Suicidal minor factions FIXED! **Updated**

[aeoleron9]

Sick of minors declaring war on you for no reason? I found a way to make them back off.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Basically, I felt it was easier to maintain peace with major factions than minors in vanilla. You can scare off hostile majors with enough troops, but against minors there is nothing you can do. As long as you border them, they'll attack you.

So I made every minor into a major faction with full AI. And it worked.

With this fix, the ex-minors no longer declare suicidal wars against me. For example, in vanilla France was always attacked by Savoy or Wurttemburg early off. After the fix, my new French campaign is now 25 turns in and they're still at peace. As long as you keep a decent overall garrison in your regions, they won't mess with you.

There's also a nice side-effect: you will now get notifications from all factions. Apparently diplomatic notifications only work between major factions, so now that everyone is a major, you'll be notified about every war/broken alliance, even between nations like Westphalia or Cherokee.

Download Links (the attached file in this post is the old version)

Old Version:
Cluttered look, Minors spam stacks, but notifications for everyone

New Version:
No cluttered look, no minor stack spam, but only notifications for majors(same as vanilla)


Extract it into data/campaigns/main (backup the original first), start a new campaign and enjoy.


Thanks to the guys at IS mod, who taught me how to change minors into majors. Here's the original thread.
Feel free to use this in any mods, as long as I get me credits

[aeoleron9]

There are some drawbacks though: for example the diplomacy screen is now a bit cluttered, as is the prestige screen. Also, because small countries are more self-preserving, your campaign will be more slow and passive. But you can still bait them to attack you if you don't recruit anything.

Also Note that you'll still get the usual wars between AIs, because they can't build up an army fast enough to scare off others.

Oh and if you're using a mod that changed the starpos.esf, you can mod in the changes by yourself:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1. Get the esf editer here
2. Use it to open your starpos.esf at data/campaigns/main (don't forget to backup)
3. campaign_env > campaign_model > world > faction_array > faction, find the minors
4. Look for the major-minor value and change it to "True". => you can skip this
5. Look for "MAINTAINANCE" and change it to "FULL" (without brackets)
6. Do this for every minor faction, save the file and you're set.

[Officerpuppy]

Hmm...this looks rather interesting.

[M D]

THing is.. Is there a way to do it wihtout making them major factions?

[aeoleron9]

You could try just giving them the FULL AI. But you'll miss out on the notifications.

[M D]

I just dont like the cluttered look, eugh!

[Xelathur]

If you only change the AI to full, what happens?
Is there any noticeable effects at all?

[Roslolian]

According to patch.pack ai_manager-Behavior tables, FULL and MAINTENANCE differ by four/five categories. That is to say, Maintenance does NOT have these:

Region_Group_Expansion
Local_Noncontinugous_Expansion_Behavior
Global_Noncontiguous_Expansion_Behavior
Buffer_Zone Behavior
Trade_Behavior

Also, MAINTENANCE has this one category which FULL does not:

Excess_Recrutiment_Behavior

[priam11]

Trade_Behavior

I am very curious to see how this works.

[Roslolian]

I'll be curious to hear how this works in the long run also. I also would like to know what effect this has on turn length if any.

[Xelathur]

According to patch.pack ai_manager-Behavior tables, FULL and MAINTENANCE differ by four/five categories. That is to say, Maintenance does NOT have these:

Region_Group_Expansion
Local_Noncontinugous_Expansion_Behavior
Global_Noncontiguous_Expansion_Behavior
Buffer_Zone Behavior
Trade_Behavior

Also, MAINTENANCE has this one category which FULL does not:

Excess_Recrutiment_Behavior

Nice! + rep

Excess_Recruitment_Behavior seems to make the AI of minor nations to, well, recruit alot of troops.

This is why we always see those pesky little states fielding fullstacks, cause they dont aggro so fast in the campaign as the majors. Is these values easily changed?

One could toy around, by removing:

• Local_Noncontinugous_Expansion_Behavior
• Global_Noncontiguous_Expansion_Behavior

From major nations, and adding Excess_Recruitment_Behavior, to make the AI build better armies before mindlessly attacking everything in sight. This needs to be tested.

[aeoleron9]

OK, I found another side effect besides the cluttering. Apparently majors have more base income than minors (3000vs1750), this was a balancing fix from CA to prevent minors from spamming stacks. When I changed everyone to major status, they all started getting too much money again, and so I saw alot more stacks in little countries.

So I reverted the major change but kept the FULL AI, and I've been testing with this setup on another new French campaign. So far it's looking good. After twenty turns, the only faction that declared war on me was the Iroquois, who were hostile, had three cities producing troops, and had those imba native stats in their favor. I loaded an earlier save and bought an alliance with them before the war, and they never troubled me again. Oh and the minors no longer spam stacks.

In short, the minor suicidal behavior can be fixed just by giving them FULL AI. The only benefit turning them into majors is the diplomatic notifications. I'll upload the updated file later. I'll be honest though, with my horrid upload speed, you can probably finish changing the file faster than waiting for me:/


BTW, I don't plan on touching the ai_manager_behavior stuff, partly because there are already many mods that tune them. AFAIK, IS tuned some, Darth has a diplomacy pack, and APETI also has a submod.


:edit: Here we go.

[priam11]

So if I get this right.

Ignore step 4 and just proceed with step 5?

This doesn't slow the turns down does it? I remember reading somewhere before ETW came out that this was one of the reasons why the minor factions were on maintenance and not a full setting.

[aeoleron9]

Yep, ignore 4 and go for only 5.

As far as I've tested, the turn times appear to be the same. I think they made minors this way for gameplay reasons: they want them to be target practice for new players.

[Xelathur]

I'd say, the last change you did is great!

The minors aren't as warmongering now, and actually behave like nations instead of some stagnant "I build troops and might attack someone". I'm having success with Hannover in my UP campaign, they are my allies and we are currently attacking Westphalia together. I have also helped them fend the Prussians off.

The year is 1724 ( Yeah.. I did not focus much on Europe ) and they haven't touched me yet. Wurttemberg has a DOW against France, and Courland against Sweden. Dagestan actually attacked Russia, and Georgia attacked Ottoman Empire. Seems that this "fix" for minors is great. Will have to play some more though.

+rep for you OP

[aeoleron9]

Thanks for the rep

All feedbacks are welcome, I'm also interested in instances where the minors still declares war at some point.

[Lazy Knight]

Very interesting. I am also keen on hearing more reports if this helps.

Also, you should know that we can not see everything in the .pack files. We see some differences between MAINETANCE and FULL behaviour there, but it would be foolish to assume that this is all the difference there is. Hence it is hard to know what to expect, or to predict what will happen.

[Xelathur]

Hello, you should update, "minors spam stacks" isn't that accurate - just tell people they gain full money every turn instead, since some minors actually don't just spam stacks, they work as other major factions albeit small ones.

Great mod btw, it's REALLY noticeable in the lategame.

[aeoleron9]

Well technically they're still minors

What's happening in late game?

[Xelathur]

Well technically they're still minors

What's happening in late game?

Some minors have 3 regions and are competing against other factions. Like Savoy owning alsace-lorraine and savoy, fighting the french both at land and sea. ( Winning, actually, unless France get's help ).

And stuff like that. I like it personally, but some minors ( courland ) got a bit too much of the expansionist feeling, don't know why, but they always rush the swedes and russia, leaving their back open to prussian attacks.