Increasing the Influence Cost of Armies?

[Apocal]

So, I mess around with this game a lot,and I decided to test out what happens if I increase the influence cost of armies. Via dnSpy:

Spoiler: CalculatePartyInfluenceCost

It worked, so I gave it three test runs out to exactly 20 years (using the "campaign.move_time_forward 40320" command; twenty years on the dot) and checked the results by way of counting settlements (two points per town, one per castle):

	Test 1	Test 2	Test 3
Aserai	24	17	22
Battania	34	26	26
Khuzait	40	40	34
Northern Empire	13	0	1
Southern Empire	18	31	30
Sturgia	13	1	6
Vlandia	30	23	26
Western Empire	3	37	28

It turns out it works to help some of the snowballing, although I still got unrecoverable or dead factions. But on the plus side, the largest faction was never more powerful than the next two largest combined, which was what typically happened by year 1100 in a playthrough.

Going through my save of the third test (the only one I have since I was unaware how autosaving worked across multiple characters (it doesn't)) I checked on the armies to see what they looked like:

Spoiler: In the army now...

Fairly small, especially for twenty years of game time, when clans have plenty of influence and loads of influence-generating policies and buildings up and running. But still reasonably capable of sieging down a serious settlement in a few cases. But mostly modest armies that basically are good at defense and not much else. Because throwing less than 600 dudes against a settlement with level III walls is like throwing a watermelon at a tree.

So yeah, unless I ****ed something else up, I think this might be a reasonable band-aid for snowballing, keeping in mind it took twenty years of game time to play out.

Thoughts? Questions? Comments?

 

[XDaron]

Thoughts: It seems like simple way to make the game less volatile.
Questions: could modifications like this be used to increase the cost of troops and consequently reduce the number of soldiers in parties in general?
Comments: It would be nice to have a picture comparing the armies before and after the modifications.

 

[Figulus]

Nice , could also be used in conjunction with a half-wages for garrison troops mod.

 

[TheWigglyTapeworm]

Nice testing! Could you put 3 columns for the game in the current state just for comparison? Would be nice to see how much difference it made.
And also what does the red and orange colour mean?
Thanks!

	Test 1	Test 2	Test 3
Aserai	24	17	22
Battania	34	26	26
Khuzait	40	40	34
Northern Empire	13	0	1
Southern Empire	18	31	30
Sturgia	13	1	6
Vlandia	30	23	26
Western Empire	3	37	28

 

[Apocal]

And also what does the red and orange colour mean?

Red is basically a dead faction, orange for factions that are so weak they can't recover (less than 12 settlements).

 

[AfLIcTeD]

Nice to see Khuzaits dominating for a change.

 

[Apocal]

Nice testing! Could you put 3 columns for the game in the current state just for comparison? Would be nice to see how much difference it made.

Yeah, I got a potato laptop though, so it takes some time to roll through.

 

[TheWigglyTapeworm]

Yeah, I got a potato laptop though, so it takes some time to roll through.

in your own time friend

 

[black_bulldog]

Nice work @Apocal hopefully @mexxico sees this soon. It's seems the NE still the kicking boy for the Khuzait that faction really needs some help.

 

[Apocal]

Thoughts: It seems like simple way to make the game less volatile.
Questions: could modifications like this be used to increase the cost of troops and consequently reduce the number of soldiers in parties in general?
Comments: It would be nice to have a picture comparing the armies before and after the modifications.

In this block? No, it doesn't control troop wages. It is very focused -- on the influence cost (not denars) of pulling another lord's party into your army. Troop wages are somewhere else. Probably somewhere really easy to find, I just haven't yet gone looking for them.

As for your request:

Spoiler: Standard influence costs and 20 year armies

Armies are bigger, but not quite as big as I remember them being at 20 years (1104). Maybe they've already done some balancing there?

in your own time friend

	Control
Aserai	24
Battania	59
Khuzait	65
Northern Empire	6
Southern Empire	2
Sturgia	1
Vlandia	15
Western Empire	1

 

[LDominating]

In this block? No, it doesn't control troop wages. It is very focused -- on the influence cost (not denars) of pulling another lord's party into your army. Troop wages are somewhere else. Probably somewhere really easy to find, I just haven't yet gone looking for them.

As for your request:

Spoiler: Standard influence costs and 20 year armies

Armies are bigger, but not quite as big as I remember them being at 20 years (1104). Maybe they've already done some balancing there?

	Control
Aserai	24
Battania	59
Khuzait	65
Northern Empire	6
Southern Empire	2
Sturgia	1
Vlandia	15
Western Empire	1

How will this affect player lead armies?
What would the influence be for us to create armies?

 

[Apocal]

How will this affect player lead armies?
What would the influence be for us to create armies?

It will cost five times as much influence to pull parties from outside your clan into your army. So right now, you probably have a clan you can recruit into your army for 17 influence -- it will cost 85 influence instead.

With that said, as a player, you can recruit only your clan parties, which remain 0 influence to recruit. And since armies are generally smaller, the player becomes relatively more powerful. Or should anyway; I didn't play through the test runs.

 

[Earth Dragon]

Are we really still complaining about snowballing? It isn’t nearly what it used to be, and, naturally, it’s always gonna be a bit of a thing. The only thing the game can really do to make it better is make other nations more likely to attack their superiors when at war with another nation.

If getting larger was more likely to cause 2 and 3 front wars, it would naturally get curbed. But arbitrary systems that aren’t intuitive, I’m not a fan of.

 

[XDaron]

would you mind telling me what is the name of the file where you found these parameters?

 

[Apocal]

would you mind telling me what is the name of the file where you found these parameters?

Taleworlds.CampaignSystem.dll

 

[Blood Gryphon]

@Apocal I'm glad someone finally took a look at this, I've been thinking the same thing for awhile now

I think this would also help with snowballing if there were more small armies instead of 1 or 2 giant deathballs. As we experience in previous patches after a deathball vs deathball fight the winner steamrolls for the rest of the time.

 

[LDominating]

@Apocal I'm glad someone finally took a look at this, I've been thinking the same thing for awhile now

Armies should be instantly created when a fief that's worth saving gets besieged.A counter attack will be in order in case the defending army succesfully defends the fief and they have the men.

Parties should patrol newly conquered fiefs,in case they are not too far into the enemy territory.

Introduction of limiting army size/parties.
Limitless for marshall like position from warband.

I don't think it's about armies size or influence.
It's mostly AI behaviour doing silly things.

 

[Dabos37]

Nice test!

The thing is that I am not sure if 800-900 men are enough to take well protected towns with 400-500 men. I have seen armies with 1200 men barely being able to take one of these towns.

 

[LDominating]

Taleworlds.CampaignSystem.dll

That's a lot of influence farming,too many parties exterminated.

But your test did show us which factions might need buffs,Sturgia,NE and WE.

 

[Apocal]

@Apocal I'm glad someone finally took a look at this, I've been thinking the same thing for awhile now

That's a lot of influence farming,too many parties exterminated.

Yeah, the biggest problem is that it costs a lot more influence.

Nice test!

The thing is that I am not sure if 800-900 men are enough to take well protected towns with 400-500 men. I have seen armies with 1200 men barely being able to take one of these towns.

That's right, as far as I've seen. I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing though.