Tsardoms Total War - Campaign Feedback, Bugs and Reports

[eyelurker]

I'm hoping we add forced diplomacy to the newer mod releases. Sometimes the AI really is too stupid. I had Wallachia in my Ottoman campaign down to the last settlement basically without any army that was besieged, and i offered them 6 settlements back in order to be my vassals and they refused. They also refused a ceasfire with me returning 2 settlements to them; it just shows the AI has no idea how to diplomacy.

Ofc it will be up to the player not to exploit it, but it makes more sense imho than an AI that never accepts peace despite it being 10x more beneficial for them than continuing the war(s)

I remember playing as Hungary where Wallachia throw wave upon wave of man thrown into meat grinder that is Transylvania Fortress and they refuse to peace despite repeated stackwipe.

Although diplomacy here in general are far more difficult than vanilla since Diplomat are only available in Unique landmark(most likely your capital) which can lead to problem to someone like Venice which take like 10 turns just to negotiate with Athens and Hospitaller and once AI relationship is very poor or below you have to give them about 5000-20000 bribe become mandatory for any agreement and you just have to hope they ask for ceasefire because they will never agree if you are the one asking for it.

[Wallachian]

Yes, the diplomatic AI is completely broken. We should def add forced diplomacy. Problem is that even if you make peace with an enemy that hates you, sooner or later they will attack you again. And the vassalisation is completely broken too.

We limited the diplomat recruitment mainly to stop the AI spamming diplomats like crazy which would repeatedly try and fail to bribe characters during the end of turn.

[Anubis88]

Having a set of mods covering the period of 872 to 1530 would be amazing. Tsardoms stops in 1530 as past that date there are a whole host of changes in arms and armour (pike and shot era) which is hard to cover in the same mod. That is when With fire and sword mod comes into play.

The glaring issue here is the lack of mods from 450-872 as well for me It seems like everyone wants to focus on the 12th-13th centuries, but the absolutely best mods imho are those that chose other eras.

I do agree with what was written before, i haven't played fire and sword much but Tsardoms and TGC are really insane mods. Only EBII and TATW can compare with them, and those have had huge teams, they had more active teams at the peak than TGC and Tsardoms had combined members in it's entire history probably So it's a real testament to the work Tsardoms and TGC did that they can compete and in many cases surpass those 2 mods.

It would be amazing if modern mods like these could go back in time as i mentioned, to the fall of the Roman Empire and beyond. So much potential with the Roman reconquest, Sassanian superpower, and ofc the rise of Islam. A lot of unexplored potential there, but i doubt they will ever get made, there's little sources about the period and it's not something people love to read or talk about. Everyone wants to play the "crusader" period of the middle ages, so everything is focused on that. I guess it just captures imagination better. TGC and Tsardoms actually did quite a gamble i think, focusing on representing eras (especially TGC) of which people know almost nothing about, in an area often overlooked, yet they managed to basically perfect the representation of them.

A bit off topic but whatever, just wanted to give my thoughts

[Hrobatos]

Well it all comes down to personal will to create something. While Tsardoms, TGC but also TATW had large teams lion share of work was done by few individuals. Without those none of these mods would have seen release.

Manny enthusiastic people start a mod but it takes discipline to follow it trough. Thousands of hours went into creation of Tsardoms. I am sure same is the case with TGC, TATW and all other large mods

[Anubis88]

Well it all comes down to personal will to create something. While Tsardoms, TGC but also TATW had large teams lion share of work was done by few individuals. Without those none of these mods would have seen release.

Manny enthusiastic people start a mod but it takes discipline to follow it trough. Thousands of hours went into creation of Tsardoms. I am sure same is the case with TGC, TATW and all other large mods

Yeah sure, i agree 100%. I'm just saying that for example EBII when i was with the team had 20+ people working on the mod actively at the same time, and everyone made some contribuiton. Ofc there were guys with real passion that did a crazy amount of hours, but they had a much larger manpower than what Tsardoms or TGC have, so it makes sense that EBII is such an in depth mod. The fact that Tsardoms and TGC are on the same level shows how much work those few individiuals did without much help.

[Wallachian]

Yeah EBII literally had professional archaeologists working in the team. You can't beat that. I think in TATW King Kong did the bulk of the work though and it was a true testament of his willpower. But indeed, even at its peak Tsardoms had maybe 3-4 people working at the same time on modding stuff.

And indeed it really depends on people's interest. For example, personally I am not that interested in certain periods. I love the Renaissance and the period when gunpowder and medieval stuff were on the battlefield at the same time. Also, really enjoy eras such as the 30 years war period, though I never got to play the mod due to lack of time.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

Back to Romans again, I'm only 34 turns in but they've been an action packed 34 turns and I've noticed some things.

1. Chelandion Ousiakon has less attack and comes from the same building as the War Galley, but costs the same upkeep. Seems that it should be slightly cheaper due to the lower attack.

2. These loose, circle formation cavalry units (Turkman Tribel Horseman mercs pictured) always fail to come on the field when arriving as reinforcements. I have never once seen them successfully come on the field, their formation is so spread out that by the time they stop, a few models are still off-map and the entire unit cannot be used that battle. It doesn't even fight back, you can walk a unit in the middle of them and kill all those on the field without any losses. Looks like a Medieval 2 issue but maybe loose circle should be dropped and all cav made into line cav to reduce it. Even as a line unit, some light cav deploy as reinforcements in a long line by default; if they arrive from a corner position, they will be stuck partially off the field unable to be controlled much like the circle formation units.

Addendum: It occurred to me that this might be caused by my increasing unit sizes. I changed Turkmen Tribals from 32 to 40 size. However I just tested it with the default export_descr_unit.txt that comes with Tsardoms and the problem persists even with the default 32 size.

3. Annex Settlement missions are the worst, I've received 3 so far. I'd enjoy seeing them removed completely. The mission doesn't make sense, it requires you to obtain a settlement via diplomacy not through battle, if you take the settlement by force you fail the mission. Except the mission is always issued against a faction I am at war with, which requires me to make peace and pay massive amounts of cash to a faction that now hates me to get the settlement, or trade settlements I've already taken from them and now have to re-conquer. Totally counter intuitive when my army is standing just outside the city ready to take it.

4. Is the Roman Emperor's campaign map model supposed to be wielding a bishop's crosier as his weapon? Looks like he's using a special bishop model. I was expecting a campaign model that was closer to his in-battle model.

5. Maybe subjective and I adore their look, but Toxotai look like they are wearing more than 2 armor.

6. The port of Saloniki has some accessibility issues. It is covered by both the city's model and the city's info card, making it hard to click on. Konstantinoupolis and Galata have similar issues.

7. Should I still be getting the Ottomans Cross into Europe (1352) popup after the Ottomans are destroyed? The event's writing is phrased strangely. The first paragraph is purely historical. The second paragraph has some history but also gameplay implications, indicating that Ottomans will be attacking Gallipoli and I should be ready. Except Kantakouzenos and Sultan Orhan are dead along with both their empires. The event reads strangely when this is the case. It seems that the event should be re-written as purely a historical account. Then at the end of the event's text, a sentence could indicate "If the Ottoman Empire still exists at this time, raids around Gallipoli can be expected soon, escalating into a larger invasion over time."

8. Paramonai look very pretty chasing down baddies from a distance. However, and no insult at all, I've noticed that the horse armors in the mod have a conspicuously lower-res texture than other units, than even the rider atop them. It's very noticable on nearly any mount with visible metal armor like plate or chain. Speaking of which I was looking through moddb some time ago and noticed many models from old updates in circa 2012 that are no longer in the mod, like those megaswordsmen or these Kontaratoi and that beautiful banner. Where did they go off to? I love the units and models currently in game, however more variety is always good to me and now I am interested in the history of the mod itself. The Vestaritai interest me the most because while the Kontaratoi are still in game with a different model, the Vesties are not in game at all and do not seem to have an equivalent replacement, meaning they were dropped completely.

9. And the Karamanid AI. Ah, Karamanids. My poor, tragic six-pointed stars. The Ottoman, Aydinid, and Hospitaller AI are all bloodthirsty tyrants with units that greatly outclass much of the Roman early roster and fighting them without trump cards like Siphons or Varangians can be beautifully bloody. However the Karamanid AI has no strong units, has no great economy, is crippled by rebel garrison scripts, and as a general rule offers no meaningful resistance of any kind. I think I'm going to end this post here since it's getting long and disorganized. Instead I'll double post a seperate look at the Karamanid AI because I'd like to do a bit of a deep dive into this faction, having played them for 120 turns and now fought their AI in 4 other campaigns.

Also edit:

10. The Silk Road trade building line could use a small change. It comes in 3 tiers. Currently the tier 2 building has barely any effect, even in trade hubs like Konstantinoupolis and Prousa it's only ~25 income for a 6400 dollar building. Then the tier 3 building comes in with a big trade modifier and 300 flat income. I think that the tier 2 should have +100 flat income and the tier 3 stay at +300, this would help flatten the gap between tier 2 and 3 and make the tier 2 building more attractive in itself rather than the necessary money sink to get to the real gold at the end that it is right now.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

At the end of the last post I outlined some basic issues with the Karamanid AI and to an extent, the faction as a whole. Time to look at them more closely.

* Karamanids have no strong units early on. Noker Archers and Retainers are both good units, but the AI hardly ever makes them. Instead they mass produce basic islamic levies like yayas and turkmen axemen which are easily swept away by even basic light cavalry, or they make the weak Karamanid unique units like Igdish Spearmen or Thaqlah Axemen.

Igdish simply are not very strong, and they are fairly expensive for what they do. I found it better to simply mass cheap Yaya spearmen until foot askari were available as the Yaya are widely available and easily retrained in large numbers.

Thaqlah are, much to my regret since I adore two handed axemen, little more than a waste of money. They suffer from five crippling issues: poor melee killing performance largely due to lack of attack, not being a spear unit means the AI prioritizes charging their heavy cav into them, lacking shields so the AI prioritizes shooting them, sparse recruitment only from mercenary barracks, all are which are greatly amplified by their restrictively high upkeep cost of 400. Obviously not being a spear unit cannot be "fixed," but if they are going to be charged by cavalry every battle then they need to be able to take a charge with few losses and deal enough damage back to justify their place in the army. Maybe a mass increase? This unit might be fine even in its current form if the upkeep were greatly redued, even cut in half down to ~200.

The Karamanid unique infantry are inferior to basic AOR levies on cost-benefit and logistics levels. You are better off foregoing their unique units and using masses of cheap levies that can be easily replaced until Foot Askari are available, which is another unit available to all islamic factions. Karamanids need some infantry that are better than basic levies and that are strong and cheap enough to be worth using.

The other early Karamanid unique unit is Mamluk Cavalry. For a player, all you need is to look at the Upkeep cost to dismiss this almost almost out of hand. 800 upkeep is completely outrageous for a cavalry unit with 14 armor. Even when I reached the point where I was rich, I found it to be far more economical and effective to simply mass hordes of Faris Lancers, merging and retraining them, than it was to use Mamluk Cavalry. Faris lancers are widely retrainable as mercenaries all the way into Thrace while Mamluks are 4 times the price and can only be retrained way out in Karamanidland on the edge of the map, a 10 turn round trip from Constantinople. I don't know how the AI's finances work since it gets so much free money, but I rarely see the AI raise many Mamluk Cavalry. I've actually only ever seen them with 1 unit of Mamluks, probably the starting unit that sat in Konya bleeding money for them the whole campaign.

Ultimately the Karamanids take too long to reach their Ghulam units. I still have not reached them after 120 turns. If they do in fact appear in 1390 then that is 90 turns on 2TPY and 180 turns on 4TPY before they are available, either way they are going to be superfluous for the superpower you will be by the time they are available, and the AI won't survive long enough to make use of them.

* Karamanids have no great economy. Their corner start makes them very slow to acquire trade agreements. Konya is their only powerball money city, but your weak early unit roster will likely see Konya spending time building barracks and merc barracks to train better units, taking time away from economy buildings. Their three neighbors all start out able to train their superunits out of their capitals immediately: Aydinid Guard Archers and Beglik Nokeri Lancers in Guzelhisar; Englinovarangioi, Murtatoi, Siphonatores, Kavalliairoi, Dynatoi out of Konstantinoupolis; Sipahis and Nokers from Bursa and Balik Hisar. These factions don't need to waste time building military in their capitals and can focus on building up roads, silk road, and trade exclusively to maximize economy.

Making Foot Askari, Nokers, Thaqlah, Mamluk Cavalry and maybe even Naffatun available to Karamanids in Konya and maybe Karaman on turn 1 could make this faction's early game more interesting and competitive with its neighbors. It would also greatly help the AI get itself together. Konya can't even train Foot Askari at all at any point, which baffles me and weakens their position.

Aydinids can make Merchants, but Karamanids cannot. I'm not sure of the reason for this, historical basis? They do little early on but by turn 100 merchants on the right tiles can be pulling in 8000-10000 per turn which makes a great difference. It seems that both the minor islamic factions should get Merchants to help them keep pace with their more powerful neighbors.

* Karamanids are crippled by rebel garrison scripts. I cannot emphasize this enough, I think it is the most significant factor in this faction's poor performance as AI. The garrison scripts in Anatolia are surprisingly strong, filling even small palisade wall cities with foot askari, askeri horse archers, or nokers plus many other cheaper units. The AI in medieval 2 tends to send only exactly as many units as it thinks it needs to win a battle, it rarely employs overwhelming force. So when it attacks a rebel settlement that has 6 units inside it, the AI will usually only use 6-8 units of its own. Then the garrison script spawns an army and chases off or destroys them. The AI sends a larger army back to fight the scripted army, and a rebel army from another settlement gets together and teams up to destroy them. Or the AI underestimates the power of the garrison and fails to assault the city. By the time they are able to try again, the garrison script has refreshed.

There is a vast wall of rebel settlements between the Karamanids and the rest of the map and they all have garrison scripts. Angora even has an Ottoman script that spawns a trebuchet army to attack the city and will put you at war with the Ottomans if you own Angora when the script goes off. This further affects their poor economy as Angora is a wealthy city with a silk road connection and this event punishes the Karamanids (or any faction) for taking it without any warning. All of these magical script-summoned armies bog down the Karamanid AI that actually has to buy its units and build its armies. As the Romans, by the time I crossed swords with the Karamanids on turn 30 they had captured 1 settlement (Adalia).

Improving their economic potential and recruitment will help them get through the garrison scripts and accomplish something.

* The Karamanid Candar is the weakest bodyguard in the mod. An important addition. The karamanid candar is unlike the other two islamic bodyguards in that they are horse archers, not lancers. Heavily armored horse archers. This unit is cursed by every kind of magic: 1. it has terrible charge and is poor in melee meaning it will lose any fight with another bodyguard. Its sluggish turning and horse archer skirmishing AI means it will usually be charged in the rear, making for a bad start to melee. 2. it is heavily armored and therefore slow; it can be caught in melee and charged by lighter cavalry and then swarmed by heavy cavalry for an easy kill. Karamanid Candars handle so sluggishly that even slow cavalry can catch them, and by slow I mean the slowest: even my Oikeioi and Paramonai Hippeis Guards can catch them, and I believe they are the two slowest cavalry in the mod. This makes Karamanid family members extremely easy to kill or capture & ransom compared to other factions. 3. Being a bodyguard their model count is too low for them to pose any real threat as an archer unit, they simply cannot score a significant number of ranged kills with their low model count and their poor melee stats and slow speed leave them vulnerable up close.

The Karamanid Candar is a curse upon the faction in horse archer form. Lancer cavalry bodyguards in this mod are often maddeningly difficult to kill and a massive threat on the field, the amount of damage they can take and deal approaches absurdity sometimes. But the Karamanid Candar's lack of charge, slow speed, lack of models, and poor melee performance make it easy pickings in any battle and is an achilles heel for the faction in battle. I would either turn them into lancers or greatly increase their model count so they can be an actual threat in number if not in ability. Even then they are still very vulnerable to heavy cav charges that can easily catch them due to their slow speed. They would actually be better off with less armor and more speed in their current form; maybe a larger horse archer unit with less armor, more speed and good stamina that reforms later on with the Ghulam event into a heavy lancer could be a bodyguard improvement?

* Karamanid AI offers no meaningful resistance of any kind. It is harsh but I believe it is the correct conclusion. They aren't able to become a naval annoyance because of the limited sea access in their region. Their limited economy, weak early unit roster, and very thin early recruitment leads the AI to field armies of low tier levies that are easily swept away by garrison script elites and player armies. In their current form I find the Karamanid AI adds almost nothing to the campaign. They are actually easier to destroy than the rebel settlements around them because their units are weak and they don't get any magical conjuration armies to help them. Making some of their units cheaper, giving them more varied early recruitment, and a bodyguard change could power up this faction. I would welcome a big cost reduction on Mamluk cavalry and possibly some mamluk infantry and/or archers to supplement them and make the Karamanid early game roster more unique.

Ok my insomnia is still going but I feel like I should lay down now.

[Anubis88]

Hey Artannis, great feedback! I'll try to answer as far as i know.

1. Agreed, i doubt there is any actual reason just an oversight

2. Very interesting. I've noticed some similar issues but mostly with wagons. Definitely something worth looking into, it's quite a huge issue.

3. Again agreed. I don't remember seeing them in previous versions, but they do make no sense. You can never get them. I was also surprised at failing the mission when i conquered it.

4. No idea. Could be that the Roman Emperor was very famous with having that crosier with him ceremonially, but i'm just guessing here.

5. Indeed

6. Some cities have that, also Ragusa comes to mind and Kotor. You can access it by zooming out easier. I guess the issue is with the big port cities, we try to represent it as 1 thing and sometimes such issues crop up.

7. Yeah i guess, i'll look into changing the text myself when i get around to it if others don't

8. You are right about that. I especially notice the eyes with some of the caped horses. Jurcek managed to fix them a bit with the late campaign where at least the eyes can be seen. We have removed some horse headgear that was clearly lower res, but it still appears on some units. IIRC at some point the quality of those textures was downgraded during the years, i assume somebody made a bad upload and nobody noticed it until the old versions were correct, and now you'd have to basically redo everything in the affected units, which however is not a priority.

The units do look awesome, i can only assume they were removed for not being historical enough.

9. Such feedback would be invaluable. People don't really play with them so it's really hard to balance such a faction when you receive little feedback.

[Wallachian]

The text of the Rise of the Ottomans event si fine, its just that the event appears in error. It also appears if the player is Ottoman too. It will be removed if the player is Ottoman or if the Ottomans are dead by 1352.

However, if the Ottomans are dead by 1352 you must be playing on Easy difficulty or without the added difficulty scripts or there must be something wrong because ideally this should never happen. The Romans should never be able to defeat the Ottomans before 1352.

I don't remember getting the annex settlement mission in previous versions, this will be fixed for sure. Just like we got rid of the annoying kill the heretic missions which would have you send agents to the other side of the map.

The Emperor model is also an error. However, it's not meant to be look like the in-battle version. There are separate battle map models and strat map models. On the strat map the emperor wears gala clothing whereas in battle he wears armour.

Those megaswordsmen or these Kontaratoi were from a mod made by Caudillo and they were anachronistic for our mod period. That was before we created our own Roman units. And yes some horse armours are lower res but they are still better than having no diversity or having horses with no armour.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

This was on VH/H without hardcore script. On 4TPY the Ottomans can very plausibly be destroyed before 1352, take Prousa very quickly and the Ottoman AI's military to collapses. Without Prousa the AI mass produces levies that are easily defeated. I eliminated them on turn 27 but I didn't rush the end either, I left to go north and take Varna before Bulgaria could which cost me many turns against the Ottomans. I'm not great at Medieval 2 so someone who knows it better could get rid of the Ottomans before turn 15 which would be required to destroy them before 1352 on 2TPY. Using the starting assassin to take out high % family members helps. I eliminated the Ottomans by killing all their family members, not by taking all their settlements.

I tried to make the Ottomans tougher in my current campaign by inreasing all their units sizes to 125 for cavalry and 250 for infantry and while this did make Sipahis more annoying to fight, for the most part it just gave me more experience. I find that because of the way the Ottomans start, they are vulnerable to losing Prousa in a rush attack across the sea of Marmara with the starting units around Konstaninoupolis. And Prousa can be easily taken early on by sieging the city while standing on its southeastern corner tile - when attacked you will start on top of a giant mountain from which you can easily burn the Sultan with Siphonatores and rout the rest. The greatest blessing for the Romans is their levies: kontaratoi, toxotai, and viglai hippeis are all free upkeep in settlements and with some turcopole backup can win every battle for the first 40 turns. Because they are free upkeep you can take a settlement, leave some behind, and move on while marching up reinforcements and hiring mercenaries to replace them. Prousa alone makes 2500 income as soon as you take it which is enough to raise another full stack of levies to continue the attack.

On my next Roman campaign I'd like to try a sort of speedrun against the Ottomans. I see the makings of how to do it. Assassinate Kantakouzenos on turn 1, siege Didymoteichon on turn 1 at the bridge title with some Turcopoles and cavalry; hope they sally out so that you can get all their cities on turn 2 before Serbia can take Berroia or Ser. Immediately rush Prousa with the emperor, get all Kontakouzenos' units together and use them to take Balik Hisar, keep the assassin busy, constantly build levies to keep the war machine moving east and eliminate them before turn 15. Probably not possible with the hardcore script.

Having said all that, I do think the Ottomans Cross into Europe event reads oddly if either Kantakouzenos or of course the Ottomans are dead. How can the Ottomans cross into europe at the invitation of a dead man? It does seem to me that the event could be re-written purely as a historical narration with a warning at the end that ottoman incursions will begin appearing if the ottomans are still alive. It's an interesting historical event so I think it would be nice to have always appear for learning's sake.

[eyelurker]

The Rise of Ottoman is used more for a more challenging Ottoman but If you play as Roman then Rise of Ottoman is kinda redundant becuase you have to defeat Ottoman before Ottoman get too powerful because the only viable Roman expansion at the start is against the Ottoman

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

Unless you are like that deliberately like to loose, in order to make the challenge next to impossible. In my Roman campaign we are literally fighting for survival in the Morea, Thessaliniki recently fell to the Ottomans and despite a crusade (which so far has been annihilated) my allies ate too far away to help

[eyelurker]

Has anyone play golden horde? Because their elite cavalry are the most lethal unit in the game. I remember having my Roman and Hungary army decimated by Khan Guard and when i play as them during Genoa sally out in siege of Kaffa Mirza lancer and Bey heavy horse archer can easily decimate Genoese pavise crossbowman which are one of the best heavy infantry in the game despite being a ranged unit.

Usually heavy horse archer have too little armor capability to be as serious threat as knight despite having the same price and upkeep which means you better off using Knight but Bey heavy horse archer are the exception and are equal if not more powerful than regular knight.

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

I have not yet tried the Ulus Juchi or Horde, I really must get around to trying it. Does Talemane attack?

[Anubis88]

I played some GH, and they are indeed very powerful. Horse Archers are quite OP, but they kinda should be, at least army quality wise. They will be nerfed a bit in the campaign, in my Ottoman campaign i was at 1510 or so and GH was conquering Switzerland

There's a reason why the Steppe people had such advantage over the rest of the worlds armies before widespread use of gunpowder though. The Horse Archer was the elite unit to which sedentary people rarely had an answer to. So defeating a Golden Horde army should be very hard, but they shouldn't be able to field many armies.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

Trinacria has some silver surfer units. [1] [2]

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

Something's up in Sicily, Trinacria missing a unit card and more silver surfers. [1] [2] [3]

Also these silver surfer Albanian Trebuchets. Albania doesn't get trebuchets which is why they are silver surfer. However one full army with 2 trebuchets spawns as part of a script where an Albanian noble raises an army to retake Durazzo/Dyrrhachion. These silver surfer trebs come from that scripted army.

[eyelurker]

Is it possible to make future patch in the game to disable the reputaion loss of "retaking back diplomatic given settlement"?

Because events like Bulgaria loss Vidin and reconquer it will automaticly make Bulgaria reputation despicable which didn't make sense. It also happens with Naples when dealing with Conspirator or Hungary. I've already mod to disable it myself but i will have to do it again in future patch

[Oliver27]

Hi, love the look of this mod, but I can't get it to work. Well I can start a campaign and it seems to work fine, but then I save and exit and try to load, but it always stalls after I click, the cursor becomes an hourglass and the screen never changes. I've tried verifying integrity on steam, I've tried using the .bat launcher, I have tried different resolutions. Loading save games always bugs.

Any idea how I could resolve this? Thanks