bizarcasm's Rebalanced Strat mod
Hi, this is a personal modification that I've been working on since BC 2.3 came out. I originally just wanted to tweak the balance of the descr_strat, in order to compensate for some of the balance issues with the latest release, but it quickly became much more complicated. Here's and overview of what I've done:
Extended Christian Family Trees:
One of the awesome things about the recent BC 2.3 release was the expanded family trees for the Muslim Factions, but this left many of the Christian factions feeling a little left behind, so, with my amateur skills and the internet, I expanded them back several generations. Jerusalem and Rome in particular now have rather large, and more historically accurate trees, going back several generations. I attempted to keep roughly the same number of named characters, so some of them have been swapped out.
Seljuks of Iraq swapped for Eldiguzids (Atabegs of Azerbaijan):
While the revamping of the Great Seljuks by the BC team has made the game much more historical, it removed the major counter to Georgia in Iran and the Caucasus. With this in mind, I felt it best to represent the strongest Seljuk successor, rather than the impotent remains of the Seljuks themselves. This does leave the heart of Iran rather empty, but IMHO this is more realistic. The Kwarezmshahs, the Ghorids, and the Eldiguzids should all have good chance of establishing their hegemony over Iran, while Georgia should not.
Map tweaks:
A number of small geographic alterations have been made to the rivers, but the only major change to the strategic map is that the Damascus province is now linked to the Ayyubid territories. This allows the Ayyubid army that spawns next to Damascus to actually beseige and usually capture it. This significantly strengthens the AI Ayyubids, hopefully stopping Jerusalem from becoming too powerful, without sacrificing the challenge of taking Damascus by an Ayyubid player.
Rome/Turkey Balance:
One of the big balance issues has been the Romans steamrolling everything. I've buffed up the Turks some, and weakened the Roman armies slightly. The biggest change has been eliminating the big rebel stack attacking Ankyra at the beginning. This seems to help a lot, and seems to give to Turks a better chance of resisting Rome.
Also included is a fix for the siege ladder/tower issue, and some other minor fixes, mainly for the Chauhans. Giving them victory conditions, the Kshatriya trait, and fixing some recruitment issues, such as the Chauhans recruiting Paramara cavalry and vice-versa.
Install by copying the data folder into the Broken_Crescent_kingdoms folder, then delete the expanded.txt.strings.bin, the export_ancillaries.txt.strings.bin, and the names.txt.strings.bin in the text folder. Also, delete the map.rwm in world/maps/base. Obviously this is use at your own risk. I've never publicly submitted my modifications before, so I may have missed something. If you have issues, I can probably debug it, but no guarantees, especially if it involves conflicts with other sub-mods.
Feedback and suggestions are welcome.
EDIT: I've done some more extensive tweaks to the balance. Of note, Rome now starts out at war with the Turks, and Jerusalem with Egypt, which significantly improves the AI's expansion. The Ayyubids now slowly whittle down the crusaders, usually taking Jerusalem in the 1190's, and the Turks now usually hold the upper hand against Rome. I've tweaked the rebel garrisons to encourage AI expansion in certain directions, which will hopefully slow down Georgia and speed up Khwarezm. I've also cut all the unnecessary files from the download, making it much smaller.
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