AD: Gameplay Discussion Thread

[Tsarsies]

I think some of the scripts cause your money to be increased\decreased while the turn is ticking. therefore, you could be 10,000 positive when you click end turn but due to armies in the field, upkeep costs, character wages etc, you drop to a negative. then when your next turn arrives (5 min later:>) your profits (trade, merchant trade etc) are added to your 'negative' balance. So the answer to your question,

Where did all my money go?

, You must have too many units, or have a few in the field. Retire any units you dont need, or are outdated by other units. and only field an army when you need too. and build PORTS! and get those trade rights!

When i first played AD i had much the same problem, my economy was negative for too many consecutive turns. and had to restart the campaign. To keep your economy positive ONLY train units you need (don't train units merely because you have the money available), same for buildings. ONLY build in the settlements you need strategically. I also find building farms only when i want that settlement to increase a level helps.(from castle to fortress for example), that way your settlements wont populate too fast and you wont need to worry about 'squalor' too much. Which becomes a HUGE problem when you are negative for multiple turns!

My Current campaign i am playing as england and it is the year 1120 (81st turn) and i have not gone into the red yet. I have only taken 2 new regions, am currently planning a mass invasion of scotland while using diplomacy to keep the french on reasonable terms (i dont want to ally with them for the fact that i will eventually be invading them). Some of my regions have barely improved since the start of the campaign. i use 3 regions to produce my military and hire mercenaries to take care of rebellions. I focus on building up my economy by building those buildings first. Ive also found that rebellions seem to occur much more often in your outer regions, so my london region has never rebelled, but york has had a few. so if you expand your territory in a circle (so to speak) and move your capital to the centre of your empire that could help increase not only your economy but also decrease the rebellions.

Although the HRE i found is rather difficult to control due to its large size from turn 1!

Another solution if strategy isnt helping, cheat lol. go into the descr_sm_resources and increase the value of the trade items. which will bring in more merchant trade. or simply go into descr_strat and change the HRE's kings purse to a more favorable number Keep in mind that altering those numbers will effect the AI so they can benefit from the increased trade aswell!

Not sure if this post helped. i hope it did seeing as its so damn long haha...

[waldopbarnstormer]

Thanks for the help, I thought it had something to do with unit upkeep I just couldn't find any info on how the script works so didn't know what was going on.

Playing HRE is really tough at the start partly because the empire is so large and your starting territories are underdeveloped, right from the start I lost most of my provinces in italy and on the periphery of my empire to large rebel forces, as I couldn't afford to recruit more troops I was hard pressed to stem the tide.

[waldopbarnstormer]

I restarted my game as the HRE and managed to keep myself in the black however I seem to be up against a never ending tide of rebels.

So far I have reached turn 30 (1095) and every turn so far at least 1 stack of rebels has appeared somewhere in my lands and attacked one of my settlements or just stood there looking threatening. My captial province is one of the worst offenders, for example im my last 3 turns I defeated a rebel force beseiging frankfurt my capital, then I moved my force to attack a rebel force beseiging Koln, only to find a new rebel force has just appeared right next to Frankfurt again. At the same time I am being besieged by rebels at Hamburg and also Praha.

I am playing on H/VH setting as this is usually what I have found to be the best balance so what is going on with all the rebels an how can I decrease their occurance?

[Ozy]

Hey,
Ive been playind AD for about 80-90 turns with the Byzantine Empire and its been really good except for a couple of things. First of all, as many other people have said, the rebels just seem to be everywhere, every turn. I don't know much about medieval history, but i guess its kind of realistic to have so many rebels since the empire was kind of weak...
However, something that i really find problematic is heresy. Heretics don't pop up as usual as rebels, but still they are a big pain in the ass because they simply spread heresy way too quickly. For example, in the island of Cyprus, a heretic appeared, so i recruited a priest to take care of him. However, my priest had no piety at all so he had 5% chances of succeeding. I recruited an other priest so that they could stop the heresy spread in the island. At that time about 90% of the population were orthodox.

3 or 4 turns later, a little revolt started in the island, and only 50% of the population were orthodox, the rest were heretics. At that point i really was like wtf!! so i built a bigger church, and took 3 of my "best" priest in Minor Asia, who had been converting Muslims and had 3 or 4 of piety. I tried to convert the heretic with one of them, but he converted to heresy. The next turn most of the population were heretics, and even though i had 5 priests (i recruited a 3rd priest in the island) + a 2nd level church vs 2 heretics, the conversion percentage to orthodox was of -22%!!

Eventually i managed to kill the heretics, but after that, my 5 priests were still there and the population turned really slowly to the orthodox church. So, in general, i can really say that heretics are WAY to overpowered, and priests definitely too weak. If my priests started with 2 or 3 peaty points instead of none their chances would be a lot bigger. Besides, turning half of the population in 4 turns? I really find that hard to believe. I really think you guys should definitely fix this, since i think its a big issue.

[Re Berengario I]

Heretic power is already tuned down in the next version together with the conversion power of priests (both are irrealistic).

For the rebel popping chance the base is 2% for every province, with further increases based on your global reputation (that will be called "prestige" in the next version) and the happiness of the region population.

[Ozy]

Hey,
I just read waldopbarnstormer last comment. I played a campaign in Spain for a while and i saw that for some reason regions with no fog of war tended to have less rebels. So, I built lots of watch tower everywhere, so that I could see almost all of them land. I don't know if it was just a coincidence, but you might just give it a shot an we will see. I also always accepted the the events with the show me how button, even if it made me have negative numbers during that turn (i usually had my money back the next turn).

[Shaba Wangy]

Hey,
I just read waldopbarnstormer last comment. I played a campaign in Spain for a while and i saw that for some reason regions with no fog of war tended to have less rebels. So, I built lots of watch tower everywhere, so that I could see almost all of them land. I don't know if it was just a coincidence, but you might just give it a shot an we will see. I also always accepted the the events with the show me how button, even if it made me have negative numbers during that turn (i usually had my money back the next turn).

Watch towers lower chance of rebellion. Its hardcoded.

[Coko]

Has this been taken into account when considering their cost? Also is a Fort similar? And if so what are these numbers...I'm can you almost stack them up?

[Shaba Wangy]

Has this been taken into account when considering their cost? Also is a Fort similar? And if so what are these numbers...I'm can you almost stack them up?

Remember that the hardcoded limits of the game regarding whether rebels pop up have no interference with the scripted rebellions Re has put in, which depend not on the computers calculations but on loyalty of the city (i.e. unrest). They work together to screw you, but by easing one you don't cancel out the chance of the other.

[Re Berengario I]

Hardcoded rebels (aka brigands) are a lot (and I mean A LOT) scarcer than in Vanilla, almost non existant in my gameplay experience.

All the rebel stacks without (xxxx brigands) are the outcome of your play, beside a small 2% chance for each region every turn (this means 1 each 50 turns probability, of course having 10 regions the chance become 1 each 5 turns in all your empire, but empires were hard to rule).

[Kaosbouncer]

alright, I know I've said this before, but I really need to adress the heretic problem. It's currently 1180 AD in my Spanish campaign, and lesser factions control a good 3/4 of the map. The only factions that are actually stronger than they were at the beginning are myself, Scotland the Papal States, and Denmark. Venice, Comuni Lombardi, Sicily, England and the Moors are dead. Portugal, the Byzantines, France, Egypt and the Kievan Rus are all down to one province. The HRE and the Seljuks are still holding onto quite a few provinces but have definitley lost a lot more than they've gained. Hungary has lost all but one of its original provinces and now occupies most of Bulgaria and Macedonia instead. Portugal is down to Coimbra (and it's not even my fault )

i've been putting in toggle_fow and looking at what's causing rebellions pretty much every turn since the beginning. I've been watching wars and noble rebellions closely, and I can honestly say that over 90% of rebelling provinces are caused by heresey. The heretics are a pretty serious but handleable problem for me (i've built a series of forts along the pyrenees to keep heretics out but since Barcelona and Navarre have a bit of territory east of them the heretics still bother me). But the AI simply can't handle it. They ignore the scripted heretics for several turns until it's around 30% heretic, then they send a minor priest to try and denoucne him. All they do is double the problem.

The game is still pretty challenging because taking over the now-rebel territories can cause rebellions in your own provinces. But it could be so much more challenging. For example, early on I had to fight a tense war against the Moors for control of southern Iberia. It all culminated at a battle near Sevilla where my own army and a half stack of my Portuguese allies crushed the main Moorish invading force, and then I took over most of the rebel cities pretty much unopposed. This was before the heresey struck and destroyed the AI. Recently, now that almost all of Iberia is under my control, I moved to take over North Africa, but the Moors were long gone. I still had to fight hard against some rebel stacks, but I took Fas without as much trouble as I expected. I quickly took over Marrakech, Algiers and Biyajah with no opposition. I'm currently besieging Tunis as we speak. The lesser factions are a lot stronger in this mod than in vanilla, but they just can't stand up to a determined player-controlled faction with a variety of better units. If the Moors controlled these regions as they are supposed to, I'd have to deal with Moorish desert units outmatching my heavy knights and infantry in the desert enviornment, and I'd probably have to worry about sea battles and controlling the water to safely transport my units from the mainland to reinforce the armies in Africa. Soon, when I start taking over rebel-controlled Sicily, the same thing will probably happen.

I'm planning to manually stregnthen the power of priests to denounce them (as soon as I find out how ) and I really think you should do the same. The problem doesn't seem to come from your scripted heretics (like Henry de Lausanne), but priests turned heretics. It also usually starts in France and Germany, so I plan to start a Capet campaign and see if I can keep the situation from becoming explosive

[♔ST0MPA♔]

I would have to agree entirely with this post. I too have been experiencing the exact same situations with heratics. Please please, release the file asap to tune down heratics conversion rate, not only is it unrealistic it is killing every game im playing by the 13th century,. Take as long as you want for the release of version 1.0, but please sir I ask you to reales this file.

[Shaba Wangy]

Go to the descr_campaign_db.xml in your Anno Domini data folder. Open as a .txt file.

There you will find the following:

<religion>
<max_witches_per_region uint="1"/>
<max_witches uint="5"/>
<max_heretics_per_region uint="1"/>
<max_heretics uint="10"/>
<max_heretics_conversion_modifier float="1.0"/>
<max_inquisitors_per_region uint="1"/>
<max_inquisitors uint="2"/>
<heretic_conversion_rate_modifier float="0.0075"/>
<heretic_conversion_rate_offset float="0.025"/>
<witch_conversion_rate_modifier float="0.0098"/>
<witch_conversion_rate_offset float="0.02"/>
<inquisitor_conversion_rate_modifier float="0.010"/>
<inquisitor_conversion_rate_offset float="0.04"/>
<priest_conversion_rate_modifier float="0.004"/>
<priest_conversion_rate_offset float="0.015"/>
<witch_creation_modifier float="1.0"/>
<heretic_creation_modifier float="0.4"/>
<inquisitor_creation_modifier float="0.3"/>
<min_cardinal_piety uint="5"/>
<convert_to_heretic_base_modifier float="10.0"/>
<convert_to_heretic_unorthodox_modifier float="0.7"/>
</religion>

Note the values of the highlighted parts may differ in your file. Change to these values, or whatever else suits you. I play AD much differently that Re.

Shaba

[♔ST0MPA♔]

Thankyou Shaba. I appreciate this very much.

[Shaba Wangy]

Thankyou Shaba. I appreciate this very much.

No worries. Go enjoy AD.

[Malachus]

Hey RB, I've been reading some of your posts here and there scattered between TWC and the Org, and I noticed mentions of changes to the building system that simulate a province either being a 1)vassal, 2) directly controlled by the faction in question, or 3) independent. Is this based on the game play of Crusader Kings?

If so, or not, either way, I have a suggestion. In CK, you couldn't build certain upgrades in your province unless the technology for the upgrade had been discovered within that province. Essentially, not everywhere in the world advanced at the same rate.

Are you planning on incorporating something along these lines into your mod?

[♔ST0MPA♔]

No worries. Go enjoy AD.

Im still finding the rest of the factions depleted to one province or destroyed alltogether by the end of the 12th century. would love to be able to fight against more than just rebel cities, but i guess it aint gonna happen.

[Re Berengario I]

Hey RB, I've been reading some of your posts here and there scattered between TWC and the Org, and I noticed mentions of changes to the building system that simulate a province either being a 1)vassal, 2) directly controlled by the faction in question, or 3) independent. Is this based on the game play of Crusader Kings?

If so, or not, either way, I have a suggestion. In CK, you couldn't build certain upgrades in your province unless the technology for the upgrade had been discovered within that province. Essentially, not everywhere in the world advanced at the same rate.

Are you planning on incorporating something along these lines into your mod?

It will be pretty similar to the CK system.

[CaesarBR]

Just got curious...
What is the "dreadful checker farm pattern" that Re Berengario says have been modded in the List of Features thread?

[waldopbarnstormer]

I have a question whcih needs an answer.

Playing a campaign in AD I decided to send an army off to join a crusade as the pope wanted me to, however my army costs me an incredible amount of money while out in the field. Can this feature be altered so that my crusade army cost no upkeep while away, so that I can raise another army to defend myself.