How will Caravel mod the game when he starts playing again?

[caravel]

Reading this thread makes me want to play MTW again. The question is this: Can I play the game without giving in to the modding urge?

[gollum]

"To mod or not to mod?" :)

Just get the peasants out, mess abit with the AI personalities, make available any faction you want to play that is not, switch the terrain in provinces to match the map - and go for it. About 45 to an hour mod work.

It may be interesting using the -ian thing to play a faction for 3 consecutive rulers and then switch to another faction for another 3 rulers (for the benefit of all). It avoids the superfaction boredom and offers fresh challenges. When i tried that i played 3 different cultures/religions; islamic, orthodox, catholic - just to complement the variety.

[drone]

Just get the peasants out,

And the ballistas.

[gollum]

Yes, and the ballistas :) or he could increase the number of men in artillery to 60 and make them have spears so the AI not being able to defend them is countered. Also the maintenance cost will increase and so the recruitment/maintenance cost and so the AI won't (hopefully) built as much, unless of course...all this is about modding and defeats the purpose ;) Just get the ballistas out.

[caravel]

But that will inevitably lead to getting the ships out, modding Muwahid foot to Almohad only, changing bodyguard unit sizes and support costs...

Of course before do all of that I need a PC that runs the game...

[Vantek]

the -ian thing

Sorry for sidetrack, but what does it do exactly? Switching factions midgame could actually be pretty cool. I could start with a random faction, send Priests to all muslim provinces and then just keep hitting End Turn until one muslim faction seems to be in a state where it would be challenging to survive. Alternatively, start with a small challenging faction and try to crush the muslims, then switch to muslims when it looks like you're about to succeed. This could be a pretty fun solution to the problem that two of the three muslim factions are ridiculously easy to win with. But I love muslim music so much.

Yes, and the ballistas :) or he could increase the number of men in artillery to 60 and make them have spears so the AI not being able to defend them is countered. Also the maintenance cost will increase and so the recruitment/maintenance cost and so the AI won't (hopefully) built as much, unless of course...all this is about modding and defeats the purpose ;) Just get the ballistas out.

Won't the AI still keep running away with his artillery crews however?

[drone]

Sorry for sidetrack, but what does it do exactly? Switching factions midgame could actually be pretty cool. I could start with a random faction, send Priests to all muslim provinces and then just keep hitting End Turn until one muslim faction seems to be in a state where it would be challenging to survive. Alternatively, start with a small challenging faction and try to crush the muslims, then switch to muslims when it looks like you're about to succeed. This could be a pretty fun solution to the problem that two of the three muslim factions are ridiculously easy to win with. But I love muslim music so much.

When you set the -ian switch, you can change factions in the campaign map by using the number keys. IIRC, the number for a faction depends on the faction's declaration order in the startpos file. 1 is the rebels, 2 the Almos, 3 the Byz, 4 the Danes, ... to 0 for the Poles. Shift + # covers the next 10, not sure after 20 factions. There are some other hotkeys to do stuff, I think "I" shuts down the campaign AI (no troop movements, no building), "G" shows everything, there might be a couple more.

[Gaiseric]

That sounds pretty cool actually!!! With the -ian switch could you play all of the factions on the map at the same time? For example start as Denmark, do all the things you would normally do in a turn and then switch to the next faction, then the next one, and so on without ending the turn.

How would battles work? I am thinking that when you finally ended the turn you could only control the upcoming battles of the faction that you end the turn with. Still it sounds like a lot of fun and additional variety to the game!!!

[gollum]

Vantek: you may be right, the AI would do this, although there might be a choice to alter that behaviour by the declaration of the unit type and the unit type behaviour. I remember very well that Caravel's pocket mod had crossbows that did not skirmish back and forth and took shot in the face of even charging heavy cavalry and knights. I am quite hopeful that with a bit of modding work, artillery could stay in with being more meaningful and less overproduced for the AI.

Gaiseric: i am pretty sure that you can keep changing factions while a turn lasts and do actions for them - however you would certainly play only the faction that you end the turn with. Its also possible that the AI would still do his actions with all other factions other than the one you end the turn with, but i cannot vouch for this its pure speculation.

I tried recently to play rulers instead of factions, but i found out that a single ruler per faction was too little. Two could also be too little because the succession order can include aging brothers etc - but three gives a play time from 50 to 80 years approx per faction.I played an early campaign by playing in turn the Turks, the Byzantines and the French. It was really fun. While playing factions i had to pay more attention to faction stability and to the Royal family and line - there was more room for roleplaying in this way because there was not unlimited time to design things to the player's will.

Anyway, just thought to share :)

[caravel]

Vantek: you may be right, the AI would do this, although there might be a choice to alter that behaviour by the declaration of the unit type and the unit type behaviour. I remember very well that Caravel's pocket mod had crossbows that did not skirmish back and forth and took shot in the face of even charging heavy cavalry and knights. I am quite hopeful that with a bit of modding work, artillery could stay in with being more meaningful and less overproduced for the AI.

Errm...? Well if it did work like that, it certainly wasn't by design (). In fact some time ago I was interested in finding out what controlled the default skirmish/hold formation/engage at will behaviour of units. Basically I wanted to remove spears from the game altogether and have them behave like swords (or to be more specific, like more defensively oriented versions of halbs/bills/jhi), in 60/120 units as well, defaulting to engage at will as swords do (making them more like YS/YA in STW). I have never worked out how to do it. Just changing "spear" to "sword" in the unit prod file doesn't work.

Gaiseric: i am pretty sure that you can keep changing factions while a turn lasts and do actions for them - however you would certainly play only the faction that you end the turn with. Its also possible that the AI would still do his actions with all other factions other than the one you end the turn with, but i cannot vouch for this its pure speculation.

You need to make changes (build/train/move/agent missions) then end the turn for only one faction. If you make changes for more than one and end the turn, only the last faction's changes will take effect. The AI will undo all of the others and do it's own thing.

I tried recently to play rulers instead of factions, but i found out that a single ruler per faction was too little. Two could also be too little because the succession order can include aging brothers etc - but three gives a play time from 50 to 80 years approx per faction.I played an early campaign by playing in turn the Turks, the Byzantines and the French. It was really fun. While playing factions i had to pay more attention to faction stability and to the Royal family and line - there was more room for roleplaying in this way because there was not unlimited time to design things to the player's will.

Anyway, just thought to share :)

A very interesting mode of play.

[Gaiseric]

You need to make changes (build/train/move/agent missions) then end the turn for only one faction. If you make changes for more than one and end the turn, only the last faction's changes will take effect. The AI will undo all of the others and do it's own thing.

Oh darn:( Well the -ian switch might still be fun for some other alternate ways to play the game. I will definatley have to give it a try once I am through trying out all the differant mods and factions for MTW. It might be a neat concept to design a mod around. I am thinking of somthing like a Roman mod or another Large Empire with vast territories to govern. Although these territories respond to the demands of the capital, they are largely independent and the governors enjoy free rule. Each large region of the empire could be an independant faction but they would all be allied to each other and the capital. When you play a governor as one of these regions, you would have specific goals to achieve related to the territory you are playing. When you acheive these goals, your leader is considerd to have enough presteige to become the leader of the empire. You would then switch factions and control the capital region. When your leader dies, you could then return to govern another territory with more goals for your new leader. I dont know if this would work or not in game but there may be other cool things to do with the -ian switch if a mod were designed around it.

[caravel]

Sounds like a great idea, but due to hardcoded limitations I'm not sure it's feasible. Setting up client/vassal states in MTW is definitely not possible. It's also not possible to set up the alliance/war/neutral state of factions at the start of the game.

For Roman era mods where a senate type authority is required your best bet is to use the catholic religion for roman factions only and then the pope will act as a sort of senate to them. All other factions should be pagan, muslim or orthodox so that they are not subject to the senate.

A bit of renaming among the "loc" files and some replacement images should get that working. i.e. replace the "pope and his two cardinals" warning image with an image of roman senators or the senate and the text for "you have been excommunicated for your aggressions against fellow christians" with "you have been outlawed by the senate" or similar (it's probably been done before). The call for crusade messages could be reworded to appear like the senate missions from RTW, you could either leave crusades in to fit this purpose or remove them altogether and just treat the crusade requests as "advice". It would be an idea to set the typical "enemies of Rome" (Carthage, Gaul, Greeks etc) as muslim as that's whom the "senate" will target.

As to the papal faction itself (remember that the pope and the papal faction are two very different things in MTW - they're linked but are not the same. You could either place them in Rome, as in vanilla, or I believe there is a "cheap and dirty" means involving hiding them on the map somewhere (i.e. the disabled Sahara province) so that they will never be seen or wiped out. This would give you a "never ending senate" which may not be desirable. A senate that can be wiped out and can reappear again seems more sensible, if not totally historical. The problem with this is that they will always tend to come back every so many years (like the papacy) which will soon get annoying.

[gollum]

Right, so it wasn't by design, ok :)
Other than the sword/spear designation there is another column in the file that says things like "attacker, strong" or something; i think this is how the AI macromanages the unit in battle. There is also a number of lines in a col that specifies how the AI micro the unit - this gives specific details about at what distance from an attacker the unit skirmishes, engages etc. I was thinking of tweaking that.

I believe that the Sam Wars mod has spears that are not spears in the MTW sense. They were basically swords with an anticavalry bonus. Perhaps it would be just sufficient to set to 0 the number of ranks that engage for spears. Iirc i did that once and engaged a spear unit with a mounted knight unit. They did alright (because of the high anticavalry defence +1/+4), but they engaged very differently than spears usually do ie in clean ranks - they were spread all over as were the knights after the charge.

I think that the "spear" designation may be controlling whether the unit denies the charge (which is set in the exe - but the designation may be the trigger). Certainly Samwars spears did not deny the charge of cavalry - the charge bonus and the subsequent combat cycles for the cavalry had the benefit of the charge. However, the Samwars gave a very large anti-cav bonus, either +4/+4 or +5/+5. In this way, it mattered how you used the spears in battle, especially pre-engaging. I mean in MTW it does not matter if your spear unit receives a heavy cav charge in motion as long as its head on. In Samwars it did matter even head on - stationary and hold form/position was best, and after the first few seconds set to engage at will. On the other hand, spears that were on the run and had disturbed ranks, would get shaken (or even broken if the local numerical odds were against them) if charged that way even frontally by heavy cav. I found that better in a way than MTW battles in which spears make their long stable lines because they deny by default charges and the battle revolves around that. It required more skill to make a stable engagement, so you could busy yourself with flanking after that. I always thought that only pikes should deny by default the charge and have supporting ranks. Of course other people may not like this.

For MTW - i mean the period - maybe lowly spears could do with +1/+4 and from there to increase the attack bonus as the spear unit quality (and tech appearance) increases.

[drone]

Just a little thread maintenance, carry on...

[Gaiseric]

Have you installed\played MTW yet?

Just think, the AI in MTW is the best AI there is as far as TW games go. I have been very impressed from what I have seen, AI\MTW, based on my recent games with ETW. If you get too far ahead, a few ironman rules wouldn't hurt so that you dont become bored with the game.