Strong alliances

[Soul Firez]

ok well if there is interest in this i will put up the files what it does it stops you or the ai outrightly attacking and ally without some sort of real trigger you wont be able to just take an alliance with the AI get military access wander your troops into there lands and then go surprise ha ha ha we tricked you and atttack .

To break an aliance you or the ai will have to do one of several things 1 send a diplomat to break the aliance the Ai wont do this of course 2 attack an allies allied nation where they will then decide to stay with you or go with them this works for you and the AI for breaking alliances 3 have your standing with that nation drop to low by such things as not having military access and still running your men through there lands especially in the red area around the settlements 4 failed missions for your allies and or failed assasination and spying attempts on your ally will drop or instantly break( assinations generally instantly break such alliances if you get caught trying to do it )

I thought of this method because of the popes new found aggression causing him to attack me as an ally when i had near perfect papal standings and this didnt make sense .

The work is based on archaeons work with TATW and it is done with his direct permission for use with KGCM

[Koljan]

I dont know, kind of gimps AI diplomacy, doesnt it?

[Soul Firez]

In what way do you mean gimps it ??

alliances are formed and broken just not as easy to break as i would imagine an alliance would be it takes a real action for such things to happen rather than the Ai not looking for other more rational options. The pope waring against a devote catholic for no other reason than he is expanded doesnt seem right??

this will stop that but fear not if you upset the pope or any other nation they still will go to war with you it more stops people exploiting alliances to allow them to get at AI nations more than anything else

[Koljan]

Heres the thing...
If a player is going to exploit the game, thats like cheating.
If a player wants to cheat - he will cheat.
I mean, you can just as easily type control <faction> in console and control your adversary, signing a ceasefire.
manipulating the AI is going to be a possebillity at all times.
An example is, in TATW, in my isengard campaign, i have allied myself with the high elves and dunadeins, and was not disturbed while annihilating rohan.
It's like an I-Win button.
I'm sorry to sound so critical, but, have you ever seen an AI diplomat approach you and initiate a breaking of an alliance?
Never. ever. ever.
I've had ai withdraw from alliances as a response to an offer (not even sure this was in kgcm) but never proposing to break an alliance, not even in TATW.

have you confirmed that the AI indeed is even capable of doing this?

P.S.
play your turn lol.

[Soul Firez]

AH as noted in the first post they do not send diplomats to break the aliances so yes in that way they cant break the aliance but there are many many other ways an aliance will be broken

and ps isengard aligning with HE would be an exploit and a cheat so i see what you mean LOL

but in general historic terms a group signing an aliance would usually mean a strong bond that would not be broken easily except on infringing on the alliance agreements and this actually allows for this if you walk into your allies lands with no milatary rights what happens standing with them plummets and bang alliance over you use your spies on an ally or assasins bang alliance over you attack an allies friends and again guess what the alliance is over it merely stops the Ai for irational reasons suchas oh well he is the closest target and my str > then his str AI action attack aliance means nothing if you meet Ai attack parameters this merely stops that but i can see how somewouldnt like meh seeing i dont like a crazed pope attacking catholic factions when they are still catholic and allied to him ill use it oh and the biggest alliance neder is being excomunicated this will in many cases end your alliance with another catholic faction so its use varies greatly from tatw use

biggest difference between KGCM and TATW is the amount of factions having a strong aliance with one faction will not allow you to just steam roll to victory there will be other factions around who will still stand in your way and hey you make an alliance with all around you where you going to expand to
PS it is also very easy to make getting an aliance much harder to make it one of those tough but then usefull lasting sort of things but thats 1 no i dont want maybe someone else does but again hey the idea was for me as i didnt like the pope irrationally attacking me as his ally

[Koljan]

Might as well try to compose a world war submod for kgcm lol.
2 super camps to start with, maybe 3 super camps in KGCMs case.
not a bad idea you gave me.

[Soul Firez]

Its kinda already set thatway i mean the faction standings have some factions as obvious friends of each other making aliances real easy where others your standing is zip so no alliance will result LOL so it kinda big groups now but i am interested in how you will work your idea

i have been doing some testing just ran a 60 round auto campaign having given all catholics(the italians) around the pope a starting alliance with him and setting his descr_sm faction to prefer naval invasion and you Know what he did with his new found aggression he sailed over to the moors and kicked the hell out of them .

well thats untill milan attacked venice the pope then excomed them for it and attacked which i was quite pleased to see it is working for my tastes anyway

[FortressofRain]

As dave stated somewhere in house rules...never ever ever ever make an alliance.

Why share power when there are lands for the pillaging? I thought the title was total war anyway...

Nuff said.

[Rhythalion]

This looks interesting! I agree that in the new XCAI files that the pope is too aggressive... why would he attack Milan and Sicily when he is not at war with them or they are not excommunicated? is he trying to revive the Roman Empire or something?

Plus Sicily was fighting the Moors, who had invaded them.... so why the heck did Popey Pants decide to stab them in the back when they were fighting the Muslims? That's not very Churchy is it? The Bugger tells me off for fighting the Teutons and Norweigans, but then decides to smack poor little Milan instead.... dumb AI. Pope needs to settle down and Turtle.... unless someone pisses him off .

One small issue I can see with this file though, is that after a bit (if your not cheating or playing close to the Pope), when the original alliances are broken in the Italian Peninusla, the Popes not likely to ally with them, and the violence will be all on once again.

A better fix for this Pope would be to tame him down, but this change to alliances is still cool and should be implimented as well i think, although Alliances should be made harder to achieve (meaning take a whack of gold/tribute) to get it. It would really make them mean something, and mean you and the AI would then need to be really naughty to break it. Historically, if a faction makes an alliance, they are not likely to break it the next day with a naval blockade or siege! this games' AI is too dumb to treat diplomacy properly and doesn't weigh diplomatic events with wjhats going on in the campaign map much at all, so it needs all the help it can get.

[FortressofRain]

See this:

faction_standings papal_states, -0.6 egypt, slave, turks, moors, mongols
faction_standings papal_states, -0.1 hre
faction_standings papal_states, -0.2 russia, byzantium
faction_standings papal_states, 0.2 milan, venice, antioch, hungary
faction_standings papal_states, 0.4 jerusalem, antioch


First off, Sicily isn't even on the standing list, in terms of bonuses. The pope must not be too happy with them from the start. Second, raise faction standing in descr.strat, and there you go, happy italy all over again. See Dave's standings below:

faction_standings papal_states, -0.8 egypt, slave, turks, moors
faction_standings papal_states, -0.6 hre
faction_standings papal_states, -0.4 russia
faction_standings papal_states, 0.2 milan, venice, sicily
faction_standings papal_states, 0.4 jerusalem, antioch

Sicily made the list!

So, there you have it. Xeryx has something against the southern italian buggers.

[Soul Firez]

Dave never said anything about not making alliances he did make a rule about not making them and using them to attack (which this prevents . IF there were to be no alliances why does the game start with some nations at alliance and some at war ???? If it was to be total war in they way you describe forrest there would be no alliances at all and these can be disabled quite easily

The concept doesnt stop the pope from waring with his italian countrymen it just makes it so he only does it when they commit something worthy of him doing it eg being excomed by failing to follow the popes orders etc. As i again point out it makes no sense for the pope to attack a nation that is allied to him is faithfull to the words of god ( i had been keeping all my territories at 100% catholic ) and had followed every order he had given it was purely a AI equation going yes i can beat them i must expand ATTACK ATTACK i am trying to add a little more realisim to the AI responses

In past CAIs the pope was disabled a dormant nation to prevent crazed pope actions in this one he has been opened up which at first i was hesitant of but now i like the idea and with this it merely makes his attack decissions more rational stronger is the word of the pope for you stray from the flock and well the wraith of gods right hand man is most terrible INDEED

@forrest also if you had actually bothered to read my posts you would see that Ai faction standing is actually of little effect in stoping them from attacking you again in my example milan papal had great relations eg faction standing and bam he attacked and why because i met all other requirements for his attacking mentality in the Ai he was stronger in that region than i was he was expanding result attack . So an increase to a factions starting standing will do little to nothing to prevent such happening it will merely make getting an alliance under current situation easier to do so you solved ZERO

[Koljan]

I think you guys both have a problem with where you are seeking the solution.
In KGCM, the pope has 50% upkeep cost, enabling him to outgrow in military strength his neighbors.
In my opinion the solution is to disable him from recruiting and live off just the garrison script of Rome, which should be more powerful.
Thus, demands for agressive behavior will never be met (strength of numbers in a region).

[Soul Firez]

yes i can see that turning his upkeep back to that of a normal faction as now everything else about him has been made like a normal faction will indeed limit his AI response of attacking due to well he isnt as huge as he can get now .

I had actually thought of that, but strangely i like the idea the pope wields a mighty army, one for catholics and muslims to fear and was merely seeking a way to curb his aggression in the right directions by artificialy making him seem to make better decisions. It has him as a force to be feared and obeyed, but i may be barking up the wrong tree as they say but honestly from the test campaigns i have been running ( also using a change that mikill suggested for the XCAI files , i have been liking how he reacts to muslims and to excomunicated factions those who have turned against god have a force to fear

EDIT DOHHHHH on re reading your post, hmm i see what your saying but this will just gimp him like he was before totally placid without the forces to actually envoke a attack response and in such case then we would basicly be resorting back to him in the zombied AI he had previously, i think the pope should be able to fight he should shed the blood of itialians and muslims but he should only do it when the god almighty commands such ,eg they get excomed start fighting with other good catholic nations it will add a real oh i dont want to get excomed factor to the game even beyond just the inquisotors and faction standing drops with other nations.

As i am finding in the scheme of seeing a faction attack the standings seems to be the smaller influence over the more basic influence of strength and position , you can upset a faction till you have very poor standing with you and they wont attack unless they have the front line strength and you are in a position of being in direct line of the expansion

[FortressofRain]

Dave never said anything about not making alliances he did make a rule about not making them and using them to attack (which this prevents . IF there were to be no alliances why does the game start with some nations at alliance and some at war ???? If it was to be total war in they way you describe forrest there would be no alliances at all and these can be disabled quite easily

I was joking silly = p

On to the real problem though, hmm, I wasn't aware how little effect the faction standing would have. I suppose the problem actually lies in the campaign ai. Personally I'm not really for the pope weilding large armies. That simply wasn't the case. Even the crusades were not under the command of the pope. The pope was and always has been a political force, not a military one. I agree that it would be good perhaps to beef up the garrisson script, that way the pope would have a large army to go attack things.

I wonder, is there a way to spawn two armies on two different turns as the result of one trigger? Ie: milan attacks rome, garrison script triggers, large army defends, small army remains, two turns later, another army spawns, and the pope sends the reinforcements to go attack milan?

Personally I think if you open up the pope ai, then you have to keep himsomewhat on par with other factions in terms of upkeep costs. Maybe a small decrease like ten percent, both otherwise he should turtle until he has reason to attack, not simply as a result of ai calcs. I'd first try raising the upkeep back to normal, and increasing the garrison script to just give him more units to defend then counter attack. But the pope shouldn't be able to build or train his own armies and expand on his own. Just my opinion.

[Koljan]

Lets think about it realistically for a second.
If one of the Italian factions of the time would (for what ever reason) decided it wants to claim Rome as it's own,
What would have happened?
How would the christian world really react to an attack against Rome?
In the days of the roman empire before Ceaser i know that no army was allowed to cross the river, and Julius ceaser broke that law.
Im not too good with history of Rome the region, better with roaman empire lol.
So, in RL, how would have Christianity reacted? I say christianity because as far as kgcm is involved, i prefer looking at the millitary forces of the papal states as representatives of radical religious folks. better yet, they ARE radically religious folks.
Would a regular everyday guy decide that it is in his best interest to serve "the popes army"?

[Soul Firez]

ok here is a pic i took of an auto run campaign with my attacking allies disabled in the pic you will see there are still few in the ways of alliances , also of great note england is still very untrust worthy meaning they have been backstabbing there little black hearts out all my files have done is prevent silly things like irrational naval blockaides from happening which kill alliances..

I have also added into the CAI that trusted allies will declare war on there allies enemies when they go to war with them it kinda makes again the alliances more a valid and true reflection and vastly increases the incidences of the Ai allies actually coming to your aid in a war take a look see what i mean

Yes in this pic france has gone nuts its pretty deep in the campaign and no matter how many times i test different nations do very differently i have seen some where it is almost the same map as it was at the start or in this case where one or 2 nations have done extremely well

@forrest yes that is most possible via script the more i practise and learn about scripting the more i see it is possible to do well most anything with the right script used heck you could get your 2 armies to spawn at different rounds and make them do different things eg give them labels allow to script there actions so as the condition of say milan sieging rome you could make the second army spawn near milan and then siege there capital city just an example its all about using the right monitor the right conditions and then commands to trigger what ever result you wish to simulate an event of any historical occurence i do like to leave some to chance though ..
as in the case of my re emerging factions i gave them labels so if i had wanted at later time make there initial actions set eg go straight to there old capital and try take it back it could be done but i do like a somewhat random effect put forward by AI and if you knew they were going to do that you could defend against it left to chance you never know what cunning things they will do

[chris7ian]

I would definitely want this mod. Hate making an alliance and then be halfway across europe and get attacked from an ally. If at all possible Soul could you link me to the rar, and give a breaf instruction on how to apply it to kgcm. Thanks

[Soul Firez]

I might suggest you take a look in the released mods section of the med2 forums a master scripter by name of archeaon has released scripting and tool tips work that does just this in a form thats merely copy and paste witha good tut on how to apply this to any mod you play

Or now i am back a week or so after christams ill be releasing a mod for 4.2 that will include a great deal of extras (heroes re emerging factions hordes skins and lots of other things that will add flavour) it doesnt include this stronger aliances work but it does include an AI and diplomacy package that greatly strengthens aliances(does make them very hard to get though ) that will if you get the max aliance with military access will have your alies coming to your aid when your attacked

[chris7ian]

Sounds great man, ill give it a look through and will be anxiously awaiting your new mod.

[chris7ian]

Found it here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=255238

incase someone else needs it