Gameplay Statistics.

[PikeStance]

Hello,

I have a question about gameplay.
I use to playing Empire or Napoleon, so I am not as familiar with the economic mechanics.
I noticed that I am in the top 5 in military and production, but my Financial ranking is much lower at 21. (I cannot recall the percentage). I am not sure how this is calculated. There have been a few times I have had a deficit (in the red), but this was fixed within a game turn. I also had a few turns when my income was quite low, but not many. In any event, why is my financial ranking so low? How do improve my financial situation? I am currently the larges faction (by regions) and number 2 by population. I am in the top 5 in production and military, so I am clearly doing ok economically. What am I missing here? Thanks.

[Son of Horus]

Financial Ranking is determined by how much actual money you have available. Try cheating with it, which should state where you are. If you look at the graphs it should match each turn to what money you have.

[Gongsunzan]

The ai is always at higher rating than player because they need money scripts to function. Dont worry about being top financial there is no need to be top financial and i can win without it

[Seether]

Like what Gongsunzan said, the AI in every Total War game is pretty miserable, especially when it comes to managing finances. This, in conjunction with the fact that any TW player is better than the AI, means that the AI must be given some small incentive just to stay competitive with the player. Just to be clear, they are not given a lot of money, free troops, or anything that we would label as "cheating."

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

Unless I am mistaken, the financial ranking simply reflects how much money the human player has "in the bank", available to spend, at the start of the turn. It does not reflect how much money the human player is making. The financial ranking is a practically useless statistic.

[PikeStance]

Yes, this is what I have figured out as well. I assuming the percentage is how much I am lower than the highest faction. I am usually around 3%. That is a lot of money sitting in their bank. It does highlight the need to provide extra help to the AI.

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

Yes, this is what I have figured out as well. I assuming the percentage is how much I am lower than the highest faction. I am usually around 3%. That is a lot of money sitting in their bank. It does highlight the need to provide extra help to the AI.

If the other factions are not too high in the financial chart of the faction standings, then the AI is probably doing ok. Your percentage is in comparison to the highest faction but your low percentage may also reflect a problem with calculations, if all factions are bankrupt or close to bankrupt. But if AI factions appear to be always high on the financial chart, then there may be an AI issue.

[Son of Horus]

The problem is balancing the AI's willingness to spend money on building and upgrading rather than just on units. I think someone worked out that only the King's Purse is untouchable by unit recruitment, so by increasing that via scripts (say for every settlement owned, increase Kings Purse by say 1000gp for AI only. It doesn't need to be that high, but you can then use that new figure to remove the value from the AI's afterwards so that they've not strictly got that money for free

Other things, including *AI-only* invisible traits could make it easier for them; reduced cost of training units (makes it easier for them to fill the unit recruitment slots in settlements), and buildings, throw on Tax bonuses and settlement growth etc all improves the AI economy naturally, rather than naturally *hacking* it into them where it probably can't account all that much for the increased money. In regards to unit production, the AI doesn't handle retraining, merging etc very well, so providing benefits to "Battle_Surgery" makes their armies more reliable to look after themselves; it stops units of 30 men taking up a slot in a stack that the player would retrain or delete. Of course, the problem then leads to the cost of upkeep, which is one of the last factored in calculations in the AI's spending strategies. Lower upkeep makes it easier on the AI as well; however, that then makes it easier for the player, and AFAIK, there's no way to lower upkeep costs of units, using the Traits/Ancillaries.

This wasn't intended to be a Cash dump, but rather a modification of the existing Kings Purse. I'm not sure if there's a way to force the AI to stop recruiting (perhaps reducing the number of recruitment slots for units, if that's a thing, and providing short term temporary boosts to their economy traits). I'll have a look at coding up some traits for those purposes. It is still an artificial boost, in the sense that the AI is getting free hidden boost, whereas the player doesn't, but it's using in game mechanics which might be better handled than the cash dump that comes from bankruptcy.

And of course, the AI's preference to using captains rather than generals; while this cannot be helped, I'd like to see how a game would run with forced Generals staying as city governers; perhaps an Ancillary making it "Lord of X" place, which then reduces its movement speed to nothing.

Other things could include up to increasing battle effectiveness from Battle Surgery (more units survive battles) to larger sight range and movement points. I'm not strictly sure if Watchtowers improve the sight range for AI or if it's just hardcoded behaviour, but I've found that giving traits with Sight Range increases tends to make the AI be a bit more active (if not strictly smarter), or forced retraining (at a much reduced cost for AI units which end turn in the settlement).

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

The AI does not know what to build beyond some general and nearly useless preferences to build farms or markets, etc, depending on the faction. Besides, the reason why the human player needs high production is so that he can have the money to build an army to defeat the AI armies.

Much of what you propose would help the AI but consider the time and effort needed in writing and testing those scripts so that the AI can make some extra money vs just giving the AI some extra money. Same result.