Hi All!
I would like to present you my little submod I call "Alternative Economy".
This is a small project that focused of redoing certain aspects of how profits and costs work in this mod.
To sum things up what this submod changes:
-unit recruitment cost increased around 5 times
-income from trade increased
-building cost increased 6 times
-building income increased 4.5 times
-changed AI bonuses for difficulty levels so that AI also needs to develop provinces instead of just having high taxes but depending on difficulty, their buildings cost and unit upkeep are a bit lower
-changed thresholds for how poor/wealthy faction is rated in diplomacy based on income per turn
-Slightly increased income from main buildings in Sparta adn Pella (for better player and AI experience)
-Seiger does not suffer casualties, only besieged side does
How does above look in actual game?
While income has been greatly increased, most of "one time" costs got increased even larger. This means that money can run out rather fast if you do unwise investments. In case of army, upkeep does not play as large role as it used to in base DeI but recruitment cost changes how the war is waged, also in case of AI. This means that if you play as small tribe and wage war against other small tribe and you beat their army, AI will most likely not be able to recruit new one or only in limited strength rather than pumping new full army each few turns. In terms of fighting larger and wealther factions, you have new challange as their initial armies in campaign might be rather good quality and in large numbers, their overal army composition will be made of cheaper and cheaper units as the war progresses, which means you can actually wage a war of attrition.
This also makes you rethink military campaignes as if you have rather poor economy but good army, you might not be able to replace it if you lose it or take too large losses. Player army composition also changes as for example a unit of cataphracts can cost between 10,000 to 14,000 denarii. Lets say you have a full army of cataphracts, if you lose it, you would need to spend around 200,000 to 280,000 denarii to rebuild it! This changes the dynamic of recruitment cost and upkeep as in base DeI (where unit costs were pretty much made by me anyway), if you lose army, you get large income boost due to higher upkeep to unit cost relation, while here it is lower. Sure, after losing an army you might get few thousend extra money per turn BUT it might not be enough to have new and proper army in place in case of danger.
Mercenaries play a bit different role in this one as they are slightly more costly to recruit and maintain than regular units but are often a better choice since military infrastructure is also a lot more costly, while mercs can be recruited without it.
In terms of differences between factions, it is a lot more varied now. If you start as Arverni with single small and undeveloped village, you will have not too much income and you won't field expensive units but also your neighbours won't be able to spam elites. If you start as Seleucids, you have starting income of around 10,000 per turn BUT your units cost a lot (You can field Agema cavalry from start BUT that unit costs 10,000 to recruit and around 1500 of upkeep!) and if you just spend the money carelessly, you can get easily into trouble.
I also highly recommend to play with No Attrition for Besieger, meaning that you or AI won't take casualties if you lay a siege to the city. AI should also siege now instead of just attacking. I haven't changed some techs yet that lower casualties for besieger but I will replace them with something else later, since they have no use with it.
IMPORTANT!
This is a test version and might need tweaks in different areas. Please report what you enjoy and what you dislike about the changes.
PLEASE play first, without simply jumping to comments as often odd ideas on paper actually work in the game, while sometimes nice ideas do not work in the long run.
Keep track of how AI develops their cities as I want AI be more restricted by the economy (As it does understand single cost investements, if just does not understand sustained costs like upkeep!) but I don't want it to ignore developing own cities or armies.
Download:
Steam link:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...?id=1347813163