[Submod] Unofficial 12tpy Recruitment Mod

[TrippinDaJive]

Hello everyone,

Are you using a 12tpy submod with Divide Et Impera? You may want to check this submod out because it extends the recruitment times for all units for both the player and the AI which makes for an even more tactical and realistic campaign experience! You could use this mod for the regular tpy too if you wanted. In essence, this is what the submod does:

Light Units = 1 turn
Medium/Heavy Units = 2 turns
Very Heavy Units = 3 turns
Super Heavy Units = 4 turns
Light Siege = 4 turns
Medium Siege = 8 turns
Heavy Siege = 12 turns
Light Ships = 4 turns
Medium Ships = 6 turns
Heavy Ships = 8 turns
*Levy units only take 1 turn and barbarians take longer to build siege*
*Barbs build ships quicker since they aren't as advanced*

Another reason why I made this submod was because I hated how the AI was able to repeatedly field multiple, powerful armies in less time than it took for me to fully replenish just one army. This makes it reduce that likelihood and it also makes you more attentive to how you choose to create your armies. Quickly field cheap, weaker armies to protect garrisons or finish off a routing enemy? Or carefully produce a powerful army that actually requires time and money to make?

Made for Divide Et Impera. Credits go to Dresden, Kam, and their team for all I did was change the values for some tables they had already made. Thank you guys for making Rome 2 the game it should've been!

Future Goals: Perhaps change some recruitment times for each individual unit in regards to how I think it would've really taken. I'm open to suggestions and feedback!

Submods version 1.2

*If you'd like to play the Alexander campaign, you must also use the 12tpy recruitment submod for Alexander for the applicable version of game you're playing (Regular DeI or Realism)! (compatible with the version released on Aug 29, 2019)

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Hello, @TrippinDaJive

On behalf of the Modding Staff I would like to thank you for your submod on DEI's forum and encourage you to develop it further

Feel free to reach me anytime, in case you have questions or you need my services.

Cheers,
G.S

[Ygraine]

Did you test how well the AI performs with this? I recall they had problems when units took more than one turn to recruit.

[Dardo21]

Yeah, I think the AI prefers units that are recruitable in 1 turn, but haven't really played with those since the start of the game.

[Jake Armitage]

Yeah, there have been several reports regarding the AI not been capable to handle more than 1 turn, sometimes they act normally, sometime they recruit just levies, sometimes they don't recruit at all.
This is the last I remember: https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...o-build-troops
Honestly, the fact that in 7 years no one has ever made a serious mod with this feature included, led me automatically to exclude the use of it (for AI at least, I'm using it as an effect for a player RPG unit).
Anyway I'm courious to see some fresh reports about this and even if I was really suited to M2TW system (with a lot of units with more than 1 turns) after a while I became acclimatized to this Rome2's one turn.

In the case (which I assume as probable even if I hope not) your submod will reveal itself bugged, I would suggest using the "rom_building_recruitment_points" effect which is a provincial effect removing/adding the number of recruitable units.
It will limit in a different way the time to recruit an army and it works very well (you may check into testudo packs the values I set: campaign_difficulty_handicap_effects_tables > @@@_TESTUDO_Envi_campaign_difficulty_handicap_effects)
That effect is modded into DeI too (always under "campaign_difficulty_handicap_effects_tables", the effect can be used as a junction though).

[TrippinDaJive]

@Greek Strategos Thanks for the support!

@Ygraine No, not really I only tried it for a few turns on a new Roman campaign but it seemed to be working thus far. But I will continue to test it for any bugs.

@Jake Armitage Oh no that's discouraging! I'm going to really check out the effects this may cause more extensively using the "cheat mods" for testing purposes. I'll let you all know what will happen and post screenshots later. If it does become bugged as you predict, I'll try your method out. I tried your Testudo Large submod for about 200 turns and it's actually really great! But it was too hard for me

[Fluke]

I too am curious how the AI will be affected by this submod.

[Jake Armitage]

Yeah, let's see...
I would really like a playability with this feature.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

@Greek Strategos Thanks for the support!

My pleasure

[TrippinDaJive]

All right fellas, I've got some good news! I'm mostly convinced that this submod is working because I got my ass kicked again by the AI on hard difficulty!

Now I must state that I do in fact believe it may still be too early to tell how the AI is acting because I hadn't started the reforms for any factions (so no one had access to better units). I started a new campaign as Rome with the Realism submod on hard difficulty and played organically for 88 turns (just played how I normally would). I did have some other gameplay submods included like the Turtle packs large for reforms and technology. In the first few turns the AI seemed like they weren't recruiting very much. But as I kept playing I did notice that they did have units and were taking territory from each other. I noticed that their armies were still mixed with light and medium units and a few heavy units. I noticed that they recruited mercenaries more frequently too, especially the heavier units (unless vanilla DeI was already like that anyway). On top of all that, they were still building 20 stack fleets (good ones too) and the submod makes it so that it takes 4 turns to just recruit 1 light ship. I also started a few other campaigns (like Arverni, Egypt, Carthage, and Macedon) just to make sure it actually still takes multiple turns to recruit units and it does. Now to be fair, again, no reforms were started so I don't know how the AI would act when better (but longer) units are available and I also can't be 100% sure if the recruitment restrictions are actually being applied to the AI. But it does seem like it is.

Next, I'm going to play as Rome again with the Realism submod but on normal and without the Turtle packs to ensure the reforms start a lot sooner. Hopefully, the game still plays out. I'll let y'all know how that goes!

P.S. I'll try to post screenshots of this last campaign.



I also need to note that I only deactivated the fog of war on that last turn so these results are all organic AI plays. In addition, I took more screenshots so if you want to see more please let me know.

[Jake Armitage]

Good news, it means is at least playable, keep up with tests, they'll tell you more.
(A compromise way to do something similar without involving the AI might be setting turns recruitment for player only and lower AI recruitment cap, but this will require custom pack for any faction...)

[TrippinDaJive]

Yeah I thought about doing just that actually but yes it would require a lot of work so I'll keep that as an alternate plan. I also thought about just changing all the units to require the same amount of x turns so that way the AI won't think to just recruit units that would be the quickest to get. Also, is there any way I could actually see what the AI is doing in a given turn (i.e. it's recruitment queue)? I've only been counting turns to see what the AI is recruiting and how long it's been taking it.

[boblikesoup]

Way to go @TrippinDaJive ! (if this indeed working fine with the AI). I'd test myself but am away from my gaming computer for some time.

If it's not a lot of effort could you make something like this to balance gameplay with longer recruitment? I can't imagine myself being happy waiting an entire year for a piece of artillery to build. Especially in Realism submod where you get very few generals.

Light Units = 1 turn
Medium/Heavy Units = 2 turns
Light Siege = 2 turns
Medium/Heavy Siege = 3 turns
Light Ships = 2 turns
Medium Ships = 3 turns
Heavy Ships = 4 turns

[TrippinDaJive]

All right everyone, I'm 99% sure this submod works just fine! I just played 200 turns of a Normal Campaign with the Realism submod as Rome and let me tell you, the AI is playing just great! They have been recruiting just as normally as they have been in vanilla DeI. They have multiple full stack armies with a mixture of various units ranging from light to super heavy units, just like in vanilla. They play just as aggressively as they do on normal difficulties. In addition, they still build multiple 20-stack fleets that have diverse units (and one light ship takes 4 turns to recruit). The campaign I was playing on developed into a great game just like in vanilla. The AI took territory from each other and expanded into small empires, formed alliances, and was not afraid to go to war with the player. At this point in the campaign, the whole world was divided into 2 super alliances and it was really getting interesting. And all reforms had been discovered I believe (except I was stuck in Polybian because my imperium still wasn't high enough).


Ultimately, I don't know what people had been saying about the AI not working with mods like these. Perhaps in the past it was indeed fishy, but there could've been other parameters involved too. Suffice to say, it works now for both the player and the AI and the latter performs normally. Maybe there is something I am not noticing but I can be confident and say that the AI works just fine. If you do try it out for yourself, please let me know your experience!

P.S. I took about 30 screenshots from this latest campaign to showcase how the AI turned out after 200 turns. Unfortunately, I could only post about 10 because of the upload limit.



P.S.S. I'm going to fine tune the submods and change some recruitment times for some units. (I disliked having 2 turns for levy troops because they were classified as medium troops).

[Ygraine]

All right everyone, I'm 99% sure this submod works just fine! I just played 200 turns of a Normal Campaign with the Realism submod as Rome and let me tell you, the AI is playing just great! They have been recruiting just as normally as they have been in vanilla DeI. They have multiple full stack armies with a mixture of various units ranging from light to super heavy units, just like in vanilla. They play just as aggressively as they do on normal difficulties. In addition, they still build multiple 20-stack fleets that have diverse units (and one light ship takes 4 turns to recruit). The campaign I was playing on developed into a great game just like in vanilla. The AI took territory from each other and expanded into small empires, formed alliances, and was not afraid to go to war with the player. At this point in the campaign, the whole world was divided into 2 super alliances and it was really getting interesting. And all reforms had been discovered I believe (except I was stuck in Polybian because my imperium still wasn't high enough).


Ultimately, I don't know what people had been saying about the AI not working with mods like these. Perhaps in the past it was indeed fishy, but there could've been other parameters involved too. Suffice to say, it works now for both the player and the AI and the latter performs normally. Maybe there is something I am not noticing but I can be confident and say that the AI works just fine. If you do try it out for yourself, please let me know your experience!

P.S. I took about 30 screenshots from this latest campaign to showcase how the AI turned out after 200 turns. Unfortunately, I could only post about 10 because of the upload limit.



P.S.S. I'm going to fine tune the submods and change some recruitment times for some units. (I disliked having 2 turns for levy troops because they were classified as medium troops).

Thats great news! Thanks for testing TrippinDaJive (here, have some rep!). You'd have to ask KAM, since he was the one that said it didn't work. I actually never tested it myself (which I now realize was a mistake, since I wanted this feature for a long time).

[TrippinDaJive]

@boblikessoup Let me know which faction you'd play as next and I'll customize the siege units for ya. Don't feel like redoing all the factions lol. And the reason why siege units take so long is because it's supposed to represent how many months I think it would've taken to build, more or less.

@Ygraine Ah okay I trust KAM knew what he was talking about. But whatever the case was, it seems to work now

[Jake Armitage]

oh...
really good and thx for testing it extensively.
I would also like to apologize for being skeptical but honestly I mostly reported what was a sort of (wrong, it seems) common knowledge.

I would advice you to wait for the next DeI release (which is coming really soon) before starting doing changes so you can have an updated main_units_tables.

Now I have the dilemma wheter to use this features of yours or not...

[KAM 2150]

Wow that is some great news!

In the past issue was that AI was often moving armies around which meant that units were cancelled if they had more than 1 turn to recruit. It was especially big issue if faction was at war as it meant armies were moving around even more so AI armies were rather weak. I never tested it out myself, Dresden and other campaign wise people would know more. We thought about it as a possible addition but idea was dumped especially due to AI issues. Later on population system replaced the idea.

[valerius karamanus]

This is amazing. Would you do a 4tpy version?

[TrippinDaJive]

@ Jake Armitage Hey no harm done, man, you were just trying to save me from having a headache! Okay that's a good idea, I'll wait for that. And yeah you've been busy with your submods too so it would completely change your plans probably

@ KAM Oh yeah that would explain it. I was actually keeping an eye out for that and initially I thought that was going to happen. However, they would stay in one spot to recruit as necessary. I did notice, for example, Epirus would swim back and forth from Taras to Apollonia to buy mercenaries and then would recruit once all the mercs were bought. So I think this mod may make them more biased to get mercs first but then they'll recruit afterward. But with whatever you guys have done 1.2.4 patches later, it seems to work now!

@ valerius Sure, I'll do a 4tpy version once this next update comes out!