Are there trusted allies in Kingdoms?

[Rumpole]

I am trying to finish up Britannia on H/H as the Norwegians. Early in the game I allied with the Welsh, and I have kept relations at "Good" to "Very Good."

I have 32 provinces and a booming economy. The Scots have 6 provinces and no economy except for AI cheats, which means they have about 7 full stacks of troops. The Welsh have about the same.

This is a typical Kingdoms end-game situation: although you control most of the map and your opponents are broke and have no production, the largest military you can support is outnumbered by troops that are supported by cheats in the campaign script.

In the Americas I solved the problem by allying with one faction while using my entire force to take out the last few cities of the other. But on turn 84, the Welsh stabbed me in the back, even though relations were Very Good. Relations are now Good but I am under siege in the south with all my troops in the north trying to exterminate the Scots.

I know how to solve this problem: earlier in the game, while the Welsh still had the English as an enemy, I could have built up my treasury to 500K rather than just to 50K. But that gets really boring!

Could someone who has unpacked the files check whether the "trusted ally" code that was supposedly introduced in 1.2 is still there?

One of the things I have liked about MTW2 is that once I get a commanding position in the world, I can just finish up the campaign and start another. By constrast, every Kingdoms campaign has become really annoying when I got close to winning. I actually abanodned a Mayan campaign with 3 regions left to go because I was outnumbered 2 to 1 by enemies who were broke.

Do people find this fun?

[Zaleukos]

To me it seems like the trusted allies code works as before, that is that there is a chance of backstabbing irregardless and that additional trigger conditions are activated once you reach a certain size, making the probability of war much higher past that point.

I havent bothered to unpack the files and check though. The smaller maps make "total war" a much more realistic option than in vanilla, so it bothers me less:)

[Rumpole]

I think this is the answer, from the campaign script

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType norway
and not I_HotseatEnabled
and CampaignDifficulty > easy
and not IsFactionAIControlled
and I_NumberOfSettlements norway >= 30

set_counter AI_attack_player_level 2

end_monitor

The best way to combat this would be by getting small, useless cities to rebel so that you don't hit the magic number of 30 until you are down to one AI opponent.