Announcement: Europa Barbarorum 2.1b is released!

[Moros]

You just need to enlarge the mountain pass by one pixel in map_ground_types.tga. Mind you, it's just that roads can't travel diagonally like armies do.

Also, what do the full faction names of Nabatu and Saba mean? Is it just "Kingdom of the Nabatu" and "Kingdom of Saba"?

Malkhûta means kingdom, yes. Saba' Wa-Gawwum means Saba and (wa-) Gawwum (the others). The gawwum part in our period is an abbreviation as to how the Sabaeans called itself earlier, which used to be Saba and the other tribes. Saba wasn't as much a kingdom rather more akin to a hegemonic city-state/tribe/shab.

[wojtekimbier]

I have a quite unexpected bug:

I move my faction heir and some other units from Athens onto a navy, which then transports them to southern Italy. When I try to disembark the army near Taras (Tarentum) they don't appear on the shore, but back inside Athens again
It happens just when the general is selected to leave with the army, other units can land perfectly well by themselves. I have to merge the bodyguard unit with an army on the shore or they teleport to the city wherever they land.

[Apani]

Is it just me, or the in-game font does not show apostrophes?

[romanius24]

If you want to try the battle again please try with these files. Unzip this into your EBII folder overwriting the existing files.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ph4iz3s9sv...files.zip?dl=0

It still crashed the same way.
eb.system.log.7z

[z3n]

Just checked the log looks like something funky is going on, this should fix it. Please let me know thank you.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yokvt8rruu...otfix.zip?dl=0
http://depositfiles.com/files/wh4btrbcw

[_Tartaros_]

want to report a map issue:
the isle of malte is not accessable for any troops and the castle/city can not be reached or conquered

[Tactics Mayers]

I'm not getting the usual Seleucid tax payment as Baktria after I refused to conquer the Nomad controlled territories (the one where the Seluecids gave me a free elephant unit). I'm still allied with them so I wonder what happens to the Baktrian Independence script?

[Nimor]

want to report a map issue:
the isle of malte is not accessable for any troops and the castle/city can not be reached or conquered

Thanks for the report. Minor settlements are completely gone in 2.2 so it won't be an issue any longer.

[Bitiquinhus]

First of all, I can't thank you enough for this awesome and unbelievable work, guys !

I don't know all the issues that this might involve, but, could I ask that you ensure that all the files for the next full release are named lowercase ?

With the release of M2:TW for Mac/Linux, the issue of case-sensitive file systems came up, and took me a while to figure out that all the file/folder names of a mod should be lowercase for it to work properly.

Anyways, sorry for my English and thanks again for all you do here. I enjoy a lot playing EBII and following its development.

[z3n]

We do have team members gosam and bovi trying to figure out how to get battles working with linux. Bovi is probably going to write a tool to make the conversion of file names to lower case easier.

Out of curiosity, once you named every file to lowercase your battles worked?

[Bitiquinhus]

With EBII I got crashes. But, as other mods are working fine, I guessed that my script could have missed some files.

[z3n]

During or while loading the battles?

[Bitiquinhus]

On loading

[Bitiquinhus]

I'll try again with a clean install. But sadly logging of trace or error messages doesn't seem to work here.

[RubiconDecision]

Thanks for the report. Minor settlements are completely gone in 2.2 so it won't be an issue any longer.

PSF (minor settlements) are gone? Can you build minor settlements? If not, that's a shame since they're great for free upkeep by being redeployed from settlements, plus a resupply point on frontiers(resets the named character general's trait), plus seizing those from the AI. That all seems very historical.


With invisible agents, you could even name them, replicating famous small cities.

[Genghis Skahn]

Don't think minor settlements can be built by the player the way you are suggesting. Minor settlements as they are cause too many in game problems for the CAI and BAI to be kept in the game; they're simply not worth it. I've seen the worst of it in the early versions of EB2, and while things have improved vastly since then, they are still an incredible thorn in the AI's side in the worst way imaginable. I won't miss the free upkeep or RP options at all when you compare how much smoother the AI will behave without them.

[RubiconDecision]

Don't think minor settlements can be built by the player the way you are suggesting. Minor settlements as they are cause too many in game problems for the CAI and BAI to be kept in the game; they're simply not worth it. I've seen the worst of it in the early versions of EB2, and while things have improved vastly since then, they are still an incredible thorn in the AI's side in the worst way imaginable. I won't miss the free upkeep or RP options at all when you compare how much smoother the AI will behave without them.

It's fine as it can be modded back in.

If you have supply traits, then unless configured well, it's impossible to get to some without minor settlements i.e. forts to resupply. So if you remove them, then the supply system has to be reconfigured too.

Forts are ideal for pinch points. In history, border towns were utilized to push the boundaries and as an early warning system through the limited paths to main settlements. More settlements would help but there's a hard coded limit. Minor settlements can enable better cash flow and allow a larger standing army...so the AI has adequate treasury to build infrastructure.

Without that, the AI can't do naval invasions(can't afford em or afford to tie up the queue) or afford better units versus the player.
...
What some mods do is free upkeep for the AI only in the EDB. Limited supply traits for the AI.

Two problems. The AI shifts too many outside the settlement which then DRAINS their treasury as free upkeep is negated.
Supply traits only for the player takes great foresight in logistics and creating hubs of conquering to aid the successive supply triggers whilst conquering.

If free upkeep exists (like the settlement can have for limited numbers of soldiers based upon size), then unless cavalry rich and invasion is imminent, the AI risks understaffing by a night attack, while also suddenly higher upkeep. The AI should mostly use free upkeep and keep everyone within.

But with minor settlements and free upkeep, placed as a hub, a redeployable mobile force, particularly cavalry can suddenly REPEL an invasion, or harass with guerrilla techniques.

Players tend to invade with named characters. Thus using traits for bonuses and minuses. The AI has no issue in avoiding that by captain-led armies. Thus even if configured, the AI has no supply traits.

If the EDB allows recruitable generals for the AI, then the AI seizes upon that, then uses them, and gains traits especially building infrastructure. Due to the weakness of the AI, if all AI generals get Night Attack capability (NightBattleCapable), then the AI can pick off chains of soldiers moving to the front, as well as attacking multistack captain-led forces. It is the most helpful trait next to Line-of-Sight bonuses.

[Dragannia]

After finally managing to play a little EB, I wanted to give a bit of feedback.

Naturally I chose AS and played on the suggested H/M. Campaign difficulty was ok, however, as others have noted, battles were too easy with some units fleeing after barely fighting longer than a few seconds. Battles against FMs were better, however not as challenging as I'd hoped. I'll definitely go for H/H or H/VH next time around.

I tried a different approach than usually and basically conquered nothing for the first 100 turns except Gerrha. I thought that this would give me a greater challenge in the later game. That was true to a certain extent, however not as much as I'd hoped would be the case. When the Ptolemies finally started to get active in Asia Minor, they got quickly overrun by Pergamon.
I got dragged into wars with Takshila and Hayasdan due to a rebelling Pura and what I presume was a botched assassination Hay's part. The latter was also the reason I got into a war with Pergamon, however this time it was my assassin that triggered it.
While I'm on the subject of assassins, they were a major nuisance. On the one hand I liked it, because they were actually starting to influence my economy in a bad way. On the other hand, they usually struck where it made no sense at all. Ptolemai assassins targeting markets in Persia and Taksashila assassins destroying waystations in Minor Asia. I guess there's not much to be done about that. I've never lost a single FM to assassins, which was quite nice.

Loyalty was a non-issue in this campaign. Maybe it's because I groom my faction leader and heir, but I've not had a single stack rebel from me. It got to the point where I could easily ignore loyalty completely.
In general I feel that traits and ancillaries is an area that needs expansion. Most characters get the same +-5 traits which don't change that much during their life. Apparently, education can also be ignored for the most part. I still do it for RP purposes, but I don't feel that it has a significant effect at all.
While I'm on traits, the trait for spys that gives them +4 skill and LOS does not seem to trigger, since they always go straight from 3 to 5.

AI progress in general was ok. There are however still too few wars and those that exist were almost all triggered by rebellions. (KH-Getai, Rome-Boii, Carthage-Ptolemaioi)
Carthage especially was doing nothing for the majority of the campaign, but have recently started to expand.
Rome is slowly starting to go on a rampage in central Europe. 3-4 turns after the last screenshot, they had not only taken the remaining rebel settlements around them but 2 settlements from the Boii as well while besieging a third. This is despite me giving about 30k to Boii every round as well as stacking spies in nearly every Roman city north of the Alps. However, the only settlement I've so far managed to rebel was Syrakuse. It seems to easy for the AI (and IMO for the player as well) to hold settlements with close to 0 % of their own culture.
Related to that I think that the conversion rate of governors should be reduced. It is too easy for me to put an influental governor (which as AS is not that hard due to the positive effects of an appointment to the King's council) with a halfway decent garrison in a newly conquered town and I never have to worry about rebellions for the rest of the campaign. Most of the time I don't use colonies not for the conversion but rather the recruitment options they offer.
I would also suggest removing the happiness penalty offered by the native recruitment building. Add that to the fact that it already converts to another culture, I see close to zero incentives to actually build it, since the threat of war by my neighbours is close to zero.

This brings me to the biggest bore in this campaign, the Ptolemies. In every version and every campaign I've played in EB 2, I've yet to see an army of theirs cross the Nile. They occasionally use fleets attempting to conquer Cyprus back, but there was never any army, no matter how small, that actually marched up from Egypt. Maybe others have different experiences, but this has been consistend over every version I've played so far.

Additionally, I've been getting a of CTDs in the new version, which I haven't encountered before. At the beginning of the campaign only every 15 - 20 turns, but they are getting more and more frequent to the point that I'm now quitting the campaign because they are every second turn now.
It usually happens when clicking around on the campaign map and always crashes with the "Medieval 2 has encoutered an unspecified error..." message. I have my game installed out of the program files and in windowed mode and while that helped with loading times, it didn't do anything to help with the crashes. I could upload an error log, but from my (unqualified) look at it it doesn't seem very informative. Maybe it's just my computer, since I'm running the game on a quite laptop where other games also crash. However never so often and as I've said before, the problem only started to occur with the new version.

I still had a blast playing the campaign though and want to thank every team member for his or her hard work.

I'd just like to reply to this message with my own input. I'm slogging it through the AS campaign too, and I agree with the passive AI, which is hugely different from EB1.2. The Ptolemies especially are weak - in EB1 they were throwing everything they had at me, but after I defeated two medium sized army they've basically ceased any aggressive activity at all. Same with Hayastadan - after a defeat or two they've stopped. It seems the AI really have problems recuperating from losses. I'm playing on Hard difficulty too. Battle AI has problems that I think people have mentioned before. I've had issues with loyalty though, I have had 2 FMs turn traitor, one of them was just about to get a load of elephants joining him the next turn too so luckily he turned sooner rather than later. The other one defected on the very last turn I would have captured Salamis. Grr!

The assassins thing is also something which is INCREDIBLY annoying. The Ptolemies would send so many assassins into my eastern provinces. EVERY TURN there's a market being sabotaged, which really eats into your savings, plus its not the easiest thing to stop that. It's not very enjoyable chasing down assassins that come at such a high rate..

In regards to CTDs, I had a lot to begin with but since I left the graphics settings on default and used windowed mode I have had none. Also, has anyone noticed the weird animations you get if you zoom out a bit? Like for instance, cavalry turn into a mass of red manes on their horses which seem to be using lower quality sprites.

[Genghis Skahn]

To my understanding(only a working rather than an in-depth one) the supply system works simply: If you are in non-controlled territory, you lose supplies gradually(though how much depends on the general and how much you forage I believe) whilst in controlled territory you resupply and can maintain the well supplied trait indefinitely as long as you're in factional territory. I don't understand what you mean about the supply system having to be reconfigured, and what minor settlements have to do with supplies, outside of a RP level.

Currently the minor settlements are NOT forts on the battlemap. They're flat fields with a capture point(which cannot be captured anymore, because you can't capture flagpoints in EB anymore), where the BAI never ever behaves properly(I've played enough to know, and it's a well established fact on the forums here). In fact, one of the best ways to exploit the AI is to attack an army in a minor settlement; you will see virtually no tactical resistance to your attacks.

The minor settlements are indeed often at pinch points/strategic locations, and I'm aware of how important border towns were historically. The thing you don't seem to be aware of, is how erratically the AI behaves around minor settlements. The minor settlements sabotage the AI by causing it to pointlessly turtle inside the minor settlements they own, and they virtually NEVER try to capture a minor settlement that isn't garrisoned by an enemy AI or when it simply belongs to the player. This is why you'll see so many eleutheroi minor settlements in AI factional territory; the AI doesn't capture/control them properly. There have been mountains of reports in this thread and the predecessor thread to this one on how screwy minor settlements are for gameplay, I've submitted a few myself and I am in complete agreement with the others who have done so as well. I've played this game more than long enough to know how the AI behaves with minor settlements. Any economic benefits you believe are gained from minor settlements are more than crushed by the crippling effect these minor settlements have on the AI. By the way, they never properly garrison them like the player, you know. They either have some amount of forces in there(often full stacks), or nothing at all. Contrast this to a player who very strategically places units to get as much free upkeep as possible. The AI virtually never benefits from this free upkeep the way a player does, in fact I would say that the free upkeep it provides is completely negligible for the AI. What is best for the AI's economy typically tends to be conquest(besides their gratuitous and ever evolving money scripts, which have worked wonders, believe me). The AI turtles like hell inside these awful minor settlements, when so often they should be active. An inactive army due to the many bugs surrounding minor settlements is far more devastating to the AI economy than any 1 slot free upkeep can benefit. As well, even if the AI(lets use the AS at game start as an example) garrisoned every one of it's potentially many minor settlements, the economic benefits aren't comparable to capturing just a few more cities.

I've seen the AI make proper naval invasions(remember, they NEVER EVER EVER garrison minor settlements properly to get the free upkeep you're talking about), so I don't know what you mean here. They can be a bit rare, but they definitely happen, and when they do it's a fairly planned/well prepared invasion force. Also the AI is just fine at composing armies nowadays, there's a good mix of units from army to army--there's been massive improvement for this as of late.

In my Numidian campaign of ~300 turns in H/M you should have seen how active Carthage was in terms of naval warfare. They landed several stacks near Aedui controlled Arretium, wandered for a bit, but then attacked the Aedui in full strength, even capturing Liguria after Etruria. They later navally invaded Epeiros(eventually destroying them). Before I finished my campaign, they had all of S. Italy under their control and the province of Epeiros, + their starting territories(minus Lepki, which I bought). I've also seen Kart-Hadast make passive landings in neutral Areuakoi territory in other earlier campaigns as well. The Aedui were about to launch a naval invasion against carthage at one point before I sent my fleet to sink the attackers(Carthage was my ally). The AI CAN make naval invasions. Also when pergamon throws an army filled with machairophoroi, thureophoroi, thorakitai, phalangitai and only 3 skirmishers(led by a FM no less) I'd say that the AI is producing tough enough units to face the player. The only thing wrong with that army was the lack of cavalry, otherwise it had great variety and really dependable troop composition. Large AI empires can afford both good stack composition and adequate stack numbers. Have you seen how many stacks a large AI empire can field? Many more than the player can, and the unit compositions are often quite balanced(they shouldn't be completely overpowered, that's not historical).

I am almost certain their removal will have a large positive effect on gameplay, if only we lose a bit of RP potential and free upkeep. I do wish that these settlements could be actual towns unto themselves, like they are intended to be(but due to engine limitations, cannot be as such), but since they cannot and since they are atrocious for the AI beyond words, they should be removed. A great deal of work has been done to try to make the AI behave better around them, and there has been some progress in that regard(in 2.01 AI armies would spend entire turns just entering and exiting minor settlements until their movement points were drained), but presumably what it came down to is that minor settlements are ultimately more trouble than they are ever worth for the CAI and BAI. And boy, what a load of trouble do they cause.

Don't misunderstand me: I wish minor settlements didn't royally screw with the AI the way that they do, but they ing do. It's just probably a lot better for gameplay, and easier on the modders to just remove them instead of them be one of the constant problem children of the mod (something they've been for a long while, hence why the decision to remove them was made, no doubt).

[RubiconDecision]

Supplies are WAY MORE complicated than that. It's worthy of a new topic.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

; Logistics and Supply Lines
;------------------------------------------
Trigger Army_was_PoorlySupplied_but_is_travelling_in_home_territory_now
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and not InEnemyLands
and Trait Supplies < 3

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 60
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 30

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_LogisticalSkill_was_PoorlySupplied_but_in_home_territory_now
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait LogisticalSkill > 0
and not InEnemyLands
and Trait Supplies < 3

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 80
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 40

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Army_WellSupplied_travelling_in_home_territory
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and not EndedInSettlement
and not InEnemyLands
and Trait Supplies < 4

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 80
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 40

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_LogisticalSkill_travelling_in_home_territory
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait LogisticalSkill > 0
and not EndedInSettlement
and not InEnemyLands
and Trait Supplies < 4

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 90
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 45

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Army_was_PoorlySupplied_but_is_home_now
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEndInSettlement

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait Supplies < 4
and not IsUnderSiege

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 100
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 80
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 60


;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_LogisticalSkill_was_PoorlySupplied_but_is_home_now
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEndInSettlement

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait LogisticalSkill > 0
and Trait Supplies < 4
and not IsUnderSiege

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 100
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 100
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 80

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Army_PoorlySupplied_under_siege
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEndInSettlement

Condition IsGeneral
and IsUnderSiege
and Trait Supplies > 1
and Trait LogisticalSkill < 1

Affects Supplies -1 Chance 90

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_LogisticalSkill_under_siege
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEndInSettlement

Condition IsGeneral
and IsUnderSiege
and Trait Supplies > 1
and Trait LogisticalSkill > 0

Affects Supplies -1 Chance 70

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Army_PoorlySupplied_while_campaigning
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and InEnemyLands
and not AtSea
and Trait Supplies > 1
and Trait LogisticalSkill < 1

Affects Supplies -1 Chance 90

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_LogisticalSkill_while_campaigning
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and InEnemyLands
and not AtSea
and Trait Supplies > 1
and Trait LogisticalSkill > 0

Affects Supplies -1 Chance 60

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Army_PoorlySupplied_while_campaigning_cold_winter
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and InEnemyLands
and not AtSea
and Trait Supplies > 1
and Trait LogisticalSkill < 1
and Trait WinterEffects > 0

Affects Supplies -1 Chance 100
Affects Supplies -1 Chance 80

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_LogisticalSkill_while_campaigning_cold_winter
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and InEnemyLands
and not AtSea
and Trait Supplies > 1
and Trait LogisticalSkill > 0
and Trait WinterEffects > 0

Affects Supplies -1 Chance 100
Affects Supplies -1 Chance 50

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Army_PoorlySupplied_while_campaigning_hot_summer
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and InEnemyLands
and not AtSea
and Trait Supplies > 1
and Trait LogisticalSkill < 1
and Trait SummerEffects > 0

Affects Supplies -1 Chance 90
Affects Supplies -1 Chance 60

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_LogisticalSkill_while_campaigning_hot_summer
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and InEnemyLands
and not AtSea
and Trait Supplies > 1
and Trait LogisticalSkill > 0
and Trait SummerEffects > 0

Affects Supplies -1 Chance 80
Affects Supplies -1 Chance 40

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_PoorlySupplied_DevastatesTile
WhenToTest GeneralDevastatesTile

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait Supplies < 4

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 60
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 30

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_PoorlySupplied_CaptureSettlement
WhenToTest GeneralCaptureSettlement

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait Supplies < 4

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 80

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_PoorlySupplied_EnslavePopulation
WhenToTest SackSettlement

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait Supplies < 4

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 90
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 60

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_PoorlySupplied_ExterminatePopulation
WhenToTest ExterminatePopulation

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait Supplies < 4

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 100
Affects Supplies 1 Chance 75

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_PoorlySupplied_stops_Drinking
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait Supplies < 4
and Trait Drink > 0

Affects Sobriety 1 Chance 10

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_PoorlySupplied_becomes_Austere
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait Supplies < 4

Affects Austere 1 Chance 5

;------------------------------------------
Trigger General_becomes_GoodLogistician
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and InEnemyLands
and not AtSea
and Trait Supplies = 4

Affects LogisticalSkill 1 Chance 5

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Assist_AI_General_WellSupplied
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

Condition IsGeneral
and Trait Supplies < 4
and not CharacterIsLocal

Affects Supplies 1 Chance 90

Without this condition:
and not CharacterIsLocal
then supplies affect the AI far too often, a known issue.

I have my own economic system. The AI is too often bankrupt. Money scripts contribute to bankruptcy by a sudden influx of cash then overspend then bankruptcy vicious cycle. It's a known issue.

Instead, the goal is cash-flow so the AI can defend and improve and afford fielding armies with minimal money scripts.

Try a campaign with Trade significantly higher. Start the AI with 100K. Free upkeep. See what happens. It settles out with a positive gaining balance offset by upkeep when away at war - trade loss. War becomes realistic with a carrot and stick.

Money scripts are unhealthy welfare and screw up what the AI should field for invasion. That's offset by cheap mercs upon events for the AI for defense.

The BAI for minor settlements might be buggy due to this in the descr_campaign_db:
<can_build_forts bool="false"/>
<fort_fortification_level string="-1"/>
It's usually 1, 2, or 3...a positive value. It's neither a fort or settlement but apparently a custom settlement, and they have zones for defense. That might be an IWTE issue not configured not a BAI issue.