A couple of questions.

[Prince of War]

First of all I'd like to start of with congratulating the chivalry team on their great mod.
I just have a couple of questions about the mod. Firstly is the agression of the other nations in the single player campaign. I am playing as Castille and have just taken care of the Alomhads and was preparing to advance on Aragon.
I was looking at my settlements and was about to build stone walls when I thought, what's the point? I have only ever been attacked once, and it seemed that the enemies were just waiting around for me to attack them at my leisure. This was kind of annoying as I didn't really have much challenge from the enemies. I was wondering if anyone else has found themselves hardly ever being attacked and also, is their anyway to increase the agression of the a.i?
Secondly, is it possible to change the general icons as I find the original Medieval ones to be ugly. It's no big issue but any help would be appreciated, cheers.

[stu3216]

well im playing as the HRE and ive been attacked by a ton of rebels.

[alpaca]

Ya the problem is known. I'm not 100% sure how we may fix it though, so if anybody has ideas (besides giving the AI factions more money), let's hear them.

[Ciaran S]

I believe it´s an issue with the economic system, the AI just plainly is broke. Giving them more money will result in a unit spawn at the beginning, but then they´ll end up hugely indebted, unable to retrain or recruit new units.
I see the point where the team is coming from (and that the economic side isn´t finished yet), and for the human player the lack of income does provide a challenge, but the AI just can´t cope with it.

[daud.fr]

What about then reducing the upkeep values significantly? It worked in BI. AI creates full stacks of armies and becomes really agressive.
I think the problem in the game, is that normally ai tries to value your military capabilities, if you are strong it will wait, till you go to war and are weakened. But once they feel they miliatry overpower you....nothing is gonna stop them...

[dragases1453]

you're right...you could also try to change they attitude in teh descr_strat ( fortified_napoleon and all the otehr who i don't remember) and put all teh AI very aggressive

[dragases1453]

Hey i have some good news...i modified a bit the chiv script and teh desc_strat and i made the game more interesting

in fact now i'm playng as the holy roman empire and after 10-15 turns. rebel armies attavked my capital, denmark attacked me from the north and conwuered slesvig, england attacked me at koln and conquered.
from the map the otehr european country are in this situation: castillans are besieging the moors at denia, aragonese faction conquered toulouse and pamplona, the moors copnquered valencia and are entering in the region of toledo with quite big armies; the french aren't still expanding but have 2 big armies; the english people conquered scontland,wales, gent and koln; the polish copnquered 2 rebel cities; the bohoemians are attacking the polish with big armies; the hungarian conquered serbia, moldavia and another rebel city; the cilician armenians conquered iconium,ankara and adalia; the byzantines conquered 2 european provinces but lost adalia; the turks conquered 2 rebel provinces; the egyptians conquered 3-4 rebel provinces; the danish cponquered kalmar and slesvig;the normans,kievans,hordemen,novgorod are still at the starting point.

i'll try other modifies to make the AI still more aggressive

[stu3216]

i gave the byzantene empire 200,000 denarii and they used it all after the first five turns

[alpaca]

Well I reckon a lot of this passivity is due to the lack of funds. The problem is that one has to be careful not to give the AI too much money as it will drain their cities, etc. and make it really difficult for the player because the AI can easily recruit more units.

What exactly did you change dragases?

[Glycerius]

Reducing maintenance certainly helps, though it can make the Byzantines well overpowered. Giving each faction objectives of their neighbour's provinces helps. Adding trade resources certainly helps. Large rebel stacks are very aggressive if they have a chance of winning. A constant flow of money is what I think helps most.

[deadcell87]

First of all I'd like to start of with congratulating the chivalry team on their great mod.
I just have a couple of questions about the mod. Firstly is the agression of the other nations in the single player campaign. I am playing as Castille and have just taken care of the Alomhads and was preparing to advance on Aragon.
I was looking at my settlements and was about to build stone walls when I thought, what's the point? I have only ever been attacked once, and it seemed that the enemies were just waiting around for me to attack them at my leisure. This was kind of annoying as I didn't really have much challenge from the enemies. I was wondering if anyone else has found themselves hardly ever being attacked and also, is their anyway to increase the agression of the a.i?
Secondly, is it possible to change the general icons as I find the original Medieval ones to be ugly. It's no big issue but any help would be appreciated, cheers.

I don't feel like reading all the other giberish , but its just your campaign. I also play with Castille and I was attacked more than 10 time by the Almohads but their attack failes sicne it was on Toledo. They tried once on Valencia but I managed to beat them with so-so casualties.

[militiaman]

I don't think it's the actual aggressiveness, because as deadcell pointed out above the AI can be very aggressive towards the player. Besides, the RTW hard-coded AI has always been aggressive towards the player.

I think the real problem is expansion. This is not expansion for all factions either, only a few. For example, in some games Egypt really conquers, and so does the Byzantine Empire. The Moors go well in Spain, and I've seen Hungary do some good expanding as well. It's not only confined to larger empires either, despite only starting off with 2 provinces and being at war with to major powers Cilician Armenia really packs a punch in Anatolia.

IMO the factions that do have these problems are ones like Aragon, Sicily, Novgorod and to a smaller extent Denmark, Kiev and the Horde. While I think that our upkeep could be a problem, I'm more leaning towards bugs like what was being researched at the ORG. Things such as 45 degree angle roads blocking armies (I think that was it) and parts of the map could be made to promote expansion as well. I would like the upkeep tested on a lower level, but then I also end up at the question of why some of the above mentioned factions do so well.

[DaVinci]

Well, ya, i read all the threads here, and i'm not certain that more triggers/scripts will solve the "agro-balance" for the long term campaign. But i have no clue what Agrares (name?) did in his scripts (thread above).

My experience so far:
I played as yet England, Byzantine, HRE and France and in every campaign i was attacked quite immediately. First from big rebel armies and then from any faction enemies, which touch my borders, latest if the AI noticed that i expand too much, they begin to show aggressive behaviour in my experience. Played this on VH/VH. On VH campaign, anyway the AI gets more aggressive behaviour and +10.000 florins extra per turn (hardcoded AI cheat by CA).
Then, the still to code victory conditions (missing now), and the diplo-pre-settings (missing now) should help as well to steer the AI into their right ("historical") goals.

But what i also see is the cash-flow, that need to have a permanent base ... this can and will be secured through the trade resources, if they are added (atm. there are none real trade resources implemented, as well no mine-resources). Then with some additional changes in the tech-tree for basic cash-flow increasements and perhaps here and there some unit cost and upkeep! corrections, the situation should be solved, imo. But balancing the whole map and factions out is not the easiest job, and needs quite long beta-playtesting in my experience, so maybe a v1.0 is quite good balanced :wink:

The increase of the starting cash can in fact only solve the AI money problem for a short timeperiod and has not a real significant point, imo. This would maybe turn more the "natural" starting balance into a "unatural".

Someone spoke already over the AI characters, well they have naturally a direct affect on the AI campaign behaviour!

Edit: Militiaman, i wrote here still as you made your thread, but i second your opinion.

[militiaman]

DV, you bring up some points I didn't think about either, especially ones about the economy and resources :wink:

[DaVinci]

Sorry, off-topic:
Militiaman, btw., our dev forum lags horrible atm., i wasn't able to provide any new thread, ie. to your answer to my EDB topic.
EDIT: The whole SCC seems to be down atm.

[militiaman]

Yes, I'm getting the "IPS Driver Error". I was also posting a bit in our dev forum. Oh well, time to work on the merc list alpaca wants

[dragases1453]

@ alpaca: i changed the AI behaviour in descr_strat and your script and now every turn the Ai receive 10000 florins if he has less then10000 florins and less then 8 territories...it seems better...atm i'm at school but when i'll return i'll try other factions...

[militiaman]

The AI behaviour was historically modelled on the definition CA gave each value. For example cavalry armies were given the more mounted, cavalry-focused behaviour. I'm a little sceptical about how much it actually does though.

[Papirius]

Hello dragases,
how did you give the a.i. additional money?