mfberg, that tactic just outcheesed every tactic that I ever thought up before.
that would make the target faction broke beyond belief but also you rich beyond belief.
they have to ransom him.
your fun might only be spoiled when an heir gets born so the king gets killed and you get delayed by an iteration.
Thats exactly what I did. Now with 500000+ in the bank and an income of >20000/yr its time to chastise the French who think they can bleed my troops with their damn crusades passing through my lands.Originally Posted by [b
E Tenebris Lux
Just one old soldiers opinion.
We need MP games without the oversimplifications required for 'good' AI.
Oops, must take care of this. Thanks for the reminder Mouzafphaerre.Quote[/b] (Mouzafphaerre @ April 19 2004,16:53)]-
BUMP
Shouldn't this one go to the Guides board?
_
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Your last statement is an interesting tactic. To wipe out a navy by taking down the faction. Of course, this is predicated on having a large number of higher valor assassins and being able to reach all of a faction's descendants. It definitely may be an alternative strategy as having assassins doesn't require support costs as ships do. The training, perhaps on your own peasants, does require some time and some scared peasants, but the peasants can be sacked or assassins can practice on each other.
Generally, I find that when I attack other navies, whether I retreat my ships (or not) the other faction remains at war (of course there are also no land borders shared as well). Because of this, I attack sparingly unless I can afford the possible loss of trade.
Yes I did this the other day against the Italians. They were the dominant power, my major trade partner, and had a big navy. Plus, they were beating me for GA points. If I started a war, my income would plummet - so instead I had the royal line assassinated. *Poof* their ships disapeared, GA's reset to 0, and I could still trade with the rebels. Job done.
"We are not the Duke of Sung." - Mao Zedong
well, syria assasins are almost a given provided you crusade.
those 5* slice up the italian kings good.
I personally use that tactic only on italians and sicilians due to their relatively low level kings/princes vs. the byz who are a naval threat with many more stars.
Great thread Thanks for all the thoughts, folks, and katank for turning me on to it...
One thing I haven't seen mentioned re: economics, is taxation versus police armies. I did some playing around and had somebody on ezboard confirm, that only warm bodies count toward keeping a province loyal. That is to say, 100 peasants is exactly as good as 100 royal knights, for keeping the peace. Considering the amount of money that can be gained by jacking up the taxes in most provinces (each tax level may well give another 100/turn in productive provinces), vs. the cost of a peasant unit (37/turn), it makes good economic sense to keep peasants around simply for crowd control. It also gives you something to make with those sucky provinces early in the game, while keeping the rabble down if you expand quickly. Finally, rebellions can be real expensive if they turn nasty - but if you are generally keeping peasants around and provinces nice and loyal, you not only reduce the chance of rebellion, but you will probably have some peasants nearby that you can grab, if you do goof up and find a province about to rebel. Like in those nasty inner-continent provinces, or if your real armies are stretched thin.
One concept that I've not tested or heard of anyone testing, is the extent to which having excess police armies in a newly-conquered province, causes it to become more loyal, faster. In other words, can you slam 10 peasants on it and then walk away after a few turns, with it highly loyal, or is it more cost-effective (vs. the cost of the peasants) to let it slowly limp up to high loyalty over time?
Change of topic...
Cutepuppy, are you still around? Re: your post in this thread on the equation for farm income,
I took detailed data on 45 provinces in my current game. Your farm income equation is close, but not quite a cigar, for me. The best match is +0.5% off (none are below +0.5%) and half the 45 computed values are within +2%, but a third of them are +12% or more, with the worst being +16%. This is with dividing my computed value (using your equation) by my actual in-game farm income. I've double-checked very closely to make sure I got everything right, including e.g. taxes and governor vices and virtues. Any ideas on what may be off? Is it possible for as yet unrevealed v&vs to be affecting it? Or anything else like, how close/presence of the governor?
And, to clarify: My king has 6 acumen, so that should be a 1.12 modifier... but he's also a Steward (+10% to agri), so the king should be 1.22 overall, right? His v&vs aren't also taken at a fifth, like his acumen, are they? If I take the Steward 10% at a fifth (which makes 1.14 overall), I'm off by -6% to +8%, which could conceivably be due to lots of rounding errors, but I doubt it... it is nicer that it's centered on the right value on average though.
TIA -- Mike
A post on the first page of this thread by Doug-Thompson says that once a gov or ruler gets the steward virtue, the +farm income is permanent, even if he dies. In your tests, perhaps an ex-gov had the steward virtue so his +farm bonus is invisible.
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore
Hiya Motorhead, are you the same Motorhead as on ezboard? Anyway, thanks for pointing that out - I hadn't thought of that. Looking closely at what Doug-T wrote, he sometimes says ruler in general, and other times king specifically, but never specifically says that governors carry the benefit past death. It would solve the 'problem' of my regions that are 12-16% over, though; there seems to be a definite group of them. Would anyone mind confirming whether governors too carry death benefits?
I have never tested it, but I don't think so. It doesn't make sense. Would you feel more loyal just because your new ruler has left a large army in your back garden for a few years?
More likely you would be so fed up with troops looting, stealing and urinating against your garden fence that you'd be ready for revolt. But this would make the loyalty calculation needlessly complex and I doubt the programmers cared to add it.
Rather I would like to know if the tax rate, besides its direct effect on loyalty, influence the rate at which newly conquered people accept your rule.
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I'd like to see a better trade network for the landlocked provinces. As it is now they earn 1 income while coastal provinces earn 1 income for every trading partner. It seems to me that a network of trading posts should do the same thing.
Perhaps there has been a Mod?
E Tenebris Lux
Just one old soldiers opinion.
We need MP games without the oversimplifications required for 'good' AI.
Hi Mike, I received your e-mail, so I will try to answer your question.
I have to admit, that when I wanted to determine the influence of the king's acumen, I only took the king's acumen into account. I did it by comparing the basic farm income (multiplied with 0.52) with the farm income represented in game, without having appointed a governor for that province. (a problem with only 1 variable is much easier to solve)
I did this for all the provinces occupied by one of the playable factions, and only in 1087 (starting year).
By dividing the in-game income by the basic income I got the king's acumen factor. None of them was exactly 1+0.02*A (A being the king's acumen), but that's probably due to the fact that only whole numbers are used (123.65 becomes 124 in game), but these rounding errors should only play a minor role.
If a king has 6 acumen and steward, I think the multiplier should be 1.232 (1.12+10% = 1.12+0.112 = 1.232).
Maybe the small deviations (
With regard to return on investment and other economic factors, I have to say that IMO its irrelevant to this game.
Why ignore RoI? Because at some point in the game (assuming domination here rather than GA) you arent going to have anyone to trade with. Thus you need every penny you can muster from your farms and mines in order to keep a steady income so that you can support any kind of an army at all in the endgame.
What you have to do, is build EVERY money making improvement in EVERY province you own, regardless of how long it is going to take to 'break even'. In addition, always ensure that your governors of your provinces have at least 4 acumen (the only exception is if the governorship gives command stars, in which case giving it to a good general obviously takes priority).
Think of it as investing for your old age.
Once you get past the initial stages of the game, and you have some good trading provinces + a dominating ship network, you should have more money rolling in than you can possibly spend. So you can afford to build every money upgrade. And even if the RoI is only 1%, the game lasts a LOT longer than 100 years.
The only point at which RoI starts to become a factor is in the endgame, once you get to the point where you think its all going to be over in 20 years, then there is no point in building any upgrades which wont pay off in that timescale - but by then youve won the game anyway.
I have to agree with Davey, build every money making building you can. At some point you will lose your trading partners and will need to be self reliant. One year you're pulling in 15K florins a year and the next you have a 35K deficit. It doesn't take long to chew up that 500K warchest.
Also, I'm a big believer in the happy buildings. They don't generate income but they do allow you to reduce the size of the local garrison, reducing maintenance cost, without creating a revolution.
More good points
Thanks for taking the time to give details, cutepuppy... you're right, I didn't try the king's stewardship as a multiplier, I just added it... multiplicaton makes sense, so I took a look at it. But, since my results were already on the high side (+0.5% to +16%, calculated divided by actual), making the king's modifier be 1.232 instead of 1.14 only caused my results to be slightly more wrong on the high side (+1.5% to +17%). I rather like the sound of motorhead and Doug-T's idea, that there might be hidden steward v&vs... it would especially explain this shelf of high values... in my original results (king=1.14), half the values were +.5% to +2%, then there's a few up to +5%... then, bam, the worst third is a shelf of values from +12% to +16%. It's much like an extra 10% is being thrown in... and then there's some other minor rounding factors or something going on that make it otherwise be from 0 up to about +5% high.
Ludens - clearly, extra armies increase the loyalty. Thus they don't cause more rebellion per se. But whether or not they affect the rate at which loyalty changes, I dunno. You will notice that if you use auto-tax, it tends to stay at about 25 to 30% loyalty, above what it would need to make the next tax bracket... and then slowly over time, it eventually does make it to the next tax bracket. I've always wondered if this was the programmers saying don't tax them too hard, or their loyalty won't go up over time. If true, then it's possible that having more troops than needed, might increase how quickly they go loyal. But, who knows... and it's a fairly moot point, hehe.
Davey and Seth - while it's true that in the long scheme there's no such thing as ROI - and that's a good point, thanks for that - I'd argue that in the short term, there is such a thing. Specifically, in the early turns of a game, when you can't build everything you'd want to (and in fact might be so short of cash that you have to leave some building queues idle). In this case, you want to be choosing the best ROI buildings... which generally means, your best farms, since that early in the game, there probably hasn't been time to make a trade network yet. (Unless maybe you're playing a Late game or maybe High game and already have dockyards ready to crank, in some regions.)
Seth, that's a good point about the happy buildings... you can take everything I said about 'peasants as police armies' and apply it to happy buildings, with the big difference being of course, that buildings don't keep having a maintenance fee - so they're even better, on that score. Conversely though, peasants are mobile and can be moved on to newly-conquered provinces as needed (which it will take a while to make happy buildings in), so I guess there's a place for both concepts.
In case anybody cares, I did a VERY simple analysis of the concept of how many sea trading regions returns the most money, before you start cutting into how many there are to trade to. In this very simple scenario (all your coast regions can trade, all trade makes the same amount of money, no trade goods block each other, etc. etc.), the maximum point is when you own half of all the available coast provinces. A graph of income/turn vs. number of provinces owned, looks like an upside down bowl... e.g. the income from your second province is almost double what it is with one province, and slowly plateuas, then past the midway point it does the reverse... down to zero if you own all coastal provinces, of course. In the real game, of course, a big reality check vs. this simple example, is that, to whatever extent possible, it makes a lot more sense to try to own coast provinces that have trade goods, and not own ones that don't (so they can buy from you, without worry about being 'blocked' because they sell the same thing you want to sell). But that's a real big 'if', especially seeing as how you'll never get any money from some enemy's provinces (trade goods or not), if you got in a war with him to get a juicy trade province, and now not a one of his coastal provinces will ever trade with you again, lol. (assuming you can't move away and make him go neutral, if you've just attacked into some provinces he borders on.)
FWIW I'm trying to make an applet that computes the optimal real-game income (trade, agri, mines, the works) based on specific province data (agriculture base value, trade goods, mines), but it's a bit of work so don't hold your breath.
it's true, if you want maximum profits from trade income, you have to own some ports, buth ai have to own the majority. for example, it's hard to get points for controlling the north sea trade if you own all ports in the area
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well, I think for the start, you really have to prioritize.
RoI is very important for early years.
once trade is fully connected, then it's worth while to build all the farming and all the happiness buildings you can.
I like all my people to be 200 loyalty while being set on highest taxes.
However, contrary to davey, my games almost never last longer than 100 years.
average length is 80-90 years.
Heh, well... i like to take my time (that and i'm crap).
Agree that when cash is tight in the early years you have to make every penny count. Shame that trade networks are so overpowering and often so one-sided. Its difficult to resist dominating the seas even though its cheesy...
No argument there. I was just saying that it is unlikely that the people of a newly conquered province will accept you sooner (that is: the 'newly conquered' penalty disappears faster) if you bring a large army with you.
I am sorry, but I do not quite follow what you are saying here. Could you explain what you mean with tax bracket?
I guess this is the difference between loyality and happiness. If you tax them to high, their hapiness won't rise. You can compensate for that by increasing their loyality with large armies. But this is just guessing, I don't really know if there's a difference between hapiness and loyality in the game.
That sounds very useful. Please tell me when it is ready.
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I think he means Very Low/Low/Normal/High/Very High
Well, i know it can be important to make sure that your garrison armies have a loyal general, because otherwise you will get a higher chance of civil war. Dunno if the loyalty of the garrison force affects the hapiness/loyalty of the civilian population though...
I usually have 4 units of peasants as a garisson force (keeping them in the castle for tidyness). Its always worth checking through the stack for the unit with the highest loyalty, dragging that unit out of the stack, then dropping it back in, as the most recent unit dropped in a stck becomes its general, assuming all other things (stars, titles, royalty etc) are equal.
the best way to gain money is not through trade,this is extremely volatile. Although of course you may well want to have a trade network to finance the farming and mining processes necessary to make a 'stable' economy. I'm not saying don't trade, on the contrary it is very necessary. Also disband those damnable peasants, they're damn expensive to keep around. However as a medmod player new to the org i dont have this problemSO rock on
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I am ROCKIN' ONah. You do likewise
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Peasants are the cheapest unit out there, and theyre 100 men in size, so they are perfect for garrison troops.
try slav warriors which are equal support and better fighters.
even better is celtic warriors who are a real gem at 22 support.
Wow, never realised that celtic warriors were that cheap. Nice one. Looking at the spreadsheets, it seems that Bonnachts are the same price. Heh, but everyone gets access to bog standard peasants, so theyre still a good choice for most people at the beginning of the game.
Nubian spearmen are also just as cheap as peasants/slavs, and might be better at holding a line in castle defences (if the ai ever bothered to instigate them)
There are also other units which come in smaller unit sizes, so you need more units, but are just as cheap to maintain per man, so it works to out the same maintenance cost overall.
So, heres a list of viable garrison troops based on their cheapness.
#men / unit = cost
100 Peasants/Muslim Peasants = 37
100 Viking Thralls = 37
100 Bonnachts = 22 (Very Cheap)
100 Nubian Spearmen = 37
100 Celtic Warriors = 25 (Very Cheap)
60 Golden Horde Warriors = 22
60 Irish Dartmen = 22
60 Crossbows / Pav Crossbows = 22
60 Arbalesters / Pav Arbs = 22
60 Arquebusiers = 22
60 Woodsmen = 22
60 Gallowglasses = 22
60 Highland clansmen = 22
60 Kerns = 22
60 Slav Javelin Men = 22
my name is simple if you understand cantonese gregoshi
Thanks for the welcome by the way Gregoshi it's better than any i've had anywhere else
long live the ORG
I knew there was a good story - maybe not an exciting one, but a good family story none-the-less. Thanks for sharing it.
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@Daveybaby
- just a small clarification since you included a viking era only unit (bonnachts). Support costs vary between viking era and medieval campaigns. Peasants are only 12 support in viking, and i know several other dual campaign units also have differing support costs.
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore
Doh
I assumed that since vikings_unit_prod.xls lists that unit as being available in ALL periods, it was available in the main medieval campaign.
Okay, so: can someone tell me where in vikings_unit_prod.xls (or in any other file) it tells you whether a unit is available in the Viking Campaign, the main campaign E/H/L, or both?
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