Epic battles through lower unit pricing?

**Scorpion** · 01-20-2005, 00:34

A thread on the single-player forum gave me a new idea. The poster told us that he´d managed to create a truly epic total war with epic battles simply by patiently "feeding" his rival factions with money.

While I don´t like the idea of doing this myself, it gave me a modding idea - why not either reduce the costs of everything in the game to a fraction of the original, or somehow increase the amount of money in the game by a great deal?

Wouldn´t this inevitably have the same effects - truly epic battles, numerous armies etc...?

Have any of you tried and tested this?

**Duke John** · 01-20-2005, 08:48

The AI is set to build and train. In M:TW it was the same except that it wasn't too good on the finance side so lots of factions were dirt poor. However when giving the AI plenty of money (either by upgrading province income or lowering unit costs) it can do what it does best; spending dinari. So yes, it will certainly help, but you should take notice of the increased stress on population levels. Settlements shouldn't run dry.

**Epistolary Richard** · 01-20-2005, 13:24

This approach should certainly increase the number of units in battles, but it won't make the individual battles more significant. Now, that may not be your goal, but what some players find annoying is the large numbers of small captain-led detachments that wander around the map so instead of having one or two epic engagements settle a war (which is more in line with what happened historically) they have to fight ten or twenty smaller engagements against the AI-spawned captains.

So reducing unit cost would, most likely, just mean I'm fighting a dozen battles with twice the number of men against a twenty stack captains instead of ten stack captains - which, to me personally, would be even more exhausting.

Indeed, reducing unit cost would increase the number of captain led armies, as each character can only lead another 19 units. The more units there are, the fewer character-led armies there can be.

But, if you just want more, bigger battles then its a valid approach.

**Scorpion** · 01-20-2005, 15:58

Yes, I realize that there will be more of the captain-led armies...however, I´ve modded away the inherent attack bonuses that the characters´ command chevrons give in the vanilla game, and instead made Command increase the morale of troops.

I always found it very silly how a weak unit could defeat an elite unit in a head-on engagement just because it happens to be in an army with a superb leader....

Anyhow, this means that all those battles against non-family members will actually mean something - in the normal game it´s always a pushover to kick those captain-led armies out with your precious command 9 generals...

**caesar44** · 01-20-2005, 20:15

i must agree with the basic idea that historicaly conflicts were decided with one or 2 major battles and i hope that the modders should pay atention to that fact
here are some examples from roman period :
pharsallus
philippi
actium
pydna
canae to zama
magnesia
ets

**Scorpion** · 01-20-2005, 20:31

Well....does anyone have any ideas on how to make the AI concentrate its forces to reduce the number of smaller engagements...?

**Duke John** · 01-22-2005, 10:18

I read at TWCenter about changing a setting descr_strat when declaring a faction:

faction romans_julii, comfortable caesar

The last entry caesar in this case (and for other factions there are others) should be changed to genghis

I have little time, so I'll just assume you will know what to do. Let us know if it works.

Cheers,
Duke John

**Tchan the Man** · 01-23-2005, 19:12

Originally Posted by caesar44

i must agree with the basic idea that historicaly conflicts were decided with one or 2 major battles and i hope that the modders should pay atention to that fact
here are some examples from roman period :
pharsallus
philippi
actium
pydna
canae to zama
magnesia
ets

Yes, how would you make battles more influential on the strategy side of the game??
Maybe the way is to have more resources tied into the battle, ie much more units/much bigger armies......
Just a thought, but when playing MTW a while ago i had a truly Massive battle, it lasted for a couple of hours,, and it involved masses of reinforcements on all sides.
That was a decisive battle and the most enjoyable one ive had yet. All we need is the AI to mass troops together to form 'big bastard' armies rather than lots of average sized and wastefull deployments of troops. Ie, Armenia contantly sends 500 or so troops against my town. If it only waited a little longer (5 turns, or so) it could send an army that would take my city (hatra) and severely disrupt my empires plans.

**Darius** · 01-26-2005, 15:45

Yes, I was the one who made that post about the feeding the others income for a challenge. The thing is though that if you give the AI a whole lot of money in the beginning, they will most likely drive themselves bankrupt unless they IMMEDIATELY begin large scale conquests. I tried this in MTW once, and several factions that normally provided a challenge, like the Egyptians when I played the English, would actually field these massive armies, I mean just numbering in the thousands, and all of them compromised of the most fearsome peasants you ever did see...well, no, they just had a lot of weapon/armor upgrades...didnt help much

Hopefully the AI in RTW is a bit better, but I have noticed that they have a tendency to build the most of whatever happens to be the best unit they can get at the moment, for example Macedon produces absolute hordes of Light Lancers from Larissa because it has only a stable. So instead of producing a militia barracks at least and waiting to get some levy pikemen they just pump out horsemen in numbers the Huns would appreciate.

**Frans Ubberdork** · 01-26-2005, 18:28

Hopefully the AI in RTW is a bit better, but I have noticed that they have a tendency to build the most of whatever happens to be the best unit they can get at the moment, for example Macedon produces absolute hordes of Light Lancers from Larissa because it has only a stable. So instead of producing a militia barracks at least and waiting to get some levy pikemen they just pump out horsemen in numbers the Huns would appreciate

I wonder if you place what they recruit on a certain order, if they will pick the last unit in the line.
Which if that is the case, you could somewhat control what they build.