Faction Balance

[cfan01]

Which files should I edit to make Germania and Gaul more aggressive and expansionist while doing the opposite for Britannia and Spain? Is there a way to semi-control the direction of this expansion (i.e. Germania goes southeast while Gaul goes northwest)? The only thing I can tell right now is the descriptions like "comfortable caesar" under each faction in descr_strat affect this somehow.

[HouseOfHam]

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=45212

[cfan01]

Is it possible to allow factions to enter Italy or is that hard-coded?

Also, a side question that's semi-related to this topic: why is everyone worked up about the Seleucid Empire needing to be dominant in the east? Weren't Parthia and Armenia more of a threat historically?

[Aradan]

Is it possible to allow factions to enter Italy or is that hard-coded?

Not sure what you mean here. Why wouldn't factions be allowed to enter Italy?

[cfan01]

I've never seen any faction enter Italy (besides spawned rebels), and when I looked into more AI behaviour threads, I got the impression that a lot of other people noticed this as well. Even the Gauls, which practically have an open door for several years into the campaign don't capitalize on this. I assumed it was hard-coded, but if not, never mind.

[Aradan]

It's mainly campaign pathfinding. There are certain ways to prevent the AI from targeting a settlement and the vanilla map has accidentally "used" some of them in various instances (no entrance to Italy, Carthage gets stuck, etc)

[cfan01]

How do you turn those off?

[CaesarVincens]

Map editing mostly.

[cfan01]

In what way? Thin out the Alps, widen the path into Italy...?

[Aradan]

If you're in the mood for a long read: http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=63614

[cfan01]

That's perfect. Thank you.