[Submod] Strategikos

[JC_von_Preussen]

Hello Erken,

I appreciate the submod !

However, I recently switched SURRENDER to 65% as I felt 75% was disapointing. Problem : it looks like the script is not working any longer. The next battle I played (defensive siege), I had to wait untill 100% of my army was killed... Should I restart the script ? What should I do ? Is something wrong ?

Thx in advance !

[JC_von_Preussen]

Hey again,

So I played another battle. This time I'm an expeditionary corps engaged by two enemy armies. Big difference this time : It's a 2v1. So I suppose that's why the script won't work. That's too bad. My men should have already surrendered. Any possibility to push the script even in 1vx ?

[Erken]

Hi, yes it works only in 1vs1 currently, as mentioned. There was a problem of ctd when i used a command to test the strength of a not present army, si i have limited the thing. This is indeed frustrating, nevertheless i can probably circumvent the problem now. That's on my (long) to do list.

I regularly forget myself this limitation .

Otherwise, there is a real (but minor) problem with some settlements that cannot be breached by the poliorketika script. I have just identified the thing, and it will be fixed in a next update.

[JC_von_Preussen]

Hi, yes it works only in 1vs1 currently, as mentioned. There was a problem of ctd when i used a command to test the strength of a not present army, si i have limited the thing. This is indeed frustrating, nevertheless i can probably circumvent the problem now. That's on my (long) to do list.

I regularly forget myself this limitation .

Otherwise, there is a real (but minor) problem with some settlements that cannot be breached by the poliorketika script. I have just identified the thing, and it will be fixed in a next update.

Thanx for the quick answer and update.

I just finished a 1v1 near Salamis. I was attacking. On purpous I let my opponent alive past 66% of losses by his side. The battle SURRENDER script did not happen. Even after 3 minutes real time.
As I mentionned, this problem only happens when I have the 65% script, not the 75%. Am I hallucinating this ?

[QuintusSertorius]

The limitations of number of armies involved is one of the reasons z3n stopped any further work on his battle scripts for EBII. Whenever he added more nuances, it simply meant it was much more crash-prone when multiple armies engaged.

[Erken]

Thanx for the quick answer and update.

I just finished a 1v1 near Salamis. I was attacking. On purpous I let my opponent alive past 66% of losses by his side. The battle SURRENDER script did not happen. Even after 3 minutes real time.
As I mentionned, this problem only happens when I have the 65% script, not the 75%. Am I hallucinating this ?

Thanks for reporting this. I have tested 5 battles with 65% and the script has worked 4 times; for the last case the battle has probably stoped before the next iteration. The gauge of losses is something not exactly reliable, so it could a part of the explication. Could you tell me if it was a very long battle?
Also, the script is very simple, and the setting alone should not be an issue. I will investigate (it could be a problem with I_PercentageOfArmyKilled which is a heavy condition for the engine).

The limitations of number of armies involved is one of the reasons z3n stopped any further work on his battle scripts for EBII. Whenever he added more nuances, it simply meant it was much more crash-prone when multiple armies engaged.

Battle scripting is quickly tedious. A lot of things are totally or half broken, and the performance and the stability are very problematic, even without multiple armies. For example some events can be used with only one condition (direct or independent), otherwise they are not executed. Some others accept only one secondary condition, and a "if" nested in another one (or associated with more than one condition) can sometimes simply break the full monitor.

Futhermore, the performances of a basic thing like monitor_conditions also depend on the size of the script: in a background script i was able to add several hundred of lines inside this monitor without problem. If i do the same thing inside the eb2 campaign_script, even with ony ten lines, then won't be executed (unless i remove the rest of the script...).
In fact, i'm sure that if the script reach a critical size monitor_conditions will no more be operational (keep calm! it works great currently for eb2, and with good room for manoeuvre a priori), and it's already the case for I_UnitStatus iirc.

In the case of multiple armies, there is also the problem that the "goal to achieve" system of the ai is very rudimentary and so hardly supports the external constraints.

[JC_von_Preussen]

Thanks for reporting this. I have tested 5 battles with 65% and the script has worked 4 times; for the last case the battle has probably stoped before the next iteration. The gauge of losses is something not exactly reliable, so it could a part of the explication. Could you tell me if it was a very long battle?
Also, the script is very simple, and the setting alone should not be an issue. I will investigate (it could be a problem with I_PercentageOfArmyKilled which is a heavy condition for the engine).

It was not a very long battle. I play my campaigns with infinite battle time (I suppose it's in the AI's favor), so I have no real measure of game-time. All I can say is that at home, much more than three minutes had elapsed, and, as seen in the picture above, the difference in % was very big.

Thanx in advance for the investigations. I will resume my campaign with the SURRENDER 65% to provide more feedback.

[JC_von_Preussen]

Hey there. So my game is running fine again. Rebooting has let me play with my saves again. Maybe I had been playing for too long yesterday and the scripts got wrong ?

Anyway, so today I played quite a few battle still with SURRENDER 65% and I still don't get the event while I clearly should... Very strange that it works by you! I'm starting to think about reverting back to 75%.

What else, concerning State of War. Will there be a possibility in the future to actually see what the CURRENT effects are ? I have been at wars with the Seleucids for more than 20 years, but now that I've been forced to sign a shameful peace, I'd like to see the numbers of my new take off

About State of War : The fact that one can never make peace with the Rebels does not count right ? What happens if you are at war with different enemies do the scripts cumulate ? At one point I was at war with the entire Hellenistic world + Carthage, and I felt my economy and PO fall dawn...

[Erken]

For the 65% that's really weird, and i don't know what to say. It works for me, all is correct in the script, and i have done all my tests with the version i have posted, so yes for the moment it's better to not loose your time with this setting. Forgive my question, but are you sure you have not pressed 4 instead of 3 when you have choosen your setting (just check in the options)? That's the kind of thing that i have already done...

For the state of war, you can see the effects on the wall building. It's a little unreadable to be honnest, since the effects are not cumulated, but that's something i have planned to enhance through a new interface (when is another question).

The rebels are indeed not taken account, nor the number of ennemies. There is only a penalty for the factions already at war at the beginning of the campaign, depending on the duration of their initial war (but if you disable and re-enable the script, it will be reset).

This script is still wip, and currently not as flexible as i would like (and it's probably bettre to disable it unless you want an additional difficulty) . The final goal inter alia is also to obtain an interaction between the military situation and a part of the loyalty of your generals (depending partly on their traits). But it's probably a bit too ambitious...

[JC_von_Preussen]

So this building is actually showing the current state of war impact :

[JC_von_Preussen]

So this building is actually showing the current state of war impact :
Turn 148 at peace since 1 year I think.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Same building at turn 133 when I was still at war with the Seleucids from the start of the game :

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

So it would seem the situation got worst for me after I made peace ?

[QuintusSertorius]

Battle scripting is quickly tedious. A lot of things are totally or half broken, and the performance and the stability are very problematic, even without multiple armies. For example some events can be used with only one condition (direct or independent), otherwise they are not executed. Some others accept only one secondary condition, and a "if" nested in another one (or associated with more than one condition) can sometimes simply break the full monitor.

Futhermore, the performances of a basic thing like monitor_conditions also depend on the size of the script: in a background script i was able to add several hundred of lines inside this monitor without problem. If i do the same thing inside the eb2 campaign_script, even with ony ten lines, then won't be executed (unless i remove the rest of the script...).
In fact, i'm sure that if the script reach a critical size monitor_conditions will no more be operational (keep calm! it works great currently for eb2, and with good room for manoeuvre a priori), and it's already the case for I_UnitStatus iirc.

In the case of multiple armies, there is also the problem that the "goal to achieve" system of the ai is very rudimentary and so hardly supports the external constraints.

As far as script sizes go, there clearly seems to be an upper file size limit for stability and performance, and EBII's huge campaign_script (13MB and growing - compare that to vanilla's tiny 103KB) strains that limit. Since the script went over about 6MB, it's become impossible to edit directly, it often crashes and corrupts itself while you're typing things, so we do most of the editing in a separate workspace, then copy it in wholesale. The EDB is approaching that size as well (over 6MB now - vanilla's is 268KB) and giving similar stability issues with direct edits.

Our battle script is at the near-bottom of the file (the massive unit limitation script is at the very bottom) precisely because it stops other elements of the script below it working if it's any higher. If you want to do anything more with battle scripting in EBII, you might be advised to remove the unit limitation script, which is about 80% of the content by number of lines.

[Erken]

@JC_von_Preussen
Don't forget that the simple presence of an expeditionary corps (local or not) triggers the state of war, even if you are not at war with a faction for the game. That's what i see on your screenshots, and the maluses are slowly decreasing. Have you checked your setting for the surrender script?

@QuintusSertorius
Interesting. The only problem of corruption (at least this is how i interpret it) i have experimented till today was a problem with a value for a counter, that was supposed to be 183. The only way i had found to make it works was to use 183000 instead (one zero could have been sufficient though), after having tried to replace this part without success.

For the battle script, i have no plan to add more things since this is a real house of cards. And to found the most primitive form to make a script work is a concept that quickly reach its limits.

[QuintusSertorius]

Interesting. The only problem of corruption (at least this is how i interpret it) i have experimented till today was a problem with a value for a counter, that was supposed to be 183. The only way i had found to make it works was to use 183000 instead (one zero could have been sufficient though), after having tried to replace this part without success.

For the battle script, i have no plan to add more things since this is a real house of cards. And to found the most primitive form to make a script work is a concept that quickly reach its limits.

Oh no, I mean actual file corruption. You're typing away, then inexplicably the first character of every line is deleted, rendering the script useless. All you can do is close and go back to your last save.

[JC_von_Preussen]

@JC_von_Preussen
Don't forget that the simple presence of an expeditionary corps (local or not) triggers the state of war, even if you are not at war with a faction for the game. That's what i see on your screenshots, and the maluses are slowly decreasing. Have you checked your setting for the surrender script?

The expeditionnary corps thing must explain some things then ! Do ally and neutral stack count towards this ? The AI tends to move stacks around sometimes...

I haven't changed my scripts yet. Still with the SURRENDER 65% here...

I like the State of war script. My very long war against the Seleukids was a real pain, and the longer it dragged on, the weaker I was. Certainly my very first total war campaign where I actually feel I'm being kicked by the AI. I settled for peace after having lost Side, Kypros and Akkos to the Seleucids...

[JC_von_Preussen]

Hello,

So I reverted to SURRENDER 75%.

When I restarted my game again (some time later), I had no problem to load my turn 200 save. So I would suppose my problem came from the SURRENDER 65% script.

[Erken]

Leave my 65% alone! I will release an update next weekend if all goes well. It will contain a fix for some settlements that are not working correctly with the Poliorketika script, and for some little damages that i have caused by removing a script at the last minute. I have also rewritten (exactly) the same surrender script (even if the current one works perfectly for me...), so if there is a problem with a(/some) line(s) inside an iteration, it should be fixed^^

EDIT: it will be longer than expected, i have a problem of ctd coming from nowhere in battle (it seems that i have broken something...)

[Erken]

Strategikos for eb2.35 v2: Download

Fixed:
- the Poliorketika script was not working for some settlements
- if the besieger was attacked during the ai turn, the breach message was no more firing
- the presence of an expeditionary corps was no more detected in certain conditions
- Removed a command causing random CTDs in battle, and because of this also (temporarily i hope) removed the fatigue script (pending another way to prevent him to fire when it should never fire)

[JC_von_Preussen]

Thx for the update !

[Der Böse Wolf]

Wow, impressive work. I'll definitely give it a try.
But before I do, I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind.

"b - Siege (optional): The defenders will not beat a retreat at any time. This does not include the reinforcements (Player and AI)."
>>Isn't that the case already. Defenders in a siege cannot retreat as they fight to the death.

"VI - Navigation restrictions: Coastal routes for mediterranean and germanic ships, and Open sea routes for celtic and arabic ships"
>> What does this change strategically?
Why do celtic and arab ships have open sea routes?

"VII - Poliorcetics (optional):Non-barbarian and non-nomadic factions have the ability to breach the stone walls on the strategic map, as they would do it in a real siege with battering rams, demolition ravens, mines and others.

• The script is fully automatic and random, requiring no action from the player.
• There will be no breach during the first turn of the siege (dedicated to the installation of the camp, the filling of the ditches, the assembly of siege engines, etc...).
• Three different settings are available in the options for the percentage chance of breaching the wall (tested each turn): 33% (default), 25% and 20%.
• The rebels cannot breach the walls.
• A message notifying the breach will pop up at the first selection of the besieger concerned (4 variants: battering ram, mine, digging tortoise, demolition raven). As defender a message of the advisor at the start of the battle will have a similar role."

>> I don't understand this. If walls are breached on the strategic map, what will happen? Will the attacker simply take the settlement without a fight?

"VIII - State of War

• A local general ending his turn in enemy lands (and then an expeditionary corps) will generate the state of war, even if the conflict is not still declared"

>> How ending a turn in ENEMY territory generate a state of war? If it's an enemy territory, it means that war already is on.

"IX - Surrender: (optional) If an army has lost more than a certain percentage of its strength (adjustable in the options: 85%, 75% (Default) or 65%), and the other side has still more than 50% of its men, then its soldiers will lay down their arms (more exactly there will be a satellite view of the battlefield (while the script is eliminating the army), a message of the advisor, and the battle will finish).Note: The script is tested every three minutes, so there will be a little margin of time. Works only in 1 vs 1 battle."
>> So what happens to the troops who surrender? Are they exterminated, enslaved or allowed to return to the nearest safe point?

Thanks!