auto manage

[gingergenius]

One thing I liked about original MTW were the options to auto-manage. If I didn't want to build troops, but still wanted to auto-build buildings and such, then I could tell the game to auto build buildings, but not troops. I could even tell it to train agents without training troops.

MTW 2 is very irritating in this sense. Turns take long enough as it is, what with it taking 5mins for the other factions to take their turns anyway, so I can't be bothered to go round all my cities (currently 65) constructiong buildings etc. So I click auto-manage, with the option to spend rather than save. However, while I am happy with the construction of buildings, every few turns everywhere trains new, needless troops that aren't even good. Most of my cities have Generals, and most have large enough garrisons as it is. So why do new armies appear outside, with 3 trebuchets, 3 demi cavalry, 3 dismounted feudal knights, or 3 heavy bill militia??

I never train siege weapons anyway, I think they're a waste of time, but thats another story. Why train dismounted feudal knights when you can train Armoured Swordsmen? Whjy train anything? All I do with these new troops is disband them, since I really don't need them and they cost money each turn. But I am wasting money because of the recruitment costs. The AI doesn't even train agents, which might in some cases be more useful than hordes of demi-cavalry. Nothing has changed since I told it to save rather than spend.

Is there a way to adjust how the auto-manage spends money?? Otherwise this seems like a case of CA going backwards.

[Moah]

You can auto-manage taxes, troops and buildings seperately (in faction scroll and tick boxes in settlement scroll respectively I think.)

Not that I ever do. I'm far too anal to trust anything to AI, even when it takes me an hour to do 1 turn as I obsesively check each and every city of 73.....

[Forward Observer]

If one checks either the auto-manage everything or the auto-manage taxes only box on the main scroll, it applies to your entire empire.

However, to manage building and troops separately, one has to go to each city/fort scroll and check or uncheck the appropriate boxes.

If you have the auto-manage everything box checked in the main scroll, when you go to each city, you will see three boxes checked.

auto-manage (uncheck this and the other two boxes disappear)
construction
recruitment

Simply uncheck what you don't want to A.I. to do.

If you do not have auto-manage everything in the main menu checked, I think you can still use the individual management boxes for the city/fort to auto-manage a particular settlement.

Like gingergenius, I don't trust the A.I. to build the appropriate structures or troops so I don't use these features although I have considered letting the A.I. manage taxes.

This only problem with that is that the A.I. will probably not let public order fall below 100% so one may not get the maximum taxes possible.

As you may know, you can usually let public order fall within the 80 to 95% range to get an extra tax level for a few turns without any real serious repercussions.

Cheers

[rosscoliosis]

Actually, with auto-manage taxes I've seen it drop the public order into the blue with the very high taxes setting still on, even in the red without it on the lowest setting. This happens in RTW as well. So I'm not quite sure how it decides to set the tax rates, haha.
But I as well am too anal to let the AI build structures or troops. Unfortunately, later in my campaigns this can sometimes lead to becoming frustrated with how long each turns takes without any action, and I'll end up not playing at all anymore for several days to several weeks, ha. (until the need to feed the addiction kicks in again, of course)

[Foz]

For taxes, the automanaged taxes squeeze every last penny possible out of your peons. It'll run PO right down to the wire keeping things at highest tax level, and only bring it down on the turn you go red and would revolt. It's a really great option. Granted you can build up dread points doing this which may not be what everyone wants, but if you're economic-minded and don't mind the potential dread, then it's a very safe setting to use.

Never let the AI manage recruitment. It spends and spends and spends, and makes tons of low quality troops that you will never want to use. A nifty tip though is that if you enable auto-management without building or recruiting ticked, it manages taxes plus automatically retrains any eligible units in the settlement. I use this in castles where units will be auto-upgraded whenever an experience or armorer building completes, and it's handy if you drop units there to be retrained they automatically que up.

As for the massive micromanagement... I don't see what the big deal is. Right-click the "city" button on the UI, and you get a big ole list of all your cities and castles, each with icons that tell you whether it's constructing anything, recruiting anything, and what the current PO level and income are. I normally pop this up when the turn starts and hunt down any cities not building something. A right-click pops up their settlement scroll, and I pick something to build. On to the next. It doesn't take too long usually, especially since as the game progresses the build times go up. No more than 1/4 of the empire is usually idle ATM, as build times are usually in the 4-6 range. For recruitment, it's usually pretty easy to remember the few places I intend to do that, and jump to them to recruit units. One helpful possibility is to add something or change the settlement name so it grabs your attention. You can describe what you intend to produce there, or just put a *, or whatever will help you notice the place.

One thing I do wish, though, is that the city list would be able to be sorted by build status. It's sortable by everything else that I don't want, but build status that's usually the reason I'm in there, we don't have. It'd be great to just have all the cities I need to build in bubble up to the top.

[KHPike]

I don't trust the AI with micromanagement. It does a terrible job at that. I only leave it to manage my taxes. However I've noted that sometimes the AI lowers tax rates to low even though my loyalty on v high is 150%. My guess is that the AI is trying to promote population growth, which I don't really want as my population will grow too fast. I'd prefer to turn off automatic taxation in this scenario but it's not practical if I have a large empire to manage.

[Foz]

I don't trust the AI with micromanagement. It does a terrible job at that. I only leave it to manage my taxes. However I've noted that sometimes the AI lowers tax rates to low even though my loyalty on v high is 150%. My guess is that the AI is trying to promote population growth, which I don't really want as my population will grow too fast. I'd prefer to turn off automatic taxation in this scenario but it's not practical if I have a large empire to manage.

I agree on the practicality of the matter. I recently noticed that the AI put my taxes to low when they had been much higher, too. Interestingly enough, it did so when my empire hit a huge economic boom - in a few turns I had almost no big buildings to build, and recruit as I may I still ended up many tens of thousands in the black. In that situation, it seems like a very good idea to lower taxes, as the last thing you want is exorbitant sums of money sitting around, and that extra "resource" is probably better spent making population grow faster (and consequently farming some chivalry for governors). I actually think this is smart design on the dev's part, as there's no way I could use all that money that would be coming in from higher taxes - and from looking at the traits file pretty much, I also think there's a goal in mind too. I'm guessing this happens to actively avoid firing the "corruption" triggers.

;------------------------------------------
Trigger corruption1
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and Treasury > 50000

    Affects Corrupt  1  Chance  1 
    Affects Aesthetic  1  Chance  1 
    Affects ExpensiveTastes  1  Chance  1 
    Affects Epicurean  1  Chance  1 
    Affects Embezzler  1  Chance  1

That's just the first one, it gets worse from there at the 100,000 and 150,000 treasury levels. All of those listed traits are NASTY things for governors to have, the kind of thing that makes them worthless. So if you consider that the game might be lowering taxes to help you avoid making so much surplus money that you destroy your governors, the auto tax manager starts to look smarter and smarter.

When this happened to you KHPike, were you making tons of money? I'm looking for some corroboration here, since I'm quite sure I was starting many turns with 40k or more at the time, and recall a few times trying desperately to spend to get under 50k, lol. I'm sure I failed once, which may in fact be what triggered the tax policy shift, I'm not certain.

[KHPike]

I won't say I was making lots. I had about 23 provinces, several of them still in the process of building up economic structures. I was churning out on the average 25k per turn.

But very late in the game I was producing about 80k per turn, which I'd usually deplete rapidly that turn building stuff. In this case I noted that tax levels in the smaller settlements decreases to low. Hence I believe that the AI tries to boost your population in the short run for long term tax benefits.

I haven't tried to observe what happens when I build farms though; perhaps the growth produced could offset this?

Your point on corruption prevention is valid...but the other triggers make it almost inevitable to get a corrupt governor when you place in a general.

[gingergenius]

sorted, thanks for all your help.

Every city now has had its garrison disbanded, and has six militia units (for free upkeep)

All my castles have a standing army of 1 general, 3 armoured swordsmen, 3 levy spearmen, 6 retinue longbowmen, and 7 English knights. Nottingham has sherwood archers instead of longbowmen, and some have knights hospitaller instead of english knights.

all sorted, and it retrains automatically as well (!! )

[gingergenius]

sorted, thanks for all your help.

Every city now has had its garrison disbanded, and has six militia units (for free upkeep)

All my castles have a standing army of 1 general, 3 armoured swordsmen, 3 levy spearmen, 6 retinue longbowmen, and 7 English knights. Nottingham has sherwood archers instead of longbowmen, and some have knights hospitaller instead of english knights.

all sorted, and it retrains automatically as well