Help with Modding

[Elvain]

Well, that seems nice, but what about you? how did you enjoy having everything for free? Wasn't it a little boring?(I don't mean watching how Ai kingdoms grow but the building of your kingdom - we must never forget that the target of our modifications is not only AI, but also player's game)

I'd like this, if the cost is 1g for Ai and as high as it was for player...
For me it's boring when I can afford everything all the time. I don't play KoH to watch how AI kingdoms grow. I play it to have fun building my own empire while surrounding nations can endanger me.

my conclusion: free units may be enjoying for voyeurs of AI, not for those who want to play themselves...

[Angryminer]

The thing is:
Sooner or later I always have the squads available I want to have. Squads are never very expensive. They are always cheap for the player, but sometimes too expensive for the AI.
Also there are mechanics that still allow you to grow in your military strenght, because you always have to build the right buildings before you can draw the soldiers you want and you won't always be able to effort as many armies as your enemy.
But no, running around with 4 simultanious armies is really not my kind of playing.

Angryminer

[Doge]

I took a look at "squads cost only 1 gold"-idea.

This is definitely going to be interesting. :biggrin:

I had to ajust a bit more beside that so I came out with the following setting:
First marshall 5 gold, second 20, third 40, 80, 160, and so on.
This was necessary because small nations have to have at least one army available (or they are pointless), and bigger nations have to be militarily stronger than the weak ones.

I agree when testing it, make it logical so the test will see the max results that can happen from giving the AI far more available armies. :go:

This of course completely destroyed GoG's feel. But I wanted to give it a try. A long story short: After two hours at gamespeed 10.0 Kiev counted 24 provinces, italy 18, france 16, fatimids 15, byzantia 14.
Two times there were 6 (of course well equipped, because free) armies in one province. That looked... interesting.

It would destroy any mod's feels. Nothing like this has ever been tried, nor will be ever tried again. Why? because of the AI of course! :biggrin:

Also the AI showed it's uselessness. It often fails to take a unprotected town with three armies, because army one attacks, army two plunders the harbour and army three plunders a farm. After army one is defeated by the garrison army two attacks the town and army three plunders a village until also army two is defeated, so that it can now also attack to be also destroyed. :confused:

This is what we were talking about. Each army acts independent of each other. :bash: Dumb AI! :wink:

I have a question: is there a way to increase the chances of an AI army reinforcing another AI army? I think I know the answer: no.

On the topic of "army one" being unable to take the town. The only possible way to give a slight advantage to the attacking AI is to make the town guards as wimpy as peasants. Then each town would have 6 good units, 4 bad units vs 9 good units. Can a mod change the town guard, or do they operate outside of the regular units and are "fixed" (not changeable)?

Conclusion: This has about nothing to do with athmosphere. It just puts some "action" into KoH. But yes, the AI can overwhelm you with a lots of well equipped armies if you do something foolish.

Yeah, but that is the conclusion of everything KoH. Don't do anything foolish and you will win. So in effect, this does not change what is built into KoH AI.

Edit: We can make it "KoH: The Battle Against Rebels" and many have done so. I find no attraction to it, as I've said before.

[Hamah]

Hi to all.

I´ve been playing this game in Normal difficulty for about 3 weeks, and played Highlands, Leinster, Teutonic Order, Ottomans, Navarre and Granada. In all the cases I won the game by becoming the Emperor of Europe, not because the other AI players voted for me (only once Britanny voted for me; AI always abstains) , but because I had more than 30 provinces. I always found it too easy for the stupid actions the AI does, so that´s a problem we will always have when concerning AI. That, at least until someone develops such an AI that kicks ***.

Someone said he needed 1 cleric, 2 or 3 merchants and 2 or 3 marchals. I assure you it´s very easy to win the game with only half of the slots filled. When I start the game I have 2 merchants: the king and 1 prince; and the marshal that starts the game. Then, if another prince appears, he will become another marshal, because I have already got a heir that will replace the king in the same duty. And, as the game goes on and provinces are conquered, I need no more than 1 merchant, which will always be the king. Sometimes, to give another challenge to the game, I hire a cleric, but being catholic, that means that your cleric will be for certain the next pope; so I have to keep the pope in my slots and hire another cleric for my use. On the other side, the cleric adopts pop and converts a province, but at very high cost that can be avoid by waiting the pop with different religion to become happier and give you a good income. You won´t need more than 2 marshals if you want to spread over the map quickly; so I usually move 2 marshals at the same time over 2 provinces to get them at the same time. And sometimes that means eliminating a kingdom that would never "think" you would attack it. If you want to be secure at home, you can have 3 marshals, one of which can stay and crash the revolts.

Rebelions were not so often but they did happen. For example, during the 11th century, when Russia was called Rus and the capital city was Kiev, and Moscow was only a small village, there was a thing called "vieche" in the cities which was a meeting that people did to debate about any given issue. And, sometimes, that meant revolting and kicking the prince that governed that city and calling another one. It happened in Kiev with a prince called Vladimir Monomacus, which became the governor of Kiev, "elected" by the people. Also, during the advance of the Mongols over Rus, revolts happened often. Even during the reign of the zar Ivan, Novgorod and Pskov tried to revolt and Novgorod was purged. So, I think rebelions are not so far from the reality. The only thing is that they should happen less often. Nevertheless, I agree with taking out nostalgia and "dead king" penalties.

Concerning the conquest of towns, that´s also very easy, when the city has walls; if it doesn´t, some of your soldiers will be lost for sure. If, there is a marshal with an army inside, then try to avoid fighting with that army and the town guards and the garrison; just stay outside and wait for that army to attack you. When you attack a city with walls do this: put your archers beside the doors; go with your marshal and destroy the doors. Then advance with your marshal a little inside the city and wait for the enemy troops to start walking towards your marshal. You´ll see how your archers fire upon your enemy and decimate them before they get to your marshal. When enemy troops get too close, just move your marshal outside the city and the enemy troops will stay like confused and still being decimated by your archers. You can also have 2 ballistas and 2 trebuchets and the thing about conquering a city is a piece of cake. Not to mention that if you have longbowmen, the enemy city stands no chance. So, no matter the AI has money or not to have a full garrisoned town, if the city has walls, it will be too damn easy to get it; and, most of the times, you don´t have casualties, which makes it good to go and attack another city instantly.

Maybe I´m a newbie in this, but I still can´t find the good thing about having a princess. I mean, she gives me nothing. If I marry her, then, the prince which she was married with will sometimes claim land from me which, of course, I don´t wish to give. So I agree with using a princess to rule.

The thing about AI armies is annoying; the AI doesn´t know how to build a good army when it can. Only sometimes, an AI marshal buys mercenaries and you can find challenging armies to fight against. But, there´s always a way to defeat your enemy without even losing a company. When playing with ottomans, my armies were formed by 2 or 3 companies of varangians, 1 company of ghulam cavalry or catraphacts and 5 or 6 companies of janissaries, which are very useful. That kind of army kicks *** against any AI army. Another thing about AI armies is the formation they use. It seems that AI doesn´t know how to manage formations, because the companies always stay as they are. Is there any way to change that?

On the other hand, I saw several times AI armies acting together. For example, when besieging a city, I suffered that when playing with Teutonic Order. Also, when playing with Navarre, I was at war with Algeria for some time, and it used to attack me with 2 armies at the same time, against different provinces. So maybe that´s and issue in this game, but not so problematic.

[Doge]

I made several changes to GoG 1.6 and the AI kingdoms are both large and powerful:

My changes:

(1) nostalgia gone, dead king penalty gone

(2) conversion penalty reduced from -5 to -1

(3) normal taxes increase to 800 for every 100 population, double taxes increased to 1200 for every 100 population. This makes the game dependant on tax income and gives large kingdoms large income and small kingdoms small income. I was sick of being a 2-3 province kingdom and having the largest income because of my traders. Trading becomes more a quest for goods your kingdom does not have (i.e.: clothes).

(4) all units cost 1 gold and 1 food

(5) Men-at-arms, Saracens, Vikings, and Roman Infantry need no building upgrades (like peasants used to be - available from the beginning) I did this so my battles against AI armies would be more challenging. I am sick of fighting an army of swordsmen.

(6) upkeep for marshals: 200, 300, 400, 500, 1, 3000, 3000, 3000, 3000

(7) upkeep for builders, farmers, and spies: 5, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, etc

(8) upkeep for clerics: 10, 20, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, etc

(8) several other changes

The results:

within two hours of play time on "early" map -

Byzantia = 40 provinces
Lithuania = 14 provinces
Cordoba = 11
Prussia (me) = 11
Kiev = 9
Loth. = 10

Byzantia increased to peak of 44 provinces, then lost several wars

after 6-8 hours of play time -

Byzantia = 37 provinces
Lithuania = 26 provinces
Cordoba = 16
Kiev = 13
Prussia (me) = 12
Loth. = 9
France = 9

There are many wars, but they are not overwhelming. It has a medieval feel to the changing map via wars. At one time, there are no more than 2-4 rebellions throughout Europe (max 5-6, when I asked for "war taxes" and rebels appears throughout my Prussian Kingdom). This makes the kingdoms far more stable.

I am responsible for Lithuania being so "small", I beat them in four wars, each time making them my vassal. If I were in some other part of Europe, they would be a 35+ province kingdom.

I want to test it with no or little inflation because large kingdoms are having some inflation problems. Does anyone know how to decrease inflation?

[Elazul]

Sounds interesting, will you be making your own mod Doge or releasing any changes you make? I am also very tired of the enemy being too easy even on the hardest difficulty. I also select the smallest or weakest countries so it is more of a challenge but hours later I own half of Europe.

One idea I'd love to see is to have all provinces in the world become independant nations. Setting all historic realism aside this would make things very interesting and more challenging. This combined with changes you've talked about (like AI using 2+ armies to attack a city) would make a really fun and challenging mod for the sake of strategy and fun over history.

What about making the AI leave armies in their cities at all times unless attacking an enemy city. Maybe prohibit the AI from attacking anything but cities so they stop raiding towns.

[Doge]

Sounds interesting, will you be making your own mod Doge or releasing any changes you make? I am also very tired of the enemy being too easy even on the hardest difficulty.

I am modding Angryminer's mod, GoG 1.6.

It is unfinished. I need to know how to:

(1) change inflation

(2) change income from trade (per tradable good)

before I can continue to mod it. I am stuck right now with AI kingdoms having inflation problems that effect their net income per turn.

If I am happy with the results, I may post the changes I made. Given the fact the AI is so dumb, I don't know if it will be a great mod.