Some questions about scripted battles and possible replacements

[Maltacus]

This is a question about modding in a way but it still mostly concerns the mod and campaign as a whole so I hope it's allright to post it here. I have a question about the spawned and teleported armies that appear in the beginning and are teleported to attack most factions, part of (maybe the whole) the script that is called "4. script battle" in the campaign_script.


The scripted battles in the beginning irritate me beyond belief. Not because it is too difficult which it certainly isn't, but they ruin the gameplay for me and turns the campaign into something that just feels like a row of custom battles with no connection to what I am doing on the campaign map. I am no expert in Warhammer lore but they don't seem to be very lore-accurate or logical to me either. So as you probably have guessed I am thinking of removing them and have all factions do as they please until the main events unfurl with Krom, Grimgor and the Chaos Storm.

Now the big question; what must I do to maintain at least the same level of overall difficulty while still removing these scripted battles?

Increase corruption? Vast AI kings purses? Recruitment bonuses? Multiply the beastmen starting armies? All ideas are welcome.

[Himster]

The scripted battles were fixed in 1.4, only the essential battles are in it now (a vast improvement IMO)
They work lore-wise because it's supposed to be a local noble who takes it upon himself to raise an army in the name of the emperor to thwart an imminent threat that the local count is not aware of, it's this sort of story line that is found in most (good) warhammer novels that deal with the empire.

However, the teleport effect: passing over defended bridges and choke points is still a major issue.

[Lord Baal]

There's, I think, a command to order an army to walk instead of teleporting.

Yeah, I think teleporting the armies is silly, I learned the lesson the hard way. I got this awesome defensive army with two Nuln cannons batteries, pikemen, halabards, handgunners and two pistoliers for mopping ends, posted in the bridge near Nuln that the ork invasion early on needs to go to Averland. My surprise, they not only pass beyond me, but two ork armies appear out of nowhere and take out my southern province in a single turn, even with the dwarf help of their armies there (the AI still tends to mass armies outside your cities to betray you like in vanilla Medieval 2).

[Maltacus]

We all have our own views on the aspects of the scripted armies and their movement and that is well worth discussing, but could we please move back to the purpose of the thread which is how and with what the scripts could be replaced to maintain the overall level of difficulty?

[mr.blonde]

Hello there, imho if you remove the random spawned armies, you will get to the point of facerolling everything even with cheap units, sooner or later. I would suggest mod longer recruitment time for units and longer building construction time.Nerfing money income will help also.
In general, think what you would do to even the odds(for the AI ofc) like you were playing vanilla M2. Although there is fixed diplomacy(except if you remove and those scripts) and you ll need to adapt.

[Lord Baal]

You need to modify the "Script battle" and the "Orc script" sections

[Ichon]

Increase building costs and have things like artillery production buildings have a cost representing gunpowder/shell production? Increase costs of cavalry... have traits nerfing you general's command... make strict army composition rules based on faction, greatly reduce replenish times of some of the mid tier but actually strong units (pistoliers and halberdiers come to mind).

[AllianceDeath]

You can make everything cost waaay more than now, but there will be nothing to fight for players like Hochland/Nordland etc, if events are gone.

[Maltacus]

Building costs could work I guess, supposing the EDB code to make them cost 1 gold piece for the ai works in CoW too.

Regarding the latest post; what if Sylvania, Beastmen and Dark Elves get their kings purses multiplied by 10, or 100, when they are the ai? Even the central imperials will eventually be pressured from some direction.

It seems to me that the main area to focus on is economy, either increasing income for the ai to let it produce stacks instead of having them magically spawned and teleported, or reduce your own financial abilities to resist what you face right now. Probably a combination of both things. Recruitment priorities could probably use an overhaul too, making the ai build the biggest and baddest orcs whenever possible and get out daemons before endless heaps of marauders.

If we take the kings purse as an example; assuming the ai is ordred to produce the best units it can whenever possible, what sums would seem viable to get the same level of challenge as the mentioned scripted armies? 10 000? 50 000? 100 000? How much for each (beastmen with their close and exposed position next to the empire culd probably use more than most, for example)?

[Ichon]

Building costs could work I guess, supposing the EDB code to make them cost 1 gold piece for the ai works in CoW too.

Regarding the latest post; what if Sylvania, Beastmen and Dark Elves get their kings purses multiplied by 10, or 100, when they are the ai? Even the central imperials will eventually be pressured from some direction.

It seems to me that the main area to focus on is economy, either increasing income for the ai to let it produce stacks instead of having them magically spawned and teleported, or reduce your own financial abilities to resist what you face right now. Probably a combination of both things. Recruitment priorities could probably use an overhaul too, making the ai build the biggest and baddest orcs whenever possible and get out daemons before endless heaps of marauders.

If we take the kings purse as an example; assuming the ai is ordred to produce the best units it can whenever possible, what sums would seem viable to get the same level of challenge as the mentioned scripted armies? 10 000? 50 000? 100 000? How much for each (beastmen with their close and exposed position next to the empire culd probably use more than most, for example)?

I don't know how much increasing money bonus will help smaller factions because often they are trapped by replenish/availability rates more than money. Easy to see when you x KP by 100 the AI will build a bit more yet still not expand much but hugely increase its treasury which turns into exploit if you fight their armies as ransoms etc are always paid. Best option is more money and then some mercs or spawned stacks set to AI only. Not sure can do that with building recruitment can be made higher rate for AI only but mercs can.

[IrishBlood]

well at least in terms of the beastmen, their random spawning scripted armies work well, both for gameplay and lore wise. They attack from the forests, they dont have or need cities, so capturing their temples shouldnt equal their destruction. They are an easy way to give some of the central provinces some action and currently I think they work just fine, all thats needed for them is a bit of unit variety

[Lord Baal]

In my mod scripted armies move around instead of teleporting. It's quite a fun. I haven't released the update yet working on this.

[Reiksfart]

In my mod scripted armies move around instead of teleporting. It's quite a fun. I haven't released the update yet working on this.

You have made me a happy man, saving me a lot of work. Any chance you could keep track of your changes to the script in detail to make it easily transferable to a modified campaign script?

[Maltacus]

Aye, the beastmen work well. I am not planning to alter their regular spawning, only aiming at the chaos, orc, elf scripted stuff in the beginning and their teleporting.

@Lord Baal
Does that mean that they then can be blocked by holding bridges and other narrow passages and so on, all like a "normal" army?

[Lord Baal]

Yeap. Right now I'm experimenting with the Grimgor invasion, it seems to works fine, next I'll adapt it to the rest of the scripts, so they are still a big threat but a more handleable one instead of the unstoppable things they are, specially on the start where you tend to have weaker armies and try to block them in bridges and such only for them to drop a huge LOL on you.

Expect weird things to happen sometimes tough, as Grimgor getting killed before the invasion even makes it to the empire or things like that.

[Maltacus]

Well, that's sort of what you would expect of any TW game, isn't it? Alternative lore as well as alternative history.

About Grimgor, and Archaon for that matter, is it possible to make the armies walk in a big group with the commanders army in the middle? So that Grimgor for example is more protected from random ai assaults?

[Lord Baal]

Yes, in fact that's my very own approach. They will move like:

xxx
xox
xxx

Where obviously x is the most important character, then for sieges, I have a little script that makes the important character initiate it or, in the case he's death, any of it's lieutenants gets the place as assaulter.

[Lord Baal]

The mod already give good sums of money every time the AI falls in debt, so it should not be an issue.

[Maltacus]

So, if not money in itself, then what kind of combination? How much of each of the various enemy bonuses would make it at least as difficult as the targeted spawned stacks makes it right now?

The mod already give good sums of money every time the AI falls in debt, so it should not be an issue.

Increased income does still make the ai able to build many more stacks, even when money scripts of this kind are present.

[Ichon]

So, if not money in itself, then what kind of combination? How much of each of the various enemy bonuses would make it at least as difficult as the targeted spawned stacks makes it right now?

Increased income does still make the ai able to build many more stacks, even when money scripts of this kind are present.

But the Elven replenish rates are very low so every with lots of money they are impossible to spend it all. I'd suggest more mercenaries for Elves but that takes alot of work- far as scripting goes really it has to be either free stacks or that the Elven units are buffed- or some special unit is created that only AI can recruit in high numbers as buffing units or making replenish easier all help human players significantly. I think main mods designers wanted Elves and some factions to be the most difficult to play as they had little roles relative to Grimgor etc.