AI can understand and follow this idea.
3. Make new units have the same or very similar requirements as older units.
4. Make 3 versions of the same unit - restrict each version to one era only. Raise the cost and upkeep for the unit in later eras. This should force the AI to develop and build newer and cheaper units.
5. Try to modify 15th column "Unit choices (AI)". btw does anyone know what the number in the brackets exactly means (e.g. POVERTY_STRICKEN(75.75)). It's 75 and three quarters or 75 and 75 (whatever it means)?

They are only the ideas. I don't know which of them will be really useful but you have something to think and test.

Thanks for your input, Stazi

1. Making basic units available will, I'm afraid, only create a situation where the AI builds just those anyway.

2. Doubtful that the AI will follow this scheme, though. At least from my experiences.

3. This is a good idea, but a large part of the campaign game itself (teching up to get new units) will be lost.

4. Could work, nice idea!

5. Numbers in the Unit Choices simply mean the probability that the AI will train that unit given the condition it is in.


Generally speaking, the basic problem stems from the fact that the AI, even if it's rich, still prefers to spam cheap units.
This is why the Castilians for ex. loads it armies with Jinetes even though they own all of Iberia and rakes in the cash.
Sometimes the AI builds an "advanced", modern unit, but always woefully few of them.

Modifying the unit choices likely holds the key to solving this issue, but I think it's a damn chore to achieve and
would require A LOT of playtesting. I don't want to be back at square one instead of actually playing MTW...

[PershsNhpios]

They are all good ideas, but I think most of those ideas stray too far from vanilla gameplay - which therefore stray too far from the aim of the Caravel mod.

Forgive me for speaking on your behalf Gollum, but I thought you would most likely see this as such.

I do like your ideas, but I wonder if either of you have played the mod through to the Late era or for a good length into High? (I haven't)

How do you know the problems which you mentioned have not already been fixed by Gollum's attempts?

[gollum]

Hello guys,
the approach in the mod is to take out the armour upgrades, as they are the ones that skew unit stats more than others, and also reduce somewhat the morale bonuses, that again were too many in vanilla, and were skewing the unit match ups too much. It also makes the base stats of units from fort, keep and castle level of the same class (say spearmen) a little bit more close to each other than what they were in the vanilla game. The units however, are all still fully recognisable in role and performance for anyone that has played the game in terms of capability and dependencies.

In this way, the majority of the units of the same class that are recruited from higher levels are not very much better than the basic ones from fort level, but still better. Their prices to be trained and maintained have been tweaked to represent more faithfully their difference in stats - now what you pay for is what you get and you have to maintain accordingly.

Obviously, this cannot be the case with elite units, like knights, varangians, janissary heavies etc: these units cost a lot in buildings to get and so they should be statistically head and shoulders above the others, and they are kept as in vanilla. In most cases, however, they cost as much as their due to maintain. The vanilla training costs weren't bad at all and in the vast majority of cases of elites the mod sticks with them or thereabouts. Their maintenance though, was judged to be in many cases too low and it was tweaked accordingly. For example, Varangians of late era (that's the varangian unit of all periods in vanilla) are practically speaking a late era unit in terms of armor and capabiliity (huge ap attack, lots of armor and shield when nopt meleeing, very good defence etc), so they cost a bit more to maintain now.

Hence, with this approach, the mod maintains the variety of the vanilla game without flatening the differences between units of the same class (essentially turning them into clones of one another), but also without making easy for the player to have an army of elites that would sweep less developed AI factions on the battlefield.

In the medmod, the other potential approach was used, ie have 1 spear unit per era per faction, one bow unit per era per faction etc, but this approach was taking away the variety of the original game. My goal for the mod was to maintain that variety but make it more balanced and hence less hurtful in the long term for battles.

In the vanilla game, low end units cost little to train but a lot to maintain, while high end units cost a lot to train but too little (less than the low end units in many many cases; for example Nizaris cost less than Desert archers in maint. costs), to maintain. This approach clearly favors the player, that can tech up quickly and efficiently and then have an army of elites at lower cost than an army of low end units.

In the mod, the accessibility of elite units was increased somewhat, and most importantly, buildings that were getting nothing to AI factions, were removed from that faction's building potential. A classic example is the Townwatch line of buildings that for the Eggs and Byzantines gets nothing other than from the first building of teh line. In the mod this is corrected - teh higher levels than level1 of the watch tower are not available for the Byz and the Eggs. This means that the AI won't be wasting many turns and money and the benefit of what he could get with these many turns and money to the higher levels of teh town watch that get him absolutely nothing.

These are the methods and rationale employed and, i can say that stack composition works really really well; you won't see any faction with stacks that are worthless at any stage of the campaign.

The spamming of the AI of cheap units has to do, as i posted earlier, with the ratio of teh (training cost)/(maintenance cost). Once the AI finds a unit that has high such ratio, with small training cost, he spams it (eg siege engines/artillery/javelins/slav warriors etc). This is all the more for units that are very easily available - like the Slav Warriors that are avalable from the fort in vanilla.

This spamming really hurts the AI because, in the long run, many AI factions may end up fighting with units they've build in the first 30 years of the campaign. If they are fodder units, the AI will have to live with them for much of the duration of the campaign, as the AI can't disband to make financial room to get new units, or burn them in battle too efficiently in order to build new ones. In any case, even if he could done so, the chances are taht he would still build...Slav wariors all over again :)

The mod does a great job with this, or so i think. It is its strongest point, imo.

[gollum]

I also quote this post of mine from the Main Hall (the deus nolt! thread, Stazi refered to), as its relevant here.

The mod plays slightly slower than vanilla because faith propagates slower and because the happiness bonuses are given more gradually.

In vanilla you can rush very very quickly because the watchtoewers line of buildings gives +50 happiness (when both build) with 300flrs and in 2 turns - that's very cheap and easy cowering of new provinces

In the mod, only the border forts give +20 happiness and in 3 turns (watchtowers=1t, borderfort=2ts). The other extra +30 is given by buildings that come from keep level (basically teh church/mosque), hence you need to be a bit more careful and also will make a bit less tax money from newly conquered territories.

Also, the faith propagation being slower it takes more time to subdue different religion territories because of that, hence happiness is affected and there is reason for be careful for loyalist revolts.

The mod plays slower for the AI, especially if you put it @180 loyalty with -ian (as reccomended). If you want teh AI taking more initiatives and pester you more and take opportunities, you can drop that to loyalty:150 i'd say. if you do not use the loyalty feature at all, the AI may be hurt by the slower happiness bonuses, especially since many factions are set to expansionist that makes them aggressive and prone to burning out by overstretching and revolts that ensue. But who knows, it may play ok in that too - just i've never tried it.

Having said that, i like the occasional rushing campaign, and i tried to rush in Caravel and it does work without a doubt. Just the opponents are a bit more ready especially ones that are not immediately next to the player and i was able to make less quick cash flow - those were the main differences.

The mod is at this stage finished and there is no further plan to update it for 2011.

What i will/would update next, would be the rebel garrisons. Some of them are a bit too big and some would make for better gameplay between factions if they were considerably less strong without hurting the mod concept and intended gameplay. This should/would help people who like different unit settings to play the mod better, and also improve teh AI performance of some factions without upsetting the intended difficulty.

The fixes i would have done would be to:
-Make Navarre completely empty- it stands historically as teh Navarrese dynasty was merged with the Aragonese and Castilan one at the time the early era starts and so there is no reason to have a strong Kingdom there.

This would impact gameplay positively as it would increase teh chances of competition between Aragon/Castile/England/France and also, in case the Ibearians are the first to get it, it would aid them to power status sooner than they now do in the mod.

-Make the Prussia, Volhynia rebel stacks smaller. This is relatively historically accurate, and it would also help the Polish AI to develop a bit better than it currently does.

-take out a few units from the rebels in Lithuania/Livonia. As they are now they are overflowing and even attack the Poles and teh Russ occasionaly which is ok, but not as much as they are now.

An additional thing i would try to do would be to fix the strong shot/slowreload missile units in terms of battlefield role, if there is a way.

Other than these things, which won't be done for a while, the mod is done.

[Durango]

Gollum, I seem to recall that you wanted no river crossings in your mod, no? I found some oversights in the startpos.
These are the lines:

SetBorderInfo:: ID_BLACK_SEA ID_MOLDAVIA
SetBorderInfo:: ID_POLAND ID_CARPATHIA

SetAttributes:: ID_CONSTANTINOPLE
SetAttributes:: ID_EGYPT
SetAttributes:: ID_HUNGARY
SetAttributes:: ID_ILE_DE_FRANCE
SetAttributes:: ID_PEREYASLAVL
SetAttributes:: ID_ROME
SetAttributes:: ID_SCOTLAND
SetAttributes:: ID_SILESIA
SetAttributes:: ID_VALENCIA
SetAttributes:: ID_WESSEX

I might be mistaken in that you have decided to keep rivers in some places, and I apologize if it is indeed so

[gollum]

Hello Durango,
thanks for this observation, i'll check it out in time. If the river is set in the province attributes it won't show in the map at all. If the river is similarly set in coastal landings, it also won't show up as a river crossing at all.

This is because, in the attributes,you set how the siege/castle map of the province will look like. It seems taht CA wanted originally to have some such maps with a river in them - i doubt it wuold be a rivercrossing map; just a castle map with a river. There were many such cities in the Middle Ages (Constantinople, Paris, London, Valencia etc), and i guess it was meant to represent that.

So i specified rivers in such provinces for their castles to make the game feel more historical, only that i realise that there are no such castle maps (castle maps containing rivers) in the map collection. The feature can be used if someone makes castle maps with rivers and denotes them as such in their names - so the engine can pick them - but as it stands at the moment they are simply redundant, hence why i left them as i set them up.

Similarly in coastal landings, the river may show as a map feature but it will be in such a way that you won't be fighting a river crossing map, as far as i know.

Another such redundancy is that of having coastal castle maps. Again, there were many cities that were next or on the coast in the Middle Ages (Const., Venice, Palermo, Valencia, Genoa etc) and it would be nice to be able to see that in the castle map. Well the option is there, but none have made such maps and so the feature - although seemingly functional - is essentially again redundant.

Also, when you right click in a province in the campaign map and hover the cursor over it to get info for it, you are told what is written in the attributes col of the starpos txt file. So, if you read there is a river there, its meant for the castle not for crossings. For crossings you need to right click on the provbice and then hover the cursor over the neighbour province to which the crossing you want to check, and this information is in the CROSSING_BORDER col of the starpos file, which is a different one altogether.

From what you posted, the one that seems that i have missed, is the Poland to Carpathia, which sounds strange as, i think there is no river there in vanilla and i can't think why i would add one.

But, in any case, thanks, i'll check it out.

[gollum]

In addition to fixing the rebel stacks along the lines mentioned above and attempting to fix the strongshot/longreload missiles, the mod needs to tackle a little better the mercenaries feature.

Regarding mercenaries, the most balanced appraoch is of course to get rid of them altogether, but, for the sake of keeping all the flavor of the original i decided to let them in.

My take has been to make available as mercs more generic light to medium units of infantry/missiles/cavs, and keep elites/unique units of factions only for those factions that train can them normally on the map.

The approach certainly works for the middle game, that all factions can certainly have those medium units (that are available as mercs) with much better maint. prices, but, its still too much of an exploit for the player in the early game, as factions still fight with militias fort level units for the most part, and so the medium mercenaries can really make a difference and give the player an advantage.

This is all the more so since, the medium units that are made available as mercs. cost little comparatively to train.

I remind (or saying for those who didn't know it), that the mercenary system sells you mercs in their normal training price, but, with double the maintenance costs.

This effectively means, that the medium units i have available can still be bought in large numbers by the player as mercs. Increasing their training price will unbalance the unit's normal use in the camp map.

The solution is to designate certain units as mercenaries only. These would be again of medium stats, and so would have uses on the battlefield, but, since they would be mnercs only, they will have an appropriately calibrated recruitng price for their mercenary status - that is they would be costing twice (or more) to recruit than their equivalent normally trained medium units.

In this way, making a quick conquest with mercs will still be available availale to the player (if having the cash), but, the player would have to pay accordingly to make it happen - even if he disbands immediately.

Since this feature is not used at all by the AI, it's only fair to design it to the measures of its user ie the player.

Once the feature would be made such, any iron man rules for mercs would be made redundant. Now mercs cost cheaply to recruit and lots to maintain - which the player workaround by using quickly and disbanding. Once they cost lots to recruit as well as maintain, there would be no such workaround and hence no need for the player to limit artificially merc use.

[Stazi]

5. Try to modify 15th column "Unit choices (AI)". btw does anyone know what the number in the brackets exactly means (e.g. POVERTY_STRICKEN(75.75)). It's 75 and three quarters or 75 and 75 (whatever it means)?

5. Numbers in the Unit Choices simply mean the probability that the AI will train that unit given the condition it is in.

I know it's a probability but I don't fully get it. Is value 75.75 a fraction or two different values?
1. If they are two different values what are they referring to? What's the difference between them?
2. If it's a fraction - What's a point of making a fraction value when you have @0-300 range at your disposal? It's strange.
The probability - how to convert these values to the easily understandable and comparable percentage values?
What's the min-max range for this probability?

[Durango]

@Stazi: It's most likely a fraction value, even though it may seem redundant.

@Gollum: Making duplicate units is probably the most foolproof way of restricting mercs - albeit at the cost of variety. The problem with
regular units as mercs is that while you can change the magnetism value of the Inn, you can't stop lots of advanced units flooding
the borders when there is a war.

Also, you should consider making the Inn unique (as I have) and having it cost more and take longer to build. The AI, fortunately,
can be left out of the equation when it comes to Inns, so feel free to raise costs/build time however you want.

[gollum]

Hello Durango,
making the Inn unique is something that i have done in my home modding efforts in the past considered and rejected for this mod for the following reason that detracts from the vanilla gameplay: once the borderline moves and the Inn is no longer in it, the magnetism of mercs does not work, which means the player will have to manually destroy the Inn and rebuilt it on a frontline province to get the mercs, which is confusing if someone doesn't know how thge mercs are attracted (as many players i bet don't). On the other hand, leaving the Inn in the game can give a cheap/quick building that aids teh AI faction leaders (and teh player) to get the "builder" line of traits easier that makes them more stable (as it gives province happiness and general loyalty eventually).

In vanilla the Inn takes 2 turns to build and 400flrns. Since the AI is not using it, the cost to build it was downed to 200flrns, which is a reasonable price to pay for the AI leader's improved trait.

I was thinking to make available some of the extra units that come from the VI as mercs only, which won't impact on variety in any way, as most are not used in the mod and are sparsely used in vanilla.

[Durango]

I'm not sure I follow you here. You are saying that razing and rebuilding the Inn makes it an exploit? Well, in that case, every building
in the game can be abused in that way. And what is the point of making the Inn cheap, when its disuse by the AI leaves you carte
blanche to make it considerably more expensive for the player?

[gollum]

No, i am not saying that makes it an exploit Durango.

I mean what i say in the post, ie that players who do not know that Inns attarct mercs in border provinces may not think that razing manually the Inn and rebuilding it somewhere else is the way for them to get mercs. For them, this will almost certainly be confusing, and they might end up not having mercs avaolable after they've built their first Inn.

If i was making this mod for me alone, i would have simply taken the Inn and hence mercs out altogether, as mentioned. The idea in making the mod available is that other people may play it, and its concept is that its an improved vanilla. I cannot assume that everyone who takes up the mod knows as much as me or you, and make the mod on this assumtpion.

The AI in fact uses the Inn, as in he builds the Inn. When i say he "does not use it", i mean that he cannot recruit mercs- not that he does not build it, because he does, very much in fact, at least in vanilla. Hence, making it cheaper, saves the AI moneys in building the Inn. The money does not go completely wasted as mentioned, because a cheap/quick to built building in all provinces helps AI faction leaders to acquire the builder trait, that makes the AI factions more stable.

The exploit for the player will be regulated by having dedicated, non-duplicate merc units, properly priced for merc use as discussed previously.

[Durango]

OK, a simple misunderstanding then. I understand what you mean. Strange, I somehow never noticed the AI building the Inn before.
It's most likely that the base for my home mod is XL, where the factions start with more infrastructure and Inns already built.
I will probably try to tinker with the build priority then, so that my expensive Inns ("Mercenary Office") will never get built/rebuilt.

On to the new merc units!

Perhaps these units can have lower base morale than their regular counterparts?