Trade & Religion Tweaks - available for testing (update 25/08)

[St Naffatun]

Update 25/08/08
-irrigation is now a far more expensive and lengthy system to construct but gives a large increase in farming income
-2 nile delta settlements are started out with irrigation to reflect the status of the region for vast grain production
-Ballista/Cannon towers given a small happiness bonus
-Population tax penaty reduced to help the AI maintain its capital city populations better.
-Tunis no longer hugely populous but has silver deposits instead.
-Mayors Palace building gives a Taxable Income boost.

Maybe other very fertile lands will get the same treatment and start out with irrigation (baghdad? any others?).

Update 24/08/08
-minor rebalancing
-redone all resources added some historically accurate german silver, increased timber trade
-modified some capital city starting populations
-decreased incidents of plague in highly populated cities (this is normal plague NOT black death)

Update 20/08/08
-increased the difference in income between the different levels of merchant buildings.
-boosted income from Admin as an anti corruption measure

I never liked how corruption was used to control player income in some mods. I understand the logic but sometimes no matter what you do, a far away province always have a lot of corruption. I have countered this by increasing income from Admin.

Now a far off province with no governor will suffer income loss from corruption BUT if you install a governor, the boosted income from Admin will counteract this (consider it functioning like a court of law, an anti corruption measure). It's way better like this imo. Also some further minor trade, building and tax changes based on my playtesting. It's getting quite well balanced now.

Also before the diference in income from a grain exchange to a market/fairground was tiny. I've made the trade income difference between the buildings greater, to motivate the player to build the trade tree.

Update 19/08/08
-London, Genoa, Novgorod, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Cairo, Urgench, Mecca, Venice, Naples, Rome, Paris, Vienna, Cordoba, Baghdad and Tunisia have had their tax income INCREASED to reflect their importance. Tax from other settlements is still low so it's vital to capture and defend these settlements both for tax and trade reasons.
- other smaller settlements still make money in trade even if they are not on the above list for improved tax rates, so they are still vital.
- Increased income from Gold & Silver mines. Gold mines are now real...err. gold mines
-minor changes to trade for certain regions

Overall it's an excellent campaign I'm having I am convinced players will love it when they try it out, I hope to put together a good install/uninstall utility. More updates to come but the economy side seems almost done now.

Update 18/08/08
-Ports can be built at the lowest level of town/catle
-slowed population and made trade have a slightly greater influence on pop growth for settlement variety
-Improved trade resources for specific cities listed below and certain mined resources (marble, silver, gold)

moscow, london, paris, vienna,constantiople,lisbon,leon,marrakesh,tunis, palermo, milan, genoa, venice, krakow, moscow, oslo, baghdad, urgench
iconium, cairo, alexandria

Update 06/08
- Improved trade from roads and byzantine Highways
- Improved sea trade
- Added recruitment of low quality units from farms
- Added recruitment of religious fanatics from Abbeys/Cathedrals for FRANCE and HRE only so far
- Boosted the religious conversion bonus from all religious buildings
- Balanced the build costs for all buildings
- Balanced tax and farming income
- Balanced population growth

To do
- Mercenaries for hire from Ports/Shipyard buildings (no eye patch required )
- More variety in religious warrior recuitment from Churches/Temples etc
- More unit variety in peasant levy from farms ("slingers" for the greeks etc)
- Caravan guard recruitment from the Market building tree
- Add higher tier religious warrior recruitment from Temples/Churches only triggered by an active Crusade/Jihad
- Scripted "People's Crusade", 3 or 4 large stacks of unruly Christians spawning near Constantinople (Europe's answer to the mongols... kinda )


This is getting messy, need a tidy up. I'm avoiding calling this anything so grand as a "mod" or a "release". I'm enjoying playing it, so thought I would share it with others.

The purpose of these tweaks are to improve campaign gameplay by increasing the importance of trade to the player. Trade is now an important consideration when deciding where to expand your kingdom and whom you go to war with.

The main aim is for better interaction between the player, their income and their diplomatic decisions. Players will build their income around key cities that will be responsible for revenue generation.

The campaign_script.txt included contains a script to reduce the frequency of winter to once every 4 turns. The descr_strat.txt timescale is set to 0.5. The combine fine characters just live a little longer

Summary of changes

- Large increased in income from trading

One of the first points of refence when deciding where to expand your kingdom may be your Trade Summary scroll.

- Decreased income from tax and farming

Tax and farming involve very little player interaction, the purpose of these tweaks is for more interaction/decision making from the player that will impact player income.

- Kings purse removed

Again zero scope for interaction by the player, Kings Purse is just a constant.

- No marchant & Priest Spam

Merchants only recruitable from higher tier trade buildings gearing larger cities towards income production. Merchant limits increased by higher tier trade buildings and sea trade buildings (Merchants Wharf etc).

Priests recruitable from cathedral and above tier buildings, I've increased religious conversion bonuses for all religious buildings.

- Slower population growth

Some settlements may always be larger than others - not every settlement on earth is destined to be a Huge City or Citadel. This also will also lead to greater variety in terms of seige battles.

In addition the merchant changes should make the campaign map easier to manage, it's a common complaint that players get fed up managing 30+ settlements and 40+ agents each turn. Some just stick everything on auto-manage - that's exactly the type of thing these tweaks are designed for. To have fun managing the kingdom rather than get fed up and sticking on auto-manage.

To that end I have also made priests for al religions only recruitable from "Cathedral" and above tier buildings. This should help take some of the pain out of managing a medium or above kingdom.

Installation

Manual for now until I tidy all this up - if you don't mind winter every other turn don't perform step 3 it's not necessary to see the trade and agent changes.

Until then manual Installation (assuming M2TW is installed on C drive)

1) After backing up your originals files, place the export_descr_buildings.txt & descr_settlement_mechanics.xml files in the folder:

C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data

2) After backing up your original file, place the descr_strat.txt in the folder:
C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign

3) After backing up your original, place the descr_disasters.txt file in the foler:

C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data\world\maps\base

Compatible with the latest Real Recruitment/Byz Grim Reality & SSTC, if you do not have these installed I have no idea what will happen (probably nothing though it should work fine)

[JaM]

actually i like the idea of much higher costs of units - as it prevents AI and human player to enploy huge armies - this system is used for example in Europa Barbarorum.

[Quark]

St Naffatun
Resources: are you aware that the closer a resource is to your capital the less value it has. Hence for instance because England has wool, it will never develop wool as an important resource (the opposite of history), similary silk in Anitoch would actually mean that the silk road is less valuable for merchants.
Population Growth:already to high imo
Economy: The Ai does not build as intelligently as a player, so unless you give the Ai more money it will not handle any increases.
Merchants:The Ai (unlike the player) does not place its Merchants on the highest value resources, hence it is far more ineffecient with such.

Conclusion: it may be best to remove merchants from the game and assign more resources to a region so that these reflect the true worth of a settlement.

Personally I also increase the penalty of taxing settlements on growth and unhappyness, while reducing the effect of chivalry.

What I would like to see is a greater difference in cost between city militia, used to keep the rabble in check, and troops used to wage war, along with an increase in military buildings, as this would promote the player building cities more on a economy or military basis, rather than just sticking a royal barracks everywhere.

[WRL]

I was thinking about trade the other day, I was thinking a little different though, like merchant resources should be more valuable the closer to ports they are. I figured such a change would be hard to implement though.

I agree with the premise of your thread though, personally I think it's one of the biggest draw backs of the game, how minuscule trade can be in your decisions.

[spanish_emperor]

i like the idea, trade should be much more important than it is so that you would have to think more before going to war. Imagine that you trade with the byzantines and the money gained from trade with them is immense. But you find that to go to war with them would destroy all this income and you would probably not declare war on them. trade could be used as a weapon to determine war or peace.

Another thing that has always bugged me is war. It seems so inexpensive when in reality war cost a lot of money to finance and could leave countries bankrupt. Upkeep of armies seems to small imo and i would prefer to have to disband armies when not in use because the men(who are not professionals) would want to return to their lands and the cost of maintaining such a big army would be huge. Although armies should be able to be raised much quicker so as to be prepared fast when war comes nearby. But im afraid the AI won't know how to respond to this

[Caesar Clivus]

Another thing that has always bugged me is war. It seems so inexpensive when in reality war cost a lot of money to finance and could leave countries bankrupt. Upkeep of armies seems to small imo and i would prefer to have to disband armies when not in use because the men(who are not professionals) would want to return to their lands and the cost of maintaining such a big army would be huge.

One mod (can't remember which one...DLV or BC maybe???) charges the player money for having armies outside of your territory. So to invade foreign territory will cost you money in addition to usual unit upkeep. I'm sure someone more familiar with the mod I'm trying (and failing) to remember can shed more light on this.

[St Naffatun]

Nice to see others have had similar thoughts. Quark I was thinking by changing some of the modifiers in the settlements mechanics file, trade income could be increased without having to add new resources? I'm not sure I'm about to trial and error test a change I just made to a likely variable.

Removing Merchants

It's fun to discover distant resources the first time round, but once you know where to send your merchants it's a "send and forget" grind to distant gold/ivory/amber/spices/glass/silk etc to maximise profits asap - not terribly interesting, so I agree regarding either ditching merchants or maybe restricting their number.

Population Growth

I've modded the various modifiers for growth down to a quarter of their original (I forgot to mention that did it months ago) - also I never liked the way a level 2 farm upgrade would continue to increase and feed a massive population just as it would a small town so I nerfed it so hard also, but it's a "dead tree" for me atm while I think of what to do with it.

My thinking is not all settlements should be destined to become huge cities or citadels - some settlements simply will not develop past a certain point unless you dedicate a high chivalry governor (kind of an eccentric ruler saying "I want this crap hole in the middle of nowhere to become a great city" i.e. ramses the great or the Hittite king that decided to build in the middle of anatolia. Or indeed Constantine the Great). You also get seige defence/attack variety later on in the campaign- it's not always Huge Walls/Citadels to the hilt, nice to attack or defend the odd wooden castle etc for variety.

Briefly I increased devastation drastically (after reading about the People's Crusade ravaging the outskirts of Nicea) but it got very annoying trying to find enemies tucked away hiding in forests, devastation is not usually a covert act (just follow the smoke of burning farmsteads on the horizon and direction from which screaming villagers are running from in terror ).

Field Cost Script (DLV)

I don't want to get into scripting, I like 80% playing 20% modding (at most). I like to make simple tweaks that improve my own gameplay and self contained without spilling over into other areas and thereby adding too much, but thank god for dedicated modders .

Recruitment/Upkeep

Personally I would like an army of 300 - 400 knights to be a LOT - the sort of force you could take a town with, but the AI spams big armies so the player must too (huge battles are great but they wear thin quite quick - more is less I like nursing smaller forces, building their experience and using them judiciously. Maybe why I enjoy the first 50-100 turns the most in any campaign and why I'd like to raise recruitment cost but not mess with upkeep).

Again regarding heavy troops - I tweaked all heavy troops to have 2 hitpoints (knights, heavy cavalry, heavy infantry, generals bodyguard and a few other select units). I did this after playing Broken Crescent, I considered increasing armour values but that can make missiles ineffectual, increasing hitpoints means they still drop eventually. The disparity between militia units and heavy units is also greater which I like. I got tired of being able to kill Crusader Knights with garbage militia units. It has been great for gameplay and I might even increase to 3 hitpoints if I raise recruitment cost. Then a force of 400 dismounted lancers for example really will be something to be reckoned with.

Regarding the AI not handling increased recruitment cost, the AI money script could just be tweaked to IF <10000 or something (yes this will lead to big army spam - but I guess it's better than an AI that rolls over for you). I don't like a money script being required but it's definitely the lesser of two evils - nothing kills a campaign quicker than all your enemies being on their knees and virtually defenceless.

Any all thoughts observations welcome.

*edit*

Increasing the SIF_TRADE value increases the value of trade but only by multiplying the "base" values on the trade scroll e.g. if on the trade scroll you see sugar 346, wool 24 = 370 total. With a SIF_TRADE value of 2 this appears in the settlements details scroll as 740 (370 x 2) but doesn;t change the "sugar 346, wool 24" values on the trade scroll. Doesn't bother me personally, but it's not ideal.

[Quark]

Caesar Clivus
Would you be referring to the mod Stainless Steel which at one point had this in the script file, but some people moaned.

;------------------- Field Costs -----------------------------------------
monitor_event CharacterTurnEnd FactionType england
and I_LocalFaction england
and CampaignDifficulty >= hard
and not EndedInSettlement
and not AgentType = admiral
and not AgentType = spy
and not AgentType = diplomat
and not AgentType = assassin
and not AgentType = priest
and not AgentType = princess
and not AgentType = merchant
and InEnemyLands
console_command add_money england, -500
end_monitor

St Naffatun
One of the tricks I use is to use multi-resource spots. As an example you can place three wool resources on the same spot near york. This makes wool more valuable to the settlement, yet a merchant can only trade on the top resource, so that there value stays the same. Also if it is a mine resource the value also increases, so important mines can be portrayed.

[Caesar Clivus]

Caesar Clivus
Would you be referring to the mod Stainless Steel which at one point had this in the script file, but some people moaned.

Hmmmm....I don't think so. I didn't even know SS had that in Pretty sure I was thinking of a mod I haven't played before :hmmm:

[Banzai!]

How about increasing the corruption modifier to make life as an empire challenging?

btw what causes corruption ingame?

[Point Blank]

St Naffatun


Personally I also increase the penalty of taxing settlements on growth and unhappyness, while reducing the effect of chivalry.

What I would like to see is a greater difference in cost between city militia, used to keep the rabble in check, and troops used to wage war, along with an increase in military buildings, as this would promote the player building cities more on a economy or military basis, rather than just sticking a royal barracks everywhere.

Any chance of you releasing some of your changes?

Regarding boosting costs of professional/regular troops etc versus militia, should there not perhaps be some sort of further corresponding increase in the combat value of those troops relative to militias etc as well in that case?

[St Naffatun]

St Naffatun
One of the tricks I use is to use multi-resource spots. As an example you can place three wool resources on the same spot near york. This makes wool more valuable to the settlement, yet a merchant can only trade on the top resource, so that there value stays the same. Also if it is a mine resource the value also increases, so important mines can be portrayed.

Just tried this out very clever, nice one

<factor name="SPF_TRADE">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
<castle_modifier value="1.20"/>
<city_modifier value="1.6"/>
<pip_min value="0"/>
<pip_max value="1"/>

Will use something like the above to cap the pop growth from these extra resources in settlement_mechanics. This is exactly what I was looking for

lol just realised you were asking Quark if he was releasing his changes

[St Naffatun]

along with an increase in military buildings, as this would promote the player building cities more on a economy or military basis, rather than just sticking a royal barracks everywhere.

How about removing the agent recruiting capability for lower end trade buildings. Then increasing the merchant agent limit for great_market and marchants_quarter to 2 and 3 respectively.

Maybe by increasing the build cost and time for these trade related buildings the player will be forced to concentrate on the economy of key cities rather than having their cake and eating it i.e. maxing out every military & trade trees. Maybe the sea trade buildings like warehouse and merchant wharf should add +1 to the merchants agent limit, but still keeping merchants recruitable only once a great market is built.

Boosting trade combined with lower tax and farm income (via settlement mech changes) trade would obviously be key to income. Combined with nerfed population growth the player will have certain key trade centres with large trade incomes, which also have the capability to produce merchants.

Your Constantinople/Paris/London/Cairo etc will be the "jewel" of your kingdom and key to your success in any sort of war effort - which is as it should be for gameplay imo. The tax based income is too generic, lacking in terms of interaction.

Also, right now the player just builds 10 grain exchanges and spams merchants for 5000+ per turn if he knows where to send them. Further building of trade buildings yields relatively small benefits thereafter. They get it all so soon.

Sounds like I'm criticising SS not for one second it's an awesome mod, just looking for ways to improve my own game.

[Quark]

St Naffatun
KK reduced the resources to reduce settlement income, along with merchants available. Given the smaller resources, I find that I start to run out of good places to send them with some factions. Having said that having Merchants start at market makes sense (although you may have to look at the guilds file as well), as long as you start cities off with a more accurate model, eg Antioch should have roads and port, London port etc.

One method is create new buildings like Silk Road, River Ports (for river trade routes) and then use not building_present_min_level condition so that you cannot build the higher tier buildings in settlements with such. Of course you could just remove such anyway and force all high end units to come from castles, but not sure how the Ai will cope with this.

The Ai loves to build buildings that give it military units, so maybe another change would be to shuffle around some things, such that a market also gets you 'Caravan Guards' as well.

[WRL]

any chance of getting a version with just this part?

- Large increased in income from trading

One of the first points of refence when deciding where to expand your kingdom may be your Trade Summary scroll.

- Decreased income from tax and farming

Tax and farming involve very little player interaction, the purpose of these tweaks is for more interaction/decision making from the player that will impact player income

[obbob]

Im not sure if this was just you mentioning or if it will be part of this mod/tweak, but i think the more hitpoints for heavy units is really overpowering. Hitpoints is probably the most powerful trait. For example, in theory, a unit of 20 bodyguards with 2 hitpoints should be able to fight with a unit of 40 feudal knights with 1 hitpoint (almost exact same stats) that would result in a close fight.

However, the bodyguards will probably be able to destroy the knights taking around 50% casualties.
This is just my opinion, ive never actually tested a full battle with this, just a couple of unit on unit tests

[BigJake]

I second what WRL is wanting.

[WRL]

Well I've tried it out, and my first impression is good, I like how so much more of your income is based off trade, it adds depth to your finances, vs generic tax levels, and merchant. Good first impression. Although please tell me how to return the normal priest recruitment back, with BYG's religous AOR, I'm thinking it'll hamper far to much trying to change the religious make up of a region fast enough to get good units out of it. Please.

[Gorrrrrn]

Field Supply Costs.

As someone who moaned it was mainly because it was applied in way that made no sense - same cost for a few militia troops who stop off in neutral territory as a full-stack in enemy territory.

Personally I'd prefer far more free upkeep slots in settlements to reflect the potential defenders who are economically active when not needed to defend the settlement with higher recruitment costs (to equip and train them) and higher upkeep costs when on actual campaign irrespective of whether they are on friendly territory or otherwise. As this cost is directly related to the size of the unit it makes more sense. Also operating on neutral or enemy territory wouldn't necessarily cost more as the units would be living off the land and even extorting taxation from places they passed through.

Having more free upkeep slots would also enable even professional troops to be rebuilt and keep their experience and armour upgrades etc. Disbanding units doesn't allow for accumulated experience.

The AI seems quite capable of handling merchants as it doesn't suffer from fog-of-war, it can send them off to the most lucrative places without having to discover them. (I found an English merchant trundling through Hungary on turn 2 of one campaign.) So maybe some tweaking of trade income (Is there a way of cutting merchant income if there are armies nearby?)

[St Naffatun]

Thanks a lot for testing it out I really appreciate it - I'm playing it myself and having some fun with Byzantium.

Priest Recruitment & Religious Conversion

The reduced priest spam I included after playing Broken Crescent (which also has an AOR system), it's nice to open your agents tab and deal with 6 or 7 key agents instead of keeping track of 40 or more.

However faster religion conversion is the advantage of having priests, the solution I propose is to increase the religion conversion bonus of the religious buildings. This means when you build a Chapel for instance, it will be like having the building + 2 or 3 priests converting the province less hassle and mouse clicking. I have added this now see updated attachment on the original post Also worth noting fewer priests means the AI will be sending fewer to convert your own population..

Hit Points

I've not included any hit point changes or changes to any of the unit stats. Partly as it's so much a case of personal taste and partly as they are some brilliant unit roster mods being worked on - I am not worthy!

Population Growth and Merchant Spam

This mod is not designed to stop you using merchants or having big cities, this is designed to make certain key cities your centres for revenue production, the jewel in your crown so to speak. With most factions you will be able to recruit merchants (and priests) IF you have a large city (may require some modding to make sure most factions begin with at least one decent sized city) and IF you build a Great Market and Cathedral there rather than going straight for "military" buildings. So it's not to stop you recruiting these agents, it's designed to make your key cities vital in recruiting these agents rather than having little towns in the middle of nowhere all capable of producing a ton of merchants by turn 7.

The problem her is of course the AI tends to build military type buildings first, however the AI also has a built in money script in SS so doesn't need to worry about building trade buildings the player does for his key city or cities.

Throughout history city states (Carthage, Athens, Constantinople etc) have shown the power of a productive city - I mean we call Romans after the city they emerged from. I know most of those examples are ancient not medieval but in terms of gameplay it's far more interesting in my opinion to have variety in the settlements. Throughout history these rich cities have been key to waging/winning/losing wars. Having 19 huge cities with all building trees maxed out just doesn't float my boat personally. I usually restart a new campaign. I'm trying to make your Paris/Milan/London/Constantinople/Cairo the beating heart of your kingdom. As well as making blocking of trade routes and blockading of ports to be something damaging that you have to react to. In the normal game if your port is blockaded you just lose a few hundred florins - no big deal - I prefer mobilising my navy for a really good reason.

Just increased Trade With None of the Other Changes

It's very simple to mod this (thank you Quark).

It's personal choice (even though I am convinced you will have less fun if you are a veteran player) so what you do is this. Open the descr_strat.txt file, find this line

resource amber, 159, 271 ;oslo

and select all text down to the following line

resource tobacco, 215, 166 ;belgrade

Once you have the entire block selected, copy it, move down one line and paste. You will now have twice the revenue from trade but the SAME revenue from merchants. Paste is again to have x3 the trade income and so on as many times as you like. I'm convinced you will get bored of this however because on top f this cash you will still get a lot from unmodded tax, farming and the Kings Purse. It will be outrageous but each to their own.

My Own Playtest

As stated I have good motivation to deal with enemies blockading my ports or standing on my trade routes, I find I am garrisoning troops near key roads (using the Stone Forts mod - awesome mod) and keeping a naval presence to respond quickly.

There's no doubt in my mind that 1 turn years or 2 turns per year is best. I've alse added a script to stop winter popping up every other turn, lots of winter battles gets tedious. I think winter every 3rd or 4th turn? This will extend the lives of characters but it's not an issue when playing imo, having certain characters around for 60 or 70 turns is good for those that wish to roleplay without affecting the fun of those that don't roleplay.

There's no doubt in my mind that I need to increase the cost of buildings, not just to balance the higher turn numbers but to better reflect the players agenda. Mass scale, kingdom-wide building whilst waging all out war is a bit silly. Having enough money to build whatever you want 100% of the time kills the fun for me because - again - it lacks true interaction. I have now updated the building file with higher building costs.

I've raised building costs but not drastically, it seems pretty well balanced right now. I will update the files once I've tried a few other factions. Bear in mind I am making stuff that I will make the best possible campaign experience for me personally. I am not a modder I am a player - not sure why I'm even sharing this I guess deep down I know many veteran players will like it.

I will shortly update files with higher religious recruitment bonus and higher build costs. As well as a script to top such frequent winters and a slower timescale this is in the campaign_script.txt at the top. I still don't know what to make the farming tree make.

Maybe some sort of peasant levy :hmmm: Maybe higher level farms could enable recruitment of better off, better equipped "land owning" units. I love real recruitment but a bit of recruitment variety in cities would be a bonus even if they are only average quality units.