Small states too powerful?

[rebelyell2006]

I've noticed whenever I play the Campaign in Vanilla M2TW that the Papal States, Denmark, Scotland and Milan are always conquering the world. The traditional powerhouses, England, France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire are always quickly destroyed by these smaller states, and then the Mongolians come in and take over the world east of Magdeburg. Is there any way to adjust the AI to make the small states less aggressive without making the game unbalanced? Or else make it impossible for a faction to be destroyed before the Gunpowder Event?

[Augustus Lucifer]

You could use the horde ability to make factions become a horde once their last settlement is captured. In Kingdoms there's also 're-emergent', where you can designate a faction as re-emergent and then specify the conditions for that faction to re-emerge in the campaign script. In this case that would include the faction having no cities and whatever other conditions you feel are necessary.

[uanime5]

In which Kingdoms campaigns can factions re-emerge and do their armies have to be defined by a script?

[Augustus Lucifer]

All Kingdoms campaigns run off the same kingdoms.exe so all can use elements from each other.

In Kingdoms factions can re-emerge either with armies or in settlements. If you want them to appear like the Mongols with preset armies at given times it's recommended you use spawned_on_event. The Baron's Alliance uses the shadowing and shadowed_by parameters first introduced for Roman Rebels in BI, and I believe the faction_emerge scripting command is simply the realization in scripting of what was hardcoded for those two BI factions.

For the event method you use spawned_on_event in the descr_sm_factions entry. You also need dead_until_resurrected on a new line in the descr_strat after ai_label for that faction.

faction	timurids, spawned_on_event

faction	timurids, balanced smith
ai_label	default 
dead_until_resurrected
denari	10000
denari_kings_purse	3000

For the 'faction_emerge' scripting method you use shadowed_by for the faction who it spawns from and shadowing for the faction which will spawn. You further use dead_until_emerged and re_emergent in the descr_strat faction entry.

faction	england, shadowed_by barons_alliance

faction	barons_alliance, shadowing england

faction barons_alliance, balanced smith
ai_label barons_alliance
dead_until_emerged
re_emergent
denari	15000
denari_kings_purse	3000

There's a third method which I haven't explored that is used in BI and is still available in Kingdoms. That is the following.

faction	goths, spawns_on_revolt ostrogoths

faction	ostrogoths, spawned_by goths

faction	ostrogoths, balanced henry
dead_until_resurrected
re_emergent
denari	10000

It's been a while since I've played BI, much less that particular campaign, but I imagine it's pretty straightforward and whenever the goths have a province revolt, it goes to the ostrogoths rather than the slave faction.