Has anyone messed around with the combat.txt some in the db folder? I recently began tinkering with CK again, and I have come up with interesting results.
Mostly, I was very tired of how the AI would gather huge armies, and then waste them in a siege. And what REALLY bothered me, was when two armies fought, it was attrition that did ninety percent of the damage. Attrition is bad, but it should be major battles that really shatter the opposing armies. Otherwise, how could the First Crusaders have made it from Normandy to Jerusalem?
So what I did was dramatically raise the morale rating for each type of soldier, and I made castles (a word on that later) give an attrition bonus. It's generally possible for an army of up to 10-15k to do most things with only 2% attrition, and often none in its own demesne. Further, except for some strange situations, such as reloading during a war seeming to set all armies as morale 0, they will tend to engage in set piece battles which either shatters the other side or not. Sometimes, parts of the enemy army escapes, but they are generally decisive. This works because the one thing the AI does well is form super-massive armies and use them like a hammer. Used to be, the army would then melt away at the first siege.
A quick word about other changes I've made:
In my own saved games, I've done past modifications where I set the laws, province power levels and starting tech of each culture. I've also done many other minor modifications, such as making spread dramatically more unlikely, so that cultures would better retain their individual flavor. I've also completely reworked the battles event folder, to make martial ability incredibly more important. It is much more likely to gain prestige and win sieges if you have a great martial value, and it is much more likely your land will be devastated (instead of ruler_stewardship), armies will desert during combat and you will be captured or killed if your martial value is low. Also, romantic and pragmatic were never taken into account before.
I have also changed many other event files, to take into account how children tend to mature with much higher stats on average than they used to...and I set every education trait in my traits file to 2 stewardship less than usual, (so a +1 bonus becomes a -1, and a +4 becomes a +2). Stewardship is so overwhelmingly, incredibly powerful, end-all, be-all of everything, that I generally took every step possible to make other traits more significant. It's only lately that I've found it better to always go martial education when I'm looking to expand, as even tough_soldier helps prevent a lot of negative stuff. Otherwise, I try to depend on marshals, and there are events that give negative consequences for that (albeit rare).
Finally, most every province in my game is a medium_castle. There are a few, which were historically difficult to take, such as Little Armenia, or Aragon and Navarre, which are Large. And others, such as Rome and Byzantium are Huge. I have modified the wars at start, to have the Seljuks in combat with most of Byzantium's Anatolian vassals.
One thing that I failed at doing, was trying to designate certain provinces as 'ports'. All islands, and quite a few other places, which were historically appropriate, would start with naval_harbours, and it was impossible for other provinces to develop them. They would get a massive bonus to speed (encouraging AI to send troops to that province in its calculations), and a huge bonus to the cost of sending troops overseas. Whereas all other non-harbour provinces would have a massively increased cost, preventing the AI from using them. But it just didn't work out. In practice, the game seemed to not take into account any percentage increase beyond 100%.
Right now, I am trying to figure out the difference that playing with regiment sizes, along with attack, defend and shock values will have.
/One sad thing I did was just comment out the Crusader file entirely. It just doesn't work, and usually results in most games turning un-fun around 1090. This was very unfortunate, but unavoidable. The game mechanics just don't allow for them to conquer all those individual emirs, before a white peace is made for 27d.
Mostly, I was very tired of how the AI would gather huge armies, and then waste them in a siege. And what REALLY bothered me, was when two armies fought, it was attrition that did ninety percent of the damage. Attrition is bad, but it should be major battles that really shatter the opposing armies. Otherwise, how could the First Crusaders have made it from Normandy to Jerusalem?
So what I did was dramatically raise the morale rating for each type of soldier, and I made castles (a word on that later) give an attrition bonus. It's generally possible for an army of up to 10-15k to do most things with only 2% attrition, and often none in its own demesne. Further, except for some strange situations, such as reloading during a war seeming to set all armies as morale 0, they will tend to engage in set piece battles which either shatters the other side or not. Sometimes, parts of the enemy army escapes, but they are generally decisive. This works because the one thing the AI does well is form super-massive armies and use them like a hammer. Used to be, the army would then melt away at the first siege.
A quick word about other changes I've made:
In my own saved games, I've done past modifications where I set the laws, province power levels and starting tech of each culture. I've also done many other minor modifications, such as making spread dramatically more unlikely, so that cultures would better retain their individual flavor. I've also completely reworked the battles event folder, to make martial ability incredibly more important. It is much more likely to gain prestige and win sieges if you have a great martial value, and it is much more likely your land will be devastated (instead of ruler_stewardship), armies will desert during combat and you will be captured or killed if your martial value is low. Also, romantic and pragmatic were never taken into account before.
I have also changed many other event files, to take into account how children tend to mature with much higher stats on average than they used to...and I set every education trait in my traits file to 2 stewardship less than usual, (so a +1 bonus becomes a -1, and a +4 becomes a +2). Stewardship is so overwhelmingly, incredibly powerful, end-all, be-all of everything, that I generally took every step possible to make other traits more significant. It's only lately that I've found it better to always go martial education when I'm looking to expand, as even tough_soldier helps prevent a lot of negative stuff. Otherwise, I try to depend on marshals, and there are events that give negative consequences for that (albeit rare).
Finally, most every province in my game is a medium_castle. There are a few, which were historically difficult to take, such as Little Armenia, or Aragon and Navarre, which are Large. And others, such as Rome and Byzantium are Huge. I have modified the wars at start, to have the Seljuks in combat with most of Byzantium's Anatolian vassals.
One thing that I failed at doing, was trying to designate certain provinces as 'ports'. All islands, and quite a few other places, which were historically appropriate, would start with naval_harbours, and it was impossible for other provinces to develop them. They would get a massive bonus to speed (encouraging AI to send troops to that province in its calculations), and a huge bonus to the cost of sending troops overseas. Whereas all other non-harbour provinces would have a massively increased cost, preventing the AI from using them. But it just didn't work out. In practice, the game seemed to not take into account any percentage increase beyond 100%.
Right now, I am trying to figure out the difference that playing with regiment sizes, along with attack, defend and shock values will have.
/One sad thing I did was just comment out the Crusader file entirely. It just doesn't work, and usually results in most games turning un-fun around 1090. This was very unfortunate, but unavoidable. The game mechanics just don't allow for them to conquer all those individual emirs, before a white peace is made for 27d.
