This translates into a strategy for the player: once you are at war with an AI faction, you need to kill it off asap. Just beat an army and then relentlessly take all the settlements. This makes the sniping-group-of-armies tactics (se my sig) the most viable one. What is actually not the most historical one...
Actually, I wonder if somebody has explored if it's possible to make Imperium level for the AI moving more often. Like: it'd go up if the AI is attacked threatened (so that it can recruit more), but keeping low otherwise?
(Jake - I'm sorry if it's not the place to discuss it but I have no time to follow the forae, I've just bumped with the idea).
you can add more imperium levels, but you will add them for both, palyer and AI
but you can script so the AI has more/less armies depending on some conditions (I already did something about this).
One thing doable is to relate it to regions owned, so to resemble what you suggest but I had people complaining about AI being slightly too strong regarding troops deployement (in comparison to player's)
I think the best way to counter this may be a spawn army script so as soon as the players approaches sensible areas (like important capitals) an AI army is spawned (quite a classic for some M2TW mods)
Jake - I'm over 50 turns into a campaign with your beta build. What type of feedback are you looking for?
well... any... mostly how do you feel the gameplay, that is what matters
I've already done quite a lot of changes though.
I'll have to do some more factions pack (at least tor reach 10) and then I'll release it.
Yo, great mod! Basically plays the way i would normally play, but forces me too with a minimum of house rules.
I play on Medium/4TPY
I've gotten to turn ~660 as Pergamon. Going to abandon the campaign because Ive kinda both already won and perhaps lost at the same time.
I've noticed a couple things:
1. My provinces don't really want to grow, like, at all. Asia, where i had low taxes for ages and have built Pergamon city to stage IV, I still don't have more than two other buildings (out of possible 5?). The population growth (the one that unlocks more buildings) thus seems obnoxiously high in requirement. The AI has easily built up all of their territory though to the point where I have to raze some of them to keep them under control.
2. PO options seem limited. I've maxed out the possibilities for focusing on PO control only and I've still had to fight sooooooo many garbage uprising battles. Feels really tedious, you could probably solve it by giving more and better role play generals next patch to handle it, right now they're mostly pretty weak. Mind you, the problem is more pronounced for foreign cultures, which is fine, but since the victory conditions require a good chunk of the map to be conquered, having every outlier region be an eternal ulcer can be tiresome.
3. late game economy becomes too baffling to control as far as trying to "plan" for anything, as I think there are so many scripts running and so many weird hidden modifiers that each turn is a totally unpredictable income level. Sometimes i will be struggling, other times i will suddenly be making 5-10k a year, and then go back with nothing having changed except the seasons, sure there is a pattern of making less in winter and more in summer generally, but that isnt always the case. It also feels kinda weird that, rather than having my taxes just be reduced to near zero, they now actually hemorrhage into the negative, far more costly than the meager two armies i maintain. This is hard to track down in the UI just why it is, I'm guessing its building maintenance flat costs per turn ontop of the myriad modifiers and empire maintenance depressing the taxes to zero?
4. Agents are actively useless now, as even the noob generals on the AI side are all sporting 8 to 9 stats on authority/zeal/etc. Thus, I cannot act on them in anyway unless my agent is an ancient legend. Spies are food stealing bots, champions PO/upkeep bots, and dignitaries just feel pretty useless.
5. XP rates feel too low for both agents and generals. They keep dying from old age before doing anything interesting stat wise. When I do eventually get a few stats going, it all just has to go to PO/empire maintenance.
6. Given how expensive buildings are to build and how long they take, a few of them feel pretty weak now, though overall building feels much better and more important than just instantly upgrading everything right off. Sprinkling some empire maintenance suppressors in to the more cultural buildings would be nice to free up some generals to take other skills, the trade off would be the time and expense to build.
7. Not sure about some of the maluses introduced later into the game "just because". I feel these would be better balanced by tweaking Imperium maluses, having them stack ontop of each other feels a little urgh.
8. Some of my generals feel weirdly slow? I didn't notice it early on but in late game they seem to be crawling around... will have to test more on this one though.
Nothing has been back breaking thus far but I feel some of my options are actually more limited due to certain malus stacking. However, overall, decisions are more important and the game must be played slower, so that is on target.
Other thoughts:
I've never liked DeI's victory conditions, they seem to only make sense for a small handful of the largest factions while being obnoxiously large for the small ones (the ones I usually like to play) not your fault but the slower pace makes it even more painful.
Also, since the player is forced to play slow, I would really love some even larger reform delays. Fighting multiple stacks of armored imperial legionaries in ~220bc just feels gross. It doesnt bother me for most factions, the greeks and celts seem pretty well timed, but the Romans are still wayyyy too early.
Politics and general economy pacing seems good, haven't had any troubles with either.
How do you play with 4TPY when 4TPY is not ready yet ?
Also, the FIRST goal of jake's work is to slow down the game. I am on his side here. I was totally bored for vanilla fast paced rhythm. As for reforms, you're right. Romans are still too early, but i am not sure if Jake don't have a .pack with other reform dates, from memory.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bvh8z6m9f2...gamon.zip?dl=0
Here ya go, four saves over the campaign about 40 years apart up to my present play time. Also, i lied, I actually wont be abandoning it and will play it through to conclusion, so I'll provide those in the future if you wish.
Also yes, I've been playing 1.6.
Thanks man!
I really need saves games to understand what actually happens in an advenced campaign.
Let me have a look, then I'll be able to answer better your questions.
Hi Jake - For some reason, I cannot declare war on Syracuse as Rome. The option doesn't populate in diplomacy and when I click on the city with my army, the Declare War box is greyed out.
Any clue as to why?
Yes, I've blocked it for the first 12 turns.
There are quite some first year diplomacy blocks (both for player and AI).
I'll enlist them when I'll release it fully. (You can check the PO script, at the real bottom)
I'm way past year one and it's still blocked.
mmh, that's weird. I've tested it with other factions and it worked fine (like this script works fine for alexander submod)
the war button will be showed again on 15th turn, the first spring month of the second year.
If not, please send me the savegame
I've also noticed that armies can get stuck in another forces sphere of influence (the red circle). This has happened with one of my armies being stuck as if caught in a gravity well between the 2 cities on Sicily on the western side of the island. My army couldn't go back to the city with the iron, it could only go forward to the other city, held by Carthage. I had to attack the city then retreat the army, that broke the gravity lock effect as the retreat took my army past the red influence zone.
I've had issues changing the stances of armies out of Fortify (no icon to click after going into it).