Rebalancing IR with some ideas of my own for science, and experiment

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
[EXPERMENTAL]

Fixing AI fruit salads....

Fixing AI fruit salads turned out to be quite the fricking nightmare, as almost all AI behaviour turned out to be hardcoded, the was no *actual* method to fix the fruit salad issues that the AI faces, so the Rubicon had to be crossed! if limb is gangrenous and cancerous, it *has* to be cut, lest the whole body goes with it, and so the AI fruit salad issues had to go, *no matter the cost*, so I took to the painful solution of limiting what units a country can build by tradition group, yes, I know, this is nuts, but an extreme issue requires an extreme solution, and so I had to at least try and fix it, after all, how hard can it actually be?


Well, turns out, the game just craps itself if you try to put *more* than two restrictions on any given unit if you try to make more than one unit be unlocked by the header tradition, no matter what we, at the IR modding discord (special thanks), tried to come up with, nothing worked, neither limitation by tag, nor limitation by a conditional, we tried, and the game would just *totally* break, the game can't even process more than one requirement at a time, it wouldn't even process the trade good requirement, no matter what we tried...

But when all hope was lost, it struck me, while I was looking for an answer, I noticed a -15% ship cost modifier for the N.African tree...EUREKA!

Why not simply make everything 1000x as expensive, and give a 999% discount for *certain* units...and it worked! after several hours of failure, we DID IT! certain units can now be only built by certain traditions!

Countries are now only allowed to build one of four units, with the exception of Persians and Indians, who can choose from five units, additionally, the default deployment selector for AI has been tweaked so that they match the units allowed by the tradition, additionally, all traditions have been given access to either archer, or LI, to allow the building of an army even if things are going ruff.

Changes are:

Greeks can now only build HI, LC, HC, and archers.

Latins can now only build HI, LI, HC, and LC.

Indians can now only build HI, LC, WE, Chariots, and archers.

North Africa (now only Numidians) can now only build LC, LI, archers, and camels.

Levantine can now only build LC, LI, camels, and archers.

Parisian can now only build HI, HC, HA, WE, and archers.

Barbs can now only build HI, LC, archers, and chariots.

Three new tradition trees which are slight deviations from their parent group to represent some form of heritage or separate past from their cousins.

Seleukid, can only build HI, HC, WE, and archers.

Egyptian, can only build HI, LC, LI, and archers.

Stepp, can only build HA, LC, HC, and archers.

Additionally, a new Carthignian tree is planed, but now is only set up with basics to allow testing.

Carthaginian, can only build LC, HC, HI, and WE.

This version is still in no shape for release, as no tradition tree is yet been balanced around it, nor have any kicks been worked out, I would also like to add a separate Spanish tree somewhere at some point, but that is far off.

Thanks for both reading and patience.

Especial thanks to the members of the IR modding discord, whom without their help, I would've never gotten this far, extra special thanks to:

II_Paulus_II.

Parcipal.

Flowfire.

'Othman Ibn 'Affan.

and starchitec.

Who have been helping me on this pain of a journey, and enduring my ignorance on the nuances of IR modding, while providing support and ideas.


CaptainObvious.
 
Last edited:
  • 1
Reactions:
Addendum:

I also checked AI fort stuff...and....take a look:


Code:
NAI = {
       [...]
       #economy
       FORT_BUDGET = 10
       [...]
       }

what this means is that the AI never spends more than 10% of GDP on forts, doesn't sound too bad...right?

well, check this monstrosity out:

Code:
NAI = {
     [...]
    #Forts
    PLACE_FORT_BORDER_FACTOR = 1.5 #Is on border 1/0 multiplied by this.
    PLACE_FORT_COAST_FACTOR = -1.5 #Is on cost 1/0 multiplied by this.
    PLACE_FORT_PORT_FACTOR = 2.0 #Is on cost 1/0 multiplied by this.
    PLACE_FORT_DISTANCE_FACTOR = 1 #Distance in provinces to nearest fort multiplied by this.
    PLACE_FORT_CAPITAL_FACTOR = 1 #Capital 1/0 multiplied by this.
    PLACE_FORT_TERRAIN_FACTOR = 1 #Def bonus multiplied by this.
    PLACE_FORT_RIVER_FACTOR = 1 #River 1/0 multiplied by this.
    PLACE_FORT_LEVEL_FACTOR = 0.5 #Existing fort level multiplied by this.
    PLACE_FORT_PROVINCE_CAPITAL_FACTOR = 3 #Forts in province capitals.
    PLACE_ROAD_MIN_DISTANCE = 2 #Minimum distance from one road endpoint to another.
    DISBAND_FORTS_CAPITAL_BIAS = 2 # More likely to choose Forts in capital city to disband first
    [...]
    }

what does this mean?

It means that the AI not only doesn't build enough forts, but has been *intentionally* instructed to *demolish* capital forts, ever seen the AI just leave it's capital undefended? well, this is why...
 
Last edited:
  • 1
Reactions:
Buildings.

Fixed ratio issue with tribal settlement.

/Buildings.

Defines.

Rank 3 now 50 cities.
Rank 4 now 150 cities.
rank 5 now 350 cities.

Max manpower now back to 18 years.

AI now spends double on forts (20% from 10%).

AI now spend less on navy (20% from 30%).

Massively increased Some fort placement biases for the AI:

Border increased to 2 from 1.5.

Capital to 1.5 from 1.

Terrain to 1.5 from 1.

Extra level to 1 from 0.5.

Fort for provincial capital to 5 from 3.

Removed bias to remove capital fort, 0 from 2, no clue why anyone thought this would be a good idea...

/Defines

Modifiers.

Reduced penalty to army upkeep from ranks, as the wars of the diadochi were a little ridiculous (Rank 5 35% from 50%).

Miltary traditions:

Completly upended army construction, due to the unfortunate realities of the AI, how it works, and how immovable it is, I had to tie *all* unit construction to military traditions, and due to how hard the game just brakes if you try to do this logically, I hade to increase the price of all resource dependant units to 1000x and give a discount in the tradition header, units that don't have a resource requirement, LI, archers, and chariots, were processed the same method as chariots, but chariots were processed using the cost method because you can't put more than one unique unit in the allow section, and so countries can now only have either LI, or archers, as base resource free unit, as the day one army spawner broke, and kept giving incorrect units to certain countries, hence making them go 1000s of gold in debt on day one.

/Miltary traditions

Trade goods

Horses now also give discipline to HC

/Trade goods

Units.

Reduced the prices of some units, as manpower is more precious now.

HC now 12.

HI now 10.

Supply train now 10, as the AI didn't build enough. <-still doesn't

/Units

I don't know when will I upload this version, since a whole lot more balancing and testing are needed, but my PC is slow, like 8 hours for ~100 to ~150 in-game years, so I can't gather enough data quickly enough, if you are interested, let me know, I might upload it prematurely.

EDIT: TODO:

Change tradition tree boni to remove stuff that is no longer in use.

Upload version without the Fruit salad rework since I fixed/Changed quit a few stuff.

Get the AI to actually build wagons.

Get the AI to build more units at the start of the game, especially the diadochi (maybe ad extra price/upkeep discount for a 5-year duration if the choose to start fighting?).

write flavour text for the new trees.

acquire more data.
 
Last edited:
  • 1
Reactions:
This mod aims to rebalance the game and removes tedium and frustration while improving general warfare by tweaking certain AI modifiers to make it slightly more efficient.

General/most important changes:

Made warscore reduction costs from inventions much much stronger to account for the massive increase in WS costs by late game.

Rebalanced Diplo stances so that trade isn't the only one being run all times.

Rebalanced food for armies, armies can now only carry limited amounts of food, and will need constant resupply to not starve.

Rebalanced food for population, you now need to import food to almost all well-urbanised provinces.

Rebalanced subjects to encourage vassal play, as well as reduction of vassal swarming by Feuds, as they now have to pay 5k% extra cost for armies/navies (Feuds weren't allowed to build their own armies), and in exchange, Feuds now give 100% of manpower, integration of subjects will no longer be a total pain, as integration speed has been boosted considerably (IRL they were either forcefully annexed or their monarchs left the country in their will to the overlord, but whatever).

Governors policies no longer cost PI to change.

Totally reworked how settlements work, instead of 100% slaves, they now get 5% citizens, 45% freemen, and 50% slaves, tribals still have a 50/50 split between tribals/slaves.

Settlement buildings now totally change the ratios of pops to 100% of the building's target (mines/farms/slave estates now make slaves 100%, barracks makes freemen 100%, and tribal settlements now makes tribals 100%)

Reworked diplomacy so that countries and subjects just dgaf about AE, this is 303 BC, nobody cared back then, as a side effect, diplomacy and trade now exists past the first month.

Slightly increased base fertility.

Tweaked AI biases to forts, and increased fort budget by double, AI *should* no longer delete capital forts.

I have uploaded the mod to the Steam workshop and the PDX one, should be public soon.
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
V1.1:

V1.1 notes:

Ship flanking now accounts for extra width.

Libs and Triremes now flank for 20.

Tets now flank for 15.

Hexes now flank for 10.

Octs now flank for 5.

Further curbed Feuds' ability to build armies/navies.

slightly cheaper to change diplo stances.

change governor policy cost invention now gives 2.5 loyalty instead.

speed up integration from rank

LI now slightly cheaper to help oppress the pea- I mean keep the peace, the also scale cost per rank less now.

for some reason, tribals were not allowed to become feuds, despite the fact that many tribals start as feuds, and tribal feuds could be gained by event, fixed.

Compatibility warning, I usually play with "A Sloths tradegood colo(u)r" these two mods are incompatible, as they both change the trade goods files.

BYZ: I have changed BYZ's heritage, both because I like to play as them and their heritage is bad, and because I need some heuristic to check if everything loads

 
  • 1Like
Reactions: