Penalties?

[Num13ers]

Can someone tell me how I can remove this trait from the game? It makes everything so much more difficult. I thought when you chose the campaigin and battle difficulty is where you choose how difficult the game is going to be, but now regardless, I'm going to have an extra penalty?

I love the game, but it's always been some of the absurd traits that annoy me. There isn't even much purpose for even having family members. More trouble than they're worth.

[DaVinci]

I was wondering when the first complaining would pop-up about this human player extra trait

Actually i have lowered the penalty effects already in my dev version (to make it bit easier for the average player), so that the first default penalty trait won't make that much anger or big difference. A second tier of the trait will stay quite annoying, yes, that's the purpose of negative traits, and negative traits are also contained in RTW vanilla btw. But the first trait text contains a hint how to avoid the second tier penalty trait: try to be not corrupt, and the corrupt traits are dependent on your treasury, quite high treasury makes even more corrupt.

And the trait text explains, this trait is done to make up a balance with the weak RTW campaign AI ( but in ChivTW enhanced, the AI just always needs help anyhow in RTW+BI ).

If you have really heavy troubles in your campaign to use your characters senseful (as you say they are more worse than good in your opinion, not in mine!) then you are maybe too weak for this mod ... perhaps lower the camp difficulty for the first attempts in this mod.

Really, i tested different camps a lot, and also with the current active default penalty trait, the mod is very playable and just better balanced vs. the inevitable imcapable CA camp AI.

If CA would have produced a better AI, then we modder wouldn't have that much to do to enhance it.

If you really wanna remove that, then open the traits file, and find: Trait MoneyDisadvantage and Trait MoneyDisadvantage2 in the trigger section, and remove the entire trigger lines where you see the said Trait Affects. Better make a file-backup before you change something.

[Alavaria]

To be honest, it isn't too bad. It's just that your family members will lower public order and frequently reduce revenue from a city their in. I tend to just use them as heavy cavalry. In fact, for small starting factions, having the faction leader+heir with their large bodyguards is pretty sweet as a kind of army by itself. (Something like 30 for the leader and 20 for the heir? All heavy cavalry too).

On the other hand, once you expand enough, a group of 6 normal "generals" and a smattering of units (preferably with armor piercing) can also form the core of a second army. It's funny because in my campaign using Bohemia, armies consist of 8 FM's + 12 Dogheads (or Leader+Heir+2FM's + 16 Dogheads).
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One use for a general I had that had the "Higher Penalties" was to put him in a town - he drops the Public Order by a lot. If I can keep the city happy with him inside, then I can assume it's pretty safe to drop a few thousand people in it (when I enslave somewhere) and then he moves onto the next town that needs to grow

Now, does the bodyguard size depend upon the family member's Command/Management/Influence? If it does, it might be worthwhile to try and at least get ancillaries to boost the number of heavy cavalry on the field (ie: bodyguard units, and nothing else) a bit

[DaVinci]

Thank you for your opinion on this thing, whereas i'm not sure that i understood everything.

The bodyguard unit increases with certain traits and i believe also with exp points to a degree. But it is not the goal to give higher troop number to them by default. They are set to the minimum possible troop number in this mod via the edu file, as for their superior skills. Nonetheless the design intends, that you can fight with them in a chivalrous and heroic way. Not chivalrous would be for example to slaughter fleeing units with your character/bg unit (this is also reflected with by me created traits btw.). And also it would be an exploit to take a handful of familymembers and their bg's to win battles, and even it wouldn't be in any form historical battles to play a campaign this way. I recommend to try playing historically to get an immersive feeling with this mod in all aspects.

[Alavaria]

If all the French nobles could get together for Agincourt, so can mine. Only that these ones get away with it. Also, somehow my faction leader has the merciful trait even though he does kill fleeing units (not sure why that is the case though).

Could be thanks to the difficulty, though. Most infantry do about 1->3 attack, and when the computer gets its attack bonus (+7?) infantry just can't kill very much. Not even spears against light cav, since apparently their attacks don't have the spear or light_spear attribute (they get like +1 vs horses, maybe).

In all honesty though, it seems like the AI gets smart and begins to aggressively swarm the FM's with any heavy units it has. And it's armies start having a look of AP in them (like woodsmen, those things really hurt). Quite annoying since low-ish tier troops just get stomped and higher ones tend to have armor which isn't too great against axes.
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Oh, and you can decrease bodyguard members pretty far if you make use of the (- private security) effect. Only thing is it makes the FM's easier to assassinate. But the AI doesn't spam assassins, so I suppose you could knock them down a bit.

[Athenogoras]

Hi Alavaria, thx for feedback.
Against cavalry use cavalry or heavy spearmen(MAA) or heavy spear mercenaries. You can also use light cavalry to disrupt and intervene charge by heavy cavalry
Woodsmen, although ap, has very low attack(and quite low lethality), and extremely low defence, they are easily destroyed be some feudal sergeants.

[Alavaria]

The thing is that I am pretty sure the AI's woodsmen can kill my feudal sergeants just because of their attack bonus. (What battle difficulty are units balanced on?) I usually try to get the heavy horse to charge into their backs once they are pinned. As for heavy spears, I've tried using them before, they tend to rout, especially if they're facing enemy heavy cavalry (being on a horse + armor piercing lance+attack bonus). Tends to come down to bodyguards fighting one another - AI has attack bonus, I have more numbers. I kinda like to watch the melee.

Also, what is the effect of spearmen not having the "spear/light_spear" attack attribute? Can they still charge reflect against cavalry? Because it doesn't seem to be the case - they can be braced with two units on top of one another and light cavalry will still kill a lot on a charge.
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I think, because battles in Chiv. always end up with melees (nice!), harder battle difficulties might mess things up - unlike when ranged units come into play (because you can destroy the AI's units before they can hit back).

[hammy the hamster]

cavalry are supposed to kill a lot, MTW2 doesnt show it very well but even with heavy spearmen fully armoured knights could basically charge anything and win, one of the quotes from a muslim writing about the crusaders says that a frankish knight cannot be harmed whilst on a decent horse

[Alavaria]

Yep. Are the horses armored though? It's odd to see light cavalry with 1 armor killing spears. But it's usually bodyguard units to the rescue. (I prefer to think of the random family members a just *knights* rather than generals). And if I try charging stuff, my horse tend to get chewed up unless the target is light or they're tired/demoralized.

Oh, and the problem with using spears isn't just the enemy charging. I bog down the heavy knights in lighter (more expendable) spear units, then move up the heavy spears. They still can't do too well without help. Takes knights to kill knights, I guess Spears work against light cav (some get up to +4 vs mounted units) but AP works against heavy cav (I think bodyguards have 14 or so armor, so that works out as +6,7 bonus, I think).

[DaVinci]

If all the French nobles could get together for Agincourt, so can mine.

Agincourt ... AD 1415. Chivalry AD 1072 - 1222.

Chivalry's timeframe is the epoche, as the knighthood first evolved, mainly as for the first successful crusade (end 1099) and its crusades after, mounted nobles (knights) began to get their extra-role in the books ... and developing to its role as massive heavy cavalry-arm supported by mounted sergeants/men-at-arms, at least valid for europe. While Turcoman etc. horse armies surely didn't exist from numerous nobles, but just mounted warriors ruled by nobles, so it's also valid for the rest of the world.

The only land or culture that deployed sometimes quite high numbers of heavy cavalry in this time where the Franks, but of course not consisting only of the highest nobility, what you try to reflect, when you grabbing your fm-bg's together to crush everything in your way:

To make armies consisting of pure highest noblemen is ahistorical in this timeframe, but you are free to play as you want of course, but it remains what it is: an exploit vs. the AI, because the AI never would deploy such an army, thus isn't able to counter.

[Num13ers]

The game just crashes every time now after I hit end turn.
I'll just have to deal with the penalties and cheat to get Kiev moving. :hmmm:

[DaVinci]

You mean the game crashes after you changed the trait?
I tried to describe in my reply to you that you only remove the concerning triggers and nothing else, this will avoid that more characters get the penalty trait in your running campaign.
If you have removed also the concerning trait entry then the game crashes, yes, because there are just characters with the trait in your campaign.

To play complete without the penalty trait, you have to start a new campaign, after you have correctly removed (or disabled with a ; in front of every code line) the penalty triggers.

Well, here it is what you need to remove (or disable), it's at the bottom of the traits file:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Trigger generalmoneypenalty
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition IsGeneral
		  and FactionIsLocal
		  and not Trait MoneyDisadvantage >= 1
	
	Affects MoneyDisadvantage  1  Chance  100
	
Trigger generalmoneypenalty2
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition IsGeneral
		  and FactionIsLocal
		  and Trait Corrupt > 1
	
	Affects MoneyDisadvantage  1  Chance  100

[Num13ers]

Awesome, it worked. Much appreciated. Sorry you had to deal with me, I'm borderline retarded.

Anyway, thanks again. =]

[DaVinci]

No problem. But i recommend that you remove your now outdated version and to install 0.99.20, and try it with this trait