Glory of God 1.5

[Xazax]

Black Sea made it so the computer cant hold a big empire together not to mention its hard enough for a player to hold a big empire. Also along with the new pop up factions comes up a possiblity for those new factions to become strong powers.

[JustinianII]

But if the computer can't hold a big empire together, how can they ever compete with the player?

As it stands, if you don't get invaded and conquered in the first 15 minutes of play, the game is essentially already over. I don't want a game where only the first 15 minutes out of a many many hour game actually matter. 15 minutes of tension, 10 hours of mopping up.

[Valgardur]

But if the computer can't hold a big empire together, how can they ever compete with the player?

As it stands, if you don't get invaded and conquered in the first 15 minutes of play, the game is essentially already over. I don't want a game where only the first 15 minutes out of a many many hour game actually matter. 15 minutes of tension, 10 hours of mopping up.

The original KoH is like that, sadly. With GoG 1.6 its however possible to add several hours of tention before you're strong enough to take over the entire continent. At this moment all great AI-empires will eventually fall due to the kings inability to produce offspring.

Though, is it possible to increase the chance of producing offsprings to ensure long lasting AI-nations? Perhaps an aspect to think about in GoG 1.7 - for the AI sake?

[Angryminer]

Most unfortnately I never encountered anything to tweak about the rate of births. Too bad...
Perhaps it might also work when I make the nostalgia deplenish faster and remove the "adept population" feature, as the AI never uses it and the historical background of "kingdom-propaganda" is doubtable. That would sagnificantly lower the propability of nostalgia-caused civil wars.
So what's harder: Fighting against loyalists or fighting against (sometimes) big empires?

Angryminer

[Valgardur]

Most unfortnately I never encountered anything to tweak about the rate of births. Too bad...
Perhaps it might also work when I make the nostalgia deplenish faster and remove the "adept population" feature, as the AI never uses it and the historical background of "kingdom-propaganda" is doubtable. That would sagnificantly lower the propability of nostalgia-caused civil wars.
So what's harder: Fighting against loyalists or fighting against (sometimes) big empires?

Angryminer

The existence of Kingdom-propaganda during the middle ages can be questioned, as you say, and currently nostalgia is together with the no-offspring-effect the main cause of falling AI-empires. I tweaked my own version of GoG by lowering the nostalgia rebellion risk to max 5, which I think made AI-nations more lasting. Since the AI is at constant war, they never get any lower nostalgia in their conquered provinces (if this feature hasn’t been changed or modded already).

Sweet Hungary with 20 provinces was a pretty nasty opponent in my resent game. As well as the Mamluks – although they never marched towards my provinces, I had to invade them in order to “test” their military might. I battle 7-10 star loyalists/rebels more often than mighty empires though – whom I often try to maintain good relationships with. The “power rebels” should still be a dangerous factor in the game, but as always one has to balance the power between the AI-nations and the AI-rebels. Currently, in GoG 1.6, the balance is good in my opinion. Lowering/modifying the nostalgia further would however be interesting. I get more thrills from observing an AI-nation reaching from Novgorod to the Adriatic Sea than three plundering rebel heroes.