Imperial Splendour v1.078 General Feedback

[Quixote07]

Post your general reactions to the new version here.

[carbide]

Wow the naval changes were fast and I do agree with them.

The only problem I can foresee is that once the trade nodes have been established, we'll likely see spamming of fleets like in the early days of vanilla. Quixote, if your genius mind can find a way to make the AI feel safe sending merchant ships to theaters without fleets protecting them.... your previous naval setup would be excellent in my opinion. Keeping down spamming and having trade routes established in the theaters as well.

Edit\ Woops I missed the part of IS naval cost returned.

[musketoon1988]

Is a new campaign required for these ai changes to take effect???

[Quixote07]

I'm almost positive that it doesn't need a new campaign.

[jaggedx]

seeing more activity in the trade nodes since updating to 76 from 75 from turn 12-18.

[dantragic]

First of all, I like the new version

tho, I've noticed a few things:

-> mass fire seems to cause a little bug(?)

Usually mass fire comes into action when your regiment has reached a certain width, right? If it's below that width it uses kinda the old "first line fires" mode from vanilla ETW. So I played a battle now in a small town. Me prussian republicans, my enemy prussian monarchist. They use Milita, I'm using experienced (2 bars) line infantry.
Since we were fighting actually IN a town, neither of us was able to use mass fire, therefor we had to stick to the vanilla mode. Well, at least I had to stick. The A.I. didn't really bother. They didn't use actual mass fire, but they had at least every soldier of the first 3 ranks firing in vanilla style, which is usually restricted to the first line. Comes out they've slaughtered my line infantry like no good.


-> Hussars have muskets?

Is that accurate? I just don't know, but they're really deadly. Got longer range than my line infantry, a much more effective charge then usual cavalry and cost only about 100 bucks more. Is that supposed to be so? Or is it something only Prussia has?


-> A.I. uses fewer ships than in vanilla. Thats okay. But now there's almost no naval warfare going on anymore. I'm not sure, maybe I'm just missing the party. But AI seems to use not only very few fleets now, but they just don't really use 'em.

-> A.I. very passive

I don't know, but I'm now in 1719 and the A.I. decided to go into suspend-to-ram mode. Except for the legendary 1unit-raids they ain't doing much more. A few small skirmishes against each other, but thats it. Austria and Poland were fighting a bloody war for years and now suddenly decided to do nothing. Spain gathers a useless stack in the normandy, Britain keeps its rare fleets in its harbors and France decided to stop all its troop movement on half the way to the UP.
Maybe I'm just unlucky, but thats kinda strange :S


EDIT:

To the last problem:

I remember you did make the A.I. much more aggressive compared to vanilla in the early versions of your mod. Is that still so? Because, since the new patch I've heared many people getting an almost dead AI in vanilla around 1750/60. That seems to be caused by the overaggressive AI, which constantly is at war against each other and therefor goes bankrupt at some point. Maybe your mod did accelerate it?

[Erunion Telcontar]

Loaded up my English game (1739) with 1.76, the ai now uses ships. My blockading sloop, which had sat blocking entrance to the baltic, since 1710, was finally attacked (really fun Sloop vs Sloop battle too...) Dutch/French sent trade ships south, Pirates built their first ship in 30 years and blockaded my port.

Bugs, some line infantry (and Coldstream guards!) don't like firing unless you directly order them too. They just stand there. (Some did, some didn't.) Life guards cavalry, I dismounted them to fight a square formation, then remounted them. Three battalions mounted up fine, the fourth got stuck and was unusable for the rest of the battle.

Really enjoying actually having ships to fight now!

[cherryfunk]

Nice work Quixote -- we have fleets! Lots of ships being built, trade nodes being occupied, things are back the way they should be. IS is ready for epic action

[carbide]

Yep the trade nodes filled up and even had others that arrived a little to late into the theaters as a lot of fractions were seeking to grab positions.

dantragic, I don't know what to tell you if you're not seeing naval battles.... they're happening a lot in my campaign. Barbary is even traveling quite a distance to come pest me by blocking trade routes. Heck I even saw United States cruising around with half a stack fleet.

[Frederf]

For some reason the mass fire isn't screwing up the game like 1.74 or so. I don't know what changed but before they were accordioning and overlapping units. Now they aren't. They are expanding a little bit but not enough to overlap.

I started a Savoy campaign and I couldn't steal/trade any tech until I had a school. It was 20 turns in and no one had any tech to demand in diplomacy. Is this a known bug/behavior?

[RuleBritannia]

Battle AI seems worse than before.

[Quixote07]

I havn't changed anything that would affect the battle AI in this update.

[RuleBritannia]

Well, from what I've seen, it's somehow gotten worse.

[cherryfunk]

I just lost Gibraltar to a smartly-led Moroccan army, so it's good enough to kick my butt...

[Hambino]

This is actually something I noticed in the recent versions, perhaps due to the accuracy reworkings. The AI is tending to charge in and melee with dragoons and light dragoons, more often than not anyways. They used to dismount close to where they spawned and act as infantry. Now the AI seems to want to get really close before dismounting, at which point it then decides to just charge.

As a side note, eastern ranged cavalry such as Deli Horsemen, Pindari Horsemen, Shaturnel Camel Gunners, and perhaps Carabineers are stuck with volley fire. I see these as hybrid cavalry, as they tend to have decent melee stats, but it's difficult to get any real lethality out of their ranged attacks. It's all right when I can stretch them out in a long line, but that's rarely an option on some battle maps unless I want them stuck in a fence. It's particularly painful when they dismount, as they are still stuck with only volley fire. Light dragoons fire as irregulars just fine, granted they have poor melee stats.

[aeoleron9]

I started a Savoy campaign and I couldn't steal/trade any tech until I had a school. It was 20 turns in and no one had any tech to demand in diplomacy. Is this a known bug/behavior?

You need the prerequisite buildings for techs to show up as available (to buy/steal). I believe the school is the prerequisite for all techs.

[Quixote07]

Not just that, but you also need the appropriate building.

For example, to research Plug Bayonet, you need an army encampment. A military focused minor city (governor's encampment, governor's barracks) doesn't work, you have to have a major city.


I'll try pumping up Dragoon accuracy to fix their melee tendencies. It won't affect their combat performance really.

[Frederf]

Can you edit the game's faction descriptions so people know what type the capital city is and the restrictions for having that city type?

[Daergar]

Bugger, can't try 76 until I get back from work. Evilness.

Glad to hear the naval thing has been squashed at last, since naval warfare is the most fun I have in Empire. Correction, the most fun in Empire after Q fixed it and made it unsucky.

[Disaray]

After playing a while I have some of that feed back you were asking for. All in all there is lots of improvement. Light cav defantly feels lighter, I don't know about the heavyer cav units beacuse I haven't got that far just yet. The number of ships I see coming out of Denmark and Sweeden is very impresive, can't see much more than that from Prusia just yet, though it seems England is giving France a hard time at sea, and the trade zones are filling up fast. Good good there, I even saw a trade fleet out of Persia and befor now I didn't even know they had ship biulding capabilities.

The only thing I can see that needs improvment is in the CAI war fighting department. The frequency of declarations of war are just right I think, though some how I have managed to dodge wars with every one but Courland in the 5 years the game has taken place in (With exception of the war I started with Spain over Florida of all places). The problem lies in the fighting of the wars that are going on. Is there a way to increas the fearceness of the AI in the wars it has with out making them declare war more often? The Austrians and the Poles have been at war sence turn one and I don't think a single provance has changed hands. The Austrians and the Otomans have been at war sence about turn 3 and only one provence has been taken. The only other land to change hads was Savoy taken by France for a turn befor they lost it to rebelion and Spain took out Portugal a turn or two back. It would be nice to see two factions go to war and the carve each other up real brutal like. Any way that is my two cents on the matter.