ETW Economy Modding Ideas

[Suraknar]

Hello all,

Just wanted to share my ideas of modding ETW economy.

I do not have a Pack file to share as I have modded my game on top of other mods, specially AUM for Vanilla - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=250655 -. However this may interest some in making the game's economy flow in a more fun way with any mod.

I used the DBEditor Tool to do these modifications. (I am assuming you have modded ETW before).

So the first thing I did was to reduce all unit Upkeep Costs by a Factor of 10, the original Hiring costs were left untouched.

Second, I raised all Building construction costs by a factor of 2, and reduced building time by a factor of 2 (rounding up) for all structures.

In other words, Units require less money to maintain once hired, and Building Structures requires more money to be built and build faster.

For the third part, I used ESFeditor an doubled all of the factions Starting Money.

Game play Effects:

The effects of lowering Upkeep costs were that you can maintain fairly Large Armies and Fleets that you build. The AI does the same, so expect full blown battles. - In my book this is FUN.

At the same time, raising structure costs insures that you or the AI do not progress too quickly.

Your Turn income ranges from 10k to 15k, this is a nice budget per turn, in order for the player to make choices, prioritizing where needed, either on units or structures, but also leaves you some breathing room for Diplomatic activities. Most importantly however this way you will not go in the red and in to a negative balance.

The idea of a total war is well, being able to fight battles, how is it a total war when you can't?

On the other hand, attrition is still preserved, but it is differently expressed. You will not always be able to starve the enemy by simply blockading all their ports.

But you will be able to starve the enemy via a combination of strategical and tactical moves. In other words, your blockades and Privateering (Attacking Trade Routes) will reduce the enemies capacity to raise armies, and in combination to your own military success then you achieve the same goal.

In other words, your success in battles counts more under such an economy than before. If you lose a full stacked Army, it hurts and it cannot be rebuilt quickly. Same applies for the AI.

You will notice in the advanced game that the AI will have 2-3 full stacks of armies in their territories, the key here is not to attack and overwhelm directly them but rather to draw them out in a series of battles in terrain of your choosing to better your chances of success. Follow up with reinforcement armies, retreating and replenishing as needed. Multi-vector Campaigns are possible and fulfilling. And also Fort Placement is much more important too.

In other words, a Strategic and Tactical Campaign, and thus battle after battle, you weaken the enemy, and then at the right moment you are presented with the choice of moving in for the taking.

A good side effect to all this is that the AI does not send stacks of two armies all other the place trying to damage your farms and other buildings, I found this always so annoying mechanic, when the enemy faction attacks, you can expect a full blown total war in your hands, so be ready and papered.

Finally how intense you want all this to be in your games can be adjusted by the in game difficulty sliders. I play tested this approach for 55 turns with two different factions, and I have been having a blast!

That is about it, if you like that style of play as me, wishing you lots of Fun as I have been having

Cheers!

Thanks to all moders and tool makers for making the tools that made this possible, if it were not for you this game would have just accumulated dust. Not to demean CA's efforts in bringing us this wonderful series all these years either, because without the game there would not be modding tools, mods and modders either.

[Gorrrrrn]

Interesting modding Suraknar.

Q: Have you noticed whether AI factions manage their regions any better - I'm amazed at how at even low difficulty levels the AI seems incapable of hanging on to regions it captures,
how buildings often go many turns before being repaired etc.

with more money to play with I'm hoping the AI can rebuild damage and keep taxes lower and avoid rebellions - (but I have an awful feeling of deja vu regarding this and our attempts at modding M2TW in this regard.)

Have you found anything in the files (incl the new raw data) that sets the behaviour of AI factions re taxing their regions?

[Archimonday]

Getting the AI to upgrade their economies is something that I've worked hard to do in my modding. It proves difficult though, because even when you modify the AI to take advantage of their income equally for all sorts of structures, they tend to still ignore the construction of buildings, and instead focus on unit production.

Initially I wanted to cut upkeep costs for units, but when I realized that larger battles were proving too difficult for battle AI, I actually worked to make the size of battles smaller by increasing the upkeep costs, and balancing them so that a sustained army and navy was not a cheap asset.

Buildings remained the same, but were necessary for the AI to build if they wanted to upkeep larger forces that didn't consist of weak militia.

However, the best test of AI economic building was to go to a place, burn it to the ground, leave, and then watch the AI rebuild and see what they do. I think I've got my economics and infrastructure upgrading for the AI pretty decent now, not perfect, but much better than before.

[Suraknar]

Interesting modding Suraknar.

Q: Have you noticed whether AI factions manage their regions any better - I'm amazed at how at even low difficulty levels the AI seems incapable of hanging on to regions it captures,
how buildings often go many turns before being repaired etc.

with more money to play with I'm hoping the AI can rebuild damage and keep taxes lower and avoid rebellions - (but I have an awful feeling of deja vu regarding this and our attempts at modding M2TW in this regard.)

Sorry for the delayed response, I have been playing

Actually yes I did, the final changes I made were accumulated in a gradual process, at first I only reduced Upkeep Costs, and I found that the AI upgraded all of their cities to the fullest even fortifications.

It is when I decided to double the Structure building Costs for all factions. Now the AI still does upgrade however a bit slower than before.

And yes the AI does repair structures, engages in more diplomacy too.

Makes Invasions by sea with full stack armies quite frequently, in my first campaign I played France and attacked england starting with Ireland then scotland and finally London. However, I had to fend off 3 sea invasions in Ireland once I conquered Scotland.

In my second campaign play testing this time I chose Prussia I wanted a small starting faction in the middle of all the others to see how that would go.

The behavior of the AI varies depending on Faction. But on average I found that the AI will not be erratic, it seems like it somehow benefits from this change and focuses on a plan. I had sweeden invade by sea and hit the heart of my lands in a surprise attack.

So the upkeep changes have impacted not only my game from the point of view of the player, but also the AI behavior.

It becomes more of a strategic and tactical game rather than an economical one.

Have you found anything in the files (incl the new raw data) that sets the behavior of AI factions re taxing their regions?

No , this is something I have been looking for also for a long time.

As far as rebellions are concerned, I did not notice many happening on the AI and most were relating more due to religion differences.

But it is also to be expected the AI garrisons towns with full stacks now this reduces rebellions.

[Gorrrrrn]

Thx for reply.

I've not attempted modding ETW (wasn't much could be done originally so went back to M2TW modding), but hopefully with new CA info re DB files
we can see if this sort of modding can be given a new life.

a version for vanilla ETW would be most useful

[Suraknar]

Bienvenue Rosanov,

It is not that hard once you read a couple of threads, I started recently as well I give some key threads to read that help one start up here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...86#post9791386

To help get started, after a couple of trials it sinks in quite nicely.

It is much more streamlined, even if we are dealing with much more complex approach compared to RTW or before it modding.

Wishing you have fun, I really enjoy ETW because of its free Style grand campaign, I really liked the enhancements overall in NTW however I did not like the fact that it was a guided approach I played up to Egypt Campaign and gave up because it felt like rehearsing napoleon's Footsteps instead of Taking the role of Napoleon with freedom to make own decisions.

On the other hand ETW has that freedom however it has an older approach to the economy compared to NTW which made the game-play redundant and long after so many turns, so I started learning the ETW way of modding to enhance its economy in a way that will permit me to have fun, and so far I am very pleased with the results.

I always liked the more open ended free styled approach of the series, with a strong historical setting but evolving in an "what if" kind of way as the player's decisions rewrite history from that point on.

@Archimonday you seem to have done much more in depth changes to balance the economy, I do not know if your aim was to enhance the military aspect of the game but that was my goal with these changes.

And by all means this is in no way removing any value from your approach, if you are happy with it as you have made it that is really what counts and I am sure will appeal to many.

I just thought to share this approach for anyone that is seeking a more military focused game-play.