Low recruitment costs?

[scattered]

Hi

I am new to this great mod (been stricked to RTR), have installed it today, so i just wanna ask few questions.

I noticed that unit recruitment costs (at least for barbarians, haven't seen Roman ones yet) are extremely low... For example vandal two-hand swordsmen (can't rmember name exactly) is around 200 or so, and all cavalry units are VERY cheap too...

Is that made deliberately to make things easier for barbarian factions?
Or am I missing something?

And just one more... I wanted to start playing with sassies, but I saw that I have about 4-5 full stacks of armies alongside Byzantine border... So I'm little worried that is gonna be too easy.. Any comments on that?
Hope that these aren't a stupid questions

[scattered]

Few exapmples for Sassanids:

Savaran (cataphracts) - only 480
Asavaran (noble cavalry) - 420
Steppe horse archers - 80

I think it's a little bit unrealistic...:hmmm:

[Quinn Inuit]

480 for cataphracts?!?!?!? No wonder I keep facing huge armies of Sassanids! Their armies cost next to nothing, and each unit of that cavalry is twice the size of my ERE cavalry units.

Edit: Also, how were the recruitment times chosen? ERE troops seem to take remarkably long to recruit, and some of the 0 recruitment time troops are rather oddly chosen. (E.g., sword paighan-1 turn, but Gothic Foederati-0 turns.)

[Ramon Gonzales y Garcia]

I noticed that unit recruitment costs (at least for barbarians, haven't seen Roman ones yet) are extremely low... For example vandal two-hand swordsmen (can't rmember name exactly) is around 200 or so, and all cavalry units are VERY cheap too...

some ppl were actually suggesting 0 cost since barbarians don't really 'hire' their troops nor spend money for training them... in actuality most of the 'barbarian' troops would be self equipped warriors, w/c is why they should also actually be more ragtag than say a Roman unit (possible in M2TW engine but not in RTW)
but making it 0 recruitment and upkeep would highly imbalance the game so just made it chepaer

And just one more... I wanted to start playing with sassies, but I saw that I have about 4-5 full stacks of armies alongside Byzantine border... So I'm little worried that is gonna be too easy.. Any comments on that?
Hope that these aren't a stupid questions

well, you can try and find out

480 for cataphracts?!?!?!? No wonder I keep facing huge armies of Sassanids! Their armies cost next to nothing, and each unit of that cavalry is twice the size of my ERE cavalry units.

the Sassanids were a horse/cavalry culture, though it can be argued that the Romans at this time were becoming one themselves, the Sassanids (and the Persians before them) have been at it for a few hundred years so their military makeup should have more cav than infantry.

Edit: Also, how were the recruitment times chosen? ERE troops seem to take remarkably long to recruit, and some of the 0 recruitment time troops are rather oddly chosen. (E.g., sword paighan-1 turn, but Gothic Foederati-0 turns.)

ERE undergo training esp for the elite troops, sword paighan, as mentioned above Sassanids are a horse culture so their infantry are/should be less well developed (if they are also 0 time then we'd be faced w/ infantry heavy sassies... w/c we are in fact facing since we lack control over how AI recruits troops) Gothic foederati, from the name itself implies mercenary like troops w/c should be recruitable easily (not trained)

I chose recryuitment cost/time/ubnit number separately for each culture/factions i.e. Romans would have longer recruitment time higher cost but powerful units, Sassies would have powerful cavalry, Barbarians would have low cost so-so units but can have powerful higher level units

I am not subscribing to the idea that all factions are created equal, rather each faction have their strengths and weaknesses u should learn to exploit them.

Savaran (cataphracts) - only 480
Asavaran (noble cavalry) - 420
Steppe horse archers - 80
I think it's a little bit unrealistic...

I have no idea about the relative value of a denarii at the time so I couldn't say if it is unrealistic. U must remember that the actual value of a currency is relative... take for example 10,000 yen and 100 dollarsUS, they're almost the same... or a bottle of coca cola now and a bottle 60 yrs ago. so unless you or someone can give me an actual value of an actual object at the time (say a wagonload of grain, or a camelload of silk) I cannot say if the values I gave are too little or maybe even too much...

[scattered]

I have no idea about the relative value of a denarii at the time so I couldn't say if it is unrealistic. U must remember that the actual value of a currency is relative... take for example 10,000 yen and 100 dollarsUS, they're almost the same... or a bottle of coca cola now and a bottle 60 yrs ago. so unless you or someone can give me an actual value of an actual object at the time (say a wagonload of grain, or a camelload of silk) I cannot say if the values I gave are too little or maybe even too much...

I wasn't talking about relative value of money...
I'm just comparing that (recruitment) costs with some other game structures/units... If, say, market costs amount of 2400 (represented by denarii, silk, cows, anything, it doesn't matter), compared to that amount maybe cataphract (or some other high end unit which requires a lot of resourses to raise and maintain) should maybe cost more than amount of 480 (again, not denarii - anything)... Or if I can earn 20000 of something in one turn (and say I can build 5-6 valuable buildings for that price) and I can afford ton of cataphracts in that year, because 1 unit requires small part of that hard-earned amount...
It should take more resources to train such unit, besause they WAS very expensive (don't know how much tgough ) - building/maintenance of cataphracts in that time should be like constructing/maintenance of jet fighters escadrilas today...

So I think that respective amount doesn't represent enough value of cataphract...

And another thing, now I can build them in large numbers and can aford to use them careless in battles, or even throwing them away if I want, because I will earn enough value in 1-2 turns, and will be able to easily recruit new ones... I don't thing that they could recruit so many new ones in such a short time, because they required a lot of resourses.
Loosing, say, half stack of cataphract sholud be a hell of a blow to one countrys' economy - even if the Sassanids DO have long cavalry tradition - they are still expensive.

I think that amount of some 1000 or even 900 (if ERE has 1200 - and comparing to that) should be fair

[Quinn Inuit]

Scattered has a good point there. It's the relative value that's the key.

I think I see where you're coming from, Ramon. You're trying to induce players (and the AI) to play a faction the way that faction behaved IRL. That makes sense. But I don't think making life unrealistically easy for one faction makes sense, and doing something like giving the Sassanids dirt-cheap cavalry gives them a massive leg up on everyone else.

Therefore, why not try to tweak behavior in a different way? For instance, take the barbarians. You said people were advocating low recruitments costs for them. That makes sense, historically, but has the potential to unbalance the game. So, let's look to history for what limits their army sizes. Two things: population and supplies. Population is automatically dealt with in the game, but we have to set the "supply" value manually.

This lets us also try to force players and, depending on how well it budgets, the AI, into behaving exactly like barbarians. Large, cheap, easily recruitable armies, but with relatively high upkeep costs, will force players to continually conquer or end up permanently in the red. It basically forces horde-like behavior with a trick of accounting.


As for the cavalry issue with the Sassanids, the goal is to make them field armies composed largely of cav., right? Keeping the price down is one way to do that. Besides tweaking AI personalities, you can also do things like giving them one-turn recruitment (most cav. in RTR has a two-turn recruitment) and lowering their cost relative to that of the other units available to the computer. The AI appears to do a cost-benefit on units, so increasing the cost and upkeep of Sassanid infantry should change its equation.

You don't have to give a faction super-underpriced units to get it to do something. Just giving it mildly underpriced units is IME enough to bias it to those.

[Ramon Gonzales y Garcia]

I think the analogy would be better this way:
a troop of M1 tanks BUT the M1 tanks are commissioned (built) and maintained by the people driving them. Brought home and kept in the garage until the king calls for them.
The Sassanids were a proto-feudal society in that the Savaran (Cataphracts) were not maintained by the State/Empire/Kingdom, but by the feudal nobles. The state did maintain armories but for the state supported troops like the Infantry and the Royal Archers.
The same does not hold true for the Roman Empire w/c trained/maintained a professional army aside from local auxilias. (Something w/c will be lost in Europe in the Dark Ages but will resurface much later).

It really is very difficult to come to a balance between something that is possible in the engine, something that is realistic, and game balance...

the low recruitment/high upkeep idea sounds interesting... another thing I introduced is the inability of Barbarians to build high level barracks but the requirement of these high level barracks to be able to train elite forces (dunno how this would affect AI but it forces the player to conquer developed regions)

the ideas for the Sassanians is also very sound... btw, I just remembered your offer to inccrease the charge values of the cavalry, if ur OK, I can give u EDU for latest internal version (still in beta) else u'd prefer working on v6.05 EDU ur free to do so.

[Quinn Inuit]

Sure, I'd be happy to work on the charge values for you. How would you like me to deal with them, and would you like me to adjust the attack values, too?

Here's the thread where we debated cavalry in RTR-PE:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=62228

The situation 600 years later is clearly going to be different, but I don't know enough about this period to say how.

So your barbarians can use the elite structures of other factions? Nifty.

Very good point about the professional army of the Romans. Would that be reflect in high cost/low upkeep vs. low cost/high upkeep units?

If so, what about making Sassanid infantry and any other troops that might be recruited centrally high cost/low upkeep, but feudal units low cost/high upkeep? Also, you might give whoever is Sassanid faction leader a trait that cuts their empire's income to reflect its feudal nature--sure, your units are cheap, but that's because a lot of your gross income is being siphoned off by your local governor.


Edit: Could you also give me a copy of export_units? That'll help me learn about all the units. I'm actually going through it right now for RTR-PE and cataloguing which cavalry units are armed with swords (and how certain skirmishers are armed) for the next version of my MightyMiniMod. I'm not sure anyoen but me uses it, but I like it and if I'm going to do it I might as well share.