House Rules

[Arkat]

I have played ERE and Armenia so far and will be trying Georgia and the KoJ next. The house rule I play with is that I will not attack another faction without being attacked first. The only exception to that is that if my allies are at war with the same faction, then I will assist. So in the beginning, I go after rebel cities.

The problem with this is that I am making a lot less money than most players around here seem to be. With the reduction in income and merchants, I am always saving for upgrades, especially once you get past the Tier 1 level. I do sack every town/fort I take and I maintain only 1 Full stack of troops and a very small navy.

I play this way because the AI diplomacy is very inadequate (not a BC problem) for self preservation. I also offer the AI a ceasefire after I take two cities/castles. They seem to always refuse. It seems that people are capturing 50 towns/forts in a very short period of time which rarely happened in the annuals of history.

The original version of this mod fit very well with my style of play. Is it relatively easy to re-work the merchants and town incomes to better fit the slower pace of play?

[Achilla]

I have played ERE and Armenia so far and will be trying Georgia and the KoJ next. The house rule I play with is that I will not attack another faction without being attacked first. The only exception to that is that if my allies are at war with the same faction, then I will assist. So in the beginning, I go after rebel cities.

The problem with this is that I am making a lot less money than most players around here seem to be. With the reduction in income and merchants, I am always saving for upgrades, especially once you get past the Tier 1 level. I do sack every town/fort I take and I maintain only 1 Full stack of troops and a very small navy.

I play this way because the AI diplomacy is very inadequate (not a BC problem) for self preservation. I also offer the AI a ceasefire after I take two cities/castles. They seem to always refuse. It seems that people are capturing 50 towns/forts in a very short period of time which rarely happened in the annuals of history.

The original version of this mod fit very well with my style of play. Is it relatively easy to re-work the merchants and town incomes to better fit the slower pace of play?

You are not going to play slowly. AI gets cash for every settlement and castle it owns + hard coded cash bonus based on difficulty, if you play slowly and build your economy up you will be conquered. Expand fast or die ;p Only advice I can give you. For a slower paced game you would like to edit game campaign script and decrease or delete amounts of money AI gets, and play on medium campaign difficulty. Atm cities and merchants give more than enough money, homever it's very hard to get your economy running.

[Taiji]

Personally I found version 1 gave me way too much money and version 1.05 gives me slightly too little.

I could be wrong but I think sacking towns is costing you money. Buildings get damaged or destroyed and population is reduced. It hasn't seemed cost effective to me.

Playing georgia I had to expand massively beyond my normal range - I normally play like you. I take rebel settlements and only consider taking another nation's lands once they show some animosity towards me. I want them to be at least a little developed before I wipe the floor with them among other things. I decided I would sacrifice a nation early on, the Turks. I took rebel settlements in their direction to stop them from expanding then I took 3 of their settlements as soon as ERE attacked them. The Turks were no more.

Even having secured a vast empire, the second largest, with my military force poorer than almost everyone, my finances were still at ~5000 a turn. One upgrade for one city per turn or I could retrain some of my troops.

I fixed it by raising the trade income of all market buildings above level 1.

Normally they would have been 1 through 6 but I changed it so it went up through the odd numbers 1 - 9. It's really simple to do.

Just find "\broken_crescent\data" folder in your M2TW folder and edit export_descr_buildings.txt

Use ctrl+f to find "market" and your fourth click on find next should deliver you to the area you want to play with.

Then you just change "trade_base_income_bonus bonus x" with each level of market to suit your needs.

Hope that helps

[Arkat]

Yes, thank you, I will look into that. Does it require to start the campaign over?

I believe the problem is that people think they are playing more modern warfare. Their tactics have more in common with Patton's dash across France to the Rhine than with the realities on Medieval warfare.

I know that Stainless Steel made some changes to his mod with army supplies, but I think it has gone too far. I still play his 3.2 mod, but nothing after.

In SS 3.2, you are able to play at the slower pace so that your AI opponents were more of a challenge.

[Achilla]

Yes, thank you, I will look into that. Does it require to start the campaign over?

I believe the problem is that people think they are playing more modern warfare. Their tactics have more in common with Patton's dash across France to the Rhine than with the realities on Medieval warfare.

I know that Stainless Steel made some changes to his mod with army supplies, but I think it has gone too far. I still play his 3.2 mod, but nothing after.

In SS 3.2, you are able to play at the slower pace so that your AI opponents were more of a challenge.

I played SS 4.1 a lot and I expanded rather swiftly as Kievan Rus and Moors, haven't played others cause they bored me. Imo, Kingdoms is very slow-paced. You get big maps, a lot of regions and not many factions. Hardly surprising, since the beginning you know your enemies, but that's acceptable since it's kind of remaking some historical accuracy. I played recently SS 5.1b, but that old vanilla map just threw me out of business. Can't even look at it! And yes, that supply trait's thing get's annoying after a while and destroys the fun, imo. Just like DLV adds too many things and complicates the game to the extent that any mod so far hasn't beaten it.

[Taiji]

You're welcome!

It doesn't require a campaign restart and you can just change it back any time.

Have fun!

[MagyarMatt]

The original version of this mod fit very well with my style of play. Is it relatively easy to re-work the merchants and town incomes to better fit the slower pace of play?

I wrote a thread further down the board on how to make merchants worthwhile. It details how to improve the money the make by increasing their base income modifier. Altering your income within the code is easy, it's just a matter of choosing a balance to suit your style of play.

[Arkat]

Thanks MM. The problem is that the AI seems to be on a search and destroy mission with my merchants. No matter where they are, someone will come to get my guys. Just about everytime I lose too. Even if the merchant is of the same level. When I attack their merchants, I always seem to lose.

[Tariq]

Players income is not that much of the problem. It is AI income that is causing fast pace.

Trouble is , that if you lower it down , you will slow down the game , but then no AI faction will be even have any chance to scratch mongols when they show up.

In this pace of the game Ai manages to get to decent troops by that time.

[Arkat]

Players income is not that much of the problem. It is AI income that is causing fast pace.

Trouble is , that if you lower it down , you will slow down tha game , but then no AI faction will be even have any chance to scratch mongols when they show up.

In this pace of the game Ai manages to get to decent troops by that time.

Well maybe they need to be tuned down a little too. I wonder how many players actually get into the 1400's with the game's result still in the balance? I read one thread here where someone said they had won the game by the time the Mongols show up.

I figured most people are done by 1250 or so, especially if they are not in the area where the Mongols show up.

[Tariq]

Well maybe they need to be tuned down a little too. I wonder how many players actually get into the 1400's with the game's result still in the balance? I read one thread here where someone said they had won the game by the time the Mongols show up.

I figured most people are done by 1250 or so, especially if they are not in the area where the Mongols show up.

Yeah , i would like to play thru 1400's to. As EB fan one of my friends and I made 3 different money scripts , that you could have choose from how fast/slow you want to play it.

Equally important issue for slowing down the game, from what i have learned in EB, is respawn and amount of mercenaries available.If AI has money , it will always recruit units first , then will buy mercs and then build economy, so limiting merc slows down game drastically to.

Again , i think that main stumbling issue is Mongol invasion happening early in game.If it's later , then it could be worked out much easier, but due to history thats impossible.

Maybe Kingdoms features will resolve issue of AI overstacking and fielding gazzillion of mostly infantry units.

I don't have to much knowledge about Kingdoms features , but from what i have read there is a way to limit amount and type of units recruited by AI.
If thats the case then BC team can customize everything with great precision.

[MyNameIsGreat]

Well maybe they need to be tuned down a little too. I wonder how many players actually get into the 1400's with the game's result still in the balance? I read one thread here where someone said they had won the game by the time the Mongols show up.

I figured most people are done by 1250 or so, especially if they are not in the area where the Mongols show up.

The point of the game is to conquer, so the pace should be very fast paced. And Alexander the Great conquered most of the BC map in thirteen years, so it's not like great conquests are completely unrealistic.

[Achilla]

Players income is not that much of the problem. It is AI income that is causing fast pace.

Trouble is , that if you lower it down , you will slow down the game , but then no AI faction will be even have any chance to scratch mongols when they show up.

In this pace of the game Ai manages to get to decent troops by that time.

Mongols can be toned-down a bit too. And that strange script eating all Khwarezm money when Mongols shows up can be deleted too.

Btw, no real need for minimod. Look at events, and strat file and just multiply turns value to your liking, unless something like twice summer and twice winter in same year doesn't count. Increasing time limit to year 2000 and decreasing cash AI get's from settlement script tones down game too. Without merchants AI makes much less money even if most of time their merchants try to eat your own ones. Basically, that's not hard to adjust game to your liking and when someone releases a mini-mod it's basically a huge guess how many people will find particular changes good or bad. Atm I'm trying to fight not with other factions, but with AoR system itself. Quite funny playing as Oman invading Makuria right now. To have fun most of the time and in almost every game and mod we come to a point of creating "House Rules". It's because it's even worse to force players to play slow-paced campaigns, if most of them prefer fast ones. And that minority of us who prefer slower ones can change the fact of things within matter of minutes and without any serious coding knowledge.

[Miraj]

Mongols can be toned-down a bit too. And that strange script eating all Khwarezm money when Mongols shows up can be deleted too.

No, that script is perfectly fine.

[Tariq]

Btw, no real need for minimod. Look at events, and strat file and just multiply turns value to your liking, unless something like twice summer and twice winter in same year doesn't count. Increasing time limit to year 2000 and decreasing cash AI get's from settlement script tones down game too. Without merchants AI makes much less money even if most of time their merchants try to eat your own ones. Basically, that's not hard to adjust game to your liking and when someone releases a mini-mod it's basically a huge guess how many people will find particular changes good or bad. Atm I'm trying to fight not with other factions, but with AoR system itself. Quite funny playing as Oman invading Makuria right now. To have fun most of the time and in almost every game and mod we come to a point of creating "House Rules". It's because it's even worse to force players to play slow-paced campaigns, if most of them prefer fast ones. And that minority of us who prefer slower ones can change the fact of things within matter of minutes and without any serious coding knowledge.

I know how to adjust scripts to my liking , trust me . My point was that no matter how you make gameplay , slow or fast , there will be people that prefer play opposite way, and not all of them know how to change scripts.

So you will have someone that will post something one way or another.

And if you follow the trend of the mods , in long term you will find that people that are not prone to 'blitzkrieg " are the one that usually stick with certain mod for longer time.You have to understand that lot of people play games not to win but to have fun playing it first. Winning comes as additional bonus, ans it's highly desirable , but they prefer to have more then one way of how to win it.After 25 years of gaming i was able to see that in so many games.

Do i think that gameplay should be that slow so you conquer only 1-2 provinces in first 50 turns ? No , i don't , because thats impossible in TW series.For me slowing down would means that there is no necessity of conquering 3x more provinces then you own on start, just to be able to break even in beggining.

Major issue here is that AI needs money that is getting it att, otherwise they will not scratch Mongols(didn't say defeat them) when they show up.So decreasing their money for much is not going to work that good. Extending time when mod is ending? Well, the way you mostly have to play now , can't get you to 1300+, so what is the point of extending it.I found that sometimes giving more money to AI can also work towards slowing down the game.

Same thing with AoR, canceling it and/or extending it for quite a bit is just going to put extra speed in the game for human, not for AI. I don't see why is a such a big ordeal to take turn, 2 or 3+ to bring your replacement troops from homeland, other then person has no patience and prefers instant gratification over little bit more realism.

I for one am finding possibility of recruiting Mamluks or Templars in Delhi almost immediately, for example, completely hilarious and sad that someone can justify that as acceptable.

Unless , player took time and got that province up up 80% of his religion and had been owner of that province for 50+ turns for example. But then you have AI that is not capable to follow that plan , so that will give player even more advantage over gimped Ai .

I believe that certain Kingdom features will resolve some of these issues.