Konny's money script

[konny]

( For previous discussions and AARs see also: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=121932 )

This is a money script I have made for EB. The scripted money help for AI factions is raised from 1,200 to 5,000 mne per town, but only when the treasury of that faction is negative.

Example:

monitor_event SettlementTurnStart FactionType egypt
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < 0

console_command add_money egypt, 5000

end_monitor



The idea is to give non-profitable factions more help to 'encourage' their expansion, and to keep the big factions within the limits of their domestic economy.

So far, several players (including me) are running this script permanent and the results seems to be as intended: no 'Grey Death' from the very start, no Germanic superpower by simply holding dozends of remote villages in the Northern Woods etc. The big factions still are far from beeing push-overs and in most of the times Rome, Seleucia, Karthago etc. are still the richest factions, but by their own economy. The game is much more balanced.


Downloadlink:

http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Rt...BBS_SCRIPT.zip

[Geoffrey S]

I particularly buy into the theory that AI campaignmap stupidity is largely caused by having a huge amount of money and thus making messed up threat assessments. It'd be interesting to know what the EB team makes of this different approach to the money script.

[Redmeth]

I'd like to state that something similar is used in the EB money script now but it's a part of a more complex mechanism.

This piece of code was in the balanced version of the money script I released with mlp071 but along with other things that would make it too difficult for unexperienced players.

I say this cause I don't want Konny to think we plagiarized his idea when he sees the script in 1.0.

[konny]

I say this cause I don't want Konny to think we plagiarized his idea when he sees the script in 1.0.

That would be no problem either. But I was anyhow sure that internal the EB team is working on improving that part of the script, espacially since I have learned that there are altered versions of the money script around provided by team members. So, probably EB 1.0 will make my script obsolte; looking foreward to that.

[Redmeth]

That would be no problem either. But I was anyhow sure that internal the EB team is working on improving that part of the script, espacially since I have learned that there are altered versions of the money script around provided by team members. So, probably EB 1.0 will make my script obsolte; looking foreward to that.

The script was made before I joined the team and hasn't been updated due mostly to lack of time to work solely on it and make it better. I hope the one coming with EB 1.0 will be perfect but that rarely happens so good feedback will be needed from everyone kind enough to provide it.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

I really hope no unofficial balance in the script is further needed with EB 1.0, but this needs to be further checked. Looks like we won't, though, but it was a good job, konny, back in the o.81 and 0.7x days when AS was killing everything.

[Davor]

Example:

monitor_event SettlementTurnStart FactionType egypt
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < 0

console_command add_money egypt, 5000

end_monitor

Problem with this sort of thinking is that you give a faction the option to make even more troops, so their debt becomes even larger because of greater unit expenses.

Example: If a faction has less than 0 money and negative income on turn 0, and you give them 5000, the next turn the AI could buy units with that money, what results in even more negative income. So after a couple of turns, their negative income could be bigger than those 5000 you give them, resulting over time in a big negative treasury hole.

There is a better way, imo, to tackle this problem. Just make sure to keep their money at 0 if they have negative treasury. The negative side of this is that the EB script doesn't support looping, (to my knowledge), so the script can get really large. (although easy to make if you use for example VB scripts to make the EB script as I have)

Example:
monitor_event SettlementTurnStart FactionType egypt
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < 0

console_command add_money egypt, 100

monitor_event SettlementTurnStart FactionType egypt
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < -100
and Treasury > -200

console_command add_money egypt, 200

end_monitor

(EDIT: SettlementTurnStart should be FactionTurnStart here!)
...
until 5000


(you can make the delta(money) bigger/smaller depending on what you can buy with the money. 100 minai is a safe, but results in a big script.

Another thing: giving Epeiros a huge army to start with, which they can not support financially is bad for the AI, historically inaccurate, and beyond the point of EB?

Another thing: trying to control the treasury of AI factions by giving/taking their money through scripts is, I suppose, bad for AI strategy. As far as I recall from some CA member, AI plans it's strategy a couple of rounds in front. Those AI strategies are not saved. So loading a game forces the AI to make a new one. (ever had a AI army besiege a city, then when you reload, the army stops besieging on their next turn although it wouldn't do so if you just continued to play?) Anyhow, with taking/giving money to AI, you even more disrupt it's strategy, I think, because it isn't anticipating the money. That's why I am convinced that regulating money should be made with buildings, or any other in-game way, and not so much with scripting.

Another thing: giving money like this to AI factions makes a whole aspect of the game irrelevant: A big aspect of the game is your possibility to cripple the opponent's economy. So what's the point in besieging their ports or cities, or any other method, if it's irrelevant for their economy?

Conclusion: this way of scripting is bad. And the badness factor depends on how much value you put in these three arguments I have given you. (I may have other too, but these few just came to my mind while I was writing this post) So if you don't care about crippling economy, AI strategies, realism... then your way of scripting is not bad at all.

(Your second Idea about sponsoring historical wars I like a bit more.)

Now don't come saying that this is the only way to make the game challenging, or prevent the AS from taking the whole map, or 'protecting small factions', or whatever else... we all got brains, so try to figure it out without excluding the above arguments, or show they are futile.

Greets
Davor

[Leão magno]

So konny, any news about your great script? :) :)

[konny]

I had not went on with this idea. I wanted some more testing what the new EB script is doing. So far I am satisfied: the AI is expanding in a reasonable way and the army are about the size I would expect of their empires; save for the one-town factions with their three full stacks.


But, of course, if you or other players have the impression that the AI needs more, or different, help we can open this one for discussion: who should get how much and under which circumstances?




--------------------------------------------------------

@ Davor

But you do know that the former EB script gave the AI factions 1,600 mne per city and per turn regardless of their treasury? I suppose, not.

Another thing: giving Epeiros a huge army to start with, which they can not support financially is bad for the AI, historically inaccurate, and beyond the point of EB?

That must be another Epeiros you are talking about. I was refering to Pyrrhos' "look-what-fine-toys-I-got-from-Egypt" Epeiros.

Another thing: trying to control the treasury of AI factions by giving/taking their money through scripts is, I suppose, bad for AI strategy.

According to my experince, beeing broken is even worse for the AI strategy. Did you know that the AI isn't able to disband troops?

Conclusion: this way of scripting is bad.

Then you better do not play EB, because it has around 11 MB of such scripting.

[Davor]

But you do know that the former EB script gave the AI factions 1,600 mne per city and per turn regardless of their treasury? I suppose, not.

I do... that’s why I started this thread https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=90571 Giving AI factions more money is no solution imo. I prefer a complete different approach.

That must be another Epeiros you are talking about. I was refering to Pyrrhos' "look-what-fine-toys-I-got-from-Egypt" Epeiros.

And was he broke thereafter?

According to my experince, beeing broken is even worse for the AI strategy. Did you know that the AI isn't able to disband troops?

For that reason I modified you script. I explained why you approach was the same as giving no money at all to the AI. (All you do is increase the zero line with 5000. You don't prevent beeing broke, you postpone it this way!) But if you modify your script to just keep the total treasury at 0 or more, then, after the AI has lost a few troops, he is instantly no longer bankrupt.

Then you better do not play EB, because it has around 11 MB of such scripting.

You show arrogance... I don't know how you come to 11MB. Currently, I am looking at the EBBS_SCRIPT.txt, "Money Assistance" section that's not even half a megabyte. And if you ask me, yes, the current script is bad because of various reasons already given. Luckily, it's the only less good part of this incredibly good mod that I consider as one of the best games (not just mods as this is my first one) I ever played.

[konny]

And was he broke thereafter?

He was dead thereafter. But he would have been broken if he had given the command of his army to the RTW AI.

For that reason I modified you script. I explained why you approach was the same as giving no money at all to the AI. (All you do is increase the zero line with 5000) But if you modify your script to just keep the total treasury at 0 or more, then, after the AI has lost a few troops, he is instantly no longer bankrupt.

Absolutly not. I am giving the AI 5,000 per town per turn until economy has recovered. The only way for the AI to don't get beyond this point is by not doing anything at all. When the AI has conquered an additional town it will get another 5,000 extra the next turn for that. This, minus the lower upkeep for the casualties, will most likely get their treasury over the green line. And then nothing more is granted. That worked very fine, save for the Nomads, who will never be able to have a running economy in EB and an army that is able to expand against the strong rebell towns.


When you have a broken faction with one stack and the AI gives that stack an illegal target, in terms of pathfinding, and you do not give the AI extra money to raise more units and build another stack, this AI faction will most likely doing nothing at all for most, if not all, of the game. That is/was (since it seemed to have changed) most likely the problem with Getai.

[Leão magno]

Tried the Konny's Script since the very beginning and I can assure you that it worked pretty much on 8.10v2, think that it is one complicated job to discover how to give the AI just enough resource (money) nothing less, nothing more... in fact the first scripts were not all balanced since the necessities of each faction are different from the beginning, but it already led the AI to some real intelligent behavior.. for example, once I managed to break the Selucid empire in two splinted parts and instead of sending every army they had against me, they dedicated the armies in the smaller of the separated parts of the empire to maintain it and attacked me with the armies on the other part... this led to a much more difficult threat since I could not simply wait to be attacked, destroy everything and then go to conquer cities, I had to really garrison the cities I conquered because I was fighting a real two fronts war against the same enemy! Have never experienced this level of AI without Konny's Script... anyway, the EB 1.0 script is a much better one than the EB 0.81v2 but still needs tweaks, after all, as the EB members always states, EB is a work in progress... but it is a much better one, think we should develop some kind of help when the Faction is already defeated and defending (usually in a poor manner) their last two three cities. I defend this idea because it gets little boring after you destroy the huge stacks and goes for their capital and they have no way to defend themselves... By the way, changing money script also allowed to better diplomacy AI, I experienced that with Konny's Script too, for the first times in years of game play I got Rome to accept, not once but three times a cease fire that really endured, fact is that when the AI got broke and without any army, the preferred to make peace agreements with me... EB 1.0 was launched and I never got that action duplicated to prove the scripts help on it, but I am convinced that it was with the help of Konny's Script that AI got a little bit clever.

[Decimus Attius Arbiter]

Thanks, I am going to try it out.

[Ymarsakar]

konny, why not give factions like pontus an initial mnai influx so that the economy doesn't go negative for a few turns?

[konny]

They do get itin EB. The problem is that these factions (Getai, Pontos, Armenia) often do anything for a very long time. If we want them to have the money do economicly survive that time they may be need a million of mne. That would seriously unbalance the game if they decide to go on campaign on turn #1 (and sometimes they do).

[Ymarsakar]

I'm not sure how many smaller factions are in view here, but I remember that the Sweboz and Saka Rauka, and some others, would get mnai bonuses from devastating an enemy tile. Could increasing that or adding it to factions help out those smaller factions in the beginning?

[konny]

I don't think so because for that they have to enter hostile territory first - and that's the point where they always fail.

[craziii]

is this mod still needed with EB 1.0???