Tone down the money script?

[Anesthetize]

Hi, I've just started playing SS again after a long break, and I once again feel I'm reaching the same issues that made me lose interest in m2tw the previous times. SS does indeed bring the general gameplay to a whole new level, but I still end up tiring over the money script, and the way it affects the game.

Sure, the AI needs its boost to not make this game a complete walkover, but I'm wondering whether anyone has tweaked around with it to find a somewhat reduced setting that hinders the AI from being competely ridiculous with its armies? I don't want to remove the script completely, so does anybody have any ideas on what I can add/remove to tone it down, without completely gimping the AI? I am at a loss here...

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

PS: Playing SS 6.3 with several submods (most notably soulson AI as the only major change to overall gameplay).

I'm also playing at medium/medium, as I'm not a super hardcore player, but enjoy fighting at somewhat lower odds. Just not at half the strength of any given AI

[k/t]

Play the RR/RC compilation with Carl.

RR/RC: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1397
Carl: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=396039

[Ichon]

At M/M the AI is not getting huge money bonuses. It also depends on the faction you are playing. Usually the AI money bonus is only noticeable when a faction is down to 1 region and still maintained 2 or 3 full stacks or even more sometimes. However unless its the Pope it usually can't recruit more and those stacks are leftovers from its former empire.

If you are playing Genoa or something and notice Venice with similar amount of cities has much larger armies- well, Venice is richer and AI does not spend much on buildings. If you devoted nearly same money your armies would be only slightly smaller due to AI money bonus. On higher levels this doesn't hold as well.

If you are playing a smaller faction next to a larger one which often happens then... AI is just focusing most of its armies against you. Not a bad decision probably as human player is likely the greatest threat but can be slightly annoying if you are trying to play slow or RP.

[-Myth-]

So? That's just more XP and command stars for you.

[David93]

Reduce the campaign difficulty

[Anesthetize]

So campaign diff doesn't affect anything but the cash the AI gets?
Atm I am playing spain, conquered all of iberia, and with 10-15 settlements I can support enough military to be on 18th in military strength without going in negative numbers each turn. This is with prioritizing roads>mines>farms>trade>military in ALL cities.

All the while, moors are warring with 16 factions and have had all the crusades within turn 81 called against their cities (i know because I called them), and are still doing fine with their 40 stacks of units and 4 settlements. This is what annoys me. I want a seemingly dead faction to stay dead and at no threat, without having to hunt every last settlement down.

So, all it takes is to reduce difficulty to easy? It doesn't affect how aggressive the AI is in any way? I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of fighting multiple fronts against multiple enemies at the same time, it's not like I can't achieve heroic victories. I just don't want to be fighting the same faction for 100 turns...

Edit: And the Carl - the Taxman submod wouldn't be usable with SS, would it? It sounds like exactly the thing I am looking for...

[David93]

So campaign diff doesn't affect anything but the cash the AI gets?
Atm I am playing spain, conquered all of iberia, and with 10-15 settlements I can support enough military to be on 18th in military strength without going in negative numbers each turn. This is with prioritizing roads>mines>farms>trade>military in ALL cities.

All the while, moors are warring with 16 factions and have had all the crusades within turn 81 called against their cities (i know because I called them), and are still doing fine with their 40 stacks of units and 4 settlements. This is what annoys me. I want a seemingly dead faction to stay dead and at no threat, without having to hunt every last settlement down.

So, all it takes is to reduce difficulty to easy? It doesn't affect how aggressive the AI is in any way? I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of fighting multiple fronts against multiple enemies at the same time, it's not like I can't achieve heroic victories. I just don't want to be fighting the same faction for 100 turns...

Edit: And the Carl - the Taxman submod wouldn't be usable with SS, would it? It sounds like exactly the thing I am looking for...

I dont know what your doing, when you call a crusade send everything and demolish a faction, i usually demolish two or three on the way, sell of your cities and hey presto lots of money and dead factions.
General no, i dont think that difficulty affects aggressiveness, that should be covered by your a.i. choice Gracul e.c.t
I think the difficulty just gives the A.I bonuses

[Anesthetize]

I've called crusades on Granada, Silves and Tunis, all Moor cities. There isn't a lot of cities to take and sell, since my military barely covers enough to take one at a time before retraining, and for obvious reasons, it isn't far to go. The polish actually managed to send an army and take Granada before I had enough military to do so. Now, warring against a faction that can sustain double or triple of my army is challenging, but it went okay regardless. The problem just appears when the 3 settlement-strong Aragon declare war at the same time, with equally large or slightly larger army than I can sustain off 6 settlements, and a couple of turns after France jumps in. I managed to stave off France and eradicate Aragon, but it was awfully tedious.

The gist is that I feel like I have to be spreading too thin to actually relax and enjoy the other parts of SS, than just doing four field battles per turn before I can consider sieging a settlement. I might just be a rookie and move too slow, or lose too many units in battle, but it's still a fact. And although being to able to defend a large town against a 900 army of spear militia and knights with only the use of three spear militia and a general, I feel that it somewhat forces me into playing on the enemys hard coded weakness as AI by denying siege engines and spending 30 minutes on a fight that I really would lose unless I kite the entire enemy army in front of my towers until they are all dead.
These battles are fun, but become somewhat tedious when you have to do one of them every turn.

This is why I'd like to just tone down the amount of standing army the AI is able to sustain, without stopping them from being able to field entirely. I just can't believe I am the only one on this forum who feels the same way, and therefore just wanted to ask around if someone had a working tweak to this.

So the question is simply whether anyone with more insight to how the scripts work has any suggestion where to start in the AI economy script, and what to alter, instead of me going randomly in and deleting stuff!

[Ferdiad]

The AI gets bonuses in the EDB, definately for pop growth and probaly for income as well.Check their.

[Anesthetize]

EDB= export_descr_buildings.txt ?

[Ferdiad]

Yes.

[Anesthetize]

Allright, I'll check it out! Thank you.

But if I understand correctly, the AI has a tendency to bankrupt themselves, so wouldn't reducing this cause them to tech less and flood lower tiered units instead? I thought I read something about freezing recruitment somewhere around here. Anybody know how I could apply this? I definately want them to tech, and to have armies relative to their kingdom size. A middle ground between the current AI bonuses and no bonuses at all, perhaps. Would reducing the amount of florins each AI faction get when bankrupt hinder their unit flood somehow?

[Ferdiad]

Allright, I'll check it out! Thank you.

But if I understand correctly, the AI has a tendency to bankrupt themselves, so wouldn't reducing this cause them to tech less and flood lower tiered units instead? I thought I read something about freezing recruitment somewhere around here. Anybody know how I could apply this? I definately want them to tech, and to have armies relative to their kingdom size. A middle ground between the current AI bonuses and no bonuses at all, perhaps. Would reducing the amount of florins each AI faction get when bankrupt hinder their unit flood somehow?

The AI is so incompetant that It'll bankrupt themselves no matter what, It's just a matter of time as they usually crash at 200 turns.

[Anesthetize]

Quick question. Found a nice idea in an older post to reduce all recruitment slots to 1. That seems fair, as it affects both me and the AI, and also will maybe make the AI spend all its excess money on more tech. It will also cause them to have more units than me, since I won't be bothered to train every turn if I have only low tier units to chose between, whereas the AI would probably build them anyway.

So, that leaves the garrison script/unit spawning. Can anyone point me in which direction to find it/edit it, and also if someone knows how it works in the different difficulties that would also be swell!

[k/t]

Carl does work with SS, but right now it's only for the RR/RC compilation and TATW.

[bɑne]

What garrison script? what spawning?

I'd much like to know if you play with rr on or disabled, couldnt find it mentioned.

[Anesthetize]

No, I did at first, but enabled it again and started a fresh game when I read that it was broken (RR disabled).
Isn't there a script in SS which spawns troops for AI if it is low on settlements or whatnot? This is just something I've been reading in here. If there isn't, that's my bad!

[bɑne]

No, I did at first, but enabled it again and started a fresh game when I read that it was broken (RR disabled).

It isn't in the 6.4 version. You should upgrade if you haven't done so.

Isn't there a script in SS which spawns troops for AI if it is low on settlements or whatnot?

From memory:
There is a script to spawn faction heirs with a small army to prevent a faction accidently dying out due to family tree mismanagement. There is also a one-time script that spawns additional armies based on difficulty, firing once and then never again. There should also be a small script helping byzantium defend jerusalem, hardly worth mentioning. If there is more it has completly slipped past me or wasn't dominantly mentioned in the changelog.

This is just something I've been reading in here. If there isn't, that's my bad!

The RR/RC submod compilation has (optional?) garrison scripts afaik. Feared a mixup as it was recommended here in an earlier post.

[Anesthetize]

Allright, I've decided to just tinker around and test games without the money bonuses to AI altogether, and then trying out the recruitment slots reduction later, just to find out if it suits me better than how it is now. Thanks for all ideas and suggestions, I would +rep if I could! And yes, I found the spawn script that hits in at turn 10 and decided to keep it, since it's probably a vital thing for the AI to be able to do anything at all.

Otherwise, regarding the ss 6.4 I'm kinda holding off on that one, since I'm not too sure about the harder city growth and heretics/antipope stuff, although the tougher heretics would probably be easier to edit out than to find a balance to the economics in 6.3...
If my testing doesn't prove fruitful, however, I'll probably think about trying it out at a later time =)

It's really great that you guys keep freshing up this game though, and I hope you stick to it for as long as possible. Shogun 2 just didn't do it for me, since I personally don't think any other TW game comes close to the atmosphere of mw2. Truly, a great job by everyone involved.

Regarding the RR/RC submod compilation, how is that affecting the campaign map and such? It's a completely different mod from SS and would redo the entire game, no?

[Ferdiad]

Allright, I've decided to just tinker around and test games without the money bonuses to AI altogether, and then trying out the recruitment slots reduction later, just to find out if it suits me better than how it is now. Thanks for all ideas and suggestions, I would +rep if I could! And yes, I found the spawn script that hits in at turn 10 and decided to keep it, since it's probably a vital thing for the AI to be able to do anything at all.

1)Otherwise, regarding the ss 6.4 I'm kinda holding off on that one, since I'm not too sure about the harder city growth and heretics/antipope stuff, although the tougher heretics would probably be easier to edit out than to find a balance to the economics in 6.3...
If my testing doesn't prove fruitful, however, I'll probably think about trying it out at a later time =)

2)It's really great that you guys keep freshing up this game though, and I hope you stick to it for as long as possible. Shogun 2 just didn't do it for me, since I personally don't think any other TW game comes close to the atmosphere of mw2. Truly, a great job by everyone involved.

3)Regarding the RR/RC submod compilation, how is that affecting the campaign map and such? It's a completely different mod from SS and would redo the entire game, no?

1) Try it, you won't regret it.Use this tutorial to edit pop growth http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=253598
2)The Team is great
3)RR/RC is included in SS 6.2 onwords.Albeit a earlier version.It's also togggable.

(Who said I can't be helpful )