Timscale/build time balance mod?

[Dooz]

Any mod that balances build times for 0.50 or 1.00 timescale? I believe there was some discussion about that fact that things would progress too fast even though according to the years per turn they shouldn't. I want to remain in Early Medieval period with Early units for a long time before moving on to High and so on, and since buildings constructed are what determine the progression of eras, can't really prevent it even though years are going by slower. So anyhoo, any mod that say doubles build times? If not, how could I go about doing this myself?

[Agapeus]

hehe good point,
with help from some examples i adjusted the "base farm" with a really low pop growth, the result: a really low growth with lower income and of course with a balanced planing of what & when i build .... the time period of building remains the same only the resources r low thus u have to wait and struggle with the tech at hand for quite some time. for example i start with -1 in castles end 0 in town at normal tax ; if changed to very high then: baff -1 there as well. got my first stone wall in london after 45 turns (years) thus its ok - i figure the next upgrade will be like in turn 90 or 100. and also i did replace some events ex gunpowder event to match the 1 y/t mod.
hope it helps


ps these "smile lists"r really cool

[Agapeus]

hehe good point,
with help from some examples i adjusted the "base farm" with a really low pop growth, the result: a really low growth with lower income and of course with a balanced planing of what & when i build .... the time period of building remains the same only the resources r low thus u have to wait and struggle with the tech at hand for quite some time. for example i start with -1 in castles end 0 in town at normal tax ; if changed to very high then: baff -1 there as well. got my first stone wall in london after 45 turns (years) thus its ok - i figure the next upgrade will be like in turn 90 or 100. and also i did replace some events ex gunpowder event to match the 1 y/t mod.
hope it helps


ps these "smile lists"r really cool

[Dooz]

Sounds good, do you think you could upload your text file that has the necessary changes to population levels for me and others who are interested to use? Also, I heard you don't have to mess with events and such because they happen according to year, not turns played, so even if you change the time per year timescale, they'll happen when they're supposed to. What exactly did you replace as far as gunpowder events and all that?

[Agapeus]

I already posted this to another threat thus ill just copy & paste ; to make thinks clear , i found all this info in other different mod sides. here it goes:
______________________________________________________________

Hi,

locate the file of ur M2TW.
open:

My Computer / c: / program files / SEGA / Medieval II Total War / data / world / maps / campain / costum / e3_campain_demo / descr_regions.

the first u will see is:

North_America
Miccosukee
england
Native_Rebels
212 198 206
tobacco, coal, america
5
2
religions { catholic 0 orthodox 0 islam 0 pagan 95 heretic 5 }
Inverness_Province

where 2 is base farm value. down at other regions on the same page the value might be higher.

change it in 1 or 0 at all regions. just delete 2 and tipe 1 or 0.

it will look this way:

North_America
Miccosukee
england
Native_Rebels
212 198 206
tobacco, coal, america
5
0
religions { catholic 0 orthodox 0 islam 0 pagan 95 heretic 5 }
Inverness_Province

do it at all regions with care (sory if im being annoying ). it will take awhile.

then "save as" on your desktop or a "new file"

after that you open:
My Computer / c: / program files / SEGA / Medieval II Total War / data / world / maps / campain / imperial campain.

jsut drag with your mouse the "descr_regions" over there.

now the pop growth rate will be on zero or even negative, forcing you and the AI to concentrate on building farms to aceive a decent pop growths.

however this will slow down the developement in general thus ajusting the time in game is cool and gets u much more turn for gameplay.
if you r interested:
open:
My Computer / c: / program files / SEGA / Medieval II Total War / data / world / maps / campain / imperial campain / descr_strat.

the begining is like:

; Custom campaign script generated by Romans Campaign Map Editor

campaign imperial_campaign
playable
england
france
hre
spain
venice
end
unlockable
sicily
milan
scotland
byzantium
russia
moors
turks
egypt
denmark
portugal
poland
hungary
end
nonplayable
papal_states
aztecs
mongols
timurids
slave
end


start_date 1080 summer
end_date 1530 winter
timescale 2.00

change as following:

start_date 1080 summer
end_date 1630 winter
timescale 1.00

meaning that the game will end in 1630 giving you a more 100 years, and that in place of 2 years / turn you will get 1 year / turn a cool 550 tunrs game
_______________________________________________________________

[Dooz]

Thanks a lot buddy! If my patience runs out waiting for the patch to be released, I'll start up a brand spankin' new campaing with these changes. Good stuff.


-edit-
Just did the editing, I subracted all the existing numbers by 3 to keep everything even in relation to the vanilla settings, just lower. This means there are still places with pretty high growth rate, but everything as a whole is down. I'm gonna experiment a bit and see what the balance is like, and if it's still too high, might need to go down another notch or two.


-edit2-
Well, now I went back and took everything down one more value. That's taking 4 numbers off the original values, figured that pretty much halves all the originals and effectively doubles the time it takes for growth rate to reach vanilla. Should probably be a pretty good balance.

[bdtj1815]

I have been testing this and it works very well. You should reduce the number to approx. 1/4 of the default. (ie. one turn used to be 2 years and is now only 6 months) I think it is important to adjust income as well or else factions have far too much money. At present I believe the only way to do this is by reducing the factions "king's purse" income. I have tested this , again reducing by 1/4 and although it might need some balancing seems to work well. It is surprising how much of a factions income, certainly in the early stages of the game, comes from the "king's purse". Probably put in to give factions some sort of income before better money making buidings are constructed. I hope to release a small mod including this, and a few other good bits, soon.

[Dooz]

Hey, I actually did a little work regarding this and some other aspects and it works well I believe. My current campaign is much more interesting with these settings. I didn't reduce the king's purse though because I found the economy to be pretty tight as it is with the reduced population, as you get less money with less people being taxed. Here's the thread with the files if your interested. Seems similar to what you were planning, might want to check it out .

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73286

[Lord Condormanius]

I like the 0.50 timescale much better as well. The Characters age correctly and the game seems to have a much better feel to it. The downside that I have found is that the AI wants to upgrade its cities and castles first. In many cases, before any other building.

The balance seesm to be there though. I am on turn 124. With this timescale it is the winter of 1142 (it would be 1390 at the 2.00 timescale). Only Portugal and Milan have been destroyed. Nobody really has the upper hand and boundaries keep shifting.

I like the idea of trying to slow down the pop growth, to fix this. I don't find money is a problem, I think it is scaled down with the timescale change (not sure). If there is a way to adjust the pop requirements (raise them) for city/castle upgrades, that might work as well.

[Re Berengario I]

Lowering the farm level helps a bit with the 0.5 timescale but it's not the all solver.

Commerce incomes are still calculated on a 2 yrs period and more than them also the governor effects.

Out of example my Scot King alone provided a 2% growth to Edimburgh every turn (alas half a year with 0.5 timescale).

Same effects are given by "recreative" and "law & order" buildings.

So it's really a hit and miss until the unpacker (will it ever exist?) will come and we could mod the hell out of the above values.

[ihategamespy]

So then we cant mod build times for buildings and units until the patch, im i understanding this correctly?

[Dooz]

That's correct. It shouldn't be too long now for the patch in any case, it's been right around two weeks since the "it's about two weeks away" announcement. Hoping to see that patch readme aaanyday now.

[Bob the Insane]

The population control itself might be enough for now... I mean the lower population means lower income anyway and in my 0.5 timescale game as the English I was not exactly awash with cash enven though I had some Huge cities)...

Of course part of the reason I had cash problems was because of the size of the cities and the fact that I was building the 10,000+ fl improvements (plus war is expensive)...

I guess we are all waiting of the unpacker...

Do we think it will be as simple as increasing the build times by x4 and reducing bonuses and penalties by a factor of four across the board to balance things??

[Re Berengario I]

Do we think it will be as simple as increasing the build times by x4 and reducing bonuses and penalties by a factor of four across the board to balance things??

It depends if we could mod the population growth factor directly or otherway we'll have to mod both the incomes and the maintenance expenses.

Still there are so many things to mod and a lot of others that really need a patch to be adressed (unability for the AI to plan naval invasions and so forth).

For example I'll surely mod the duration of the sieges, not just by a plan 4 but probably more if it's needed, maybe creating a new building which will represent the province fortifications (castles, keeps etc) because it's overly silly that I'm able to storm a huge regions filled with castles in 6 months.

[Bob the Insane]

But surely a 4 turn siege translating into 2 years fits better than 8 years! Outside of Troy in Homer's work and the 10 year siege, where else was ever besieged for so long??

Personally that is one of the things that fits better at the 0.5 timescale...

[Re Berengario I]

But surely a 4 turn siege translating into 2 years fits better than 8 years! Outside of Troy in Homer's work and the 10 year siege, where else was ever besieged for so long??

Personally that is one of the things that fits better at the 0.5 timescale...

LOL You see, the problem lies on the visual look of the gameplay which hides the strategical counterpart.

Sieging the castle in a province in MTW2 includes ALL the sieges of every castle, keep and fortifications of that region which, in reality, can be counted on a scale of hundreds in same cases (if you're european you just have to look around where you live to catch the concept usually).

Of course a singular siege wouldn't last so long, but to keep under your control most of a region (and as huge as regions are in MTW2) meant a warfare of years if not decades.

So don't be fooled by the visual gameplay of you against a simple wall of bricks, it wasn't so easy and so fast and it should be reflected in a gameplay not arcade oriented (no puns to arcade games, they're cool, but they're not strategical).

Plus most of the castles, cities and fortress usually were conquered by starving them to death. And yes this also when cannons were used as fortresses were really hard to be blasted open anyway and still they were so hard till the modern wars (Maginot line in WWII weren't blasted by Germans but enveloped with the troops in let starved there).