[REL] Divide et Imperia Harder Economy Submod (for DeI 0.6) - UPDATED 23 Dec 2013

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Divide et Imperia Harder Economy Submod (for DeI 0.6)

GET THE NEWEST VERSION HERE!


Updated to v0.3 (savegame compatible; just replace the file with the newest one)

A mod for all who like to have a greater economic challenge in the beginning and middle part of the game. You don't have to be a hardcore strategist to play this mod, you just have to care more about the economic side of the game. Most changes will also effect the CAI, which can handle them quite nicely. If you are interested in this submod please help me finding a good balance for the economic values by posting savegames from the middle or late game.

Be warned that an economic victory may not be possible with this mod enabled, because you may not get the insane income of 90 000 talents required in the late game. If you are keen to get this achievment, you can turn off the mod after you fulfilled the other conditions for an economic victory. Nearly all changes will revert back to their original values after you disable the mod (prices for commodities are an exception).


CHANGES

- v0.3: Doubled the tax bonus you get from slaves to make them more worthwhile.
- v0.3: Set all cultural conversion bonuses back to vanilla values (they were halved in DeI to slow down the conversion to 100%, but with the recent changes to the cultural conversion mechanics this is no longer needed).
- v0.3: Set the growth values of all buildings back to vanilla values, but doubled the requirements for one population point (DeI halved the growth values from buildings accross the board, but values like 0.5 dont work because the game will round them up to full numbers).
- v0.3: Fixed construction times for some of the new DeI buildings that still had vanilla values.
- v0.3: Made the increased upkeep costs player only to allow the AI field large enough armies on lower difficulty levels.
- Reduced quantity of resources a resource building provides by 50%.
- Reduced the prices especially for high value resources like gold (still very lucrative to get). NEEDS A NEW CAMPAIGN TO TAKE EFFECT!
- Construction costs for all buildings are 50% higher.
- Upkeep costs for alle regular units increased by 20%.
- Inceased the corruption in the middle game (up to +10%).
- Reduced the rate of settlement development by increasing the number of growth needed for each population point.

INSTALLATION

Download, unpack and copy the file into your ...\Total War Rome 2\data directory. Enable it with the mod manager. The mod must be in the list before the main DeI pack file to work properly, which should be the case by default.

Enjoy!

GET THE NEWEST VERSION HERE!

[Kurisu Paifuaa]

Good ideas Yarkis. Income is far too abundant for there to ever be any sort of challenge to economy building. Giving it a try.


I see you imply that commodity prices get baked into the save. This is good to know... I was wondering why my own changes were sometimes ineffective.

Do you know whether price elasticity is functional? The UI feedback is terribly lacking and constantly doing the math gets tedious. Prices seemed static to me, but I may not have actually played deep enough into a campaign yet to notice.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Good ideas Yarkis. Income is far too abundant for there to ever be any sort of challenge to economy building. Giving it a try.


I see you imply that commodity prices get baked into the save. This is good to know... I was wondering why my own changes were sometimes ineffective.

Do you know whether price elasticity is functional? The UI feedback is terribly lacking and constantly doing the math gets tedious. Prices seemed static to me, but I may not have actually played deep enough into a campaign yet to notice.

I have no idea if and how the price elasticity works.

[Kurisu Paifuaa]

I have no idea if and how the price elasticity works.

Price Elasticity of Demand should drive demand higher as price falls and lower as it rises. If the PED value is less than 1 (inelastic), the effect is marginal. Higher than 1 (elastic) would have greater impact. So for something like wine or olive oil (ped = .8) the demand should remain fairly stable, whereas grain and textiles (ped = 1.2) would show greater fluctuations in quantity demanded alongside price changes.

Actually, grain should likely have a ped < 1. In general, staple goods (grain, oil, fish etc) would have a stable demand while luxuries should be more volatile (>1). At least, that would be my interpretation.

But if they didn't implement price change, the whole concept is pointless. I'm really hoping that isn't the case... if the economy is made tighter and more challenging, commodity prices and demand suddenly become interesting.

Does anyone see prices fluctuating at any point in a campaign? It's not intuitive, as the crappy UI doesn't show individual prices and you have to look it up in the table and divide the income per item just to figure out the quantity you're trading

[stupar123]

Will try it

[Dresden]

In my other mods I have increased the price of buildings, units and upkeep. I think maybe I should do it in DeI as well.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

In my other mods I have increased the price of buildings, units and upkeep. I think maybe I should do it in DeI as well.

When you are on it, can you please look over the effect bonuses of the new buildings the mod adds? For example the salt and copper buildings have half the building times of other minor production cities. Other values like growth rates or cultural conversion rates are also not consistent amoung similar buildings.

[yukishiro1]

The problem with increasing unit upkeep is that minor factions already have only +1000 income. If you increase unit upkeep significantly, a 1-province minor faction won't even be able to afford a single decent army until late in the game. Which may or may not be ok, but it's something to consider before doing it.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

The problem with increasing unit upkeep is that minor factions already have only +1000 income. If you increase unit upkeep significantly, a 1-province minor faction won't even be able to afford a single decent army until late in the game. Which may or may not be ok, but it's something to consider before doing it.

I was thinking that too at first, but actually, money seems to be the least concern for the AI. In my current game as Rome on VH Patavium has 38 units in two armies, and all other minors with one province have at least one full army plus a second one, or one or two fleets. DeI has hidden income for the capital of each faction enabled (rom_building_gdp_subsistence_faction_capital_hidden). On VH that's 1250 bonus income, and then the AI gets a 30% tax bonus and other bonuses right from the start. I just looked into the savefile and many minor factions have more then 10 000 talents in their pockest (Knossos for example more then 30 000). You can check that with the ESF editor. The first number in faction_economics under the faction entry in the faction array is the current treasury.

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, but that's only if you play on very hard. On normal, they get 1000 bonus income (total - on VH they get 2250 total) and no tax bonus.

I'm playing a game on normal right now and the single-region minors I come across have at only a little more than one full stack...and that full stack is mostly made up of low upkeep, low-tier troops.

I think you may have raised a good point though: those AI handicap values are based on 2500 base income. Minors now have only 1000 base income. It seems like the AI handicaps should also be scaled down on a scale of 1:2.5. Otherwise, it ends up being very hard to balance gold input when playing on very hard means single-region minors get literally double as much gold.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

I updated the mod with some additional changes (see first post). There are savegame compatible, so just copy the new file over the old one.

@ yukishiro1

I made the upkeep changes player only.

[Yerevan]

So you're now taking part in DeI Yarkis ?

That's very good news ! I loved TROM 3 very much. With this mod I had my best S2 campaign ever. The CAI was perfect.

[gogopher]

is this mod in steam workshop...and if not do u plan on listing it there?

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

So you're now taking part in DeI Yarkis ?

That's very good news ! I loved TROM 3 very much. With this mod I had my best S2 campaign ever. The CAI was perfect.

Thanks!

is this mod in steam workshop...and if not do u plan on listing it there?

Not yet. I would need a logo for that, and I am to lazy to do one.

Here are some pics from my current test game with DiE 0.6 and the economy mod only. I am playing Rome on VH/N difficulty. It is 246 BC or 93 turns into the game. I picked my wars carefully with factions that had no allies. I was interested how Carthage would do without my interference, and it was a bit of a rollercoaster for them. At one point in the game they lost nearly all their possessions in northern africa and sicilia to Syracuse, but they retook everything with the help of their allies. Currently they have trouble with the Turangites (or so...), but they had a similar situation in their western holdings before and reconquered all their regions. In the east a power block of Athens, Sparta and Egypt is fighting a very strong Pergamon. The Averni have grown, and in the north the Suebi seemed to have build a threatening empire. They are at war with the celtic tribes in the alps, but already reached my borders. The diplomatic chart tells me they are very strong, so I wil send a scout into their territory soon to get a better image of their empire.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Overall the AI is doing very well with this mod, despite the fact that nearly all changes to income affect them as well. I peeked into my savegame and nearly all factions have more then 20 000 in their treasury, some with not so violent wars in the past even more (Parthia has over 200 000!).

And here is the difference you get with this mod. The first pic shows my income without the mod enabled, the second one with it. I took care to build my economy and researched a number of civil techs to help with that. I have no lvl 3 resource cities yet, but these will boost my trade income considerably. I have 3 1/2 legions and one full fleet. Overall, I could build up very well, but I wasn't forced into a major war yet which could drain my coffers.

Income situation without mod:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Income situation with mod:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Overall the mod has found a good balance. I will see what happens in the later part of the game, when my empire grows and I get higher level economic buildings and techs. I will see if the upkeep for better troops will scale with the economic growth, or the latter will outrun the upkeep and I will swim in money again.

[Veltegez]

I like very much your mod, especially the slave bonus idea as it makes the choice to enslave captives a double-edged sword. I wanted to ask if it is compatible with Yukishiro's historically plausible development ?

[Dresden]

I am working on some economic changes for the next big update, and I had increased building cost by actually multiplying all the costs by 1.5. I didn't realize you could do something similar in the difficulties table! Really cool. I am going to be doing some similar changes as these to the main mod.

Edit: Also thanks for pointing out the forgotten building times on those tables.

Edit 2: Forgot to ask for permission to use some of these changes

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

I like very much your mod, especially the slave bonus idea as it makes the choice to enslave captives a double-edged sword. I wanted to ask if it is compatible with Yukishiro's historically plausible development ?

There should be no problem in using them both.

I am working on some economic changes for the next big update, and I had increased building cost by actually multiplying all the costs by 1.5. I didn't realize you could do something similar in the difficulties table! Really cool. I am going to be doing some similar changes as these to the main mod.

Edit: Also thanks for pointing out the forgotten building times on those tables.

Edit 2: Forgot to ask for permission to use some of these changes

Go ahead and use any settings you want. It's not that I invented that stuff. The settings I used work very well in my experience. The AI still has all the money it needs. You could give the AI more money from slaves and lessen other bonuses. That way only AI factions that wage war get extra money, not those that just sit on their asses most of the time and amass money anyway.

Changing the building costs or any costs directly has one advantage: all modifieres are applied to this base value. If you increase the building costs through the difficulyt setting from 1000 to 1500, a modifier of 10% will only give you a 100 talents bonus. If you use PFM and copy the row into exel or open office and modify it there it is done very quickly. I didn't do it because I didn't want to interfer with the DeI tables too much.

[Dresden]

You can also multiple the entire row in PFM, for example by 1.5.

However, using the difficulty table is much simpler and more compatible with future content/new content in the mod. It also allows me to make it just affect the player, which is nice.

[rick1063]

This mod shows great promise, any plans to incorporate it into DeI?