Some Possible Faction tweaks for the Stainless Steel 6.2 patch

[Gorrrrrn]

Some Possible Faction tweaks for inclusion in the Stainless Steel 6.2 patch
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First up I'd better say there will be no proposals to change any of the factions. Too much of what is already available makes use of them. That doesn't stop other sub-mods making whatever changes they like of course, but the 6.2 patch is supposed to be mainly fixing what's wrong with 6.0/6.1

I've deleted all the guff that was here previously to save space.

Suffice to say that these tweaks are to improve AI faction performance and survivability in the Early Era campaign. (Not looked at the late era one yet.)

They are very much at the testing stage.

Generally they help the AI factions by:

reducing starting religious differences in some regions;
reducing negative traits in faction leaders and heirs in some factions;
bringing the religion in descr_regions and descr_strat files more in line with the starting position of factions;
some gentle massaging of the numbers in the descr_settlements file;
an increase in the kings_purse at all difficulty levels;
slight increase the level balance of forces required to initiate attacks;
slight reduction of the level at which garrisons will sally forth.

Also have incorporated the extras from the descr_campaign_db.xml version of the kingdoms americas expansion. This allows for more control over spies, priests, auto-resolve and boiling oil amongst other things. See how you get on with them. (May need kingdoms 1.5 patch - please report any issues there.)

V9 incorporates PB's ideas on how to make bonuses only apply to AI so that the AI gets economic and public order bonuses better than the human player. This is for all difficulty levels - examine the EDB file to see how its done and experiment with different values for other difficulty levels.

The files below are the final version. Unless someone can come up with a good reason I'm stopping work on this. Had a major problem with a couple of versions that weren't calling the campaign_script due to errors in the descr_strat. The files below address those issues.

Final tweaking was to add money to emergent factions to pay for their armies after they settle and to all AI factions to pay for extra armies that they get in hard difficulty levels.

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To do:

ideally a major revision of the traits, triggers and ancilliaries file

add a few more rebel armies and adjust strength of existing ones.

(And maybe one day try and sort out the main campaign AI files!!!)

possibly some assistance to the templars and lithuania to stop them disappearing so soon, due to a lack of family members?

add in necessary levels of bonuses for difficulty levels in the EDB

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note:

To avoid any possible "contamination" remove the old map.rwm from the base folder, install new files and then please start a new early era campaign.

This is for the baseline stainless steel 6.0 with 6.1 patch only. If you have sub-mods installed using these files may mess up your sub-mod. If you re-install SS6.0 and the 6.1 patch and then these files they should work fine. Any sub-mods you install after that may well over-write one or more of these files. I can't predict what effect that might have.

If you read this thread you should get a good idea of what changes have been made. You can, of course, use them to manually adjust sub-mod files but neither I or the people who put the sub-mods together can take any responsibility as to what might then happen. You do so at your own risk.

Finally you'll need to install Lusted's revised Campaign and Battle AI (if you haven't already done so) after the 6.1 patch and before these tweaks.

Final version herewith

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finaltweaks.rar

[ginger_hammer]

wow, good work
A request I would have is to make alliances a bit weaker as I never get back stabbed anymore, and as its easy to get alliances then the game can get very easy if you choose to make many alliances.

[Gorrrrrn]

ginger_hammer

well that's a little bit further down the list of things to do if I ever understand what I'm doing.

it needs a thorough looking at the descr_campaign_ai_db.xml file and it isn't a short file by any means.

have a look and see if you can find any obvious (not too drastic) changes that people can try out.

meantime have a play with the descr_strat above (no idea if it messes with other sub-mods etc.) early era only.

[ginger_hammer]

Ok, will do.

With the descr_strat.rar file, do I just uncompress the contents and overwrite the existing file? (making a backup beforehand).

[Greve Af Göteborg]

I'll give it a shot , i'll give you a report at turn 60-80 somewhere around there .

[Gorrrrrn]

With the descr_strat.rar file, do I just uncompress the contents and overwrite the existing file? (making a backup beforehand).

yes that should do it. do make a back-up first though!!

you'll need to start a new campaign. really it's to test how well the AI factions do, not to see how easy they are to beat.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

Okay , i'm currently 30 turns in with my campaign as the christian faction above egypt (forgot the name) .

Anyway , i'm using 2 turns per year mod and VH/H.

At turn 19 Whole of russia rebelled and was destroyed from the game .

The Ai factions are really having a bad time trying to expand while getting revolts all the time .

France is down to a castle and Paris from rebellions ,
Rome revolted from the Papacy .
Scotland down to their castle from rebellions .
Genoa revolted from the Genoese the exact turn they took Milan and Marseile (really close to faction destroyed)

It seems like that the Ai place only 2 units in garrison in normal settlements and 5-7 units in their capital .

Playing at medium seems more unstable as the rebellions occur more often , so the most stable is VH , but even there the rebellions destroy the game.

So , here's the current state of turn 30 in my campaign.



Novgorod is wiped out by rebellions , Lithuania is wiped out by a crusade .
Kwarezmian is doing a good attempt at expanding but is plagued by revolts through their kingdom.

[ginger_hammer]

ok, have overwritten the descr_strat.txt file in the folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign

Making a backup of course Will see what happens. Oh and what is the command to open the console and toggle the fog of war on/off?

[ginger_hammer]

it needs a thorough looking at the descr_campaign_ai_db.xml file and it isn't a short file by any means.

have a look and see if you can find any obvious (not too drastic) changes that people can try out.

I'm having a look through this file, have found 3 syntax errors (just commented code missing the initial "<"). Am still looking for the ratio bit to adjust to make allys at least a small chance to backstab.

Will now try out the new descr_strat file with Cumans to keep out of the way.

[Gorrrrrn]

Phew

you got a lot of rebellions going there!

I'm up to turn 108 and no faction has been destroyed by rebellions. Only two have been destroyed - Portugal by the Moors and OKT by Egypt.

anyway a quick summary of where everyone is so far. NB I'm playing on M/M so the AI gets less money than on VH/VH.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ireland: lost Cork to rebels, only 2 regions
Scotland: lost Cologne to Denmark and Antwerp to England, down to 2 regions
England (me): have England and Wales, Edinburgh, Rennes, Caen, Antwerp, Tunis, Gaza and Alexandria.
Norway: finally built 2 ports and have taken Groeningen
Denmark: been pushed back by Lithuania from Hamburg and Stettin, but have all of Sweden and Oslo and Cologne.
Lithuania: control the shores of the southern Baltic from Hamburg to Palanga, plus Vilnius
Teutonic Order: marched straight past Lithuania and attacked Kievan_Rus, captured Kiev.
France: lost Rennes and Dijon to rebels, but has rest of France except Marsailles and Caen, also Bruges, Metz, Staufen, Zaragoza
Aragon: has Pamplona, Valencia and Balearic Isles
Leon_Castille: been reduced to Murcia by Moors
Moors: have north African coast from Algiers westward, Al-Andalus (including Barcelona) except the three and above and Granada
Sicily: has rest of north Africa (except Tunis) as far as Egypt, Sicily and southern Italy and Sardinia
Genoa: has Genoa and Milan and Corsica and Marsailles (lost Barcelona to Moors)
Pope: Rome and Florence
Venice: Venice and Milan, Granada
HRE: core territories and Zagreb
Poland: string of territories south of Lithuanian lands from Prague to Iasi
Hungary: core territories, plus Sofia, Ragusa and Jerusalem
Byzantines: core territories plus Ankara, Caesarea, Crete, Duruzzo, Belgrade, Bucharest, Caffa
Turks: core territories plus Jaiksk and Baghdad. (lost Yerevan, Kaitasai and Astrakhan to rebels)
Egypt has Egypt and Arabian peninsular up as far as Adana except: Alexandria, Gaza, Jerusalem and the coastal strip along Arabian Gulf
Kwarezm: SE corner of map except: Shiraz and Yazd lost to rebels, Urgench and Khiva lost to Mongols.
Mongols: Urgench and Khiva
Cumans: top right corner
Kievan_Rus: stretch from Riga to Sarkel (including Novgorod and moscow) but have lost Zhyomir to rebels and Kiev to Teutonic Order
Novgorod: split into 2 chunks - Turku and Reval; Murom, Ryazan and Yaroslavl

Greve - did you remove the offends_nobility trait from HRE Emperor?

might help them.

We'll definitely be needing to improve the public order buildings in some large towns and cities to try and prevent some disorder. (that'll have to wait though!)

Early faction disasters can wipe them out - ie it may look like rebellion, but that can the aftermath of a battle where the faction leader and faction heir both die. Portugal is prone to that.

(And then there is the shere randomness of the game.)

No idea what is causing the French rebellions or Genoa unless it is the gung ho attitude the AI takes which makes it so bad at keeping garrisons in its settlements.

The basic problem there is that the AI prefers to run its settlements with a tiny garrison unless under immediate threat, so we need to give more happiness from walls etc I think to compensate for that.

Anyway if you can keep playing a bit longer it would be interesting to see how things pan out in Iberia - looks nicely balanced - if the Moors win out then so be it, but we may need to re-think the Spanish options (ideally we should stop them fighting each other as that makes it very easy for the Moors.)

As for alliances - I had the situation where the only the Pope has was the Moors and vice versa. Given the Pope had OK'd a crusade against the Moors that seems a bit daft. No idea how we fix that but the faction standings may need revising as we go along.

[ginger_hammer]

I'm only 23 turns in playing on vh/vh, with no mods installed, not even RR or grim reality, just the supply traits. So far no factions destroyed, usual wars between eng v scot, port & spain v moors and benz v venice. Did see an unusual allaince between england and hre that I haven't seen before.
Will post map shots when I figure out how to access the console on toggle_fow. Is it the tilde key (~)? Because that didn't work?

[Gwyllion]

Greve> The rebellion problems most probably stem from the 2TPY mod (if you are using Tsarsies' original setup) since it doubles the size of the settlements and increases the negative effects of ungoverned settlements and the tax rate.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

Oh? , how do i remove those changes without actually removing the 2 turns a year?

[Gorrrrrn]

the console can be brought up by the @ key on some keyboards. it varies between countries.

don't worry if you have different sub-mods, in a way that's useful as they may make a difference, and it helps to know how any changes work with sub-mods.

[aduellist]

Haven't implemented the changes yet, but I'm going to give it a whirl. Sounds promising. +rep

Have you looked at the "faction_creator" attributes in descr_strat? Do you think these have any effect? There's a lot of inconsistencies. Alpine provinces with "faction_creator england", northern Italian provinces with "faction_creator spain", Turkish and Levantine provinces with "faction_creator moors", western Polish provinces with "faction_creator russia", etc. First came to my attention when, in a couple of different campaigns, Wroclaw revolted after being taken by the AI Poles. It didn't go rebel, it went Novgorod, thus starting a war.

I've been going through and trying to "logicalize" the settings, but I'm not sure if they were set that way on purpose and why.

Edit: just saw the other thread.

[Gwyllion]

Greve>
Either you edit the files manually, or try this (you will have to restart the campaign)
http://files.filefront.com/2TPYRRZIP.../fileinfo.html

This is only modified for the RR version and the early campaign, if you want to use BYG or the late campaign, you will have to modify the files manually.

[marceror]

Interesting ideas. Still going through them, but I have a question. Are we talking about an unofficial 6.2 patch here or is this something that KK is actually involved in?

[Gorrrrrn]

These are ideas for the sort of official 6.2 patch that is being built (without KK but with his blessing.) I hoping we can sort out some of the problems that make the AI perform worse than it has to. I don't expect wonders but if we can give the AI a helping hand (even if some benefit accrues the human player that's acceptable - helping 28 other factions is a reasonable balance.)

I've got to turn 130 on M/M the Mongols are having a tough time breaking down the Kwarezm, the second wave has arrived and still only 4 regions taken!

Norway has finally suicided itself - they declared war on Scotland and kept landing small armies with their FL or other family member to attack Aberdeen - not unreasonable as the Scots only had a single unit garrison. However the scots had staioned a full stack on the west coast, a single turn's march away from Aberdeen (sneaky!) So every time the Norwegians arrived they were attacked by the full-stack and defeated. Eventually the Scots got both the FL and FH and Norway died. (If I hadn't been watching this with toggle_fow I'd just have seen the annoucement that Bergen had fallen and seen rebel held territories and assumes some sort of rebellion. But it wasn't a rebellion that did for them they died in battle - same as Portugal and OKT.

(Will revert Norway to sailor in next change as the hoped for benefit of trader didn't accrue. But they really need Oslo and a couple of ports to be a proper contender.)

I'll incorporate the faction creator changes with the next version of the descr_strat file.

Plenty of other ideas to work through - such as removing the ballista builder line of buildings from cities as the AI seems to regard them as the first item to build even with public order problems. Have cut down siege engine spamming in line with cavalryCmdr's suggestions but the AI can still build them (moors used a treb against a garrison i left in Leon after capturing it and then scarpering) BTW the moors do seem very poweful in my campaign!

I'm also thinking about removing some of the negative traits at tleast from the starting generals. For a human player they're a minor nuisance that you get round quite easily, but I don't know if the AI is properly aware of how traits work.

(Example: playing as England I found that moving certain generals into settlements gave rise to 20% religious disorder, even when I couldn't see any negative traits! And that was with 99% catholic regions. The disorder was enough to turn them red face. Given how slowly the AI can react that might be sufficient to turn the settlement into rebellion.)

We also need to look at kings_purse. I realise that playing on M/M the AI gets less than on hard or very hard, but the AI seems to be constantly short of money. It gets worse the more settlements the particular regions control. If someone could rework the money script so it gave a bigger kings_purse for more settlements that would be useful. Something along the lines of 400fl per turn per settlement on easy; 600 on medium; 800 on hard and 1000 on very hard might do the trick?

I'm also considering bumping the slave faction kings_purse. Currently they only get 50fl per turn. 5000 might make things more interesting. With current change to a fortified personality they sometimes do make some decent garrisons - (the AI can find them quite a challenge!) some extra cash might make them more interesting in the middle game -when there's only a few slave stettlements so the money isn't spread too thinly to make much of a difference.

Anyway keep trying things out and see what other changes we can make to help the AI out.

(Do read CavalryCmdr's excellent piece:


and CavalryCmdr's essay:
http://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/f...t&f=9,6718,,10

for some ideas.

(there's several files not even looked at so far, but incremental change is easier to test than all at once big changes so we can try and see what particular changes work and which don't.)

[ginger_hammer]

I'm about 55 turns into my Cuman campaign and so far no factions have been destroyed and nearly all rebels have been swalled up. There seems to be more fighting going on (a good thing) and also more alliances. One thing I did notice that I haven't seen before is that venice went down to africa and have a settlement on the north coast there, perhaps due to the personality change to sailor napoleon?

So far so good

[Santiago de Pola]

Rozanov..I have a descr_campaign_ai_db.xml that cavalry_cmdr made for his own AI mod(that was made for vanilla Medieval 2).

If you are interested I can upload it here for you to take a look at it! It's pretty massive, but it has explanations all the way..