Greek campaign at 3x unit price

**killmore** · April 21, 2006, 04:06 PM

I love RTW but I don't have time to play huge amount of battles. I hate seeing 3 full stacks attacking and AI spawning full stack every turn.
So I trippled the price of units and tried playing on M/M and Vanila map.

I also doubled the price of the walls (I hate sieges)
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Results:
Turn 1:
I tried to play defensively but Macedonians moved 2 armies to the border of Athens in the first turn and 3rd one was on the way. I had no choice but to attack them before they join up.
Also I attacked town in tip of the Italian boot and took it.
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Turn 2:
The first battle was in north Peleponesus where I attacked Macedonian army with army from Athens and from Sparta. Victory.
I managed to join these armies and then I was attacked by 2nd Macedonian Army during their turn. Victory.
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Turn 3:
I send my army to Athens to refill ranks and add some trained units to it.
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Turn 4:
Fully stacked Macedonian army appeared beside Athens. I consolidated my armies and attacked. Victory.

At this point Macedonia was crushed. 3 large battles to crush a Nation - feels about right to me. I still needed to siege Corinth, Larisa and Thesaloniki but it was over...
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Turn 5:
Rome sieged Taras with 117 Triari, 130 Princeps and Commander. Due to AI stupidity I managed to get Roman commander to attacked me and surronded him. Same happened with triari. Princeps joined in when triari were already in panic.
I had 2 basic therokai, cavalry militia and commander.
Sieged Corinth.
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After that:
Corinth fell, and soon after Larisa and Thesaloniki. Macedonia was gone. I was the biggest nation, about 25% bigger then second largest.
I was attacked by Seleucids but it was a poor effort.
I took crete, west Turkey, Basically everything around Aegean sea.

AI was suprisingly static.
I did see Scytians taking part of Iran - that was a suprise. But other than that AI factions were only attacking rebels (succesfully) not each other.

Brits, Cartagena, Thrace, Iberia did nothing, Germany was large.
Dacia was up to 4 provinces.
Rome took province where Venice is now.
Egypt, Pontus, Armenia, Seleucids took some rebel teritory.
Scytia and Partia were fighting each other. Partia was winning.

But I am getting now 25000 cash per turn. So game is pretty much over.

**Venom** · April 21, 2006, 04:08 PM

I'm sure there's a point to all this...

**DimeBagHo** · April 21, 2006, 06:06 PM

It's useful to know how this kind of thing works out. One of the problems with starving the AI for money is that it becomes more static. It doesn't handle logistics very well, if it feels too weak it won't attack, sometimes stacks get stuck, etc., so if it only has a few stacks it won't achieve much. Personally I prefer lots of AI stacks so that you really need beat the AI factions down before they are out.

**killmore** · April 21, 2006, 09:39 PM

I will try on Hard and with Darth formations next time

**Venom** · April 21, 2006, 10:16 PM

Yeah I like it when the AI throws stacks of armies at me. It's much more of a challenge, and that way you'll get more interesting battles, not just lame skirmishes where your army of 1500 men has to take on their 240 because the AI completely mishandles auto-resolve.

**Zarax** · April 22, 2006, 01:10 AM

Well, a rebalancing in that sector needs lots of careful fine tuning, you can have a good game offering slower strategic pace and lesser stacks while still presenting a challenge but you need to compensate the poor AI economic skills.
Try fiddling with the starting script and give to AI some better economical buildings and higher population, this way you still will have an hard start while AI will be less static and able to offer more of a challenge.
Of course this is not enough for late game, I'm trying to find ways to keep the player from piling up money the way it happens now and I think that once we will get loyalty to work and a few trait tweaks you can get an interesting challenge throughout the whole game.

**killmore** · April 24, 2006, 12:59 PM

Well - let me tell you on Hard/Hard it is quite a different game!
Yes it makes sense to tripple unit cost - everything runs very smooth but with fewer battles!
AI expands quicker because I doubled price of the walls.

AI still produces large armies and throws them at you. It just happens less frequently.
Because my casualties are much, much larger I am not able to just attack AI stack after AI stack, I need a short break. Game is much more strategic. I have to pick my targets/enemies carefully!

Game also started to make more sense:
Romans attacked my cities in the south of the boot. I will probably loose these cities.
Pontus attacked Macedonia because it was allied with me.
Carthage is the only nation behaving strangely - it has 3 full stacks in Sicily and it is not moving them. They are my allies too.

**Lusted** · April 24, 2006, 01:08 PM

Tripling the unit costs is a bit extreme, you are only going to handicap the ai with that. I have found that increasing upkeep costs to around 4/3rds, and recruitment costs to about 7/8ths makes the ai produce less armies so battles become more decisive, but still lets the ai do well enough as the ai does not seem to take unit costs into account, and so large unit costs really hamper it.

**killmore** · April 24, 2006, 01:46 PM

Originally Posted by Lusted

Tripling the unit costs is a bit extreme, you are only going to handicap the ai with that. I have found that increasing upkeep costs to around 4/3rds, and recruitment costs to about 7/8ths makes the ai produce less armies so battles become more decisive, but still lets the ai do well enough as the ai does not seem to take unit costs into account, and so large unit costs really hamper it.

Right now I don't see AI having any problems producing armies on HARD/HARD.
Sure there is less of armies around but fighting is quite fierce.
Rome has 4 full stacks, Carthage about 5, Gauls are figting Romans hard.

I will let you know how campaign progresses.

**Zarax** · April 24, 2006, 02:15 PM

I'm going to try and work on a global price rebalancing based on actual game economies rather than just raise prices by a certain amount, if you make some quick price/effectiveness ratios you'll see that the most expensive unit to maintain based on their effectiveness are militias/slingers/skirmishers, something completely ahistorical and with little gameplay sense.

There is a thread at the guild where someone managed to discover the income function based on population and taxes, it would make sense to mod the game in a way that makes unit costs and upkeeps related to their city level income, so that a 400 people town would be able to just support one unit of militia, the next level one or two level 2 units and so on...

This way you'll have to make a choice between large armies and quality ones, with carefully balanced traits and starting balancing script you can also help AI in a fair way and prevent the player from taking full advantage of the natural logistical management superiority.

**killmore** · April 25, 2006, 01:10 PM

I managed to catch Macedonia when it had 1 minor army close to Athens, tiny army in Corinth and another city beside land bridge to Italy. So after I won these 3 battles and captured 2 cities, Macedonians sieged Athens with a full stack. After a huge siege battle with 3500 loses to my 2000 I won and Managed to capture Larisa next turn (gate was open by the spy)
I am trying to heal my units while Macedonia AI is sending another full stack my way.

Just before Rome attacked my Taras in Italy I destroyed all buildings, set taxes at highest level and left. Romans took the rioting city but they are battling rebels there ever since.

In Turkey Seleucids just sent another stack my way, while Egyptians are trying to walk their army to Rhodos.

Anyway AI does not seem to suffer from 3x unit price so far. Even Pontus has 2 full stacks.

**Zarax** · April 25, 2006, 01:19 PM

Well, around 3x unit price is what should be a rebalanced income should be with some adjustments so i'm not surprised that AI could still field decent armies... Care to join into a rebalancing minimod test?

**killmore** · April 26, 2006, 07:25 PM

Originally Posted by Zarax

Care to join into a rebalancing minimod test?

I have very little time to play. So I think I would be a poor Beta tester.
What is it that you are testing?

**Zarax** · April 27, 2006, 01:59 AM

I'm working on a minimod that makes prices and upkeep more fitting to the unit level, so that a city income can support only a few units and not an entire stack by itself...
Right now I'm tweaking with the starting script so that AI is not too harmstringed, I'm testing with a pontus campaign and I have to say I like the slower pace, AI is slower in attacking you and diplomacy seems to work a little better...

**Pizza de Oveja** · April 27, 2006, 10:03 AM

It’s a shame that the AI produces such 1 unit or 2 unit stacks. It makes the player having to deal with all of them in crappy battles manually just cause the auto resolve battle function sucks and makes your army suffer stoopid casualties.

How on earth is an army of two farmer units manage to cause 40 dead on my legionaries and and 20 on my general’s body guard? It is impossible to get that result even if you wanted to!

I understand a mod can't solve the auto battle thing but I wonder if there could be a way to make the AI combine its armies the way humans players do.

**Zarax** · April 27, 2006, 03:50 PM

I'm afraid this is not possible either...

**killmore** · May 01, 2006, 06:21 PM

Well - Seleucids started to send 1 stack each turn toward me.
So I doubled the upkeep of the units.
Some coutries did well with that - Pontus, Dacia, Romans, Egypt but Carthage is deep in debt - serves it right so having 6 idle stacks just sitting there.