Anybody fancy co-operating in a balancing mini-mod for vanilla?

[Barbarossa82]

Update:
Since there seems to be some confusion over whether a new patch is forthcoming (1.7 and 1.8 are missing from the series), I have decided to temporarily suspend work on the balancing mod until we find out what is going on. In particular if chariots are rebalanced in auto-calc to be more realistic, there may be less need for some of the changes.

Anyway, playing with some of the early changes mentioned above implemented, I have experienced particular success, with the following observed (obviously this is only from one campaign, so consider this provisional).

GAUL: Far more effective. Resisted Julii attacks in northern Italy, temporarily owned Illyria and Dalmatia, resisted Spanish onslaught and even took Osca. It's taken the Julii and Brutii combined until about 209 BC to really chew them up.

GERMANIA: Powerful expansion eastwards, as far as Themiskyra. Have consolidated central Europe, at 209BC they are still a major power at war with Rome.

BRITAIN: Developed perfectly according to my hopes. Without a navy they basically sat on Great Britain until around 220 BC, although they swiftly developed a powerful military which would be a real challenge to any invader. After this period they hopped across to Hibernia and took it, and in approximately 210 BC they landed in Gaul and began an attack, too late to provoke an early Gaulish collapse but just in time to ignite a war with the Julii which hopefully will eventually see the Julii take Britain. Perfect!

Stand by for the results of my attempts to boost Carthage and the Seleucids.

EDIT: Dates should be BC, not AD. *smacks forehead*

[Byzantine Emperor]

I think this is a great idea. Do you need any help at all?

Also I would love to do any testing for this. Egypt has been overpowered far too much so far...

[Barbarossa82]

Thanks for your interest, Byzantine Emperor. As mentioned above, at the moment I am waiting to see if a 1.7 patch is forthcoming for the vanilla imperial campaign, in case it does something about the chariot auto-resolve problem.

If you would really like to help then it would be great to have someone run some test campaigns and experiment with different faction start-up situations. Carthage might be a good place for us to start, since it's not concerned with the chariot issue. The problem with giving advantages to Carthage, as with the Seleucids, is that we don't want to ruin the fun of playing as that faction in a single-player campaign. If we were to just, say, start them off with 50,000 denarii each then it would certainly help the AI but there would be no challenge for a human playing as that faction.

My thoughts were that we could do any or all of the following:
* Provide them with a more powerful navy - this would be historically accurate as well since Carthage were very much a maritime power. Positioned near Sicily, it might help prevent the flow of Romen reinforcements onto the island.
* Slightly increased starting finances
* Transferring one or both of the eastern "bloc" of Spanish provinces to Carthage. This would also be historically sustainable (at least the southern one of the two) and would give the faction a bit of a boost. Spain always turn out to be rampantly powerful in my games so I don't think it would hurt them to be nerfed slightly anyway.
* Changing the personality of the faction from "balanced smith" to something else. Not sure what though as I'm not very experienced with what the different effects of these are.

So if you wanted to experiment with any different combinations of those and give a brief report of results to be compared with mine, that would be great help, thanks!

[Byzantine Emperor]

Yep I will try some of your ideas, see how they work. Carthage could really do with a medium infantry unit, or iberian infantry boosted. Have you compared them to Hastati? Same upkeep and worse in flexibility and hugely worse in defence.

[Woad Warrior]

You could give Carthage Scutarii, theres a skin for them.

Also, I find Dacia does far too well, often defeats Germans along withe Britannia, then expands north and rolls over Scythians. Perhaps you could reduce attack of Falxmen and reduce starting money and armies.

[Byzantine Emperor]

I am experiencing no real change to Carthage using those ideas.

[Barbarossa82]

I have come up with a package of changes to Carthage which may have some effect, although I haven't had an opportunity to test them yet, and I'd appreciate anybody's help in doing so. Basically, what I have done so far is:

* Increase starting funds from 7k to 10k
* Moved Admiral Timasion's fleet to northeast Sicily, made him a four-star admiral and given him four biremes
* Made the other Carthaginian admiral a two-star admiral
* Moved the spy on Sicily to near Messana in order to avoid early Carthage-Sicily war
* Taken Carthago Nova from Spain and given it to Carthage, moving the Spanish general and his army to just south of the Pyrenees
* Added Carthaginian army to Carthago Nova - town militia, Iberian Infantry, cavalry and peltasts
* Slightly reinforced faction leader's army on Sicily with one unit of Iberians and one unit of peltasts
* Increased Iberian Infantry defensive skill from 2 to 4

Thanks for letting me know that there's a Carthaginian Scutarii skin already in the game, Woad Warrior. Adding them to the Carthaginian unit roster is a real consideration, although a unit card would have to be created which would somewhat increase the scope of this mod. Still, I'm not averse to doing that.
As regards Dacia, I find that when the Britons are not a factor on the continent in early game, the Germans tend to forestall Dacian expansion. However, that's my impression from only one campaign so I'd like to test some more and if Dacia are still running amok a bit I might well take the Falxmen down a peg or too.