The extreme and the Economy.

[Agathyrsus]

Now, Im relatively new to EB. I spend most of my TW time on RTR. I Decided to give EB a try as it has grown now into something amazingly large.

I am thoroughly impressed on most everything, if not for the amount of work put into it alone. The historical detail is quite amazing and I wanted to point this out before I went on, as to make sure you don't take this as a flame, and it is not meant to be. More of a question suggestion without demanding, if you will.


MY concern is the economics of the game. Now it may be because you simply can't change the monitary types, but regardless of what name you name money. Im not entirely convinced every faction would require so much to put together a band of warriors.

Now it can represent what it indeed does take, but I just wanted to get some feedback on the economy at present, if its still undergoing changes, is too hard to change, or just too complex to customize for each faction.


For instance I imagine the asiatic horse cultures to be... less driven by coins to recruit and build when warriors would get their pay from victory I would think. Granted we are talking about armies and not raiding parties.

Now beyond all this, I approach this subject as a player is faced, first thing, with often a very important decision that is thrust upon them. Disband your army, or march about the immediate contryside with this inhereted army, which also inhereted a massive debt, payable only through victory or dismemberment.

As that is the only two choices really and TW tends to, when best put to use, make a game of economics. As war is a game of economics. I think Cicero has the credit on the actual quote for that, sinews and all, but I just wanted to bring up the question as to plans on the economy.

I just question lightly the Saxon reliance on gold to rally warriors is all. It sure is pretty though, right?

[Apgad]

If it helps, you can think of the money not just as gold coin being given to a horse archer who has nowhere to spend it on the steppe, but rather the cost of feeding himself, any attendants, his horse (and replacement horses), purchasing and maintaining weapons, armour and other equipment, supporting his family back home etc.

When conquering you can consider it each soldiers' share of plunder, slaves, and land granted.

[Megas Methuselah]

Personally, I love this part of EB. The high cost of troops greatly reduces the chances of there being endless stacks of soldiers deployed by both the human player and the computer players. In that sense, it also means that each large battle carries much more significance than it does in other mods, where I always got sick of barely annihilating an enemy army, only to see another one of equal strength replace it, and so on.

If I sound offensive, I don't mean to. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions in life, be that what they may.

[Agathyrsus]

No, that makes perfect sense and I agree with that. Just sort of bringing up any points to the economics in general.

But it is disheartening that plundering these equally poor 'rebel' factions doesnt offer any equity sum in return (although how much can be turned into liquid assets upon conquering is also up for debate in such "uncivilized" places. Granted I did easily gain enough territory to spread the cost to what I did have, and being new to EB im not writing off anything as I may have completely screwed up.

And I noticed starting as Rome or a larger imperial faction tends to not be so rough (The difficulty of factions is nice) on the money factor right off. Do things shift given enough investment though? If its posible to reach the opposite spectrum of things and gain income equal to the large costs then the point is really just to be smart about early spending, as it should be.

I just noticed that my Sweboz campaign will take nearly 70 odd turns at my current income to exit debt and my military may not be strong enough to gain any new recruits... and by that time population and squalor might overturn my profits at such a high tax rate.

My Sarmatae game was a failure (Acceptable as its ranked as very difficult for new EB players).

Still wondering though if adding different recruitment for factions is possible. Would be interesting to see warlike 'barbarians' sort of join up. Given that its true that young warriors offerend themselves up as skirmishers or Boyar like nobles would answer the call. Maybe as long as you have adequate food you could offer any loot to your units as pay.

I dont want to go in depth as im not making the mod, just thoughts and questions still. Thanks for the kind replies, I don't want to come off as pushy or even ungrateful. I love these mods, and RTR alone brought so much enjoyment for my favorite Total War game Im hoping that EB too will provide an even more indepth experience.

I can at least say Im impressed labling something as hard in the game is actually hard. Too long have I cranked up all difficulties and installed mods to make the game truely challenging only to be bored by worthless foes. The fact I own M2tw and prefer RTW and BI over it perhaps show my need for solid, fluid and more challenging gameplay. EB wins in that respect hands down.

[Cyclops]

Very hard to represent the huge variety of societies with the relatively simple system we have.

Babarian leaders could attract followers by their charisma and the promiose of future wealth. Yeomen pikes turned up expecting their meals and a modest cut of the loot, and to go home to get the harvest in. Citizen soldiers served for a set period too, often after they themselves voted to go to war. Proffesional mercs wanted cash on the barrel head.

EB does a fine effort within the coded limits. The economy is a simple but workable element in the campaign.

I imagine mnai equating to disposabel wealth. It could be foodstuffs, trade goods, precious metals whatever. i imagine most societies use actual coin for a variable fraction of theirb economic dealings: for example I understand that Carthage's enormous trade empire was established, expanded and ran smoothly for centuries almost exclusively on barter: they adapted to coin as a medium of exchange quite well, but it wasn't really central.

So mnai in the game represent this disposable wealth. For Romans it is contributions in kind, and a fair amount of actual coin: likewise for the eastern monarchies, although it might also represent the right to collect incomes from villages or prime grazing lands. For the HA's its more gold arm-rings, weapons, horses, slaves etc.

It'd be a nice tweak if factions got more out of their cultuiral speciality: eg Carthage getting a 10% boost on all trade, or Rome being extra good at enslaving, or the nomad's getting a bonus from pillaging and provinces with mount markets. However the system we have is suitable to my mind. The high cost of (for example) most of the Lusotanann troops gives the sense that their armies were hard to keep together, and should be disbanded between campaigns.

Another aspect of the tight economy is the temtation to short term cash gains from self-pillaging (especially wonders). You get in a hard spot with the KH and you start eyeing the Parthenon and thinking "how bad to I need that 5% law 5% happiness bonus?"

[Apgad]

You get in a hard spot with the KH and you start eyeing the Parthenon and thinking "how bad to I need that 5% law 5% happiness bonus?"

You're reading my mind! And who has time for games when there is war on?

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Another aspect of the tight economy is the temtation to short term cash gains from self-pillaging (especially wonders). You get in a hard spot with the KH and you start eyeing the Parthenon and thinking "how bad to I need that 5% law 5% happiness bonus?"

I have to remind you that this game is best played rollplayed.

[V.T. Marvin]

It'd be a nice tweak if factions got more out of their cultuiral speciality: eg Carthage getting a 10% boost on all trade, or Rome being extra good at enslaving, or the nomad's getting a bonus from pillaging and provinces with mount markets.

Actually the nomads DO get money from pillaging (i.e. by standing in a foreign territory until a black spot appears) AFAIK, which is really cool.

[Pode]

One of the things I'm loving about EB's economics is how it is rewarding me for not warmongering. It's 232 in my Roman campaign, every city's build queue is full, and I've got a touch less than 180K in the bank. I got there by putting together a single Camillan legion, securing Italy, getting peace and trade rights as fast as possible, and going after coastal Eleutheroi provinces only. I had great success keeping my army small and avoiding wars, and EB's the only Total War where that's been a winning strategy for me. When it finally did come time to fight the Sweboz and Carthaginians, they'd had plenty of time to build up and came with a diverse and challenging unit roster instead of hordes of levies. I'm still not on permanent easy street, though, as my income is slightly negative with two Polybina legions and a bunch of new garrison troops. Even with the easiest faction in EB and a firm grip on a quarter of the Med basin, I can't just throw money at a problem.

[blacksnail]

The hardcoding of the economics makes things very difficult to model accurately using the RTW engine, so money ends up being a factor of history, balance, and to a lesser degree something you have to explicitly take as a game mechanic that functions because that's just the way the game functions.

Take army movement and the turn-based structure of RTW. In Antiquity there was not a turn-based, ordered structure when it came to moving armies about the map. There were not 19 discrete factions which patiently had their armies remain in place while a 20th marched for a fixed distance. However, this is a core mechanic to the RTW engine. You either have to accept it or else stop playing the game within the first five minutes, because it's not going away.

In many ways the economic hardcoding is the same way, with some fundamental aspects of the money operating independently of factions. It is possible to somewhat alleviate this by making each controllable monetary bonus faction-dependent, but only somewhat, without vastly inflating the economic base to marginalize the hardcoded bits into irrelevancy. Also, units have fixed costs regardless of factions and many EB units are recruitable by many factions of different cultural types, which effectively means that variant unit-pricing and upkeep becomes trait-dependent (and therefore family-member dependent). This isn't at all optimal because it means a stack of horse archers without a family member to keep their upkeep to 90 mnai per unit could potentially become 900 mnai/turn economic sinks. Plus the trait cost reduction is, I believe, keyed to "any unit" which means Steppe generals recruiting Hellenic troops in Pergamon could be paying out 50 mnai/turn per Hellenic unit which would normally require 500. Etc, etc - the issues just keep going on. Disappointing, but we've tried to provide some parity when we can. I expect that there will be more options to better simulate the varied economics in EB2, but it will still be built on that hardcoded core.

Incidentally, it would be very interesting to me to see a campaign map system where you gave every army a destination as part of movement, as well as engagement parameters ("pursue and attack all enemies encountered/pursue and attack half strength enemies encountered/actively avoid all enemies if possible/force march/defend location X and the nearby vicinity from any enemy spotted"). When you hit "start the clock" every army on the map would advance to where they had been ordered by the player or the AI and battles would occur during an abstracted length of time (week/month/year) until you got back to the strategic approach again. However, the AI required to maintain a consistent grand strategy for dozens of enemy factions would be potentially crippling to code, if not confusing as hell for the player without some abstraction, so that's on my wishlist for stuff I hope to see in 10 years or so.

[Hax]

Originally Posted by Cyclops
You get in a hard spot with the KH and you start eyeing the Parthenon and thinking "how bad to I need that 5% law 5% happiness bonus?

HERESY!

ZEUS WILL STRIKE THEE DOWN, SINNER!

/exitCapsLock

[Pode]

Incidentally, it would be very interesting to me to see a campaign map system where you gave every army a destination as part of movement, as well as engagement parameters ("pursue and attack all enemies encountered/pursue and attack half strength enemies encountered/actively avoid all enemies if possible/force march/defend location X and the nearby vicinity from any enemy spotted"). When you hit "start the clock" every army on the map would advance to where they had been ordered by the player or the AI and battles would occur during an abstracted length of time (week/month/year) until you got back to the strategic approach again. However, the AI required to maintain a consistent grand strategy for dozens of enemy factions would be potentially crippling to code, if not confusing as hell for the player without some abstraction, so that's on my wishlist for stuff I hope to see in 10 years or so.

Couldn't a very similar effect be achieved today by the use of "phases" within a turn? In the first phase, building/recruiting/taxing gets done for the turn, all armies/units get movement orders (but don't move yet) and the end turn button gets pressed. Now every army/unit moves one map square, simultaneously, and fow gets recomputed. If a new enemy unit is revealed, the movement pauses while the player or AI decides on new orders for that unit. Combat gets resolved if two armies end up on the same square in the same phase (possible strategic evasion!) As armies units ran out of move points, the phases would go faster until no one had any moves left and a new turn would begin.

[Parkev]

Or just go real time with a pause button. Disregarding possibly funtional limits of the hardware.

[LorDBulA]

Or just go real time with a pause button.

This is also not the best solution.
Can you imagine fighting war as seleucids both with Bactria and Ptolemies?
With intensive fighting, many armies trying to take advantage of terrain on both ends of the empire in real time would be nightmare.

The best Idea is mentioned by blacksnail. But it would require extremely good AI.

[blacksnail]

Or just go real time with a pause button. Disregarding possibly funtional limits of the hardware.

The functional limits are of the human brain, in such a case.

[blacksnail]

Couldn't a very similar effect be achieved today by the use of "phases" within a turn? In the first phase, building/recruiting/taxing gets done for the turn, all armies/units get movement orders (but don't move yet) and the end turn button gets pressed. Now every army/unit moves one map square, simultaneously, and fow gets recomputed. If a new enemy unit is revealed, the movement pauses while the player or AI decides on new orders for that unit. Combat gets resolved if two armies end up on the same square in the same phase (possible strategic evasion!) As armies units ran out of move points, the phases would go faster until no one had any moves left and a new turn would begin.

Phased play is appreciated by a small subset of the "moving armies around a map" market and pretty generally loathed as glacial and overwhelming by all the rest. It is a hard, hard balance to find.

I sympathize - I'm one of the few people who enjoyed the Star Wars Rebellion game which essentially operated under a "time advancement" mechanic like this. However, there were only ever 10 or 20 large groupings of 10 to 20 planets each, so it was easy to comprehend when you jumped to a battle in Bartix sector and then another in Pueblo sector. "Anywhere in the Med and surrounding areas" is what you'd be faced with in a TW engine, which could easily turn off a large subset of the player base.

[Pode]

Glacial and overwhelming is my style. I was excited by the hotseat mode in Kingdoms because I envisioned a single player grand campaign with no AI control except in battles.

[Agathyrsus]

I've often wondered about differing campaign map timetables... Although I usually stray from any phased thinking as I quickly believe I would get bored really fast.

As far as AI in TW... it seems to vary, and my biggest issue has been the ever failing pathfinding. Im sure its been enlightened on somewhere, but how cavalry flocking (and general unit cohesion) became broken between RTW and MIITW (same engine it appears, looking through the files I see scripts disabled for Marian reforms and the like...) Not to mention flocking tends to breakup even more so in the new game...

Whatever AI CA uses in their games appears and sounds messy and absurd. Im going to link this all back to the topic by the phrase "Money Injections" to show displeasure at the clunk used for AI.

Probably a topic for a M2TW forum, but do any of you guys know about any of the code or AI engines used for TW?


Ed: As an after thought, it seems shortening turn lengths increases campaign map... probability. The absurdity of taking 2 years to move halfway across france is beyond the basic subject but a relative point on its own.

Ed2: yeah, the first thing I did to M2 was drop the turns to 6 months... to save the future comment...