Mod to stop AI from spawning units instantly when out of your line of sight

[NovoMD]

Even with the mod, the AI still spawns units to defend its capital province when certain triggers are hit. I believe 4 at a time.

[Abe86]

You'd think that by looking at the files we'd have a definitive answer on the matter of AI spawning units.
So do they or dont they ? Does the modder Yarkis know ? The suspense is killing me !

Cheers.

[shakmaster13]

I am currently playing as Date and by turn 10 I reached Honma and saw that the enemy had 1 full stack of troops including yari and bow samurai and another 1/2 stack of yari ashigaru, bow ashigaru, and light cavalry. This is a one province nation. This should not be happening, so I think I'll try this mod and see how it goes.

[aeoleron9]

I don't know if it's the mod, but in my new Oda campaign somehow the Shimazu and Uesugi are still around in turn 20. Usually they get wiped out long before then afaik. Maybe their vicious neighbors are less vicious because they can't magically spawn new troops?

Oh and for those worried that there ill be less challenge, I don't think so. Recently Hattori did a blitz on two fronts and wiped out the two allies that were protecting me, and proced to march on Owari with a huge stack(They control 7 regions, pretty much everything around Kyoto, so no magic involved ). I had to rapidly mobilise my ashigaru, and even though I outnumber him, his archers and samurai cut my ashigaru to pieces along with one of my generals. Luckily, my reinforcement arrived with four fresh ash archers, and thankfully held their ground while the remaining Hattori troops tried to charge. Never had a more intense and close battle.

[Zepheris]

if the AI did not cheat, then the variable change shouldn't affect it at all. but more importantly, if the AI does not cheat, how on earth is it dropping a full stack of units that it is not capable of building? this i noticed when Oda (boxed in with only a single province bordering the sea) dropped a full stack of units from the sea into my main island... fair enough i say and good, it looks like the AI is not totally stupid, then 2 things happened...

i checked the army with my ninja, full stack of samurai of various sorts... katana, yari, yami ... the whole spectrum.. there's just ONE tiny little problem there, i KNOW where oda's single and only region is for the past 20 turns... i have spies checking it every year, and they do NOT have the buildings to manufacture the entire spectrum of samurai i see landing in the main island... when i saw the invasion army landing and after i checked it's composition, i sent a ninja immediately to their region to check their state... they only had a naginata dojo and a stable ...
where the hell did the other samurai came from then?

[Phanboi]

I will give this mod a try. I like the way Shogun 2 is except for the AI getting these extra stacks when they shouldn't.It ruins things when I fight a tough battle and stretch myself thin going for the kill, only to have an army that shouldn't be there showing up and wrecking my game.

[zowrath]

I still haven't seen the AI instas-pawn troops, but I found this little parameter which would explain what I've seen about generals appearing at the front, in cdir_configs:

"all"    true    "all"    "CDIR_CVN_TELEPORT_GENERALS_TO_FRONT"    true    "1"

I did however notice consolidation of a severely wounded AI stack, which I actually liked. It had almost a full stack of units in the 40-60 man range. The turn after it had roughly one third stack that appeared full as it had consolidated its units like we would. This is certainly a welcome change.

[r0x]

a mod like this would be like a placebo. as long as we are not able to turn of the FOW, we can only guess where the AI gets his armies from. i found an explanation to every AI stack i encountered so far (hard and above). keep in mind that the AI can probably recruit more troops for less money on higher difficulties and that you can find hidden armies in forests only if you have a unit in sight when you END the turn not by moving over it in an ongoing turn (wasnt this way in older TW titles).

[zowrath]

a mod like this would be like a placebo. as long as we are not able to turn of the FOW, we can only guess where the AI gets his armies from. i found an explanation to every AI stack i encountered so far (hard and above). keep in mind that the AI can probably recruit more troops for less money on higher difficulties and that you can find hidden armies in forests only if you have a unit in sight when you END the turn not by moving over it in an ongoing turn (wasnt this way in older TW titles).

In all fairness it would not be totally placebo as anyone that really wanted to check this out would spread monks, metsukes, ninjas and geishas out to cower a larger area in addition to what vassals covers with their units. If you are adamant about this you can have good field of view of the map. It would cripple you gameplay-wise but for testing purposes it can be done.

Yes, there are parameters in the files that gives AI bonuses to recruitment and such, and it can explain some units suddenly appearing.

Another thing people tend to forget is also hidden stacks, in forests. From previous games we're used to having an agent stop if he encounters a stack in its path. Now it seems there's a check in place for whether or not he can find it. I have seen the AI move a stack to a specific forest on a map, small forest. I had two ninjas and a metsuke nearby and I wanted to attack that stack without risking an ambush. I ran all over the place, plot by plot, and it did not turn up. Thinking I might have been mistaken I moved my stack in and voilá, an ambush.

So, while the AI may or may not insta-spawn troops there may also be other factors that make it seem like it does. Just saying

[Havokreaper]

The AI also replenshes its troops in your territory when you lose sight of them had a 4 unit stack on the island that the chosokabe start on, they where moving around the western edge took them 6 moves to clear the forest they went threw one winter attrition but when they came out the othere side the units where all at full strength which implies they infact do respawn lost troops instantly the miniute you lose sight of them

also the myoshi clan directly to the east of the chosokabe are good example of them spawn troops instantly if you move your army directly east to the forest youll encounter a 6 unit stack straight up and thats about it but if you hold back for a few turns you'll see a mass of single units appearing and moving threw the forest until after a few turns youll have to deal with a large army of atleast 10 units and theyll just keep coming unitll you put a agent or a army over there to stop the spawning and theyll keep coming untill there province is taken

[charleyp]

I don't think it is clear wether they do spawn, but I have seen some strange things in the AI's armies. For instance the Otomo clan had 1 province with an archery range, then one of their armies weirdly had katana and yari samurai, so yeah.

[zowrath]

I don't think it is clear wether they do spawn, but I have seen some strange things in the AI's armies. For instance the Otomo clan had 1 province with an archery range, then one of their armies weirdly had katana and yari samurai, so yeah.

Which makes me wonder if the AI gets missions as well, like capture a province/research something and you'll get a samurai. Or perhaps the AI uses mesuke to bribe other armies as well? The AI uses their agents better in STW2 compared to previous games, for sure.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

a mod like this would be like a placebo. as long as we are not able to turn of the FOW, we can only guess where the AI gets his armies from. i found an explanation to every AI stack i encountered so far (hard and above). keep in mind that the AI can probably recruit more troops for less money on higher difficulties and that you can find hidden armies in forests only if you have a unit in sight when you END the turn not by moving over it in an ongoing turn (wasnt this way in older TW titles).

The cheats only work in hidden areas. CA wasn't so stupid to let the AI "cheat" in plain sight of the player.

[Lammo]

I am sorry that some of you do not believe that this problem exists within the game but there have been a few instances where I have seen Clans form quite a few armies of various experience where they once had none, while I was their only enemy the entire game. Either they are spawning too fast or they are spawning instantly and either way, they gain experience without actual combat. This has bot only been on Legendary, Hard, Normal, but also on easy, I have found throughout multiple campaigns.

I will use this mod to see if these instances stop but I must ask that all of us, despite whatever opinions we may have on this situation, be respectful to each other and if we have nothing constructive to add, at least add nothing spiteful.

[aeoleron9]

There is a FOW mod in the workshop>tutorial section, and you can easily see how many troops the AI is supposed to have, compared to how many they throw at you when you have FOW turned on. Lets just say there's a big discrepancy.

For example in my first regular campaign as Date I met heavy resistance fom my neighbors the Mogami, who managed to scrap together a 3/4 stack in like turn 4 and trashed me several times. Now turn off fow, put on this mod and look at Mogami in the first few turns. They got nothing close to that kind of numbers. That's why the AI Date usually steamroll them in seconds.

[Tim_Ward]

Try this beta mod and report back. I can't gurantee that it works, because I had to guess a bit which CAI variables control the freespawns. I kept the free unit spawns for the Ashikaga Shogunate though, which is reasonable.

Just drop the file in the data directory. It's a movie mod, so it will work without changes to the user script.

Maybe you could explain which variables you changed?

[Sii]

I have this mod in my data folder but I'm still seeing the enemy with a lot of unexplained veteran units considering they only have level 1 of their unit builder (Sword School) and no other faction they are fighting. In fact I saw them send their units from their city without veteran ranks and when they went into FOW and I approached them with my army. The majority of their units had 2-3 stripes, this is on hard difficulty.

[Thoragoros]

The cheats only work in hidden areas. CA wasn't so stupid to let the AI "cheat" in plain sight of the player.

They don't need to be cheating in plain sight for the cheats to be painfully obvious.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

I have this mod in my data folder but I'm still seeing the enemy with a lot of unexplained veteran units considering they only have level 1 of their unit builder (Sword School) and no other faction they are fighting. In fact I saw them send their units from their city without veteran ranks and when they went into FOW and I approached them with my army. The majority of their units had 2-3 stripes, this is on hard difficulty.

Yes, because I didn't change the unit experience cheat only the spawning stuff. Ther are a number of different AI helpers in the game.

Maybe you could explain which variables you changed?

One table that controls some of these cheats is cdir_desire_priorities. I set two of the variables there to zero. Obviously I found the ones who control the spawning.

[HunterKYA]

Just what the topic says - the AI spawns units when out of sight of any of yours directly into their army. I don't know if it's doable without a toolset, but it would be very much appreciated if anyone could. Very lame for them to be able to do that.

Same here. It seems like the AI isn't governed by the same sets of restrictions that human players need to abide by. I've noticed on more than one occasion where you could rout an enemy after a siege, but with both sides having taken heavy losses, you wouldn't think they'd come back the next turn. However, low and behold, the enemy is back with fresh troops, stronger than before, like nothing ever happened. It leaves me scratching my head how they can replenish their armies that fast, especially when you're still recovering from the previous battle(s), like the AI is making uber-amounts of money behind the scenes.