[SUBMOD: a Slower Paced DeI Campaign] TESTUDO v.1.7 + Custom Packs [upd: aug.09/20] - OUTDATED

[Cool_Ranch]

- reworked the corruption trust effect (less hardcore)
Perfect. I just switched from republic to empire, and between the added empire maintenance and economic corruption, the income in all my provinces hit zero.

[gnosis89]

Incredible Jake! As always you've promptly provided us with magnificence itself.

Looking forward to the alternative hoplite/phalanx and especially the trading regions (hoping that is in store?)

The diplomacy distance would be nice as well, is the lag during end turns or while playing on campaign map?

[Cool_Ranch]

Is it normal to have way more 1st and 2nd class citizens than 3rd class citizens as Rome? My cities only have 1000-4000 proles, but 40,000+ plebs, and 10,000+ patricians (Taras has an astonishing 47000 1st class citizens).

[Jake Armitage]

@cool
send me your savegame and tell me what packs you're using, it will be useful to track down unbalancements and eventually give some advices
thanks
no that pop thing is not normal

gnosis
yeah would be nice, for sure, a little bit secondary and not actually 100% needed tbh

[Cool_Ranch]

Main packs are Medium, 4tpy, Rome.

Optional packs are 1-3 children, +1 ai recruitment, +1 ai armies.

My main recruiting province is southern Italy, pretty much only able to recruit veteran legionaries there since Marian reforms. I changed the main building in Taras from latin rights to roman provincial for more 3rd class growth, but even though there's 50k+ 1st class pops in Taras, they keep growing by 1k per turn, and 3rd class is falling due to overcrowding. I've been trying to move 1st class out and bring 3rd class in, but I can't keep up, the settler units don't even make a dent.

[Jake Armitage]

Ok, thx for the save
I've checked it and... well, nice campaign there, you've gone pretty far and you're even following historical conquests, nice.

So, I don't see great problems there except for 1 things:
you're outright tyrant... mmhhhh that is really giving you tons of penalties, was it a choice or a necessity? Try playing a little more with politics and have power more distributed, testudo has custom intrigues for doing that.

Everything else seems pretty fine though, economy seems good to me, you have 25k cash and 3k per turn, seems fair.
I may consider to make the economical trust less affected by treasury though. Or less penalties for the economical stimulation intrigue.

About population, so, yeah those numbers are weird, I've checked another savegame (750 turns at huge from Trippin) and effectively he has more or less the same pop ratios of yours
Do you have any idea if this is the same for DeI vanilla too?
I've tweaked many thing in the pop system but I did that proportionally.
I'll see what I can do about that math, one thing could just be raising (a lot) the pop for the settlers, so that you'll move 3-5 times the pop you can now.

Thx, checking other people campaign is always interesting for understanding how this mod works.
How was your experience, globally speaking?

[Piros]

i use this combination
https://gyazo.com/35ab0beb85bbbd0231c5fcc90133d1af

Maybe these files are wrong, because I don't understand that doing a clean installation won't work for me, without adding other mods

[Cool_Ranch]

How do I prevent having being a tyrant? I don't know how to keep my influence from growing, my party just has so many family members passively gaining gravitas compared to the other parties. I tried promoting and getting as many new characters for the other parties through marriage and adoption events as possible, but getting to tyrant seems inevitible.

Economy was a lot better before I switched to empire, was making 15k/turn, getting back up there though. I don't really understand the economic trust and corruption. I thought corruption was just based on how much money you have banked, but I've been at max corruption even after my treasury dropped from 200k to 3k. Is there anyway to increase economic trust besides spamming the economic stimulation intrigue?

Vanilla DeI's population is definitely not like this, in my vanilla campaign Taras is 1.5k/8k/50k/1k for first, second, third and fourth class populations. Rome is 4k/1.5k/54k/1k. In my Testudo game, Taras is 54k/9k/2k/1k and Rome is 5.5k/49k/2k/1k.

Settler size should be increased, they're hardly worth the trouble and expense to move 100-200 pops per unit, but that wont fix the population issue. I've tried moving proles in, but their population just decays, and I don't have a surplus of them anywhere in Italy anyway.

Would it be possible to raise the resting population of 4th class from 1k to 2k or give Rome an Imperium based 4th class pop bonus to simulate the influx of immigrants as the empire expands or something? It would be nice to have some more flexibility in raising AoR armies and using them in your own territory without immediately running out of manpower. There's doesn't seem to be any food, economic, or PO margins for wasting building slots on trying to boost foreign immigration. Just a thought if you're going to tweak the pop system more.

Overall experience so far is very good, been really enjoying it.
My praise: The general system is brilliant. I like how unit experience decays, I'm finally disbanding and raising new legions between wars like I ought to, instead of clinging on to certain units for the entire game. Campaign pacing on 4tpy seems perfect. The scaling difficulty penalties keep the game in that interesting sweet spot where decisions still matter, haven't been able to snowball out of control and get bored yet! I'm still figuring out some of the systems, there's a lot to learn, very indepth and impressive mod.

My feedback: It seems to be impossible to adequately culture convert a region enough to stabilize the PO without taking the entire province. I had just Carthage with culture conversion governors and diplomats and everything, but it was just endless rebelions for like 100 turns until I took the rest of Africa. This somewhat limits your options, just siezing individual cities of strategic value without conquering the rest of the province doesn't seem viable.
The PO maluses are pretty onerous, it doesn't leave a lot of options for what to build. The only buildings I can upgrade are temples and aquaducts, and most regions have 10-20 surplus sanitation because everything else is left unupgraded, yet the provinces barely squeak by on PO.
The tax penalties are brutal when they stack up too, I hit a point where I had -100% taxes in all provinces between stacking penalties and empire maintenance. I was oblivious to the economic trust system at the time though.
So far the AI has been really passive, maybe it's just because I've been at a low imperium level for a long time, but pretty much everyone has offered non agression pacts, and several have offered to become clients. Carthage even tried to ally me. I've had complete control of when and where I go to war since the first war with Epirus ended. The wars themselves have been pretty quick and easy, the AI isn't able to rebuild their armies quick enough to defend their settlements after losing a battle. I've added the +armies and recruitment packs recently, so maybe that will spice things up.

[Jake Armitage]

@cool
another thing, I see you're playing with +1 ai recruitment, +1 ai armies
that's pretty nasty actually, it will force player to quicker developements and harder wars, it surely will impact to your economy
maybe... if you wanna remain in 4tpy try to play it at hard and without those 2 packs
otherwise if you found the campaign too harsh just remove them, or even use some light weight packs

edit: see now we wrote the same time, gimme a minute for an answer

@piros
just tested and everything is fine
can't really help you more from here
quicker solution is
1) use mitch mod manager (instruction inside that word file I uploaded
2) use kaedrin mod manager
change mod manager and you'll see you'll never go back

also, as an advice, you may choose to play with a small faction if it's the first time you play testudo, it's easier to understand how the gameplay works

[Jake Armitage]

@cool

How do I prevent being a tyrant?
check the intrigues, there is a decrease power one
don't marry too many guys inside family, I never marry more than 2 actually
try to always keep characters as few as possible inside every party
check the power bar often 8every spring I would say) and build countermeasures

Economy
I'll probably have to check govs effects then
corruption, as most of the scripts, work with a turn delay. yes it works with treasury only
trust is a curve you can, in the same time, control and not control it. trades, taxes, treasury and stimulation are the main keys btw. It's not finished, surely not perfectly balanced but I really like how it works tbh

pop
I'll see what I can do and yes, I'll raise pop for settlers
yes it would be possible to script pop depending on various things but I'll have to put hands on the script itself (not just the libraries) and that's pretty nasty and it's a thing I always tried to avoid

tax and po
ok, I'll see to make things a little bit easier, mostly for mid/late campaigns

AI
well... I would like the player not being too much conditioned by AI like in DeI vanilla, where you always are at war and have to keep the pace.
I honestly prefer letting the player build its own way, not always, not for sure but tendentially at least.
I still have projects about diplomacy though.

Globally speaking I'm glad you're liking it
and yes, there is always space for improvements so keep reporting, thx

[leonardusius]

My feedback: It seems to be impossible to adequately culture convert a region enough to stabilize the PO without taking the entire province.

THIS IS HISTORICALLY PROVEN. Excellent work of Testudo, if it is true, because I really had very little spare time to play it.

[Jake Armitage]

yeah, but could be that cool's complaint is fair, playing 550 turns and arrive to a sort of frustration point isn't cool.
I think that lowering some penalties for mid/late game would be good and encourage more guys to play the campaign further

[leonardusius]

yeah, but could be that cool's complaint is fair, playing 550 turns and arrive to a sort of frustration point isn't cool.
I think that lowering some penalties for mid/late game would be good and encourage more guys to play the campaign further

Maybe, but a little. Me, always use the old mod which stops to recruit native troops until you gain culture majority in that specific region. Because was also HISTORICALLY proved. And that's even though to play with. I don't like to play 'arcadish' type like games when strategy is required. One more question, Jake: AI is using this mod also ?

[Jake Armitage]

you'll really have to upload that pack 'cause I can't remember what it did
if it was some modification of that purple turtle icon then I updated it so it probably won't work no more

[isa0005]

Am I blind? I can't seem to find the download for the mod...

[Jake Armitage]

you probably are, yeah
first post, at the bottom inside a DOWNLOAD spoiler
there are a lot of things inside, just follow instructions/example

[leonardusius]

Look for those scripts ! I guess the idea behind them are useful to incorporate into Testudo, I think. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...chtext=mk+1212. I mean the first two,
- Annex Vassals: Diplomatically annex vassals who have been subjugated for 10 or more turns.
- Buffer States: Release vassal buffer states from conquered territories where your direct control may be tenuous.
Also, reading inside other .lua ones, ex. population.lua, they introduce more concepts related to populations (https://github.com/DETrooper/MK1212S...on_economy.lua). Excellent ideas and much more to come as it is wrote to coming soon.

[Jake Armitage]

yeah, I already am in contact with DETrooper, the mind behind mk1212 new systems
DETrooper and Daruwind recently taught me how to spawn buttons which means I am now capable to build things my own way without having to use weird ways for triggering scripts
Yeah, I'll build both annex and self-liberate + something else, my own way I think, though
mk1212 has a custom pop system but I never played mk1212 nor checked its pop script, honestly the DeI pop script is so technically complex that I really think I would never change its core, redoing it form scratch would be a pain.
And yes, I have to balance testudo pop current values 'cause really dunno when but they got unbalanced

[leonardusius]

Very good to see more options into game due to Testudo scripts !

[Jake Armitage]

exactly that