Army limit

[Aquila SPQR]

Hello,

I'd like to ask a small question before I download and try this mod:

How the situation looks like in later turns when it comes to AI army stacks? That was always my biggest flaw of M2TW when AI was able to spam the map with dozens of full stacks. I've heard this mod limit it somehow and I would be grateful for more info.

[Nemesis2345]

Hello .

Yes, i would say the doomstack spam is significantly lowered , especially on weaker factions. Obviously , a big developed empire (like the Mongols) will still send stacks to fight you , but i noticed they dont last forever. In my current HRE campaign , France is a considerable threat and is as big as my faction , we had a very hard fought war. I battled around 6-8 stacks with my 5-6 stacks and after i won , they asked for ceasefire and stopped sending doomstacks , i actually used toggle_fow to watch the map and France indeed had no more armies to field at that time , so if you whistand a doomstack war , the AI will need time to regroup instead of aimlessely send stack after stack for you.

Also , beware of invasions! I noticed the AI invading with prepared stacks and sieged 3 of my towns at the same time , and they seem to spread their stacks so you gonna have to field multiple armies to fight them throughout your country.

I recommend this mod + Kostic KCC that changes unit's appearance to most units, the only Mod that brings me back to M2TW for over 3 years.

[Aquila SPQR]

Sounds great, thanks!

[Jurand of Cracow]

The stack-spam is very significantly reduced in the SSHIP. There are 2 main mechanisms:
1. recruitment pools regeneration is very low, also for the AI,
2. the number of types of units recruitable is low - if you go to a Northern faction you would have only 2-3 units (Byzantium is an exception - perhaps a dozen?)
If you compare it to eg. EBII, the pools' regeneration is equally low, but many types of units are available, so at the end the number of units around is much higher.

The "AI will need time to regroup instead of aimlessely send stack after stack for you." is true in the sense that the AI simply doesn't have troops.

At the end it's just a question of maths. For illustration:
scenario A: you've got 4 types of units with regeneration of the pools of 4 (ie every 4 turns you've got a new unit of one type)
scenario B: you've got 10 types of units with regeneration of the pools of 20 (ie every 20 turns you've got a new unit of one type)
scenario C: you've got 4 types of units with regeneration of the pools of 20 (ie every 4 turns you've got a new unit of one type)

After 10 turns in scenario A you (and equally the AI) will have 10 units, in scenario B - 5 units, in scenario C - 2 units.

So vanilla is type A, the EBII is type B, and the SSHIP is type C.

There're of course other factors (availability of money, frequency of the battles, tendency do execute or ransom, scripted additional forces (if any), but in general all ends with this maths.

If I'm not mistaken ;-)

[Aquila SPQR]

It sounds really awesome, it seems this is the M2TW experience I was always looking for. Unfortunately I'm struggling with CTDs right now, plenty of them (every few turns)... I'll post my log in the proper topic but it seems you're working on new version so I think I'll just wait a little bit until it becomes more stable.

[Lifthrasir]

SSHIP is rather stable. Try to download the mod from the Moddb link in the OP (updated yesterday). It solved a repetitive ctd for another player

[Aquila SPQR]

You mean the patch? Because I downloaded main file yesterday or maybe two days ago (main file was uploaded on Feb 27 2020).

OK, I'll give it a try. I'll do a clean install of SS 6.4 and then follow instructions again. I tried to fool myself that I'll wait but this submod simply sounds too good.

[Lifthrasir]

On Modb, you'll find SSHIP v0.9.6 with JoC patch (22nd of February) included. There's also another patch beside wich is the one made by Luker from Codex, removing some broken traits causing ctd. That patch is also linked on TWC in the thread I've linked previously