Bran Mac Born DMN Mod Edits

[Bran Mac Born]

UPDATE: New trigger event table for improved diplomacy and BAI. Post 1

[RandyRhoads]

I am playing with GB and I'm really having no trouble in Early October 1807. Had a struggle to keep the Gibraltar but all that changed once I finally finished my star fort. From that point onward I've been on the offensive on the Iberian Peninsula. Madrid fell fairly without effort, next was Mallorca, Navarre and then I decided I'll liberate the Catalans. Next step was to set up ambushes in the Pyrenees and the French just keep walking into them like flies on honey.

I think I'm in this super strong position cuz of the naval supremacy I was able to establish. I defeated Vilenueve and took his flagship then set up a full blockade on all French ports except those in the Mediterranean. From this point onward I just started building trade ships to improve my NA trade routs. As I launched my foot invasion of Spain I also moved Nelson's fleet for the kill on the port of Cartagena, where Gravina's fleet was docked. After the victory against Spain there was no one who could stop me from monopolizing the naval imports from Africa so I just became even wealthier. To top it all off France kept sending 2 122 gun ships to blockade Greece (which I liberated) so I've captured a total of 6 122 gun ships that I use to blockade their ports.

A few thoughts on the campaign so far:
Even tho France stretches all the way to Ukraine I dont see them as a threat right now. Which is mainly because the AI makes idiotic armies. It guards its ports from raids with full stacks of conscripts and artillery but holds choke points with just a few units. That being said France are a good bit ahead of me in terms of research mainly because they have like 10 universities while I have 2. I may not be as cocky once I invade them but from what I've seen so far I'm not impressed by the grand army.

Now I doubt the AI would be able to capitalize on its military victories the way a human could but perhaps France should get a naval boost, maybe those undeveloped ports should be made operational from the start. I doubt its possible for the AI to be scripted to keep the French and Spanish fleets together for support so the only choice is to make them better individually, wouldn't you agree?
Another way the AI could improve is to send more trade ships to trade routs. Denmark currently holds 1 of the ivory trade routs with only 1 trade ship.
Prussia, Portugal and Russia all have big fleets, Prussia even has 7-8 second rates and a heavy first rate it captured from France. At the same time Spain's fleet was the same as the start of the game with just 3 more frigates. They kept sending wave after wave against the Gibraltar while they could have invested in a few bigger ships.

AI fleets have definitely improved from the ones in regular DM, but I think they need to improve more. Not on the level the AI spams land armies but Spain and France should be more competitive.

[-Concrete-]

The link for PFM seems like a dead end, which are we supposed to use?

[Bran Mac Born]

UPDATE: Better Navies for France and European factions. Better regional defense and development all factions. Post 1 Thanks for the report Randy. Wait till you try and invade France. Please post some screens shots. What campaign and battle difficulty setting are you using? Any big epic land battles yet?. Do you use 40 unit armies?
Concrete go here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?618353

[gastovski]

I have been away like two years from TW games now i'll play both dme and dmn(got bored from r2tw even with dei mod). I want to know that are the enemies still rampaging us nonsensely even if you have allied with them?. It seems Bran did extremely well after retirement of Darth(so many things needed to be improved such as cai and bai and economy in both DME and DMN), thank you so much by the way.

[limith]

Seems to be a bug with diplomacy(?) in the Pack Editor, for the version you have, there's a red under diplomacy in diplomacy_attitudes_tables where Darth_diplomacy_attitudes_version0 is missing entries. Using the version you linked to for concrete.

[Bran Mac Born]

UPDATE; Fixed missing entries from diplomatic strings and diplomatic attitudes. Post 1 Thanks limith Post 1

[limith]

Doesn't seem to be fixed.

[Bran Mac Born]

UPDATE: Removed diplomacy attitudes table ported from Bran DME. It seems that NTW does not like it Post 1

[Bran Mac Born]

After the Prussians split the French Empire in Half in 1808 the French make massive counter attacks from the south and break through to siege
Berlin. The Prussians did counter attack with my 3 armies to defeat the French in two massive battles involving 7 armies and 46,000 men in a giant meat grinder of blood and gore and death in fire. Fabulous

[limith]

Feedback on balance and bugs: -Trade income decrease would be nice. I make way too much money from trade. -Seems to be some bug with Supply Posts where I can't train those units while the post is being upgraded. -It's good that the AI declares war on me again immediately after I abuse diplomacy and peace out with them for money to avoid losing cities while my army annexes minors. In original Darthmod, I can just offer France 2000/turn and they won't be at war with me. This ensures that I am always at war with France and Spain and that I can't just bribe them money to let me peacefully build a trade empire while France and England kill each others trade ships and I steal all the trade nodes by placing 1 Indianman on them (since I only have 1 port to start with). I actually have to bother with a navy to protect my trade empire. -It's bad that the AI accepts peace for merely 1000 for 15 turns in your edit when it took an offer for 2000 gold/20 turns for the AI to accept peace in the base mod. Given I make 50,000+ from trade a turn, this is too ridiculously cheap for peace. -You might want to look at German cavalry, some of the "elite"/limited units are worse (imo) than the plain units (they do have cold resistance), unless the cold resistance thing is why they have worse stats. Not just German cavalry, saw this with Sweden as well. -There is a bug with Hussars in the battle where they will literally stop charging right before they reach a target, and require micromanagement to actually charge into an enemy. Also they seem to have a really really hard time chasing after shattered enemies (often going in the wrong direction or parallel to the retreating units) if I just tell them to attack the enemy. I have to manually move them on top of the enemy first and then tell them to attack.. I don't have problems with Generals when chasing enemies so I suspect it has to do with their formation. -Land mines explode (NOT trigger, they trigger at the right place the red mark suggests) a bit too close to the unit placing them, the marker on the ground should either be moved closer so it's more obvious I NEED to retreat my units right at start a bit, or the offset should be increased some how to avoid land mines killing the unit that layed them.

[Bran Mac Born]

UPDATE: Lowered trade values for ships,strength of square, changed some stats for Cavalry, better expansion settings. Will look into diplomatic stuff. Post one. HOW are battles playing out?

[hooahguy14]

Could you possibly upload a version that is just the naval stats? The hull strengths arent done well without your submod but Im not so sure if I want the whole shebang just yet but I do want the naval to be balanced.

[Bran Mac Born]

It is the whole shebang

[limith]

UPDATE: Lowered trade values for ships,strength of square, changed some stats for Cavalry, better expansion settings. Will look into diplomatic stuff. Post one. HOW are battles playing out?

I enjoy battles overall, especially when the AI mostly properly uses militia to hurt my small numbers good troop army.

Some bugs though:
-AI will run units into mines. All the time
-Seems that some battles BOTH the attacker and defender can deploy stakes and mines(?). I don't recall this ever being in other games. Not sure if you can fix.
-Another bug where a human army moving to seige a city can be "intercepted" by a city defense unit and allied reinforcements right next to the army will not show up in the battle. Extra challenge I suppose.
-Cavalry is a mixed bag. They are quite strong relatively due to ability to rout other units, and in melee are very strong. However, I find I can consistently kill AI cavalry before they reach me with Gernadiers, which don't have good marksman or anything. This is because the AI insufficiently attacks from the flank. It tries to, but while it moves the cavalary to my flank, it chooses to do so by moving in front of the firing cone of my troops (basically it doesn't choose to take the long but safe route to get to the flanks, but the short and unsafe route that leads to it moving into my line of fire). Also, since the AI decides to charge cavalry in before the infantry has arrived, this means I can safely eliminate all enemy cavalry before the main battle has begun, AI should hold cavalry in reserve until the infantry line has committed itself.
-Other than that, Infantry seem fine. I would consider increasing the numbers of some of the light infantry or something. Given the AI likes to charge into lines, I can't think of a reason for choosing to use the 120 range but less number light infantry since the slight range increase and accuracy increase, as well as light infantry doctrine ability, doesn't mean much once the enemy is in melee. Basically only the 170 range units seem useful, as well as grenadiers imo to counter the melee preference by AI.

[Bran Mac Born]

Well AI units runs into mines-well good that is why they are there:laughter. It is modded to have defenses in all battles to make is harder for the human player. About 'allied' reinforcements armies not appearing in battles put his in your 'preferences folder at the bottom of the list; unlimited_men_on_battlefield true; # unlimited_men_on_battlefield <true|false>, Allow unlimited men on battlefield # Troops will appear at the beginning of the battle. Cavalry will flank your line IF there is room to do so on the battle map. Cavalry are a bit stronger so they are to be feared more. The settings I have for Cav usually they stay back and guard the artillery-it is part of the hard coded behavior for the Cav to charge in though. sometimes they do sometimes they do not depending if the AI army is defending or attacking. Will try new setting for musket range and see if that stops the walking into player lines-though it is very rare that happens from my tests.
limith are you using 40 unit saves? battles play out better with bigger armies.

[Bran Mac Born]

UPDATE: Changed Cav charge range to 1 from 0 seems to help keep them in reserve. test. post 1 and 4 volley fire fully updated.
Campaign behavior any reports?

[limith]

Well AI units runs into mines-well good that is why they are there:laughter. It is modded to have defenses in all battles to make is harder for the human player. About 'allied' reinforcements armies not appearing in battles put his in your 'preferences folder at the bottom of the list; unlimited_men_on_battlefield true; # unlimited_men_on_battlefield <true|false>, Allow unlimited men on battlefield # Troops will appear at the beginning of the battle. Cavalry will flank your line IF there is room to do so on the battle map. Cavalry are a bit stronger so they are to be feared more. The settings I have for Cav usually they stay back and guard the artillery-it is part of the hard coded behavior for the Cav to charge in though. sometimes they do sometimes they do not depending if the AI army is defending or attacking. Will try new setting for musket range and see if that stops the walking into player lines-though it is very rare that happens from my tests.
limith are you using 40 unit saves? battles play out better with bigger armies.

What I meant with the allied reinforcements is that they won't even show up as available reinforcements before the battle starts. I can have 2 stacks right next to one another and I get "intercepted" while attempting to move toward the city (my stack hasn't moved at all) and the reinforcements aren't available. I'm not saying that they don't go into the game once some of my units rout or that I reached the unit cap in battle. This is a campaign bug.

Also what I meant with cavalry is that they do attempt to go flank, but the pathing they use to move toward my flanks results in them going through my line of fire. Ex I have my line _______________ with flanks on right and left. The cavalry will come in via reinforcement from in front of me on my right. The AI somehow decides it wants to charge at my line from my LEFT flank, so it moves from in front of me from my right to my left flank. While it moves to my left flank, it takes damage from my line, and dies. I don't know if you can fix this behavior though.

Edit: added an image.

Basically, the cavalary enters in from 1, and it proceeds along 2 to 3. It wants to flank me from 3 to behind my lines (I know because I've tested it with fire at will off to see what it wants to do). However, while it is at 3, my grenadiers are able to shoot at them (because the path it takes is bad) and the cavalry dies. Instead of taking the path it does, cavalry should take the red-brown paths instead to avoid being in range of my grenadiers, or to attack my right flank since it comes in from the right side.

(If you are wondering why I have artillery undefended, there's mines in front of them)

I guess another AI oddity (not sure if fixable) was a river crossing one where I fortified both river crossings, the AI chose to cross from the left and walk all the way to attack my right river crossing defenders while ignoring the defenders on the left which were firing at it the whole time.

[Bran Mac Born]

UPDATE: Improved flanking. Post 1 Try this. As to Allied armies-they must have movement points left to come in. Seige the city with your reinforcement army next to you for one turn and then attack.

[roy64]

The mod is working fine Bran. Excellent instructions to thanks.