Faction descriptions in the desc_strat file

[Darviathar]

Was taking a look at this today and noticed that the factions are described using historical names...



Rome - Comfort Caesar
Egypt - Trader Stalin
Seleucid - Fortified Napoleon
Carthage - Sailor Napoleon
Parthia - Religious Henry


What exactly does this mean? And would changing the historical name there actually impact game play at all? Nothing seems to save the Seleucids in my game, and unlike Bactria, Parthia is never able to carve out any sort of empire whatsoever. Would changing this shake things up a bit?

[florin80]

I have this from an old thread that I don`t have a link to atm. I also have no idea who made this list so I can`t credit him unfortunately, but, anyway, the idea is that I didn`t made it.

These are the offical descriptions of the various options in descr_strat.txt:

These control a set of AI production personalities, which contribute a bias towards building and training (but not retraining or repairing). This bias is fairly small compared to game-generated factors such as "the enemy is attacking me with lots of cavalry, build me some spearmen". Explaining the weighting system which drives the production AI in full is beyond the scope of this document as it would take several days to write.

So in short, the building construction personalities are these: (ranked highest to lowest - therother)

balanced - biases towards growth, taxable income, trade level bonuses (roads), walls and xp bonus buildings

religious - biases towards growth, loyalty, taxable income, farming, walls and law

trader - biases towards growth, trade level, trade base, weapon upgrades, games, races and xp bonus buildings

comfort - biases towards growth, farming, games, races, xp bonus and happiness

bureaucrat - biases towards taxable income, growth, pop health, trade, walls, improved bodyguards and law

craftsman - biases towards walls, races, taxable income, weapon upgrades, xp bonuses, mines, health and growth

sailor - biases towards sea trade, taxable income, walls, growth, trade

fortified - biases towards walls, taxable income, growth, loyalty, defenses, bodyguards and law

These biases are towards building properties, rather than buildings themselves. The game does not know what a "Blacksmith" is, for example, it only knows that it is a building which provides a weapon upgrade, and hence a Craftsman AI would be more likely to build it than another AI personality type.

These are then combined with a troop production personality, as follows:

smith - exactly level

mao - biased towards mass troops, light infantry

genghis - biased towards missile cavalry and light cavalry

stalin - biased towards heavy infantry, mass troops and artillery

napoleon - biased towards a mix of light and heavy infantry, light cavalry

henry - biased towards heavy and light cavalry, missile infantry

Caesar - biased towards heavy infantry, light cavalry, siege artillery

The same system as for the buildings applies. Troop category and class are combined at the time the unit database is loaded to give a unit production type, and the likelihood of the AI choosing to produce a given unit type which can be produced is then modified by the unit type weighting. There is also a random element in the choosing of which building or troop type to produce next, so the effect of the bias is a statistical thing. Another factor that is applied over the top which may obscure the bias is a tendency towards producing troop mixtures (according to what is already in the garrison) and a weighting according to unit strength.

The two sets of types can be freely combined; for example, although Fortified Caesar does not appear in the list of options currently used by the vanilla RTW game, it is a valid combination.

[Darviathar]

Many thanks for digging that up!


I believe I'll change these names up a bit, and hope to see a better performance out of Carthage especially. Their infantry is simply no match for my Roman Legions. If they concentrated more on cavalry (and especially elephants) maybe they could put in a better showing!

[Darviathar]

From just glancing at this, I wonder if changing Parthia to "Genghis" would help....I've never seen them in game long enough to really see their stacks, but it would seem to me that directing them to concentrate on missile cavalry would be ideal. They are listed as "Henry" now, which focuses on light/heavy cavalry and foot archers. Sure, cataphracts are awesome, but they are very expensive, and not likely to show up in large numbers early on, the periods of time in which Parthia typically goes out in my games.

[Marcus Camillus]

The info posted by Florin above is from a copy I made of info originally posted by Archer on the TWCenter Forums. I found the info quite intriguing and back in the days of RTR6.0's first release, I used it to change RTR6.0 to better suit the various factions historically. Its pretty much a preference call on the individual player's part, and people should edit as the see fit to their own preferences.

[Quinn Inuit]

That's a good idea, Darv. I think I'll switch them to Genghis in the next ExRM version.

[Darviathar]

What do you think about altering Carthage as well? As the only nation depicted in this time frame who's armies ever really dominated Roman legions, I'd like to see them far more difficult to defeat than they are even on VH/VH. "Napoleon" with an emphasis on light/heavy infantry and missile troops simply doesn't seem to work with them; that crappy Libyan Spear unit simply cannot hold the line against Roman troops for long, even on VH level. I wonder if changing them to "smith" (even) would improve them?