Quick questions

[Total Roach]

Settlement Capture bug: Having loyalty activated might cause the game to crash under certain circumstances. If the player lays siege to a city, and then captures it on the AI turn (this can happen if the garrison sallies out and is then destroyed by the player) then the game might crash after the battle.

Is this still an issue?

Is there a real problem with huge unit sizes? I'm used to playing with units that big and won't prefer not to reduce them.

Going to D/L in a mo, but maybe I should wait until I finish my current campaign before installing, not sure

[Sextus Molestus]

I cannot answer your first question; I turned loyalty off.

I use Huge unit sizes; I prefer them because they are what I've used since I started playing vanilla, and I just can't accept anything smaller. This option is a bit more problematic in XGM than in Vanilla, due to many things. First off, the population growth bonuses that every city has are smaller (or so I've been told), so populations grow less quickly, especially when the population is depleted. Second, if you put AI Bonuses on, this enables them to recruit more troops. Third, faction characteristics come into play heavily here; some factions like Germania in particular are very inclined to make war and therefore recruit a lot.

Let me continue with an anecdote: I played a M/E campaign as Rome with AI Bonuses on. When I was planning to invade Gaul, Germania showed up with a full stack in the alps. I got into a prolonged war with them that cost me most of my resources. Whenever I captured a settlement of theirs, I found the population to be near the minimum of 400, with few exceptions. This kind of ruined the campaign for me; I couldn't recruit garrisons out of the actual city's populace.

My recommendation is that you pick either AI Bonuses or Huge Unit Sizes, not both, as both will deplete the AI's (and possibly your own) city's populations to drastically. Otherwise, find some way to mod the game files to get the old population growth things back, but I wouldn't know anything about that.

Hope this helped!

[Scutarii]

Huge is not a problem. Depopulation is really the only factor.

The settlement capture bug is unresolveable. It is seemingly random. I had a couple in a row, but then again, I haven't had one in many months now. It affects many, many mods though. XGM just seems to be more aware of it for some reason...

Just as a side note, loyalty doesn't play a huge factor in the settlement capture bug's appearance. It's a possibility, but I actually haven't had the bug occurs since starting to play again with loyalty a few months ago.

[GoldShield Guard]

Huge is not a problem. Depopulation is really the only factor.

The settlement capture bug is unresolveable. It is seemingly random. I had a couple in a row, but then again, I haven't had one in many months now. It affects many, many mods though. XGM just seems to be more aware of it for some reason...

Just as a side note, loyalty doesn't play a huge factor in the settlement capture bug's appearance. It's a possibility, but I actually haven't had the bug occurs since starting to play again with loyalty a few months ago.

I had a settlement capture crash a few days ago, in my GCS campaign, playing with loyalty OFF. I had besieging a Roman city, then in the AI turn, Romans outside the city attacked me, I won, and then... crash!! It was because in the city there was a Roman assassin that in the ordinary way he should be thrown out automatically. I know this because I reloaded and won the battle by autoresolve and auto_win defender. Then I saw the assassin, as it didn't crash again.

So I believe the crash is not necessarily connected to loyalty.

[TM Is Back]

Well, I play with loyalty since I joined XGM, a long time ago, and the bug occured only twice to me, and not in the last 5 months. If it still occurs, it will be a one time thing I quess.

Only depopulation is the problem. Especially in the Barbarian lands of Germania.

Play with the bonussus though, it gives you a more challaging AI.

[Scutarii]

There have been reports that its because an agent is in the town. Having a team of spy/assassin's going around and clearing out agents could help this way...