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I am making a mod for this as well, the most sensible thing you can do, which I have done, is reduce the manpower output from freeman pops in the pops folder. This will reduce the amount of manpower nations receive from pops, which is usually what spirals out of control with big empires.
Thank you, I have reduced it from 0.01 to 0.025. My fear though is that all changes I've made only apply to me. Or if I tag switch to another nation and pass a month then it applies to them.
i.e: I doubled the upkeep of navies, for about 40 ships I pay 39.01 gold for my fleet right now. Yet Carthage has 110 and pays 33.13 And their composition is similar to mine.
Now when I use console tag CAR and pass a month, their economy updates the upkeep and when I switch out they balance their fleet accordingly.
Either way, we shall see. Thank you though for your help!
Thank you, I have reduced it from 0.01 to 0.025. My fear though is that all changes I've made only apply to me. Or if I tag switch to another nation and pass a month then it applies to them.
i.e: I doubled the upkeep of navies, for about 40 ships I pay 39.01 gold for my fleet right now. Yet Carthage has 110 and pays 33.13 And their composition is similar to mine.
Now when I use console tag CAR and pass a month, their economy updates the upkeep and when I switch out they balance their fleet accordingly.
Either way, we shall see. Thank you though for your help!
Actually, the thing I'd recommend doing, that feels like the most sensible thing, is not just lowering the manpower output of pops to some insanely low level but instead:
- Increasing war exhaustion gain from attrition, battles and occupation a few times over so that it actually accumulates more than a little.
- Adding a small decay ratio to war exhaustion based on the current amount, so it doesn't cripple you or the AI for years on end.
- When you have the above two at a sane level, then add -5% manpower recovery per 1 WE to its effects. That way, as wars go on and the losses pile up, manpower will slow up its rate of recovery, and in an extreme case cease to do so completely. No matter how large a manpower pool, it'll eventually run dry if it doesn't trickle back up.
- Reduce max manpower years from 25 to 20 - This means the max pool will be smaller, and, consequently, faster to deplete.
- Cut pop manpower output and manpower base to about a quarter of its original values.
- Change cohort_size in defines to something like 400 and Garrison_size to 2.5, up from 1, so that assaults don't become trivial.
- Double the prices of each unit.
- Make merc maintenance something a bit more sane like 200% at least, up from 125%.
The above changes result in way smaller armies by headcount overall, manpower pools that dry up over time even for major powers and up, armies that can be actually costly to maintain, and mercenaries that aren't overpowered, all without any wonky AI issues arising unlike what happens with just plainly reducing manpower outputs - doing so screws with its aggressiveness due to low manpower, which forces it to stay passive all game.
As for Carthage ship maintenance, that's because they have -navy maintenance from military traditions, their heritage AND their religion. They likely also buy related inventions. This means their navy is dirt cheap compared to just about anyone else.
Thank you for the suggestions. Do you happen to know where I could modify all of those suggestions.
-War exhaustion from attrition...where is that?
-decay ratio from WE???
--5% manpower???
-Reduced the max manpower to 15 now, thank you
-pop output down to 1/4 of its original value.
-Cohort size...I'll try that suggestion now. I changed soemthing that kept cohorts at 1k, but recruiting cost was 1200 (justified it by attrition during training).
Actually, the thing I'd recommend doing, that feels like the most sensible thing, is not just lowering the manpower output of pops to some insanely low level but instead:
- Increasing war exhaustion gain from attrition, battles and occupation a few times over so that it actually accumulates more than a little.
- Adding a small decay ratio to war exhaustion based on the current amount, so it doesn't cripple you or the AI for years on end.
- When you have the above two at a sane level, then add -5% manpower recovery per 1 WE to its effects. That way, as wars go on and the losses pile up, manpower will slow up its rate of recovery, and in an extreme case cease to do so completely. No matter how large a manpower pool, it'll eventually run dry if it doesn't trickle back up.
- Reduce max manpower years from 25 to 20 - This means the max pool will be smaller, and, consequently, faster to deplete.
- Cut pop manpower output and manpower base to about a quarter of its original values.
- Change cohort_size in defines to something like 400 and Garrison_size to 2.5, up from 1, so that assaults don't become trivial.
- Double the prices of each unit.
- Make merc maintenance something a bit more sane like 200% at least, up from 125%.
The above changes result in way smaller armies by headcount overall, manpower pools that dry up over time even for major powers and up, armies that can be actually costly to maintain, and mercenaries that aren't overpowered, all without any wonky AI issues arising unlike what happens with just plainly reducing manpower outputs - doing so screws with its aggressiveness due to low manpower, which forces it to stay passive all game.
As for Carthage ship maintenance, that's because they have -navy maintenance from military traditions, their heritage AND their religion. They likely also buy related inventions. This means their navy is dirt cheap compared to just about anyone else.
Thank you for the suggestions. Do you happen to know where I could modify all of those suggestions.
-War exhaustion from attrition...where is that?
-decay ratio from WE???
--5% manpower???
-Reduced the max manpower to 15 now, thank you
-pop output down to 1/4 of its original value.
-Cohort size...I'll try that suggestion now. I changed soemthing that kept cohorts at 1k, but recruiting cost was 1200 (justified it by attrition during training).
This here is what I'm playing on most of the time, and it includes all of the above + quite a lot of other balance changes, most notably a complete overhaul of settlement buildings, food production and civilization value, and QoL stuff.
Be warned though, that it has a few very minor balance problems that I haven't gotten around to fixing yet, though they're pretty much limited to the early game - Phrygia&Seleukids tend to collapse more often than in vanilla, for example. I'd recommend playing on very hard, if you want to use the mod, but if you end up not liking it, the files you'd need to edit are all in there, so you can just safely delete/edit what you don't want and use the rest.
Unpack the contents (the folder and the .mod file) into Documents/Paradox Interactive/Imperator/mod
Also, I hope you've been keeping your changes in a separate mod and not by editing the game's files directly... because in the latter case it'll end up overwritten whenever the game updates. Just a friendly tip.
Thank you, and yes I made a separate mod. Learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago. I shalls trive to study your files and understand what was done.
This here is what I'm playing on most of the time, and it includes all of the above + quite a lot of other balance changes, most notably a complete overhaul of settlement buildings, food production and civilization value, and QoL stuff.
Be warned though, that it has a few very minor balance problems that I haven't gotten around to fixing yet, though they're pretty much limited to the early game - Phrygia&Seleukids tend to collapse more often than in vanilla, for example. I'd recommend playing on very hard, if you want to use the mod, but if you end up not liking it, the files you'd need to edit are all in there, so you can just safely delete/edit what you don't want and use the rest.
Unpack the contents (the folder and the .mod file) into Documents/Paradox Interactive/Imperator/mod
Also, I hope you've been keeping your changes in a separate mod and not by editing the game's files directly... because in the latter case it'll end up overwritten whenever the game updates. Just a friendly tip.
Question, did you do something to food stockpiles? Even when massively importing food, Rome suddenly has negative food growth. Like -50% food production?
Question, did you do something to food stockpiles? Even when massively importing food, Rome suddenly has negative food growth. Like -50% food production?
Food production diminishes the more you have stockpiled, relative to the cap, to simulate people not really caring about it since the storehouses and full, and it just getting wasted by the rich and/or rotting away. So, at full storage, you'll have -50% food production in the province. If the storage goes down, the production will effectively go up, most likely going into a net positive long before you run at a risk of starvation.
It is also possible that it was simply winter season, which, in the mod, reduces food production by quite a margin, hence the trouble.
Keeping a healthy stockpile is much more important in the mod than in vanilla though, because that's where the bulk of your pop growth comes from - so if you can manage to produce more food than required to the extent than you can stockpile lots of it, you'll be properly rewarded.
If you're having trouble with food - build farming settlements, or any settlements really but urban ones. Slave Estates can also be quite potent due to them being the only pop type in the mod that innately produces more food than it consumes by default, and the game no longer enslaving everyone not in a city by default (the base slave ratio is gone).
As for a province starving, that will typically only happen in one of those three cases:
- Prolonged warfare going on in the vicinity.
- The local climate&terrain is truly shit and you neglected infrastructure (mostly happens in areas like tibet that aren't really able to sustain huge populations, forcing you to care about each pop more and play around quality instead of quality - on the other hand, areas with good climate, terrain, and major rivers, like the Nile, are so fertile you'll likely never have to worry about food unless you build up 200+ pop cities.
- Huge urban centres present (Population not only consumes flat amounts of food per pop + extra for each citizen, but it also reduces local food production by a %. Civilization value also increases consumption but increases pop output, because muh higher standards.)
Meaning, truly massive cities will never be able to sustain themselves without a good, properly developed countryside to support them and heavy food % modifier stacking, which you get from tech, inventions, omens, high stability etc.).
In fact, at some point, a city can grow so huge that no amount of imports will save it, because the balance of % food production efficiency accumulated to under -100%. And this is kind of realistic - there is a reason there were no truly huge metropolises in antiquity other than Rome - and even it struggled to maintain it despite the whole weight of the empire being put behind it and multiple legions and fleets dedicated solely to ensuring food imports go smoothly.
You can always push the "soft cap" by increasing your food production, through means such as getting civic techs (+1%/level), dedicated inventions (+5% per one, and there are several, there's one with +10%), invoking the food omen (can be as high at 30% or more if you have high religious unity and religious tech), changing the provincial policy to the trade one (typically in the +10% range), and at 100 stability you get +25%, scaled down to 0 at 50 and below. Moving to better terrain and climate will also help tremendously. So, at no point are you ever without means, metropolises just need significant, dedicated investment to maintain.
In regards to your changes on the settlement buildings, I am confused. The Farming Settlement is for mainly freemen, which have a bigger food capacity and actually a bigger stockpile bonus than slave states? I find this counter intuitive. Can you explain your thought process?
Or, since you changed the buildings, does the "farming settlement: freemen heavy is the new manpower training fields" While the slave state is for excess products so you can have copies of the resource?
Edit: Found a bug on your mod: barracks can't be destroyed. I have a settlement with barracks, and it says "you can only destroy a building that actually exists".
In regards to your changes on the settlement buildings, I am confused. The Farming Settlement is for mainly freemen, which have a bigger food capacity and actually a bigger stockpile bonus than slave states? I find this counter intuitive. Can you explain your thought process?
Or, since you changed the buildings, does the "farming settlement: freemen heavy is the new manpower training fields" While the slave state is for excess products so you can have copies of the resource?
Edit: Found a bug on your mod: barracks can't be destroyed. I have a settlement with barracks, and it says "you can only destroy a building that actually exists".
Its because pop outputs are different than in vanilla.
Freemen in the mod are a sort of jack of all trades pop - they produce manpower, a small amount of tax (half of a slave's), and a very small amount of research (10% of a citizen's), mostly to make sure that civilized countries don't get stuck on very low (0-3) tech levels for centuries on end, which happens quite often in vanilla and I wanted to avoid that.
Slaves produce twice the tax, and are still the only pop that produces goods, which about doubles your income from them because trade gives you gold too, in addition to surplus bonuses, hence they're pretty much the best pop for making money. They are also the only pop that has, by default, a higher pop food output than consumption, and that's huge towards keeping your people fed. They also give you holdings for every 10 of them, which is a nice bonus.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going with it. A slave is on average worth more than a freeman just based on output alone, especially in a specialized environment, if manpower is not a great constraining factor. Hence why farming settlements have "better" effects than slave estates - having more slaves is boon enough, and then the building also makes them produce more goods per x slaves, which is pretty good as is. Having it be equal to the other settlements with the other effects too would just be overkill and it'd be the only thing you'd ever build if min-maxing.
Other pop types for comparison:
Citizens in the mod produce a lot of commerce, research and they have civilization value as one of their outputs too, being crucial to have if you want to keep it high locally - there is a giant decay ratio on civ, which means all your territories no longer tend to reach your cap, and your countryside can easily have it at less than half the value of your urban centers.
Tribesmen are.. well, tribesmen - they are useful for tribes with all its bonus output modifiers from laws etc, but otherwise are a meh pop with commerce and manpower output. They also reduce local civilization value, and low civilization environment is helpful for them, because they're happier and more productive there. In addition to such a place requiring less food.
Civilization in general is not necessarily something you always want to have high. It helps with citizen/freemen happiness and research through local pop ratios, and it also increases all outputs, but its food consumption increase is harsh, enough so to make you wonder if its worth it if you think about it. So, its an opportunity cost basically.
Pop food production/consumption (the former scales with local efficiency, the latter is static):
+0.2/-0.2 per pop for Freemen and Tribesmen
+0.3/-0.2 per pop for Slaves
+0.2/-0.5 per pop for Citizens -> Cities with a lot of those mean you need loads of food.
As for the bug, type event cru.1 in the console.
It'll fire a cleanup event that'll search the map for any and all invalid buildings and delete them. I once set it up as a routine event on a yearly pulse, but for some reason it was crashing the game midway through the gameplay (no idea why), so I moved it to on startup and then manually when needed, until I can figure out a way to make it work.
The thing about barracks & mine still being in game - the localization file of buildings is, unfortunately, the same file where like half of the game's localization is, and you can't overwrite it separately from everything else. So.. doing the whole file in the mod is not feasible because its likely to break stuff on every non-hotfix update. Which is why those buildings are still technically in the game, they're just never buildable and have no effects. There are some events that end up creating them still though.
Thank you, which leads me to the question about food.
farming settlements vs slave estates for food production?
i.e:
on farmland, with grain resource...which of the two?
on poor farmland, without food resource which of the two?
Should I then rethink all my provinces? Some should have maybe 1 city at most because everyone at this point is loosing food stockpile. Reason being, now that I see my grain regions, they lost most of their slave pops and are now mostly freemen, so excess food resources are gone.
What is the most approrpriate mix for food production, farming settlements with +100% food output or slave estates for higher slave pops?
Thank you, which leads me to the question about food.
farming settlements vs slave estates for food production?
i.e:
on farmland, with grain resource...which of the two?
on poor farmland, without food resource which of the two?
Should I then rethink all my provinces? Some should have maybe 1 city at most because everyone at this point is loosing food stockpile. Reason being, now that I see my grain regions, they lost most of their slave pops and are now mostly freemen, so excess food resources are gone.
What is the most approrpriate mix for food production, farming settlements with +100% food output or slave estates for higher slave pops?
On farmland with food goods, and probably any other territory with a local good that is particularly valuable for you to have for one reason or another, slaves are likely better IF you want to export that food somewhere else than in the province. If you do have a use for it locally, farming settlements are marginally better overall, for the reasons I'll explain below.
For food production-only, slave estates end up being just a bit more efficient, but they have a few significant, non-obvious downsides:
-They don't allow you to keep as huge a stockpile as farming settlements, and those stockpiles can last quite a few years - being quite important to have in case of a bad event such as a flood, etc. It is also possible if you have huge cities to be unable to get the full stockpile bonus even at max stockpile, because the consumption rate might just end up too big relatively, thus effectively losing you quite a bit of province-wide pop growth and defensiveness, which in the long run will likely make you weaker.
-They also increase unrest, which reduces overall local pop output by a bit, and makes a a slave revolt more likely (and those are more frequent in general, because slaves now don't have a 100% happiness base but 70% if I remember correctly). This is mostly a nuisance for smallish states, but for a huge country it can be quite a problem. Too many slave estates can also cause provincial loyalty issues long-term.
-They provide a lower food output bonus than farming settlements (+50% vs +100%, which means less extra innate food from thing like terrain, being near a river etc. - so if you have few pops in your settlements, farming settlements are always better for food.)
Also, If you just spam slave camps, you'll end up with very few freemen, and, hence, very little manpower. Now, you can build forums and training camps in cities to mitigate that, but that means your research will suffer. You also have the option of building mills and tax offiices to concentrate slaves in cities if you want, which is viable all the same.
In other words, you have full freedom on what you want to do with what pops and where to concentrate them, but everything has tradeoffs. Even for citizens - remember that they are much harder to feed than any other pop type, so you might not really want to have more of them than you really need.
Thanks for taking the time to explain. My economy went to the toilet when I implemented your mod. That is because farming settlement building from vanilla was in all food producing settlements. Had to switch it to slave estates and the excess was still maintained.
Basically everything is a slave estate, that isn't a city, and my manpower (after having Magna Graecia, Italia and Ciscalpine Gaul is at 320k) I got no issues with manpower even though there isn't a single farming settlement
Have had 2 slave revolts but they are put down easily enough. But the martial tech advances has made my legions extremely expensive.
Manpower isn't an issue, it isn't in the 600k anymore, stable at 320k. Even after a protracted war with Carthage at the desert. However the WE that you somehow implemented makes sure I have to end wars quickly or suffer huge penalties. That War exhaustion mechanic you implemented is a bit too strong in my opinion. By WE of 10 I already got shit hitting the fan. And the max is 20 hehehe.
Thanks for taking the time to explain. My economy went to the toilet when I implemented your mod. That is because farming settlement building from vanilla was in all food producing settlements. Had to switch it to slave estates and the excess was still maintained.
Basically everything is a slave estate, that isn't a city, and my manpower (after having Magna Graecia, Italia and Ciscalpine Gaul is at 320k) I got no issues with manpower even though there isn't a single farming settlement
Have had 2 slave revolts but they are put down easily enough. But the martial tech advances has made my legions extremely expensive.
Manpower isn't an issue, it isn't in the 600k anymore, stable at 320k. Even after a protracted war with Carthage at the desert. However the WE that you somehow implemented makes sure I have to end wars quickly or suffer huge penalties. That War exhaustion mechanic you implemented is a bit too strong in my opinion. By WE of 10 I already got shit hitting the fan. And the max is 20 hehehe.
Hmm.. strange - it might be that you're having the mod not work correctly after loading it up on an existing save. There is no actual way for you to have 600k max manpower with the changes implemented unless you owned like, over half the world. Because of the cohort size of 200, and proportionally scaled down manpower gain, that'd be like having 4m+ max manpower in vanilla, which is.. kinda high? How much land do you have? Max WE is also 25 in the mod, at all times. Its possible some things are working properly, while some just aren't, or are overwritten by some other mod which might be why its so all so mixed up, so I'd start a new save to make sure
Also, what do you think about it overall? Besides the changes being somewhat confusing, is it easier/harder than vanilla, etc?
Edit:
Just loaded up this save, and right before the end of the game in 800 AUC, this empire has 149k max manpower, and that's with all the techs and stuff, a few specialized manpower cities, and farming settlements in most territories. Similar numbers for the other big players like Carthage, Egypt and Maurya (they have a bonus from v.hard difficulty though, would really likely have less).
Thanks! Do let me know if you find something a particularly glaring issue
Also, remember to adjust the freemen/tribesmen manpower outputs accordingly to accomodate the 500 cohort size if you haven't already, otherwise you'll end up pretty starved for it, especially early game. Or forced to use fewer cohorts and thus pay less upkeep, as it is per cohort, and this might have a negative impact on the AI too.
And, yeah, so I read your earlier post wrong - if its 283k max, not 600k, then it does make sense after all, especially as Rome in year 758 haha. WE being so punishing is intended though - you're meant to care about it, and if it forces you to think whether to end wars early for less instead of escalating them into decade-long total warfare just for the sake of getting the 100% warscore deal, then all the better!
Manpower not getting depleted quickly enough in wars might just be because you're not really using as many troops as you can afford because no one can decently challenge you. I'd guess if you raised twice the number of troops, you'd run out of it pretty quickly, and I guess you'll find out if you're playing multiplayer with it, as long as its not perma-coop mode that is, because you know, player wars can be pretty challenging. Feel free to let me know how it goes!
Well I can't raise as many troops as to challenge my manpower. Is too expensive to do so, at Martial tech 18 and 6 Armies of each 12k men (cohorts 500 ea), I have a little positive left over. So, as the game goes on, manpower isn't an issue because the armies are too expensive to field.
Well I can't raise as many troops as to challenge my manpower. Is too expensive to do so, at Martial tech 18 and 6 Armies of each 12k men (cohorts 500 ea), I have a little positive left over. So, as the game goes on, manpower isn't an issue because the armies are too expensive to field.
Hmm... that might be because in my playthroughts I adopted the approach of always having a sizeable amount of money saved up - meaning, having enough to afford a much bigger army short-term. I also like playing as very small states, so it kind of becomes a habit to squeeze as much gold as you possibly can because you have those looming giants who won't hesitate to jump on you at a first opportunity to do so.
Did you find troops so expensive that you were unable to build more in an emergency situation in a difficult war, or were you just never pushed to the brink by the AI, and so never had the need to raise more troops than what your economy can comfortably maintain with a decent positive surplus?
It might also be that you solely used heavy infantry or another very costly troop type - in the mod, things like like infantry/archers cost 4/8 gold each, whereas HI costs 20 per cohort, and heavy cavalry/elephants are a few times that. So, if you feel like you have too much manpower, you might want to get less "elites", and more cheaper troops, because for a price of 1 HI you can get 5 LI, for example, and that means you could have had 30 armies of 12k of them if you went to the extreme, for the same price (if you were running mono HI armies). Enough quantity will trump quality. But that's 260k manpower, so.. it'd likely run out quickly, I guess?
In the screenshot you still had a couple thousand gold, and that is enough for a bit of an army expansion, and going at a deficit is not so bad in this game - as long as you don't have mercs, being at negative gold is still better than losing a good chunk of territory in a war.
Hmm... that might be because in my playthroughts I adopted the approach of always having a sizeable amount of money saved up - meaning, having enough to afford a much bigger army short-term. I also like playing as very small states, so it kind of becomes a habit to squeeze as much gold as you possibly can because you have those looming giants who won't hesitate to jump on you at a first opportunity to do so.
Did you find troops so expensive that you were unable to build more in an emergency situation in a difficult war, or were you just never pushed to the brink by the AI, and so never had the need to raise more troops than what your economy can comfortably maintain with a decent positive surplus?
It might also be that you solely used heavy infantry or another very costly troop type - in the mod, things like like infantry/archers cost 4/8 gold each, whereas HI costs 20 per cohort, and heavy cavalry/elephants are a few times that. So, if you feel like you have too much manpower, you might want to get less "elites", and more cheaper troops, because for a price of 1 HI you can get 5 LI, for example, and that means you could have had 30 armies of 12k of them if you went to the extreme, for the same price (if you were running mono HI armies). Enough quantity will trump quality. But that's 260k manpower, so.. it'd likely run out quickly, I guess?
In the screenshot you still had a couple thousand gold, and that is enough for a bit of an army expansion, and going at a deficit is not so bad in this game - as long as you don't have mercs, being at negative gold is still better than losing a good chunk of territory in a war.
No you are right, I hadn't thought of the changes you may have to units, besides costs.
I run HI and HC armies. Since in vanilla, archers are just medium infantry so may as well end up with HI and HC. An enemy with 18k troops goes toe to toe with my 11k armies.
Light infantry or archers, may indeed be viable again for meta and from a cost point. Similar with LC I think, may have to double think those as well.
