Province Architecture

[Figgie]

Hi, all! I had a brief question for some of you more experienced modders regarding an aspect of the game and whether it can be changed. Yes, you guessed it, its the province architecture ;). I wanted to know if it was possible to change which architecture set a province uses in some of the initialization files. Specifically i wanted to changed a few of the provinces in spain to have western architecture instead of arabic, but have not yet stumbled on the file that holds the code controls for this. Have any of you knowledge of such a file?

Thanks for your answers, everyone!

[Neural Eclipse]

Speaking of architecture in terms of the buildings that provinces start with, is it random or can it be predetermined through a file? I haven't seen the AI build a single heavily armored unit yet and I think it's because half the provinces that start out with military buildings have the wrong type of building to begin with. IE: axe master in the middle of high Germany or a spear master in the north-east (Russia) where there are only axemen, swordsmen and bowmen availible. It's a waste of a slot and the AI isn't smart enough to demolish crap like that. So I think that hinders any sort of unit build up progression from the very beginning for it. The AI might even build worthless buildings like that by itself anyway, which would be even worse.

Any tips on how to change that are appreciated. Combination of all mods to try and make the game more difficult even on hard isn't enough >_<

I have fought against a few cataphracts though, but I believe all of them were from famous rebels.

[Figgie]

Yeah i agree with you, the ai builds far too much useless crap and does not build toward a goal afaik. From what ive seen it just draws building id codes out of a hat and builds them if it accidentally has the requirements met :P. And considering some of the heavy units of which you speak have pretty complicated requirements, im not surprised the ai never draws the right numbers out of a hat, so to speak, to be able to build them anywhere :(

[Elvain]

for the architecture, I know it has to be possible, but right now I don´t know in which file exactly. I will look it up and tell you.

We, at least me and Angryminer, try to improve AI behaviour in hiring stronger military units and \i thisk we are successfull (I mostly only thanks to Angryminer). Those changes are made by moving buildings from one to anothre town level in AI built file and also changing prices in buildings.ini (defs/economy resp. defs/Misc)
Axemen is more expensive so it balances the advantage of it (+1 workers), so Ai don´t build it so frequently...but we are not so skilled (I am not) to change AI intelligence in this case. I only can help him, but nothing more.

[Neural Eclipse]

Aye, you guys did improve the game. Do you know if town templates.ini (not at my comp right now, so I don't remember the exact name) actually governs specific cities? I looked at it and it seemed to specify starting buildings for a couple towns (IE: Rome) or at least some sort of build routine for a couple others.

I keep conquering province after province as Kiev right now on hard and all of them have the problem of having useless military buildings (I even bsswitched to check whether their nation's units needed the structure, but they didn't and, of course, the province units didn't either).

The heaviest AI units I've encountered so far in battle in my Kiev campaign are Roman Infantry and Mameluks and I have 30ish provinces... I paused the game, and bsswitched to other nations to see if I could find anything heavier and I managed to... but only 1 army. Forgot what nation, but their marshal had 4 teutonic knights in his army, though they were all missing half their men.

[Angryminer]

1. Yes, I know the towntemplates.ini file. It defines "templates" for towns that are randomly distributed over the map. It also defines starting-structures for some provinces.
2. The AI doesn't know about the fact that good units require specific buildings. It builds random buildings and recruits the best available units.
3. Elvain and I tried to came up with new structure-costs to steer the AI towards a more logical construction-que with partial success. In GoG 1.4 the AI constantly builds medium and heavy units, though the behaviour still needs massive tuning.

Angryminer

[Neural Eclipse]

Cool, thanks for clearing it up, Angryminer. I'll have to start a new game with your mod then, since playing a save game with a mod bypasses all the town-build up improvement that happens over time ^_^

[Figgie]

for the architecture, I know it has to be possible, but right now I don´t know in which file exactly. I will look it up and tell you.

Thanks! Yeah i just -know- the bastard thing is hiding in some ini file somewhere but i havent been able to find any trace of it. Its not really that big a deal as i dont plan to play a kingdom in spain in any immediate future, but it would be a nice thing to tweak a little.

Oh and i made a few minor changes to some of the building requirements and orders, if any of you mod kings is interested in implementing them in your creations :)

[ballista towers]
req = corner towers, toolsmith
override = corner towers
cost = 1200s, 5000g
group = 2
attritionbonus = 1000

[cathedral]
req = church, sculptors guild, dyes, wax
override = church
cost = 3000s, 10000g
monasteries_bonus = 3a, 3g
base_bonus = 2a
happiness = 10
siegedefencebonus = 20

Notes: i did change some of the index #s around to compensate for the empty space left by the ballista tower, but it works well enough if you just copy that in. As for the cathedral and grand mosque (they both have the same resource requirements, i just didnt want to copy practically the same thing in twice) they are now much easier to build and they dont require you to build a bunch of workshops in the same province with them. All you need with this is marble deposits in a province as well as the dyes and wax trade goods and youre set. It never made sense to me that you would need a wax makerin the same province when it makes sense to me that you could just as easily import the wax from somewhere else, and dyes as well! However since a great deal of stone is needed as well as skilled artisans i didnt want to just make Statues one of the requirements so i left the sculptors guild requirement in there from the vanilla.

[Angryminer]

The cathedral-changes are very good. :go:
I'll spend some thoughts on that too.

Angryminer

[parachute]

Regarding heavily armored troops:

It *might* be an idea to change the requirements of the troops. -- How about removing the different armorers (chain/plate/scail) from the game altogether, making it possible to build, say: halberdiers with a simple armory built, instead of a plate armorer?

Axes could be removed from standard build template too, imo. Beacause there are only a few provinces that can make use of an axes master. These provinces could start with an axe master, so they dont have to build one using a standard build template.

That way there'd be 4 building slots saved for the AI.

I admit that it is fun, planning ahead and having military supply provinces, but the AI is not capable of doing so. So by dumbing down the tech tree, there might be an increase of difficulty and -> fun.

keep up the good work,
parachute

[Neural Eclipse]

That's an idea. With a flat tech tree, you get to decide whether to spend 2k on a horde of axemen or buy feudal knights ^_^ And of course the AI builds everything then too. I'll have to try this out.

[Elvain]

I think that making chain mail/scale/plate armoury upgrades of armoury is much better than removing them all. Heavily armoured units would be then toooooo easily available.

[parachute]

@elvain:

It'd probably replace the "why am I fighting swords all the time" question with the "why am I fighting teutonic champions all the time" question. -- However: There's to few slots and there's too many buildings to be built to have an efficient empire. AFAIK the AI fails in having a decent army all the time.

-- I just thought, it'd be nice for a change, if you face an army that has the same quality troops than one's own army. And that army not being 'rebel'... ;-)

cheers
parachute