ZX MiniMod Beta Released!

[Zarax]

Another minor update, just improved cavalry dismounting criteria for Muslim and Byz units as well as improved some dismounted units choice.
Currently testing the Eggys, they looks fine so far.

[Zarax]

Ok, i was away for a week so i couldn't work on the mod...
Did anyone had a chance to try it?

[Pericles]

Zarax:

My suggestion would be to edit your first post on a continuing basis to keep us up-to-date on the changes you make to your mod:

Add the date (in BOLD) plus the version number (in bold).

For example:

DATE: ####

Mod Version ####

Changes to date:

1
2
3

After a while this thread is going to get long, and it will be hard to read through to find what changes you have made to your mod.

Thanks :)

[Zarax]

Will do, thank you :-)

[Pericles]

Thanks for your work on this mod.

I am currently knee-deep in playing two campaigns so far, so I haven't had a chance to play your mod.

I would suggest you continue to tweak it on your own, and when I get a chance I'll download and play it. The changes you have made so far sound quite interesting.

What I also like is the fact that your mod is a very small download.

One suggestion that I find works:

In the default VI Campaign the first farm improvement (land clearing) takes 16 years and 1200 florins to complete. I think 16 years is just too long to tie up the AI.

I changed this myself to: 2 years and 1000 florins. The other farm improvements progress 4, 6, and 8 years.

As a general rule to help the AI, I think buildings should NOT take longer to build than 10 years (maybe even 8 years) in all the default campaigns.

Cheers!

[Zarax]

Well, i'm experimenting with the building times to help the AI to tech up a bit, and i'm leaning towards a small speed boost for non farming upgrades.

What i still haven't managed to ackieve is to improve the AI economic management...
Despite all my attempts instead of investing money into creating an infrastructure the AI tends to squander almost every florin in units, and crappy ones more often than not, only to go into deep red once they cannot sustain the army anymore...

That said, there are some improvements so far, thanks to the improved roster focus you actually see the AI trying to build good units when it gets the chance, one of the happiest moments of modding development i ever had was when i happened to fight against gothic units in late... There weren't many but still it's much better than fighting vanilla spears in 1350...

[Pericles]

Personally, I wouldn't waste a lot of time trying to improve the AI's economic situation. That may be a road to frustration.

I have found a very simple way to make the AI a formidable opponent both militarily and economically:

Have the player choose a faction, and then instruct the player on how to give ALL other factions more florins (from 10,000 to 2,000,000) for the difficulty setting they have selected.

So whether the player is playing a default campaign, your mod, or any other mod, doing the above will give the player a great game.

With lots of florins the AI can squander money on units AND have lots of money left over to build improvements. This also means that the AI doesn't have to worry about building a trading system; only the player has to worry about it.

I would concentrate on:

* getting rid of crappy units (like peasants) and have better units available for the AI

* make ALL factions playable

* include some unique units

I have also found by switching Faction Behaviours around, I can get some factions to be more aggressive.

They are found here:

C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos:

For VI Campaign:

For example, in the default VI Campaign, the Northumbrians are set as CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE. I often change this to CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST. With this behaviour, the Northumbrians will attack me and build ships. As the Scots, I am having quite a war against them and the Saxons in my current VI Campaign (I also gave all other factions 200,000 florins).

//Faction Behaviour
//This is the default behaviour of each
//faction, various in game factor will
//alter it. Rebel are always set to REBEL
//these are the available options
//also note that these are related to the
//product spreadsheet
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_ISOLATIONIST
//CATHOLIC_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
//ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
//ORTHODOX_STAGNANT
//ORTHODOX_DEFENSIVE
//MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
//MUSLIM_PEACEFUL
//MUSLIM_DEVOUT
//POVERTY_STRICKEN
//DESPERATE_DEFENCE
//CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT
//POPE
//BARBARIAN_RAIDER
//REBELS
//========================================

SetBehaviour:: FN_01 CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST // Irish
SetBehaviour:: FN_02 CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST // Mercians
SetBehaviour:: FN_03 CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE // Northumbrians
SetBehaviour:: FN_04 CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER // Picts
SetBehaviour:: FN_05 CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST // Saxons
SetBehaviour:: FN_06 CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER // Scots
SetBehaviour:: FN_07 BARBARIAN_RAIDER // Vikings
SetBehaviour:: FN_08 CATHOLIC_TRADER // Welsh