Recruitment and other observations
I finally broke down and bought M2TW + Kingdoms so I could play Stainless Steel. What seems to be the majority of the TW center can't be wrong. Played vanilla through a short campaign, then SS 6.0, and I'd have to say, I was impressed. It was easily the best vanilla/mod games I've had with TW. Played England under both, and in 6.0 I got slapped around a fair bit in the initial phases of my Irish and Scots conquests [My invasion force actually had to retreat to England in the face of Mel Gibson, and if the regular Scots force had accompanied him I would have lost at least York, and maybe Nottingham as well] so for the first time there was a real sense of being under threat. The general process seemed quite rational, a radical advance on the usual offering, so congratulations to CA and all the SS modders. Because of that experience I'm much more optimistic about ETW, with its newly written and coherent AI as well as its integrated approach to building, than I was before.
Two things I still have an issue with though. The first is shipborne invasions. In practice they are a disaster, being both totally unrealistic and an invitation for the AI to do something very stupid. If technically possible they should be stopped. In my short game Portugal invaded Ireland, Scotland invaded the HRE, and Spain attacked me [with a single Jinetes unit], all engaging in a poorly resourced adventure over vast oceanic distances while ignoring massive dangers at home. If I'd continued with my game I'm sure other, equally absurd moments would have occurred.
The best alternative seems to me to be to prevent fleets from loading up anything other agents while radically expanding the number of land bridges as a means of allowing all islands to be invaded. This will lead to defenders [hopefully the AI as well] parking their fleets on the land bridges to prevent the transit of armies, leading to a genuinely important naval battle to open up a route for an invasion force [Again hopefully for the AI as well]. This is a far better solution than the existing system, both historically and in terms of the game. Because of the limitations of naval tech overseas invasion routes were always short, always entirely predictable. Even the long range transportation of armies [predicated entirely on their landing in a friendly port] was an absolute rarity until well into the 19th C. It really is best if this particular "ability" was taken out of the hands of the AI, given that all it seems to do is shoot itself in the head with it. As for the game becoming more predictable as a consequence, I think the loss of ability to transport troops on ships will be more than made up for by the increased vulnerability of all the islands to armies because of the land bridges.
My second and biggest issue is recruitment. I also played SS 6.1 on the same H/VH settings as I did 6.0 and I wasn't so impressed. Because of it the game was far easier, with Scotland and Ireland both little more than passive victims. The problem is that the AI is disproportionately punished by complexity. While I applaud the idea of rationing the best troops, pushing everyone towards realistic armies, it doesn't work if the AI can't understand it.
I propose three solutions, one of which I've actually tried myself. First, give each settlement the ability to raise all the troop types available to it as soon as it has upgraded, meaning all infantry, missiles, cavalry, artillery and ships. Barracks, stables, missile ranges etc should add experience to the troop type, not allow the creation of it as such. This will be a lot easier for the AI to handle and means its habit of producing generic settlements won't penalise it.
Second, and most radically, make every unit the same cost to recruit and maintain, relying on the rationing in the recruitment system to prevent armies from becoming unbalanced. The AI will, like the player, choose the best first, then seek to fill out the remainder of his armies with what's left, leading to the creation of the sort of large but balanced armies most players want to field and to face.
The third idea, something I've heard elsewhere, is to have only two levels to troops available in any settlement, meaning for example that as soon as Nottingham starts producing knights it loses the ability to produce peasant militia. There will therefore be a very real cost to upgrading a settlement, which again should slow down the successful.
Hopefully these ideas will be of some help.
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Originally Posted by Warspite_TW
