[Overhaul Submod] "Data Venia" (for DeI 1.2.5 - Updated 2020-01-20)

[Lord Damian]

Thanks for the reply. Should i combine DV, AI Arbitris and Culture Tensio? Or that would be extreme hard o those mods are incompatible?

[Lionel Messi]

Thanks for the reply. Should i combine DV, AI Arbitris and Culture Tensio? Or that would be extreme hard o those mods are incompatible?

It depends. It is sometimes easier since the AI behaves more realisticly, not just ultra aggresive. I just think that Data Venia does a great job with battle and empire management, but that the AI is so buffed and agressive that it is hard to play around creating stable periods and focusing on something else than fighting 20 stack one after another AIA makes the AI behave more according to their culture when it comes to expanding and attacking, and CT makes it so that they are historically accurate as to whom they attack.

[MrMerisi]

It depends. It is sometimes easier since the AI behaves more realisticly, not just ultra aggresive. I just think that Data Venia does a great job with battle and empire management, but that the AI is so buffed and agressive that it is hard to play around creating stable periods and focusing on something else than fighting 20 stack one after another AIA makes the AI behave more according to their culture when it comes to expanding and attacking, and CT makes it so that they are historically accurate as to whom they attack.

Agreed re the above.

I modded DV a bit, tweaked the income so the AI builds its huge stacks a bit slower, doubled the building times, reduced arrow tower range and potency, reduced all fire arrow ranges to make burning down towers risky if they are defended by archers.

Now it feels perfectly balanced and I have some house rules like max 2 artillery units, no corner camping and only using forts as an absolute last resort. As Roma I have fought 7 large battles against Epirus (no fort battles yet this campaign), 5 of which were finely balanced and could have gone either way. Now they just landed 2 armies south of Taras plus an army from the Ardaiei who are their satrap.

With Cultural Tensio and DAIA added, this is by far the most challenge and fun I have had playing a TW game, probably since Imperial Splendour for TW.

The CAI, BAI and Diplomacy are just so much better. The enemy cavalry in particular behaves like it should - no more standing around doing nothing. They rear charge, cycle charge, chase missile troops and especially those Agema Hippeis are so tough to beat!

If only...if only....the BAI could maintain a single solid phalanx line instead of twisting and turning and attacking diagonally...

@Ygraine: it's too cheap and easy to get other factions to declare war on your enemies. I restarted, paid the Venetii 1,800 gold to declare war on the Etruscans and we've been best buddies ever since. Then Liguria joined in the war and offered me a trade agreement and a defensive alliance.

I suggest for 1.2.2.h that you try to make it more expensive to buy (temporary) allies.

[Lord Damian]

Agreed re the above.

I modded DV a bit, tweaked the income so the AI builds its huge stacks a bit slower, doubled the building times, reduced arrow tower range and potency, reduced all fire arrow ranges to make burning down towers risky if they are defended by archers.

Now it feels perfectly balanced and I have some house rules like max 2 artillery units, no corner camping and only using forts as an absolute last resort. As Roma I have fought 7 large battles against Epirus (no fort battles yet this campaign), 5 of which were finely balanced and could have gone either way. Now they just landed 2 armies south of Taras plus an army from the Ardaiei who are their satrap.

With Cultural Tensio and DAIA added, this is by far the most challenge and fun I have had playing a TW game, probably since Imperial Splendour for TW.

The CAI, BAI and Diplomacy are just so much better. The enemy cavalry in particular behaves like it should - no more standing around doing nothing. They rear charge, cycle charge, chase missile troops and especially those Agema Hippeis are so tough to beat!

If only...if only....the BAI could maintain a single solid phalanx line instead of twisting and turning and attacking diagonally...

@Ygraine: it's too cheap and easy to get other factions to declare war on your enemies. I restarted, paid the Venetii 1,800 gold to declare war on the Etruscans and we've been best buddies ever since. Then Liguria joined in the war and offered me a trade agreement and a defensive alliance.

I suggest for 1.2.2.h that you try to make it more expensive to buy (temporary) allies.

Buddy could you share your DV mod? But when Ygraine update his your mod will be broken right?

Anyway im still waiting Ygraine opinion about playing DeI with DV, DAIA, Cultural Tensio on normal normal and what is the difference between battles in vanilla DeI and his mod DV. Pls

[MrMerisi]

Buddy could you share your DV mod? But when Ygraine update his your mod will be broken right?

Anyway im still waiting Ygraine opinion about playing DeI with DV, DAIA, Cultural Tensio on normal normal and what is the difference between battles in vanilla DeI and his mod DV. Pls

1) The awesome Ygraine said I could share it and when the new DV (for DeI 1.2.2h I believe it will be) is released I will create a small submod just with the tables I have changed. Otherwise yes the new one will over-write it and it's 90MB for something like 500 table entry changes.

https://goo.gl/8xmNY4

2) For the battle changes, check out the DeI 1.2.2g changelog and the 1.2.2x changelogs and descriptions in the upload thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ated-January-8

This will show you everything you need to know about what's different in DV. To be honest, I thought I would be missing out on things like the toggle button for the phalanx mode, and differences in how units fight, but my battles in DV feel pretty realistic and they last a while. There's evidence that the actual combat in Roman warfare could last a pretty short amount of time once it actually started (20 mins to 1.5 hours) and that a lot of the epics we know of were actually a lot of maneuvering and mopping up once the routing started. Most of my battles fit within the 15 to 40 minute time window, longer for some sieges and mega battles with lots of reinforcing armies.

Can't remember if I mentioned this but definitely mod your savegame to get 41 unit armies.

3) Check the load order from my post above. I use DAIA, then CT, then DV, and the AI actually does smart and realistic stuff. If you're going to play as Rome, you will find yourself paying factions to fight your enemies - it's not a gimmick - and coalitions and tribal confederations will form and they will represent a great threat to your plans.

[Lord Damian]

What mod manager do you use and could you post a load order picture please? Can i just use the steam one and change names in order tu manage the proper order of loading?

And wait, your data venia mod is the actual Data Venia complete right? I don´t need to download the actual data venia right? or i need both and load yours before the vanilla one?

[MrMerisi]

What mod manager do you use and could you post a load order picture please? Can i just use the steam one and change names in order tu manage the proper order of loading?

And wait, your data venia mod is the actual Data Venia complete right? I don´t need to download the actual data venia right? or i need both and load yours before the vanilla one?

I use the mod "manager" that comes with the game launcher. See my image pasted above in a previous post for load order. So yes in your /data folder, just go in and change the names manually and they will load in alphabetical/numerical order, and if you put an @ symbol, that will load before a number which loads before a letter.

So @ is before 1 which is before a.

You only need the DV pack that I sent you the link to. You can replace the original with that one.

[JCB206]

Shouldn't the softcore mod make diplomacy more reasonable? It is loaded before everything else.

DeI Softcore 1.2 Only AI Aggression (Just changes war/peace/AI personality settings)

I have tried two campaigns so far. One a Ptolemy Egypt and one as the Seleucid Empire. With Egypt (without softcore mod) everyone declared war on me in about 10 turns. I had spent my entire treasury (starting and each turn) on diplomacy to get a stable setting. Didn't matter at all. Once one enemy declared war, the rest followed. The second (with softcore mod) I spent 2/3 my money on diplomacy and the rest on getting troops on the border. Turn 2, four factions declared war and me and my satraps. I persuaded most neutral factions to declare war on at least one common enemy. Relations were boosted well, then end turn. All but 2 known factions are at war with me.

I really like most of your changes...

Tips for early campaign to keep everyone from auto declaring? I don't want to play where you have to fight every faction in the game as it completely eliminates diplomacy. The rest of the Sub-mod looks great from what I have read. Thanks.

[MrMerisi]

Shouldn't the softcore mod make diplomacy more reasonable? It is loaded before everything else.

DeI Softcore 1.2 Only AI Aggression (Just changes war/peace/AI personality settings)

I have tried two campaigns so far. One a Ptolemy Egypt and one as the Seleucid Empire. With Egypt (without softcore mod) everyone declared war on me in about 10 turns. I had spent my entire treasury (starting and each turn) on diplomacy to get a stable setting. Didn't matter at all. Once one enemy declared war, the rest followed. The second (with softcore mod) I spent 2/3 my money on diplomacy and the rest on getting troops on the border. Turn 2, four factions declared war and me and my satraps. I persuaded most neutral factions to declare war on at least one common enemy. Relations were boosted well, then end turn. All but 2 known factions are at war with me.

I really like most of your changes...

Tips for early campaign to keep everyone from auto declaring? I don't want to play where you have to fight every faction in the game as it completely eliminates diplomacy. The rest of the Sub-mod looks great from what I have read. Thanks.

I don't know which tables Softcore changes but I find the CAI in DV to be quite intriguing, especially when loading DAIA and CT before it. It makes sense that a weak but wealthy power is going to face issues versus less wealthy powers that have 70-80% "discounts" on their unit upkeep (and probably recruitment as well).

So the issue you are going to face is that, unless you edit the Startpos to give yourself a bigger starting army, you are going to seem weak but wealthy to the AI.

In my current game, turn 85 and I have the same power rating as the Dalmatae...

I find that, early game, paying people to declare war on your enemies kind of stops them from declaring war on you. IMO it's too cheap at the moment.

I would tweak AI unit upkeep to make it a bit more expensive for them, and make it more expensive to get others to DoW your enemies.

Trade needs to be easier. It makes no sense to me that the Venetii will DoW several enemies for 1800 gold but won't accept trade for 8000.

@Ygraine - can you tell me where to mod the AI discount for unit upkeep? Thank you!

[AS1606]

At what point in the data veni overhaul do factions get their military reforms? I have started a Rome campaign and played up to where they are supposed to be in the normal dei - for polybian reforms turn 40 imperium lvl 3 - and have researched the first purple tech - but nothing has happened yet

[MrMerisi]

At what point in the data veni overhaul do factions get their military reforms? I have started a Rome campaign and played up to where they are supposed to be in the normal dei - for polybian reforms turn 40 imperium lvl 3 - and have researched the first purple tech - but nothing has happened yet

AFAIK if you are playing 24 TPY it's 120 turns circa.

[JCB206]

I don't know which tables Softcore changes but I find the CAI in DV to be quite intriguing, especially when loading DAIA and CT before it. It makes sense that a weak but wealthy power is going to face issues versus less wealthy powers that have 70-80% "discounts" on their unit upkeep (and probably recruitment as well).

So the issue you are going to face is that, unless you edit the Startpos to give yourself a bigger starting army, you are going to seem weak but wealthy to the AI.

This makes some sense. It seems this mod is made for small powers. Every large power has a very good income and very little troops. Seleucid's have 11-12 regions and maybe 8 units. Egypt has 10-12 regions and about the same units but weaker. I would attack that too if I could raise so many troops for so cheap too.

Anyway to help out the larger factions get a start?

In my current game, turn 85 and I have the same power rating as the Dalmatae...

I find that, early game, paying people to declare war on your enemies kind of stops them from declaring war on you. IMO it's too cheap at the moment.

I tried that with the Seleucid and then everyone was just at war with each other because I was a weak (militarily) target. They need a few turns to build units but you would need time to build 40-60 units and you would be surrounded by 100's of units and with the reduced movement, you cant defend your large borders. This mod is for smaller factions starts IMO. Rome may be the exception as the have very tough and cheap units and an ideal starting location. Fighting on one front and defensive on one front could be doable but fighting 20 factions by turn 6 is not entertaining, though I like the ideas on this mod.

[AS1606]

AFAIK if you are playing 24 TPY it's 120 turns circa.

Thanks for the reply! Can anyone else playing with Data Venia confirm this?

[JCB206]

Made a run through with Rome. Rushed Etruscans and Venetians (?). Fun fights, definitely more aggressive AI. Constant revolts that allows some fun 4 on 4 fights, though I see no end in sight with that. If you are constantly recruiting units and playing diplomacy, then your regions are constantly going red. Every turn I recruit more Hastati to replace losses and move forward. Recruit some units every turn in the south. 4 battles won, no losses and all peaceful in the North, though that wont last i'm sure. 5 turns in.

Mod definitely feels playable as Rome though diplomacy is all about declaring war. No trade agreements just me asking people to declare war and the AI declaring war on me. Going to give another try with Egypt. Hard to beat Rome's starting position though, as it takes 3 turns in winter to reach one end to the other. As Egypt or Seleucid, it takes twice as long in summer. Also you have more "known" factions which just means more people to declare war on you.

JMO but diplomacy is main issue with the sub mod. Nostalgic to see the old battle system. I would like better diplomacy, aggressive AI when war is declared, not just "I need to be at WAR now!"

Again, just trying to make it more playable for all factions. Maybe your own soft core mod for the beginning?

Originally you stated that the mod was supposed to be played on Normal, which was like "Very Hard" in normal DEI. What about playing it on Easy, with Normal battles?

[MrMerisi]

This makes some sense. It seems this mod is made for small powers. Every large power has a very good income and very little troops. Seleucid's have 11-12 regions and maybe 8 units. Egypt has 10-12 regions and about the same units but weaker. I would attack that too if I could raise so many troops for so cheap too.

Anyway to help out the larger factions get a start?

I tried that with the Seleucid and then everyone was just at war with each other because I was a weak (militarily) target. They need a few turns to build units but you would need time to build 40-60 units and you would be surrounded by 100's of units and with the reduced movement, you cant defend your large borders. This mod is for smaller factions starts IMO. Rome may be the exception as the have very tough and cheap units and an ideal starting location. Fighting on one front and defensive on one front could be doable but fighting 20 factions by turn 6 is not entertaining, though I like the ideas on this mod.

1) The Startpos can be edited to provide Rome (or whoever you like) with more troops. There are decent tutorials by Magnar on YouTube for how to do this. There should be a simple way to mod the movement distance, but Ygraine said there is a change coming in the next version. Still, I like the reduced movement even though it would be a real pain in bigger regions. However 2 weeks to march the width of Italy, with baggage train, is pretty quick in winter, as the Appenines are hard to cross.

2) IMO the mod is designed to be extremely tough and there are several handicaps for the player:

- small starting army and treasury, it's just not mathematically possible to build up a large enough force quickly enough to counter AI aggression if you don't use the 2k buy-offs to get factions to DW on your enemies. Raising 40 units that cost an average of 100 per turn upkeep and 600 to recruit means you need to spend 24k on recruitment and up to 4k per turn in upkeep within 8 turns, while countering PO penalties. So the only way it works is you (relatively cheaply) bribe all of your neighbours to fight each other. It costs the same to get the Ardaiei to DW on Epirus as it does to recruit 1 Equites unit and pay for its first month upkeep.

If you get "domino DoW" early, your campaign is over.

- when the AI owns a settlement, the "gold" displayed for that settlement is 4-10x higher than when the human player controls it. I believe this is because of the scripts that give the AI money, which varies by imperium level as well. I don't know the intricacies of this but it seems very powerful for the AI.

- because of the AI money scripting and additional recruitment slots, 1-minor-province factions can support 100+ units within 50 turns. It's a multiplier of the AI GBP boost script and the 60-90% discounts on upkeep (and probably build costs too). Ygraine has said this is because the AI is so bad at managing its economy. So if 2 or more of these DW on you, it's going to be tough.

- I have not figured out yet how to mod the scripts to give the AI less of a discount so it builds a couple of stacks over time but not an implausible amount. I wouldn't have an issue with a confederation of tribes bringing 50k troops on campaign, just not when Rome has a tiny army and the regions are relatively large so borders with hostile tribes happen immediately. Historically they conquered Italy piece by piece, not entire regions at a time so I know the game mechanics can't show that (imagine the Prologue map at full scale!).

In my most recent campaign, Syrakousai conquered all of Sicily but created satraps. However they themselves raised over 120 units and invaded Cosentia. I destroyed the farms, pulled back and raided and 4 of their stacks got diseased and depleted. Then there was a rebellion and they ended up fighting the Lucanians for a year. Pretty epic outcome considering I was expecting to get steamrolled!

So I'm continuing to tweak my own version of the mod to the point where I like how it feels. Reducing all "hidden GDP" (even for the player) seems to be working pretty well. The AI is still building stacks just not as fast as they were with the default 2k gold.

[JCB206]

Playing as Ptolemy Egypt on the IA map. Either being a Client State or recruiting as many units as possible in the first few turns has stopped the AI from "domino DOW". I have everyone at war with the same two factions (in Arabia) and had the country to the west declare war on me. Trying to decide if I want to spend the large amount of time and money to send an army to Arabia to get "military action against"?

Fought two battles and stormed a town vs the town to the west and the war is over. Now going to attempt to actually grow my population and get taxes off max. 32 turns in.

One thing I noticed that I really dislike...You have put experienced gained from governing to 1 or 2 points per turn instead of 10 points? This actually makes me use less generals. Why pay 250-500 in upkeep for a general? By not being able to train governors ruins immersion for me. My generals get traits based on what they are doing at the time. If they get promoted in battle, they get battle or army administration skills. If they get it in a city, they get trade, +PO, +tax, -Empire maintenance, etc. This also stops the AI from leveling up unless they are fighting.

Just makes little sense to me...some say "Hey! they should get experience for just sitting there!", but they are governing. They are working or they would be statesmen.

I'm on 32 turns in and I only have 2 generals that has leveled up one spot and both were in battles. They both got army skills. JMO

[MrMerisi]

I have modded DV further to reduce unit recruiting costs and upkeep for both the player and the AI, and balance the elite unit costs so they are more expensive and more valuable, reflecting the impact on the Roman economy when its most productive citizens left to fight, while at the same time making it more realistic for Rome to be able to field some legions early game to deal with the aggressive AI and the inability to fortify borders without generals. Also on 41-unit armies the AI frequently builds and attacks with full stacks, so you don't have the option of a smaller border guard force in a fort holding back a medium-sized invader. 1,000 men in a fort can destroy a 9,000 man invasion force and that's just silly. Even if you role play and say the Roman forts would have had ballista towers, moats and all kinds of other things, the Barbarians weren't so stupid as to charge 5,000 men at one entrance all at the same time.

The force ratio I am using is 2 Regions = 1 Legion.

So, with 41-unit armies, holding the 6 central and southern regions of Italy you can field 3 x 41-unit legions, between 16,000 and 19,000 men under arms depending on your army composition. If you use more levy troops the number will obviously be higher. Because the AI doesn't know how to attack forts properly, and because the arrow towers cannot be nerfed or it makes barbarian walled towns too easy to capture, and it's not possible to have a small garrison in a fort without a character "general" the house rule is now "no forts."

Current test is 70 turns in and I am fighting a Celtic Confederation invasion with a ratio of 1 legion for every 1.7 Celtic armies, which means open field battles with 1 legion (6,000 men) versus 10,500 Celts. I have a heavy infantry core of around 2,000 men, then a mix of younger and levy troops and a cavalry wing.

As for generals - I am reducing their upkeep to 0 across the board for all factions. These were very wealthy men who didn't rely on the state to fund their personal retinue, and this way they can be garrisoned as governors and gain experience.

I am also studying how to mod the scripts to give the human player much greater corruption and public order penalties as the empire gets larger, effectively making it very expensive to keep large cities happy (requiring the Bread & Games edict to basically be constantly "on", and making the cultural penalties even more severe so that conquered peoples rebel constantly until sufficiently Romanised.

Finally, I am making fleets slightly less expensive so both the player and the AI can raise historically plausible fleets. Even though the AI does a poor job of consolidating fleets, just make it a house rule not to use a 20-ship fleet to pick the AI off 1 squadron at a time. Combined with the zero-cost generals, you can now have 3-4 fleets operating and you just make it a rule that you're going to try to match the enemy fleet size, not defeat them in detail every time.

[Ygraine]

Ok let's see if I can answer everything:

@Lord Damian

Congratulations on your new GPU!

DV has a little slower combat and albeit the balance was based on the old 0.x/1.0 DeI balance, I have since then changed a lot of details to suit my own playstyle. The slower pace was what made me enjoy fights when I was new to the original mod, so I was sad to see it go and get replaced by something with faster pace and it prompted me to start learning how to mod.

DV works well with AI Arbitris and Cultural Tensio as far as I'm aware.

@jdofo

I'll update the 4tpy and 12tpy packs with corrected movement when the big update is released!

@Jackito

I'm not sure. Never had a mod-file vanish from my folder like that

@Lionel Messi

I will test changing the recruitment bonus from +2 to +1 and test it in a campaign. Have to say that I suspect it will be way too easy for the player, especially later on in a campaign when you have a full province and +x bonuses, while AI isn't able to keep up with your recruitment power.

@MrMerisi

When the AI is deciding if they want to declare war on someone or not, they look at strength ratio between themselves and the enemy, in addition to diplomatic relations.
If you add that most non-defensive AI personalities want to always have a war going on, it's not too far fetched that it's easy to pay someone to attack another early on in the game before they get their own wars and before the balance of power is altered. Thus those that are "cheap" to "bribe" to attack someone else might have declared war even without your gold.

Best way to have your own changes in a pack is to create a separate one and import only those tables you are changing, that way it'll be easy to fix stuff if an update breaks things.

I'm at work now so I can't check, but I believe it's in campaign_handicap_effects_tables or something like that. You want to change the value that belongs to "0"-rows (which is for normal difficulty).

As for fort-strength, I'm still experimenting with the ignition threshold for fort-walls as I don't see any other way to make them less "OP" (already slightly nerfed tower damage in my beta version). The only two solutions is to either make walls catch fire faster (so that they break and larger gaps are created for the AI to enter your fort with melee units) or give some adverse negative campaign effect for standing in a fort.

@JCB206

This is interesting because I rarely get everyone declaring war on me at the beginning. Perhaps it's because I manipulate diplomacy right away to have some of them fight each other. Also if a player doesn't build up their army early, others will see you as a weak kingdom ripe for the taking (relative strength ratio being a factor whether they declare war on you or not).
I've had a few occassions when I'm larger later on and hated among others, that in some cases 5-6 might declare war on me together - but by then you might actually have a chance to keep your borders safe.
In overall it's kind of difficult to find the sweet spot for the AI when it comes to diplomatic behaviour. The "snowball"-effect is something that happens often and the three only solutions I had for that so far is to either have decent relations with everyone, have a defensive/military alliance with someone strong or be strong yourself.

As for handling public order, dignitaries are buffed in DV in comparison to DeI. Sure, they cost more but they give more bonuses and are a must (in combination to governor-general) later on to maintain a healthy kingdom.
I would actually recommend to tech dignitaries the first thing you do in many cases. Sometimes it's more worth to go for military first (to either unlock next tier barracks or get the +25% ammo as barbarian), but after that get the dignitary tech. The philosophy tree in general is better in DV than in DeI, as I've replaced political incident occurrences/costs with small diplomacy bonuses with all factions and research speed bonus.

I already buffed movement a little in my beta version of the next patch and it's working out quite well so far - I'm sure most players will like the new movement more than the old.

DV is designed to be played in normal. The bonuses to the AI are larger in normal than even "very hard". All other difficulties are pretty much DeI values and I cannot recommend nor know how well or bad the AI will behave with the standard settings. I made it this way so that two people can play coop/head-to-head normally, because in multiplayer you can't change campaign and battle difficulty separately (#CA).

And lastly in regards of governor-general exp gain, I might try to double the exp they get from governing (perhaps from 1 to 2 or 3), but 10 is insane and overpowered. You'll be sitting on a level 10 godly governor in no time with that setting

@AS1606

Rome should get it in GC at turn 120 with 24 tpy iirc... I've had one person say that they didn't get the reform at that date, but another said they got so I have to investigate the reform script to make sure there's nothing wrong with it.

[MrMerisi]

Thanks @Ygraine. I will export the DV tables and import into a separate pack when you release 1.2.2h.

For those about to start a new campaign, when do you think that will be released?

In the meantime could you let us know where to mod the movement distance?

The issue with forts will remain that with the pathfinding the AI will always blob one entrance over others and the arrow towers will kill thousands, along with stupid AI friendly fire.

Have you considered enabling a bunch of deployable barricades allowing the player to build their own sort of fort and station archers inside it?

[waidizss]

Was just reading through a few posts and remembered that I am 40 turns into a campaign and I forgot to set it to normal instead of hard. Crying inside.