Campaign balance

**Geoffrey of Villehardouin** · April 18, 2014, 04:26 PM

Do you find that certain AI factions do consistently better than others? Armenia tends to do well. Which other factions?

**Captain_Aramsham** · May 08, 2014, 04:48 AM

Ghurids invariably swamp the Khwarezm-Shah. Ghaznavids usually get wiped out very early in the campaign, either by the Ghurids or Sindhi (or both).

Yeah I've noticed Armenia turn into a bit of a juggernaut, more often than not. In earlier versions of the game they tended to get flattened almost embarrassingly early, so I suspect for the current release they were tweaked a little and have just been slightly overcompensated.

**Geoffrey of Villehardouin** · May 09, 2014, 11:49 AM

I thought the wiping out of the Ghaznavids was historical but I have the same feeling that Armenia was over-compensated and that the Ghurids start strong and expand fast.

**Captain_Aramsham** · May 10, 2014, 04:37 AM

Originally Posted by Geoffrey of Villehardouin

I thought the wiping out of the Ghaznavids was historical

That's true, but I feel that every faction should have at least a fighting chance, and it just seems that the Ghaznavids don't.

**LoneWolf94** · May 18, 2014, 02:58 PM

Aside from the ghurids and Ghaznavids..

The Abbasids also get very powerful quite fast, destroying The Seljuks while in reality, weren't The Seljuks supposed to beat the Abbasids historically? Well yes, this is Medieval 2 total war we make the history but it's quite sad to see the seljuks get flattened so fast while Kingdom of Georgia can fight at 4 sides without any loss.

Kingdom of Jerusale. also gets beaten but it takes some time until they get beaten.

I also think Makuria is the first faction that almost always gets bent in early games.

Seljuks of Rum also do get beaten by Armenia and Eastern Roman Empire but they do make a good stand like Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The mongol invasion is also a joke, they get beaten all the time by late game big AI factions.

**Captain_Aramsham** · May 19, 2014, 09:08 AM

The other day I lost my ERE campaign. I wasn't defeated as such, it's just that Armenia reached 60 provinces before I did.

On about turn 120. That's about 1/4 of the way through the game. That would be the equivalent of one of the AI factions in vanilla having 45 provinces on about turn 55-60

That's actually one reason why I often find myself going back to Vanilla M2TW, simply because (for all its faults) it's so well balanced I never know which faction(s) are going to become strong, and even when they do become strong they never seem to turn into a juggernaut like Armenia do in BC, or like either Egypt or the Seleucids do in Vanilla RTW or EB, for example.

**Geoffrey of Villehardouin** · May 20, 2014, 11:15 AM

The Jizya, Kafirs and Dimmis mod gives a different campaign balance, you may want to try that. There is still, however, a tendency for some factions to become very strong quickly as others die an early death. The BC campaign script is full of money related monitors that make it difficult to understand what is going on.

Originally Posted by LoneWolf94

The mongol invasion is also a joke, they get beaten all the time by late game big AI factions.

You will not feel the same if you play as Khwarezm, I can assure you. Check the military stats and you will see the Mongol 17-20 stacks are worth the cumulative military strength of several of the biggest factions.

**shikaka** · May 29, 2014, 04:07 AM

Originally Posted by Geoffrey of Villehardouin

Do you find that certain AI factions do consistently better than others? Armenia tends to do well. Which other factions?

For me these are:
Armenia
Ghurids
Jerusalem

I think Armenia and Jerusalem could be "balanced" with a stronger muslim faction nearby.

**Byzantineboy** · May 29, 2014, 05:58 AM

It is planned

**baradona** · May 29, 2014, 11:03 AM

My BC campaign using Jizya submod the mongols defeated the The Kharwzem and Seljukes of Iraq and they took over baghdad so they are very large and scary. What i did was using give_money command i gave them 2million once they showed up on the map which gave the AL a huge momentum. I tended to check if they are going to run out of money or not because once they still running out of money they will be defeated from other big factions. every time they are close to bankruptcy i would use the give_money command to give them money this how i noticed the mongols would be a horrifying power!

**Geoffrey of Villehardouin** · May 29, 2014, 12:51 PM

One way to look at campaign balance is that there are two main aspects: the relative strength of factions at start and the strengthening and weakening of factions with time.

Over time there seems to be a tendency for some factions to become big at the expense of others. The Ayyubids compete with KoJ and about half the time one or the other become big and destroy their rival. The tendency with the current campaign AI seems to be to reduce the number of computer factions during the campaign, presumably so that the surviving factions grow bigger and remain a challenge for the human player. As a result, the surviving AI factions increasingly expand beyond their historical areas.

There is some room for rebalancing that aspect and keep AI factions closer to their native ranges. But overall it would tend to reduce difficulty.

As for the Mongols, they could be given a cash bonus if the human player faction is not Khwarezm, so that they can expand a bit more. Is there interest in that?