Fans suggestion thread for future releases

[QuintusSertorius]

Oh no, just realized the line I was referring to in edu is just a comment line anyway. So the only way to mod all unit refresh rates is edb and that's not just a single unit edit solution, but many multiples over across every settlement... Do you guys on the team use some kind of automation tool to make sweeping changes to things like this when you test new stuff, or are you manually slaving away in the coding mines forever?

I periodically slave away in the code mines. Everything in the EDB is done by hand, I've completely rewritten it over the years.

[Dooz]

Well we're lucky to have this blood diamond of a mod as a result of your and the team's hard work, thanks

[bismarck 1899]

I want to make the argument that factions like Pritanoi or Sweboz should be able to develop further than large town. I'm a social scientist and I totally agree with the point of historical accuracy but on the other hand I find it odd that if a tribal federation that controls all of Britain would come into existence, that this federation would not develop further than the British tribes historically did. After 50 years or so further development and a more complex social structure is at least a possibility. Is there a scientific argument for not allowing such a development?

[Dooz]

Default for a 1-point pool is either 33 turns (if 0.03) or 25 turns (if 0.04). It's when more than one point is devoted to a unit that refresh rates get fast.

Going to do some testing with lower refresh rates, just changed all 33 turn refresh rates to 52, and 25 to 40 across all point pools. I'm seeing some very slow refreshes near the top of the file, 100, 200, 300 turns, will leave those alone. Besides that, any other numbers I should look out for before running an AI sim campaign, or will those two have covered everything?

Here are the changes so far.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

25 turns to 40 turns
---------------------
1 0.04 1 > 1 0.025 1
1 0.08 2 > 1 0.05 2
1 0.12 3 > 1 0.075 3
1 0.16 4 > 1 0.1 4
1 0.2 5 > 1 0.125 5
1 0.24 6 > 1 0.15 6
1 0.32 8 > 1 0.2 8

33 turns to 52 turns
---------------------
1 0.03 1 > 1 0.0191 1
1 0.06 2 > 1 0.0384 2
1 0.09 3 > 1 0.0576 3
1 0.12 4 > 1 0.0769 4
1 0.15 5 > 1 0.096 5
1 0.18 6 > 1 0.115 6

[QuintusSertorius]

Fleets are already using base 0.025, but they're all concentrated in a handful of buildings, so should be easy to adjust.

[Dooz]

Thanks. The editing wasn't too bad for this particular kind of change since I knew what I was looking for and could just find+replace all entries for a given pool grouping in one go. Speaking of, do you know if there are any entries that have anything other than a 1 for starting pool points, the left-most number? I just realized I'd included that in my searches for some reason, so would have missed any variations there.

I'm looking at the unmodified edb now but it looks like fleets have some variations to them. Though luckily since they're concentrated in ports buildings, hopefully I'll be able to catch them all with adjustments.

Also, I accidentally searched for 0.25 instead of 0.025 at first and there was a unit that came up with it ("arabian infantry saba communals" 1 0.25 5). Then found others with 20 turn rates as well. Just mentioning in case this isn't an intentional deviation from the standard, though I imagine it is given they're all Nabatu units and probably represents numerosity of some sort. Either way, I wonder if there are any other non-standard rates I may have missed. Happen to recall any rates other than 20, 25 or 33 for land units I could search for?

P.S. Before seeing your reply, I'd just gone through a 30 year campaign sim with just the initial changes mentioned and I'm pretty excited about it. Gonna restart with the additional changes and if it looks good again after a nice long run with default R3 campaign movement, I'll try with increased range as well to see how that plays out.

[QuintusSertorius]

There are a few with 0 starting pools.

Yep, there are a handful of very high refresh units where there isn't the variety to put anything else there.

[Dooz]

Ok, more to do for before starting the campaign then. Any tips on where to look for those very high refresh units? Particular factions or certain turn rates? Edit: I'm actually just going through line by line to catch any outliers and compile a good base to work from for future tweaks and tests. Found a handful so far, a few tens of thousands more lines to go. And I'll move future discussion to a submod thread, thanks for your help.

Btw, I think I may have found a possible error for Pentere rates. There are two entries for it, and the second one has a refresh rate of 20 turns ("generic ship pentere" 1 0.05 1) while the first is at 40 turns ("generic ship pentere" 1 0.025 1). The reason I think the first may be in error is because as compared to the lighter ships above it with a rate of 26 turns ("generic ship quadrireme" 1 0.075 2 0), its rate is faster. This is the reverse of the first entry, where pentere has twice as long a rate as the quadriremes. Or maybe there's a reason for it?

[aaronp]

Some more feedback from my Lusitania campaign:

After taking Nertobriga, it's only a matter of time before Carthage attacks. That's fine, it's easy enough to take Gader, fight off the counter attack and then ship a diplomat over to Africa to sue for peace. I like that script BTW, though maybe it was a bit too easy. There's only so much you can do with the engine and a limited number of settlements to work with, I suppose.

Anyway I noticed the Areuakoi took Moroika and Kontrebia and are probably gearing up to invade, so I took Mastia in response for some extra cash. This triggers another war with Carthage within just a few turns of winning the last one. The justification is that the region is in Carthage's sphere if influence.

As far as the gameplay goes, it's a minor inconvenience. But it doesn't make much sense for the internal narrative that goes on when you're playing the game. I guess we can assume there are still Punic colonies in Iberia in the background, but the game is presenting visual information that Carthage is gone and shouldn't be able to exert that much political influence from so far away. It's just a bit jarring.

My recommendation is to either make that script depend on Carthage owning Gader or, depending on exactly how much political influence Carthage actually had over the region historically, it might make sense to just make Mastia a Carthaginian client state.

[Jurand of Cracow]

I want to make the argument that factions like Pritanoi or Sweboz should be able to develop further than large town. I'm a social scientist and I totally agree with the point of historical accuracy but on the other hand I find it odd that if a tribal federation that controls all of Britain would come into existence, that this federation would not develop further than the British tribes historically did. After 50 years or so further development and a more complex social structure is at least a possibility. Is there a scientific argument for not allowing such a development?

I share this opinion. I think that if we allow for creating something so un-historical as large states for the Barbarians, we assume that they'd develop the necessary stocial structures, then its unreasonable to assume that these structures would not allow to create larger settlements, ie cities.

[Gigantus]

The idea has it's merits. After all everything after the first turn is alternate history interspersed with historical events. Not sure if anyone in the team would like to actively indulge that alternate history, though. Let's take a closer look under the hood:

The triggering script won't be much of an issue
Surely Quintus will welcome the opportunity to once again prove his mettle and fortitude in the code mine of EDB (don't forget descr_cultures!)
Someone will gladly spend hours to develop a new barbarian custom settlement, throw in a strat model as well
By which time another one will notice that 'more pop means more mess means more unrest means more control measures required' - so either all gains are spend on upkeep of permanent, ever increasing garrisons or yet someone else has to come up with some historically sensible buildings that grant the required bonuses (to the delight of Quintus)
The AI sucks at building stuff if he can recruit so someone will have to have a look at the 'barbarian' AI to compensate for that

[bordinis]

They weren t more barbarians than greeks or romans. Everyone lived in stigma, everyone was selfish and as some nations have written in texts it happened that romans and greeks were the most selfish so they had stoned walls and structured military. But the people who were leading "barbarian" armies were not stupid, they saw how selfish their tribes were so they offered them a less selfish system of living, more simple pastoral life or a life on the road, it s not like they did not know how to make stoned walls. People like you get this unintellingent understanding that leaders of Sarmatia or Pritanoi or any culture who did not use stone was a stupid and prmitive. They were not, in fact they wanted their tribes and people away from selfishness and materialism. And when that failed after numeorous raids and bloodshed after hundreds of years trying to make them less selfish they made a desicion to go to more settled so to speak "commune" life with stone walls. The reason why they did built these walls was because they could not predict other people selfishness. So tribal numidians Lugians who used wood ( they had plenty of it ) and they deliberately did not build roads, deliberately did not. So they would be hidden and live their life in the woods and protect themselves from other nations inability to control their greed for materialism. But moders will do to apease reality so they probably won t make factions like Pritanoi have more armour or sophisticated walled settlements. The Reason Romans and Greeks had that knowledge was because they were chosen by their leaders to do so. Romans deliberately were destroying the knowledge of other nations, hiding in tracks, burning libraries and kiiling of tribes and their knowledge. The reason we don t have "druidic knowledge and Keltoi writtings" is intentional. They were destroyed and gotten rid off. So only the roman words and greek remained. Even Carthaginian books were destroyed or hidden. on purpose. But it would be cool to have more options for these factions..

[bismarck 1899]

If the event itself isn't a huge problem, then one could take the Averni template for the next level. The Pritanoi are Celts anyway and for the Sweboz there is already a Germano-Celtic building which could be the limiting factor. In the sense that the less developed Sweboz acquire more developed social structures capable of maintaining a more stable realm from the Celts.
If the AI couldn't handle it then do not give them the option. The AI already cannot transform camps into settlements, handle money or retrain troops. Players can.

[bismarck 1899]

They weren t more barbarians than greeks or romans. Everyone lived in stigma, everyone was selfish and as some nations have written in texts it happened that romans and greeks were the most selfish so they had stoned walls and structured military. But the people who were leading "barbarian" armies were not stupid, they saw how selfish their tribes were so they offered them a less selfish system of living, more simple pastoral life or a life on the road, it s not like they did not know how to make stoned walls. People like you get this unintellingent understanding that leaders of Sarmatia or Pritanoi or any culture who did not use stone was a stupid and prmitive. They were not, in fact they wanted their tribes and people away from selfishness and materialism. And when that failed after numeorous raids and bloodshed after hundreds of years trying to make them less selfish they made a desicion to go to more settled so to speak "commune" life with stone walls. The reason why they did built these walls was because they could not predict other people selfishness. So tribal numidians Lugians who used wood ( they had plenty of it ) and they deliberately did not build roads, deliberately did not. So they would be hidden and live their life in the woods and protect themselves from other nations inability to control their greed for materialism. But moders will do to apease reality so they probably won t make factions like Pritanoi have more armour or sophisticated walled settlements. The Reason Romans and Greeks had that knowledge was because they were chosen by their leaders to do so. Romans deliberately were destroying the knowledge of other nations, hiding in tracks, burning libraries and kiiling of tribes and their knowledge. The reason we don t have "druidic knowledge and Keltoi writtings" is intentional. They were destroyed and gotten rid off. So only the roman words and greek remained. Even Carthaginian books were destroyed or hidden. on purpose. But it would be cool to have more options for these factions..

English isn't my first language, is this sarcasm or some form of irony?

[Domaje]

No that's idealism.

[bordinis]

History only repeats itself. They lived in selfishness and we live in a system of selfishness. And yes that s idealism The reason for wars - inability to control ones selfishness and greed

Note : it would be nice still to have pants and boots and leather armour upgrades for some barbaroi factions in later game. creates a sense of progress for the player.

[Ampe211]

We simply have no way of knowing to what extent so called barbarians utilised leather as armor, if they used it at all. The point of wearing armor is that it protects against the most common threats on a battlefield-regardless of nation/tribe, those would be spears and arrows. From the tests of Alan Williams (The Knight anfd the Blast Furnace) it is evident that a singke layer of leather is incapable of resisting these threats, making several layers a necessity. Leather armor was probably not made out of leather, but rawhide, which provides more protection against weapons, several layers of rawhide would not only be heavier than metal armour providing the same level of protection, but it would also be really expensive. We know that greeks used rawhide/ leather as armour (spolas), but there isnt really a reason why barbarians would have used it had they expanded to the size of the roman empire.

[bordinis]

Barbaroi men really relied on this primitive idea of a warrior supremacy. In their mind probably even wearing armour was not man like and cowardly. They weren t organized they wanted fame for their own action not fame won by the collective effort like people in Greece and Roma used. What I would like to see represented in game for factions like Pritanoi for their spear and sword retainers to gain some form of upgrade, levies should be left out as poor people who went to war almost naked and without shoes I guess but they went out to war to aquire boots and pants and expensive hides from their enemy! Still a feeling of progression is always apreciated in game for some factions. Let s just pray that those late game kingdom units from Pritanoi and Sweboz get cool chainmales and helmets and retainers get some love in armour upgrades..

[Dooz]

The AI cannot retrain troops.

I know this is the common understanding, but I'm not so sure. When you sim a hotseat campaign and take control of one of the AI factions, the recruitment report (from before you took control) often includes retrained units, as well as freshly recruited ones.

[Jurand of Cracow]

The idea has it's merits. After all everything after the first turn is alternate history interspersed with historical events. Not sure if anyone in the team would like to actively indulge that alternate history, though. Let's take a closer look under the hood:

The triggering script won't be much of an issue
Surely Quintus will welcome the opportunity to once again prove his mettle and fortitude in the code mine of EDB (don't forget descr_cultures!)
Someone will gladly spend hours to develop a new barbarian custom settlement, throw in a strat model as well
By which time another one will notice that 'more pop means more mess means more unrest means more control measures required' - so either all gains are spend on upkeep of permanent, ever increasing garrisons or yet someone else has to come up with some historically sensible buildings that grant the required bonuses (to the delight of Quintus)
The AI sucks at building stuff if he can recruit so someone will have to have a look at the 'barbarian' AI to compensate for that

I think this is a fair and decisive point.

AI already cannot retrain troops.

This is my understanding of the Med2 engine. What would you say, @Gigantus, @Quintus?