Medmod IV v3.06 Beta Update

[WesW]

The next beta is now posted at my webpage.

In addition to the list of changes that I posted last night in the 3.04 thread, I have made many more today.

Tunisia ships fixed to Gulf of Gabes.
Name changes for Trebizond Archers and Gallowglasses made.

I have added units to the starting positions of the HRE, Italians and Muslims.

I implemented the un-destroyable Forest Clearing upgrade from the VC. I also lowered the priority of the Clearing, which takes the place of the 40% upgrade, for all AIs.
I then increased the starting land inprovement to at least a Clearing for the 25 most fertile provinces in the game. Most of the provinces in need of upgrading were in the same factions which received the extra units, so I hope this combination of upgrades does much to help them.
The land improvement setup is designed to keep the AI from spending money on farms in barren provinces. For fertile provinces, the Clearing prevents them from being brought below the 40% mark. Since the human should do a better job of determining when to upgrade farms, this should help the AI as well.

I also made several additional changes to strengthen the Muslim factions.

I made African Spearmen the equal of Feudal Sgts., with slightly better speed and morale, but a small shield. They now require a Spearmaker 2.
I added an Inn to the requirements of Hashishin, but lowered the Sword4 to a Sword3, so hopefully they will built more often in the Late age. I did not raise their price 25%, as is normal for buildable mercs.
I also enabled Inns to be built in Egypt.
Finally, I brought the price of Muslim infantry hybrid units back to the 60-man cost, so they get the extra 25% manpower increase for free. I also removed the excellent speed benefit for some Muslim units, which reduced their costs significantly.

I will be very interested to see how these changes inpact the game.

Note: I was unable to fix the texture bugs for the Nizari and Jan Bows.

[A_B]

Wes,

Simply amazing. Thank you.

Question on the clearing... I assume the way you describe is better than just making all provinces more productive? Is this because the AI reads that it has a 40% improvment already, so it doesn't improve any more? Just curious...

[Razor1952]

Some feedback on 3.05, I think overall its shaping up very well.

Late GH, great fun to play,
-I presume emissaries are meant not to be available for them
-Too strong IMHO, perhaps a few less starting provinces or make Khazar less valuable.
-Looking at some christian provinces with UNI's,monasteries and chuchs(Prussia I think) got icon not available error.
-I think the Polish(maybe Hungarian) faction leader missed campmap icon to give error.

Early Sicilian
-I note you've made African Spearmen stronger, they were too pathetic in 3.05, I had to give them a small melee bonus to stop the French(naval trading AI) with Pyronese Brigands destroying my armies with 50% less spearmen.
-Popolo cavalry appeared twice in Venice in mid age , one had mounted crossbow the other was the straight cavalry.
Liked the straight cavalry one though.
-Still got offered a muslim princess -> error.
-The papal halberdiers( forget the name) had no description.

Overall comments

-the town watch series often built nothing.

-Early to mid game was good but later on I relied on stacks of basic spearmen/archers. Perhaps you might think of adding basic horsemen and a basic swordsman to add a bit more variety.
Alternatively have access ONLY to peasant troops in non-homeland provinces, thats a bit radical I know but at least you will have to carefully manage your home provinces to make good troops. At present you forget(almost) the good troops and make huge spearmen armies.

-Though the changes to naval trade greatly help naval trading AI's , other AI's really struggle. I'll watch with interest the Forest clearing etc changes on the other AI's
cheers


-

[WesW]

There are too parts to the new farmland setup.
The first part is strongly discouraging the AI from building the 40% improvement. This should keep them from wasting money in barren provinces, which usually start with nothing or the 20% improvement.
Alternately, I gave the most fertile provinces at least a 40% improvement to start the game with. Thus, they will have the normal incentive to further improve these provinces.

The second part is the insertion of the Forest Clearing, which is unique in that it can't be destroyed. By inserting it into the game at the 40% spot, you keep the fertile provinces from ever being degraded below 40%, so that the AI never loses its incentive to develop them.

The combined effect of all this is to permanently segregate the provinces into barren and fertile classes, so that the AI handles each properly.

Razor, the only way to restrict a generic unit like Spearmen to homelands is to make a separate unit for every faction.

The bugs for the Popolo Cav and Prussia are fixed.

The Horde is not really meant to be played by the human, though that option is available.

[A_B]

Quote[/b] (WesW @ Sep. 03 2003,11:28)]The Horde is not really meant to be played by the human, though that option is available.

If I'm not mistaken, all of the Horde units are very cheap to build, and even cheaper to maintain. This was done to give the Horde more longevity in the game.

Also, i think the GH should loose the regular horse archers and possibly the steppe cav. When they regenerate later in the game, they come back too weak in my opinion, because they are mostly the cheaper units. It would be nice for them to come back a couple times with more power. Could you eliminate the peasents and spearment from the Pagan faction?

I'm about to start a game with the new agriculture set up.

[WesW]

Let me type this all in again..........................

I remembered during the first time I was making this post that there are CA commands that they used for testing the game.

In your VI desktop shortcut, rt-click, and under Properties, either add the command -ian, or replace the word "strictserver" with "ian" (keep the hyphen).
This enables God mode, which in turn enables a number of other commands. While in God mode:

The F5 key toggles the Scenic tour, which I am not certain what it does.
CTRL+I toggles the inset map and screen panels.
The default for both of these is on, I believe, so you don't have to worry about them.

The letter a puts the game in autorun, meaning the AI plays as all factions. I haven't tried it, but I assume the combo of it and the Scenic tour will let you view all AI moves. The letter c may do the same thing as a.

The # or ' keys let the AI take over your faction, so that you can see what it decides to make and do.

The most useful switch, imo, is the combo of either CTRL or Shift and the numbers at the top of the keyboard, 0-9.
They let you change the faction you control. CTRL does the first ten factions, and Shift the next ten.

The g key toggles God mode on and off, so that you can resume playing the game normally. This works for saved games as well.

Thus, if you want to do some really good observing really fast, toggle on God mode, let the game autorun for a while to see the general strategic changes, and then use the switches to control each of the factions.
You can then see what they are building, what they aren't building, their troop strength and composition, and their current economic status.

In my current game, I am playing as the Novgorods. This helps me stay out of the way of the AI, and also gives me the chance to take on the Horde when they appear.
Currently it is 1122.

After studying all the factions in-depth, I can see why you guys keep reporting some of the same things.

The Spanish, perhaps with the help of a Crusade, have already conquered the Almos. The Spanish provinces are all so fertile, the greatest concentration anywhere, that whomever wins this war is going to be very hard to beat. The Spanish haven't built many buildings from what I can tell, and their trade income is negligible at this point. But they don't need any, or even to upgrade their farms, since the base value of their provinces is so high.
Also, once they build enough ships to protect their coastline, their provinces are secure from invasion, which makes a huge difference in their behavior.

The French have gained the upper hand in their traditional war with the English. The English only have Wessex, Wales, Scotland and Aragon left, and Wales and Scotland are almost devoid of buildings.

The HRE is losing to the French as well, and has suffered some huge army rebellions in Austria and Tyrolia.

The Italians are at war with the Papacy and Sicilians, as usual, but seem to be holding their own at this point, only having lost Tuscany to the Papacy.

The Huns and Poles have expanded in the rebel territories along their borders. More on them later.

The Danes are sitting in Denmark, though they have taken Sweden. I know now why this is- their BG unit is far too expensive for them. They were one of the strongest factions in v1 of the mod, so I wondered at the reports of them being stagnant.

The Sicilians spent all their energy in building and supporting a Crusade against the Turks. The Crusade succeeded in taking Rum, and they are beseiging Edessa now. They are now turning a nice profit, but they are 5000 in the hole due to the Crusade.

The Crusade and the Byzantines have crushed the Turks, who only control Antioch now.

The Egyptians have taken Syria, and have a large army that is sapping all their income.

General observations:

The AI is not set to put aside a big enough profit margin to be able to develop its provinces adequately, at least after the wars begin. The margins for the winning factions were between 20% and 30%. I checked mine to compare, and it was over 50%.
This same problem, with the exact same percentages, was present in the Call-to-Power games, and I never was really able to fix it, even with the additional file types I had access to in those games.

Solution: I reduced the time needed for buildings in v1 of the mod, to help the AI rebuild faster, and speed the game up a little. Now that provinces aren't plundered until the castle is taken, it may be better to set them back. Or, this may only reduce what the AI can get built before its armies sap all of its income.

I am going to increase the priority for the 20% and 60% farm improvements to try and get the AI to prioritize them before units.
I am going to raise the priority of Muslim ships.
I am thinking about lowering the upkeep of Crusade and Jihad units, and I am going to give faction price discounts to all BG units.

Unit restrictions:

I am going to restrict plain Spearmen, Horse Archers, Woodsmen, Peasants and maybe Archers to the Early era. This should help force the AI to upgrade its units more, and also hurt the human from building much of anything in non-Homeland provinces.

I am thinking about restricting most other Early era units to the Early and High eras.

I am also thinking about changing the personality types of some factions, particularly the defensive ones. The Huns and Poles, both defensive types, had a huge percentage of their armies composed of Spearmen, like over 90% for their garrison provinces, excluding princes.

From what I could tell, most all the other personality types had pretty well balanced armies, and the more successful the faction, the better the balance.
I noticed when I reduced the Spears' priorities that they seemed to be the unit type of choice for poverty-stricken or close-to-support-limit situations. I am going to change this, and look at the other unit types as well.

Spears seemed to be the choice for garrisons, along with archers; defensive personalities; losing factions; and poor or over-militarized factions.
If you think about the location of the Poles and Huns, you see that they are surrounded by other factions, so that they feel the pressure to build spears for all of the above reasons. They have few fertile provinces, and little access to trade.

I am going to make their lands more fertile, as I did for the HRE in v1, and reduce some of the Iberian provinces.


I had hoped to be able to sit back and relax for a while, but after seeing all this, I realized that the game was still poor in many areas, and that it isn't going to be nearly as much fun as it could be until these changes are made.
It will take a day at least to do all this, but maybe I can get it here before long.

[Yelping Godzilla]

I think restricting basic units to just early should be something you try if everything else fails. It's not that I want to see armies of basic units walking around in late, far from it, it's just I think the restrictions would be pretty drastic.

I suppose the most important thing is to test it and see what works though.

Off to do more descriptions.

EEUURAAH.

[A_B]

OK, i don't know the mechanics as well as some, but here is some brainstorming;

Make vanilla spear/archer units almost support cost free.
Make faction specialty units 1/2 normal support.

If the AI doesn't really take support cost into account, then perhaps when an AI faction get enough spearmen, it will feel 'safe' and start doing other stuff, and still have the resources per turn to do it.

Make ships cost more to support, to slightly slow down trade cultures from being too dominate, without penalizing local trade too much. Anyone know how the AI will handle this? Ships are just super cheap to support, and i think it should be expesnive to keep a line of them from Constantinople to Finland. Perhaps the dock locations could be modified slightly, to make it profitable trade either in the Mediteranian, or the atlantic, but not both (unless you own spain or france). THe atlantic could be made 'impassable', for requrie more ships (cost) to trade, or only a few LATE age ships could be true Ocean Going ships, and limit those to the N. European trade Nations.

Just some ideas...

[BDC]

I like it, although be nice if I had a chance to finish a game before the next version is out. Anyway, in the one game I played the Byzantines became all powerful. Might just be fluke though.

[Dukezer0]

Blimey, busy testing 3.05 and another is out , so i don't know if these comments are valid but.......

First i played as the swiss (late obviously). IMO, the swiss' speciality is pikes, so i think that their specific units (SH, SP, SAP) should be slighty more powerful than the other generic types for other factions ( They may be but didn't seem that way). I also think they should start with 80% farmland or gold mine so they are at least not on a minus at the start of the game.

Also, i was miffed to reach the end of the game (20 year warning), just want to know if this is going to be changed in the final version......though the swiss are the least of the worries.

So then i played the english.
excellent. got trashed by the egyptians but excellent none the less.

Played the danes in v3.03 and i think they should be able to build scottish pikemen as they don't have any vs cavalry units. I know this is the point but its not going to unbalance the game because scotland is hard to keep loyal, constant harasment from the english, expensive and only one province can produce them.

One more thing is the group formation "footman first" is squiffed, the cavalry are all over the place .

Its definately coming to fruition Wes, nice balances, each faction having its own feel and unique units and hardcore AI .

Looking good.

DZ

[ChaosLord]

Hmm, changes look good. I was just barely into a game with the previous version though, heh. I like how mercs are only available to certain provinces now. Makes building merc armies in a instant much harder. I also love being able to build Alan Mercenary Cav with inns, they're my favorite light cav.

As for the proposed changes, the ships for muslims factions sounds good. I've always wondered why Egypt doesn't exploit its provinces for trade. Infact I can't remember ever seeing Egypt have a large naval presence, which is a pity since they could make thousands of trade. Hopefully this'll make Egypt more of a power, in most of my games they've just sat there.

I also like the idea of the Iberian provinces not being worth so much. It made playing Spain kind of dull knowing once you took all of it the rest would be easy.

I've also had some portrait missing errors, or whatever the exact syntax is. Doesn't crash the game on me, just have to hit escape to get rid of the error box. If it happens again i'll report the faction/unit that caused it.

[WesW]

3.07 is now posted. If you are in the middle of a game, you can install the update and it should not mess anything up. And you will start using the new units and buildings files immediately.

BTW, I get irritated as much as anyone about all the frequent updates, it's just that if I start seeing things that the AI isn't doing well, I have the urge to try and fix it, to paraphrase Napoleon.......somewhat.

I have an idea about the Muslim Princesses. You may have read a few weeks ago that someone, I forget who, had corrected the error with incorrect messages referring to marriages for the wrong faction.
Anyway, the problem was that the game sometimes reads a list in order from top to bottom, and then matches it to another list in order, regardless of whether the two lists match up or not. Someone at CA had switched some of the provinces around for VI. You may not have noticed it since I made the corrections and then put the corrected files in the mod. (No thank-you's necessary.)
Well, I probably switched some factions around in the startpos files, so that the heirs show up in the wrong factions. I'll get around to correcting it sometime.

The Swiss units are like Muslim ones- they give a little armour for better speed, and have better attack and morale. Remember that the Pikemen get the Region bonus.
If I can remember, I'll give the Halbardiers a bonus in Tyrolia.

I may have forgetten to mention along the way that I lowered the required Armourer from 4 to 2 for the Arm. Pikemen.

I have also upgraded the Mamluk Handgunners to use the Arquebusier projectile stats, making them Arque's in effect.

BTW, I get irritated as much as anyone about all the frequent updates, it's just that if I start seeing things that the AI isn't doing well, I have the urge to try and fix it, to paraphrase Napoleon.......somewhat.

A_B, I am taking a different approach to the ships. I have made them cheaper to build and support, especially for the Late era vessels. I only raised their normal priorities a little, like from 55 to 60. The major changes were to the situations where the AI is poverty-stricken or close-to-support-limit. In these situations, I have drastically raised the priority of the cheapest, Early era ships. My aim is to get the AIs to grow themselves out of poverty rather than make the successful AI's poorer.

I have implemented everything I mentioned in the first post, and a good bit more.
I mentioned the poverty-stricken and close-to-support-limit situations, which the weaker factions tend to fall into early and never recover from.
Well, I think I have found a lot of the reason for this- the priorities for the cheapest units skyrocket in these situations, like tripling or quadrupling. I can see the logic that the guys at CA used in this, but I do not agree with it at all. I think that factions need to simply stop making units in these situations and concentrate on growing their economy. Even if these units manage to stop an invasion which has ravaged their economy, the faction is going to be stuck with weak units and no opportunity to build better ones.
To that effect, I have reduced the priorities for the cheap units to the same as regular units in all situations.
I have also raised the priorities for the economic buildings, farms and merchants, to very high levels in the two poverty-support limit conditions.

While going through the units text adjusting the poverty settings, I also thoroughly organized the priorities for all units for regular situations. Many of the changes were dramatic, and I expect to see much better balanced AI armies now.

Economic and general behavioral issues like this were what I spent most of my time on in the Call-to-Power games.
In normal situations, the AI aims for a certain precentage of total income dedicated to unit support, and whatever is left, usually 20% to 30%, goes to infrastructure. Thus, to get the AI to develop more infrastructure, the only two options are to make buildings cheaper, which will benefit the rich factions just as much as the poor ones, or you can try and get the poor ones to increase their incomes.

I have also given the Danes Sweden in the High and Late eras, when everything gets more expensive but their income stays rather flat to start the game. I have also weakened their early BG unit a little, but lowered its price even more.
I found out that I had an error in my unit cost formula which make Royal Knight units only cost 60% of what they should have. This was an enormous advantage for the smallest factions for v1 of the mod.

Similarly, I have given Tunisia back to the Almos for all three eras, and I plan on scrapping the Berber minor faction. I'll see later if this opens up another rebel faction for play.

I have also increased the time needed to build the economic and unit-producing buildings (spearmakers, swordsmiths, metalsmiths, town watches, etc.), except for special-attack units like Taverns and Brothels. Or gunpowder units.

I have written a detailed explanation below, but simply stated, the buildings which can be built with Forts, and end with Citadels, take 3,4,6, and 8 turns. Thus the only change to them is for the basic level.
For basic buildings that require a Keep, the sequence is 4,6,6,8. Thus their first two levels take more time.
This should help slow down the rich factions at the start of the game, when a few turns can make a big difference in what you can build. It also has the neat effect of making all buildings in the Fort through Castle levels take the same amount of turns to build. (See how the 4 and 6 levels match up?) All Master-level buildings still take 8 turns.

Now remember that basic spearmakers, breeders, watches and bowyers can be built with Forts. These buildings now take three turns instead of two. Ports, basic farms and merchants also take three turns now.

Ok, now any building or improvement that requires a Keep takes four turns to build. This affects Swordsmiths, Armourers and Shipyards.

Similarly, all buildings that need a Castle take six turns to build. Again, this affects Swordsmiths, Armourers and Shipyards.

For Citadels, Master-level buildings, the same things affected by the Fort changes, still take eight turns. The Guild-level blds, Swordsmiths, Armourers and Shipyards again, now only take six turns.

Then, the Master-level Fortress buildings still take eight turns.

If this seems confusing, don't worry; it'll make sense when you play.

Ok, now to the most debatable changes:

I have changed the personality types for several of the factions.
The Spanish and Aragonese were both set to Defensive Crusaders. Surprised? I was. I have set them to Expansionist.

The Almos and Turks were Muslim Defensive, while the Egyptians were Muslim Expansionist, which probably explains why the Egyptians attacked their fellow Muslims so often. Well, I have reversed this situation for all three factions. I will be very interested to see how this affects the Almo vs Spanish and Turk vs Byzantine contests.

In the same vein, I have switched the Poles, Huns and Burgundians from Defensive to Expansionists, since I believe that these factions have to expand into new territories to ever grow their economy and power.

The Italians were Catholic Traders, while the Danes were Catholic Naval Expansionists.
I think this means that the Danes used their ships to protect their coastlines and allow access to some new provinces for invasion. Seems right historically.
The Italians were probably setup to string out more in order to increase trade income.
There is a fundamental glitch in the Trader personality setting, in my opinion, in that this personality seems to bunch its ships around rich foreign provinces like Sicily, rather than make sure it has connections to all of its own rich ports, like Venice or Constantinople. The bunching in chokepoints like Gibraltar is probably a good trait, since losing those can cut off trade to many ports, but the glitch tends to mess this all up.
Thus I have reversed the personality types for these two factions just like I did for the Muslims. This should have the Italians staying closer to home, where they can still do a lot of trade, while the Danes spread out more for the trade income they need so badly. They may also bunch ships in the English Channel, which will be a good place should they decide to invade jolly old England. (Have you noticed that Northumbria is one of the Danish Homeland provinces? )

Ok, now that I have been typing all night, we finally get to the units:

I have restricted most all of the weakest, Fort-level infantry to the Early era. This includes Spearmen, Archers, Desert Archers, Woodsmen, Urban Militia, Horse Archers and Peshtsi.

I have restricted most all of the remaining Catholic Early era units to the Early and High eras. This includes Longbows, Trans Archers, Feudal Sgts and MAA, Mtd. Sgts. and Feudal Kn. types. The knights because they usually have two upgrades available.
Also included are Saharan Cav, African Spearmen and Arab Infantry, as well as Lithuanian Cav, Polish Retainers, Steppe Cav and Khazar Royal Cav.

Crossbows and Mtd Crossbows are NOT restricted. No other Muslim units are restricted, either, nor are any Byzantine or other Novgorod/Russian units.

No units are restricted to the High era alone.

I really hope all this gets the AI to perform better economically and in unit choice. The reduced poverty priorities for cheap units alone should do a lot.

This has been a lot of work making all the changes yesterday and typing this all in tonight, but I am even more stoked than before with these new settings. Version 1 of the mod significantly improved AI performance, and I think this will make things significantly better again.
The restrictions to units should complement both goals of handicapping the human without cheating, and producing better quality AI opponents.
It was somewhat discouraging to see how the AIs performed after all the previous work when you could use God mode to really study them, but my research has turned up both solid leads as to the cause of most of it, and ways to correct or greatly improve the problems as well.

Ok, now practically every facet of the game has been reviewed and sometimes overhauled in the last two-three weeks. I am at the point where I don't think I will have any more bright ideas should these changes not make the expected improvements to gameplay. Thanks to the reports of many of you, as often through emails as through the forums, I believe that all the significant bugs have been caught, though of course I am sure there are a few more lingering about.
The unit lineup seems to be in very good condition as well, at least good enough for the first public release. So, let me repeat what I said over two weeks ago; that I expect this to be the final beta before preparing that first public release. Now, where's that wood to knock on........?

[ChaosLord]

Little update, just installed 3.07 of your mod. For some reason the description for Inn says "Generated Income - etc.. etc.. etc.. salt - 5 florins" along with what its supposed to say. Not sure if I accidently did something on my side or if its a bug.

[Lancer6969]

i checked the readme, and couldn't find an updated one for 3.07. So dont flame me for asking this. Are the minor factions in the game yet?? I havn't had time to play it.

Sorry Lancer

[Old Bald Guy]

Wes, you don't know how many of us out here really appreciate the effort you've put into making a damn good game into a damn GREAT game. Without the MedMod, no doubt I'd have moved on to some other game by now. With it, it has become even more addictive. CA owes you a debt that simply could not be repaid, as do we all. Thanks, thanks again, and if I may, thank you three times. Heroic.

Best wishes,

OBG

[BDC]

The mod is great I actually lost a game after making a trade empire as the Danes

The Byz built thousands of boats, and blockaded me. Then the Golden Horde swept up the Steppes. So basically I lost all my money, was endlessly destroying single suicide Byz ships, and had no anti-cavalry to couter the Horde. I just had to hid arbs behind Huscarls, which hardly worked.

[ToranagaSama]

Just want to echo the above posts. Playing the first beta I lost too Haven't seen that screen too often. Doing well as the Sicilians on Expert, Early Period. The Campaign is about to go into the Middle Game stage, where superpowers emerge. It'll be interesting.

Wes you are amazing in a number of ways, the first of which is your prolificacy---*I* cannot keep up Which is both good and bad---but I wouldn't want you to change.

I think, perhaps, its time we all get together and think of a good Christmas present for Wes--totally deserving--I believe he takes cash [Serious thought]

[BDC]

Maybe. Have to see what shiny new Radeons are out by then. Seriously though, CA should pay this guy. He has finished off their already brilliant game A couple more unit descriptions and it will all be ready as far as I can see (and the minor factions).

The Nordic Marauders description needs doing btw.

[Yelping Godzilla]

Minkeys

My job is eating up a lot of time at the moment, so I'm behind on descriptions. I wanted to have them all finished by now. Still, not that many left really.

I'm a little dubious about the unit-era restrictions, but if it helps the AI out, it can't be bad. AI changes were always the most impressive thing about the medmod.

I'm inspired by the frankly ridiculous amount of work Wes has done, especially recently. Hopefully that means I'll actually do some too for a change :]

Some of it should be graphical stuff to go in the mod too. Nothing drastic, just some changes to enhance the overall appearance. Hope people will like it.

EEUURAAH.

[WesW]

You're welcome, everyone. I'd actually probably be doing this just for myself if there was no internet, though the time spent on posts can be large sometimes. I enjoy the discussions, though, and posting helps work your writing and communication skills.
I don't know if I have thrown too much out there for everyone to absorb these last few days or not, but it's gratifying to make such a large, info-packed posting and not have a single person who replied confused about something.

Chaos, I haven't looked at the Inn description, but the numbers you posted are correct. For v1 I gave the Inns a small income generation, and now that they require Salt to be built, I guess the game interprets it as mining income.

And for those of you who missed it last time, the first Public Release will NOT have the new factions in it.
I am still trying to stop modding and just play the game for a while, and writing up the Readmes and such for the Public Release will take time, so I am thinking a few weeks to get that out.
The minor factions are going to be a lot of work, and probably require a good bit of playtesting and debugging, so they are still off in the distance at this point.

[A_B]

Quote[/b] (WesW @ Sep. 05 2003,22:58)]A_B, I am taking a different approach to the ships. I have made them cheaper to build and support, especially for the Late era vessels.

Wes, regarding game economics, i know very little, so i can only defer to your judgement. I'll try the new system out today (i have the whole weekend).

I have been spending a lot of time on the unit production file. On the latest trial i've done the following;

Limited spearmen and archers to about half of the provinces - evenly spread around the map. I did not allow them to be built in Capital Provinces, such as Isle de France, Hungary, Poland, Castile.... I then ran the game three times in GOD mode up to the Mongol Invasion. Some interesting things happenend. There were about 25-30% fewer spearmen and archers. Not perfect, but better. The Hungarians and Polish had huge amounts of Horse Archers, which i found pretty good (i had already changed their personalites to expansionist). The only faction which was dominate in all three games were the French. The BYZ, Novgorods/Russians, Turks, Egyptians, Spanish had also become dominate. Italians and Sicillians had done OK. English never went anywhere. The only faction to routinely cruble was the HRE. The Danes always stagnated.

The real problem i still had with the units was that the Factions weren't building heavy cavilry at all (the French were building some Mounted Sgts). So i did another experiement. I made it so that the French could only build Destriders in Isle de France, the building requirement was a RoyalCourt, and the cost/support was halved.

It is no surprise that the French started building a lot of Destriders (and still dominated). The good thing is that they had much better balanced armies.

I'll be experienting more this morning, giving each faction one province which can only build their heavy Cav. unit. I'll raise the price back up to normal. The downfall i see is that if a faction looses it's one home territory, it is screwed.

Could i raise the Rebellion factor in these territores, to help faction regain them (or reemerge), or would that screw the AI up by causing more internal revolutions?

What about raising rebellion slightly around the globe? it would be good for the Uber factions to implode more often, which should be more possible given that they can only build their good units at home.

Given the length of the game, it makes sense for empires to rise and fall. Along with this train of thought, i think it would be better to make a lot of buildings be undestroyable. That way, the overall economy continues to improve. Some setbacks, yes, but not total destrucion.

[Old Bald Guy]

The MedMod is coming along great. I played 07 with the Sicilians in early, so I could watch the major factions duke it out and still remain viable. Some improvements are fantastic

The French dominate, along with the Italians. The French held all of western Europe, knocked out the Spanish, all the way to Cypreniecia. The Italians had the Peninsula, except for Naples and Rome, up to the Danish to Polish. The French survived excomm, rounded up a couple of provinces which rebelled, knocked the English to Scotland, then took on the Italians. They have rolled the Italians down to two provinces in the boot, and will probably finish them off, soon if the newly reformed Pope doesn't do it for them. But, now the Polish are marching on France.

The real good news is on the seas. Both factions rolled back their ships until both had full fleets heading on a collision course. What a pleasant surprise to see the Italian fleet as a mix of all three ships. (As an aside: why not make Dromons even higher on the attack with zero defense, so the player has to make a choice. As it is now, I never build these.)

The Italians have pushed the French navy back and back and it will be close as to whether they finish off the French fleet before they become history. However, what is real interesting is just when it looked like the French navy would be gone, they start appearing again in sea after sea. I'm not sure if they are rebuilding, or they escaped the Italian fleet and scattered their fleet into the seas. Either way, it's a GREAT improvement over past AI behavior.

Most of the armies are still infantry dominated, except for the late Spanish king, who had nothing but his sons and jinnettes in his personal army. The Elmos and Spanish beat each other to death, as have the Turks, Egyptians and Byz. The Danes haven't done anything, nor have the Hungarians, only defending. None of the Muslim factions built much of a navy. (I've taken Portugal, Antioch, and Tripoli, only, cause I like the money. The Turks then came back and offered me a cease-fire after losing Antioch, which surprised me.)

So far, I like the way the AI is behaving. It will be interesting to see if the French win the game, or are driven back after the long war against the Italians. (They did beat back the Elmos when they re-emerged.)

Great job, Wes, and thanks again.

OBG

[A_B]

Here is an update on some things i've done with Wes's unit_production file. The goal was to reduce the vanilla units (spearmen, archers mostly) and get factions to buy some Knights for a change.

Here is what I did;
I drastically reduced the provinces you can build spearmen, archers, crossbows/arbs, and woodsmen in. You can only build these in about 20% of the territories. This had the effect that I was actually glad to take a second province I could build them in (as the Hungarians).

All the factions are building a lot of their BG Cavalry units (or Italion Nobles in the case of the Italians). This is forced on the AI and the Player by having one dedicated province which can only build BG and Faction Elite units. The AI doesn't have any choice. Build Knights, or build nothing in that provice.

A typical French army with these changes is 2 to 4 Destirders, 2-3 Urban Militia, 3-5 spearmen, and a couple of archers or crossbows. The exception is offensive French Stacks (which they seem to create one of), which is 8 to 12 Destriders. It is like fighting the Horde.

The Byzantines are building Byzantine armies. Again, they are forced into it. They have a half dozen provinces they can build their infantry units in, and a half dozen they can build there Cav units in. They can't build vanilla units in these provinces. The result is a lot of Byz Lancers, Byz Cavilry, and horse archers. 3/4 of the infantry is faction specific. Their archers are almost all Trebizond.

The Muslim armies have a LOT of desert units in them, Negro Spearment, desert archers, and a lot of Camel warriers. The Egyptians are the most powerful faction in my current game (helped by the quick collapse of Byzantium).

I've sent the file to Wes for him to check out, along with more detials. I'm waiting to hear back from him.

[Action]

Arab infantry has the wrong description, I think. I think their description was mixed up with that of Spanish Militia.

EDIT: This is 3.07

[ShadesPanther]

I was Byz today in High 3.07 and decided to attack those nasty Itallians and did so but they had captured Bulgaria the year before. Then they got massive reinforcements the next year before I could sink their ships. We then had a massive 20 year battle then they sent a crusade and when it arrived at Constantinople with 2000 + men and I only had 1000 troops with most of my provinces stripped. I beat them then they sat on the Buulgarian border for abput another 10 years.

Then the Hoarde arrived and I had only played 3.02 before where the Chinese Infantry were quite weak but now they are very Tough. They Took the crimea and Georgia (Turkish as I was busy with Italy) Then the took Trebizond and Rum and Armenia from the Turks and wiped them out eventually and then I made my last Stand in Greece bu Lost and saw the Losing screen for the first time in Months. Thank you for the fun challenge Wes

[WesW]

Hi Dan,
I have been busy all weekend working on my Mom's computer, so I haven't been able to play the game at all with the latest beta. I'll look at your setup, but I generally try and stay away from forcing the AI to do things that are normally optional.
I think what I will do is configure the capital provinces so that they can build their BG's immediately in each era, and see what this does.
I think the game is designed so that the royal family supplies about all the heavy cav needed until the faction grows pretty large though.

Thought: I wonder if the priority level is affected by the number of men in the unit? The priorities for heavy cav were/are the highest in the game for their era, and only some Late era heavy infantry have larger priorities than Feudal Kns with the new settings. OTOH, if manpower mattered, I doubt the Egyptians would have ever made Hashishin, which they did on a regular basis.

I would not raise the rebellion setting, since the AI doesn't know how to handle it. If I do anything, I may get rid of the setting altogether, since it only serves to cause the AI, and not the human, consistent problems with rebellions most every turn or two.

Remember that only a year passes between turns, and that empires usually lasted at least an age or so in this period before falling. I would rather reduce rebellions and re-emergences if possible, to let the AI factions weed each other out and provide a better challenge for us. This would also let them improve their provinces more, since most buildings are destroyed when a province changes hands.

OBG, check the starting income level of the French, and see how it compares to everyone else. The English, too.
I may not have raised the land value of the Hun provinces enough. I may also give the Danes Sweden in Early and see if this gets them going.
Btw, I use Dromons a lot to pair with a heavier unit so that I don't lose every battle automatically.

I may change the personality type of the English from Trader to Expansionist and see if that helps them.

I almost set the HRE from Expansionist to Defensive for this update, since that would seem to fit their situation best. I think I'll try this next.

Oh, and the info on the Horde is very interesting, SP. I was trading emails with Dan (A_B), and I think I forgot to mention here that I had restricted plain HA's to Asia Minor and the Steppes, and also that I had added Asia Minor to the Horde Homeland.

Finally, I usually spent about half on the Early period building up my provinces and defending invasions, and maybe launching small wars of conquest if the opportunity presents itself. The AI may still build too many cheap infantry in Early, but I would be very interested on how they do beyond that, both with Early starts and later ones. Myself, I could probably deal with somewhat overloaded AI armies in the beginning if they were developing their provinces so that they produced good units later on.

What would be great is if you guys would let the game run in Automode, maybe with no human faction if possible, and view the AIs every 30 to 50 years, depending upon how long you let it run. You can turn off the Show AI moves option to help things go faster.

The info I am looking for is:
1)changes in income levels as the game develops, along with the profit margin. To be specific, note generally the margins of the strong and weak factions, and any that get close to their support limit early in the game.
2)General number of ships. Maybe count the sea powers to get an average, and note if anyone has too many or very few- you know, things out of the ordinary;
3)A rough estimate of the percentage of provinces building something at any given time. Check out one strong and one weak faction thoroughly, and spot check some of the others.
4)Army composition. The AIs seem to be programmed to build at least one offensive stack for wars, and then garrison troops for the rest of their provinces, much as I do. Note the general balance of spears, sword/axes, missiles and cavalry, both light and heavy. However, just noting whether the attack stack looked strong and balanced would be very useful.
Also, separate the garrisons from the attack stacks in your post. Garrisons of spears with a sword and/or missile unit would be about ideal.

[A_B]

Quote[/b] (WesW @ Sep. 07 2003,22:52)]Hi Dan,
... but I generally try and stay away from forcing the AI to do things that are normally optional.
I think what I will do is configure the capital provinces so that they can build their BG's immediately in each era, and see what this does.

I would not raise the rebellion setting, since the AI doesn't know how to handle it.

What would be great is if you guys would let the game run in Automode, maybe with no human faction if possible, and view the AIs every 30 to 50 years,

Wes,

I agree with your comments in theory, but my eyes are showing me things in the game which look really, really good with the changes i made to your unit_production file. The AI's armies look like ones i'd build. There are just enough vanilla spearmen and archers. The AI is using Heavy Cav (knights) substantially more. The factions are building a lot - LOT - of the new units you've added to the game.

There are too many Knight type units for factions that get pinned down early. Perhaps allowing the AI to build other units in it's core province, but making the building reqirements for the BG Cav unit so low that it can get them very early, would balance this out.

I agree with your comments on Rebellion as well, but the AI is handling the level '1' ok, since it is only in about half of the provinces. I've only seen slightly more rebellion than normal. The AI's expansion is definately slowed down though, as was mine.

I've done the auto mode 12-15 times over the last three days. Sometimes for only 50 years, sometimes well past the Mongol invasion. It seems the AI is more aggressive in Autorun (just an unscientific observation). Mostly i've been looking at army composition, not econimics. Check out the army composition with the province limitations i've added. I think the results are what you (and I) have been looking for.

PS - the building requirement for all the starting BG units is a Horsebreeder1. I made it so minimal so that if a faction has to fight over its BG territory, and it gets wasted, it is quick for the faction to get its BG units back. This only applied to the Early Era BG units. High and Late BG units building requirements remains unchanged.

[Greeny]

The Late era currently seems to have no units placed at all (except King units)

[Yelping Godzilla]

Bad news. Medieval Total War will no lunger run on my system. It loads, appears in the taskbar, then the screen turns black - no intro and the computer locks up.

I think the culprit is the latest Nvidia driver update for windows 98/ME, 45.23

But as it stands, I can no longer play Medieval. Unless I can fix the problem, my involvement with mods is obviously going to be extremely limited.

I'm trying my hardest to get the thing working though.

EEUURAAH.

[WesW]

Thanks, Greeny, I must have made a bug in the Late text.

YG, my game still loads, but I'm using XP. Just so you know its not the mod.

BTW, to everyone, would you guys mind giving some advice on the problems I found with my Mom's computer? It uses ME, which got me to thinking about it. At Apolyton, it seemed that most all the guys there worked in the computer field, so I figured that a few of you do, too.

A_B, I'll definitely keep your method in mind, but I want to see what everyone thinks of the new priority settings before doing anything that drastic. You know, the AI doesn't really need many heavy cav units for the first 50 yrs or so, imo, so what I am aiming for is to have them with strong, well-balanced units by that time, say 1150 if you want to run some tests.