AI and raiding

[Lord of Pain]

I suppose there's no big harm in turning on viking invasions for all the pagan/indian religions. It's not like they can actually use the viking_invasion CB (or at least I'll make sure that they cannot). They just might get a confusing diplo-button that may or may not be greyed-out. I'll make a note of it in my release notes for EMF.

Just remember that 'viking invasion' makes raiders within that religion target other religious groups, in other words, giving it to all pagan religions will also cause an inaccurate behaviour among all non-Norse pagans to start behaving like vikings (raiding far and wide by ship), instead of doing what those non-Norse pagan religions did historically (raiding close neighbours by foot). But then again, non-Norse tribals still need to get gold somehow until Paradox fixes the issue.

 

[zijistark]

Just remember that 'viking invasion' makes raiders within that religion target other religious groups, in other words, giving it to all pagan religions will also cause an inaccurate behaviour among all non-Norse pagans to start behaving like vikings (raiding far and wide by ship), instead of doing what those non-Norse pagan religions did historically (raiding close neighbours by foot). But then again, non-Norse tribals still need to get gold somehow until Paradox fixes the issue.

Hmm, I would've thought allow_rivermovement=yes would trigger that behavior. [In fact, viking invasions have nothing to do with raiding, so this is odd in general.]

 

[Lord of Pain]

Hmm, I would've thought allow_rivermovement=yes would trigger that behavior. [In fact, viking invasions have nothing to do with raiding, so this is odd in general.]

'Allow_rivermovement=yes' only does what the command suggests; allows ships to travel major rivers, so raiding religions that aren't allowed river movement will still raid along shorelines.

 

[zijistark]

Just remember that 'viking invasion' makes raiders within that religion target other religious groups, in other words, giving it to all pagan religions will also cause an inaccurate behaviour among all non-Norse pagans to start behaving like vikings (raiding far and wide by ship), instead of doing what those non-Norse pagan religions did historically (raiding close neighbours by foot). But then again, non-Norse tribals still need to get gold somehow until Paradox fixes the issue.

Non-Norse tribals do indeed still need to get gold somehow. Regardless of historical raiding behavior.

So, here's the thing:

If the non-Norse AI goes off raiding far and wide frequently (assuming they even have access to a port, as I imagine they just raid neighbors as normal if they're landlocked / only bordering a major river like most pagans), they probably won't make any decent money at it and could even lose a lot of money. Due to allow_rivermovement = yes, the Norse are given a -90% discount on galley maintenance. If we give allow_viking_invasion = yes to these other pagan religions w/o allow_rivermovement = yes, then they may just lose a crap-ton of money trying to raid if coastal.

This leaves us with two temporary solutions of which I can think:

1) Give river movement to all pagans. If they're coastal, they'll have ports, and they'll raid like the Norse do in that case. This'd be pretty ahistorical, but fuck it, if they're coastal, then it's not entirely implausible that they might raid via boat. It'd be temporary anyhow.

2) Temporarily remove the -90% discount on galley maintenance for religions w/ allow_rivermovement = yes and cut the _general_ galley maintenance cost by -90% (from 300 in EMF to 30, essentially making boats free for everyone for the time being-- well, they'd cost as much as 30 light infantry or 20 archers).

Thoughts?

The 2nd solution is obviously not ideal if this fix has to be in place for a long time, but to be honest, galley levies are already something that can cost essentially nothing when efficiently used (raised exactly when troops are ready to board, drop-off troops, and either disband immediately or quickly jet home and disband in port) and _are_ annoying as heck when you do accidentally forget to dismiss them. That is, galley maintenance being extortionate doesn't really serve any important purpose to game mechanics, and it won't be missed while this fix is in place.

The 1st solution has an upside of being kinda fun, but a) it will inevitably result in people complaining that non-Norse are traveling down the Rhine, b) it will probably result in the 'vikings appear off the coast of...' notification to fire for non-vikings, and c) it still doesn't address Catholic tribal raiding (unless suddenly Catholics get allow_rivermovement = yes, which is where I think I draw the line at what I'm willing to do for a temp. fix).

EDIT:

Upon further inspection, the define LOOTER_SHIP_MAINT_MULT (= 0.1, currently) has the comment "Religions that have looting have lower ship maintenance costs." Now, defines.lua comments are never what one might call 'trustworthy,' but this suggests that river movement has nothing to do with the galley maintenance discount, and purely 'allow_looting = yes' does. I'm going to go with this for now and thus simply keep galley maintenance costs as they are (and give all pagans allow_viking_invasion = yes for now).

Also, I noted that Christian tribals are still screwed for option (1), but I realize that they are for option (2) as well (and thus this temp. solution), as I'm not going to add allow_viking_invasion = yes to the Christian religions (unless it no longer enables the diplo-button due to the 2.2.1 migration to the new history command enable_prepared_invasion = <religion>).

 

[Sirrobert1]

It always bothered me that boats are so expencive.
I gues it's supposed to limit land powers ferrying an entire army acros the sea?

I don't think it does anything other than force you to micromanage your boats though.

So personally nr2 sounds best, for having (I think) the lowest impact.

I wouldn't mind seeing non-norse sailing down a river though. Might be fun

 

[Auvar]

instead of doing what those non-Norse pagan religions did historically (raiding close neighbours by foot).

This is sort of a side issue, but keep in mind that you will in fact tank your own religion's moral authority by plundering temples of your own faith. Right now this isn't a problem because most pagans do not actually raid, but if this issue were to be "fixed" and pagans were to "accurately" raid their co-religionist neighbors, I suspect you would rapidly see all pagan moral authority drop to zero in relatively short order.

 

[zijistark]

This is sort of a side issue, but keep in mind that you will in fact tank your own religion's moral authority by plundering temples of your own faith. Right now this isn't a problem because most pagans do not actually raid, but if this issue were to be "fixed" and pagans were to "accurately" raid their co-religionist neighbors, I suspect you would rapidly see all pagan moral authority drop to zero in relatively short order.

Will you? Same-religion raiding was specifically enabled in CM for tribals for the purpose of being able to eventually generate enough cash and prestige to develop their settlements and feudalize. The religion modifier is "Infidel Temples Looted." Is it applied when you loot temples of the same faith?

 

[Auvar]

Will you? Same-religion raiding was specifically enabled in CM for tribals for the purpose of being able to eventually generate enough cash and prestige to develop their settlements and feudalize. The religion modifier is "Infidel Temples Looted." Is it applied when you loot temples of the same faith?

When a Slavic ruler plunders a Slavic temple, the Slavic religion loses 1% MA. I assume the same to be true of other religions (though I've only observed it in a Slavic game).

In other words - assuming this is true for all religions - when a ruler loots a temple of his same faith, his religion gets the 1% MA penalty for having a temple looted, but does not get the 1% MA bonus for looting an infidel temple.

 

[Lord of Pain]

[snip]

Op 1 sounds better, IMO.

It always bothered me that boats are so expencive.
I gues it's supposed to limit land powers ferrying an entire army acros the sea?

I don't think it does anything other than force you to micromanage your boats though.

So personally nr2 sounds best, for having (I think) the lowest impact.

I wouldn't mind seeing non-norse sailing down a river though. Might be fun

Fleets were very expensive and hardly ever used in the west, even as transports, until high medieval times.

 

[Sirrobert1]

Will you? Same-religion raiding was specifically enabled in CM for tribals for the purpose of being able to eventually generate enough cash and prestige to develop their settlements and feudalize. The religion modifier is "Infidel Temples Looted." Is it applied when you loot temples of the same faith?

Infidel temple looted is the bonus, +1%
On the other side (so usually christian), there's a -1% for 'temple looted'

 

[das]

In my current game (latest version, all modules except SWMH) there was a brief, intense burst of raiding activity at the start of the Viking Age... and nothing more in the years after that, as far as I could tell.

 

[Auvar]

Infidel temple looted is the bonus, +1%
On the other side (so usually christian), there's a -1% for 'temple looted'

"Usually" is the key word here. In a situation where it's just Norse pagans raiding Christians, the modifiers make sense and work reasonably well. In a world in which same-religion raiding is not only possible, but encouraged as a way for tribals to survive, feudalize, and expand, however, the fact that the "temples looted" malus doesn't care who looted the temple is going to potentially do horrible things to MA.