Pie's Ancient Europe

[pie_at]

Exactly. There are 4 stages of these mercenaries. The smaller bands consist of small (4), medium (8) and large (12) units. These are just mercenaries who travel to a meeting point inland. The 4th level is then an army (border army with 16 units) that appears at the border due to its size.

It is true that hardly any large army was positioned in a city, but smaller ones did (Praetorian Guards in Rome and a Cohorta Urbana in all other Roman cities).
Larger armies were divided into the provinces, but still within their own country. That's why the strategy in CIV4 is to have at least one army positioned in your own country (centrally) for urban protection.

 

[pie_at]

ehm, yes and for gameplay, it is much better for difficulty reasons, when the AI appears next to a (perhaps weak) city otherwise the silly AI has 1) no chance if anyway to reach any city and 2) move to the neighbor civ...

I could "train" human tactics and add a python feature that you need at least one unit per three pop. so the city gets angry, if you have only eg 2 units in a 8 pop city.....

then you will have 3 or 4 defenders and that's quite enough to defend a 12 size AI stack.

 

[Bandenere]

Hello, beside this happened also in my game and it didn't bother me too much because i was not at war vs anyone ... i have to agree with Uniqueusername because this Barbarian camp popping up right in one turn in the middle of my empire didn't make much sense ... i even tried to get rid of it but its not so easy to destroy. I wasn't prepared for war so i decided to leave it there. I think a good compromise would be the Barbarian fortress / outpost to form in some turn with prior notice, this way the player could react and it would be much more realistic (not sure this is doable from a modding side). Some sort of internal rebellion or concentration of power inside the empire that gradually become a thread, this make sense to me...but a fortress from one day to the other...uhm. Hope to be costructive! This mod still 10/10 for me!

 

[pie_at]

Thx very much and I really appreciate tips like that! And of course I am willing to make compromises and add them...
At the moment, those units are immobile for 1 or 2 turns, I don't know.
Your idea is:
1) to add an improvement (that would destroy the actual one because those mercenaries are assigned to a random plot).
2) to add more and more units per turn (hm, that's not possible because I lose the info of max units after the turn)

What I can do:
1) more turns immobility (eg 1 turn for the tiny group, 2 turns the medium group, 3 turns the bigger ones and 4 turns the border army).
2) add a barbarian fortress on the plot.

It shouldn't be too easy for HI, keep that in mind.
And: in CIV turns don't represent days but years (or at least one year)!

 

[Bandenere]

Thx very much and I really appreciate tips like that! And of course I am willing to make compromises and add them...
At the moment, those units are immobile for 1 or 2 turns, I don't know.
Your idea is:
1) to add an improvement (that would destroy the actual one because those mercenaries are assigned to a random plot).
2) to add more and more units per turn (hm, that's not possible because I lose the info of max units after the turn)

What I can do:
1) more turns immobility (eg 1 turn for the tiny group, 2 turns the medium group, 3 turns the bigger ones and 4 turns the border army).
2) add a barbarian fortress on the plot.

It shouldn't be too easy for HI, keep that in mind.
And: in CIV turns don't represent days but years (or at least one year)!

I think this is very good compromise ... maybe 2 / 4 / 6? Cause in 1-2 turn, player has barely the time to react. But i am not expert of Civ so maybe for a difficulty / balancing point of view 1/2/3 is better.


What I can do:
1) more turns immobility (eg 1 turn for the tiny group, 2 turns the medium group, 3 turns the bigger ones and 4 turns the border army).

 

[pie_at]

So it will be done....

But no Barbarian fort?

 

[UniqueUsername]

Maybe there is even a better option than several turns of immobility: a warning pop up some turns before the barbarians spawn, something like "rumors say that a foreign nation hired mercenaries to invade your empire. Be aware and defend your cities".
Main difference to an immobile enemy stack is, that you don't know where they will spawn, so you have to defend all cities, what seems to be the intended purpose of this mechanic. But at least they can't take you by surprise, like it's actually the case and what was the main reason for my rant some posts above. The actual state felt just unfair.

 

[grecays]

Hello. Spearmen have +50% against melee units, but when you aim at an enemy this bonus is not there. Also, when you aim it at a swordsman (who is also a melee unit), then his bonus works against a spearman, but not vice versa.

 

[brettschmitt]

Melee units are animals only... and a few special units. Spear, sword and axe have their own class, but no melee...

 

[Uu Uu]

Hi Pie. Absolutely amazing mod, I've started a deity-Greece gameplay in Brettschmitt's Europe XXL.

I eliminated Macedon quite early. Then Dacia declared war on me and they literally had almost no army, but ~200 or so Seers defending their cities. The AI favours building that unit heavily.

I've already killed like 400 of them, with 300 more to go lol.

Maybe adding the +50% building cost per unit built would help balance the AI's army composition.

Where should I add that condition to the unit? Thanks in advance!

 

[pie_at]

Warning popup: makes no sense, because
1) this can happen every turn or just once in 100 turns.
2) once you defend your cities properly, you don't need warnings all the time
3) there won't come mercenaries if all your neighbours are friendly or pleased.

Melee/Spearman/Sword/Axe: yes, melee are animals in PAE (cause they shall move into cultural borders). and some combi-fighters got this attribute too: hoplites or spartans and perhaps a handful of other special units.

Seers: ah! that's true! didn't thought of that. I will change that. This can be set in PAE/Assets/XML/Units/Civ4UnitClassInfos.xml. Search the UnitClass and change the value in iInstanceCostModifier

 

[UniqueUsername]

Warning popup: makes no sense, because
1) this can happen every turn or just once in 100 turns.
2) once you defend your cities properly, you don't need warnings all the time
3) there won't come mercenaries if all your neighbours are friendly or pleased.

Melee/Spearman/Sword/Axe: yes, melee are animals in PAE (cause they shall move into cultural borders). and some combi-fighters got this attribute too: hoplites or spartans and perhaps a handful of other special units.

Seers: ah! that's true! didn't thought of that. I will change that. This can be set in PAE/Assets/XML/Units/Civ4UnitClassInfos.xml. Search the UnitClass and change the value in iInstanceCostModifier

You probably misunderstood my suggestion about the warning pop-up. It should occur AFTER the opponent actually hired the mercs. The suggestion was that they don't appear in the turn he hired them, but with a delay - instead of making them appear directly, but immobile for several turns. Btw. reason 2 would speak against immobility as well.
And for reason 3, the stupid way diplomacy works in Civ 4 in makes it nearly impossible that no other civ is annoyed. AI 1 is in war with AI 2 and asks you to join, the most frequent diplomatic activity in Civ 4. However you respond, you will have bad relations to somebody, either "you declared war to us" or "you refused to help us during war times". That's not a problem of this mod, but of Civ 4 in general.

 

[pie_at]

oh sorry, I checked the code: the AI only sends mercenaries when annoyed or furious.

because of the fact, that it's a challenge to have only friendly neighbours, but cautious is possible! even with the fact of refusing war help.
let this challenge be kept in PAE.

and no, I can't use more turns for that feature so easily. then I would have to change the code into the bts event xml. And for that, I think, it wouldn't be worth the effort.