[Economics] Will the King's Purse mechanics be revisited/revised?

[QuintusSertorius]

People have reported issues with some factions being able to recruit stack after stack, and I suspect the culprit is the King's Purse mechanic. This gives the AI money to ensure they don't go into the red, in other words they have virtually unlimited money. This is why one-province Pergamon or Pontos, for example, can maintain several full stacks without going bankrupt. Problem is, even aside from it being ahistorical, if set too high, it makes the economic game meaningless. You can't force the decline of a faction through economic warfare, blockading ports and disrupting trade. Indeed it means the only faction who can be affected by that sort of thing is the human player's faction. I don't mind the task of the player being made harder, but it removes a whole tier of interesting gameplay when economics don't matter.

Is this likely to change in later releases?

[utelektr]

This has nothing to do with King's Purse, and everything to do with the AI cheating its balls off.

[Henri]

The player economy needs some refinement passes. The Ptomely & Cathagian economies are particularly bad for factions that were historically extremely wealthy.

[QuintusSertorius]

Apparently, it isn't the King's Purse mechanic:

The Kings Purse is not the main part of the problem, Quintus.
It's just a couple thousand mnai at best (5000 is max at the moment, iirc).
The main part is indeed the money script, which adds 1000 mnai to the purse whenever an AI faction is losing money.

I am experimenting with a reduced money script (adding 300 instead of 1000, and substracting 400 instead of 1000 if the factions is making money and has more than 20k.

The results so far are promising - there are a lot less stacks around, especially factions like Pergamon, the Areuakoi and the Nabataeans don't field 5 or 6 stacks anymore, not even after 200+ turns.

Although there are disadvantages, too - for example the fact that Qart-Hadasht is always eaten up by the Massylians. :wall:

I just wish I'd make any progress with the planned script to have a King's Purse that is dependent on the factions' size. If that would work as planned, we could completely skip the current flat "if the AI loses money, throw more money their way" Money Script. . .

[Thuycidides]

You can't force the decline of a faction through economic warfare, blockading ports and disrupting trade. Indeed it means the only faction who can be affected by that sort of thing is the human player's faction. I don't mind the task of the player being made harder, but it removes a whole tier of interesting gameplay when economics don't matter.

I agree 100%. Currently it's ridiculous how many stacks the AI can field compared to the human player. It's not so much a matter of challenge as it is tedium.

[V.T. Marvin]

A possible quick fix to discourage the AI from recruiting so much might be to increase the recruitment costs. It can be done using the "AIGeneral" or "AIGovernor" traits that are already in game providing various boni to the AI. One of the attributes shoud be "Recruitment" (or something similar IIRC) - giving it high negative value would make recruiting more expensive without affecting other mechanics.

[Zeleny drak]

This is especially a problem for Vassal states. They don't attack anybody but just collect one unit every turn (per city). In one game the KH was vassal to Macedonia for 100 turns and they have now 9 full stacks all around their capital (after they lost a couple of units to rebellions). Macedonia had a lot less troops ( maybe 3 full stack) as they where at war with other factions so lost some troops. However KH does not try to become independent or anything.

[Rumpole141]

I had the same vassal problem with the Boii as vassals to the Sweboz. They had one province but a larger military than me when I finished a short Getai campaign.

As far as I can tell, this accumulation of stacks by inactive factions is the only "showstopper" bug in EB II, which is otherwise excellent. It discourages long campaigns.

[k/t]

BC has a script that gives AI factions a certain amount of money for each settlement they have. On higher difficulty levels, the script gives more.

Or you can get the Carl script by Fred Putz.

[Wulfburk]

This happens specially with Nabata and Numidia. In my Carthage campaign i had all of north africa but 3 numidian cities, and also had all of spain, sicily, and the 3 other islands. I could only field 3 stacks. Numidia had 3 cities, and had 7 stacks.......... They werent my vassals fyi, i allied with them just to not worry until i had all of spain. Shoudnt have done that it seems....

[Rumpole141]

I think this happens in general factions that stay out of war because there is water between them and their enemies. If you look at the graphs you can see that quite a few factions have a financial ranking that remains stuck at zero and a military ranking that grows linearly.