posted 25 May 2007 04:42 EDT (US)
MediModInstal_v_0.75.zip (0.9 full version to be added soon)
MediModPatch_0.75_to_0.9.zip
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Update v 0.9
Requires 1.2 Patch for Medieval 2; Total War
Includes Character Names Project Mod v 3.00
-Forth beta by Jake aka HG_CavalryCmdr
--Andrew aka HG_SwampRat - Bug Reporting ; AI behavioral consultant
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Medimod institutes a 'kill the human player' mode if the human faction is 'at war' with any faction other then Rebels before turn 10. This can only occur if the human attacks another faction, AI factions will NEVER start a war before this time (unless the human activates this mode) It is irreversible, all factions will dedicate all their resources to killing you. Actually can be kind of fun....
First thank you for trying this mod and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Install instructions;
ONLY IF YOU ALREADY HAVE MediMod v 0.75!!!
1. Unzip files into your Medieval 2 folder.
2. Click 'yes' to over write all files asked.
3. PlayMedimod(.bat)
IMPORTANT NOTE; Medimod dose not change ANY core Medieval 2 files to uninstall simply delete the Medimod folder, Config_builder.bat ; PlayMedimod.bat ; Medimod.cfg ; modcfg.txt and this file.
Another Note ; Difficulty levels have a serious impact on playing the game. If you enjoy a balanced playing experience with reasonable difficulty I recommend Normal. If you enjoy challenging game play with powerful armies of better quality units Hard. If you enjoy continuous warfare against mass assaults then Very Hard.
In my opinion Hard is actually more difficult later in the game because the AI on Very Hard spam’s low-level units until they simply do not have the money to upgrade their settlements properly, so they are still stuck with those same low grade armies when the Human is marching around with Musket men and Chivalric knights.
Recommendations:
- This mod is designed specifically with 'hard' campaign difficulty in mind, though others are considered, hard is definitely best for experienced players.
V 0.9 fixes/changes
- More fluid and consistent AI performance
- Increase overall awareness of AI
- AI now maintains siege or initiates assaults more intelligently
- Better multi-army cooperation
- Better multi-faction cooperation
- Less 'team up on weak faction' / more 'team up on strong faction'
- Increased AI settlement development
- Increases 'Diplomatic interaction' even further.
- Greatly increased the effects of devastation.
- Removed 'short campaign victory' from AI priorities
What is Medimod.
Simply put it is at it's core an AI mod that overhauls all the workings of the long term AI strategies without really changing Vanilla M2 that much.
Major AI features/improvements
- AI will now plan mass assaults when initiating a war. No more 2 or 3 unit siege attempts, more likely 2 or 3 stack armies attacking 1 or 2 of your (or other AI opponents) settlements.
- AI prefers to fight single front wars, and will prefer not to start war if they are already fighting one. Unless their current opponent is not a challenge.
- AI is far more likely to accept/offer peace when they are being beaten, but will often require some serious bribery if they are winning.
- AI prefers not to start war with more powerful opponent who are not overly aggressive, and will seek aid BEFORE starting a war with more aggressive powerful opponents. A peaceful campaign is entirely possible if you maintain a strong military force.
- When at war with multiple opponents the AI will concentrate it's efforts on the most powerful. However the AI recognizes that human players are more dangerous, and so will often concentrate on them more then a slightly more powerful AI opponent (extent depends on difficulty level)
- The AI will be a little more likely to initiate war with humans playing hard or very hard difficulty, but never to the exclusion of other considerations.
- The AI has a small random element to it's decision process meaning you can never be entirely sure what they are going to do in any given situation. This is a relatively small effect, so totally out-of-character acts are very rare.
- All starting factions have independent AI subroutines, some are more aggressive, some are less. Some want allies while others prefer to go it alone. For example the Holy Roman Empire is very aggressive while Scotland tends to be less so, except where England is concerned or if they are attacked.
Other features
- The first 10 rounds are considered 'Rebel land grab' meaning the AI will not attack any other faction except rebels. It is HIGHLY recommended that the human player dose the same. If the human player attacks any faction other then rebels before turn 10 ALL faction irrevocably switch to 'Kill the Human' mode and will dedicate all their resources to killing you. Actually can be kind of fun....
- Increased campaign map movement; this is in place purely for AI performance, changing this will result in inferior/uneven AI activities.
- Re-emergent factions. There is a very good likelihood that any base faction will re-appear after being defeated. Unlike Medieval 1 they appear with relatively weak armies and will only re-appear once. Though they are weak, if they have a chance to claim a settlement and bolster their forces it is possible (though unlikely) they can build themselves up. I have been unable to modify whatever AI they use when in Horde form, it also dose not appear in the LTGD log so I can tell you little about it. However they appear to v-line it for a capital and attack (apparently at random)
- slight adjustments to the Trait and Ancillary triggers ; includes princess fix and modifies some in a manner I consider better (most notably the Pagan Magician appears much less often). These are unimportant, feel free to replace these files with others of your choice, or if you disagree with how I have them working you can simply delete them.
- Complete re-balance of beginning situation. Perhaps 'balance' is not the right word, but it works well as without human influence any given faction can become powerful in the long term. I have modified and adjusted to get optimum early activity from the AI. However there are some exceptions/bugs I have been unable to fix. These are
If Russia fails to take Helsinki in their first attempt they stagnate for quite some time.
If Scotland fails to take Dublin in their first attempt they will almost never try again (though they do remain otherwise fully active)
If Byzantium fails to take Smyrna in their first attempt the army that attacked will become inactive untile Smyrna is owned by a faction other then rebels
I'm sure there are others I have not particularly noticed, but all in all these little glitches really add to the game as it creates more variety in who your more powerful opponents might be.
- Money and city growth. Basically there is less of both. Factions start with considerably less money, and settlements make less until a strong trade economy is built up making early expansion much more difficult. This is mostly a difficulty feature and all AI factions receive a one time 5000 bonus at the beginning of the game to offset this. This is necessary since the AI is incapable of 'saving money' to build key buildings and is thus unable to build said trade economy without it.
- AI factions only pay 1/2 upkeep for all agents (NOT troops) this is because the AI has a highly annoying feature of spamming agents (such as spies assassins and priests) who then do nothing but sit in the settlement sucking up money. Set income bonuses just add to this problem in the long term.
A FEW NOTES ON HOW MEDIMOD AI THINKS;
-- First, the goal of Medimod is balance, not difficulty, though I belive difficulty is acheved through balance almost as much as cheating.
With this goal in mind, there are a few instances where the AI will acknowladge the difference between a human faction and an AI one. This section outlines these differences and provides a brief explanation as to why I felt it was necassary to impliment them.
-- The AI..
- My reason is..
-- Is slightly less inclined to want an alliance with humans (amount dependent on dificulty) then other AI factions. Actually they are slightly more inclind to ally with humans playing easy and it goes down from there. It dose not mean they will not ask for an alliance as they would another AI faction, just that they are willing to give less to make the alliance happen.
- Reduces the 'ally with everyone for cash' exploit to a more reasonable level.
-- Will not want peace with a human just because they are the protectorate of a trusted ally. This is one of the biggest seperations between human and AI factions.
- If they did, the human could attack thier lieg's ally, then demand money for a ceasefire and they would accept, every time. AI protectorates are unable to attack anyone not in thier or thier lieg's territory.
-- Is more inclined to attack the human if they are playing a harder difficulty then easy when already at war with them.
- This simply identifies to the AI that the human enemy is more a threat to them then an AI enemy. This is only activated WHEN ALREADY AT WAR.
-- Depending on difficulty the AI differentiats AI and Human factions when deciding whether or not to start a war in the following manner.
Easy ; slightly less inclined to start a war with humans over AI
Medium ; Considers humans and AI factions the same for starting war.
Hard ; Slightly more inclined to start a war with the human over an AI faction.
Very Hard ; More likely in general to attack the human over an AI faction.
- Simply to more differentiate the different difficulty levels. Again these effects are not huge (though noticable on very hard), for example, if all other considerations are the same, the AI is still more likely to attack an AI faction they are neutral with then a human playing very hard they are allied with.
-- The slave faction might attack the human after turn 25 (I think, but wont swere to this one, they should, I tell them to, but I have not had it happen yet) It is a random chance based on difficulty (no chance on easy).
- The idea here is simply to force the human to pay more attention.
-- Ofcourse there's 'kill the human player' mode ALL AI factions will enter if the human attacks any faction other then the rebels before turn 10.
- This is a multi-purpose trigger, first it's a difficulty measure, eliminating the chance of eliminating an AI faction before they have a chance to defend themselves. Second it's for players like me who like to build an empire first and crush thier opponants second, this allows you to 'get set' before the AI onslaught as it were. Third its a balance trigger, it allows larger factions to build up what they have and smaller factions to become large enough to atleast fight the larger, more powerful, factions.
I like to look at this as a briefing on the alternate history that occured BEFORE the start of the game.
---- Other notes concerning Medimod AI, In these areas there is no seperation between Human and AI factions. ---
-- In Vanilla they countered larger factions by lowering the other factions standings toward them. Medimod reduces these effects drastically, replacing them with a general likelyness that weaker factions will attack more powerful factions if opportunity presents. This is relative to the strength of the weaker faction. More powerful, but still weaker, factions will attempt to exploit the slightest weakness while much weaker factions will only attack if they trully see a chance for victory.
-- There is an overide that drastically increases the likelyhood of attack if any faction becomes too overpowering. At this point all weaker factions will become unreasonable in the hopes that, if they try hard enough, they might weaken this supreame power. I feel it important to stress this is an exteamely overpowering faction, if you trigger this before owning half the map I will be truely impressed. While it is unlikely an AI faction will ever become powerful enough to trigger this, the requirements are quite the same for them as for human factions.
-- Medimod is an attempt to create more 'diplomatic interaction.' I'm affraid there may have been some misunderstanding as to my meaning. I do not expect (or even say it's a good idea) having an army of diplomats running around and giving away map info an 100 florins evey turn, to keep your allies liking you. This might work I suppose, though not as well as it dose in vanilla.
The suggested way to keep allies liking you is, well, to be allied to them. If they are at war with someone, go to war with them as well, I dont mean drop everything and attack them, I mean be in a general state of war, blockade ports, cause devestation in thier land, interupt thier trade, maybe bribe or pick off a small army here and there, take over watchtowers or lightly defended forts, anything that says 'Im with you on this one buddy' and your allies will like you for it (thier allies wont, but hey what would you expect..) If you trully want to be an ally get military access (pretty easy with allies, usually give and take equal value trade) and help them defend thier lands, they'll do the same for you (usually).
Additionally, going to war effects your reputation and general political standing differently in Medimod then Vanilla. In Vanilla, the best way to attack an ally was, attacking him. In Medimod, unless you enjoy having a bad rep and everyone hating you, I strongly suggest not doing that (thier enemies will even like you less if you use that rout.) Use diplomacy, if your allied, cancel your alliance first. If your neutral, threaten them first. It works like this: Threaten with a 'value' of demanding to balanced, if they refuse, attack them the same turn, it will not be considered an 'undeclared' attack. If they accept, DO NOT ATTACK, not only is it considered an undeclared attack, but also breaking a treaty agreement (this will devastate your reputation.) Instead, wait a couple turns (3 or 4) and repeate. If the 'value' of the threat is 'very demanding' it's considered an outrage, negating the declaration of attack, if the 'value' is higher then balanced the problem is they will likely accept.
In general it's a good idea to know who your friend are and who your enemies are, and further more, know who thier friends and enemies are, it's all interconnected in the world of polotics. I wouldnt be overly suprised if it were posible to rule the world of Medimod with political influence alone (though you'd need decent military and financial influence to achive that level of policial influence)
At long last I hope you enjoy this little mod and would greatly appreciate any feedback, good and especially bad. - Jake
Please try my M2TW campaign AI mod and give me some feedback.
http://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=9&tn=6425&f=9,6425,0,365&st=0
[This message has been edited by CavalryCmdr (edited 08-16-2007 @ 02:48 PM).]
Did you do all of it yourself? if so, I just have to say wow again.
