Announcement: Europa Barbarorum II 2.35 released!

[Jurand of Cracow]

My biggest problem with constant low-scale rebellions is that they are destructive to your armies since you don't have replenishment and need to manually top off your troops. It's just an unnecessary annoyance to a game that's already significantly harder than the game it's a mod for.

It means there's no such thing as a pacified interior region you can relax and ignore just because it doesn't border with another faction.

That sounds like it's significantly less spawns than what we've had so far. I might actually miss the higher rate because I use them as training grounds for my young generals in their early twenties to gain experience up to veteran status before being eligible for external campaigns

I think this change should be assessed on the basis of 1. historicity, 2. gameplay.
Historicity - as I voiced before, the rebellions were ubiquotus and often had serious consequences. So the change is definitely good.
Gameplay - the question is if does change the player's behaviour. If it's not - it's just a annoyance (but not necessarily making the game harder). If it makes the player be more careful with his backyard (eg leaving garrisons or generals behind) or - ideally for me - creates crises that hamper the player runaway expansion - then the change is good.
QS answer hints that indeed the problems are the goal. The question now is if the parameters (eg the size of spawns) is well chosen.

QS - may I have a request to you: could you make a short tutorial how are you making this? I think it might allow us just to make mini-mods hardening the parameters (like Lusitanio does with his submods).
JoC

[QuintusSertorius]

That sounds like it's significantly less spawns than what we've had so far. I might actually miss the higher rate because I use them as training grounds for my young generals in their early twenties to gain experience up to veteran status before being eligible for external campaigns. But I also think the more sensible makeup and idea behind what they represent is probably a good step overall.

They were somewhat haphazard before, I remember some provinces never seemed to spawn them, when others did so much more frequently. That incidence is more evenly spread; if you hold 10 provinces, your average frequency is every 4 turns - as in somewhere will have something happen every year. That should keep your youngsters busy, and they'll get proper battles out of it, rather than ones you'd be tempted just to auto-resolve and get them out of the way.

QS - may I have a request to you: could you make a short tutorial how are you making this? I think it might allow us just to make mini-mods hardening the parameters (like Lusitanio does with his submods).
JoC

I'll open a new thread on the topic.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Thanks, QS, for the tutorial!

I've got now a question on the diplomacy. As said there's a "warweariness" mechanic which switchesAI behaviour betweentwopotential states - diplomacy (peace-seeking) or warlike (standard TWaggressive). In what circumstances this switch occur? I mean: if the AI sufferes a few defeats, is it likely to switch this behaviour to peace-seeking? Or it needs to lose a city / few cities?

[QuintusSertorius]

There are three things that cause the switch: recruiting units, being besieged and losing battles. Depending on the size of the faction (in terms of number of provinces), the numbers of each thing that cause a warweariness point to be earned differ. As soon as 7 points are accrued, they switch to diplomacy. They switch back to warlike on a random 10% chance per turn.

[Rad]

Loading a save game causes the AI to reverse back to the war path. If one wants peace, one must beat the AI into submission in one sitting.

[Ivir Baggins]

They were somewhat haphazard before, I remember some provinces never seemed to spawn them, when others did so much more frequently. That incidence is more evenly spread; if you hold 10 provinces, your average frequency is every 4 turns - as in somewhere will have something happen every year. That should keep your youngsters busy, and they'll get proper battles out of it, rather than ones you'd be tempted just to auto-resolve and get them out of the way.

Are there any factors that would affect the spawn rate, such as settlement unrest, law, corruption etc.

[QuintusSertorius]

Loading a save game causes the AI to reverse back to the war path. If one wants peace, one must beat the AI into submission in one sitting.

Do you have any evidence that's happening? It shouldn't, the game saves details of event_counters and such with save/load actions.

Are there any factors that would affect the spawn rate, such as settlement unrest, law, corruption etc.

No, it's a simple random/cooldown, as per the thread explaining the way it works, which is more differentiation than the original hardcoded feature, which only had a chance on it. The only exemption is that each faction doesn't get any spawns in their starting "home" province.

[Rad]

Only a witness... me
Remember the tribute question I asked the other day? I made peace with the Numidians and they gladly accepted my terms.
Well, I felt bad for taking the money, so I loaded a save game I made just prior to the deal and offered the Numidians peace - free of charge. They angrily refused.

[k/t]

To check whether a unit has armour upgrades, check its entry in EDU.

stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 4, 1075, 260, 75, 55, 845, 4, 100
armour_ug_levels 5, 12, 37

[joh]

I can confirm Rad's observation. I offered peace to the Getai and they gave me a province for it, after loading they didn't even want peace anymore.

[Dooz]

Lots of weird stuff happens after loading saves. E.g., units that were qued for recruitment don't get any relevant experience bonuses. You have to un-cue and re-recruit to make it work properly. And I think I remember there being issues with pathfinding, or sieges, to the extent that AI "forgets" what it was doing and starts doing other stuff... kinda sucks, but just another quirk of the engine we gotta live with I suppose. Sounds like how it effects the peace/war states might be bad though.

[Rad]

Yeah, if you save the game after you recruit, the recruited units will not get any experience points. I learned to live with that.

[Dooz]

If you mean you let them be recruited without the due experience, you don't have to live with that. Like I said, you can un-que them and re-do the recruitment before ending turn after loading save. But if you mean live with it as in you do this process each time, then yeah me too.
Edit: also applies to retraining. If you've ever noticed that a unit you retrained shows up as available to be retrained again, this is why.
Also applies for units qued to be recruited beyond available slots for the current turn, even without loading save in the interim. So if you only have 2 recruitment slots, but que up 3 units, that third unit will not get its experience when it's recruited the turn after. Basically, do all your recruiting after loading a save, and within available recruitment slots for each turn individually, if you want to get all applicable bonuses.

Also, the peace/war stuff, I think similar stuff already was happening even without the particular EB2 implementation. Far as diplomacy results coming out different when offers are made after successive turns, versus after loading a save. It's almost always a different result, which is testable and confirmable.

So you can load a save, pass a turn or few and make some offer, get a response. Load a save from right before that diplomacy on that last turn, and response will likely be different.

[Rad]

No, I don't mean recruiting units without the due experience. That would drive me insane. I just do all my recruiting after saving the game

[Dooz]

I was pretty sad when I, after about a year-long break and having forgotten all about this, had three full stacks qued up to invade Italy and they all came out as noobs. Once I remembered this, years into the war, I resigned as Emperor to live in exile on some remote island, self-flagellating as penance til I died. Don't make the same mistakes I did, young Imperators and Strategoi.

[Sar1n]

Why is the minimal Hyperaspistai recruitment after reforms limited only to Pontos Basilike Patris and not also Pergamon? I'd think they'd be the ones most likely to use them.

[QuintusSertorius]

Why is the minimal Hyperaspistai recruitment after reforms limited only to Pontos Basilike Patris and not also Pergamon? I'd think they'd be the ones most likely to use them.

Pergamon doesn't get Hyperaspistai from their Basilike Patris at all.

[Sar1n]

Pergamon doesn't get Hyperaspistai from their Basilike Patris at all.

Yeah, I'm wondering why?

[QuintusSertorius]

Update on the Ptolemaioi starting financial situation:



Those are the before and after pictures of the finance scroll. Changes are all to Egypt, rather than their wider holdings, incuding mines in Pselkis and Ptolemais-Theron (the latter doesn't make a big difference), and farming income boosts along the Nile.

Trade rights with Carthage, or peace with the Seleukids would cause the trade number to balloon. Not as precarious as before.

Yeah, I'm wondering why?

Pergamon doesn't have a relatively large Makedonian elite to draw from, like the major Successors. Most of their elites are Galatians and southern Anatolians. Arguably Pontos shouldn't have Hyperaspistai in that pool either, but for now they're there.

[Roma_Victrix]

Update on the Ptolemaioi starting financial situation:



Those are the before and after pictures of the finance scroll. Changes are all to Egypt, rather than their wider holdings, incuding mines in Pselkis and Ptolemais-Theron (the latter doesn't make a big difference), and farming income boosts along the Nile.

Trade rights with Carthage, or peace with the Seleukids would cause the trade number to balloon. Not as precarious as before.

Excellent work and +1 rep for doing this! It was one of my major concerns in my latest Roman campaign that the Ptolemies were a little too weak, but now I think they will be much more stable and far abler to push back against invaders. By the time I broke my alliance and started a war against them in the late 2nd century BC, they were literally a one-settlement faction in the Siwa Oasis of the Egyptian-Libyan borderlands. It also wasn't just the Seleucids steamrolling them, it was the Sabaeans too!