a few questions

[Nyarla]

I'm pretty new to this forum and tried my first SS6.4 game with HRE vh/vh & RR and savage AI. now i noticed that Mongols are a joke in itself, since they got a couple of millions debt shortly into the game. After turn 55 or so their Military value declined from around 2000k to less than 800k in turn 70. i think its when they stop getting new stacks and disband more than half their army cause they notice they can't support em with those ran down cities. they got no money, don't repair or build new buildings and have the worst economy ever, thus their demise was pretty much selfinduced. i had no need to really attack them other than having my fun vs their elite armies, and raking in heroic victories. after a while i got bored of fighting his dwindling but still second strongest army and simply offered money in return for their settlements. for a couple of bucks i got all but 6 mongol settlements and for his remaining 5 i offered him a million but he was still in dept his army got even smaller. then for fun i traded those towns with france and migrated him to the middle east. cost me like 60 - 200k for each settlement. now comes the funny thing france in turn was rich now so he trained insane amount of units trippling his military while now having the low profit mongol provinces... so hes the next to go into debt, not to mention his armies wander through the whole of Europe now... and gonna take forever to reach his new home.

so my question: is there a way to fix it, so that the AI doesn't run out of money for buildings but is limited in his army so they don't selfdestruct which they just love to do.
or can i make em smarter so they go for seatrade / landtrade buildings more, priorize economy over army and have the same insane amount of income i have in lategame?

while i'm on the topic, which AI is best so they don't start those suicidal all around wars? best example is in spain where all 5 factions present war eachother ( spain, aragon, portugal, the moors and genoa) usually each faction fights 3 to 5 wars at the same time. they don't succeed in conquering they just tire each other out.
i had even more wars going on right at game start, cause everyone wanted to backstab me. my allies allied with a third faction, usually far away, that then attacked me with a ship so my alliance broke and the next turn my old ally was my new enemy and i could send my recruits to yet another enemy and make sure the backstabbing fool could never do it again.

and lastly is the crusade bug known so u can make all your FM's to saints by having em join and leave the crusadearmy couple of times until they become saints? easy way to boost city growth with full chivalry. probably just an abuse but i couldn't do so in other mods so it got me curious.

here's the military ranking for both me and the mongol. his stacks didn't turn rouge nor did they get killed he simply disbanded em.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[PerXX]

Off Topic: Wow, that's some crazy blitzing you've been doing there. Around 1 settlement conquered every turn? Doesn't that make the game rather boring?

[Nyarla]

Off Topic: Wow, that's some crazy blitzing you've been doing there. Around 1 settlement conquered every turn? Doesn't that make the game rather boring?

true but i tried to hold back, i never had to declare war on anyone, they usually came for me more or less prepared.
kinda boring later but the first 20 - 30 turns were fun as hell, not my fault most of my allies ( poland, norway, genoa, papal states, and england) broke my alliance through other factions then joined the onslaught vs HRE in the first few turns ( if i remember correctly i fought papal states, venice, denmark, england, scottland, hungary, poland, silicians, byzanz, norway, portugal, the rus, and kiev ). but they had mainly the same armies / units i have or were just using ships to destroy my alliance, so it was easy to beat em all up and at the same time retrain and reinforce my armies into elite units. the only one that really posed a challenge was ERE. him having 10 more armor on his cavalary and heavy infantry ( i hate&love scholarii) cost me good amount of my army but once he lost his main 3 stacks it was cleaning up the leftovers.

thats why i thought mongols would give me more fun and started a crusade on bagdhad which was nice until i noticed he went down way faster than i killed his stacks. still out of my 8 crusade armies only half remained at the end. now i'm searching for a way to improve the campaign AI so it won't selfdestruct anymore and i can try a new campaign.

most of my last 20 settlements are through buying mongol towns cheap, repairing the buldings and exchanging them with france and others. he was the only one of my allies that didn't backstab me, and thus he was robbed of his homelands.

i got such a huge law (90%) and global trade bonus from all those hq's and master lvl guilds taken over, so i'm rich rich rich and revolts never ever happen. i can still capture towns and have no need to exterminate the population and they love me for it.

[bɑne]

Mongols have been nerfed / unnerfed again and again... if you want a challenging script I suggest the one featured in SS 6.3. Should be quite easy to port it over to 6.4 although it does not address the money issue - but: Mongols shouldn't be able to go bankrupt because of the safegap measures implemented in the campaign script - if they are listed as bankrupt in the diplomacy screen then this just means they spend every penny they receive immediately.

[Nyarla]

thx for the answer, but what i need is a different campaign ai, i think mongols itself are fine if he didn't accumulate so much debt and could still repair and build new things. that way he wouldn't have to disband his army and maybe make it to europe one day.

Mongols shouldn't be able to go bankrupt because of the safegap measures implemented in the campaign script - if they are listed as bankrupt in the diplomacy screen then this just means they spend every penny they receive immediately.

if you're refering to mongols in 6.4, then u are wrong. i gave em 1 million for his town, when he had 3 towns left, ( didn't know what to do with all the cash) and he was still bankrupt next turn, so no way to spend that much with 2 cities. i gave france around 500k over a couple of turns and he went from bankrup to very rich right away though hes gonna hit rock bottom pretty soon cause he recruited so many new units.

[popovic]

Fred Putz`s "Carl the Taxman" (and prolly his "Roma" submod aswell) and
Soulson`s AI.


Fred Putz`s "Taxman" makes the AI handle themselves WAAAY better in regards of economy, "Roma" is just an excellent addon for making a generally more challenging campaign, while the Soulson`s AI has, from the limited testing I`ve done with it and other AIs, proven that it is more balanced and realistic than other campaign AI`s.

There are a few more submods/options in SS setup I would strongly reccomend if you are after a better challenge, but lets leave it at this for the moment.

[Nyarla]

Fred Putz`s "Carl the Taxman" (and prolly his "Roma" submod aswell) and
Soulson`s AI.


Fred Putz`s "Taxman" makes the AI handle themselves WAAAY better in regards of economy, "Roma" is just an excellent addon for making a generally more challenging campaign, while the Soulson`s AI has, from the limited testing I`ve done with it and other AIs, proven that it is more balanced and realistic than other campaign AI`s.

There are a few more submods/options in SS setup I would strongly reccomend if you are after a better challenge, but lets leave it at this for the moment.

thank you for the answer, just the stuff i need to keep the AI building constantly even if it runs out of money. gonna try it right away since i only kept at my current campaign to figure out what improvements i needed for more challenge in my next one.

which other submods are u refering to? ByGR IV ? i would've chosen it for my next campaign, what i read so far about it was promising in terms of gameplay, but i guess i go with Carl, Roma and Soulson for now. lets see if their advertisements holds true.

[Ichon]

Mongols have been nerfed / unnerfed again and again... if you want a challenging script I suggest the one featured in SS 6.3. Should be quite easy to port it over to 6.4 although it does not address the money issue - but: Mongols shouldn't be able to go bankrupt because of the safegap measures implemented in the campaign script - if they are listed as bankrupt in the diplomacy screen then this just means they spend every penny they receive immediately.

There is something wrong with the script then because Mongols definitely go deeply bankrupt. I gave them a 50,000 florins a turn for 50 turns a few campaigns ago and still they did never repair their captured cities or build new cities. 2.5 million florins and still bankrupt... their huge number of stacks bog them down. I haven't played a 6.3 campaign with Carl but in 6.4 they do seem a tiny bit better with Carl but as far as I can tell they are deeply bankrupt still as they never recruit new armies or agents.

[Fred Putz]

....I haven't played a 6.3 campaign with Carl but in 6.4 they do seem a tiny bit better with Carl but as far as I can tell they are deeply bankrupt still as they never recruit new armies or agents.

They are handled like any other nation too. So Carl sets the treasury to almost Zero if they are bankrupt. The Mongols get many spawned armies which are very expensive - so they need to capture many settlements to have the money to afford new units. Also it takes up to three turns till Carl is balanced out because they have that much upkeep at once without any (bigger) income the first few turns.

....remember i didn't use MSC or other mods to stop the AI from recruiting both proffessionals and militias

Same here - Carl stops recruitment if any nation is bankrupt.

[Ichon]

They are handled like any other nation too. So Carl sets the treasury to almost Zero if they are bankrupt. The Mongols get many spawned armies which are very expensive - so they need to capture many settlements to have the money to afford new units. Also it takes up to three turns till Carl is balanced out because they have that much upkeep at once without any (bigger) income the first few turns.

Same here - Carl stops recruitment if any nation is bankrupt.

How does it work with repairing buildings? As the Mongols with such expensive stacks will be bankrupt every turn- if they can't repair they will never climb out of the hole and as they are bankrupt they will also never recruit new units.

[Fred Putz]

All AI buildings just cost 1 florin - so they are repaired all the time. At least they should - and they should build new ones. They will have at least a few florins every turn - so they are never completely bankrupt. Just not enough to recruit new units. They can build up an economy and earn more money every turn in future - if they own the one or other settlement of course. Although sometimes they will prefer to retrain a unit.

As soon as they have more income than upkeep they will spend money on units again. They should have enough initial armies to conquer a big enough territory till they "run out of units". If they don´t make it they won´t get many reinforcements and probably get stuck somewhere in the steppes.

[bɑne]

Interesting, they busted out.

[popovic]

I would most definetely reccomend BGR IV. It really makes a difference when it comes to challenge. Also, "Limited Activities" and "Longer Assimilation" are, imo, a must.

I would also reccomend Germanicu5 battle AI.

I also play with Dayy`s "Real Rebellion" and "Next Heir Ancilliary".

There are loads of interesting submods for SS, I`d advise you to check the submods section, in case you don`t like my reccomendations, or simply want to see other options as well.

Regards.

P.S. And yes, BGR IV really isn`t as hard as people around here crack it up to be. It adds a challenge, but nothing an experienced TW player shouldn`t be able to handle.

P.P.S. And play Late campaign. Much more challenging. And interesting (imo) with the better selection of units.

[Nyarla]

so Carl and Roma are visible in the submodmanager now, but not soulson's AI. i just copied the files in my ss6.3 data folder, but which AI option to activate now? or doesn't it http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t9867055matter if i use Savage and soulson is still active?
i used Davy's Real Rebellion before but none of my settlements ever rebelled so pretty useless, until i vanquished a faction and horde units get created.

P.S so Carl works with BGR then i can use that too, yay.

P.S S next heir sounds nice but i prefer leaving the heir up to my king to choose. he sometimes does pretty retarded things like ignoring his own blood and naming a french heir to his empire, but that too is fate. so having french princesses marry my germanic FH's to restore the original empires blood to the throne is fun in its own way and if that doesn't work, accidents happen and many a king died before his prime

@ recentiy03: Yes its him, cuz he, the one calling himself king of france, is a fake-king and the crown belongs to the one having both german and french blood, thus being rightful heir to the Charlemage Empire

[recentiy03]

I've never heard of the taxman mod, but BGR makes handling your own economy very difficult. In my current VH ERE campaign, I control about 45 provinces and I was up over 200k Florins one turn and a few turns later all my money was spent. It requires a lot more micromanagment, so it is quite easy to mess up, although it really affects you more than the AI. Even so, I can't play other versions of the game w/o BGR, because it is that much of an improvmet in terms of nuances. +rep for this thread BTW...LOL at calling France "him" and sending "him" to Arabia.

[popovic]

@ Nyarla:
You did it right, Soulson`s AI just need to be put into the "data" folder.

Take note though that it will make your faction male members come of age a bit early. That is at the age of 5. That can be tweaked pretty easily though.

[bɑne]

I guess it gets levered out by the losses in those cases. Mongols may need some other help anyways

[Byg]

here's the military ranking for both me and the mongol. his stacks didn't turn rouge nor did they get killed he simply disbanded em.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Did you actually see the Mongols disband because I would have thought the AI incapable of this?

Isn't the military ranking relative, whereby the Mongol line will naturally decrease as yours and other factions' increase? Either way, you said you were defeating mongol armies so it would go down anyway. And were you observing whether they were at war with anyone else or suffering rebellion even?

[Nyarla]

Did you actually see the Mongols disband because I would have thought the AI incapable of this?

Isn't the military ranking relative, whereby the Mongol line will naturally decrease as yours and other factions' increase? Either way, you said you were defeating mongol armies so it would go down anyway. And were you observing whether they were at war with anyone else or suffering rebellion even?

i didn't see him disband but he had around 100 stacks of units most of them still on their way to the front in the holy lands and some heading north, first time i saw all those i actually got scared of the Khan. But most of those full stacks were suddenly gone when i looked after the next few turns. happened around turn 55, maybe they rebelled but i didn't see any rebel units either and the other factions close by were already destroyed or crippled by both the great Khan or myself. don't let the picture deceive u, the mongols ruled once over everything up to ankara

there was nothing the other nations had in the field that could've killed the veteran stacks of mongols, most of em had 6 or higher experience. even without generals or they kept fighting and didn't run, so no way they just died inside his own borders.

as far as rebels go i never had any unit / or town rebell, and the faction leaders i've seen so far, and i've seen quite the bunch, all had plenty of authority. the truth is, authority is too easily gained in SS but thats just my opinion, and maybe that changes with some of the submods i'm using now

[Ichon]

Mongols don't get 100 stacks. So you might have seen a group of 30 stacks somewhat together and then in a few turns when they split up it seems alot smaller. 5-10 here or there and a half dozen just wandering independently. I've never seen AI disband so I think it just looks alot smaller when they split up and you realize that even with 30 stacks Mongols are usually facing 1-2 stacks per city of enemies or more on VH which means even to conquest the east they have to overcome 40-80 stacks and the longer it takes them the more stacks they face as the other factions replace losses which Mongols are unable to do.