V1.21 Rebuild-ProblemFixer BETA testing thread

[vonsch]

I don't think that is a swap error, Carl, with the Nubes and Desert archers. The two are just too similar to be very useful. Bad design choice on CA's part in my opinion. But you're noted other cases of this sort of thing. It's fine as is. Some will prefer one to the other, but I expect most will use desert archers. They were one step up from peasant in earlier games as I recall.

The better Egyptian archers ride horsies.

Here are some thoughts after 20 rounds.

First thing I noticed was, like I said, the opportunity to recruit more agents within the same year. I quickly became the Popes ally, along with Milan, HRE and Venice. After 8 turns of alliance with Venice they betrayed me lol.. They blocked the port of Naples;( So I Ctrl + L to make a test , before I ended the turn, I ordered my fleet to guard right outside the port (not "inside") and the result was that they didn't attack. I send a diplomat to offer Map - Map information, they refused, but gave me 1.7k in return to maintain good relasions My reputation was Very realibie at this point btw.

My first act was to secure Cagliari, Jesus Christ their walls was effective you might say. I outnumbered them 2:1 and lost more than half my army hehe, for a second I thought there was archers upon the walls Adds much more challenge than before, excellent.

I'm very pleased that merchants now make more money, for once I have afford to actually use navies on a high scale, thank goodness for beeing able to bribe once more, free upkeep space in cities should as you said be nerfed a little bit. Enjoying your work

I think the lower upkeep on navies is enough to make them more affordable. The big problem with them otherwise is KEEPING them, not training them. They add up in regular outlay fast.

You experience with Venice is interesting and encouraging. Both parts. First that Venice is still Venice. Second that there are player actions that can influence whether they attack or not, even in the case of... Venice. It sounds like the AI can't even see ships in port. It certainly doesn't consider them a threat as fleets (though the probably factor into the overall military strength ratio in AI decisions on attack or hold off).

I have yet to be attacked except by Crusade in my tests. But I am not a neighbor of Venice! (They tend to rate well on the power meter early on, so aren't as intimidated as Turkey is.)

I find 2:1 on the power meter, not troop numbers, to be a sweet spot so far. If you can manage that in a seige, the result is usually a victory. Not sure how the walls factor in. And I haven't stormed any walls. I dislike battlescreen seige play on the whole. Someone should test it though. Carl wants to know just how much we hate his new towers!

(I love them! I can't wait to see the Mongols attack them!)

Heh, that may prove a separate balance issue. I'm concerned that they will throw some other things out of whack like the horde threat.

[Carl]

Heh, that may prove a separate balance issue. I'm concerned that they will throw some other things out of whack like the horde threat.

Thats one reason I want to see a lot of use of them, I want to know if i need to increase horde size to compensate.

I find 2:1 on the power meter, not troop numbers, to be a sweet spot so far. If you can manage that in a siege, the result is usually a victory. Not sure how the walls factor in. And I haven't stormed any walls. I dislike battlescreen siege play on the whole. Someone should test it though. Carl wants to know just how much we hate his new towers!

ohhh, yes, I want you to utterly hate them!!!

I think the lower upkeep on navies is enough to make them more affordable. The big problem with them otherwise is KEEPING them, not training them. They add up in regular outlay fast.

I agree, thats why they got lowered, so that you can actually afford to keep some ships around, I'm hoping it will encourage more AI navies, that hopefully means more blockades and more trade drops and overall makes navies actually mean something.

p.s. bear in mind that in vanilla (and my modified AI), the AI is set to attack nothing but rebels for the first 20 turns, it has a trigger forcing it to not start any wars, so it can only attack rebels bar Crusades/Jihads.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

I was hoping you would to that, it would really be a huge increase and make the game much more realistic and better. Anyway, I'll give it couple of days, while taking notes, to see how things work out and come back with a longer post. Also, just ask if there is anything specific.

p.s. bear in mind that in vanilla (and my modified AI), the AI is set to attack nothing but rebels for the first 20 turns, it has a trigger forcing it to not start any wars, so it can only attack rebels bar Crusades/Jihads.

Why did they attack me then?

[Carl]

Why did they attack me then?

The rules only affect land forces I think, Navies are diffrent i'm afraid.

Also, just ask if there is anything specific.

Could you try to keep me updated on what your making of walls and their power.

[chickenhawk]

Quick Idea on the AI siege problem.

The game has the ability to limit some agents to a certain # per building as I understand it. Could you apply that to the siege engines so that the AI is limited outright? Might irritate players a little but most players just build enough to have a couple of decent siege trains and quit anyway. Using it on the battle field is an exploit at this tech level anyway.

[vonsch]

Very odd, about 6 imams all got monks the same turn standing in the Adana region. The region passed 90% islam, so maybe the trigger is tied to that. Just seems odd they all got one. Must be a 100% trigger.

Aha! Checked the trigger:

4 turns in a region
70% own religion
shift less than 7%
100% chance

Okay, need to let my imams stand around a bit longer for that one.
There's another that wants you to be in a region less than 3 turns with a large shift. That's a trait though. So I often do the border hop with a lot at once to get that one.
I think it needs a shift of at least 8%. Looks like they are designed to mutually exclude unless you work at them.

[Bob the Insane]

Horror at Cordoba...

From a desire to stir things up a little I decide to use my new pet Pope to call a crusade. I have made friends with the Egyptians and there is still a full stack of Venetian troops hanging around the middle east to setting the target there could be a problem. I settle for Cordoba, the Moors have some full stacks sitting around and our Spainish and Portugease brothers could use the help. So the crusade is called, lots of nations respond (but neither of the Iberian factions do?). I find my self with a spare stack of troops after the conquests of Bern and Metz, a decent General merc Spearmen and Crossbows, so cavalry and a couple of catapult units, so I decide to join in and send them on their way bolstered by further Crusader Spearmen.

Now I have been learning the new ways of siege assaults (mostly through failing dismally). Love way all the towers keep firing, but it would be nice if they stopped when captured. As it stands they only way to stop them firing is to destroy them or push the enemy troop really far back from the walls.

Now my Crusade is the first to reach Moorish lands and north of Cordoba in a narrow pass between mountains and a river the Moors have a fort with a full stack of garrison troops. We attack immediately and make good use of the catapults to first knock down the gate and then expend their ammunition as flaming missiles into the fort and the clustered together defenders. This is followed by a full assault and a and the slaughter of the garrison. My surviving troops and grouped into full units and the remaining partial units are dismissed to by replaced by further Crusader Kinights and Spearmen. This is a great boost to morale, a full stack of enemy troops in a fort so easily dispatched.

We then approach Cordoba itself and lay siege. The city is defened by archers and spearmen and a single catapult unit. In addition a second army ws camped outside the wall consisting of further archers, spearmen, cavalry and 5 more catapuly units. With hindsight we should have attacked the exterior unit to draw out the cities garrision. Well we had the catapults so I elected to attack immediately. I had learned from a previuos assault that placing the catacpult s too close would result in them being destoryed almost instantly by the cities towers so set the at the maximum range. It started well and the gates fell in short order. I then targeted the first of the towers over the gates with th intenion of destroying both be assaulting through the gates and straight to the main square where we could force the defender ininto melee combat and steal away their advantage in missile troops A bold plan, but one that should succeed if the men kept their nerve under the intention missile fire.

While this was taking place my general and 4 units of Crusader Knights moved around the city at a safe distance to intercept the reinforcements. The archers and spears moved too quickly but we caught the catapultes in the ones and slaugtered them to a man.

The first setback came with the new toughness of the defenses. Only one of the two towers fell (and to the last volley from the catapults too). One tower intact plus the archers on the walls made approaching the city hazardous (wonder if the Shield bug fix will make this slightly less hazardous for units with shields to walk towards the walls) but the army made it there mostly intact and chaged into the gate that was being held by Moorish spearmen and cavalry. My men whre killing them, pushing them back, bit not quickly enogh and the archer and tower fire was causing heavy casualties. Then the gate defenders boken and my force charged into the city. Ahead lay the square, the defenders where now mostly archers and the routed rementants of the spears and cavalry that had tried to hold the gates. We only needed to reach the square and we stood a chance. then halfway up the street leading to the square and thudd and and a raoring noise, growing closer. The sole catapult unit left was setup in the square and was firing flaming missiles driectly down the street at my men! The first shoot landed cleanly on my general, the leader of the crusade!! This combined with the constant rain of arrows was too much for the men and panic set in, strading as it always does from the front to the rear and soon all where running back for the gate. The gate now defended by the arcers that had come down from the walls. The very few men who escaled through this force where ten cut down by arrows from the gate tower. All that was left was to withdraw the catacpults units that had loked on helplessly from there original firing position. I paid the ransoms for those that still lived and the merge force withdrew to my nearest ally, Portugal where I disbanded the survivors, a merge 400 of the oringinal 1200 men, rather than forcing them into the long journey home.

Lessons learned used in Dejon:

Attacking the city of Dejon a few years later showed the lessons that had been learned from Cordoba. The attacking force consisyed of two stacks, a primary stack of the general and some dismounted imperial knight, a few crossbowmenand most importanly 8 catapult units plus two units of those new fangled Trebuchets and a small secondary stack with my cavalry (Imperial Knights). First the towers where destroyed along a long section of wall with the gates in the middle. Then the gates where reduced and finally the remaining ammuntion was used to "encourage" the defending crossbowmen to abandon the walls. The Crossbowmen where withdraw (as they where mains used to screen the siege engines and the cavalry brough on. The small but professional force of 4 units of Dismounted Imperial Knights and the general entered the city and in short order fought there way ot the main square and kill the defender to a man...

[Carl]

I understand the aim, I'm just arguing some of what you're doing appears to be counterproductive due to the way the AI works. More money for the AI Okay, just don't go overboard and rip the guts out of the economic war. I don't think you have or will, based on what I've seen. Bottomless purses remove the economic aspects in the greater picture (things like take the rich regions or exterminate their populations then pull out become meaningless as strategic choices.) Having the AI factions always have a LITTLE money so they can hire replacements even with few regions as base isn't bad. That's what I saw you doing in the current scripts.

But the better rebels aren't THAT significant a block to the player. Now that I know what to expect, and how big a hammer I need to smash them, my losses are minimal again. Just takes me about 5 more turns to get rolling. And I don't sack, so while I'm not a real blitzer test case, I, a non-blitzer, can still blitz the rebels faster than the AI can by a mile. So, that's not the answer. Better to let the AI deal with weaker rebels.

We need another way to force early choices on the player.

Can't cut the starting forces because that just hurts the AI as much or more.

Removing sacking as a major money earner early does help. But maybe the starting cash needs to drop a bunch. Try it at 5k or 4k. That means the player can hire fewer mercs too, and is forced do balance out things more carefully, and develop an economy (I hope). With your diplo changes, good behavior should buy the player time to do that, but the AI will be rolling on those rebs with its extra money. The player can still get some, but not as many, thus things may balance better.

That's my reaction to what I'm experiencing. Blitzing light will always be doable. But stronger rebs will always delay the AI more and longer. But you can give the player less starting cash, and the AI has its nice little pocket adjuster to keep SOME cash flow there. The player does not. But the player can EARN that. Even careful blitzing can work to a degree with the destruction of buildings, though that's a sort of scortched earth policy that can backfire badly. Which is good.

I figured I'd leave this till I was more awake, so sorry for taking so log to get back.

First, How are the AI changes going?

The good news is that the AI is being a lot more aggressive against the rebels, and is attacking with larger stacks, I've seen plenty of territory conquered by the AI, unfortunately their are several factions that haven't got going and only a few got going before turn 10, most where up and running by 20 and all the non-frozen where running by 30.

The issue is that being so high quality is now causing the rebels to suffer low losses themselves whilst inflicting big losses on the enemy, that makes them pick up experience fast, I've seen more than one unit of 20 woodsmen at 1 gold chevron, and saw one 10 strong with 3 gold chevrons.

The AI is also not withdrawing from sallies by the rebels that perhaps it should be withdrawing from, (and would if it was attacking a player controlled force of lower upgrade but more numbers (i.e. same power)). Strength calculator errors again i think.

On to the quoted text:

First, I'm most defiantly not trying to kill the economic war, but you knew that already. The main ideas are to allow the AI to recruit more troops early on to make up for the player preserving his troops better, and also to make up for the fact that the AI puts economy second to military buildings, as a result it takes many more turns before the AI has a similar economy to the player, and they've typically wasted money on military stuff first. I'm hoping the money script will deal with that issue.

I'm also hoping it will help kill the AI going bankrupt, and freezing up, although I have seen this happen the Rus and Egypt.

Whilst I understand (and agree based on what i saw late last night) that buffed rebels are currently hurting the AI more than a canny player, dropping them down to their old levels probably won't work. Most Blitzers don't build many/any building early on, everything goes into troops, they also empty their garrisons, so as a result this gives most factions 2 or 3 armies, each capable of taking a rebel province, and enough money to buy enough mercs to take a few more after that. A good blitzer can easily grab every rebel province in a matter of turns, the only limitation is the time it takes to build siege equipment and travel times, a good blitzer can better a province a turn.

Now base money reductions and sack reductions do slow this down somewhat, since fewer troops can be recruited and the blitzer has to start building up his economy sooner. However it doesn't change the fact that most factions start with enough troops to take 2 or 3 rebel provinces simultaneously on the 3rd or 4th turn at the latest, and can still probably pull together enough troops out of the leftovers to grab another couple of provinces before they run out of steam for their conquest. Thats still enough to deprive the surrounding AI factions of most of their rebel provinces. Add to that the player now being so big and theirs a good chance the player beating the AI factions is just a matter of time.

Now I WILL put together a Descr_Strat file with default rebels for people to try separately, but I'd like to try and find some way of making the original idea work.

You say it only slows you down by about 5 turns, in some ways I'd prefer more, but at the same time, 5 turns is enough IF i can get the AI working. The basic idea was to buff the rebels to prevent the players starting armies capturing more than a couple early on whilst the AI got buffs that would mean it was no slower than before.

Now both your's and my own tests have shown it does slow the AI down, so i could do with ideas to get round this without debuffing rebels too much. I have a few of my own that I'll go into in a moment, but we really need the AI to be better at grabbing rebels that the player. The player is always going to be able to concentrate force better than the AI and make better use of what it's got, (that was why I hoped the money script would help, i hoped the extra forces would counterbalance the worse concentration and usage).

2 Obvious ideas present themselves to me.

First up would be to reduce the rebel power to below default levels in what i term the safe provinces. Namely those that at the start of the game have only one faction within easy striking range, so the chances are neither the player nor the AI is ever likely to take them before the faction they are "safe" for.

Examples include Inverness for Scotland, Oslo and Stockholm for Denmark, Heleski, Moscow, and 2 others directly east of Moscow for Russia, Tbilisi, Trebizond, and Baghdad for Turks, Jedda and Dongola for Egypt, and Timbuktu, and Arguin for Moors. Their might be a few others I've missed too. These could help get some of the AI factions off the ground, it doesn't help Spain, Portugal, France, HRE, England, Poland, Hungary, Venice, Milan, Sicily, or Byzantine, but it's not a bad starting point if you ask me.

2. Remove the Upgrades from rebels and replace them with larger numbers in the provinces that ARE buffed, these should be easier to wear down as they won't be Superior to the AI one on one, as a result they'll gain experience slower and lose more when they win, it should hopefully speed the AI up rather handily.

In spite of that i think the AI is still going to struggle and I could do with ideas.

The next version is coming along nicely ATM, late tonight/sometime tomorrow depending on ideas for the above looks most likely.

Horror at Cordoba...

From a desire to stir things up a little I decide to use my new pet Pope to call a crusade. I have made friends with the Egyptians and there is still a full stack of Venetian troops hanging around the middle east to setting the target there could be a problem. I settle for Cordoba, the Moors have some full stacks sitting around and our Spainish and Portugease brothers could use the help. So the crusade is called, lots of nations respond (but neither of the Iberian factions do?). I find my self with a spare stack of troops after the conquests of Bern and Metz, a decent General merc Spearmen and Crossbows, so cavalry and a couple of catapult units, so I decide to join in and send them on their way bolstered by further Crusader Spearmen.

Now I have been learning the new ways of siege assaults (mostly through failing dismally). Love way all the towers keep firing, but it would be nice if they stopped when captured. As it stands they only way to stop them firing is to destroy them or push the enemy troop really far back from the walls.

Now my Crusade is the first to reach Moorish lands and north of Cordoba in a narrow pass between mountains and a river the Moors have a fort with a full stack of garrison troops. We attack immediately and make good use of the catapults to first knock down the gate and then expend their ammunition as flaming missiles into the fort and the clustered together defenders. This is followed by a full assault and a and the slaughter of the garrison. My surviving troops and grouped into full units and the remaining partial units are dismissed to by replaced by further Crusader Kinights and Spearmen. This is a great boost to morale, a full stack of enemy troops in a fort so easily dispatched.

We then approach Cordoba itself and lay siege. The city is defened by archers and spearmen and a single catapult unit. In addition a second army ws camped outside the wall consisting of further archers, spearmen, cavalry and 5 more catapuly units. With hindsight we should have attacked the exterior unit to draw out the cities garrision. Well we had the catapults so I elected to attack immediately. I had learned from a previuos assault that placing the catacpult s too close would result in them being destoryed almost instantly by the cities towers so set the at the maximum range. It started well and the gates fell in short order. I then targeted the first of the towers over the gates with th intenion of destroying both be assaulting through the gates and straight to the main square where we could force the defender ininto melee combat and steal away their advantage in missile troops A bold plan, but one that should succeed if the men kept their nerve under the intention missile fire.

While this was taking place my general and 4 units of Crusader Knights moved around the city at a safe distance to intercept the reinforcements. The archers and spears moved too quickly but we caught the catapultes in the ones and slaugtered them to a man.

The first setback came with the new toughness of the defenses. Only one of the two towers fell (and to the last volley from the catapults too). One tower intact plus the archers on the walls made approaching the city hazardous (wonder if the Shield bug fix will make this slightly less hazardous for units with shields to walk towards the walls) but the army made it there mostly intact and chaged into the gate that was being held by Moorish spearmen and cavalry. My men whre killing them, pushing them back, bit not quickly enogh and the archer and tower fire was causing heavy casualties. Then the gate defenders boken and my force charged into the city. Ahead lay the square, the defenders where now mostly archers and the routed rementants of the spears and cavalry that had tried to hold the gates. We only needed to reach the square and we stood a chance. then halfway up the street leading to the square and thudd and and a raoring noise, growing closer. The sole catapult unit left was setup in the square and was firing flaming missiles driectly down the street at my men! The first shoot landed cleanly on my general, the leader of the crusade!! This combined with the constant rain of arrows was too much for the men and panic set in, strading as it always does from the front to the rear and soon all where running back for the gate. The gate now defended by the arcers that had come down from the walls. The very few men who escaled through this force where ten cut down by arrows from the gate tower. All that was left was to withdraw the catacpults units that had loked on helplessly from there original firing position. I paid the ransoms for those that still lived and the merge force withdrew to my nearest ally, Portugal where I disbanded the survivors, a merge 400 of the oringinal 1200 men, rather than forcing them into the long journey home.

Lessons learned used in Dejon:

Attacking the city of Dejon a few years later showed the lessons that had been learned from Cordoba. The attacking force consisyed of two stacks, a primary stack of the general and some dismounted imperial knight, a few crossbowmenand most importanly 8 catapult units plus two units of those new fangled Trebuchets and a small secondary stack with my cavalry (Imperial Knights). First the towers where destroyed along a long section of wall with the gates in the middle. Then the gates where reduced and finally the remaining ammuntion was used to "encourage" the defending crossbowmen to abandon the walls. The Crossbowmen where withdraw (as they where mains used to screen the siege engines and the cavalry brough on. The small but professional force of 4 units of Dismounted Imperial Knights and the general entered the city and in short order fought there way ot the main square and kill the defender to a man...

Thanks for that, sounds like you got a big shock at Cordoba. he lowered Morale and heavy tower fire does tend to make high experience and a good general more important, if you lose him it also tends to hit the army so hard that if it's already beaten up and badly damaged it will turn and run, if it's still fresh and doing well and the general dying is pure bad luck then your probably going to be fine, but if things are close it will probably tip things into a chain rout till Dismounted units become common.

Would you say seiges are still okay though, or are they too difficult now?

[Erik Bloodaxe]

After playing as Venice for 55 turns now, I think I have noticed a few interesting events. First of all, assassins seem to be a little bugged. Several times when I have tried to kill someone and the mission have failed, the assassin have still gained Trait Increase, This assassin have improved his suberfuge skills thanks to a successful murder, + 4 to agent’s skill, Example.
Merchants, IMO they seem ATM too overpowered, I noticed that one of my merchants who I had placed on the silk right outside Constantinople, earned 2230 florins each year, and he was level 4. When he is at level 10, he will be able to finance 1-2 full stacks all by him self. If you played 15 more merchants around the world I fear this will simply produce too much money, one of the main issues you are trying to fix is that you want the AI to produce more advanced armies right? It’s just that this will make it too easy for the player as well I think at this moment.

On my Byzantine campaign, (patch 1.1) I had a merchant there myself who was level 7-8, and he earned 120 each year, didn’t kept him there long though, sent him to Africa. The thing about merchants is that they earn more money when they are in distant lands right? If so then I understand why.
Okay, walls. The pope was so kind to call a crusade to Tunis, I was like Yes, and this will be fun. But when I arrived, the only garrison inside the city was the Moorish Sultan, so I besieged the city quite disappointing.. thinking this would be a piece of cake too. At this time Tunis was a normal Castle btw. Okay, so their Sultan stood at the city plaza, which wasn’t in the middle of the city, not a single tower was “equipped” (no flags) therefore I rolled forward every siege equipment I had, ladders, ram and towers. Everything arrived without taking any looses (still had that nubish rebel camp surprise in the back of my head). I placed my poorest infantry right behind the gate and ordered my crossbow men to run up to the walls (I always to this) The Sultan began moving, when he was just about EXACTLY in the middle of the castle, POFF, POFF, POFF, flags everywhere!!! NOOO, so many Italian lives were lost and shot down ;( I’ll tell you, the King back home in Sicily became so furious that he ordered to kill the man who had commanded his armies there in the first place, that’s right, the pope is in heavn’.

It’s clearly obvious that units now a much, much, much bigger radius to equip towers. However, as a defender, towers are now my best friends. The bastards Venice, who just simply don’t like PEACE, have attacked me 1000 times already; of course, such scum like these couldn’t be surprised when they got excommunicated by MY pope, HAH! So they besieged Durazzo with 750 men (9 groups of Armoured Sergeants, 3 catapult united, and 1 Venetian heavy infantry unit) All I had was some crappy Italian militia, + some Italian spear militia, and 4 unites of Balkan archers. I lost 42 men, while their losses were 705. Only 10 Venetian soldiers ended their life BEHIND my walls. Yes this makes it much harder to capture cities and castles, but it sure as hell makes it much easier to defend.

The way I see it, is that the AI isn’t simply good enough to win a siege even with low defences (4 archers) + WALLS of course=) This might be a one time coincidence.
Perhaps only increasing walls and gates durability to withstand more beating might be a good idea, and NOT the HP of towers but still keep their new kill rate?

*Sicily!!! not Venice

[Bob the Insane]

Siege assaults too Hard?

No, you just have to be properly equiped and attack in a measured manner. No more rushing the walls with a ram and a couple of ladders...

Siege assaults too hard for the AI?

Maybe, at least it uses the catapults and such appropriately in destroying the gate towers and such first... But of course the new toughness of the towers and walls means it is unlike to have sufficient artillery to do the job... In this instance the bug where the attack AI ignores the gates being unlocked by a spy is a boon, because even with the gates unlocked the active towers would still cut an attacking force to bits especially if it is held up in the gate house by defencders... It will be interesting to see what the Official 1.2 Patch does in this regard...

I really approve of the larger radius for troops activating towers though, an excellent idea especially as the AI tended to underdefend.

Looking at the Wall and Tower HPs abstractly, for the player the newer toughness is only reguires an additional investment in siege rquipment to deal will and once you have knocked down 4 towers and smashed open the gate the result is the same whether you did it with 4 catapults or 10... In many ways this penalizes the AI more as it is unlikely to bring 10 siege units. It may be worth while to fire up a few test single battles defending cities and castle and see how the AI does... I mean we have already seen the AI having difficulty taking settlements from other AI factions on the map... It may be worth droping the HP of towers and maybe even walls to give the AI a chance again. If you retain the high fire output from the towers it still forces the player to destroy the towers and such first (the AI tried to do this anyway if it has the equipment), you are not removing the requirement for siege equipment, you just altering how much siege equipment you require the attacker to bring. Perhaps adjusting the cost of siege equipment upward to compensate?

One point I noted above was that the defending towers kept fiing for the defenders even whent the "captured" message was received. Did it not previuosly start firing for the attackers how captured it? Or was that only in RTW?? If it did it indicates you modded it and if you did it would be good if the towers feel quiet when captured by the attackers.

[vonsch]

2. Remove the Upgrades from rebels and replace them with larger numbers in the provinces that ARE buffed, these should be easier to wear down as they won't be Superior to the AI one on one, as a result they'll gain experience slower and lose more when they win, it should hopefully speed the AI up rather handily.

Based on the way the Ai seems to work, I think this is better. It may help it calculate the odds better too, not just help with the experience issue.

In my Egypt game Brussels and Flanders are silly. Tackling those pikemen is probably beyond the AI for another 50 turns. It's about turn 55 now.

I just sent off a ship to take Sardinia and Corsica too. The locals are probably sending too few troops in their ships. I sent almost a full stack of old garrison troops, missile heavy. I'm looking for more steppes holdouts now too. It's actually easier for me net than vanilla in the sense that I can keep expanding into those pockets without having a war with factions that is more challenging than cherry-picking rebs. I'm sort of sticking with this game to see if I can hold out for the Mongols.

As far as your aim, there are two sorts of blitzes, one that I thought was at issue, and the more normal war-start blitz that I think should not be attempted to be disallowed. The former is the game blitz, where sacking and mercs fuel one long blitz to a win before the AI can really do much. That should be prevented, I think. Or at least made very hard to achieve.

The second is more modeled on typical war starting suprise attacks. The attacker plans and execute a fast series of attacks at limited objectives. A recent example is the taking of Kuwait by Iraq. They moved fast enough that although relative to those who would eventually respond, they overwhelmed the local defenses easily. That's not a perfect idea, but it provides some perspective, I think. And earlier one would be WWII. Both Japan and Germany made extensive gains, but could not support them. They were rolled back and crushed.

That second model is what I think is more what we want possible. Let the player blitz a few regions close. Don't worry so much about those. The aim IS for the player to win, but to have to work for the win. And for it not to be a foregone conclusion. That's where stopping the player cold isn't good. Let the player make some gains, but have the overall resistance stiffen and become more challenging. I think that diplomact might be able to do this. To win the player needs a lot of land, but that land will become locked up in alliances. If a region is attack, that faction's allies should also jump in. And that act of aggression should make losing allies likely (unless they can be convinced to attack too). There can be a balancing act in alliances such that the player has the support to act, but has to weigh it carefully to avoid all out world war that might impede him from getting the land needed in time.

I think the time scale may be better at the original, based on what I've seen... but, again, maybe Egypt is overpowered due to that economy. It's okay if it is. I don't have to play Egypt. And it makes Egypt a possible powerhouse opponent.

But it feels to me like I'm too developed for this stage. When gunpowder arrives, I won't be building anything but accessory production. I'll be done in my main cities. They are at max size now and I'm building the last tier production in some early cities. The way to slow this is slow pop growth (you're working on that) and slow the money supply (growth will affect that also, so maybe just growth needs cutting). I am not forced to choose between unit production and building upgrades. The looming money sink for Egypt is the hordes... and Crusades.

I'm concerned that the new walls are overpowered in the last two respects. You adjusted a lot of factors there. Range, area of activation range, power, wall and gate strength, rate of fire. ROF is the one I think is appropriate. Maybe bump the range of activation up to double what it was, or 150%. But having more free upkeep slots should also do that job. If nothing else peasants can be trained for that role.If they are too large, as the report above suggests, there can be no real capturing of sections of the city, as should happen from a realism (we do want some FEEL of realism) angle. If I clear the front wall, those front wall towers should stop firing on my troops, at least. If the activation range is large, I suspect the AI is retaining them, not acknowledging that they are captured. I'm guessing the activator needs to be routed and/or out of range for ownership transfer. If the city square is in range that may never happen.

Making cities too bloody isn't fun. You'll just get my behavior: I just autoresolve. Giving the player some breathing space once through the wall and into its interior shadow is a good thing, not a bad one. The way the Ai plays it, there's likely to be more stiff resistance at the city square. And seige gear firing down main street.

But more than the player, I am concerned the AI won't be able to handle seiges. A few player defenders, well played, will crush much larger invaders, which means the players needs far less defensively. Already the Ai is weak on rear attacks, making them harder to pull off removes a worry for the player.

And emasculates the hordes. Giving the hordes more stacks isn't a good answer. Already I get the impression there are so many it tends to tedium. Fighting through 5 stacks is wearing (on the player!), making that 15 means... I'll just play a Western faction and avoid the horde. Not an optimal result.

I think slightly stronger walls and gates is fine. Range as vanilla. Activation range maybe a LITTLE larger (150% of current), but let the additional defender slots mostly cover this. Puts more pressure on the player to garrison defensively too, though it's relatively cheap. But need to encourage the AI to garrison better too. Ideally it should use all free slots. Not sure we can make it do that. Rate of Fire needs watching. I think power should be as vanilla.

The tower weapons' power should be watched. I suspect vanilla is fine. But rate of fire should be higher, I agree. Just not sure we're at the sweet spot, and we can't tell with everything else ramped so high.

I'm concerned that the upgrading of wall defenses may not factor into the AI calc on autoresolve too. That makes autoresolving "cheaper" in casualties. While that can help the Ai on the offense, it has to also skew its calculations on what's needed to take a player region if the player plays it out on the battlefield. That makes seiges way too easy. Already a decent player will cream the AI on the battle screen with forces the AI thinks are euqal.

(I told you this balancing business is non-trivial!)

I suspect this sort of micro-tweak isn't all that useful for balance. It's more useful for developing the "realism" feel. Seiges aren't as bloody as they were historically. Addressing that is okay. But I don't think it's useful for balancing the AI against the player.

Oops, I digressed some.

Back to the original point. Maybe boosting merc cost, along with the sacking decrease and the slight money pump early (and the slight keepalive to those knocked down to near nothing) to AI factions, is all that's needed. Let the player grab the handy rebs. They are limited in number. But don't slow the AI in grabbing the ones that it can. In my Milan games, Sicily and Corsica get nabbed fast. As does Edinburgh, Stockholm, Rennes, Zaragoza, the Sahara, etc. The Byzzies are pretty agressive too. The sheer distances are a greater impediment to the player comparatively than are buffed defenders that slow the AI more than the player.

So, the player grabs 4-5 rebs and has a decent base, Ideally the rest are gone by then and coalitions are forming diplomatically (a la Civ). Now it should be riskier to attack a faction that has allies. Doing so should bring a diplo hit worldwide for aggression (though not a huge one, unless the invaded was an ally!), plus should make it likely the allies of the invaded also declare on the player. And they should be aggressive about at least defending that ally. If relations get really low among them, they should attack the player's "home." That's the ideal to me.

But not sure how much we can influence that part of the behavior.

Also, it would be ideal if some AI factions are aggressive and tackle weaker neighbors to enlarge their empires. So that they become matching powers to the player, thus real threats. That's how vanilla works, to some degree. But not seeing nearly as much of that in 1.2. It's just too hard for them to expand. That may be the effect of walls, or some brake on their aggressiveness.

Heh, just got Danish maps. Norway and Sweden are still rebel. Turn is 54.

Okay, eough pounding on this issue.

[Bob the Insane]

Actually I think the boost to the rate of fire on tower and such is good because the AI's siege strategy is to take out the four nearest towers and put holes in the wall either side of the gate as long as the the ammo holds out... that way the improvements to the towers does not hit the AI too much as long as it actually brings siege engines.

Along with the large activation radius for the towers I hink this has more of an effect on players as the attacker and stop them from doing as I was doing in the vanilla game and just use decent troops and ladders to overwhelm the sparse defenders on the walls (while pretty much ignorig towers.. Of course if the AI forgets to bring catapults and such and just builds one ladder, one tower and one ram a it often does then it is going to suffer, but fair is fair...

As long as the towers are weak enough for the AI to handle them with the sort of force it puts together then I think it wil be fine...

[Carl]

First I'll deal with sieges:

First up their are two bugs effecting sieges ATM, one is a hardcoded one from Vanilla, the second is 1.2 specific and is a result of my own mistakes in understanding the wall file.

1. The Hardcode bug is that towers don't fire at all in auto-resolve battles, this makes auto-resolving easier than fighting it out right now.

2. after reading Eric's and Bob's comments I checked the wall files and after much staring realized I'd misunderstood some lines. I thought the lines related to tower size and scaled fire rate with that. they don't they relate to unit size, this means that at any unit size above small they are firing faster than they should. They (currently) fire 2 times as fast at normal, 3 times at large, and 4 times at huge. SO typically every level above small has the tower firing twice as fast as they should.


Onto the rest of the points.

First I did most of my tests with gunpowder weapons as they where what where bothering me, they could knock even the largest wall/tower down so fast that they rendered any kind of wall defense utterly useless. Thats why the HP buff. Now a Battery of 5 Culverins can still level 5-6 towers and a wall segment with maybe some oddments of damage elsewhere, but they can no longer wipe out every tower on one side and blow 5 holes in the wall at once.

Clearly Catapults are sufficiently less powerful than cannons to make it IMBA with catapult, although i have to be honest i never intended it to be nearly mandatory to need siege artillery for anything below Huge_Stone_Walls, (probably Large_Stone_Walls too if the AI is the attacker). I also only expected multiple stacks to be near mandatory when using Ballista/Cannon Towers, (although not in the case of Ballista Towers after Gunpowder shows up).

Hmmm, just checked. Trebs have 3 times the damage of catapults, and the best gunpowder, (ignoring Monster Bombards), have 10 times a catapults damage, Culverins are 8 times.

The area of activation is defiantly too large, i was beginning to suspect as much before I sent it out for BETA. The problem is the AI Will ALWAYS deploy it's forces round the main gate even if you attack with 2 stacks and on is coming from the rear. That means you can easily have half the in range towers dark and walk half the way towards the settlement with spare stacks before they get into range. Being able to do it from the plaza wasn't the intention though.

What messed up my attempts is that units on walls seem to have an inbuilt limit on how many towers they can activate, units on the ground don't, and I was always putting units on the walls during testing having failed to spot this point.

The Hordes are awkward, and when i said more stacks, i meant adding on Armour and more Valor to the existing stacks and adding one or two extra stacks, but swapping some of the existing units in stacks for more Monster Bombards, they can still knock things down in only 4 or 5 shots. Cannon Elephants and some Rocket Elephants should see the Tirmurds through no issues if they have enough valor to avoid panicking when just one dies to a flaming cannonball, the sheer number of shots should get them by after that.

I could also help them by indirect means, (adding High Level Spies and Assassins to the Hordes, that should slow the player down when Generals and Towers are being sabotaged out of commission), or disasters too, a good earthquake over the entire holy lands the turn before they arrive followed by a series of "aftershocks" for the next 5 or 6 years to really deplete forces, would also put a stop to people building up massive Garrison in preparation and deal with them as and when, which adds to the challenge significantly.

Tower's can't be captured, it's an annoying thing they took away from RTW. So long as a unit is in range to activate them they shoot, except that the enemy can never activate them, they can just remove all the enemy units activating them.


Overall I I'd say it's a case of the early levels of walls have perhaps a few too many HP's and a bit too fast a fire rate ATM. The later walls feel fine to me, (what about you though), you need Trebs or Gunpowder to get through, and once Ballista/Cannon towers show up you need multiple stacks too. However the lower levels whilst meant to be bloody, (an attempt to slow down blitzing somewhat by forcing the player to retrain-refresh his pool of troops more), they where meant to be possible with full stacks of semi decent troops and enough towers, ladder, and rams.

I'll edit in the rest of the reply as i go along, so be patient please.


Alright, the issue with blitzing is simple. I'm pretty sure money reductions and sacking reductions could force a player to spend a few turns after taking the nearby provinces building up before moving on. I'm also pretty sure that losses in the nastier sieges will prevent continuous blitzing. The blitzer Will now have to do so in stages, Blitzing a dozen provinces, then building up again for a bit then moving on again, that way the best blitzer should struggle to blitz his way through the game in less than 120-150 turns with any luck.

The reason I'm trying to limit initial expansion is partly to slow down that process as it gets quite quick once it gets going, but also, because once the player gets more provinces than the nearby AI factions he's quite able to win the game with one hand tied behind his back at that point.

A player can make more money per province, (although the money script helps even this out now), can make more troops because he has more provinces, can concentrate his forces better, and because he is so much better than th AI can win battles with lower losses than the AI in a given situation.

For the AI to actually have a chance they've got to have more provinces, so that (in combination with the money script) they still out econ the player, so that they can, (thanks to more provinces), build bigger armies. Because they have bigger armies their worse concentration and actual fighting ability will matter less. The player (if he works hard enough and is good enough), will still win but he will, (as chikenhawk put it), have to claw for every last thing. By the time the player has finally got a big enough number of provinces to finish the local factions, another faction should have established itself as a major power that will then have to be defeated giving the player another hard challenge. Unfortunately

The problem is that even with my changes the income and production of troops is so high that, (in combination with better use of them than the AI), the player has few problems defeating an AI power thats of similar size, only larger ones tend to challenge, thats why i tend to give up after 70-80 turns or so in vanilla, by that point , even as a slow expander, winning is mearly a formality.

What I'm trying to achieve is to make it so that the AI almost always gets the lions share of rebel provinces, at which point it may well be powerful enough to actually really give the player issues.

Alliances can help out, but the player can use them too to hold off one or two of the starting factions anyway himself, then let his rep go bad after that. By that time he will have eliminated one faction and have the power to take on any other, he'll be lucky to take more than a hundred turns if he does staged blitzing. Worse still, attacks from allied factions are often uncoordinated with each other and can be defeated in detail, you can't do that with single bigger attacks.

It's not even mercs that are the issue once you increase losses in sieges as retraining gobbles money, it's just that once the player gets big enough on free rebels the income and production capabilities are so high he can steamroller the AI in stages if he wants and the AI doesn't have the production ability or management skills to stop him.

In effect I'm trying to make the starting AI rather stronger than the player, but do it in such a way that it isn't obviously the AI getting advantages, the best way to do it is by making the AI bigger in province terms than the player.

If you have any other ideas though I'd be glad to hear them, i just need to make the early stage actually challenging instead of a boringly easy land grab that sets you up to win the rest of the game without massive difficulty.


Ohhh, I also tried out the changes i suggested earlier. A partial success. When the AI attacks now it tends t succeed and I saw a lot of factions that where stuck before expanding now. on the other hand some factions also went passive, although that might be just random chance. us, Milan, Egypt and Turks all got off better, but Byzantine was rather worse, as was Hungary. Poland was about the usual and Scotland seemed stuck too. aw plenty of attacks on the weaker provinces except Scotland and Denmark.

Overall I'd say their some hidden trigger thats causing the AI to figure out how strong it needs to be to beat the rebels and it's building armies to match now. the rebels aren't really any weaker, but the AI is estimating them right now so it's sending stronger stacks. Unfortunately it seems that Bankrupting it easier. I think the Money script needs a few more entries to keep them from going Bankrupt in the first 20 Turns or so, because when they don't they grab plenty of land now.


Regarding Income and getting to stuff early, (RE Gunpowder comments), well things turn up earlier because of growth I guess, I've perhaps made Strat Chiv a bit easy to get, but all the events, (such as gunpowder being discovered), happen exactly the same number of turns after the start as they do at 2 turns per year, so it's not timescale related at all.

I am beginning to agree on merchants, the problem is western Europe has some pretty poor ones, it's rare for them to exceed a couple of hundred in the hands of a good merchant, resources don't really become usable till about 100 florins. Yes you should have to send your merchants far away, but the resources in the holy land are still worth more to them than most western Europe recourses, thats how poor they are. And it's still a bad idea to make almost all the western Europe resources useless as it defeats the pint of having them. I'll try lowering them to 2.5 times vanilla and see how it goes.


I like the sacking idea, it should actually be about 4K in 1.2 as it's been reduced to a quarter. I'd do it as a separate hidden trait that has 12, (each requiring 3 or 4 sackings), levels, each giving +25% for a total of 3X, also add Dread and maybe Piety hits at the highest levels. With any luck only a really hardcore Sacker could get any big numbers of people up high on the sack numbers.

So they besieged Durazzo with 750 men (9 groups of Armoured Sergeants, 3 catapult united, and 1 Venetian heavy infantry unit) All I had was some crappy Italian militia, + some Italian spear militia, and 4 unites of Balkan archers. I lost 42 men, while their losses were 705. Only 10 Venetian soldiers ended their life BEHIND my walls. Yes this makes it much harder to capture cities and castles, but it sure as hell makes it much easier to defend.

I need some way of making the AI deploy it's siege artillery further back. Plus the walls will kill any siege stuff like rams and towers whilst it waits out the catapults, i need them to go hell for leather while the catapults attack at the same time, then use any breaches that do appear. Right now it stands their and gets 60%+ of it's men cut down waiting for the catapults to run out of ammo. Fortunately this is something the next patch is supposed to fix so...

[vonsch]

For reference, I started a H/H Egypt game with 1.13 this morning.

Turn 8 I am at #1 position in all but territory, i think. Am 4 in whatever the first category is. I have 28k in treasury. I have 4 Mamluks. The rate I can hire is the limiter. They aren't cheap, but cash is no issue with the old sacking. That's my cash source. Jerusalem was worth about 27k (I think it was worth about 2k in yours, and I didn't bother sacking).

So, I think the sacking change is huge. I think merchants are a bit too good in your version too. Maybe divide by two. That's still a lot better than 1.13 or vanilla, and how many you can have is limited by economic development and number of territories you hold, so it scales pretty reasonably.

I used a jihad on Jerusalem, so can't use one again for a while (assuming my imam doesn't croak, be a while to train up new ones). I couldn't hire many jihadi units at that early stage, so that's not terribly unbalancing. I'm conquering with footsloggers still, but am building a mobile strike army on wandering rebels.

My losses are lowish in seiges since my force rations are better, but there's not a large difference apparent in my velocity of conquest so far. Simply getting forces to the points of attack is the real limit for Egypt at this stage.

I think doubling merc hiting prices along with the sacking change is the killer of the gamelong blitz. But dropping initial player cash to half would really slow that very early phase too, I suspect. I run tight around turn 4-5 with 1.13, and later with your changes. That tightness adds turns to force buildup or the amount of time attacks can be sustained due to choices between spending on troops or economies. Conquests now only get you a quick larger tax base, not ready cash. There typically are not enough buildings at the early stage to cannibalize, and that scortched earth strategy doesn't have legs without good sacking income. Or that's my guess based on my experience.

Oh, Mamluks may be available turn 1, but you can hire... ONE on turn two, I think. And another 2 turns later. And they cost 900 each. They are not cheap in maintenance either, 210.The only reason to hire them this early is to start training them for later. They are not cost effective for pure seigework. But they can be good for bandit control and that's good practice. I suspect it will take me until turn 15-20 to have a decent HA stack, and it will be mixed cav. Of course, captured forts help as they increase the hiring pool a bit each. But I tend to ruthlessly convert those to cities for the income. That means I get one more Mamluk from a captured fort before it converts. I hired none until turn 5 or 6 due to budget tightness. Now hiring all I can.

I'm curious at how the Turks do, so gonna play on a bit to see if they grab Adana.

I could also help them by indirect means, (adding High Level Spies and Assassins to the Hordes, that should slow the player down when Generals and Towers are being sabotaged out of commission), or disasters too, a good earthquake over the entire holy lands the turn before they arrive followed by a series of "aftershocks" for the next 5 or 6 years to really deplete forces, would also put a stop to people building up massive Garrison in preparation and deal with them as and when, which adds to the challenge significantly.

Heh, nasty! I like the idea of adding high level spies to their stacks, though not sure they will leave them there. thgat would prevent leader assassinations.
Might help a little though. If the silly AI knew how to use opened gates, they could be doubly interesting. The player would be forced to counter with spies in all the threatened cities (a good idea anyway, but I bet a lot don't do it.)

Assassins are good too. Not sure how well the AI uses them on things like towers, but they probably won't hurt.

I don't like the acts of god though. At least if they weren't part of the history of the event. Earthquakes can't be countered by the player's actions at all, and they have a sort of "I win" button character on the AI side.

What I'd prefer to see with hordes is a bit more randomness in what arrives. That will put the player more in the position of not knowing what to build up. It might be a light horde, or a heavy one. They might have a lot of agents, or more bombards, etc. Not sure how much of that can be done. Or how much additional code can be dropped in with alternate configurations without choking the parser or engine.

Randomness in what comes with the hordes enhances replayability. But not sure how it works now. I know the exact spot they arrive varies some, and the year may slightly. Don't know how much force composition varies.

Oh, just had a thought on sacking. I like your lowered rate but mostly because I can see it will stop the game blitz some. But sacking is pretty well made useless. That may be going too far. It still should be a strategic choice.

So... rather than up the amount directly again, how about boosting the looting traits (and ancilliaries, if there are any, think there's at least one) significantly so they double or triple the amount? That still would not be a huge cash infusion, but it would make it a choice (assuming you develop the generals to do it). It would "encourage" some a bit more to be dreadful, rather than pious.

In my Jerusalem example, if my recalled 2kish is right, doubling would be 4k, tripling 6k. While those are more, they are no where near the 27k I got with 1.13. They are, I think, enough to make sacking more of a reasonable choice.

[Carl]

Edited everything into my last post before this one. If i've missed somones point let me know.

[vonsch]

If you have any other ideas though I'd be glad to hear them, i just need to make the early stage actually challenging instead of a boringly easy land grab that sets you up to win the rest of the game without massive difficulty.

Do away with rebel provinces. Divvy them up.

I like the sacking idea, it should actually be about 4K in 1.2 as it's been reduced to a quarter. I'd do it as a separate hidden trait that has 12, (each requiring 3 or 4 sackings), levels, each giving +25% for a total of 3X, also add Dread and maybe Piety hits at the highest levels. With any luck only a really hardcore Sacker could get any big numbers of people up high on the sack numbers.

These traits should already exist. Just need to pump their value as mods, I think. And at least one ancilliary does too, the mercenary captain guy. He gives 10%. He's sorta easy to get though, so probably shouldn't be buffed a lot.

Maybe just the trait. Despoiler and Genocide.

How about:

;------------------------------------------
Trait Despoiler
    Characters family

    Level Looter
        Description Looter_desc
        EffectsDescription Looter_effects_desc
        Threshold  3 

        Effect Looting   25 

    Level Pillager
        Description Pillager_desc
        EffectsDescription Pillager_effects_desc
        Threshold  6 

        Effect Chivalry -1 
        Effect Looting   50 

    Level Sacker_of_Cities
        Description Sacker_of_Cities_desc
        EffectsDescription Sacker_of_Cities_effects_desc
        Threshold  9 

        Effect Chivalry -2
        Effect Looting   75


;------------------------------------------
Trait Genocide
    Characters family

    Level Brutal_Conqueror
        Description Brutal_Conqueror_desc
        EffectsDescription Brutal_Conqueror_effects_desc
        Threshold  3 

        Effect Chivalry -1 
        Effect Looting   25 

    Level Exterminator
        Description Exterminator_desc
        EffectsDescription Exterminator_effects_desc
        Threshold  6 

        Effect Chivalry -2 
        Effect Looting   50 

    Level Butcher
        Description Butcher_desc
        EffectsDescription Butcher_effects_desc
        Epithet Butcher_epithet_desc
        Threshold  9 

        Effect Chivalry -3 
        Effect Looting   75

With both these maxed they get 150% from looting of your 1/4 vanilla. That would be about 63% of vanilla, I think. But the negative chivalry would be high, not to mention your good ruler issues. Or maybe 15-30-50, so both lines double the base, with 10% more from the merc captain. That first level is easy.


Oh, another side effect of your changes to priests... takes longer to train up to jihad calling level. If that first one dies to natural causes (as I've had happen very early), it can mean a LONG wait to another with level 5. Level 4 is a bit easier since you can see a level 3 "out of the box" without advanced buildings or a guild. And you can get a monk in 4 turns sitting in a converted region.

Not sure if that's a big problem or another useful brake though. Jihads are darned powerful.

And on that topic... they can also go heretic, which mine just did.

[chickenhawk]

I second Vonsch on getting rid of rebel provinces. It makes things too slow at the beginning and too easy later. If you are playing this mod you probably know how to move your troops and agents around. If it it possible be sure the player gets less of them than A.I. Though that may difficult or impossible.

While we are talking about getting rid of things I have another Idea.

Get rid of merchants. they are an unnecessary layer of micromanagement. Instead give the income that came from merchants if the player has a fort on the resource in question. Maybe make it scale by the size of the garrison or the length of time the fort has been there or something. Then in proper total war fashion you could go take their resources with an army. It would give us something else to fight over while you are trying to get enough troops together to assault the buffed up sets of walls. You could launch fast raids chew up their forts and so on.

[vonsch]

Get rid of merchants. they are an unnecessary layer of micromanagement. Instead give the income that came from merchants if the player has a fort on the resource in question. Maybe make it scale by the size of the garrison or the length of time the fort has been there or something. Then in proper total war fashion you could go take their resources with an army. It would give us something else to fight over while you are trying to get enough troops together to assault the buffed up sets of walls. You could launch fast raids chew up their forts and so on.

I doubt we can make forts produce income. Or check that they are on a resource.

The AI uses merchants fairly well. And, yeah, they take micromanagement, but you don't HAVE to use them. They just boost income. In vanilla, without using the fort exploit, they are not a huge supplement. They are a modest one. Expecially if you factor in the time, the ROI isn't all that great. But it's addon income, so worth pursuing if the budget is tight.

But I am against making them as lucrative as they are in Carl 1.2. At least for eastern factions.

[Bongaroo]

Not much to add here, you guys have mentioned and discussed everything I've noticed.

My campaign is really starting to warm up. While I do have a fairly large empire, I'm getting a little streched for money. I've gone crusading and after having anticoch go rebel I decided to take the penalty and exterminate when I hit Jerusalem, didn't hurt my standings much at all, but it the only time I haven't just occupied something.

I have a lot of interesting family lines developing. The fixed princesses are definetly working. My first grabbed Jahao from portugal with 7 or 8 charm built up. Their children have been intelligent and good looking as we'd expect. One is a military genious but hates the sight of blood and dosen't mind hugging other dudes, the other is a man's man and women find him irresistable. I'm seeing a lot of fun and interesting traits and ancilliarys.

A lot of factions are finally breaking into wars with their normal enemies. A little late to develop compared to vanilla, but they are struggling with some tough rebels and 1 year a turn.

Lots of fun. Heretics are a little too buffed imho.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

Edited everything into my last post before this one. If i've missed somones point let me know.

First of all, assassins seem to be a little bugged. Several times when I have tried to kill someone and the mission have failed, the assassin have still gained Trait Increase, This assassin have improved his suberfuge skills thanks to a successful murder, + 4 to agent’s skill, Example.

I know you got a lot to do right now hehe, just was wondering if you saw this Carl? Pherhaps not that important but I think something is wrong. Have anyone else have noticed this?

[Bongaroo]

I think that is part of the fix so that you don't lose all of your skill levels if you fail, just one. But I could be mistaken.

[Bob the Insane]

I think that is part of the fix so that you don't lose all of your skill levels if you fail, just one. But I could be mistaken.

Yeah, I am pretty sure when you fail your trait gets "increased" from +2 to +1 for example...

[vonsch]

I know you got a lot to do right now hehe, just was wondering if you saw this Carl? Pherhaps not that important but I think something is wrong. Have anyone else have noticed this?

Spies get increases on failure sometimes too, as do priests with burnings. I have no issue with this, but it may be a change from vanilla.

Yeah, I am pretty sure when you fail your trait gets "increased" from +2 to +1 for example...

Sometimes that may happen, but pretty sure I am seeing actual increases at times too. Not always.

[Bongaroo]

I'd be fine with increases in skills with unsuccessful attempts. Just not over the top like 50%; 10% chance to learn from failures would be fine. Such as getting better even though you failed. Maybe if you fail multiple times you start loosing skills. Any chance age of the agent could be used? For instance a young assassin could learn from his mistake and since he wasn't killed in the botched attempt he would know a little more about killing. He's young and adapting. Now a 45 year old assassin is experienced and a real killer, but when he messes up it reminds him he isn't so young anymore to be crawling up castle walls and sneaking poison into food. We could even apply the idea to most of the other agents. Would be cool.

Looking forward to the update to continue testing. This mod is really helping the game along I think.

I had a couple thoughts about how this mod is doing more than fixing bugs now. As it has been brought up a couple times maybe we could address it fairly easily. Have Problemfixer v1.13 stay as is and this v1.2 be named something similar, but different. I'm not too creative and I'm sure some better ideas will surface but for instance how about ProblemFixer Plus or even something more dramatic like Carls "make the game fun again" mod.

-bongaroo

[Carl]

Hey, guys, sorry for not replying much today, I've been giving you chance to say anything else, + testing out some rebel related changes.

The good news is i'm getting somwhere, the bad news is i'm not sure how useful the Information is.

I'll sum it up in a moment, but first I'll make a few replies.

Yeah, I am pretty sure when you fail your trait gets "increased" from +2 to +1 for example...

Got it in one,. also, sometimes you can lose points from a given trait and it will pop up a message saying you've got a level, and it's the same as it was before you lost the point, it's down to how where having to work around the bugged anti-traits code, the notification system is programmed to give a notification every time you gain/lose points in a trait, except when gaining them doesn't result in a level being gained. As a result every time you lose a point you'll get a notification even if your level hasn't actually changed.

Get rid of merchants. they are an unnecessary layer of micromanagement. Instead give the income that came from merchants if the player has a fort on the resource in question. Maybe make it scale by the size of the garrison or the length of time the fort has been there or something. Then in proper total war fashion you could go take their resources with an army. It would give us something else to fight over while you are trying to get enough troops together to assault the buffed up sets of walls. You could launch fast raids chew up their forts and so on.

The first idea isn't possible i'm afraid , that kind of thing is hardcoded, but, (even reduced), with the better income of merchants and the higher movement the micromanagement has gone out of merchants now, it's much easier to get them somwhere for me now and being harder to acquire should keep the worst of the AI of your back. just be quick because if the AI gets their first you probably won't be able to shift him either.

Anyway, I do appreciate the point, they are annoying to micromanage and don't add too much to the game, but a lot of people seem to like them so I'd prefer to keep them to help make it appeal to everyone.

Do away with rebel provinces. Divvy them up.

AND

I second Vonsch on getting rid of rebel provinces. It makes things too slow at the beginning and too easy later. If you are playing this mod you probably know how to move your troops and agents around. If it it possible be sure the player gets less of them than A.I. Though that may difficult or impossible.

Thats a possibility, but has a few worrying points for me.

First, as Chikenhawk noted, their's nothing you can do to make the AI better than the player, and often it will be very difficult with some of the bigger starting factions to prevent the player being bigger than at least some of it's neighbors.

Second, many factions rely on the rebels as a buffer giving them a few turns to run up to speed, in particular many of the smaller factions are viable for the AI because they can get around being smaller by being better at concentration of force than the larger factions. France and HRE for example can take quite a while to get up to speed even in vanilla as they are so big. smaller nations can make some headway in this time period where the big guys are getting ready to strike. on the other hand the big guys hit like a hammer when they do and still tend to get a few vital extra provinces when it's AI vs. AI. If you where to start them with rebels in their hands, everyone would be slowed down by being big, and the small guys wouldn't get their captured provinces that much more well developed than the big guys would their captured provinces. We could re-balance all that but it would be extremely difficult.

Third, whilst serious players like myself and yourselves probably wouldn't notice the loss of the rebels their are doubtless those who would who would be interested in this mod.

HOWEVER, it is an option i'm saving for if/when i run out of other ideas. SO thanks for it, it's so radical I never even considered it TBH.

I did notice however that no one tried disputing my points about rebels making it easy on the player. I hope this isn't because you think I won't listen, I know i'm stubborn, i just need a lot of convincing.

These traits should already exist. Just need to pump their value as mods, I think.

They do exist but the triggers are tied to exterminating as far as I remember, not sacking. And TBH the names of the traits are more appropriate for smithing related to that anyway.

My campaign is really starting to warm up. While I do have a fairly large empire, I'm getting a little stretched for money. I've gone crusading and after having Antioch go rebel I decided to take the penalty and exterminate when I hit Jerusalem, didn't hurt my standings much at all, but it the only time I haven't just occupied something.

Lots of alliances will also help negate the penalty normally, i'm upping it for the next release. I'm also removing the rep boost from having an alliances as the easy to get/keep alliances in the game ATM make good reps very easy to get.


Right, onto what I've discovered about rebels.

First I tried changing the way the rebels where set up so that their whet some weak provinces in area where not more than one faction could grab it. I also changed rebels so that instead of a small number of heavily upgraded troops they had 3 times as many slightly upgraded, (1 bronze Chevron), troops.


The Result:To a degree it worked, in those provinces that where "safe" or that had 4-5 starting units only, (thats 12-15 after trebeling), it worked like a charm. The AI was perhaps a bit slow in attacking, but it did in fact do so, and tended to win far more often than it lost.

However those cultures surrounded by rebels with full stacks, and especially the HA cultures really seemed to struggle, often just sitting their and never attacking at all.


Second, I decided to try giving the AI near infinate money, just to see if money was the issue, (Infinite money isn't something I want the AI to have BTW, it was just my way of checking to see if it was the cause of the issue),

The Result:It definitely helped somewhat, especially Egypt, Russia, and HRE. France, Sicily, England, Scotland, and Byzantium still remained frozen more often than not though


3. As I was messing i decided to lower the reputation at he start of the rebels with the Papal States.

The Result:Started a new campaign and on the very 1st turn the Papal States laid siege to Florance, taking it on the Second. it had never done that. it looks like the AI factions have to get really bad relations with the rebels before they will get really aggressive. I haven't tried it with the rest of the AI's, (but i am going to), but I have hopes of this change.


Fourth, I decided to remove the single Bronze Chevron from all rebels.

The Result: he AI went crazy, the British Isles, and Sicily are still pretty passive, but everyone else was conquering away like crazy for the most part. it still took 40 turns and too much money for the AI to get them for my liking, but it actually went and conquered the better rebels.

Overall I'm making [progress, it's become clear their is some hardcoded limitation that prevents the AI attacking the rebels with an army that it thinks is weaker than it's opponent, but a the same time it's also clear that if it can produce enough Troops and the rebels are weak enough for it to beat with a single stack it can and will attack hem gladly. I just need to cut the time it takes and the money.

What are your thoughts on all that though.

p.p.s V1.21 is probably going to be delayed. I've got everything bar the rebels, Broken Lances, and the dread/Chiv movement traits sorted though.

I had a couple thoughts about how this mod is doing more than fixing bugs now. As it has been brought up a couple times maybe we could address it fairly easily. Have Problemfixer v1.13 stay as is and this v1.2 be named something similar, but different. I'm not too creative and I'm sure some better ideas will surface but for instance how about ProblemFixer Plus or even something more dramatic like Carls "make the game fun again" mod.

I was havin similar anti-confusion thoughts. I was going to rename V1.13:

ProblemFixer Pure V1.0


And this Rewrite Problem ixer V"whatever".

[chickenhawk]

A few further observations.

The wall improvement is going to force me to build a seige train far sooner than I otherwise would. My theory of build a bucnh of ladders and "over the wall we go lads" does not work with the current state of towers/walls. So I have definitely been slowed down there. I refought the battle of Rennes discussed above about 6 times this morning and could not take the place by storm. Either all of my rams burned or the towers just killed too many troops. I easily defeated the Garrison however when it sallied. I consider this an endorsement of the changes you have made since it implies that the advantages of fortification are now substantial, as they should be.



Secondly when playing the English I have normally built enormous numbers of hobilars straight from the walls as it were and used them for a great many things. A second stack that consists of 5-10 or so hobis and one family member may not win you many battles but it sure means that you collect a lot of prisoners from the ones you do win. Having to build stables to do that definitely slows me Vs vanilla. Again this is the goal you are trying to achieve. I am looking forward to getting longbows quicker in the next version however, that still irritates me as is.

Heresy is nuts, fix is already decided as I understand it.

In regards to campaign AI scripting, would it be possible to randomly assign a single AI faction a lot more money than the others for a set number of turns? This would ensure that it grew fast enough to provide a real challenge. In an ideal situation it would always be a faction that starts a considerable distance from the player but that may be a lot to ask.

You mentioned being able to speed the conquest of rebels by lowering their reputation. Could this also be manipulated to speed up AI consolidation?

Keep at it. I think you are on the right track.

[vonsch]

I agree that differentiation between the pure fixer and the mod is a good idea. Assuming you want to support two.

But both need to see what patch 1.2 does. I'd hold off on making that sort of decision until the patch is out.


What we're doing now is learning more about what CAN be done. And your findings on the rebel issue are interesting.

I poked around in the files more last night too. I wasn't aware that the starting florins are set individually for each faction. That's a twist. You could try boosting that number for Russia, for one. I mean for the player too. Based on my 1.13 play on Hungary last night, it could use the extra cash too. Some areas are just harder to make productive than others. Not sure if this is affecting the AI or not.

But if it is, I'd think your money script would handle it. Odd.

Russia's problem is probably that it can't actually train many units per turn, so it just takes longer to accumulate that stack. It's not as smart about combining and hiring mercs to flesh things out. Scotland at least has a pretty good stack (powerful!) and short distances. Russia has a decent number of units, but they can scatter very fast and the distances are relatively... HUGE. Egypt's problem can't be money though. Sheesh. Maybe distance is an issue there too. Maybe that's the common factor the HA cultures are facing, things are far apart so mistakes in force requirement estimations take a long time to correct.

By the way, my "divvy them up" was meant purely as an idea on the table. I'd prefer to see the starting rebel provinces, or some of them, stay around too. But I was trying to go at the problem sideways, and it occurs to me that I missed the complement to that: turn some more "owned" provinces to rebel. I suspect CA did some playing around with that. Aragon as Portuguese is a bit weird, unless it's a pure game-balance call. Even so, they would have been better, IMO, in making the NW corner of the penninsula or the SW corner a separate province and giving that instead. The exterior lines are a bear.

But maybe HRE or France start with too many provinces for balance. Or maybe a reshuffling of WHICH is rebel would help. Flanders and Brussels are rich, and it makes sense to defend them and let them become wild cards in a sense: the power that gets them gets a good boost. Making them so hard to take (I mean in vanilla, where they are already hard, but it's a thought to keep them a bit harder than the rest) makes it likely one faction might soften them up and another "steal" them when it fails. That leads to variety. That's good.

Ireland might fit that category too. It's no pushover. And Jerusalem (and Damacus and Edessa to lesser degrees). Valencia too. There may be more, but those spring to mind.

I think in general the Med island should not be beefed too much. Sicily usually grabs Sardinia and Corsica, but not always. It takes fleets to reach them, so they tend to go a bit slower. Upping the Reb power there really hurts those attempts due to the shipping issue.

A few further observations.

The wall improvement is going to force me to build a seige train far sooner than I otherwise would. My theory of build a bucnh of ladders and "over the wall we go lads" does not work with the current state of towers/walls. So I have definitely been slowed down there. I refought the battle of Rennes discussed above about 6 times this morning and could not take the place by storm. Either all of my rams burned or the towers just killed too many troops. I easily defeated the Garrison however when it sallied. I consider this an endorsement of the changes you have made since it implies that the advantages of fortification are now substantial, as they should be.

The problem here is (for those of us who aren't big seige fans with all the pathing issues), autoresolve is a LOT more friendly to the attacker.

But I guess that is player choice. If you want it really hard, you play out the battle.

[Carl]

The problem here is (for those of us who aren't big siege fans with all the pathing issues), autoresolve is a LOT more friendly to the attacker.

But I guess that is player choice. If you want it really hard, you play out the battle.

True enough Vonsch, i'm hoping CA will fix the Auto-resolve bug in the next patch, and it just hasn't made it's way onto the fix list. I'm pretty sure it's because of how they've changed the tower code between M2TW and RTW.

What we're doing now is learning more about what CAN be done. And your findings on the rebel issue are interesting.

I poked around in the files more last night too. I wasn't aware that the starting florins are set individually for each faction. That's a twist. You could try boosting that number for Russia, for one. I mean for the player too. Based on my 1.13 play on Hungary last night, it could use the extra cash too. Some areas are just harder to make productive than others. Not sure if this is affecting the AI or not.

But if it is, I'd think your money script would handle it. Odd.

Using the Hotseat campaign to look at things, (also using it for tests as if the player is present and doesn't go aggressive i tend to find the AI is less aggressive too, but it's a chore working a campaign when you just want to observe whats going on), Hungary about the time it takes it's first province has an upkeep of over 5.5K. An other bigger but poorer areas (France and HRE are the big offenders), are spending rather more per turn.

Russia I think suffers from not getting access to castle units. Once it gets them it tends to go a Little crazy after the castle develops. Maybe give them Helsinki at the start too as I think thats slowing them down too much, same with Scotland and Inverness, and probs Oslo+Stockholm for Denmark as only they ever take it and they wait so long to do so it's daft.

Russia's problem is probably that it can't actually train many units per turn, so it just takes longer to accumulate that stack. It's not as smart about combining and hiring mercs to flesh things out. Scotland at least has a pretty good stack (powerful!) and short distances. Russia has a decent number of units, but they can scatter very fast and the distances are relatively... HUGE. Egypt's problem can't be money though. Sheesh. Maybe distance is an issue there too. Maybe that's the common factor the HA cultures are facing, things are far apart so mistakes in force requirement estimations take a long time to correct.

Possibly, but i think part of it is that HA are so underestimated by the force strength calculator, (although not so much auto-resolve or actual battles), that even a full stack of troops in some cases is too weak to take heavily buffed rebels. Taking away that extra 1 Bronze Chevron got them moving again. Although distance doesn't help, I've added Dirt roads to all provinces for that reason in fact. but whilst it does slow the AI down, in some cases they where remaining stuck for over 50 turns.

By the way, my "divvy them up" was meant purely as an idea on the table. I'd prefer to see the starting rebel provinces, or some of them, stay around too. But I was trying to go at the problem sideways,

Thats what i hoped, It was a sideways way of looking at it too, took me by surprise TBH.

and it occurs to me that I missed the complement to that: turn some more "owned" provinces to rebel. I suspect CA did some playing around with that. Aragon as Portuguese is a bit weird, unless it's a pure game-balance call. Even so, they would have been better, IMO, in making the NW corner of the peninsula or the SW corner a separate province and giving that instead. The exterior lines are a bear.

But maybe HRE or France start with too many provinces for balance. Or maybe a reshuffling of WHICH is rebel would help. Flanders and Brussels are rich, and it makes sense to defend them and let them become wild cards in a sense: the power that gets them gets a good boost. Making them so hard to take (I mean in vanilla, where they are already hard, but it's a thought to keep them a bit harder than the rest) makes it likely one faction might soften them up and another "steal" them when it fails. That leads to variety. That's good.

Ireland might fit that category too. It's no pushover. And Jerusalem (and Damascus and Edessa to lesser degrees). Valencia too. There may be more, but those spring to mind.

Good idea, TBH i think France and HRE are just too big for their own good with buffed rebels. Their so large they quickly end up with as many troops as they can afford and not enough at any one place to launch an attack. cutting the numbers would probably be a godsend to them.

I think in general the Med island should not be beefed too much. Sicily usually grabs Sardinia and Corsica, but not always. It takes fleets to reach them, so they tend to go a bit slower. Upping the Reb power there really hurts those attempts due to the shipping issue.

Good point, I'd still keep them a Little buffed to slow a player down, but less than everywhere else is a good idea i think as otherwise Sicily seems to struggle like hell. Milan tends to get the med provinces and Tunis and Tripoli ATM.

I'm pretty sure it's stack power issues in Sicily and Byzantium's cases as I once saw Byzantium with a 130K Treasury and it wasn't moving, when I tried to attack the rebels, the stuff it had was forcing me to use more than one stack to get through. Thats another good reason not to over-buff the rebels.

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you chikenhawk. here's some replies.

Secondly when playing the English I have normally built enormous numbers of hobilars straight from the walls as it were and used them for a great many things. A second stack that consists of 5-10 or so hobis and one family member may not win you many battles but it sure means that you collect a lot of prisoners from the ones you do win. Having to build stables to do that definitely slows me Vs vanilla. Again this is the goal you are trying to achieve. I am looking forward to getting longbows quicker in the next version however, that still irritates me as is.

Glad to hear it's doing it's job.

Heresy is nuts, fix is already decided as I understand it.

In regards to campaign AI scripting, would it be possible to randomly assign a single AI faction a lot more money than the others for a set number of turns? This would ensure that it grew fast enough to provide a real challenge. In an ideal situation it would always be a faction that starts a considerable distance from the player but that may be a lot to ask.

It's possible in theory, (i think), but only in the form of giving each faction a random chance of getting a big lump sum at the end of turn 1. Their would be no way i currently know of to restrict it to one faction. But even 2 wouldn't be so bad, it would be rare for 3 to get it and I'd have to exclude Milan, Venice, and Byzantium I think as they are money spinners anyway.

You mentioned being able to speed the conquest of rebels by lowering their reputation. Could this also be manipulated to speed up AI consolidation?

What do you mean by that, sorry i'm not quite getting what you mean by consolidation in this case. Sounds interesting even if I don't know what your going on about.

Keep at it. I think you are on the right track.

Thanks.

I've got some results from the latest test, I'll edit them in in a few minutes.


Alright, In addition to hitting rebel standing, i also gave the AI another look over and fiddled a few things to discourage the AI factions attacking each other early on.

The AI went really crazy this time, with Denmark, Scotland, and Byzantium going on an immediate land grab, with Milan, and Egypt and Russian following by turn 15, HRE also joined in somewhat half heartedly. Eventually England grabbed Rennes and then the nearby French starting Castle at which point the French AI came alive and grabbed 3 provinces in short order whilst holding the English off. Scotland after grabbing all British rebels bar Dublin went dead, and Egypt went dead with Turks, Sicily, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary never moving.

Moors, and Poland got going around turn 25, although Poland did grab a rebel early on. Russia then stalled at this point and the Egyptians and Byzantines Froze. Around 35 Hungary carved some chunks out of Byzantium, and Russia unfroze again. Milan continued to go crazy whilst France was nearly finished off by a combined English/Milan push (no alliance though as the Poles, Hungarians, and English got dragged in when they went after Rome and Florance, bot papal States holdings).

overall they where fast and brutal, but seamed to run out of steam when they got above a particular size. I'm sure in this case it was money issues as all where more or less at 0 after turn 20 or so. Only the rich buggers of Milan, Venice, and strangely HRE got anywhere in a hurry, although everyone else bar a few did do something.

it's worth pointing out I'd put the money script back to normal for this test. i think with a money script tweak and a few other things it might work, but their going t need a good 7-9K every turn for the entire game to pull it of TBH.

Ohh, last of all i gave some starting navies a buff and buffed Byzantine Spearmen t Armored Sergent levels. I think thats why they didn't stall at the start, they had a unit from the second level castle barracks that was really good in the power calculator. On te other hand the higher purchase price probably killed them later.

[vonsch]

I think the autocalc undervalues HA. That's my finding based on a bit of comparison of those to my own command of the battle. I beat reasonable odds against me with HA steadily. Not even close, really. If there are enough HA they win without taking many losses, which means they can go right back into battle again, unlike infantry. If there aren't enough HA, I can hurt them badly and retreat and give up the "win." Next turn they die. But the disincentive there is the general doesn't like it, and his traits can suffer. Generals don't like "losing."

That's before how it deals with HA in seiges, which doesn't seem consistent. They are less good in seiges. Tight spaces work against them as maneuverability is their key attribute... dealing damage WHILE maneuvering. But they seem to be valued higher than they are actually worth in those situations. Go figure.

Byz is an HA faction too, but not as heavily as most. So it's calc may be affecting it too. Be interesting to know what's in those stacks it's not using. Seige gear seems to be the other culprit.

Hmm, could we move seige gear up a tier? I know that will affect seiges too, but players can adapt. I suspect we mostly only have one city producing it anyway. Need to discourage the AI from making it everywhere.

I'm loving Hungary as an HA faction, except, man are they poor! Probably the upkeep on my Magyars and Nobles doing me in though . Starting to get past the curve now, as Venice, Sophia and Zagreb are putting out some decent trade. Budapest is okay, but Bran and the other ex-reb cities are rotten on trade. ROTTEN. If they weren't so inconvenient to Italy and where I expect the core fighting to happen, I'd make them castles and put my production all there. But it's 4 turns or so to Venice for cav, and infantry and seige gear is worse. And the ship route isn't much better, and more dangerous.

I'm used to being able to steadily upgrade most cities I own while still fielding a decent army. With Hungary I'm lucky to start 2 buildings a turn even at tier 1. And the merchant environment is deadly.

Oh, that's one side-effect to the agent movement change. Your merchants are chow to enemies you never see until they do a takeover. They come out of the fog, or cities and hit you in one turn. But if their speed is normal, it takes them decades to get anywhere. Hard to balance this one. A bit less of an issue if the payback is faster, but with 1.13 they don't pay anywhere near enemy cities.

There's always the fort system, but trying to avoid that.


Back to Russia and all, I think judicious allocation of some territories might help. Helsinki is one. Since it's a "corner" region (only land access is from Novgorad), it's going to fall to Russia sooner or later anyway. Same for Inverness and Scotland, yes. Might be interesting to swap an eastern Turk province for a connecting one. I'd say give them Adana and take away Mosul. Oh, and double Antioch's defenders. Those are just too low for THAT city.

Hmm, maybe swap Dijon for Marseille for France? And swap Pamplona and Leon (we aren't being historical anyway! Besides, that corner practically speaks Portuguese!) Portugal will have to take to the sea to find rebels, but it's a seafaring culture like England and Spain, so no real big issue. I just don't like that split start. I think it's unfair to Portugal. But Leon is not a castle and Pamplona is. That would need reversing.

I haven't played HRE. Vienna seems off to one side though. And Bologna is isolated, but it's a good city.

Nicosia may be a problem for Byz. I don't understand its problem. Should be more aggressive. usually have plenty of forces around Constantinople. Does seem to go for Smyrna. Seems to be intimidated by Sophia to some degree. That is one of those decent garrisons, but it's no Brussels. More like Dublin.

[Carl]

Lots of intresting stuff their that i'll comment on in the morning.

But to get an anwser before then on somthing, Which Version of Problem Fixer are you playing as hungay, and wha turn are you on? And difficulty too if possibile.

Just so i've got some refrance material for them.