shouldbemod :)

[w0lfshad3]

absolete

here is the readme also included with the file(7KB) or (57KB) if the sfx is the solution for some download troubles :)
must be smallest mod here :P... i just made it for myself and tought not to be selfish and post it too. I don't like personally the other mods cause i think the game is fine with some major leaks tough: AI is dumb and no multiplayer campaign.
************************************************** **************
1. Install notes
2. Ironman rules
3. ***Changes***
4. Battle hotkeys(these just are i didn't changed anything since i didn't find how)
5. E-mail

1. Copy "defs" directory into you're "\gamedir\".
Uninstall by deleting "defs" directory.

2. I could not change some things that make the game far more interesting( w/o cripling
AI's style wich is fine as it was and better with the changes made) so here are some
rules to use at you're *free will*(choose to play with these rules :):

Easy ironman rules:
- hire no more than 2 court members of each kind except marshalls.
(its more fun to play more marshalls in no pause mode so you can't control all battles :).

Advanced ironman rules(usual ironman):
- save at will but never load to recover lost marshalls, towns or poor choices in general.

3. Changes:

Trade enhancements:
(it will cause slightly more trade flow between all players)
- GoldPerValuable from 2 to 3
- GoldPerExotic from 10 to 15

Governor enhancements:
(it will make governors worthwhile for a change :), and together with ironman rules even more fun)
- Farmer:
from:
0 +1 base
1 +1 base
2 +1 base
3 +1 all farms, population birth * 200%
4 +2 all farms, max population * 150% (i.e. if MAX pop = 36 will be -> 48)
5 siege * 200% (twice longer to take city with governor farmer)
to:
;0 +1 base
;1 +2 base, population birth * 110%, max population * 110%
;2 +2 base, population birth * 130%, max population * 130%
;3 +1 all farms, population birth * 160%, max population * 160%
;4 +2 all farms, population birth * 200%, max population * 200%
;5 siege * 200% (twice longer to take city with governor farmer), +lvl 4 feats
("(i.e. if MAX pop = 36 will be -> 48)" sounds more like 120% but could be something built in)

- Builder:
from:
0 +1 base
1 +1 base
2 +1 base, zones upgrade *= 120% faster
3 +1 all villages, zones upgrade *= 150% faster
4 +1 base
5 +2 all villages, (additional bonus TBD)
to:
0 +1 base
1 +2 base, zones upgrade *= 110% faster
2 +2 base, zones upgrade *= 130% faster
3 +2 base, zones upgrade *= 160% faster
4 +1 all villages, zones upgrade *= 200% faster
5 +2 all villages, zones upgrade *= 200% faster, (additional bonus TBD)
(Whatever TBD means, must be built in)

- Trader:
from:
0 +1 base
1 +1 base
2 +1 base
3 +1 all villages
4 +1 base
5 +1 all zones (including villages), +3 for each valuable made in town
to:
0 +1 base, +1 for each valuable made in town
1 +2 base, +2 for each valuable made in town
2 +1 all villages, +3 for each valuable made in town
3 +2 all villages, +4 for each valuable made in town
4 +1 all zones (including villages), +5 for each valuable made in town
5 +2 all zones (including villages), +6 for each valuable made in town
(At 5 stars it should seriously challange the trade route fiability as well encourage to build valuables all the way,
as well as encourage you to upgrade it to a fiver :)

- Cleric(adds books):
from:
0 +1 base
1 +1 base
2 +1 base, +3 if library is builth
3 +1 all monasteries
4 +1 base, happiness +20
5 +1 all monasteries, +10 if university is builth
to:
0 +1 base
1 +1 base, +1 if library is built, +3 happiness
2 +1 base, +2 if library is built, +6 happiness
3 +1 all monasteries, +3 if library is built, +9 happiness
4 +1 all monasteries, +4 if library is built, +12 happiness
5 +1 all monasteries, +5 if library is built, +5 if university is built, +15 happiness
(more usefull i think since i like going all the way up not stay at 4 stars for some 20 happiness if i need it)

- governor deinstall changed from 800 to 1600(it takes 16 ticks instead of 8 now; this should keep you
from teleporting from a province to another and maybe even be caught in a siege :)

- each governor upgrade costs changed from 1000 books each to 800, 950, 1100, 1250 and 1500 respectively while
books capacity changed from 1000 to 1500 accordingly. Prices should reflect levels and benefits now.

Miscellaneous:
-changed marshall upkeep:
from:
UpkeepMarshal1 = 10
UpkeepMarshal2 = 30
UpkeepMarshal3 = 50
UpkeepMarshal4 = 100
UpkeepMarshal5 = 150
UpkeepMarshal6 = 300
UpkeepMarshal7 = 500
UpkeepMarshal8 = 1000
UpkeepMarshal9 = 2000
to:
UpkeepMarshal1 = 10
UpkeepMarshal2 = 20
UpkeepMarshal3 = 40
UpkeepMarshal4 = 80
UpkeepMarshal5 = 160
UpkeepMarshal6 = 320
UpkeepMarshal7 = 640
UpkeepMarshal8 = 1280
UpkeepMarshal9 = 2560
(This should slightly increase the aggressivity of the game;
small AI will now think of building an extra marshall,
while imperiums even if will have one or more marshall(s) will have to face more too(and the player too :)

- double taxation rate
(this will make tirannical and fair taxes worthwhile; and it will make you ponder at getting more money
while facing the rebellion risk(who hadn't changed) - before i could not see a good reason for keeping any tax at all
except for the fact rebels are fun especially after they plundered some zones[they get stars] :)

MOST IMPORTANT:
Since these changes are meant to bring joy to fed up players like me who get bored from walking through Europe
like picking daisies these most important changes were made:
- i think difficulty levels have some things built in so i could only modify the definitions but, the changes appeared
immediately: the AI got more energic, building more army, more buildings, managing economy efficiently and is overall
smarter wither on the map or on the battle field; so i made all settings for all the difficulties as hard as possible and
the only difference should now be reflected by the built in settings(i.e. i faced a more difficult army earlier on "normal"
than on "hard" but on hard AI seems to be overall more agressive).

changed all from(i.e. ex-"hard"):

economy_tick = 30000
military_tick = 5000
min_invade_army_squads = 6
min_defend_army_squads = 5
max_invade_armies = 12
invade_levels = 1, 5, 3, 12, 10, 40
conquer_last_realm = 80

to:

economy_tick = 1000
military_tick = 1000
min_invade_army_squads = 6
min_defend_army_squads = 5
max_invade_armies = 40
invade_levels = 1, 5, 3, 12, 10, 40
conquer_last_realm = 80

(i think the "ticks" actually mean the intervals between the AI calculating its moves be it in milliseconds[more likely]
or whatever is built in as game clock)

NOTE : - if you choose to play at 8x/10x speed(wich i strongly doubt) and game starts to stutter it means you have
a low-end PC(i.e. on my P4 2.4Mhz, 512 DDR333 i barely notice some stutter on 8x/10x speeds[i only play 0.5x or
1x speeds or 10x when covering the gap on the battlefield]) so i advise you to use 4x
speed or lower since now the AI's algorithm should be on fire :) This is mainly due to processor feats,
you could increase the ticks in "difficulty.in2"(it will make AI retarded :)

CHECK WITH defs.pak FOR ORIGINAL SETTINGS.

4. Battle hotkeys(these just are i didn't changed anything since i didn't find how)
E, R - wheel left / right
D, N - spread / tighten (ranks)
A, C - attack / charge
M, U - move / run
G - toggle stance
F - toggle fire
P - toggle camp
T - stop
??? - formation facing (lemme know if u find it, i couldn't)

num +,- - increase / decrease speed
S, L - save / load
num / - a spot on the mouse who helps u see through trees or such
num * - toggle speed 1 / 10
F1 - help
F2, F3 - quick (save / load)
F5 - experience level
F6 - stamina
F7 - ammo
F8 - health
F9 - morale
F12 - toggle UI

Some of them work in main map too find out wich yourself :P
BTW its a shame they didn't make multiplayer work as with single mode. It would have been something
to work at but its possible and it would have incresed playability a lot :)

For anything that doesn't work contact me at w0lfshad3@yahoo.com
Don't bother me to show you how to make you're own changes(and be thankfull that they aren't hardcoded, as i am :D),
just edit the *.pak's.

[Diablo_]

Sounds like interesting "deep tweaking" but unfortunatly i cant try it now!

[Elvain]

I've sent you my adress via PM. So send me your mod and I'll ad attachment with the mod to your first post.

Interesting ideas, btw :go:

[w0lfshad3]

elvain : yes i received it tough my connection must be worsest ever i will send e-mail.
(blaming zip :) ... gonna resend.

diablo: no big thingie; i just took a few hours reading the defs.pak and with my knowledge of the game and some math i fixed the things that bothered me the most in the game(and could edit).

[Diablo_]

Yea but when you get all game have completly different economy.

[w0lfshad3]

Don't know what u mean diablo.
Thats why the ideea of this small add is to work as a patch to the game not a mod :P
I like this game and i helped myself to things i would've expected in the patch to appear :)
The reason for that is when playing campaign with ye old settings :) the only reasonable thing i could do is build tons of merchants and marshalls and that bored me very quickly esspecially cause the AI ticks were seldom and that what stoped oxygen getting to its brain :) i'm so fed up trampling peasants with feudal knights adn having more money than i could use no matter what bad start i chose and difficulty settings(btw with my new armies i almost got beat by Leinster who had recruited a whole mercenary camp quite early in the game :D); i simply didn't breack a sweat in original settings. Therefore i'm still wondering how to enforce the ironman rules w/o cripling the AI's style(upkeep costs applyes to AI too[my will is strong but i might keep forgetting and start a merchant spree again :)]... PakMan should help?

[Elvain]

attachment is available now

[w0lfshad3]

thank you :)

Is it something wrong with my connection ? cause all files i download from here end up cryptic on my PC(even mine).

[Elvain]

I haven't touched the files. :scratch: that's strange...

maybe it's downloading problem on the forums? this happens quite often to quite many users :bash:

[w0lfshad3]

Seems the only thing that works for me was the PakMan soft that is actually an exe so...
i will make a sfx(zip) archive and send it to u to replace the zip one if you please.

[w0lfshad3]

I found whats wrong: when i simply click and let IE default downloader do its thing only garbage comes in so i used flashget instead and it worked :) i hope this gives you some clue.

[Elvain]

unfortunately not as I don't understand comps... :bash:

[w0lfshad3]

I read through the existing mods but when they have good multiplayer value :P they cripple the AI instead(otherwise i would've made many changes myself). i wish some1 with more time than me would compile a "pro-AI" mod to make the game more challanging.
that means no upkeep fouls(AI uses court members as well). This game needs a rebalance.
I wonder what it really takes to be a programmer for ubisoft since they have a firm here in Romania.
(3 more years of nasty math-filled faculty for me *sigh*)

[Angryminer]

The changing of the economic or military tick isn't of much use, as far as my experience is concerned.
The AI will not change it's decisions, it will just try to perform more decisions. That means it will try to hire soldiers more often (meaning it doesn't have money yet and hires militia instead of swordsmen) and will be very undicisive on the worldmap. It will tend to "toggle" between to objectives. First it wants to come to break a siege, then it turns around to attack a rebel on the other side of the map, before it reaches the rebel it turns to attack the enemy kingdom, then turns around to recapture the lost province, but seldomly does anything effective beside raising the CPU-load.
Expecially the economic tick should be high, because that way the AI will not always build the cheapest building available.
Also, when you talk about crippling the AI, you propably mean GoG. Did you ever notice that the AI completely fails to command more than one army efficiantly? The player will always overwhelm the AI when more than one army is involved on any side. That was one of my reasons to remove the second hired marshall.

Angryminer

[w0lfshad3]

As I said i tested as usual for 500 turns (calculate by having one cleric governor wich produces 1 book, make peace with everyone and push num * and let go till u have 500 books). After 500 turns in my game 33% and over provinces have level 7 while in u'rs they make it 'till level 5 and very few level 6 or 7. Besides that 50% of provinces build the military queue 'till horses and they are recruiting better units too. Its true in u're game the AI tends to get half an army as swordsmen and half as peasants wich i don't know how. The only flaw in my game is that i must impose on myself to use only one active trade route(one merchant trading for money... otherwise i grow out of reach of the AI) and that makes me linger enough 'till AI gets best shaped armyes. Worked the inflation a little and it works keeping the player at bay not having high amounts of money( have to rework it a little cause AI ussually makes lower profit[small countries]).
All these i tested with 1000 ticks and i find it its the best way... AI shoould protect its provinces instead of its zones and he does make better decisions. Such is my experience... when he does have 2 marshalls he attacks me with both adn he actually gets more than 2(no pause mode works great :).
I observerd as he gets in his head he must build something he raises the money(if he isn't threatened fisrt; wich is good cause what good is an AI building something when he actually gets killed). Besides that i liek sneaking near the AI's town, pausing declaring war and attacking in the same turn; a 1000 tick makes him instantaneously get a marshall and recruiting all he can.
I ussually don't wait 'till i get a second marshall; and i have the impression if i declare war before i'm near he's castle he wpould get mroe marshalls too... 'till now i only got 2v2 marshall battles(with teh +50% squad size of u'rs it gets rather cool :) except that squads tend to move weird and not able to pass eachother when in tightened formation. I think 2v2 marshall battles are the max. Just remove the "pause during battles and u'll see how AI will attack u with 2 marshalls :)

P.S. I rebalanced buildings cost as u did, added military upkeep on building cause it cost more for empires :) and changed some overall more setting every where to balance the factions and AI building. U're mod was of ghreat help making mine thanks :)

[Angryminer]

Its true in u're game the AI tends to get half an army as swordsmen and half as peasants wich i don't know how.That is not possible, because the AI can't recruit peasants in GoG. I have no clue what mod you are talking about.

Angryminer