Europa Barbarorum 2.08e is released!

[QuintusSertorius]

First of all, thank you Quintus for doing all the stuff to improve V 2.01. Especially thank you for re-integrating "Year in History" which is always nice to read and which I really missed in 2.01.

Now some things I can report for 2.03f in comparison to 2.03d that I played previously:

- Seleucids are THE force in the game; they quickly start finishing off the Ptolies in Minor Asia and Syria first (although the Ptolies are doing better especially in 2.03d related to earlier versions), then turn against Pergamon, who bravely try to defend but have no chance against 5, 6, sometimes 7 Seleucid full-stacks; tried to adress it myself by decreasing Seleucid money excessively, but failed - little to no impact on their power
- Parthia and Pontos doing zero to nothing
- Baktria growing but only in direction of Saka and China (they know for good reason why they don't mess up with the Arche!)
- Gandhara expanding to Eastern (former Rebel) regions of Persia, then stopping at Seleucid border (we all know why!)
- Bosphorans sometimes invading Hayasdan in earlier versions, now doing some little war on Sauromatae
- Saba and Nabatu building up huge stocks of money, expanding quite well in Arabia, then finished by Arche (at least this is true for the Nabatu)
- Hayasdan doing pretty well, expanding all over Armenia and Kappadokia; unfortunately the Seleucids turn the eyes right to them after killing Pergamon
- Makedonia: no chance; stuck in the middle between Hellenes and Epeiros; in most of my games they are THE loser in Greece
- Koinon Hellenon progressing quite well in Hellas but avoids invading Minor Asia
- Epeiros without a chance in Italy but nail on the grave of Makedonia
- Getai building up an imperium all over Thrace and neighbouring regions, doing quite fine
- Boii have bad luck settling in the middle between Getai and Sweboz; get killed by either one of them mid-game
- SPQR: in earlier versions I played (2.03c, d) they progressed quite well heading South; since 2.03f they are looking North again; in one game they finished the Boii somewhere in Southern Germany (!)
- Carthage is one of the winners of the revised money script; doing quite well in Africa, maybe a bit too well (Numidians get crashed in early-game, always on the run)

Always appreciate detailed feedback.

Something to be aware of: trying to decrease AI faction money via the console won't have any impact. They are reset above negative by the script, because if they spiral into the red, they go passive. The lesser evil is making sure they can't go bankrupt.

When having to decide between a weak and a strong Carthage I really prefer the later though. It adds a lot more depth to the game, since Roma is no longer the sole superpower in the West. Arche has to be stopped somehow but after reading the thread I'm coming to the conclusion that this gets already addressed. This was a lot better with 2.03c (or was it d?), when half of their empire instant-rebelled. The problem with them is, they are not only sending full-stack after full-stack but also win almost every battle against other AI-factions.

The change that caused so much stability was me turning all their starting Captains into Generals. They're all back to Captains again as of 2.03g. Things should also be less stable with the alteration to distance penalty and turmoil cap.

Next thing I would emphasize is giving Baktria a Hellenistic Metropolis. When I was playing them it was really annoying that I had to create Allied States in every new acquired region being unable to increase Hellenistic "religion" effectively for turns.

Baktra doesn't have a Metropolis for good reason, because the Greek population density wasn't high enough in 272BC. The update to the independence script, granting bonus colony points, should alleviate this a little (two of the three will let you put a helcol_three in Baktra), but you can always change it yourself. Search the descr_strat for Baktra, and simply change the line with polis_two on it to polis_three.

Last thing, I experienced CTDs in EVERY battle I fought personally on battle map. Don't know why. This happened only in v2.03f for me and didn't occur in one battle for the previous versions. CTD seemed to happen when AI troops started marching, irrespectively of the faction I was fighting with or on. 2.03g is currently installing. Will see how that works.

Thank you so far. I hope I could contribute sth valuable.

Coronatus

I'll ask z3n to take a look. Do you have some error logs from the battle crashes? These help a great deal in terms of locating what's causing the instability.

Edit:
Almost forgot: PLEASE do sth against the excessive spamming of assassins by Ptolies and Seleucids. When playing Baktria the Seleucids killed either Basileus or Kleronomos every turn (sometimes both of them). This happened also for me playing Pergamon, when I was spammed by both Arche and Ptolies. Choosing Makedonia, they "only" destroyed all my markets every turn, sending about 4-5 assassins to Greece every season. Maybe a tweak in decreasing their success chances for killing faction members and sabotage would be the right thing to do.

Limiting agents per faction is difficult. The reason those two have so many is that they have the higher-tier markets in a number of places. In 2.03h I'm dropping the maximum chance of success which should stop super-assassins a bit.