Back looking at MTW2 modding again and thought i'd mention a few other things I'd noticed. After this amount of time I guess most modders know this kind of thing but just in case there are still newbie TW modders.

An example of point (5) in the original post about the upkeep cost of generals. Venice in the vanilla game has four start generals and also four kids in the family tree ready to come of age (compared with say England who has three and one respectively). This means they'll be paying for eight generals quite early on in the game which is roughly 4000 florins which they usually can't afford as they don't have an easy early expansion.

Obviously generals are a big advantage as well as a cost, but if you mod things like the 2HP of the generals or reduce king's purse and then wonder why Venice doesn't seem to do very well (as an AI faction) this is part of the reason.

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This brings me on to generals and autocalc. Autocalc is heavily influenced by:

1) Number of soldiers - even if they're crap
2) Melee attack rating

(why horse archer AI factions were so useless in RTW without lots of infantry or sneaky modding)

Autocalc is also very heavily influenced by multi-hitpoint units and command stars.

(One of the reasons the Egypt and Britons AI factions always did so well in Vanilla RTW was because of this--2HP as a general plus a bunch more for the bodyguard being chariots.)

What this means is, if the general unit has very high stats, multi-hitpoints and an AI command bonus, then to the game it is a very strong auto-calc "stack", even on its own. Given that the AI likes to leave a general in each city it owns, and only leads armies with spare generals, this can have the effect of the AI often wandering round fighting with just a general (and maybe a few scraps of damaged units). You can see this in the vanilla game with the byzies starting 10 star general.

Very high stats and multi-HP is also partly why the generals in TW games suicide charge. They do a one-on-one match up with the player units nearby and think "charge"--not taking acount of the other twelve player units waiting to jump in. Weaker generals are (counter-intuitively) better. (Also why high anti-cav bonuses are bad imo as it makes spear units break formation to chase cavalry.)

Generally I think player-only handicaps work better than AI bonuses in TW games because of unintended consequences like this.

Also, something that only occurred to me the other day playing a mod and seiging another general-only AI garrison, is *if* the general on its own is a very strong autocalc stack, then to the game it might meet the AI's requirement for a garrison. As mentioned the AI always likes to leave one general per city if it has them and if the general unit is very strong that might increase the odds of the general unit being the *only* garrison unit.

Haven't tested that last point yet. Reduced the stats and HP on the generals in my modding for the other reasons mentioned and the AI garrisons have been a bit bigger but it may be due to some other factor.

I'm going to use the idea in conjunction with something I saw in the UAI mod which I think has potential which was to increase base unrest and make the garrison effect a bigger proportion of unrest control.

(Another aspect of this potential general effect vis a vis garrisons is that the strong stats/multi hit points of the general make it a strong autocalc unit but doesn't help much with unrest because of the low numbers in the unit. Hence possibly why the AI loses remote regions to revolt so often after taking them. They leave the general behind as garrison and move out.)

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Which brings me to revolts. One of the problems with the Moors in the vanilla game is they go after timbuctoo and keep losing it, so they have to keep re-taking it. (You see this stuff if you watch each AI faction in turn with fow off to see what their problems are.) Moorish armies heading for Timbuctoo, either the first time or all the subsequent times, also rebel a lot because of the distance from capital etc so it adds up to a big distraction for the Moorish AI very similar to what happened with Carthage in RTW. A simple change like making timbuctoo a castle with a lower pop stops this problem. They take it and don't lose it making them expand better.

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Which brings me to Spain. Best way to get AI factions to fight is to rig the start position so two factions go for the same rebel region(s). On the vanilla map (partly cos of map path-finding problems) the Moors concentrate more on Africa, and Spain/Portugal head north into France, or even more annoyingly, Ireland ffs. Changing things round so there is a belt of closer rebel regions in between the Moors and Portugal/Spain makes for a proper reconqusita war almost every game, which makes playing one of those factions much more fun.

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Turks. Number of things hold up the vanilla turks. Path-finding is one but also semi-related to that is the lack of roads in their area which can be easily fixed with a few map tweaks. This reduces their travelling time to attack targets which matters a lot for them because their starting capital is set to iconium but most of their early rebel targets are in the opposite direction. This means their early attacking stacks rebel *a lot*. This is exacerbated by their region having a lot of narrow mountaim passes so the rebelled stacks then block future armies moving to attack the same city.

A good fix for the turks is making a new region in the centre of their start area and making that the capital. This reduces the early rebellions as the "distance to capital" rebellion effect is reduced. Adding some authority traits helps with this as well, good for all factions that have armies moving a long way from their capital to attack rebel settlements in the early game(Russia also suffers a lot from this).

Making the roads work reduces the number of turns they spend travelling to their targets so that reduces the rebellion chance also. Their early path-finding problems are mostly fixed with higher base movement points.

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Milan. One of the reasons Milan is so strong in vanilla is the unit upkeep of their militia is low.

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France: Some pathing problems but also the relative proportion of castles/towns in France doesn't suit their strengths (suits Milan much better, hence them beating France so often in the vanilla game). Changing a few towns to castles helps France.

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For the other factions on the vanilla map, early expansion/survival problems are mainly caused by pathing glitches.