Levy Composition Oddities

[ArchaeoFish18]

Continuing on in my Parthia game, the weird patterns continue to appear.

The original oddity was that Macedonian levy proportions were showing up in regions with hardly any Macedonians (Media, Persis, Ariana), once Macedonian was added as an integrated culture.

The second oddity is that as I've conquered by way westward into areas with substantial Macedonian populations (thanks Thrace!), I am not seeing Macedonian (or for that matter any levies) significantly beyond the base number, showing up in these regions. On the other hand, levies in Media, Persis, and Ariana continue to grow and show a mostly Macedonian composition.

I can't be sure, but it almost seems like the Macedonian pops from these western regions are being counted in the eastern regions levy quantity and composition calculations.

I'm not exactly unhappy about it, as I'm getting tons of HC and HI (but sadly not HA, the Parthian signature troop type!), but I'd rather have have a clear and predictable levy pattern, so it adds another element of strategy. In this game, I'm trying to engineer my levy composition and keep only one legion in order to keep the cash flow high for rapid conversion and assimilation.

 

[Seleukos.I.Nikator]

When it comes to levy numbers, the more none-slave pops of the integrated culture(s) you have within the region the higher the levy number. So, in the western provinces you do have Macedonians, but I don't think you have any Parthians there, so that levy number is going to be smaller. Do you have any other cultures apart from Macedonian that are integrated?

 

[Blood Royal]

Continuing on in my Parthia game, the weird patterns continue to appear.

Are you using any mods? If so, which, that would help me narrow down the issue if it's mod-related. If you are using mods, try disabling the mods and loading the save and see if you get the same results.

 

[Ducky251]

I had this - I was playing as Knossos and conquered all of Crete and had 100% Cretan culture (60% archers and such and about 32 levy cohorts)

I then killed Cyrenaica (only viable target really!) and integrated Cyrenaican...and suddenly 6/32 divisions in Crete are camels...despite there only being 2 Cyrenaican pops in Crete, both being slaves.

It does appear like once you integrate more than one culture, it averages the percentages of the units across your provinces, even if they’re not present in that province.


This happened in my Bactria game - I integrated Avanti and Ghandari cultures and regions such as Sogdia with 0 of their pops went from producing 0 archers to about 20-25% archers (my other integrated cultures were Macedonian, Bactrian, sogdian and Parthian, and Avanti and Ghandari are both 60% archer cultures, so the maths kind of works out)

 

[Blood Royal]

Alright, I tested some things in vanilla with no mods just to be sure it's not a mod issue - and it's not.

Steps to replicate:

First edit the 00_west_levantine levy file. Set make these changes:

levy_west_levantine = { #Levantine states
default = no
warelephant = 1.0
}
levy_nabatean = {
default = no
warelephant = 1.0
}

I had to edit the default as at first the levy_nabatean war elephants didn't show up, so that's another weird thing with the levy system. It seemingly reverts to the default levy for some reason, but that's not really what I'm concerned about.

Now edit Rome and Macedon in the setup/main/00_default.txt file and set Hebrew as integrated culture (citizens) like so, under is_antagonnist in the country section:

poptype_rights = {
{
culture = hebrew
type = citizen
}
}

Now edit Rome and Pella (Macedon) in the files as follows:

### BUILDINGS
1 = { #Rome
commerce_building = 1
court_building = 1
town_hall_building = 1
military_building = 2
nobles = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
freemen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
}
378 = { # Pella
nobles = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
freemen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
citizen = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
slaves = {
culture = hebrew
religion = roman_pantheon
}
}

The result is this:

Judea has the correct 100% war elephant levy.

But Rome and Macedon, who only had about 10 non-slave Judean pops added, are now also somehow getting wayyyyy more war elephants than those 10 pops should allow for:

I hope this easily reproducable experiment proves that there is something very wrong and that it's an issue with the base game, not mods. Please fix or the lands of Middle-Earth will be ravaged by Mordor's 80% troll army and only the 80% Knights of Dol Amroth levy will be able to stop them in the LOTR mod @Arheo @Jamor

 

[ArchaeoFish18]

When it comes to levy numbers, the more none-slave pops of the integrated culture(s) you have within the region the higher the levy number. So, in the western provinces you do have Macedonians, but I don't think you have any Parthians there, so that levy number is going to be smaller. Do you have any other cultures apart from Macedonian that are integrated?

Certainly. With few Parthian or Median integrated pops there, I would expect the levies to be smaller. However, it's after 600, so Syria/Anatolia have been owned by Antigonids/Seleucids/Thrace for 150 years, and there are a non-trivial number of Macedonian pops there. I didn't do the math, so I could be wrong, but the levy seems low relative to the numbers of integrated Macedonian non-slave pops that are in those regions, especially for Syria. Meanwhile the number of levied cohorts in Media seems to be growing much faster than expected (over 100 cohorts now), as I integrated or assimilated that region a while ago, and population growth is not that fast.

Are you using any mods? If so, which, that would help me narrow down the issue if it's mod-related. If you are using mods, try disabling the mods and loading the save and see if you get the same results.

No mods at all.


I'm relieved to hear that others are encountering these issues. It suggests that the bug is fairly easy to replicate, and therefore presumably easy to fix. Hoping for some clarity from the devs about this issue, and the relationship of pop-types to levy composition (i.e. Do citizens produce different compositions to freemen? I hope the answer is yes.)

 

[ArchaeoFish18]

I'm as disappointed as everyone else about the pause on Imperator's development and the departure of the team (given the devs' overall transparency, I think it's worth taking them at their word that it is intended to be a pause and not a complete abandonment), but one of the things that bums me the most is that we'll have to wait a year to understand how levy composition actually works/is supposed to work!!

 

[SanicK]

I'm as disappointed as everyone else about the pause on Imperator's development and the departure of the team (given the devs' overall transparency, I think it's worth taking them at their word that it is intended to be a pause and not a complete abandonment), but one of the things that bums me the most is that we'll have to wait a year to understand how levy composition actually works/is supposed to work!!

Yeah, I agree with that, and it's not just that, unfortunately. The leaders/kings not commanding legions, achievements not working properly, and others things that really neeed a good patch.