JustinianII
16-07-2005, 04:56
I wanted to say thanks to Angryminer for the GoG mod. I finished my first full game just now under the mod (Castila, High Middle Ages) and it was fun. I wouldn't exactly call it very tough (though I suspect starting as a 1 province nation would be quite a bit harder) but it was much more engaging. The economy is vastly improved. I might tweak town tributes up by 20% over massively lower amounts you get now but that's minor quibbling over details. Having your main income until the mid or late game be taxes rather than tribute makes things much better. Increasing the prices of Marshalls above the first helps a lot, too. I ended up running 1 regular marshall plus a King/Prince to put down rebellions for all but the endgame when I could afford 400/clock tick for two full time marshalls.
I'm not sure about the rationale for lowering the cost of the exotic goods. There isn't any reason not to get all of the exotics as fast as possible now since if you are running a couple good merchants, you make more on your trade routes than the cost of the exotics. Still a fairly minor point.
The two main points I see that would really help out the game's difficulty would be:
1) The AI still gets into a lot of foolish wars. Why are they constantly fighting 3-4 enemies? Nobody is able to put together a large empire because they are constantly exhausting themselves.
2) The AI still uses mostly crappy units. Mostly, I think, because they never have the gold for the good units because they are constantly at war with half the continent. As much more interesting as the mod makes the game, the difficulty will never be what it should be when I'm constantly fighting swordsmen and some archers with Heavy Crossbowmen or Longbowmen, Feudal Knights, and Templars/Teutonic Knights. I stomp them into dust one on one.
This would seem easily addressed in a patch. I'll admit that is easier to say than program, but making the AI much less likely to declare war, and MUCH MUCH less likely to declare war on multiple opponents, plus prioritizing better units would make this an awesome game.
An AAR of my Castila game would be extremely interesting: I started out slowly but then when England declared war on me, I sent my 5 star spy after them. I managed to kill their King in battle and my spy was crowned King of England! I handed over the crown and now controllwed half of Spain, Aquitaine, Normandy, Ireland, and all of England but Scotland and Wales! I was far and away the most powerful nation and thought it was gonna be a cakewalk I pumped up all my cities for an hour or two, managed to get all the trade goods except for clothing, got two immensely valuable trade routes running, and built up two really strong armies. It looked like it was all over for Europe.... and then my King was assassinated by an enemy spy while my heirs were still babies!
My whole empire fell apart. I can't overstate how screwed I was by this assassination. I was instantly at war with the entire British Isles, Aquitaine, Leon, Navarre, and some other people. My best army had evaporated when my King died. I lost al but three of my trade goods, and my income went into the toilet. Aquitane invaded and took one of my built up cities... and I was down to my original three freaking provinces! After hours and hours of gameplay!
I was pissed.
Managed to claw back though by defeating a couple field armies with "I'll Lead" and suing for peace as quickly as I could with as many people as I could. Aquitane was the hardest... I had turned the province into a fortress with all kinds of siege defences, moat, Templars, etc. And they wouldn't accept peace no matter what I did, so I spent an hour just fighting off their armies until I could slowly save enough gold to build two armies capable of sieging the place.
Once I got Aquitance back things were a lot easier (it was producing like 5 trade goods, etc) and I concentrated on uniting Spain. Once I did that, it was essentially mopping up. Eventually I bribed all the powerful nations into voting me emperor.
Lots of fun. Thanks for the mod. I don't suppose there is any way to make the AI build better units via your mod?
I'm not sure about the rationale for lowering the cost of the exotic goods. There isn't any reason not to get all of the exotics as fast as possible now since if you are running a couple good merchants, you make more on your trade routes than the cost of the exotics. Still a fairly minor point.
The two main points I see that would really help out the game's difficulty would be:
1) The AI still gets into a lot of foolish wars. Why are they constantly fighting 3-4 enemies? Nobody is able to put together a large empire because they are constantly exhausting themselves.
2) The AI still uses mostly crappy units. Mostly, I think, because they never have the gold for the good units because they are constantly at war with half the continent. As much more interesting as the mod makes the game, the difficulty will never be what it should be when I'm constantly fighting swordsmen and some archers with Heavy Crossbowmen or Longbowmen, Feudal Knights, and Templars/Teutonic Knights. I stomp them into dust one on one.
This would seem easily addressed in a patch. I'll admit that is easier to say than program, but making the AI much less likely to declare war, and MUCH MUCH less likely to declare war on multiple opponents, plus prioritizing better units would make this an awesome game.
An AAR of my Castila game would be extremely interesting: I started out slowly but then when England declared war on me, I sent my 5 star spy after them. I managed to kill their King in battle and my spy was crowned King of England! I handed over the crown and now controllwed half of Spain, Aquitaine, Normandy, Ireland, and all of England but Scotland and Wales! I was far and away the most powerful nation and thought it was gonna be a cakewalk I pumped up all my cities for an hour or two, managed to get all the trade goods except for clothing, got two immensely valuable trade routes running, and built up two really strong armies. It looked like it was all over for Europe.... and then my King was assassinated by an enemy spy while my heirs were still babies!
My whole empire fell apart. I can't overstate how screwed I was by this assassination. I was instantly at war with the entire British Isles, Aquitaine, Leon, Navarre, and some other people. My best army had evaporated when my King died. I lost al but three of my trade goods, and my income went into the toilet. Aquitane invaded and took one of my built up cities... and I was down to my original three freaking provinces! After hours and hours of gameplay!
I was pissed.
Managed to claw back though by defeating a couple field armies with "I'll Lead" and suing for peace as quickly as I could with as many people as I could. Aquitane was the hardest... I had turned the province into a fortress with all kinds of siege defences, moat, Templars, etc. And they wouldn't accept peace no matter what I did, so I spent an hour just fighting off their armies until I could slowly save enough gold to build two armies capable of sieging the place.
Once I got Aquitance back things were a lot easier (it was producing like 5 trade goods, etc) and I concentrated on uniting Spain. Once I did that, it was essentially mopping up. Eventually I bribed all the powerful nations into voting me emperor.
Lots of fun. Thanks for the mod. I don't suppose there is any way to make the AI build better units via your mod?