Stack spam script

[FFJean]

Dear Gigantus & team,

I’m a long time player of MTW2 mods and discovered RoTK late, like 2 years ago. Although I don’t know much of ancient Chinese history, I have played this mod with great pleasure.
So I am looking forward to playing this new version.
However, due to my style of play, as I love to manage and slowly grow my empire, to fight battles rather than autoresolve, I never completed a single campaign as quickly the AI spams unit stacks and it begins to be a stack feast and more than 1 battle (more often than not, much more than one, with more than one stack on the AI side) has to be played each turn. With such a number of battles, there is nothing like a decisive battle any longer.
I noticed in your presentation of the last version that you mention a « stack spam script » and as I appreciate very much 1648 (no stack spam in this one &#128077, I wanted to ask you whether this script is trying to stop stack spamming.

With my best regards, thank you for the fantastic work !

FFJean

[Ostlich]

funny enough, this is exactly how three three kingdoms would've felt like

neverending warfare without decisive battles, especially if you're up against cao cao

even red cliffs was only a stopgap

[IBSXYPNTS]

I am also curious as to the details of the stack spam script. I only really want to know so that I dont suddenly hit my limit without warning and have all my forces on the wrong front.

[FFJean]

Dear Ostlich,

I don't think there was ever in manking history the equivalent of stack spam. Not e decisive victory? Maybe, because the armies were not ready, on both side. So endless skirmishes, yes, but stack after stack afer stack? I don't believe that.

Best regards,

FFJ

[Seether]

Essentially the stackspam script assigns points to unit types, settlements, and settlement sizes and, if a faction has too many units (points) in relation to number of settlements and settlement sizes, recruitment is frozen until the number of units (points) gets lower. It's a bit more complicated, but that is the gist of it. You can check out the script in campaign_script; only 200,000+ lines long

[IBSXYPNTS]

Essentially the stackspam script assigns points to unit types, settlements, and settlement sizes and, if a faction has too many units (points) in relation to number of settlements and settlement sizes, recruitment is frozen until the number of units (points) gets lower. It's a bit more complicated, but that is the gist of it. You can check out the script in campaign_script; only 200,000+ lines long

Thank you for the explanation! It helps to at least know whats going on in terms of numbers to me. I am playing as Xiliang and didnt want to send Han Sui south with half the troops only to have the limit reached and be unable to send reinforcements to ma chao as he moves on the capital.

[captainkrunch]

I mean, I haven't played super long into a campaign yet so I don't know if it's that big of a problem but from what I have played I really enjoyed the amount of stacks featured. I loved the feeling of wars between nations being more "Campaigns" rather than being decided by one large battle like they usually are in modern TW games. It would be a shame to limit it too much IMO, I loved the gameplay of having like 3 full stacks with more on the way in my Cao Cao campaign at like turn 3.

[Gigantus]

The present stack spam script only affects the AI, the player is deemed intelligent enough to balance recruitment and building activities

[FFJean]

Dear Gigantus,

So indeed the new script does stop or rather limit the stack spamming from the AI?

If not, is there a way to limit it without putting the whole balance at stake ?

Best regards,

FFJean

[Seether]

It does, yes, but the script only affects AI factions, not the player.

[FFJean]

Thank you,

Then it is perfect, as the player can play the style he wants, the slow, building way as I do, with not much in terms of recruitment, and then the AI is limited in parallel, or the swift agressive way, and then I guess this script does not really has time to impact his recruitment ability!

Best regards,

FFJean

[.:JuliusCaeser:.]

I don't mind the huge units I just think it's odd some of the decisions the AI makes like for example, in every campaign in previous versions, Qingzhou stacks a bunch of armies randomly between XuChang and GuanDu. Can this be changed somehow?

[Seether]

Possibly, but the cause of it will have to be found first. There could be a strat pixel in the map, but I’ll have to look into it further.

[DemetriosCZE]

Hello i am not sure if anti stack spam script is working for me. I played as Liu Bei and looked at Cao armies and saw this

[DemetriosCZE]

Im sorry for posting twice but for some reason my picture didnt upload and i cant edit post so here it is. https://imgur.com/PptYvIf

[Seether]

Which version are you using?

[DemetriosCZE]

Which version are you using?

Latest one.

[Seether]

I’m going to see if Gigantus can look at this. I’ve personally never seen that much stack spam in the last few versions, but just looking at that pic and I can tell the Cao Clan has way more units than they should. The script should have stopped recruitment for them quite a while ago.

[Seether]

As an update, Gigantus is pretty sure he identified the problem and I have made the appropriate changes to the script. I’ll try to get some limited testing before the v2.3 release.

[DemetriosCZE]

Ok thanks for reply. I orginally thought its problem on my side.