Mercenary modifications

[mlp071]

I started this on money script tread but don't want to take over their post.From what i have checked , AI has tendency to get all mercenaries in game available and player ends up fighting hordes of those on each turn.

I believe, in addition to unlimited money, mercs are second reason for infinite stacks by AI.

Personally i prefer to fight stacks of elite faction units , then uniformed armies with semi elite mercs units.I want Getai to fight me with mostly Getai units, and KH with theirs, not same armies for both

This is a work in progress , so feel free to add any comments or sugestions.

Since mercenaries appeared to be mess right now, i'm going to start from scratch.

I will run then test with other money scripts too.

I am planing to add some more units gradually, but will take time considering that i don't want to end up at same place that i was at start( fighting stacks of mercenary phalangitai , thureopoi and hippeis).

With final goal to keep game challenging , and slow enough for human player to expirience most of details (ex. celtic reforms )



05/26/07 addition:

-added 30% more units (mostly infantry units)
- units mostly recruitable by regional origin
- for more, see post bellow please

05/28/07 :

- minor balancing of some units spawn rate and amount (some cavalry units were spawning in huge numbers)
- added some mercenaries trying to help Pontus with Sinope.

06/23/07 :

This modification is now available as a part of AI balancing mod , that Redmeth and I worked on in this thread:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=87649

[mlp071]

so far this is progress of my campaing with modified mercenary file:

Year is 220 BC, VH/M, huge size units:





These are some armies that i am running into with spies:




Seleukids




Sauromatae



Pahlava

There is several of these 1/2 stacks roaming around in each faction, and if human player tries to attack, AI will gather them up into full stacks before he attacks.

It is good that AI is making switch from starting units to eltes around this period, considering that reform for Gauks and Casse is at 220. If it happens before,those 3 factions would be seriously underpowered and run over in no time.

Stalemate in Greece is quite interesting, all 3 sides have roughly same amount and quality of units.

Getai ...one game they will explode and take 1/4 of the whole map, another they will just stand still.

Sweboz is late, but now they got several stacks, and they are moving(not infinite stacks though)


and this is army size graph :




As you can see almost all armies are sizable with faction size.And when i compared armies sizes with my Makedonian campaing that has regular mercenary script, it's same.

Things to work on :

1.See how to trigger AI for making more armies, without unbalancing factions.(just to make it bigger challenge)

2.Resolve Getai stalling ( i think has to do with tons of cheap units that they have at beggining )

3. Sweboz possibly needs some help to get started, so maybe to add some extra mercs in their starting area

4. Eleutheroi needs to stay strong so factions will use up their original units on them(that way will be encouraged to recruit new elite units faster). Plus they should represent challenge for human player, to prevent blitzing them early in the game. Will see how to get that done.

[Redmeth]

Great work here, many thanks.
The diversity of mercs is a good thing, but having them in only limited numbers (no more 3-4 units of the same type available foe recruitment) and having them spawn at greater intervals is the way to go. Also some strong units should be kept limited to only their province of origin. The Thessalian heavy cav only in Thessalia as I remember you could recruit in some neighboring provinces. Thracian Peltasts only in Thrace, Galatians especially wild-men only in Galatia, the Kluddolon perhaps in a few more provinces etc.. The one who gets some good mercs in his army should feel lucky that he got them.
I noticed in this version you reduced the typed of units available, for future versions maybe try and make more types available for recruitment. Just my opinion.
And maybe you could upload the file and tell people where to put the file, I had to search for the file and I had 2 because I play with BI and made a few changes to do that.
Anyway

[Darth Stalin]

The code should replace the original code in file "descr_mercenaries" in EB\Data\Campaign\imperial_campaign folder, AFAIK...

[mlp071]

Great work here, many thanks.
The diversity of mercs is a good thing, but having them in only limited numbers (no more 3-4 units of the same type available foe recruitment) and having them spawn at greater intervals is the way to go. Also some strong units should be kept limited to only their province of origin. The Thessalian heavy cav only in Thessalia as I remember you could recruit in some neighboring provinces. Thracian Peltasts only in Thrace, Galatians especially wild-men only in Galatia, the Kluddolon perhaps in a few more provinces etc.. The one who gets some good mercs in his army should feel lucky that he got them.
I noticed in this version you reduced the typed of units available, for future versions maybe try and make more types available for recruitment. Just my opinion.

Couple of problems there:

- I tried keeping all mercs in pool with delayed spawn (2x, 3x 5x and 10x ), and result is that AI was not making faction units , but rather would park lone general in region with several merc units and wait till they spawn to recruit.

-Some of the factions are have tendency not to recruit cavalry in their barracks or they do it very rarely, for some reason. Namely Aedui, Arverni , Rome, Getai, Lusotannan, Pontus ....

- Rome has enough mnai to build all barracks upgrades before Polybian reforms, so AI never produces Polybian units...

- I am working on "wild men " recruitment, and plan is that they are available in 3 provinces: Galatia, Mrogaedu and Arvernotorg . That way Arverni and Aedui will have some heavier units before reform kicks in.

- For every mercenary unit that recruits ( especially infantry ones) , AI will not recruit one of faction elite units.He will recruit starting lower tier unit though (ex hellenic native sperman..) in their barracks.Thats why i have to slowly bring infantry back into the merc pool... They will replace some of the cavalry eventualy though.

I am trying to change money cap (raise for 50% or 75 %) at present time to see if that encourages them to recruit cavalry in barracks or not.

I would like to see some units available as mercs in certain regions , like Syrian archers , Belgian spearmen, but they are not on merc list and i am not sure if i can use them from faction scripts without messing something up .

Btw, peltastaithrakioi merc are already available in some provinces that have Getai population, adding them in more will get AI buying them over cavalry....Their presence in Makedon areas is historical too, since Phillipos and Perseus allowed them to resettle there after 2nd Makedonian war , hoping to boost recruitment base.

It is still work in progress though, so list will be changed more....slowly , since it is so easy to mess up AI's recruitment balance.

[Watchman]

-Some of the factions are have tendency not to recruit cavalry in their barracks or they do it very rarely, for some reason. Namely Aedui, Arverni , Rome, Getai, Lusotannan, Pontus ....

Poor cost-efficiency ratio I would imagine. The Pontic Katpatuka Asabara have it particularly bad - their price tag is around the level of the Hai and Pahlava archer-cataphracts, but stats are virtually identical to the Mada Asabara...

I'd be a bit leery of that sort of return for my Mnai too.

[The Errant]

Nice to see work in progress. I agree with Watchman on the cavalry issue. All the factions you mentioned have a very poor quality cavalry pool and/or require highest level MICs or in the case of the Aedui/Arverni two reforms before they can recruit even half decent cavalry.

About Rome I believe they do upgrade to Polybian reforms at some point. They did so in all my campaigns using the money script. It just takes time.

As for the money cap. There is a reason I made it so low in my script. It's very simple. Putting it high, say 100 000 before the first reduction of 30 000, the cumulative effect of the money assistance and their normal income trough trade/mining goes over the top. I dosen't really help to reduce 30 000 from the AI treasury if the have an income of say 80 000 - 100 000 per turn after paying the upkeep for their units.
Next turn once again the same 80 000 - 100 000 and the AI treasury just keeps building. That is the reason I put the "High End" safety of -150 000 to any faction that got 200 000 into their treasury. Some factions never achieve that sort of monster economy, so they don't really need High End cap. Some factions actually go static with the High End cap.
Increasing the cap too much, only leads to the AI endlessly recruiting elite stacks and mercs, plus the inevitable bribery of any city you conquer without a governor present.
I noticed this wonderful effect when playing the Casse.
I had over 350 000 mnai in my treasury and suddenly get the event message: Richest faction. Arche Seleukeia. Disabling fog of war I noticed they had something like 14-15 full stacks and numerous smaller ones running all over the place. And still a treasury of over 350 000 mnai and rising.
That sucked on so many levels I started to feel sick. How do you compete against that? And they were not the only ones. Carthies were the richest next turn. Then Rome and Koinon, followed by Baktria...

I'm not saying your idea of increasing the cap is bad. Just wanted to warn of an unfortunate problem that you will have to overcome one way or another.