The Caravel Mod

[gollum]

hello victor, you're welcome, i'm glad the mod adds/ed to your enjoyment of the game.

If you want the AI taking even more opportunities, loyalty:130 will help towards that. You could even try the default (without loyalty setting ie 120) but maybe the game won't be as good then in the long term (past 40-50 turns) - there are many factions in expansionist and usually they burn out due to rebellions ect - the AI factions can hardly tech up properly as they pay very little attention to defending their provinces. In 140 loyalty its considerably better.

If you have played 2.2, 2.3 is very similar other than the mercenaries bit and slight improvements here and there, so essentially you've seen it all :)

Enjoy redux

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi Gollum

Bit off topic, but your PM box is full.

Regards
Victor

[gollum]

hello victor, made some space now. No worries for the off topic - anytime.

[gollum]

Dear all,
just wanted to say that unless future feedback identifies a flaw or problem of any kind, the only thing that i am considering to add in the future is a dead men page - essentially corpses - for units that miss it as suggested by stazi earlier in this thread.

I have playtested the mod as extensively as it was possible by both playing campaigns and running autorun camps, and i have to say that i can't as yet find any flaw that would require fixing (within the intended context of the mod) - be that in text, or gameplay factors.

[gollum]

Dear all, after some more playtesting and playing i did over the easter weekend, The Caravel Mod v2.4 is now out :)

It includes fixes of one glitch and two small errors i found, as well as some text fixes, and also some more tweaking of the starting positions (infrastructure, infrastructure location, garrisons and garrisons locations, but not different lands - they are kept as in vanilla) of factions that gives more varied, more contested in the long and short terms campaigns. After experimenting some more with the loyalty setting, i think that loyalty:130 is a terrific comporomise for competitive short term perormance and long term development for the AI factions. The AI keeps small garrisons in his territories that provide a lot more stability than in the default mode (loyalty:120) that he leaves his core territories empty and so prone to rebellion and invasions. On the other hand those are not as large as with loyalty:180 that made him waste short term opportunities.

Many of the tweaks in this version and the previous incorporate lessons learned from past experience and feedback and i feel that now the mod has piled up a considerable number of improvements that are harmoniously coordinated into a single whole. Hopefully, you'll reach the same conclusion if you happen to try v2.4. The mod has grown in scope and improvements beyond anything i could imagine and with each subsequent incarnation, i think it is reaching more and more its intended concept.

As there will not be a new version for some time, let me add that this mod is meant to bring out the potential of the vanilla game by cutting off imbalances and weaknesses of the AI and game without killing the flavor and feel of teh vanilla Early campaign game. If you like MTW vanilla, early campaign, then the chances are that you may want to try this mod. GA mode is fully suppotred and all factions, except ones that appear later (Mongols, Burgundians, Swiss) and the Papacy, are playable.

It is for MTW/VI v2.1, preferably English edition (uncertain if others can really work, but check post#1 of this thread that i propose a way they might), and it is suggested you play with loyalty:130 and green_generals following the -ian extension in your MTW shortcut to provide better AI cohesiveness and long term development. It is also suggested to play in huge unit settings as this gives battles without endless reinforcements, more strategically cutting edge decisions on the camp map and more cutting edge tactical situations on the battle map. Also certain AI settings (as the number of unit ranks) where adjusted for huge unit settings.

Last but not least, i would like to thank once more Caravel with whom we came up with the mod concepts and ideas, and all the people here at the org in the MTW section who contributed in the mod via this thread or otherwise and also to those who had/have fun with it, as well as the org and the late TosaInu for kindly hosting it here.

Thank you for your support and i hope you enjoy

Yours truly, gollum

[Stazi]

Some thoughts about new version of your mod.

Saracens - Hard - Huge - loyalty:130

I chose Saracens because I wanted silent place as far away from the "action" as possible.
Now, about 100 years past and there are some problems with the campaign mode. The main problem is that nothing really happens. Factions have hard time to gather enough cash to build significant army and move somewhere. This mainly concerns "one province" factions: Russia, Denmark, Aragon. Spain and Sicily have nearly the same situation. Spain (not being attacked by anyone) finally after 80 years managed to conquer Navarre. Almohads constantly fights with rebels in Portugal. The worst situation is on the east. Provinces to the east from the Lithuania-Kiev line have never seen any enemy army. Russians like other small factions are not able to expand due to high cost of their royal units. They have 10 druzhinas and 6 other units (vikings, horse archers, etc.). All these units make Novgorod exactly 130% loyal. All surrounding provinces are owned by not so powerful rebels. Russians have many opportunities but not enough cash to recruit troops and move somewhere. The same for Denmark ("free" Sweden and Norway) and Aragon (Navarre, Valencia). Poland fights with notorious rebellions in Pomerania and Prussia.
Factions that have more provinces (France, HRE) or are naval/trade oriented (England, Italy) can handle the situation better but they are still very slow.

All problems vanishes when you play with default unit size. It clearly shows that AI was designed for smaller units' size. AI has huge problems with managing big, costly units. IMO reducing the units' cost should help.

Tactical mode is another story. You did truly great job with tweaking units behavior. AI can still be outmaneuvered but it tries to keep right order/formation for the most of the time.

I think I'll try another campaign to see if it will go the same way. Russians look interesting and challenging.

[gollum]

Hello Stazi,
and thank you for your feedback

If that's what you are getting, and you want more action and faster (as you may well want :) then by all means play in default or normal.

I agree with you that the AI is having trouble with managing financially costlier units (the recruitment and maint is scaled to the men of the unit by the engine) indeed and that the pace of the campaign is slowed down in huge for certain. This is because he has less "pieces" to invade with and fill in. That is something that can appeal to some people (like me :), but perhaps not to others indeed.

Playing in huge is a suggestion, not an obligation. By all means play in normal/default if you prefer quicker campaign action. I think that default is 60 man sword unit and normal is 80 man sword unit. The recruitment and maintenance costs are scaled automatically from the game engine and so nothing is lost there - all the thought that went into balancing prices to performance is maintained.

In my view is a matter of the AI apptitude relative to available funds. In default and normal, the AI has always much more financial room in his cash flow to make good his losses, as he spends less per unit, that leaves more funds unused for farm upgrades, navies and tech upgrades. In huge he has less as there is less room in his cash flow after building the same number of units. So a potential solution would be to raise the income in the map in proportion and another of course to play in smaller sizes.

One disadvantage of default (60 man sword unit) and less of normal, is that the AI has so much financial room that he makes multiple stacks that give these endless reinforcements battles that i am not very fond of. A good compromise for people that also loath endless reinforcements could be normal (80 man sword unit).

I have playtested the mod in autorun and things in most campaigns do start to boil after 40-50 turns, but i have no doubt that in smaller unit settings as i mentioned the campaign action will be more "hot" and quicker no doubt. And yes, war starts in the east first (typically the Turks and Byz and eventually the Egyptians) as factions there are in one way bottlenecks and have pretty good funds.

However, the loyalty:130 i think is significant. In effect anything above 120. I have played vanilla in default loyalty to death, and the AI factions really can show no coherense in their empires with default loyalty. They leave all their lands undefended, while alrady with 130 they place small garrisons that greatly enhance their stability and even their survivability in civil wars.

From the previous version i reduced the rebel garrisons as well as the very high rebelliousness in high rebelliousness provinces so that AI factions can expand. Provinces like Lithuania, Portugal and Livonia were death traps for the AI factions due to the high rebelliousness and were throwing the AI factions into an endless take-rebellion-retake-rebellion cycle that was draining them and making them easy targets for the player and their opponents.

I have also placed garrisons and initial training centers in relatively safe or easily defensible locations for the AI factions so as for them to be harder to rush - and i speak by experience as i like rushing lots :)

The trouble the Russians have believe it or not, is that they don't use the title of Novgorod at the beginning of the game always. Once or twice they gave it to a general with average accumen and then they played great; they took Smoliensk (that i gave on purpose a small. garrison for them to expand on) and even Lithuania and started making ships too. They are indeed challenging though. If i were to change them in order for the AI to do well, they would become much easier for the player. One idea for that is giving them one more province, say Muscovy. They are then dead easy as the player - tried and tested. Even the Mongols can seem little then :)

The upkeep for all BGs was set (non scalable) to 37 florins/20 man unit, that is pretty small to give a chance to AI factions to expand potentially. The alternative is to make the BGs no maintenance (free) something that i have tried often in my modding efforts but that detracts from teh vanilla standrad and also has disadvatntages. We infact had a discussion on this here between myself, Caravel and Durango in posts no 113, 118, 121 of this thread:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Originally posted by Durango
What I have done in my home mod is to make BGs non-trainable and have them cost zero in upkeep. Not only
is this greatly helping the small factions manage their economy, but also level the playing field between the player and AI, since the
computer does not retrain his BGs anyway. Is this also the approach taken in the Caravel mod?

Originally posted by Asai Nagamasa
The approach also has it's downsides. It provides the player with lots of free heavy cavalry units that cost nothing to support. If you go one further and give them the full vanilla cavalry unit size (40) this makes those free units even more viable, especially if you leave dismounts in, and makes units such as feudal knights and chivalric knights almost obsolete. If you leave the units at 20, the AI still suffers as they make very easy targets. It's somewhat of a a dilemma and I doubt the perfect system exists.

Originally postred by gollum
All that maint. cost free full size heavy cav after some time makes the trainable heavy cav units obsolete and unbalances the camp. And if you keep them small the player can snipe them during battle as you say.

Thank you for your kind words for the tactical aspects. In my view it is a direct consequence of tweaking the BGs and xbows for the AI use as well as tweaking the tech trees and the rosters for meaningful only choices for the AI as well as tweaking the prices that affect the stack composition of the AI factions. So it partly has to do with the campaign map side of things too, as well as tweking and balancing the unit stats to make sure there are no redundant units and that all units have clear roles that the AI recognises and uses accordingly. Another thing that contributes to that that is a feature of the mod, is that neither the AI nor the player can win so much by bringing the better units or through upgrades. There are still better units and upgrades, but these are available as such as to never make generalship on the battlefield irrelevant as in vanilla and in some mods. I really think that this is the strongest point of the mod and something that i am also happy with.

I am considering to withdraw the play on huge suggestion in the very near future and replace it with play in normal. In practice it affects little other than the default unit ranks, but to my experience the AI adjusts this in battle, so there is nothing much lost. Of course it will have the effects discussed as per your observations in the game progression.

Again, thank you very much for your praise and feedback - the Russians are a challenge yes and by all means if that's what you prefer play in default or i would say on normal

[gollum]

Regarding factions starting small; Russians, aragonese and danes, as mentioned i could make them play better as the AI, but then they would be too easy for the player. The Spanish and the Sicilians in autorun often perform relatively well - perhaps if you play a few more campaigns you might see it. The Almohads do much better with a less rebellious Portugal than before. The Polish and the Hungarians also do better but later on.

Again it is a matter of keeping these factions challenging when played by the player versus them making better as the AI. If i give them more lands or various other things (like starting troops or farming upgrades etc) they will be also that much easier to play with. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

The Italians, the Germans, the English, teh Byzantines, the Turks, the Egyptians and on occasion the French do really well, as well as the Pope also on occasion.

Also in TW the AI expands relative to the pace of expansion of the player, especially at the higher difficulty settings. If you had been turtling all the while, it does not suprise me that the AI factions have not done much to some extent.

All these comments are again for the huge setting - i don't deny your observations; i certainly agree to what you say as per the effect of the smaller unit size on campaign action and i will playtest when i get the mod in my hands again in normal unit setting for a bit and consider very much to change my suggestion to play on normal settings.

Again thank you for the feedback Stazi, it is much appreciated

[Stazi]

I understand that you want all factions to be challenging for the player (like Russians) but they should be playable for AI too. Maybe give them a little more base income in their starting provinces?

Royal units and all low in number units. Imo they should be cheaper than units with the same stats but larger numbers. Units like these have to be used much more carefully cause they are easy to outflank or even surround. Due to this they are less valuable and should be priced much lower. btw I don't like the idea of making them totally free.

I agree with you that the AI is having trouble with managing financially costlier units (the recruitment and maint is scaled to the men of the unit by the engine) indeed and that the pace of the campaign is slowed down in huge for certain. This is because he has less "pieces" to invade with and fill in. That is something that can appeal to some people (like me :), but perhaps not to others indeed.

Ok. It's probably the matter of personal taste but I can see nothing challenging in the situation when you have 40-50 free turns at the start. After such a time of peace I can literally swim in cash, doesn't matter which faction I play. That's why I like to be under constant pressure from the start of the campaign. Germans fits this scenario the best - everybody hates them ;). I think I'll try them after Russians.

One disadvantage of default (60 man sword unit) and less of normal, is that the AI has so much financial room that he makes multiple stacks that give these endless reinforcements battles that i am not very fond of. A good compromise for people that also loath endless reinforcements could be normal (80 man sword unit).

I like one stack per province idea. The campaign needs simply a little more balance. Now only big factions mean something. The small ones looks like dead from the start. I don't want to be them as powerful as the biggest factions but they surely deserve to have more chances to expand.

However, the loyalty:130 i think is significant. In effect anything above 120. I have played vanilla in default loyalty to death, and the AI factions really can show no coherense in their empires with default loyalty. They leave all their lands undefended, while alrady with 130 they place small garrisons that greatly enhance their stability and even their survivability in civil wars.

I think loyalty:130 is perfectly balanced. Rebellions happen sometimes but not too often and factions are not drained by them exactly like you said.

I have also placed garrisons and initial training centers in relatively safe or easily defensible locations for the AI factions so as for them to be harder to rush - and i speak by experience as i like rushing lots :)

I'm a turtle type. I like to have steady cash flow before going to war. That's why I like when someone tries to spoil my turtling behavior. E.g. sinking my precious fleet makes me really angry. This is the kind of pressure I mentioned before.

btw I'm not trying to criticize you but I think your mod has a potential to be the best ever made in terms of the AI and gameplay. Imo it just needs some more attention.
But, in the end, it's your mod so keep it as you like. Thanks for all your efforts.

P.S. Now, I'm starting new Russian campaign. I'll keep you informed.

[gollum]

Hello Stazi and thanks for your reply; lots of interesting things to talk about :)

Originally posted by Stazi
btw I'm not trying to criticize you

Oh but please do :) Its by putting our ideas to the test that something can be proven or disproven in practice. Every person views a different angle of the truth of things and that is great as it showcases things that on my own i would never be able to spot or i would never be willing to spot (self bias) :)

There are some criticisms that i can do very little about as they are about people being fundamentally unhappy with the concept of the mod; this is entirely possible and in such cases i advise to play mods that have the aspects they prefer. But even these criticisms can be useful as they may point out things that i entirely missed, so all are welcome to express them, and i will try, as time allows, to reply or accomodate their querries or requests as best i can.

Your (and other people's in this thread) criticisms are from within the concept of the mod, and this is the most precious type of criticism that i am very very happy to get. It touches the core of the issues and points out where things can be done better. I am very greatful for it, and i greatly thank you

The campaign needs simply a little more balance. Now only big factions mean something. The small ones looks like dead from the start. I don't want to be them as powerful as the biggest factions but they surely deserve to have more chances to expand.

Certainly, more tweaking at the starting positions is definitely and always an option.

This is a very strong point and an important case you are making no doubt. I will lay here my point of view and please let me (Stazi and all) know what you think, if and when you have time.

The Aragonese and the Danes and teh Russians and the Sicilians and the Spanish (those are the small factions that start "dead from the start" as you say) can be given more lands or more garrisons or more income at the start.

With the more land approach there is the "problem" of diverging from vanilla and also of messing with the GA points - for whatever that is worth. There is also the "problem", as i wrote previously for the Russians to end up making factions too easy for the player. Similarly if i say give to the Aragonese Navarre and to teh Danes Sweden, it may greatly improve those factions performance, but at the same time, they become much much easier to play with.

One solution to these is do what RTW/M2 do ie give factions lands that are roughly historical (that's what vanilla is anyway doing) and then put rebels between them so they can expand there before making contact. This is an appraoch that works, because factions do not start with common starting points between them and hence they can be engineered for better performance as there is no more the danger to blitz the neighbours as the player with them. By the time you meet other factions they have grown and are ready.

While this is certainly worthwhile to consider, it means that basically the GA mode may be potentially made impossible - and i am not talking about teh homelands as those are fixable, but for the special GA goals, many of which depend on the vanilla starting positions of the factions. Of course i could change the starting lands without changing the GA homelands, and allocate factions while having GA in mind.

Another "problem" with it is that the game will be less "recognisably vanilla", but admittedly that may be sidetracked if it makes the game much better.

Giving more garrisons means again that as a player you can blitz too easily, and also that warring starts way too early for the AI to prepare.

Perhaps there is a switch as you say with giving more income that may prove possible in keeping the challenge while also improving the performance as the AI.

I will certainly look into these solutions once i pick up the mod again.

The one solution that resonates more with me, is to leave small rebel gaps between factions while maintaining GA homelands and goals in mind and more or less the vanilla starting positions. Till then i would be very interested to hear what you (Stazi and all) think about this.

I think loyalty:130 is perfectly balanced. Rebellions happen sometimes but not too often and factions are not drained by them exactly like you said.

When i statred the mod i was too conscious of factions not being able to maintain cohesively their empires as big, and so i used the loyalty and partly also the unit sizes setting to counter that. I think i went too far the other way though with loyalty:180 and huge unit sizes, and i will playtest normal and large unit sizes and try to find a golden cut, a good comprmise for that, with all that means in terms of the campaign boiling sooner as you mentioned. In my view it is a matter of finding a balance between the money available from agriculture in the map and unit prices ie sizes. From what you post, there may well be a solution in normal or large unit settings for this, and i will certainly playtest them both. The alternative is to change the money on the map, but its much more labour intensive without any additional benefits, and so i will go with playtesting normal and large unit sizes.

Ok. It's probably the matter of personal taste but I can see nothing challenging in the situation when you have 40-50 free turns at the start. After such a time of peace I can literally swim in cash, doesn't matter which faction I play.

This is certainly an issue and a very real one. However, the coin has (unfortunately!) another side too: that is if you make the early game too quick in development and faction progression, the campaign can be exhausted in terms of what there is to see and also won far too quickly (early high era typically) or (even worse) taht faction progression is so chaotic that they give early challenge but in doing so burn the AI factions out.

One solution is of course to play 2 rulers per faction and then switch faction - but this is only a side measure and perhaps not all people like it of course. However its still something that i enjoy very much and itreally solves the problem of the short term challenge versus long term stability and development pretty well.

Having said all this, i think that if we apply some of what discussed in the previous section about starting positions, that would make all factions more viable for the AI but also somewhat smaller that may contribute a solution towards that, as most would start medium (and so viable for the AI), with rebels in between and so the player would need to expand accordingly in order to keep up pace. The vanilla starting points have factions in full contact with one another and also some starting large. Admittedly its a short route to victory from there.

Playing in normal or large unit setting or in fact default if that's what you prefer may also provide some relief regarding early challenge in that respect as you mention.

Till then, one thing that can be done is, since you are a turtler, to play with smaller factions as you say, or with factions that have less good cash and are more in the middle of the action than the Egyptians like France and HRE as you mention or Aragon or the Sicilians or the Italians. They may provide with some more pressure. Egypt is pretty safe and rich, and yes if you choose to turtle you can become very rich.

...but I think your mod has a potential to be the best ever made in terms of the AI and gameplay. Imo it just needs some more attention. Thanks for all your efforts.

I'm very thankful for your kind words

Indeed its in gameplay and AI that efforts are primarily directed with, and if you find that it adds to your enjoyment of the game i am one happy guy tonight :).

I certainly agree with you that it needs some attention and i'll strive to improve it along the lines you and others have been kind enough to suggest by their feedback.

Thank you again for the feedback, as this is what provides me with the direction of how to do so

[Stazi]

I think I've found a little bug. Russian Royal Palace's description says that I can recruit Druzhina (VikingLandsmenn) when combined with Spearmakers' Guild. Unfortunately, Spearmakers' Guild and Master Spearmaker are not available for Russians. They are available for Novgorod but this faction doesn't even exist in EARLY.
There are some minor errors in other descriptions but nothing really important e.g. Longboat's description suggests it's a deep sea vessel while it's limited to coastal waters.

[gollum]

Thank you Stazi, i get on in fixing this. I use Novgorod for signaling buildings out in the building prod file for cetrain factions precisely. It is a very convenient device as it allows you to give specific tiers to specific factions in places and exclude other factions by leaving only the Novgorodians in (that are not used hence nobody builds it).

It is indeed a mistake not having the spearmaker3 for the russians. I will fix the longboatstext as well. If you see others let me know

[Stazi]

Halberdiers - in theory available for Russians but they need TOWN_WATCH4 which is not available (TOWN_WATCH2 and 3 too). If I understand correctly they need SPEARMAKER4 or TOWN_WATCH4 right?
Why SPEARMAKER4 needs GUNPOWDER? It makes Halberdires very late unit and looks really strange. IMO SPEARMAKER3 and CASTLE10 is very similar requirement but avoids GUNPOWDER which is generally useless for halberdiers.

Rebel units look totally random. Full stack of Highland Clansman in Portugal, Steppe Cavalry in Pomerania, etc.

[gollum]

Hello Stazi,

If I understand correctly they need SPEARMAKER4 or TOWN_WATCH4 right?

That's right. You can set a unit dependency on multiple builds. I did this as the predominant training place for the Halberdiers for the many catholic factions that get them is the town_watch4. I wanted however to give Halberdiers to the Russians (historically plausible as late era Novgorod and Muscovite armies used westernised equipment) did have them and also for gameplay reasons to have a late era heavy infantry unit. However, the town_watch for the Orthodox did not have that many dependencies and so i ended that line of buildings in town_watch1. Hence i needed to give the Halberdiers through another way, and sincemany polerams and axe units are given through the spearmaker (varangians and billmen and Janissary heavies say) i decided to give the Halberdiers through the spearmaker4 (it is also equivalent to the town_watch4 ie you get in in Citadels, the same tier).

Halberdiers, as well as pikes, gendarmes and arbalesters, are intended as late and latish era units in the mod. I did not like them being introduced in 1204, as that is pretty historically unplausible and also gives everything out all at once that makes many other units of that period (high and late early) obsolete.

So i tied the buildings that make them to the gunpowder event that allows them to be build at about 1270's iirc. but not before that. This is the case with arbalesters, as well as the other high level militia units like handgunners, as the town_watch3 (and so 4) require gunpowder.

You can think of this, or at least i do, to reflect the social changes (shift between the feudal monarchies to more centralised monarchies and more numerous mass armies) that reflect organisational and so tactical changes in the field of battle and in armies.

The spearmaker being tied to gunpowder falls in the same category. There are very few factions that get those very high level buildings (the Turks, The Russians and maybe no other iirc).

The alternative would be to make the arbalesters, late era units only, but in that case, the AI factions would be building the buildings for them, and would have to wait for yars and years to build the units,

In this way, the latish era units (like arbalesters) come at the end of the high era, and the buildings that produce them are allowed by teh AI factions to be build at the end of the high era as well. Some of the high level militia units are iirc late era only (like the halberdiers and pikes and arquebusiers), but for them again there is no problem, as the buildings to produce them are build late in the high era by the AI factions as mentioned. In this way, the AI factions do not waste money and build time for units they will get 60 or more turns later, so they can concentrate on the builds of their era and have better stacks.

By the way the halberdiers are something like a mild version of Chivalric Foot Knights. They are still slow, but they have good attack, good morale and really top notch defence of course. They are not a fodder unit as in vanilla and cost also lots to get.

Rebel units look totally random. Full stack of Highland Clansman in Portugal, Steppe Cavalry in Pomerania, etc.

Actually the rebel groups are relatively ok, apart from 2 or 3 exceptions. The most notable is highland clansmen. i have taken them out of the rebel groups, given them only to catholics and also made them Scotland only. Despite that they keep appearing in every rebellion that happens in high rebelliousness provinces particularly in Portugal and Valencia. I am really desperate with them, to the point that i am thinking to take them outcompletely.

The equivalent unit to clansmen for muslim units are the Murabitin.

One potential reason is taht both these units are on top of teh list in the file and also are very cheap, hence they are very much preferred by the engine in the rebel groups.

Many other units (most actually) are part in the rebel groups and apart from the ones mantioned they can come alright.

Steppe cavalry are Golden Horde only in the mod and have no homelands (so the Horde can build them anywhere). Hence why you may get rebellions with them especially when the Horde occupied there etc. However there are plenty of eastern steppe specific units in the rebel mix and most of teh time it comes out ok and with the right flavor.

EDIT: the Steppe cavalry being Horde only is also exclusively pagan, and appearing in Pomerania (that is in its base pagan) makes sense. If i take them out of the rebel mix, maybe there is a risk that they won't be included in teh Horde's stacks in the Horde appearance and re-appearance. So i am reluctant to do so.

[gollum]

By the way i will do some playtesting with the autorun over the weekend and try medium (80 sword man unit) settings and see what that gets. I have a feeling that it may be something like the loyalty:130, ie a very good compromise between factions being more aggressive and the campaign start boiling sooner as you suggested and having not too many stacks with endless reinforcements in battles.

If that turns out to be so, i will then adjust the rebel stacks to medium unit settings and playtest some more with the autorun. At present the rebel stacks are geared towards huge exclusively and i think that this is a bit too specific for my own tastes - the mod should be addressed to other tastes as well. By reducing rebel stacks to medium, AI factions will perform ok nearly in all unit settings without too much deviation from the intended effect of the rebels.

The most important effect i am expecting it to have is teh AI being able to manage its financies better as his builds will not choke his cash flow as you observed.

[gollum]

Just in case the Halberdiers dependency logic was not explained well (as it well might be :), an example perhaps might make it more clear.

halberdiers are late era units for the Russians dependent on the spearmaker4 (top tier). Say the Russian AI (he won't but other factions for which the logic applies might) builds a Citadel by 1200.

If the sparmaker4 is not dependent on gunpowder, the AI will build it, as he takes buildings in turn and builds them to comlpetion without much consideration for what possibilities they give him often.

This means that he will be wasting good money and build turns for a building that will provied him something (the halberdiers) in 120 turns.

With the spearmaker tied to the gunpowder event, the AI will build teh spearmaker4 if he has the chance much closer to the date he can get something from it.

The same logic works for the town_watch3 and 4 tiers, that all catholic factions can build and upon which arbalesters, pikes, halberdiers, gendarmes and handgunners depend on.

Arbalessters were not used from 1200 onwards but much later. Hence it makes sense to erlegate them after gunpowder both from a historical and gameplay perspective.

The gameplay perspective has to do with making xbows obsolete too quickly as it happens in vanilla and having a missile weapon that can obliterate even late units' armor, and so much more high units' armor.

[Stazi]

Thanks for the clarifications. I really like the idea of limiting buildings by compass/gunpowder events. It's a pity that there are no more events like these. This would really help the AI with buildings choices.
About rebellions - not a big deal. It's a little funny when you see clansman wandering around the continent :). You can try to put another unit on the top of the list and name it "Rebels" or similar. I saw something like that in other mods. This unit will fit wherever it'll appear.

Russian campaign - hard - huge - loyalty:130

Everything was very similar to my previous campaign.
Factions "dead from the start": Aragonese, Danes, Spanish.
Factions "nearly dead": Sicilians, Hungarians.

War started early in the east but only there. War in the western Europe started after @80 years. In the meantime Almohads tried to conquer Portugal and Valencia but never really did it. The funny thing was a Jihad contest - Egyptians conquered Tunisia - Almohads sent Jihad and took the province back. Then Egyptians sent Jihad and took the province again. Then Almohads... 3 Jihads from each side.
I decided not to go too far to the south. I've taken Muscovy, Smolensk, Lithuania, Prussia, Livonia, Finland and additionally Sweden and Norway. My account hit 300K when the Horde arrived. Unfortunately, they weren't fooled by my tactic and sent the most of their forces to the north. We've met in the open field of Muscovy. 2500 of my newly recruited soldiers against a group of 10500 barbarians. Hmm.. what can i say.. Battle lasted @7 minutes. I've defeated first wave and captured general. Second wave didn't even get near my line. They turned back back in the middle of the field and run away. I've lost 250 brave man, killed 550 and captured 900. I thought it'll will be long and tough battle but it ended before it really began.
Golden Horde certainly needs better generals. 2-3 stars are not enough. I think they should be like Byzantines 6-8 stars at averange (but we probably can't do anything about it). Numbers mean nothing when they don't have any anti cavalry capable units. Their generals use standard heavy cavalry unit so they go to the first line and get killed/captured very fast. IMO they need designated BG unit with AI settings as others royal units. They should get some of these BG units along with other units immediately after they appear in 1231 (maybe one per stack). Now, they are not a challenge at all. Expert difficulty it's not a solution because (as you probably know) it has many other disadvantages.

That's all for now. The next will be HRE (or maybe Aragon).

[armoros]

I dl the mod and it works fine, playing with byzantines had no problems till now.
Is very nice work well done gollum

ps:not important but are you greek gollum...

[drone]

Welcome to the Org, armoros!

Regarding Highlanders in rebellions, has anyone tried swapping them, position-wise, in the unit_prod with, say, spearmen, or another fairly vanilla unit to see if their participation in uprisings can be limited?

I suppose you can role-play it some, when you get a horde of Clansmen in a rebellion, you can guess where Scotland was playing an international.

[Stazi]

Some more about Russians. They have two different units named "Vikings" and two named "Druzhina" - one cavalry (early BG unit) and one infantry. Sometimes it's hard to recognize which is which (especially at the battle summary screen). Maybe "Mounted Druzhina" for cavalry version?

Religions. I think it's a main problem for the AI when it tries to establish stable control over the province (like Almohads in Portugal). Without churches spreading faith and weakened priests/imams an average 1500 man army doesn't guarantee the 100% loyalty (even with lowest taxes). And with high units' support cost (huge setting) 1500 man army seems a really big one (for the AI). It's fun to play with huge units but factions' income should be altered to reflect the higher prices of units.

Another thing connected with low income/high support cost ratio. You don't have to worry about that any faction will be able to build high tier buildings and units too early. Around 1240 most factions still have only Keeps. Only English, Italians and Byzantines have one Castle each. It's a really long way for them to reach the Citadel or Fortress level. Smaller factions will surely never get to the Citadel level.

[gollum]

Hello Armoros, welcome to the org enjoy your stay

I am glad the mod adds to your enjoyment of the game, i hope you enjoy.

Yes, i am Greek (as you saw from the Byzantine unit and building descriptions probably :)


Hello Stazi, thank you once again for the feedback hello drone :)

Originally posted by Stazi
It's a little funny when you see clansman wandering around the continent :).

You can try to put another unit on the top of the list and name it "Rebels" or similar. I saw something like that in other mods. This unit will fit wherever it'll appear.

Originally posted by drone
Regarding Highlanders in rebellions, has anyone tried swapping them, position-wise, in the unit_prod with, say, spearmen, or another fairly vanilla unit to see if their participation in uprisings can be limited?

"Funny" yes, Stazi :) Sometimes i don't know if i should laugh or cry :)

I will most definitely try the solution your propose and that of drone.

This will mean however that the next version (coming up within the weekend as there is lots to do and relatively easy to do it) will have a re-arranged unit_prod file, that means no save compatible campaigns. This is not a problem for me, but it might be problem for anyone that started his campaign, so just letting you know.

Originally posted by drone
I suppose you can role-play it some, when you get a horde of Clansmen in a rebellion, you can guess where Scotland was playing an international.

"By order of the King, all the kingdom's travel agents that sold tickets to Scotts are to be immediately beheaded"

Originally posted by Stazi
I decided not to go too far to the south. I've taken Muscovy, Smolensk, Lithuania, Prussia, Livonia, Finland and additionally Sweden and Norway. My account hit 300K when the Horde arrived. Unfortunately, they weren't fooled by my tactic and sent the most of their forces to the north. We've met in the open field of Muscovy. 2500 of my newly recruited soldiers against a group of 10500 barbarians. Hmm.. what can i say.. Battle lasted @7 minutes. I've defeated first wave and captured general. Second wave didn't even get near my line. They turned back back in the middle of the field and run away. I've lost 250 brave man, killed 550 and captured 900. I thought it'll will be long and tough battle but it ended before it really began.

Right, i see. Well the numbers cetrainly seem to be right for a good challenge. By the way, what stars your general had? The AI usually retreats when he is heavily outclassed in quality. And did they give you any more trouble or the rest of the campaign?
Its certainly weird because apart than giving them exclusively the Steppe Cavalry, i haven't changed much to the Mongols and in vanilla they keep coming very tenaciously again and again until almost they are spent. Will have to look into this.

Golden Horde certainly needs better generals. 2-3 stars are not enough. I think they should be like Byzantines 6-8 stars at averange (but we probably can't do anything about it). Numbers mean nothing when they don't have any anti cavalry capable units. Their generals use standard heavy cavalry unit so they go to the first line and get killed/captured very fast. IMO they need designated BG unit with AI settings as others royal units. They should get some of these BG units along with other units immediately after they appear in 1231 (maybe one per stack). Now, they are not a challenge at all. Expert difficulty it's not a solution because (as you probably know) it has many other disadvantages.

6-8 stars would be maybe a bit much with so many troops, but i agree with you to raise the average comamnd stars to above 4 (that means +2 valor to armies). 6 means +3 valor and 8 +4. I would say give them 4 as a minimum and 6 as a maximum when they land. Is that ok?

As far as teh BGs as concerned, it is certainly a worthy idea to try and give them particular BG units that are small and conservative in use by the AI and so their generals do not get captured or killed to fast in action that impacts negatively on the battles of course. This is something that i will change also in the next version.

Expert difficulty it's not a solution because (as you probably know) it has many other disadvantages.

No it isn't at all. Too much jedaism in expert in MTW. The campaign and its battles should be challenging enough in hard.

They have two different units named "Vikings" and two named "Druzhina" - one cavalry (early BG unit) and one infantry. Sometimes it's hard to recognize which is which (especially at the battle summary screen). Maybe "Mounted Druzhina" for cavalry version?

Absolutely, you are right. This is an oversight on my part. I will name the BGs, Druzhina BGs and the foot unit will be left as Druzhina. Will do something about the Vikings too - currently it does not hurt for them to have the asme name as they are exaclty the same unit apart from the skin. I used the VI one for recruitable by the Danes and Russians as its cooler. Units should have distinct names as you say.

Religions. I think it's a main problem for the AI when it tries to establish stable control over the province (like Almohads in Portugal). Without churches spreading faith and weakened priests/imams an average 1500 man army doesn't guarantee the 100% loyalty (even with lowest taxes).

The idea behind taking out the faith propagation from religiuos buildings is to balance the conversion happenings on the map. This is because the vast majority of factions are catholic and when there is a faith propagation bonus from Churches, they swamped other religions even in other factions' lands. Now only cathedrals/greatmosques iirc give a faith propagation bonus, and cathedrals/gmosques are much more rare and so they don't have the same effect. The idea is that conversion happens from:
a) The factions natural conversion rate (every faction has that, but its slow, and by the way its tied to the piety of the King most likely)
b) From priest characters

The priests/imams were too strong in vanilla - they could convert too quickly, hence why i nerfed them. Having conversion depending on agents rather than on infrastructure is better imo, as then you can have a whole game-within-the-game with trying to assassinate them etc. as they are the only ones that can do it.

The Mongols, that are pagan and have no priests, have their BG units acting as priests very slightly (smaller than the normal priests but still have an effect), in order to facilitate the Horde conquering. This is an idea i copied from the Medmod.

Another fature of this approach is that because its slightly harder to convert enemy lands, factions cetainly retain their "core lands". At the same time its easier to conquer lands of your own religion, than say of other religions (as it should be). Again in vanilla this is very much flattened because priests are too able in conversion but most importantly because religious buildings boost too much faith propagation.

The downside of course is that the AI is finding it slightly harder to expand in other religious lands than his own. However, as mentioned minority religion factions, like the Muslims and the Orthodox and less the Pagans have now more equal chances with the catholics.

So this is the rationale and context for gameplay.

The problem you describe happens most often in high rebelliousness provinces like Portugal, Livonia and Scotland. As a said before, its now less pronounced, as the rebelliousness was lowered. The highest rebelliousness province is Livonia (4 in vanilla, now 3) and then Portugal, Scotland and Lithuania (4,2,3 in vanilla now 2,2,2). Again the mod is following the vanilla pattern so things are familiar to players who have played that.

In other provinces (0 or 1 rebelliousnes) the problem you describe is either very very small or inexistent in my experience. Is that right?

If so, one thing it can cetrainly be done is slightly increase the priests conversion bonus. this will make their use more effective by teh AI factions and reduce the times the AI factions take to convert other religions in their new lands. In addition i will further reduce the rebel stacks so the AI factions take on rebel lands earlier (more on this coming up).

It is a bit again of finding the right balance for competitiveness and stability for the AI factions.

The funny thing was a Jihad contest - Egyptians conquered Tunisia - Almohads sent Jihad and took the province back. Then Egyptians sent Jihad and took the province again. Then Almohads... 3 Jihads from each side.

Sounds fun, i played once a great sand war as the Egypts versus the Almohads. It was really enjoyable.

War started early in the east but only there. War in the western Europe started after @80 years.

Yes indeed. I have playtested your suggestion for medium unit sizes already (and still doing), and i agree fully with your observations. Basically the same things happen in terms of what factions do, just they happen much faster and the campaign is more closely contested while stability is still acceptable although somewhat reduced - but not much.

I will calibrate AI preferred ranks for medium unit size, as well as the rebel stacks sizes. This will also reduce the rebel initial stacks and will make teh AI factions jumping to it somewhat faster, while maintaining teh intended effect. I will reduce also some rebel stacks in terms of units (take 1 or 2 from some that are key for faction development).

Another thing connected with low income/high support cost ratio. You don't have to worry about that any faction will be able to build high tier buildings and units too early. Around 1240 most factions still have only Keeps. Only English, Italians and Byzantines have one Castle each. It's a really long way for them to reach the Citadel or Fortress level. Smaller factions will surely never get to the Citadel level.

Fortresses i've seen very few times in the mod, and perhaps never in vanilla (starting from early) and always come in late. Citadels should be coming about at about the mid/late high era or there abouts. If its too easy for the AI factions to have them, then the tech tree is trivialised. I agree however, that there should be more tech up. It may again be a matter of funds available in the campaign and if so, switching to medium unit size may actually prove a solution. I will be paytesting these this weekend.

By the way, the castle tech level reflects the economics of a faction. Factions that remain on positive financies, but never make "the jump" to lots of income (either by conquest or trade) they will stay in keep level for most of the campaign and maybe for all of the campaign. For those cases nothing can be done. This is all the more as the AI prefers to build keeps in all its provinces before he makes a Castle, unlike the player who may have say a few forts and a castle (in order to benefit from the higher techs of the castle).

The factions that do have money, typically like the Italians, the English, the French at times, the Egyptians, the Almohads at times, the Turks, the Germans at times, the Hungarians at times, the Byzantines do make castles and eventually Citadels.

All in all some more speed needs to be given to tech development, and i have a feeling that switching to medium unit sizes will help towards that.

In terms of worrying for the high tier buildings, the Turks, the Pope, the Italians and the Byzantines or whoever gets to build in Constantinople, all have the potentially for that occurence to happen. From these factions, the Turks and all the Catholics have units dependent on the spearmaker4 and the town_watc4 that are tied to gunpowder. It isn't too frequent indeed for the Citadel level buildings, but when it happens it does take away florins and build turns.

Such things by the way happen in vanilla big time, and it this to a great part that makes teh AI a sitting duck as he spends endless money and time wandering the tech tree without getting anything. In this mod, this is solved down to its details as far as i know, as in this example. I have made lots of efforts for all the AI is getting to mean something and for him to be able to use it.

Regarding the town_watch4 is also connected to town_watch3 that gives arbalesters is also tied to gunpowder and that is available in Castle level that is more frequent. This is for gameplay reasons regarding the arbalesters as explained previously.

Factions "dead from the start": Aragonese, Danes, Spanish.
Factions "nearly dead": Sicilians, Hungarians.

I have decided to keep the vanilla format in starting positions, because:
a) I am famliar with it and hence tweaks i make i can predict better by projecting them into the future
b) players are familiar with it
c) it may be too much work in playtesting very different starting positions that we are all unfamiliar with. The problem is not that i am work shy, but that such work needs playtesting and playtesting needs feedback and time. Feedback is coming in but slowly as MTW is not a very new game anymore, and time is often hard to find in such large amounts as to set and playtest the game up from scratch - at least for me.

For these reasons as it has been the concept and sanity line for this mod and its maker :) and it has helped thus and so i feel i better stick with it. I may siedtrack only very slightly from this rule.

As mentioned, the problems you bring to the fore will be dealt with by change of unit sizes (the alternative is to put more money in analogy to provinces and so into teh campaign, but i feel that few people play huge anyway, and so forcing people to my preference is a bit much - i'd better make the mod enjoyable for unit sizes that are closer to more people's preferences, and that does not exclude anyone he likes it to play in huge still anyway - the engine scales costs and sizes just for that) and also by changing initial garrisons and infrastructure.

This however means that the one province starting factions (Danes, Aragon, Russians), will remain "dead from the start" as otherwise, it seems to me, they will be made too easy for the player.

However, i will certainly strive for Spanish, Hungarians, Sicilians and Poles to perform better than they do by the AI at the moment. The Almohads also need a very slight boost. These tie with the issues we have been discussing (rebel stacks, religion, unit sizes and hence economics), so please just wait till the next version that is imminent

[drone]

This will mean however that the next version (coming up within the weekend as there is lots to do and relatively easy to do it) will have a re-arranged unit_prod file, that means no save compatible campaigns. This is not a problem for me, but it might be problem for anyone that started his campaign, so just letting you know.

I can't remember, does this require messing around with the description text files as well? Might be more trouble than it's worth.

[gollum]

Not that i know of. The text description is in the Loc file and completely independent from the list in the unit prod file AFAIK. I did change the order in another case (placed Druzhinas under Boyars) and it wasn't affected.

It is cetrainly a change i will leave for slightly later, when the mod goes through a "hybernation period" as it will make the game non-save game compatible with previous versions.

Priority is to fix the glitches Stazi found, and also tune in the unit ranks AI uses to medium unit settings as well as slight adjustments in the starting positions and playtest with those, for v2.5. Will also increase Horde command stars, and if time allows this weekend will also give the Mongols unique and small conservative BGs. The dead men page and the rebellion glitches with the clansmen and the murabitin will have to wait for the next next version.

[Stazi]

IMO you shouldn't abandon the huge units idea. Just alter the province income/support cost. It may take more time to balance the whole thing but battles with bigger units last longer, are harder and more interesting.

Save game compatibility it's not a problem. The beginning if the campaign is the funniest part for me, especially with strong and dangerous foes around.

Concerning battle with Golden Horde - my general had 6 stars against 3 stars Horde's general. I know, it's totally different quality. That's why I voted for some Horde's improvements.
btw What do the quality and numbers of the Horde depend on? The main variable is probably the army that stays in Khazar when the Horde arrives. What are the others?

Pavise Arbalesters and xbows. Why factions that can recruit them don't have access to standard versions (without pavise) and vice versa? Maybe give them option to "dismount" pavise xbows to standard version? This seems logical that unit can throw away heavy pavises when needs more speed. Mounted xbows should be able to dismount for foot version too. The same for other mounted missile units like horse archers, etc.

Citadels, Fortresses and other high tier buildings. It all depends how much money AI has. I remember a campaign that one of the AI factions owned 1/3 of the world. Most of its provinces had Fortresses. It had so much money that its most feared unit was an emissary. Why? Because AI constantly tried to bribe my armies. 6 of my provinces were producing nothing more than assassins. Every battle was like fight with Golden Horde. It was a really epic campaign.

[armoros]

Και εγω αδελφε Ελληνας ειμαι...ναι το βυζαντιο τα σπαει..
συγχαρητηρια για τη δουλεια που κανεις.

Thanks for all the welcomes.
I love mtwVI and believe it i put my old laptop in use just to play the best game with the new mods.
new cards as you all know cant play mtw.
and i realy like better mtwvi than mtw2..

Anyway is nice to be here thiis forum rocks...

[gollum]

Γεια σου πατριδα!... Να'σαι καλα... :)

Enjoy armoros

We have here a small but dedicated community for MTW, a little bit like Asterix's village of TW :)


Hello Stazi,

IMO you shouldn't abandon the huge units idea. Just alter the province income/support cost. It may take more time to balance the whole thing but battles with bigger units last longer, are harder and more interesting.

Well, for me personally its cetrainly much better to go that way ie customize and gear the whole mod for huge unit settings :). The problem with adding more income, is not so much that i am shying away from the work for it, as that for smaller unit settings the money will be so much as to blow the campaign out of all proportion.

Perhaps other people that are interested in the mod can give their opinion's on this?

The difference between medium and huge unit settings in terms of recruitment and maint. costs is something like 30%. This means that i would be required to pour about that much (+30%) in agri unit income (ie +(current province income x .3) ) for the factions to play in huge as they currently play in medium. This then mean that for people who play say in medium the campaign will have +70% extra income ie it will be perhaps way too much to be enjoyable.

So owing to this, please good people that you are interested in the mod, give us your view. I am currently undecided as to what to do for this (set up campaign for medium unit settings or gear the whole mod for huge and add income for quicker campaign boiling (waring etc)).

Concerning battle with Golden Horde - my general had 6 stars against 3 stars Horde's general. I know, it's totally different quality. That's why I voted for some Horde's improvements.
btw What do the quality and numbers of the Horde depend on? The main variable is probably the army that stays in Khazar when the Horde arrives. What are the others?

Right, thanks. I will certainly be increasing the command stars to be within the range of 4 to 6. The one factor i know of for Hored numbers is the one you mention. Quality seems same all the time to me.

Pavise Arbalesters and xbows. Why factions that can recruit them don't have access to standard versions (without pavise) and vice versa? Maybe give them option to "dismount" pavise xbows to standard version? This seems logical that unit can throw away heavy pavises when needs more speed. Mounted xbows should be able to dismount for foot version too. The same for other mounted missile units like horse archers, etc.

For arbs and pavise arbs: The rationale is to give only to the Italians the pavise version for some historical flavor. All other factions get the standard variety. This was in order to make armies a bit more personalised and historically flavored in the styles they fight.

As far as dismounts are concerned, i have disabled them all save for the units that have dismounted versions by vanilla FeudalKnights, ChivKnights, KnightsHospitallers (and maybe one or two more i forget, like Gothic Knights). I left those in for maintaining the flavor of the vanilla game.

All other units though do not dismount simply because the AI can't dismount units in battle at all.

There is only one solution in this, namely make the dismounted versions available for recruitment and take them out as dismounts. In the mod, i wanted to keep some vanilla flavoring hence i kept some dismounts but i took off all others in order not to disadvantage the AI.

For the player dismounts mean more flexibility of options that teh AI does not have. Imo the player should also face as much as possible the same hurdles as the AI, and fight while having to deal with them.

Citadels, Fortresses and other high tier buildings. It all depends how much money AI has.

Absolutely, hence why i said that if we put down the unit settings you'll see them coming around sooner. Either by giving more money and keep the game huge or set unit size in medium, this will be to some extent adressed.

I remember a campaign that one of the AI factions owned 1/3 of the world. Most of its provinces had Fortresses. It had so much money that its most feared unit was an emissary. Why? Because AI constantly tried to bribe my armies. 6 of my provinces were producing nothing more than assassins. Every battle was like fight with Golden Horde. It was a really epic campaign.

I can certainly see the point, but if i apply this logic to the end of it, teh player will also become very rich very quickly.

In teh XL mod and XL Tyberious, the economic game is trivialised as there is so much income coming from farms and farms are built so quickly that there is no essentially management.

While i agree with you that the current level of money in the campaign for huge unit settings is not ideal (hence either increase funds or decrease suggested unit setting), and something will be done to adress this, i would not want to give that much money as in XL or XL Tyberoius to the AI factions at the start, as then for the player too the economic side vanishes completely.

[gollum]

By the way Stazi, if you enjoy the opening stages and being harassed by the AI, just try once the mode of play i suggest ie play one faction per one King's life and then switch via -ian to another faction.

You'll be amazed how much fun it is and how refreshing because every time you have set up a strong Kingdom you end up in a completely new starting position taht you have never played before and that is totally unique and potentially very challenging.

My rule after teh King dies is to play the faction with the youngest King that still is in the black (no debts).

Just try once, and almost all of the problems you mention will be solved without us tweaking the unit sizes and incomes and starting positions :)

I thought to tell you this because you said that the opening is the most interesting part for you. Then its like having all the time a new and natural opening. But of course its up to you

[gollum]

Dear all, just to let you all know; please let me know if you consider i should calibrate province incomes completely for huge unit settings or for medium unit settings. I will wait until i get some other opinions too before i proceed to teh next version with this

[caravel]

Haven't played the mod, so feel free to tell me where to go, but you should definitely design everything against huge units IMHO. If the mod needs to be played a certain way with certain settings, then the player needs to accept this and give it a go based on that.

[gollum]

Thank you master Asai, for (edit: i mean for giving me) the courage to pursuit our ideas to the end

I think you are right. Its true that not all people are familiar with huge unit settings, but if one comes to play in huge with an open mind then its possible to discover their qualities. Some people have expressed this here and its good to see. Also battles now in huge work really well, and it would be quite an upset to throw away all the improvements that have been cumulated over time.

While everyone is still very welcome to make their views known, i am now leaning towards calibrating the mod fully for huge. This practically will entail to add 30% extra base farming income in all provinces with respect to their current base farming income and playtest. The income proportions per area and per province are well worked out imo and i am happy with them, hence i won't be touching them. Still waiting for other people's opinions to be heard though.

I will also fix all glitches Stazi reported, give the Mongols unique and conservative BGs (i already have picked the unit i will be using) and 4 to 6 stars as they land, increase the priest/imam conversion somewhat to compensate for taking out faith propagation from churches and mosques. Once done and playtested to see if the intended effect in the campaign has been achieved, i will release a new version.

Should take only a day or two after the unit setting issue is firmly decided.