Konny's money script

[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