The Great Conflicts main discussion thread. Please post here!

[_Tartaros_]

very good points!
i buffed up the generals to let them survive battles a bit longer. top generals may have attributes and ancillaries that give them +X hitpoints, which makes them heavy tankers in battlefields - this could be lowered. at some point the bulgarian war is scripted with theassalonica trade conflict. as a player just don´t accept alliances and fight battles at the borders.
the human player is always on advantage and can use kind of cheats like sinking enemy invasion ships or using diplomacy and looking for peace. ERE is to big for factions like abasids - so they look for peace. same with the bulgarians, they have other targets early on - but this will change for them later.
bulgaria also has a random feature that will make the leadership hate or love you. if they love you the bulgarian people hate the leaders, but they instead give you a peacefull time. but this peace ends after about 80 turns. it seems that stopping the chandax armies for a human player is easy, if you rotate 2 fleets on guard for crete and sink every vessel they can build. after some time they may run out of money - i would suggest to "not" sink there ships and fight the invasions for real on the islands. i do this for myself and CAI is pressing me hard in greece and rhodos everytime.

[Anubis88]

Hey,

yes i love that the generals are tankier, especially since it helps the AI, but sometimes everything disintegrates before they die, so yes, i think it would be nice to slightly lower.

Great points about the AI. Chandax will be tricky if you never sink their ships because they seem to build armies like crazy on the Island Should be fun though.

Ah ok so at turn 80 Bulgaria will start being aggressive again? Very nice. I'm not sure if should restart the game or not to allow Chandax to badger me or not. The game has been slightly too easy the way i played it, despite me not really going extremely on the offensive, i've just mopped up some rebel settlements in Greece and nothing else.

Would you perhaps suggest VH campaign AI? I often don't do it in other mods because i feel that the AI is then crazy aggressive to the point of lunacy, and it becomes quite tedious in the late game to have to fight 5 battles every turn.

[_Tartaros_]

vh/vh is the difficulty i normally play with. if you keep the enemies in constant attacks and decimate there halfstacks, they won´t be a challange with 2-3 fullstacks later. i always try to keep my borders clean of small pocket armies and attack when they are unprepared - they will do the same.
so restarting may be a good idea - just don´t invest in your fleet and after 25 turns naxos, pelepones + rhodes are invaded by chandax - giving them a good start.

about the eastern border, there´s not much untill lategame turcoman invasions and maybe a hostile abasid caliphat. the paulicans are meant as something to do in the east, but historically they wehre gone at this point.

[Anubis88]

Cool i'll try a new one then. But i will avoid VH battles; even on H the enemy almost never breaks

By the way, is there any way to change the A.M. year counting to actual years? I really love the immersion, but i hate the fact that i don't know in which year i am

[_Tartaros_]

yes, you can change this easily in the descr_strat.txt line 44 and 45

[Anubis88]

Great thanks!

One more question. Are factions like the Fatimids, Normans, Turkmanic league already scripted to appear in the game? Or is that for a later version?

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

I can attest to the Fatimids but I seem to remember that the Normans are in too

[Anubis88]

I can attest to the Fatimids but I seem to remember that the Normans are in too

Awesome thanks

[_Tartaros_]

yes, all those factions are scripted into the current build

[Anubis88]

That is awesome indeed.

While i'm waiting to see if my campaign can get fixed on a boring winter day, i thought i would return to the population topic we discussed before.

Currently i don't think it's well balanced for a simple reason; at the start most cities range from 2.000 - 6.000 households; however, about 100 turns in, so 25 years, i've managed to have multiple cities of over 25.000 households. Almost all of my cities are already above 4.000, and i've managed to get to 9.000, so to the stone walled settlements, with at least 1 city in all key regions. Even that wasn't really planned, but when you go with the "economic focus" your population rate goes up drastically and very fast.

It doesn't make much sense imho that such growth should be allowed, if the plan is to have such low population overall. I've basically increased the population of a lot of my cities by up 5x in 25 years, while realistically nothing could've happened in these 25 years to allow my cities to grow to such size. No event happened at the end of the 9th century that made the cities grow so much larger than in 872.

So there are a couple of things that should be considered. Either the starting population is boosted all around, or there has to be some ways to drag the population down, and make it more dynamic. Perhaps more maluses in a lot of the buildings, and fewer bonuses for population growth.

I have to admit; on one hand i love to see the typical strategy game experience where you grow your cities, get richer by doing it, be able to field more armies because of it etc. I love the look of cities with stone walls all over the map, and it makes me feel safer in case of a siege. On the other hand i feel like this wasn't planned given how low the population is at the start of the game. Especially since at the very very start it takes a while to build up, so not much growth in the first 20 turns or so. However, later it can just skyrocket.

Ofc i'm talking strictly about Romanía here, haven't played with the other nations yet.

[AnthoniusII]

Forgive my delay on the Arabic rosters preview but thanks to the freezing conditions in my room (today I HAD -3C) i sufaired from ice burns in my hands making even typing a hard task.

[Anubis88]

Forgive my delay on the Arabic rosters preview but thanks to the freezing conditions in my room (today I HAD -3C) i sufaired from ice burns in my hands making even typing a hard task.

Sick... Hopefully it gets warm soon, can't wait to see the previews

By the way, in turn 113 the campaign is totally different. I like the Bulgarian magic stacks attacking me, i really wasn't prepared, lost every attacked city, and now slowly getting it back. At the same time the Abbasids finally became aggressive, and for good measure now Serbia and Croatia also declared war. It's going to be really tough now, i'm barely making any money because of all the armies i have to field, but it's really fun.

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

I know that feeling I was thinking that I'm just not used to this loosing business.
And to think earlier I was picking a fight in Italy

[Heir To Arnor And Gondor1211]

vh/vh is the difficulty i normally play with. if you keep the enemies in constant attacks and decimate there halfstacks, they won´t be a challange with 2-3 fullstacks later. i always try to keep my borders clean of small pocket armies and attack when they are unprepared - they will do the same.
so restarting may be a good idea - just don´t invest in your fleet and after 25 turns naxos, pelepones + rhodes are invaded by chandax - giving them a good start.

about the eastern border, there´s not much untill lategame turcoman invasions and maybe a hostile abasid caliphat. the paulicans are meant as something to do in the east, but historically they wehre gone at this point.

vh/vh is the difficulty i normally play with. if you keep the enemies in constant attacks and decimate there halfstacks, they won´t be a challange with 2-3 fullstacks later. i always try to keep my borders clean of small pocket armies and attack when they are unprepared - they will do the same.
so restarting may be a good idea - just don´t invest in your fleet and after 25 turns naxos, pelepones + rhodes are invaded by chandax - giving them a good start.

about the eastern border, there´s not much untill lategame turcoman invasions and maybe a hostile abasid caliphat. the paulicans are meant as something to do in the east, but historically they wehre gone at this point.

The Paulicians actually still Controlled their Capital Tephrike until 879. Infact in 872 is the year the Byzantines under their Commander Christopher sent by Basil defeated and killed the Paulician leader Chrysocheir. Avenging Basil’s in person lost against them in 871. Christopher would launch a campaign conquering much of their territory in 873, Finally finishing them off in 879 with the capture of Tephrike. They were definitely very much still a threat in the Mods starting year.

If the Map had stretched to the Empire’s Eastern border, they would have been a must have faction or rebel group imo.

Glad to see the mod is still active here, I was gonna post earlier but wasn’t sure if the switch to the other Total war site would make this one inactive. Been keeping up with the mod thou, You Guys Do great work as always.

However Bringing me to my question I’ve been meaning to ask, why do the Byzantines in Great Conflicts Control Bari?

Karling Frankish Emperor Louis captured the City in 871 before the Lombards of Benevento then turned on him, forced him back up north and took the city. The Byzantines would then take the City in 876 under their Commander of Otranto and Protospatharios Gregory after defending the city from an Arab attack.

Rip Karling HRE Emperor Louis, your Kingdom is not in the mod but the treacherous Lombard duchies are alas lol.

On the other hand the settlements of Squillace and Rossano should still be under Byzantine Control. The Byzantine-Lombard border since the mid 700s stopped at the Crati River, Rossano fell on the Byzantine side. When a group of the Bari Muslims split off and invaded Calabria, they took Amantea where they established an Emirate. They then proceeded to take the fortresses of Tropea and Santa Severina. Where they entrenched themselves in and launched raids from on the rest of Byzantine Calabria, until General Nikephoros the Elder reconquered them in 885.

Sources:
• A Companion to Byzantine Italy
• A History of the Byzantine State and Society.
•Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 AD to the First Crusade.

[Kavhan Isbul]

With fewer CTDs and the bypass solution I was able to play 200 turns. I played as Bulgaria on VH/VH with aggressive AI, strong rebels and generals matter. My overall impression is that the first 40-50 turns were challenging, but then the campaign became extremely easy, because of the super easy economy. Trade generates a ton of income to the extent that I am at a point where I do not need to make any difficult choices between spending on development or spending on armies, as I have a ton of a surplus and even gifting estates to generals does not make much of a dent in the treasury. I am attaching a screenshot that illustrates this. All cities can generate a ton of trade with a few buildings, and the ports on the Via Egnatia such as Mosynopolis and Thessalonica are completely broken, with each currently generating 14k+ per turn thanks to the precious metal resources. I had enough funds relatively early on to keep full stacks in most of my cities in the North, so the Magyar scripts did not really result in much.

Other than that, it is good to see that 200 turns in all factions are alive, except for Serbia and Croatia, which I destroyed. Tulunids are vassal to the Abbasids, and the Romans are almost wiped out thanks to my efforts. The Roman Usurpers started with 5 provinces but managed to quite well (I only helped them a little). I may have also helped Great Moravia by destroying most of the Magyar script stacks and instigating loyalist rebellions in Moravian settlements that the Magyars took.

When it comes to the AI, it is doing a surprisingly awful job of growing its settlements. I am still capturing Roman settlements with wooden palisade only. I suspect this is due to the AI raising taxes to Very High whenever it can, which is almost all of the time. The AI also does not invest in spies and assassins and is very vulnerable to them.

In this latest version, characters tend to live forever and just do not die from natural causes. They sometimes die in unrest and often die if they end the turn at sea on a ship. I tried a Chandax campaign and it is practically impossible to launch an invasion to North Africa directly from Crete, because the ships cannot cross the sea in one turn, even with a general with movement points activated. When the army and general end a turn at sea, they lose the movement point bonus and a storm has a very high (seems well over 50%) chance to happen, in which the general almost always dies. One can get to Tobruk by hopping along the coast of Asia Minor and the Levant, making sure to drop off the general on land at the end of each turn. Sure, the general will be starving by the time he gets there, but at least he is still alive. This does not seem to be the intent though and sea travel should be faster or the chance of storms significantly reduced. This also explains why the Chandax AI expands in Peloponnese but never in Africa.

The only thing really slowing down my expansion in the late game is the lack of enough generals/family members. I do not adopt, but I do marry daughters off. It would be nice to have the ability to recruit generals, at the very least in capital provinces with a palace, even if it is expensive. In reality, if a governor was needed, one would be found.

Finally, the mod could use some more AOR units. As Bulgaria, I have access to my faction's roster, with Tarkans only recruitable in Preslav and Chigots and Bagains (cool looking but pointless unit as Bagaturs are better) recruitable in Preslav and Constantinople. The rest of the roster is available everywhere with the right buildings and culture. Outside of the faction's roster I have access to local levies which are kind of irrelevant as they are useless in battle and the Selyani is a more cost efficient unit anyway. Through Inns in certain places I get mounted and dismounted Kabar archers, which are simply more expensive and worse than my own faction's archers and horse archers, as well as the Hired Neretvan Archers which are actually a decent unit but only recruitable in a few settlements along the Adriatic, and ultimately worse than my Chosen Archers. After 200turns, this lack of variety gets a little boring.

To sum it up, it is great to be able to play the mod for a true long campaign now, but the middle and late games are too easy, which is due to trade generating too much revenue.

[Anubis88]

I can also give some further feedback, now at turn 230 with the Romans on VH campaign H battles.

I actually have the opposite feeling that Kahvan; the start was really easy, but i just kept my original possessions and didn't conquer much apart from Macedonia to keep it historical. Then after turn 100 the game became really hard and very challenging, making it worth the wait. I guess you probably shouldn't try to expand at the start but let the AI get a bearing and build up some armies. It makes it much more challenging than if you just blitz everyone.

I really like the surprise Bulgarian attacks in the trade war, it took me quite a while to reconquer those settlements.

The AI seems to be doing fine as well; the Lombard Duchies and Serbia are probably my 2 most aggressive enemies; the Bulgarians and Abassids don't attack me too often, however the Abassids have almost conquered the Tulunids and they might turn to face me with stronger armies soon.

I've lost my Adriatic possessions in the Balkans to Croatia and Serbia long ago, and there's really not much chance of reconquering it, at least not while i'm at war with so many nations at the same time. I have to say i avoided allying with anyone at the start, and now my only ally remains Venice which is quite useless.

The crashes are annoying when they happen, and it sometimes really sucks to need to go 5 turns back especially if you did a lot of micromanagement. But i feel those crashes must be somehow the same all the time, always the issue being of either a settlement rebelling or some other random rebel thing, and if they get fixed the game i think will run really stable. Also everyone living forever sucks, especially since they became senile and really hurt your economy later on . I've declined so many adoptions i had a terrible lack of new FM's, but finally the adoptions started rolling around and now i'm slowly killing the old generals and replacing them with new blood.

I'm still amazed at how awesome the units look, i think only Tsardoms and maybe some EBII units can challenge the quality of the TGC units, so really fantastic job there.

Some suggestions:
1) option to get the Athanatoi and Varangians sooner. Since it's 4 turns per year it takes sooo long to get them. I know it's historical, but perhaps there should be some options to establish those corps sooner. Like if you have an Emperor with high Authority and a lot of money, you can establish a new Tagma after 930 or something.
2) I love the limited elites, but i think the Tagmatic forces should refresh sooner. I can practically never have 2 units or Hikanatoi or Palatinai at the same time; i usually lose them all in battle sooner or later because of the battles i'm forced to have, so they are always just with the army of the Domestikos or the Emperor. However during the Macedonian dynasty the tagmata did become more common, and they were even station in the provinces; i would keep them only in Constantinople, but i would make them refresh at a 25-33% higher rate, so you can actually field them in different armies, not just 1.
3) Like i mentioned before and as mentioned above by the heir, some map changes in Italy would be nice if you guys are open to it. The Romans shouldn't have Taranto and Bari yet, but they should probably have some armies ready to take them in a few years there ready so that they actually conquer that area and that they keep a presence in Italy.

4) I know this one is not realistic, but just wanted to point out it's a shame that the map doesn't stretch a bit further east so that Armenia could be added. It would make the muslim powers stronger, open the area to Roman expension so you can recreate the peak under the the Macedonians, and add some interesting factions there which already have a lot of units made.

But overall the mod is fantastic despite clearly being a bit raw, and still has so much potential to grow it's insane. Amazing job guys!

[AnthoniusII]

To answer both,.
The money produssing proceedure is not finall yet. In the final version you will come to many delimas what settlements you will chose to produse money or heavy troops (nobles).
An example a coastal city has 3 options.

1. To be 100% trading center with upgraded farms, markets and ports.
2. To be a naval base but also a land trading center that will produce ellite war ships but no ellite troops.
3. To be naval trade center but land based fort produsing less food -less happyness, smaller population growth and law order- , less markets aka less income but ellite troops (nobles).
4. The cost of units is not finall either.

Save your money ..In my VH/VH campaign with Xeryx 4.1 that reached 461 turns before crash ...I was forced to bribe many enemy troops to save new conquered cities and gain time.
With money you can buy generals loyalty (_tartaros explain this when you press the button of a character in strat_map).
Bulgarians win easy because they have not a final recruitment system yet.
Athanatoi and Vrangians wont come sooner. They are histoirical units and TGC focuses on History above all. But when Pechenegs apear you can have pechengs mercenaries. What in 907 Vikings apear infront of Constantinople accept their offer to trade and you will have access to Vikingar viking warriors.

[Anubis88]

Hi AntoniusII

I didn't get the option to recruit Pechenegs despite them being here a long time. I can use the Vikings in Constantinople though.

I'm 100% for a historical mod for sure, but EBII for example has made some changes to allow players to get the units sooner. The Marian reforms, you don't have to wait close to 100 BC, but if you reach a certain size and have a certain type of very specific general they can fire sooner. Something similar could be done in TGC. There is for example nothing specific that made the Athanatoi appear under Tzimiskes, he simply created that Tagma force because he needed it. Something similar could be used in TGC.

It's not a huge issue however. Perhaps it's more notable now with such limited rosters than it will be later on.

[Kavhan Isbul]

Once the settlement building trees are reworked to make the choices more pronounced things will probably change. Right now, I have no problem growing settlements to large stone walls (17,500 households) even with a military focus. In my game, Thessalonica and Mosynopolis both have Ducal manors, neither has more than the second level of the market and yet the trade income is huge. It is impossible for me to speculate on future changes, but I am giving you accurate feedback based on the current version of the mod.

[Anubis88]

So in turn 390 i got the Athanatoi, but they don't seem to be recruitable. Is this an oversight, or is it planned for just 1 such unit to exist?

I mean i understand that there lacks sources about their existence, but if it's at least theoretically possible that they continued to exist i think they really should be recruitable, even if it at an very slow refresh rate. Seems like such a waste for it to be just 1 unit, i will probably never use them being afraid to lose them forever