At last i got my EB and now begin to test it immediately. Made a few short runs with BI exe to note campaign flow there, then switched to alex, starting new campaign. Here are my observations.
Human player: Casse
RomeTW-ALX.exe only (alex not installed)
Difficulty: H/M (not fought many tac battles anyway)
EBBS script: original, then changed (see below)
Victory towns assigned: no
descr_strat: "options +prebattle_night_battle_tickbox", NOT "options bi" (see below)
I confirm that AI factions have a tough time expanding, despite AI being more active in general under alex... It wasn't a prob in XGM, where rebels are weak and unscripted, but in EB many rebel towns eventually get half-stack garrisons full of golden chevrons... This doesn't mean that AI can't expand at all (Lusitans took Numantia in 255!), but smaller factions tend to stagnate most of the time, falling in dire debt under high upkeep rates and still reluctant to attack rebel cities.
Now i think that "difficult start help" (what a misnomer!) in EBBS (section 5a) isn't up to the task. Now, it gives 20000 mnai per year to all factions short of 5000 mnai, which is excessive for larger ones (not to mention makes pointless such things as naval blockades) and not enough for smaller factions (eg checked stagnating Pontos in 253 and found them losing over 7000 per turn - that's about 30000 per year, EB original script can't solve this). There is also per-city help in EBBS, but again, it's useless for smaller factions. Also i checked konny's and Davor's scripts and found it less than ideal... so here is my variant, applied in mid-campaign circa 250 with great effect.
It is divided in two parts for each faction:
1) This part will cover any debt as big as 65536 mnai (per turn)...
monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType romans_julii
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < -32768
console_command add_money romans_julii, 32768
end_monitor
monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType romans_julii
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < -16384
console_command add_money romans_julii, 16384
end_monitor
monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType romans_julii
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < -8192
console_command add_money romans_julii, 8192
end_monitor
monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType romans_julii
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < -4096
console_command add_money romans_julii, 4096
end_monitor
monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType romans_julii
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < 0
console_command add_money romans_julii, 4096
end_monitor
...and leaves treasury within certain range (0-4095 mnai in this case) afterwards. One can get lesser values and even exact zero treasury continuing this pattern (note last 2 bonuses are equal and last bound is 0), but script becomes bloated soon and i don't think it's really necessary.
2) This part will help small factions only!
monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType romans_julii
and not FactionIsLocal
and Treasury < 5000
and I_CompareCounter seasonCounter = 4
if I_NumberOfSettlements romans_julii < 5
console_command add_money romans_julii, 5000
end_if
if I_NumberOfSettlements romans_julii < 4
console_command add_money romans_julii, 5000
end_if
if I_NumberOfSettlements romans_julii < 3
console_command add_money romans_julii, 10000
end_if
end_monitor
It's nothing more than modified original EBBS section-5a script. It gives 20000 mnai per year if AI faction has only 1-2 cities, 10000 in case of 3 cities, and 5000 if 4 cities (i noticed that after gaining 3-4 regions AI factions finally can take care of themselves and perform well, but some further faction-specific tweaks are possible). Now human tactics of targeting AI economics makes some sense, at least when fighting large empires (we can always pretend that enemy resorts to desperate measures when he's reduced to last 2-3 regions).
Reloading game with new script variant had a couple of sleeping factions almost immediately awake and going on conquest (though i'm still worrying about gauls, still beaten by rebel garrisons). But, if script alone won't be enough, there are other possibilities, eg giving AI generals command traits vs rebels (not sure if they affect autocalc, though), in similar giving rebel generals negative traits vs neighbouring AI (thus making certain factions harder to take certain regions and leading to more historical expansion), aging some rebel generals, so they die early and garrisons come out... All such changes can take into account human player's faction proximity - luckily most edits then will affect campaign script and descr_strat, not the background script.
Also tried to destroy some factions (using auto_win cheat) - and all the pictures were shown with no probs (though text stated something about Romans rejoicing, despite the fact that destroyers were the seleucids).
Re: ::Alexander EB:: ALX.exe EB mod
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Originally Posted by Paganist
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