I'm making this new thread because I think there is going to be enough on this topic to justify a whole thread just for it. I have alot of things to discuss in this first post so please respod to as much of as it as possible everybody, and not just 1 or 2 parts only.
First of all I have pinpointed the primary reasons for why Castile/Spain is beating the crap out of Portugal about 50% of the time in the 15th century. As some of you may be aware this is not happening nearly as much in the vanilla. The reason why is because the primary causes for this are unfortunately AGCEEP events induced.
First let me explain how the AI is working that I've been able to pinpoint successfully just recently. What the AI does for Portugal and I'm assuming for all AIs is decide that the AI should go to war, it then waits for certain requirements to be met and then among the eligible targets by it's predetermined standards it picks one a DOWs it. I'm assuming that it will pick the most desirable target first given it's criterias, but I'm not 100% sure on this. Perhaps there is a random element involved as I've found out there is for colonizing and TPing. I'll talk more about this subject later on in this thread.
Some of the criterias for DOWing that I've noticed so far are low relations and CBs. It will also factor in the amount of provinces that a potential target has. This is the main reason why Castile/Spain is DOWing Portugal and very rarely the other way around. In fact 95% of portugal's geting beat up early problems can be directly linked to Castile/Spain DOWing Portugal.
This is happening because Portugal is meeting the criterias that the Castilian/Spanish AI has for DOWing another country. The way it is meeting this criterias is both through CBs and low relations. Both of these are being given to Castile/Spain through events, both random and AGCEEP events. Obviously we can't fix the random events but we can fix the AGCEEP created events that are causing this.
There are 2 major event sets that are giving the castilian/Spanish AI a justification for DOWing Portugal by it's given criteria.
First of all let me explain how the first one is even eligable to be triggered. The Portuguese AI after it's war with Morocco is often deciding that it wants to go to war again. It then looks for the most eligible target. Granada is often meeting it's requirements, by low relations. As near as I can figure they are negative but not even near -200. Portugal is then DOWing Granada. Probably about 3 out of 5 times it is capturing Gibraltar from Granada and then because Granada is so poor and already a vassal of Castile it recieves Gibraltar from Granada in a peace deal. This then triggers one of the events 260007, 260008, or 260009, which were made by Garbon to ensure that Castile/Spain winds up with Gibraltar and Granada around the time of the early 16th century. The A options of these events look like this. =
action_a = {
name = "We shall keep the Muslim lands!"
command = { type = province_revoltrisk which = 444 value = 5 }
command = { type = province_revoltrisk which = 445 value = 5 }
command = { type = relation which = CAS value = -200 }
command = { type = relation which = -1 value = -25 }
command = { type = relation which = -1 value = -25 }
}
This means that 95% of the time Portugal is getting this result when the Portguese AI is successfully taking Gibraltar from Granada in an early war. Which is usually being accomplished in the first 20 years of the game.
As you can see this -200 relation hit to Portugal's relations with Castile is then making Portugal an eligible target for the Castilian AI to DOW Portugal. And Portugal then gets the crap beat out of it and winds up amounting to nothing for the rest of the game! I don't think I need to convince anybody at this point that this is a major gameplay problem.
Fixing this problem is going to necessitate the removal of these 3 events that Garbon made. They are located in the portuguese event file. This will solve one part of the problem. Portugal will still DOW Granada and this needs to be fixed too. However I'll address the solution for this a little later on in this long post. The 1 other problem here that will need to be solved is what to do about Portuguese ownership of Gibraltar or Granada for that matter. I think we will need to make an event set that cedes Gibraltar back to Granada, if it is taken, for a price of say 200 ducats. Granada will of course have to take loans for this but a human Granada will undoubtedly quit if he loses one of his 2 provinces here. So no problem there. And an AI Granada if he loses Gibraltar is going to die anyways. This event should be province specific for ownership of Gibraltar only up to the last Spanish event effecting the expulsion of the moors etc. So it will work for any owner of Gibraltar besides Castile, Spain, or Granada.
As far as non-Granadan, Castilian, or Spanish ownership of Granada, there will have to be made a similar province cedeing event for 200 ducats to Spain or Castile. It should not be able to be triggered by Granadan ownership of course. Also there will have to be events triggered by these cessession events that minus 200 ducats from the appropriate targets treasury and most importantly they must be AI only events so humans won't be effected by all of this.
The next big AGCEEP event that causes problems is this event here. =
#Support Juana (1474)#
event = {
id = 18028 #Triggered by CAS 7110 or 7111#
random = no
country = POR
name = "EVENTNAME18028"
desc = "EVENTHIST18028"
style = 1
action_a = { #Support Juana#
name = "ACTIONNAME18028A"
command = { type = casusbelli which = CAS value = 60 }
command = { type = relation which = CAS value = -200 }
}
action_b = { #Forget it#
name = "ACTIONNAME18028B"
command = { type = relation which = CAS value = 100 }
command = { type = stability value = -2 }
}
}
As you can see it is triggered by Castilian events and yep you guessed it they cause negative relations too. The action A here is -200 relations. So it is being selected 95% of the time. This means that unless the Castilian AI has a better target or is already engaged in a war it will then DOW Portugal shortly after this event set takes place. This is why if any of you have been watching the Portuguese AI, like I have been lately, you will have noticed that almost all of Portugal's wars with Castile are taking place in the first 3rd of the 15th century and the beggining of the last 3rd of the 15th century but very rarely in the middle of the 15th century. That's because these events really are causing about 80% of the wars between Castile and Portugal.
The other culprit of these wars is when Spain annexes Aragon. This gives a -50 relation to Portugal and since as you guessd it they are already low because of the support Juana event set I just discussed in the paragraph above this is often bumping Portugal into Spain's hit list as well. If these are corrected this should make a very large difference in the health of the Portuguese AI.
As for preventing Portugal from DOWing Granada, I think the best solution is to put all of the portuguese king AIs warmonger settings up to Manuel on 0 and here's why. Portugal needs to engage in 2 wars max. The first 1 is the war it starts with. After this war is ended we want Portugal to engage in 1 other war before 1500 or so and that is a 2nd war with Morocco only if it failed to capture Tangiers. This failure conveniently triggers this event here. =
event = {
id = 18005
trigger = {
OR = {
exists = MOR
exists = FEZ
}
NOT = { owned = { province = 732 data = -1 }}
}
random = no
country = POR
name = "EVENTNAME18005"
desc = "EVENTHIST18005"
style = 1
date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1437 }
offset = 360
deathdate = { day = 1 month = january year = 1438 }
action_a ={ #Send Expedition#
name = "ACTIONNAME18005A"
command = { type = casusbelli which = MOR value = 12 }
command = { type = casusbelli which = FEZ value = 12 }
command = { type = inf which = -2 value = 8000 }
command = { type = cav which = -2 value = 2000 }
command = { type = stability value = -1 }
command = { type = trade value = -250 }
command = { type = naval value = -250 }
}
action_b ={ #No, Save Our Money#
name = "ACTIONNAME18005B"
command = { type = stability value = 1 }
command = { type = trade value = 250 }
command = { type = naval value = 250 }
command = { type = relation which = MOR value = 35 }
command = { type = relation which = FEZ value = 35 }
}
}
The Portuguese AI will pick action A 95% of the time. I reccomend that this event give a DOW instead of the CB and negative relations, which are unnecessary anyways as Tangiers is claimed by Portugal as a core even at the start of the game. This will force the Portuguese AI to DOW without any warmongering percentages necessary. An AI or human can of course handle it because of the troops being given for free with action A. And these troops should have full morale by the time they are dropped off in north Africa.
Portugal historically had peace and stability for most of the 15th century, unlike most of the rest of europe. And by no coincidence this is exactly what makes the Portuguese AI prosper. So this is what we want to ensure that Portugal will be strong and healthy by the 16th century to be setup good for Indian Ocean conquests. And after all a human Portuguese player does this themselves, really only the AI is not doing it.
Another topic that needs to be discussed is our paying attention to AI performances as AGCEEP contriubutors. Mr_hormiga and Daywalker indeed have pointed out a significant flaw in the overall effort to improve the AGCEEP and that is our not paying enough attention to the AI. I reccommend that all of us regular contributors deliberately pay attention to how the AIs is working and post this information as much as is relevant in out posts and that each of us then make mental notes of all the findings about how the AI is working and what he does in specific situations. It may even be worthwhile to assemble an AI bible thread that explains step by step what all the AI settings do and what the AIs are doing in the game.
I have alot more to discuss on this topic, particularly AI changes for Portuguese Indian Ocean conquests, but as I need to stop at school, I'll post them later on today.
First of all I have pinpointed the primary reasons for why Castile/Spain is beating the crap out of Portugal about 50% of the time in the 15th century. As some of you may be aware this is not happening nearly as much in the vanilla. The reason why is because the primary causes for this are unfortunately AGCEEP events induced.
First let me explain how the AI is working that I've been able to pinpoint successfully just recently. What the AI does for Portugal and I'm assuming for all AIs is decide that the AI should go to war, it then waits for certain requirements to be met and then among the eligible targets by it's predetermined standards it picks one a DOWs it. I'm assuming that it will pick the most desirable target first given it's criterias, but I'm not 100% sure on this. Perhaps there is a random element involved as I've found out there is for colonizing and TPing. I'll talk more about this subject later on in this thread.
Some of the criterias for DOWing that I've noticed so far are low relations and CBs. It will also factor in the amount of provinces that a potential target has. This is the main reason why Castile/Spain is DOWing Portugal and very rarely the other way around. In fact 95% of portugal's geting beat up early problems can be directly linked to Castile/Spain DOWing Portugal.
This is happening because Portugal is meeting the criterias that the Castilian/Spanish AI has for DOWing another country. The way it is meeting this criterias is both through CBs and low relations. Both of these are being given to Castile/Spain through events, both random and AGCEEP events. Obviously we can't fix the random events but we can fix the AGCEEP created events that are causing this.
There are 2 major event sets that are giving the castilian/Spanish AI a justification for DOWing Portugal by it's given criteria.
First of all let me explain how the first one is even eligable to be triggered. The Portuguese AI after it's war with Morocco is often deciding that it wants to go to war again. It then looks for the most eligible target. Granada is often meeting it's requirements, by low relations. As near as I can figure they are negative but not even near -200. Portugal is then DOWing Granada. Probably about 3 out of 5 times it is capturing Gibraltar from Granada and then because Granada is so poor and already a vassal of Castile it recieves Gibraltar from Granada in a peace deal. This then triggers one of the events 260007, 260008, or 260009, which were made by Garbon to ensure that Castile/Spain winds up with Gibraltar and Granada around the time of the early 16th century. The A options of these events look like this. =
action_a = {
name = "We shall keep the Muslim lands!"
command = { type = province_revoltrisk which = 444 value = 5 }
command = { type = province_revoltrisk which = 445 value = 5 }
command = { type = relation which = CAS value = -200 }
command = { type = relation which = -1 value = -25 }
command = { type = relation which = -1 value = -25 }
}
This means that 95% of the time Portugal is getting this result when the Portguese AI is successfully taking Gibraltar from Granada in an early war. Which is usually being accomplished in the first 20 years of the game.
As you can see this -200 relation hit to Portugal's relations with Castile is then making Portugal an eligible target for the Castilian AI to DOW Portugal. And Portugal then gets the crap beat out of it and winds up amounting to nothing for the rest of the game! I don't think I need to convince anybody at this point that this is a major gameplay problem.
Fixing this problem is going to necessitate the removal of these 3 events that Garbon made. They are located in the portuguese event file. This will solve one part of the problem. Portugal will still DOW Granada and this needs to be fixed too. However I'll address the solution for this a little later on in this long post. The 1 other problem here that will need to be solved is what to do about Portuguese ownership of Gibraltar or Granada for that matter. I think we will need to make an event set that cedes Gibraltar back to Granada, if it is taken, for a price of say 200 ducats. Granada will of course have to take loans for this but a human Granada will undoubtedly quit if he loses one of his 2 provinces here. So no problem there. And an AI Granada if he loses Gibraltar is going to die anyways. This event should be province specific for ownership of Gibraltar only up to the last Spanish event effecting the expulsion of the moors etc. So it will work for any owner of Gibraltar besides Castile, Spain, or Granada.
As far as non-Granadan, Castilian, or Spanish ownership of Granada, there will have to be made a similar province cedeing event for 200 ducats to Spain or Castile. It should not be able to be triggered by Granadan ownership of course. Also there will have to be events triggered by these cessession events that minus 200 ducats from the appropriate targets treasury and most importantly they must be AI only events so humans won't be effected by all of this.
The next big AGCEEP event that causes problems is this event here. =
#Support Juana (1474)#
event = {
id = 18028 #Triggered by CAS 7110 or 7111#
random = no
country = POR
name = "EVENTNAME18028"
desc = "EVENTHIST18028"
style = 1
action_a = { #Support Juana#
name = "ACTIONNAME18028A"
command = { type = casusbelli which = CAS value = 60 }
command = { type = relation which = CAS value = -200 }
}
action_b = { #Forget it#
name = "ACTIONNAME18028B"
command = { type = relation which = CAS value = 100 }
command = { type = stability value = -2 }
}
}
As you can see it is triggered by Castilian events and yep you guessed it they cause negative relations too. The action A here is -200 relations. So it is being selected 95% of the time. This means that unless the Castilian AI has a better target or is already engaged in a war it will then DOW Portugal shortly after this event set takes place. This is why if any of you have been watching the Portuguese AI, like I have been lately, you will have noticed that almost all of Portugal's wars with Castile are taking place in the first 3rd of the 15th century and the beggining of the last 3rd of the 15th century but very rarely in the middle of the 15th century. That's because these events really are causing about 80% of the wars between Castile and Portugal.
The other culprit of these wars is when Spain annexes Aragon. This gives a -50 relation to Portugal and since as you guessd it they are already low because of the support Juana event set I just discussed in the paragraph above this is often bumping Portugal into Spain's hit list as well. If these are corrected this should make a very large difference in the health of the Portuguese AI.
As for preventing Portugal from DOWing Granada, I think the best solution is to put all of the portuguese king AIs warmonger settings up to Manuel on 0 and here's why. Portugal needs to engage in 2 wars max. The first 1 is the war it starts with. After this war is ended we want Portugal to engage in 1 other war before 1500 or so and that is a 2nd war with Morocco only if it failed to capture Tangiers. This failure conveniently triggers this event here. =
event = {
id = 18005
trigger = {
OR = {
exists = MOR
exists = FEZ
}
NOT = { owned = { province = 732 data = -1 }}
}
random = no
country = POR
name = "EVENTNAME18005"
desc = "EVENTHIST18005"
style = 1
date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1437 }
offset = 360
deathdate = { day = 1 month = january year = 1438 }
action_a ={ #Send Expedition#
name = "ACTIONNAME18005A"
command = { type = casusbelli which = MOR value = 12 }
command = { type = casusbelli which = FEZ value = 12 }
command = { type = inf which = -2 value = 8000 }
command = { type = cav which = -2 value = 2000 }
command = { type = stability value = -1 }
command = { type = trade value = -250 }
command = { type = naval value = -250 }
}
action_b ={ #No, Save Our Money#
name = "ACTIONNAME18005B"
command = { type = stability value = 1 }
command = { type = trade value = 250 }
command = { type = naval value = 250 }
command = { type = relation which = MOR value = 35 }
command = { type = relation which = FEZ value = 35 }
}
}
The Portuguese AI will pick action A 95% of the time. I reccomend that this event give a DOW instead of the CB and negative relations, which are unnecessary anyways as Tangiers is claimed by Portugal as a core even at the start of the game. This will force the Portuguese AI to DOW without any warmongering percentages necessary. An AI or human can of course handle it because of the troops being given for free with action A. And these troops should have full morale by the time they are dropped off in north Africa.
Portugal historically had peace and stability for most of the 15th century, unlike most of the rest of europe. And by no coincidence this is exactly what makes the Portuguese AI prosper. So this is what we want to ensure that Portugal will be strong and healthy by the 16th century to be setup good for Indian Ocean conquests. And after all a human Portuguese player does this themselves, really only the AI is not doing it.
Another topic that needs to be discussed is our paying attention to AI performances as AGCEEP contriubutors. Mr_hormiga and Daywalker indeed have pointed out a significant flaw in the overall effort to improve the AGCEEP and that is our not paying enough attention to the AI. I reccommend that all of us regular contributors deliberately pay attention to how the AIs is working and post this information as much as is relevant in out posts and that each of us then make mental notes of all the findings about how the AI is working and what he does in specific situations. It may even be worthwhile to assemble an AI bible thread that explains step by step what all the AI settings do and what the AIs are doing in the game.
I have alot more to discuss on this topic, particularly AI changes for Portuguese Indian Ocean conquests, but as I need to stop at school, I'll post them later on today.