So much AI expansion

[Dresden]

Most likely through diplomacy scripting. Litharion would know more.

[CIaagent11]

Most likely through diplomacy scripting. Litharion would know more.

Looking at the population mechanics and the seasonal effects system, which seem to suggest that a large amount of intrusive scripting is possible in R2TW, wouldn't it be possible to have some sort of "where/how big this faction is supposed to be" system for the AI, that deals out negative population order, financial penalties, spawning enemy armies or even inability to build troops in certain territories?

If you are getting into modding, its a good idea to have a separate folder you mod in then copy it to the data folder.

Yeah, if you haven't done any coding in a while, you get sloppy with your backups. No big deal, I wanted to redo most of those changes anyways.

I managed to get a pretty 'realistic' campaign going, by reducing factions tat got too big with savegame parser. It was really fun, and I managed to not hate it until after the marian reforms. But ultimately I'd prefer a non-cheaty solution. Also, I think Massilia is just overpowered.

[CIaagent11]

Gah... the TW launcher has the nasty habit of deleting my mod files. Which is particularly annoying if you spent several hours modding them without backing up your files. Anyways, what I did seemed to have backfired. Reducing base income to 1000 created a crazy world, where factions expanded even earlier. Massilia had an empire stretching to germania by tyrn 15. I was really surprised to see in the savegame parser that some factions still had money. They must not spend any at all, or have some hidden way of getting it. Anyways, thanks for the modding effort. Looking at the files has really made me appreciate the work you guys did. It's quite intricate.

[Dresden]

If you are getting into modding, its a good idea to have a separate folder you mod in then copy it to the data folder.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

The odd thing is I almost never see Massilia expand. Generally it is the Arverni that become a sprawling empire within the first 50-75 turns.

That is in 1937 hours of play, predominantly as Rome. In 1.1 Greek city states AI was made more defensive as well, limiting their desire to expand.

Also, I don't know how you can claim to be playing a realistic Roman campaign without the trinomina (three name system). What's so confusing about a personal name, family name, and nickname/title?

[CIaagent11]

Also, I don't know how you can claim to be playing a realistic Roman campaign without the trinomina (three name system). What's so confusing about a personal name, family name, and nickname/title?

It just confuses me because I can't identify characters at first glance like in Rome 1. The game seems to not always show the names in the same order, so it doesn't show the same name in the faction window and when clicking on an army. And a bunch of them have the same last name, so I can't remember them by their last name. It's not a big deal, it would just be simpler to have two names.

Is there any way to lower the chance of those political intrigue events, like assassination attempts? All they do is taking my generals away from their army and I have to put them back four turns later. I looked all over the pack file, but can't seem to find a variable.

[CIaagent11]

Is there any any I could script or otherwise make the factions stay where they're supposed to be? I'm getting tired of fighting athenians in pannonia.

[FlashHeart07]

If you know how to script then it shouldnt be a problem. But it wont be something that we would do.


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[CIaagent11]

If you know how to script then it shouldnt be a problem. But it wont be something that we would do.

Good to know that this is technically possible. I might get into scripting to create a "realistic expansion" submod. I can understand the lua scripts as I read them, but I would have to learn a bit to create one myself. Any hint on how I would go about this? I'm thinking I want certain factions to not be able to conquer certain regions. But a general expansion limit would almost work too. I'm having a hard time finding any scripting beginners guide at all, any hint on where to start?

[Ivan_Moscavich]

Just a note, in rome 1 you weren't forced to wait and siege cities.

Unwalled settlements could be attacked immediately, and you could launch an attack on the same turn you sieged for walled cities as long as you had a single piece of artillery.


Also I want to know what submods you are using. Massilia and athens can not be consistently becoming huge empires in your games.
It doesn't make any sense as they have so many anti expansion things in place.

In all of my campaigns (and they are countless, mostly 100 turn roman test files numbering in the upper 80s), athens almost invariably falls to macedon or epirus.
I have seen them take a few thracian cities exactly once, and that is because I aided them by taking out epirus and macedon. So they sent a large navu at the two small costal towns.

Massalia is always eventualy overrun because they are at war with 4 to 5 barbarian tribes. And the arverni conquer half of hispania and most of gaul by turn 30 very frequently.

I have to actively defend massalia by keeping a navy near by and aiding them in a city defence battle.

Oddly they have no problem winning in battle, but lose most of the time when it autoresolves.


You said you were using the increased cost submod for one, what else?

I just find it odd that your games are playing out so far from the norm.

[CIaagent11]

Just a note, in rome 1 you weren't forced to wait and siege cities.

Unwalled settlements could be attacked immediately, and you could launch an attack on the same turn you sieged for walled cities as long as you had a single piece of artillery.

That is certainly true. But there were very few unwalled settlements after the very early game, and the AI rarely hurled artillery around. In practice, in Rome 1 and the AI did siege. It gave you a few turns of warning time so you could bring up reinforcements. (And that's how I got to fight field battles. Rome 2 forces me to do city battles all the time.)
No sieging seems to create a very quick expansion. It's too easy for a big army to race through a region and conquer a bunch of settlements before the opponent can get there. It's too much of a fourth and back; sometimes I lose three settlements only to take them back in easy auto-calc battles as soon as my reinforcements arrive. In Rome 1, owning an empire was more about your strength as a faction than the positioning of your armies.

Also I want to know what submods you are using. Massilia and athens can not be consistently becoming huge empires in your games.
It doesn't make any sense as they have so many anti expansion things in place.

In all of my campaigns (and they are countless, mostly 100 turn roman test files numbering in the upper 80s), athens almost invariably falls to macedon or epirus.
I have seen them take a few thracian cities exactly once, and that is because I aided them by taking out epirus and macedon. So they sent a large navu at the two small costal towns.

Massalia is always eventualy overrun because they are at war with 4 to 5 barbarian tribes. And the arverni conquer half of hispania and most of gaul by turn 30 very frequently.

I have to actively defend massalia by keeping a navy near by and aiding them in a city defence battle.

Oddly they have no problem winning in battle, but lose most of the time when it autoresolves.


You said you were using the increased cost submod for one, what else?

I'm using few submods, and the only ones that should affect campaign gameplay are no PO garrison submod and me reducing basic income. Less money in the game might have created more of a winner-take-all situation. But the expansion is not something I did. Rome 2 is just set up for small factions to form randomized growing empires, rather than to stay in a historical area. In the 400+ turn savegame from the savegame thread (which I didn't make), bactria had a huge empire across the east, including arabia.

I want to do a realistic roman empire expansion, and happen to have a pet peeve about factions in a historically inaccurate place. With the greek city states it's just particularly noticeable, because they're different from the barbarians. Sometimes Massilia does get conquered by gauls. These are just examples. I'm even bothered by stuff like the illyrians making their way into germania, or cantabrians conquering gaul. I've seen tylis all over asia, and macedon pushing far north a bunch of times. Once Athens had all of dacia but nothing inbetween. It seems to be impossible to play a Roman empire campaign, where you get to expand slowly and meet the people they fought where they went. Not saying it's supposed to be that way, but that's what I happen to want to do. I know a lot of people complain that factions don't grow enough and there's no challenge after the mid-game. But I think it could be possible to set up the game in a way that factions don't need to be big to pose a challenge. For example, the romans certainly had trouble conquering the iberians, despite them being much smaller than them.

I wish the game had a functionality that restricted each faction to it's rough historical area, and beyond that they only do invasions where they fight armies, raid and sack, but not conquer.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

While I understand your desire for.a historical roman expansion (I would love nothing more than to simply control the action during a historical roman game from early republic to early empire in a total war game like experience) rome 2 is simply not built to be that kind of game.

Have you ever tried europa universalis: rome? That may be more to your liking.



Edit: reducing basic income may actually hurt barbarians more as they rely on several armies of cheap levies, where as the greeks only tend to have one main active army.

So while the greeks can still afford one good quality army, the barbarians may not be able to afford their several cheap armies, putting them at a large disadvantage.

This could be why the greeks are so expansive in your campaigns.

[CIaagent11]

Very true, Rome TW is simply not supposed to be that.
Thanks for the advice, I'll check out europa universalis. But I probably won't have time to get into another deep strategy game.
I tried a campaign with normal basic income, and it seems slightly more stable. Factions stayed in a acceptable state quite a bit into mid-game, if I battled them once they went into the wrong area. For one, the player has more disposable income to intervene. But eventually it becomes too unstable and there's not so much the player can do.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

EU: Rome was I believe either an expansion, or a stand alone companion game ot either EU 1 or EU 2. But it pretty accurately let you follow the rise of the roman republic.

It is definitely more on the grand strategy side of games however.

Something I used to play, but is far more difficult as a trucker, seeing as several hours in rome II is progress, where several hours in most GS games is.... just not worthwhile.

[FlashHeart07]

Try and ask Litharion. Scripting is not easy and AFAIK very few people know how to write a script correctly. Try and take a look at the scripts we already have and you will see the complexity.


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[CIaagent11]

Try and ask Litharion. Scripting is not easy and AFAIK very few people know how to write a script correctly. Try and take a look at the scripts we already have and you will see the complexity.

Yes, I always marvel at the intricacy of the scripts in the mod packs. But setting diplomatic statuses at the beginning of each turn shouldn't be that difficult. Unfortunately I can't find any Rome 2 scripting tutorials at all. Any hints where to start?

[FlashHeart07]

Again. Write to Litharion


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[Ygraine]

You can increase AI expansion without scripts, by increasing overall aggressiveness in the diplomatic tables and increasing army caps (more armies = more battles = more expansion) - I managed to attain this in Data Venia where the AI is a tad more active in terms of expansion in comparison to default 1.1. If you do this you have to buff regional supply values too, otherwise it will be a constant starve fest in certain regions through the whole campaign (for example Saka Rauka having constant starvation, not being able to threaten the parthian player from the north).

[DesMarekle]

I've got the same desire as Claagent11 in terms of limited AI expansion and I don't have any problem with "cheating" like regular savegame editing to achieve this.
Claagent, you mentioned editing savegames to achieve your goal above, what exactly did you edit? I've not been engaged with Rome 2 for a while and I remember the savegame files as being pretty complex - so how complicated would regular editing be, say every 10 years to get the world back to where it's "supposed" to be at the time?

[Dresden]

Thats not really possible to do, if you mean editing all the region ownerships like that.