Balance of recruit_priority_offset

[Mattus]

Hi!
I have a question about the recruit IA - I premise that I don't know about any previous rebalacing.
Playing I have noticed that IA tend to recruit only landowners' unit ( Fari, Mailed, etc. ) and I suppose unbalance the game in addition to create a serious economical burden.
It's only a question because is very strange to always fight against "Fari/Mailed army"... it's so booring and frustrating

Even I would not be able to maintain such an expensive army beyond the fact that it is somewhat anti-historical to see armies of knights without a single militiaman, or at least at a ratio of five knights to one.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Well, I don't think this parameter is a problem here. I think it's the abundance of the recruitment pools initially available to those factions and also the 1-turn recruitment time. There might be a bug in the Landowners building as well - at some point too-many-generals were reported.

But if you mention Faris - I think that the recruitment numbers might be a problem.
Interestingly, you're the first one to complain about the number of AI strongest units.

[Mattus]

More than the strength value of the units is the fact of the amount of recruiting: I would not be able to maintain an equal or minimally active budget if I recruited all those units.
In fact I recruit - rightly so - large masses of militia, perhaps with upgraded smiths and elite support units in a ratio of 5:1


I find it disconcerting that the AI does practically only the opposite, even after 170 turns - I'm talking about the Seljuk Turks AI vs Zengid humans - they only recruit Beacons; likewise Rum ( in this case it almost always collapses because against Byzantines ) and Fatimids I have seen!
And looking around a bit in Europa, the tendency is for the AI to only recruit Foot Knights. I've also had against the French and in itself it's no problem dealing with them, especially the British; simply blocking them with militia - let the beggars die! - shooting them with arrows and outflanking them.

I am no expert in balancing but a recruit_priority_offset of 30 for knights compared to a 0 for militia is insane.
Also considering the variety of recruitable units it's boring to always be up against the same ones and never having to come up with tactics to adapt.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Previously, the main problem reported was that the AI fields only militia armies, without any knights or professional units.

the recruit_priority_offset values are those from the Stainless Steel - and there're many, many moders involved in crafting and testing them. I trust them.

[Mattus]

I do not doubt the balancing act is that the situation was practically reversed then: we went from militias alone to armies of knights alone.
If you tell me that it's taken equal from SS I'll try to ask them on the forum too ( after looking at the file I can't really remember with the mod - because I understand the horribleness of seeing only militia but this way it's unrealistic. ( Considering a 3:1 offset ratio ). With the Muslim factions it is remarkable, practically only Knights Faris.


Going forward in time I see that however there is balance in the recruitment ratios ( e.g. pike and shoot ) however initially I don't find it so much.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Well, the SS team has dispersed some 10 years ago. I doubt there's any other SS-team otherwise than the SSHIP team. Even the lone moders like k/t or

Thanks for the pics - the interesting issue here is that's turn 135 and there's that Fari overflow. This means it's not a problem of the first dozen of turns.

It's also interesting to see 4 factions in Spain still alive and kicking, disappereance of Jerusalem, also of Rum (this is no a surprise), and a general stability of the map - many factions still alive.

[meltorizor]

Can confirm the same, both cavalry for eastern nations and the foot knight thing for european nations. Goes so far that it seems that the AI doesn't even have enough money to repair it's buildings, let alone build new ones. Seeing many damaged buildings not getting repaired for dozens of turns. Maybe because they can't afford their ridicolous stacks? Extreme example was Venetia with a full stack of only Mailed knights and Mailed foot Knights, costing Venetia alone 20k per turn. Verona was my "assassin training target", in the end having not a single sabotage target left because AI couldn't / didn't want to repair. Never saw that before.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Can confirm the same, both cavalry for eastern nations and the foot knight thing for european nations. Goes so far that it seems that the AI doesn't even have enough money to repair it's buildings, let alone build new ones. Seeing many damaged buildings not getting repaired for dozens of turns. Maybe because they can't afford their ridicolous stacks? Extreme example was Venetia with a full stack of only Mailed knights and Mailed foot Knights, costing Venetia alone 20k per turn. Verona was my "assassin training target", in the end having not a single sabotage target left because AI couldn't / didn't want to repair. Never saw that before.

Very interesting news, thanks! Would you be able to post a few pics with those stacks? (I'm interested eg which turn it was etc. - as Mattus has put it)
The damaged buildings - we need to investigate how the other mods deal with it...
Knights recruitment - perhaps we need to make the recruitment longer, that's an option.

[meltorizor]

Hi Jurand,

You still got my save R 142. Just enable cheat vision and you can see the mess. Now that I checked myself, it's not only Venetia but pretty much any other nation. If they have the money to recruit, they'll mostly recruit expensive (foot) mailed knights and thus probably bankrupting themselves. Now that I think of it, pretty much any other nation is "bankrupt" when in diplomatic negotiation. As it was my first time playing this mod at all I only play on N/N but even on VH/VH I guess the AI just gets more cheat money and thus creating more stacks before bankrupting itself. Cannot judge the impact on building or repairing behaviour.
For the cavalry doom stacks just look at Fatamid or Abbasid, at least they had several elite cavalry doom stacks around R 135.

I also added all saves every 3-4 turns so you can better comprehend the development and make a chronological analysis, if you so wish. But be warned that most of these saves stem from a potentially corrupt mod version (used Map and Bin file cleaner.bat which very likely prevented the crown system somehow, don't know other influences or what exactly it "cleans" or does)

https://filehorst.de/d/ekJrAFyo

https://ibb.co/d22pKjM
https://ibb.co/mJHyptV
https://ibb.co/8ssKCW8
https://ibb.co/LgmsvS8
https://ibb.co/HqbxzKL
https://ibb.co/zNZSWJh
https://ibb.co/m9072YP
https://ibb.co/NnM3ndn
https://ibb.co/F5kbBZL
https://ibb.co/6n8gGcg

If I can help with analyzing somehow, let me know.

PS: what file is this thread about? I can't find it. Any way to play around with AI recruiting preferences?

[Jurand of Cracow]

Hi Jurand,

You still got my save R 142. Just enable cheat vision and you can see the mess. Now that I checked myself, it's not only Venetia but pretty much any other nation. If they have the money to recruit, they'll mostly recruit expensive (foot) mailed knights and thus probably bankrupting themselves. Now that I think of it, pretty much any other nation is "bankrupt" when in diplomatic negotiation. As it was my first time playing this mod at all I only play on N/N but even on VH/VH I guess the AI just gets more cheat money and thus creating more stacks before bankrupting itself. Cannot judge the impact on building or repairing behaviour.
For the cavalry doom stacks just look at Fatamid or Abbasid, at least they had several elite cavalry doom stacks around R 135.

I also added all saves every 3-4 turns so you can better comprehend the development and make a chronological analysis, if you so wish. But be warned that most of these saves stem from a potentially corrupt mod version (used Map and Bin file cleaner.bat which very likely prevented the crown system somehow, don't know other influences or what exactly it "cleans" or does)

https://filehorst.de/d/ekJrAFyo

https://ibb.co/d22pKjM
https://ibb.co/mJHyptV
https://ibb.co/8ssKCW8
https://ibb.co/LgmsvS8
https://ibb.co/HqbxzKL
https://ibb.co/zNZSWJh
https://ibb.co/m9072YP
https://ibb.co/NnM3ndn
https://ibb.co/F5kbBZL
https://ibb.co/6n8gGcg

If I can help with analyzing somehow, let me know.

PS: what file is this thread about? I can't find it. Any way to play around with AI recruiting preferences?

yeah, it seems to me that the availability of the knights is a problem, including recruitment times. these issues are discussed here.

you may use imgur.com for the pics, and then paste it here that they're shown directly in this page (at least, I do like this)

AI preferences and the file - it's the business of @Macaras, he can point at it, I think.

[Macaras]

Hi guys, I am busy recently and this weekend will not be able to do any research for sure. One thing however comes to my mind immediately- all the knight units have very low recruitment price compared to their skills. It by tule half of the upkeep cost. I am not sure if ai takes into consideration the upkeep price, at least if there is some algorithm it probably gives big weight to recruitment. So basically if it’s true the ai will buy as much knights as possible..

[meltorizor]

I found another really strange bug that itself helps confirming the recruitment unbalance somehow. So you saw the venetian bankruptcy stack. After a while, there was a marriable general in it, so I send my princess there and ordered here to marry him but forgot about her. Some turns later on the end she goes off and succeeds to marry him but instead of only the general, I get the whole army stack and with it the other general which was in the stack. So I can command the other general, but can't see his traits and it says "neutral character". If I do anything else with him except moving, e.g. any interaction of any kind, it will CTD, always.
I simulated the siutation with the save and it's always the same, but if you move the buggy character before and of turn, he'll swap back to the original owner. As I didn't pay attention in my original play, I'm stuck now with a CTD forcing general, and I fear that if his life comes to an end, it will always force a CTD as this is a character interaction.

Is there any way to forcefully remove this character? E.g. by console commands or anything?

Back to recruitment topic: So I took over the bankruptcy stack from Venetia by bug and 2-3 turns after the takeover, Venetia started to repair its buildings, clearly suggesting that it had itself bankrupted with nonsensical recruitment behaviour. It's likely the same behaviour for all other AIs too as they share the same engine.




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