Moddin the game to increase Capital Fortification

[WhiteHojo]

This has been talked about in regards to making China/Japan more difficult to conquer in the latter game.

This along w/some other threads on the rather large bonus one receives by conquering another nations capital (maps, bigger negotiating stick, etc) got me to reflecting on the importance of a nations capital in this game.

My play style has been to set up convenent staging grounds from which I can launch assaults on other nations capitals when war breaks out thus leading to short wars w/high returns for my empire. Seems to me the computer doesn't put the necessary emphasis on capturing a countries capital that a human does (understandable I suppose) but this leads to rather lopsidded games. Since I don't know how to change the coding of the game to alter the AI behavior, I thought I'd do the next best thing and simply increase the starting fort levels for all countries capitals to something like 3 or 4.

Has anyone ever done this in one of their games?

Is there something I'm missing? This seems like a fairly simple way to avoid the quick rushes some players (me included) tend to do early in the game... would be awfully hard to crack open the Mamelukes capital in 1495 w/little to no artillery.

Would this be too unbalanced for the game? both as to AI and Human response to this?

Also, how exactly would I do this? And, yes, Stefan, I will look at your FAQ for this one.

 

[BiB]

I also gave level 3 forts to all big majors in my game, for a whiel alreday now and even though the AI still isn't intent on defending its capital it'll take quite some time before it falls, if ever, now.

 

[Dark Knight]

Since the AI doesn't take advantage of the capital problem, I see no reason to change the game files to give extra protection to capitals. All you have to do is choose not to take unfair advantage of the easiness of capturing their capital.

 

[Olaf the Unsure]

The fortress size is set in the scenario file (1492.inc in the original game). You can edit the file in Wordpad or some other basic text editor.

Each country has an identification tag; for example, Turkey's entry starts like this:

country = {
tag = TUR

Following this is various setup information for the country - provinces, armies, tech levels, etc. To change the capital fortification size, find the entry for the capital province. Turkey's looks like this:

city = { fortress = { level = 2.000000 date = { year = 1520 month = june day = 1 } increase = no }
population = 175000
location = 357
capital = yes
barrack = yes

Note the "yes" after captial - that means this is the capital. The fortress level above is set to 2. Change the number to 3 and you have a level 3 fortress.

I've experimented with increasing the capital fortifications for all major powers to level 3. Seems to work fine. No untoward side effects so far.

 

[WhiteHojo]

Originally posted by Dark Knight
All you have to do is choose not to take unfair advantage of the easiness of capturing their capital.

Thank you oh wise one.

I know that your advice is the obvious choice but I'm a weak, weak man w/urges.... Urges that make me do things I'm not proud of... Things like attacking a capital knowing that I'll win if my army is large enough.

Seriously though, when you start putting in limitations on playing a game via self restrait (and I'm not talking cheats here, simply tactical/startegic issues), ie. don't attack a countries capital till it reaches fort level X, then the game is not as fun. Especially when the problem can be partly fixed or remedied by altering the game files. After all, do you not attack and try to take the higher income provences of your enemy regardles of their fort level? Aren't these prov'nce almost as important as an enemies capital in your long term strategic plans? If you do, should you impose some type of self restraint in that area also? How about capturing CoTs? Same theory there.

If you do show all of the above self restraint you are a better man than I, Charlie Brown.

And b/f anyone says, well why not just increase ALL fort levels across the board - to me that avoids the issue. The nations capital is a special case that should be delt w/in a special manner... that manner is increase the Fort level to reflect the overall importance of the city. Notice in my above example I used the phrase "almost as important". However, you cannot force an enemy to stop a war by holding any one provence except it's capital - thus the need for added defense. The use of self restaint brings in the subjective viewpoint into the game of forcing the player to decide whether or not he SHOULD do something. By increasing the fort level of the capital it takes away the SHOULD and makes the question CAN I do something (that is, Can I capture that lvl 3 fort w/on 10,000 men and 30 cannon - prob'ly not)...

enough of that -

Olaf - thanks for the info - I'll try it soon.

 

[Dark Knight]

I don't really have much of a problem with increasing fortress strength in capitals to simulate larger garrisons. I do have a problem with gaming the system by taking advantage of the easy peaces that you can get after capturing capitals, but since you aren't doing that, go ahead.