Any suggested house rules to make the game more challenging? (VI expansion)

[Clifton]

So I have been playing MTW off and on since its release in 2001 and have recently picked it up again for the first time in 5 or 6 years. I tried the English on Hard at first this time around and rushed through the entire map. Next was the Danes, who were even easier to win with due to Longboats (trading is broken for the player), Vikings and especially the easily obtained yet insanely OP Viking Huscarls. Next came the Hungarians on Expert, I decided to pick them and go for a style I wasn't used to - the Szeleky and other cavalry to make a 'mongol-style' army, this time I didn't even bother reaching the 60% point as it was already an obvious win before most enemy provinces were able to produce even half-decent units.
So I thought it couldn't get much harder than Expert Russia in the High period (all previous had been Early starts), especially with there being only 26 years before the horde arrives. But both Muscovoy and Novograd have fortresses and can already produce Halberdiers, only 6 years away from Arbalesters, whilst conquering Livonia and Lithuania nets you a province that can train Halberdiers and Arbalesters straight off the bat respectively, so building elite armies quickly is an easy task (especially with the already in place 80% farming in your rich provinces and easily conquerable steppes). It wasn't long before the horde was wiped out (and half the battles weren't even river crossings - forests will do just as well), I'd conquered Poland for attacking me, broken Germany in half, humiliated the Hungarians and started to push into Turkish territories. Now to be honest this is the most fun game so far and I'm taking it more slowly than usual, but it's still too easy, especially now I've realised that Arbalesters are so insanely good with 2 valour or more.
After each campaign I put in a new house rule;
After England - No mercenaries
After Denmark - No mercenaries, No Trade
After Hungary - No mercenaries, No Trade, No awful units like Peasants, Urban Militia etc for garrison duty
After High Russia - what do you suggest?

I was thinking of going into the script and preventing Peasants and Urban Militia from being able to be built by anyone as I've seen an easy to understand guide online on how to do this, and this will prevent the opponent bankrupting themselves with crap units. Another Idea I had was to stop myself from picking a faction which has very good fort units from the get go, eg: Almohad Urban Militia, Szeleky, Vikings, Highlanders, Gallowglasses, Byzantine Infantry (yes - a keep for the last one I know, but you get the idea), etc. But not using Urban Militia/Slavs/Javelinmen/Peasants etc. But what faction could that be?

So what other house rules to people use, without using an entirely different mod, to try and give the AI a decent chance?

[dimitrios the samian]

Hi mate ,
I sugest you get Axalons Redux mod or perhaps Macsens Game of Thrones Mod
cheers

[drone]

You should definitely mod out peasants and ballista units so no one can build them, this will improve the AI rosters, especially in Early. Urban militia actually have some uses on the battlefield, I would leave them in. Modify your game shortcut to add the -loyalty:120 (or 130) switch, and also the -green_generals switch. The loyalty switch will tell the AI what province level happiness to target, they will garrison appropriately and they will get fewer rebellions in their provinces (and also be harder to conquer). The green_generals switch will replace unit commanders with newbies on death, so you don't end up with a glut of high command leaders over the course of the game.

Other house rules:

• Only give titles to nobles. No more high-acumen spearmen commanders for governor!
• Don't retrain or disband units (the AI cannot do this)

If you want a faction challenge, try Swiss/Late, it's a race against the clock! You will need to mod it in, but it's not difficult to do.

[Clifton]

Thank you for the replies.

Dimitrios, I do intend to eventually download a Mod and Redux is mentioned in a very favourable light online, however, before I do, I would like to get as much mileage out of the original (+VI) as I can. Thank you for your suggestion.

Drone, thank you for the detailed advice, I already don't retrain units as when I have in the past, the moving multiple units back to other provinces then back to the front always seemed like a chore, I do like the idea of refraining from disbanding units and only giving titles to nobles... especially since nobles usually have awful acumen. I suppose I will have to make sure I have enough emissaries to strip titles for when the rare decently educated noble comes through.
I am not sure where you are talking about when you mention the green generals or AI province loyalty, I assume in the script and not in game, but I will have to research how to do this before I accidentally corrupt the game. They do seem like excellent ideas though.
From your own experience, without Peasants, do you find the AI will not just overload on Urban Militia instead?
I have been researching into how to make Novrogod (Early) and Switzerland (Late) playable so I may just do that to have a good challenge.

[drone]

I am not sure where you are talking about when you mention the green generals or AI province loyalty, I assume in the script and not in game, but I will have to research how to do this before I accidentally corrupt the game. They do seem like excellent ideas though.

You don't need to worry about corrupting the game with these, they need to be set when the executable is called. Right-click the desktop shortcut for MTW:VI, and select Properties. In the "Target:" line, add the switches you want to use at the end, space delimited. Should say something like:

"d:/games/Medieval_TW.exe" -loyalty:120 -green_generals

.
If you are running the Steam version you need to alter the startup in Steam itself.

From your own experience, without Peasants, do you find the AI will not just overload on Urban Militia instead?

It may be that you get more UMs when peasants are removed, but that is a significant improvement regardless. Peasants are worse than useless, if they just died it wouldn't be so bad but they tend to trigger full-scale routs.

[Gilrandir]

Clifton, you may try French in High. At the outset you will have the two-piece empire (Europe and Outremer) and the King with the good runner vice.

[phred]

I remember always having a hard time with the Turks starting in the High period.
There may be a trick to it, but I don't think the Turks have the provinces/infrastructure to deal with the Mongols.
And the Mongols have a tendency to make a beeline for the Turks.

[caravel]

Perhaps it's best to get this thread back on track for the OP and other who are so inclined? Also to perhaps promote healthy discussion of "sins"/iron man rules, so that some of the members who may have misunderstood or entirely missed the point of said rules in that old thread, perhaps due to it being derailed, or just because of how certain statements were versed, may come to a better understanding of said rules - while not necessarily changing their opinion as to wanting to employ them.

As I've said before, iron man rules were used since the early days of STW. A few important points:

1) It's not about dictating to or telling someone how to play the game or how the game should be played. By the same logic, one could say that any mod for MTW or any TW is an attempt by the author to force the prospective end user to play the game according the author's whims/tastes. This is of course a ludicrous idea and the same goes for any self imposed rules to make the game more difficult.

2) It's not and never was about sneering at other players because they choose to play the game without said rules.

3) It is not about those observing such rules, claiming to be better players than anyone else, or putting anyone down.

Without further ado, I will briefly cover the main set of rules from the old thread and one or two more and endeavour to explain why they would be regarded as "exploits" / an unfair advantage / diminishing the challenge within the sphere of iron man rules. I will try to steer away from rhetoric, "historical" precedence or any kind of moral or ideological basis. But as they are "rules", they will be presented as "do nots" and "should nots". Just as if you installed a mod, you would have the restrictions of the mod's creator imposed upon you. If that is not desirable, the solution is to not install the mod of course - and in the case of iron man rules, similar applies - except there is nothing to download nor install.

1. Manual Pillaging:

a) It would be a legitimate tactic if the AI could use it against the player - it cannot, so if you want to level the field with the AI, you must not do it a campaign. For both player controlled and AI controlled factions, "auto razing" will still occur regardless. The player can also build the castle upgrades, instead of just advancing to the next main castle level. This means that auto razing just knocks off the upgrade rather then, e.g. busting down our keep to a fort.

b) As a secondary factor, it obviously decreases the challenge by destroying the AI's income and training resources.

2. Systematic Prisoner Execution:

a) This one was broken by design from day one. The AI cannot use it, but in some cases for the player it could be argued that it can act as a "disbanding" tool for use by the player against the AI stacks in question.

b) In short you can use it to get rid of one of the AI's utterly hopeless armies, not to mention a hopeless general or faction leader. But in equal measure you could also practically wipe out a faction, by executing them on the field (especially the stack comprised of the faction leader and heirs), etc.

c) In every case, you will get the option - to take back your captured men or refuse the ransom. In STW this option wasn't present, so the issue never arose. This was because there was no "capturing" to start with.

d) It's a difficult one, but the only way to keep it "level" is to not use it. There is nothing wrong with it's use per se, the whole problem is that the AI can't use it. This way you're doing the AI no favours, nor gaining use of a function which it does not have access to - and thus an unfair advantage.

3. Mercenaries:

a) AI has no access to this, so this feature should not be used. It's an easy one and achievable without modding - as an exception during the first year, raze any inns and build no more.

b) The modding approach is to disable the inn in the build prod file and remove from era start positions.

4. Disbanding:

a) Another one which the AI cannot access, so the player should also abstain. As with pillaging/razing this was introduced as a novelty feature in STW/MI.

b) As it stands it is simply a feature to make units vanish, wiping out the support costs - and freeing up florins to allow the player to train better, more modern units, get out of financial difficulty or build infrastructure.

5. Dismounts:

a) Another nice novelty feature introduced in MTW, which sadly the AI cannot use, so the player should not dismount their units.

b) Modding dismounts out of the game altogether is possible via changes to the unit prod file.

c) If more explanation is needed - the player can see the initial composition of the AI army and then choose to dismount or not based on this. The AI can't dismount it's units at all, let alone make this kind of tactical decision. It give a big advantage to the player as they can match their army to the AI's or to the terrain and in the specific case of Chivalric Knights, to give one example, gain some very potent (anti cav) polearms units.

6. Jihad spamming:

a) Easily exploitable for producing big armies very quickly, to the point where the created army is the main goal and not the target province.

b) Massive influence bonuses for the ruler, as a result of the multiple successful jihads.

c) Despite the limitations on only being allowed to retake your own former provinces, far more exploitable and rewarding than crusades, due to the player being allowed to create any number of markers, launch them all simultaneously and have them all succeed.

7. The Inquisition:

a) The AI will not tend to produce large numbers of the Inquisitors and Grand Inquisitors and use them in a coordinated fashion selecting prime targets such as the best generals, heirs and even faction leaders, as would the player.

b) The AI will in fact rarely target any wothwhile or sensible targets - in fact it will often start inquisitions on it's own (decent) generals for no obvious reason. Any player can independently verify this with some time spent in ian mode, switching factions and observing AI agent movements/missions.

c) Without modding the game and keeping them in, as with the Geisha in STW, they should be limited to a single GI and two Inquisitors at a time.

d) Through modding they can be removed altogether or at the least the GI removed and the Inquisitor assigned to the papacy only and set as a "stealth" unit (functioning as with assassins/spies). This allows border forts / counterspies to control them quite effectively but keeps them in the game as a more random and largely unseen force.

8. The PAUSE button:

a) This one is not a simple do or a don't. If you pause the game to actually get up and take a break, then that is of course a legitimate use of the pause button. That should surely need no explanation, but was brought up in the other thread. But under iron man rules, the pause button should not be used to stop the game, direct/reform/adjust/deploy lots of units and then resume again, in a very stop-start fashion, throughout the course of the battle. While the AI may seem like it can make instant decisions vs the player, it is still weaker at putting together solid formations and deploying units sensibly, so this type of constant pausing should be avoided.

b) For new players it is more permissible and understandable - but iron man rules are generally targeted at more experienced players - should they wish to experiment with them.

9. Unrestricted camera:

a) This is a "cheat" and as such I feel that it doesn't need any further explanation.

10. Pre battle reinforcements shuffling screen.

a) Should not be used, as the AI cannot use. This was a feature added in the VI expansion and as with many features added by the CA since the release of STW/MI, they are "player only" features and not accessible to the AI opponents and as such leave those opponents at a disadvantage.

11. Auto-Saving between battles and pre-battle save.

a) Both of these should be turned off for obvious reasons. Part of iron man rules play is in accepting the outcome, whatever outcome and moving on from that point. Turning around bad situations, rather than being able to wind them back and retry, adds to the challenge significantly.

Comments/additions/corrections welcome.

[phred]

Perhaps it's best to get this thread back on track for the OP and other who are so inclined? Also to perhaps promote healthy discussion of "sins"/iron man rules, so that some of the members who may have misunderstood or entirely missed the point of said rules in that old thread, perhaps due to it being derailed, or just because of how certain statements were versed, may come to a better understanding of said rules - while not necessarily changing their opinion as to wanting to employ them.

As I've said before, iron man rules were used since the early days of STW. A few important points:

<snip>

Comments/additions/corrections welcome.

Nice list.
I would add something about using/abusing uber-assassins from Syria (I think that's the right region).
They are so much fun, though. So many popes were tragically assassinated when I played.

This thread brings back fun memories of MTW.

[caravel]

I remember always having a hard time with the Turks starting in the High period.
There may be a trick to it, but I don't think the Turks have the provinces/infrastructure to deal with the Mongols.
And the Mongols have a tendency to make a beeline for the Turks.

This was mainly because the start of the high era is much closer to the Golden Horde arrival event, giving less time to prepare. As I recall, you're also in not quite as strong a position with regards to the Byzantines and Egyptians. In early it was possible to blitz either one from very early on and seize the advantage and strengthen your position. Going south quite relentlessly against the Egyptians was a favoured tactic for many.

Also in early the Byzantine would often leave you alone, if you left them alone - the Egyptians however would usually invade Syria once they were strong enough. It was a little predictable and gave the player the opportunity to build up, get trade routes going, etc.

In the high era, the only sound strategy I found was to leave the Byzantine until well after the Mongols arrive and use them as a buffer to soak up the initial invasion. Wiping out the Egyptians and Almohads and heading into Maghreb is the safer route to start with. Once the Horde super stacks start breaking up and heading out into Russian and Byzantine lands and rebel held provinces such as Khazar, they can be more easily isolated and the threat reduced. It beats trying to hold onto the Turkic "heartlands" such as Armenia or Edessa against impossible odds anyway...

[Brandy Blue]

I haven't played in ages but wasn't there a way to turn over to the AI control over which buildings your faction builds and which units it trains? I never tried it, but I imagine that would raise the difficulty level a notch.

[Goalum]

I haven't played in ages but wasn't there a way to turn over to the AI control over which buildings your faction builds and which units it trains? I never tried it, but I imagine that would raise the difficulty level a notch.

Hi Brandy Blue, there is, in fact. You can open the 'drawer' behind the mini-map on the top left corner - if memory serves, and the option is there.

I really liked that option, it basically made you a 'servant' of the AI - you could think of him as the king and yourself was like his minister or something, so you had to make do and manage with the things that he decided.

That made the game considerably more challenging - and it also gave me very good insights to the workings of the campaign AI, how the AI made decisions, what he builds, trains etc etc which eventually got me into seeing all the glaring imperfections and omisions the vanilla game has.

Many of these imperfections were really easy to sort out, with small alterations with the basic files of the game, and as time went on, like many others, i started to do them.

It was the fact that so many of them were needed to be made and coordinated in order for the gameplay to really shine, that ultimately got me into modding.

The fact is, that the workings of the campaign very seriously influence the quality and significance of battles - as the game is in the vanilla state, the game can be won through sheer force of numbers and/or exploits of features.

If you blitz the AI early, you can either win outright or reach very quickly and easily a point that you are set to win no matter what, through exploiting the many 'badly implemented' game features.

Mercenaries is a typical example, they are so cheap and so good, that in the early stages of the game, you'd typically have no competition over and over. Once you take a break from expansion, you can disband them to lose the weight of maintenance, and re-buy them again once consolidated for another cycle of expansion. In this manner, you can conquer 3 or 4 other kingdoms very quickly, basically you've won, and the game becomes a drudgery.

The very same reason applies to the idea of iron man rules: they are a workaround to the imperfections and omissions of the campaign game, that make the game more on the same footing as the AI, hence they bring out the need to better strategising in the campaign and better skill on the field of battle.

The whole idea, is to enjoy the game more

In my book, this was done by bringing myself on the same footing as the AI. Sure i wanted to win, but win not steal a victory. That's the reason behind the 'deadly sins' and my modding efforts

[Brandy Blue]

Hi Brandy Blue, there is, in fact. You can open the 'drawer' behind the mini-map on the top left corner - if memory serves, and the option is there.

I really liked that option, it basically made you a 'servant' of the AI - you could think of him as the king and yourself was like his minister or something, so you had to make do and manage with the things that he decided.

Unfortunately, part of the fun is managing the empire, which you hand over to the AI. That's the cost of getting better battles in that way. Sounds like I should have tried it anyway. Unfortunately I never got around to it.

[Gilrandir]

11. Auto-Saving between battles and pre-battle save.

a) Both of these should be turned off for obvious reasons. Part of iron man rules play is in accepting the outcome, whatever outcome and moving on from that point. Turning around bad situations, rather than being able to wind them back and retry, adds to the challenge significantly.

Comments/additions/corrections welcome.

I use quick save because my game crashes from time to time so I may have to replay 2-5 turns which is annoying.

In the high era, the only sound strategy I found was to leave the Byzantine until well after the Mongols arrive and use them as a buffer to soak up the initial invasion. Wiping out the Egyptians and Almohads and heading into Maghreb is the safer route to start with. Once the Horde super stacks start breaking up and heading out into Russian and Byzantine lands and rebel held provinces such as Khazar, they can be more easily isolated and the threat reduced. It beats trying to hold onto the Turkic "heartlands" such as Armenia or Edessa against impossible odds anyway...

Right now I'm playing this one (and did it before). I captured Big C and Trebizond, the Byz are history and it is 1223. I will probably capture rebel-held Georgia as well to have only one possible province to be attacked by the Horde instead of two (Trebizond and Armenia) and with a nice hilly terrain for a defensive battle too.

[Stazi]

Hello everyone! Long time no see! I wish you all the New Year to be better than any other before!

seeing now how things developed [in pages 2, 3 and 4] in that thread is a bit sad - apparently some people detest iron man rules and the gameplay facets that they try to bring out - hence they agressively deconstructed them - some times more rationally and others more straight out emotionally..

I've never thought I'd see a topic considering MTW that had to be so heavily moderated. Especially the one about iron man rules. It's all about personal taste and arguing about personal taste is really.. pointless. Btw I'm not a fan of iron man rules too. MTW is not a very complicated game anyway so further limiting myself to use only certain amount of options makes the game less fun for me. But I see a lot of flagellants here which likes to strangle themself in some strange ways so let's see if I can add some ideas to pleasure them For example:

- don't use manual merging units option. AI can't do it and it opens the possibility for some significant exploits (gearing up units for free, getting less vices by your generals and governors).

- remove 30 mins time limit for battles. AI doesn't get the idea at all which makes defending provinces quite easy with only minimum effort.

- play on expert difficulty to somehow alleviate the prisoner execution problem. Higher morale of enemy units leads to longer and bloody battles which naturally reduces the number of prisoners.

- keep your governors in their dedicated provinces. Don't move them around or put them under the command of another general to reduce the probability of getting some nasty vices.

That's all I can think of for now (at least considering rational, not so extreme options ).

[Goalum]

Hello everyone! Long time no see! I wish you all the New Year to be better than any other before! :2thumbsup

Hey Stazi, nice to see you around..

By the way, since it has been mentioned in this thread that mods are a problem solver for certain things the AI can't use that result in the use of 'iron man rules' for a better gameplay, my own The Caravel mod was made with that in mind.

It maintains vanilla feel and gameplay, while offering indirect (or where possible direct) solutions to the problems mentioned that result in 'iron man rules'. Let me add that the version that it was left with, was significantly better than initial versions, especially since province incomes were upped to make for a more dynamic game.

It also has customisable province wealth for normal and huge size units, so you can play in either

You can download the mod here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...he-Caravel-Mod

The mod and the quite interesting discussions we had with forum patrons while making it has, if not all - then most - of my experience and knowledge of the TW game - and while it could have been furthered more, it stands pretty solidly and with good workability within the framework of concepts that i wanted it to be hence why i was very happy that the community embraced it in so many ways.

The basic idea, as said in the previous post is: level the game between the player and the AI, both on the campaign and the field of battle, so it becomes a contest of out-thinking and/or outperforming in skill rather than a contest of finding and pushing through all the little exploits the game offers - mostly out of incompleteness

This was what ticked me on, and i put so much effort into it. In the process i had to find how this and that worked, in order to make it happen which - hopefully - benefited the community.

One such discovery - for example - was altering the behaviour code for general's bodyguard units. That made the units standing behind the line and engaging cleverly at the last stages of battle (charging wavering/beaten down units or gaps in the line), instead of launching in the fray at the initial charge, which made them easy targets and frequently won you the battle (as they contained the general unit) or even the war (if the general was the king and he had no heir).

Now, if you see this issue from the standpoint of iron man rules, it becomes: dont kill the enemy general/king at the initial charge - however, its stupid - even if you wouldnt he probably will manage to get killed by himself, i remember battles in the original Shogun (that uses the same engine as MTW) that i was trying to protect the enemy Daimyo from my own units or their fire in order to prolong the fun of confrontation in that same battle as well as an interesting war in the campaign.. which is ridicoulous of course, i mean me trying to save him.. That fix i introduced in the Caravel mod [which people can copy for their own mods/games, hence why i openly publicised the fix] solves that problem.. boy that felt good at the time..

For those interested, you can read about that fix here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...post2053257066

Obviously, there are many other fine mods for people to try, some on the same line conceptually, others on different ones

[DEB8]

I remember always having a hard time with the Turks starting in the High period.
There may be a trick to it, but I don't think the Turks have the provinces/infrastructure to deal with the Mongols.
And the Mongols have a tendency to make a beeline for the Turks.

It is possible - but it is hard. Pin them in Armenia as a start...

[Goalum]

After High Russia - what do you suggest?

I'd say, play the French in early, and try to establish the outremer kingdoms/principalities [crusader kingdoms and principalities] in the Holy Land by - say 1187 [date of the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin]..[Antioch, Tripoli, Jerusalem, Edessa]

Should be pretty challenging, especially if you limit yourself to that goal [maintaining those four provinces], as the Crusades will bleed you from armies and money for normal expansion in Europe. It will also be challenging to establish a kingdom surrounded by enemy muslim kingdoms battle wise..

To make it more challenging and more role playing, you can load your King in one of the Crusades and send him to the Holy Land..that should make it even more dfficult to hold your European core terrotories..

[Goalum]

Another interesting house rule i saw once posted was: do not start a war - fight only when others start a fight.

Before you say that this is hard, you can actually play with that rule and provoke aggression from neighbours you want to fight [leaving provinces deliberately unguarded to provoke attacks]

It should make the game considerably more challenging..

[Pyrocrax]

So what other house rules to people use, without using an entirely different mod, to try and give the AI a decent chance?[/QUOTE]





House Rules i usually use is this:

Rule 1: I can only have 2 units for every command a general has. (so 2 Command = 4 units. 10 command = 20 units.

Rule 2: This is little harsh but you can only have max 2 generals in one army, you can have only 1 if you want but i think that is too much restriction i think. Also i must have a general to control an army, i can only transport 1 unit at a time if i have to go without a general. So like an army without general can not be more than 1.

Rule 3: You can not under no circumstance make peace with a faction you start war with (depending if you play the expansions) or you can not make peace with a faction you attack or create war with. You can only make peace if the faction comes to you with peace agreement.

Though if the faction attack you, you can try to make peace with them.

Rule 4: You can only have true family members/blood relatives. No Adoptions.


This Rules is the ones i usually do if i wan't a really challenging campaign.

[edyzmedieval]

With regards to family members, I think the only realistic chance here to make sure your game flows naturally is to use the heir code because sometimes your king doesn't have. And your game is lost.