Newbie questions

[drone]

Welcome to the Org, RRMike!

There are some mods out there that help lessen the steamroller effect, with some tweaking the AI and overall gameplay can be greatly improved. As for "house rules", some members limit themselves to actions the AI also benefits from. No disbanding units, no mercs, no upgrade/reinforcement training of units, etc., as it has been observed that the AI does not perform these actions.

Have you tried mixing up the game start? Starting in the Late era changes the equation greatly, due to the time constraints there is more of a push to conquer and hold than building up infrastructure and shipping. If you really want a challenge, some factions have fairly difficult starting positions. Try an Eastern faction (the Russians are the hardest I believe) starting in High, 25 years to prepare before the Horde shows up. Or my personal favorite, Swiss/Late/Hard (you have to make a minor text file mod to enable the Swiss).

[Stazi]

Mike, it's natural that when your empire goes stronger further expansion becomes easier and easier. I don't like it too but there is a little you can do about it. I usually quit a campaign when I control about 1/3 of the map. IMO the most important thing that kills the balance is fleet. Most of the AIs (maybe except NAVAL EXPANSIONIST types) are unable to keep their trade lanes. They group their ships into useless fleets wasting 90% of the possible trade income. I think the idea to limit your own fleet is very good. You can even try to scrap your entire fleet. This way the danger of enemy invasion will grow along with your empire. You'll lose huge amount of your income too. It should rise the difficulty level significantly.

[RRMike]

Mike, it's natural that when your empire goes stronger further expansion becomes easier and easier. I don't like it too but there is a little you can do about it. I usually quit a campaign when I control about 1/3 of the map. IMO the most important thing that kills the balance is fleet. Most of the AIs (maybe except NAVAL EXPANSIONIST types) are unable to keep their trade lanes. They group their ships into useless fleets wasting 90% of the possible trade income. I think the idea to limit your own fleet is very good. You can even try to scrap your entire fleet. This way the danger of enemy invasion will grow along with your empire. You'll lose huge amount of your income too. It should rise the difficulty level significantly.

I agree that a bigger empire would, obviously, be stronger, all other things being equal, but I'm talking about being able to strike and hold two or three provinces and dominating the game, regardless of your empire size. Take Sweden, Lith, Liv and Norway, build a fleet to loop the map and you can do anything you want, even if your empire consists of simply those and Denmark.

When I started my plan was "no navy", but I wanted to make landings so I allowed some trade to try to keep it at a level to just pay for my fleet, but not be a huge boon to my economy.

[gollum]

I only edited the early.txt file though, are all my changes going to come undone in 1205 or will it work for any game started in early?

No, they will last for the entirety of a campaign started in early.

Is this similar to what you did with your mod?

What i have done is the following three:
a) Increased agricultural income in all provinces by a certain % on average accross the map.
b) Used AI personalities that are more adept in maintaining fleet networks - these are all defensive personalities (catholic_defensive, muslim_peaceful, orthodox_defensive). The naval expansionist personalities can also use their fleets properly for large sections of the game.
c) Reccomend and tested everything with the inclusion of loyalty:130 command line, which makes the AI keeping small garrisons in order to maintain province loyaltyy at 130 at all times, and hence make naval invasions more sensible and likely to suceed, but also in general provide more stability to AI factions.

While lowering trade goods and increasing the % of the receiver of trade are standard modding ways to deal with it, i am reluctant to lower the trade goods, as this means often that the AI does not get even the reduced trade profits he could otherwise get. Also the faction that sets up a trade network should be rewarded with more trade profits than factions that passively benefit from the same.
Of course the downsize is that the player can make more profit at sea than the AI, but the approach of the mod is to counter that by providing more competition at sea. So far, playtesting has shown good results, ie AI factions maintaining fleet networks and making considerable profits from it, as well as hitting any challenger, and hopefully if you decide to try the mod you'll find the same.

Mike, it's natural that when your empire goes stronger further expansion becomes easier and easier. I don't like it too but there is a little you can do about it. I usually quit a campaign when I control about 1/3 of the map. IMO the most important thing that kills the balance is fleet. Most of the AIs (maybe except NAVAL EXPANSIONIST types) are unable to keep their trade lanes. They group their ships into useless fleets wasting 90% of the possible trade income. I think the idea to limit your own fleet is very good. You can even try to scrap your entire fleet. This way the danger of enemy invasion will grow along with your empire. You'll lose huge amount of your income too. It should rise the difficulty level significantly.

That's right. It is the reason why Asai Nagamasa insisted to scrap the navies completely in the Caravel mod, and essentially make the game like in STW, where the absence of navies prevents the player making extra money and the AI wasting extra money.
Having said that, the naval aspect, with all its imperfections, is a part of the vanilla game and i wanted it in-game to maintain full flavor. Hence i focused in finding ways in making it work as best as possible the way it was intended to work for the AI factions, rather than hinder it or prevent it or scrap it.

[RRMike]

Welcome to the Org, RRMike!

There are some mods out there that help lessen the steamroller effect, with some tweaking the AI and overall gameplay can be greatly improved. As for "house rules", some members limit themselves to actions the AI also benefits from. No disbanding units, no mercs, no upgrade/reinforcement training of units, etc., as it has been observed that the AI does not perform these actions.

Have you tried mixing up the game start? Starting in the Late era changes the equation greatly, due to the time constraints there is more of a push to conquer and hold than building up infrastructure and shipping. If you really want a challenge, some factions have fairly difficult starting positions. Try an Eastern faction (the Russians are the hardest I believe) starting in High, 25 years to prepare before the Horde shows up. Or my personal favorite, Swiss/Late/Hard (you have to make a minor text file mod to enable the Swiss).

I have not yet tried starting any game in late, or even high for that matter. I only recently played my first game into the high period, usually finishing or losing interest before 1200. I recently have been turtling after carving out my empire early, simply to have a chance to learn some of the high period units and how to use them, like halbs and arbs. I enjoy the campaign build up just about as much as the battles and I am still stuck on outbuilding to win. I will give some late period stuff a shot though as soon as I feel comfortable that I understand the high period units and how best to use them.

[Gilrandir]

If you really want a challenge, some factions have fairly difficult starting positions. Try an Eastern faction (the Russians are the hardest I believe) starting in High, 25 years to prepare before the Horde shows up. Or my personal favorite, Swiss/Late/Hard (you have to make a minor text file mod to enable the Swiss).

I would put my spoke in here. The challenging factions of the High I tried are the Byz (through having shredded territory without Constantinople and imminent arrival of the Horde) and the French (through having to split your attention between fighting off the English, the Aragonese and HRE in Europe while trying to hang on to Outremer).The last one ended in disaster known as civil war. The challenging faction in High I'm going to try is the Turks (similar to the Byz).