Tsardoms Total War - Campaign Feedback, Bugs and Reports

[Bund weicher Birnen]

Guys I enjoyed playing my campaign with the Romans but save won't load anymore...tsardoms.log.rar

Summer 1452/53 when the Siege of Constantinople happens. Saved before and now I want to experience it but can't load to campaign map from main menu. Any idea what I can do? Either my save nor the Autosave from few minutes before aren't working

Need your help please.

[Wallachian]

oh bummer is that the 1448 campaign? there's a ctd related to the siege of constantinople sometimes and we don't know why that happens.

[Bund weicher Birnen]

So better play through the siege and save, exit as well as load after the siege is done? Because when I lose Constantinople before the Script triggers everything goes well with loading the game...

[Gen_Poniatowski]

Alright, so here's my feedback.

First of all I want to say that this 1448 campaign is absolutely awesome and below I will point out only the bugs and problems I have with it, because if I was to write about what I love about this mod the post would be too long. However, here is my list of problems that I think need to be fixed as fast as possible:

>The AI is extremely passive. I'm in turn 25, playing as Poland on hard, and the neighboring countries do very little if anything. Slovakian province of Kassa is still unoccupied by Hungary. They have multiple full stacks in nearby provinces, and they don't even seem to make an attempt for taking the city. Same thing with Bohemia and Brno. Bohemians have two full stacks at Opava, one at Ceske Budejovice and more troops in Prague. And they are just standing still, only sometimes moving around their own territory. Kievan Rus is by far the most passive faction I ever saw in M2TW, they have a full stack and Lubny but they hardly even move around. No attempt to capture provinces, or fight with Crimean Tatars, no nothing.
It's a bit different when the AI is fighting an actual war, but still not much. The only time I've seen Moldova move their armies it was for a war with Crimea they fought for no apparent reason. When I invaded Molodva and besieged their capital, they had a full stack threatening my army and they did nothing with it. Hungary is also very passive with their armies, even though statistically it is a military powerhouse, it is a punchbag for Wallahia which for some reason is the only not-passive faction I see in this mod. They are multiple times weaker and Hungary has many full stacks near the border but they do nothing with them so Wallahia already captured three Hungarian provinces.
Well, to me it looks like if not for the scripts and army spawning, nothing would be happening in the campaign at all, maybe except for Wallahia swallowing the world.

>The mod is very unstable. It crashes usually for no apparent reason, either with an error stating the "unknown problem" or without an error at all. It can happen anytime and I can never feel safe during the game, always fearing for loosing like an hour of progress, or that the game will crash right after a huge battle before I even get a chance to save the game. The crashes not only happen before or after battles or during other factions turns like it usually happens with the mods, sometimes when nothing is happening at all or even during the saving.

And there are some minor, or very minor problems.

>My keybinds for battle controls are reset every time I open the mod. Some of them at least, and the default option for them is to not exist at all, like the shortcuts for formations, or fire at will, or the defensive stance.
>Some of the minor settlement's names tend to vanish for some reason. I've encountered such a problem with Oświęcim in Lesser Poland. Sometimes the name shows up, sometimes it doesn't and it seems either the game has to be loaded again to make the name appear again. Not like it's important, I just like the inclusion of these minor settlements.

Also, have you considered modifying the garrison script?
My problem with it is the fact that without it, the AI is incapable of defending the major cities. However, with it the game looses much on realism and fairness. These garrisons are unrealistically powerful. How could it be possible for a relatively poor country like Moldova, or a small one like Ragusa, to just spawn a full stack of ELITE units out of thin air? I want AI cities to be protected by something, but the scripts really breaks the game for minor faction and early game for me, because even if I manage to defeat an enemy army in a great battle I won't be rewarded with anything, only punished by making it to the enemy capital by spawning a huge and powerful army.
I would suggest creating another option for the player at least, to play with the garrison script, but with it being much weaker. It would make sense to spawn town militia units as citizens mobilised to protect the city, with an addition to 1-3 elite units when besieging a capital, and that would be perfect in my opinion.

[Anubis88]

I can answer a couple of those;

- The AI is always an issue, all feedback is welcome. We tried a new AI and it has some drawbacks but also some good features. It's a matter of balance

- The mod is super stable for me. Hadn't had a crash in years. Are you using the 4gb patch? It usually fixes these memory issues

- The minor settlement names vanish if you add a FM inside i think. They should return next turn however. The settlement names are actually invisible and immovable witches in the fort. For some reason when you move a named character in the fort the witch seems to get kicked out or something, so the name is lost. But the next turn it should be in again. At least that's what i noticed, maybe your issue is not the same

[OFFCIALLY SWAG]

the mods been very stable for me but yeah the campaign AI is definitely a drawback. playing as Wurtenberg so relatively isolated and 50 turns in i check whats happening on the map and hardly anythings changed besides my territory. wars are going on but i wondered how hungary cant take over 2 tiny provinces despite being one of the most powerful factions in my playthrough. Milan despite being at war with half of Italy just has 4 full stacks casually chilling in the alps doing nothing. i havent played vanilla in ages so i dont remember if this behaviour is normal. no scripts enabled

[Anubis88]

the mods been very stable for me but yeah the campaign AI is definitely a drawback. playing as Wurtenberg so relatively isolated and 50 turns in i check whats happening on the map and hardly anythings changed besides my territory. wars are going on but i wondered how hungary cant take over 2 tiny provinces despite being one of the most powerful factions in my playthrough. Milan despite being at war with half of Italy just has 4 full stacks casually chilling in the alps doing nothing. i havent played vanilla in ages so i dont remember if this behaviour is normal. no scripts enabled

Well the scripts are there to help out with that. So if you disable them you will see the really bad MTWII ai in all its glory unfortunately

[OFFCIALLY SWAG]

Well the scripts are there to help out with that. So if you disable them you will see the really bad MTWII ai in all its glory unfortunately

which scripts are you referring to, the garisson script should surely make conquest and territorial changes even harder on the AI. The Ottoman Empire AI would be the only one changing if I enabled scripts

[PavleSubich]

Alright, so here's my feedback.

First of all I want to say that this 1448 campaign is absolutely awesome and below I will point out only the bugs and problems I have with it, because if I was to write about what I love about this mod the post would be too long. However, here is my list of problems that I think need to be fixed as fast as possible:

>The AI is extremely passive. I'm in turn 25, playing as Poland on hard, and the neighboring countries do very little if anything. Slovakian province of Kassa is still unoccupied by Hungary. They have multiple full stacks in nearby provinces, and they don't even seem to make an attempt for taking the city. Same thing with Bohemia and Brno. Bohemians have two full stacks at Opava, one at Ceske Budejovice and more troops in Prague. And they are just standing still, only sometimes moving around their own territory. Kievan Rus is by far the most passive faction I ever saw in M2TW, they have a full stack and Lubny but they hardly even move around. No attempt to capture provinces, or fight with Crimean Tatars, no nothing.
It's a bit different when the AI is fighting an actual war, but still not much. The only time I've seen Moldova move their armies it was for a war with Crimea they fought for no apparent reason. When I invaded Molodva and besieged their capital, they had a full stack threatening my army and they did nothing with it. Hungary is also very passive with their armies, even though statistically it is a military powerhouse, it is a punchbag for Wallahia which for some reason is the only not-passive faction I see in this mod. They are multiple times weaker and Hungary has many full stacks near the border but they do nothing with them so Wallahia already captured three Hungarian provinces.
Well, to me it looks like if not for the scripts and army spawning, nothing would be happening in the campaign at all, maybe except for Wallahia swallowing the world.

>The mod is very unstable. It crashes usually for no apparent reason, either with an error stating the "unknown problem" or without an error at all. It can happen anytime and I can never feel safe during the game, always fearing for loosing like an hour of progress, or that the game will crash right after a huge battle before I even get a chance to save the game. The crashes not only happen before or after battles or during other factions turns like it usually happens with the mods, sometimes when nothing is happening at all or even during the saving.

And there are some minor, or very minor problems.

>My keybinds for battle controls are reset every time I open the mod. Some of them at least, and the default option for them is to not exist at all, like the shortcuts for formations, or fire at will, or the defensive stance.
>Some of the minor settlement's names tend to vanish for some reason. I've encountered such a problem with Oświęcim in Lesser Poland. Sometimes the name shows up, sometimes it doesn't and it seems either the game has to be loaded again to make the name appear again. Not like it's important, I just like the inclusion of these minor settlements.

Also, have you considered modifying the garrison script?
My problem with it is the fact that without it, the AI is incapable of defending the major cities. However, with it the game looses much on realism and fairness. These garrisons are unrealistically powerful. How could it be possible for a relatively poor country like Moldova, or a small one like Ragusa, to just spawn a full stack of ELITE units out of thin air? I want AI cities to be protected by something, but the scripts really breaks the game for minor faction and early game for me, because even if I manage to defeat an enemy army in a great battle I won't be rewarded with anything, only punished by making it to the enemy capital by spawning a huge and powerful army.
I would suggest creating another option for the player at least, to play with the garrison script, but with it being much weaker. It would make sense to spawn town militia units as citizens mobilised to protect the city, with an addition to 1-3 elite units when besieging a capital, and that would be perfect in my opinion.

You are right about ragusa spaming an army of that size being an supernatural event
But i dont think that medieval games should revard u in the afterevent of a mayor wictory7army destruction.
That would be adequate for rome Rome vas centralized,profesional army.In the case when empires colide a battle is fought and within one day the victor is known,the viner takes it all.
Like when alexander crushed the persians at gaugamela and he won egypt and so on automaticly.

In medieval time battles were fought but ground vasnt easly gained.Look at the battle of mohach or krbava. One centralized state like the ottoman empire won,exterminated the hungariyan ad the croatian armies and the the left and vent home LOL!
Its how it vas,i dont like beinga able to form an empire with factions like ragusa or bosnia or the swiss. It is nor realistic.

[Gen_Poniatowski]

You are right about ragusa spaming an army of that size being an supernatural event
But i dont think that medieval games should revard u in the afterevent of a mayor wictory7army destruction.
That would be adequate for rome Rome vas centralized,profesional army.In the case when empires colide a battle is fought and within one day the victor is known,the viner takes it all.
Like when alexander crushed the persians at gaugamela and he won egypt and so on automaticly.

In medieval time battles were fought but ground vasnt easly gained.Look at the battle of mohach or krbava. One centralized state like the ottoman empire won,exterminated the hungariyan ad the croatian armies and the the left and vent home LOL!
Its how it vas,i dont like beinga able to form an empire with factions like ragusa or bosnia or the swiss. It is nor realistic.

You are right that medieval wars were largely indecisive, or much less than one could imagine. However, it was more due to inefficiency of medieval logistical system, with lack of roads and primitive means of transportation making it harder to supply larger armies on vast distances, and the nature of medieval states that lacked well organised fiscal system, with rulers lacking money all the time, forced to disband their armies and gather money and new armies time and time again. However, the garrison script is not there to simulate how medieval wars looked like from operational and strategic level, because it doesn't. It's there to make up for AI being unable to protect their settlements properly. And for that I doubt the AI needs a full stack proffesional army, made up of most elite units avaialbe to them. Spawning a couple of town militia units, with addition of one, maybe two elite units at the capital would be enough imo to give the AI more means to defend itself, but reasonable enough so that it wouldn't feel like outrageous cheating.

[Wallachian]

Yeah some tweaking of it wouldn't hurt.

[Gen_Poniatowski]

Some more feedback - I've also been playing 1345 campaign, currently in turn 65. Here's what's happening:

-The forced diplomacy cheat does not work for some reason. It worked in 1448 campaign just fine. Was it implemented only there?

-The AI was great during the first 50 turns. It was aggresive, but reasonably so. Even in diplomacy - when I played as Bosnia and was attacked by Venice and Austria, both offered peace after some lost battles. Literally the first time I experienced AI behaving reasonably. The campaign was very dynamic, other factions literally threw themselves on unclaimed rebel provinces and waged interesting wars. That's what I would like to see in 1448 campaign. However, after turn 30 something strange started to happen and it's VERY visible in the statistics. For some reason, most of the factions became very passive, the way the AI is from the beggining in 1448 campaign. I've even turned off fog to see what's happening, there are very little wars, and most factions just stack up armies around one of their provinces and do nothing. I was then attacked once by Naples and they offered peace the next turn. Other than that not much is happening, maybe except the Ottoman conquests, but only because I had script for them activated. I really think the AI needs some tweaks.

[Wallachian]

Forced diplomacy is only in 1448 campaign.

The AI indeed needs tweaks but we don't know what to tweak. In 1345 it's just vanilla AI pretty much. There is no way to explain why the AI changes behaviour from earlier turns to later turns since it's the same AI.

In 1448 we received AI labels from a modder and we just put them in hoping it will improve AI but it seems it hasn't.

Unfortunately, unless someone comes in with knowledge of how to mix the AI labels we can't really do anything.

This sums up the Medieval 2 AI

I would actually go further, it also has to be tailored to the map, and the faction's starting situation. I have factions that have identical building and roster options, but different ideal personalities, in one mod.

That also applies to almost everything, there is no universal best anything. Despite it's age, M2 is an impressively complex game, where pretty much everything interacts with everything else in one way or another. So some things work and some don't depending on the mod in it's entirety. So while I have no doubt increased wages for captains doesn't make the AI use more generals in whatever mod he tried it on, I also don't doubt it's worked for other mods, such as whichever one beermugcarl (and apparently others) was using.

So, while it would be possible to make a tut that says A does Y and be absolutely correct, for the mod we are using, it may well do nothing in another mod. So it's best, I think, to keep tuts as simple as possible for some things. Yes discussion and sharing what things have done for us is great, but to make a single tut that includes all of it would, one, simply be impossible, and two, supply a reader with a lot of potentially useless (for them) and quite probably straight up wrong (for their mod) information. I think we all owe z3n a thank you for even attempting to assemble all things AI research related into one sub-forum, and I think, altogether this is the best format for it, rather than one grand tutorial that tries to explain EVERYTHING.

Also, while knowing A does Y from the .exe divers is great, don't let that guide you too much. If it results in XYZ does it really matter so much that it only directly does Y?

For example, relevant to this thread,
Personality does not make a faction more aggressive, it only effects recruitment,
which is then, influenced still further by the export_descr_unit
influenced also thru export_descr_buildings
thru various settings in the descr_campaign_db
and then thru the descr_campaign_ai_db
then influenced by the map it's self
while also possibly being influenced by other settings I'm not thinking of or even aware of
will make a faction more or less aggressive
So in short while "Personality does not make a faction more aggressive" is a true statement, the opposite is equally true depending on your point of view.
And that is just one simple, relatively minor, setting.

Every AI modder knows, or will learn very quickly, what works for thee might not work for me, and vice-versa. Except, apparently, some few exceptions who seem to think "it doesn't work for me therefore it's false."

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

That makes sense. I notice things like money, advancement in technology, and obviously military might make the AI act in a different way. And yet still a different way to human and other AI factions.
An example the Swiss have been completely quite all 162 turns so far, but all that has suddenly changed and they have attacked all neighbours.
The Ottomans as my Aar will show are rampant.
The Papal states are constantly attacking Florence. Milan attacks Venice and Venice is at war with the Ottomans.

[OFFCIALLY SWAG]

would it be possible to remove the tags so one can play with a more agressive vanilla AI. in my playthroughs i feel like the only province that the AI actually bothers taking is Constantinople

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

I personally think it's just a case of higher military technology for all starting factions. Once they can produce top tier armies they are more aggressive. The Ottomans take a while to get going (except scripts) because they are concentrating on infrastructure in their vast realms. The Milanese are aggressive quite early as they have less to build. At least that's my theory

[Wallachian]

would it be possible to remove the tags so one can play with a more agressive vanilla AI. in my playthroughs i feel like the only province that the AI actually bothers taking is Constantinople

There's no such things as removing the tags. AI needs the tags to function. It's a matter of finding the right combination for every faction. And that takes tonnes of time and huge amounts of testing.

And Constantinople falling is actually a scripted army.

And yes AI has issues controlling large factions. That's why you see smaller factions as more active compared to the large ones.

[Squidward01]

Hey I don't know if anyone else has this problem but for some reason a portion of my screen becomes unplayable during every siege battle. At some random point during the battle a certain section of the map will cover the camera like this if I move near it. https://imgur.com/a/Q4OSK6s

[VINC.XXIII]

Hey I don't know if anyone else has this problem but for some reason a portion of my screen becomes unplayable during every siege battle. At some random point during the battle a certain section of the map will cover the camera like this if I move near it. https://imgur.com/a/Q4OSK6s

We don't know how to solve it, I'd it during a brigde battle too, its not limited to sieges.

[Squidward01]

Ah well that's unfortunate.