Balancing the campaign : observations and thoughts

uriak

This is not a thread about the player side of things, but rather the "sandboxy" side of the inter AI warfare and the respective strenghs and weaknesses of the major and minor factions. That playable factions do present very different challenge is important and a good element.

I've been busy trying to rebalance the campaign AI for some weeks now and I'm feeling I'm reaching the limits of what can be done without interfering with the game rules. SO maybe it's useful to voice my conclusions and see if you're reached the same.

So as often written, some factions do take an irrepressible lead thats boring to face in almost every campaign (I'm focusing on ME here). But at the same time players wish for a strong opposition at some point in the campaign. From what i've observed, the issues stem from economy/warfare balance, initial positions, and special rules.

- I don't want to speak about chaos, it's currently a WIP, and in my tests it doesn't intervene, because of my neutrality
- beastmens and hordes factions suffer a lot very often. But All considered powerful hordes tend to plow through territories which can wreck factions before you meet them.

- dwarfs are infamous for the strenght and numbers that feel unloreful. They are helped by major special resources, and maybe the most strong single stack autoresolve power. They share a good friendship with other dwarfs kingdoms that can help confederate easily.
- greenskins suffer from the opposite, with weaker stacks and a waagh mechanic that is difficult for the AI to correctly use. They start very divided but benefit from a confederation mechanic that puts the onus on power ratio and not their mutal relationship.
- imperials have the mean to flourish but the main faction does take time to confederate, depending on chaos and vampire pression this severely hinder them.
- Wood elves are almost untouchable and will wreck their neighbours after their confederation.
- vampires are very powerful, income from their basic town ensure them to quickly benefit from conquest, and their corruption makes retaking territory difficult. They can bleed their opponent dry by recruiting faster.
- norses are very powerful right now, because of a sanctuary region and a reliable income

- high elves have a superb geographical situation. Most of the time by turn 100 Ulthuan is reunited and start wreaking havoc. Loreful but boring.
- dark elves have a very large territory and economy BUT they have a more difficult time confederating and have a bitter inter fighting stance (which to be honest feels quite good)
- lizarmen dominate in Lustria, less so in the southlands. Not much to say about them.
- skaven don't manage to carve large territories, they suffer from basic units that are almost transparent in auto resolve.

--

So far, by changing the campaign Ai, buildings, and armies, I've managed to reach a much more equal footing between dwarfs and greenskins. The situation in the badlands, border princes and north eastern Empire is often very different from game to game. Still other parts of the worls are stubbornly similar.

- Ulthuan always confederate without much issues.
- Bretonnian kingdoms somehow survive but are weak and divided. They don't enjoy much income.
- The imperials survive a lot but don't confederate much.
- the vampires are peculiar, with the end of strict RO, the von Carstien attack their imperial neighbours, whereas Mannfred, always, always take Zhufbar and sometimes the rest of the northern mountains.
- IN lustria, the 3 LM factions are mostly dominant, the vampires and loremaster expand a bit, but Skrolk doesn't much.
- In the southlands, I've managed to make the crusader hold better, and both last defenders and Mors stay most often quite minor powers.
- Norse don't invade as much after a hefty nerf to their income.

So, without changing too much the rules, I think I could make confederations harder for the high elves (I did it for the dwarfs) I don't think I should make them easier for the skaven, because, that's honestly unloreful. I may use the approach from the greenskin however (aka join the strongest) that would be in tone with their survival instincts.

I've changed a bit the strengh perception from the AI when sieging, to make GS and skaven more prone to attack. This can't help that much when the AR is so bad. I may make them recruit almost no skavenslaves, but I'm afraid that would make them less loreful. At the same time, dwarfs and greenskins boast pleinty of longbeards and Big 'Uns so....

I think Bretonnian kingdoms deserve a nice boost in income. They have a difficult starting situation that doesn't make them likely to play a role in the late game. Making their main settlements produce income could be a start. Remember they have a complicated chain that requires farms/mills, they need to complete the stable/forge duo to get acces to their main line of units (yes, the noble ones)

Finally, scripts can help push the odds in one way or another, but they are complicated to write and very uncompatible with other script changes from other mods.

Would you as a player, only want a mod that change the AI, or be interested with these kind of tweaks to the game rules for the sake of more diverse situation in the campaign?

steam_164191850448yoMgfCp

AI only IMHO

robdougherty1984

Would it not make sense to haev Bretonnia much more likely to confederate? Considering they're all dukedoms of the main "Kingdom" I mean.

Overlord87#6613

If you change things like settlement income, it will also affect the player when playing that faction, so I would be sort of against that (but if you could apply the changes only to AI, it would be ok). Changing Norsca is okay, until modern Norsca gets patched in. I already use a mod to nerf their income, and has worked well.
In general, I would not like an AI mod with high chances of causing troubles when used with other mods.

I don't think there's much that can be done about Ulthuan and Naggaroth, at least until the Lord Packs come out. Then there will be more LLs going around and things can be made more interesting.

Wood Elves: would it be possible to give them a strong aversion for Skaven, Beastmen and Undead? So that they would generally avoid fighting, except against their "enemies".

Bretonnia: I think the AI should confederate easier. Easier than the Empire at least. Would It be possible (for the AI) to have a large bonus to confederating, but also a (relatively) large cooldown between confederations? So that if left alone there would 100% be a unified Bretonnia by turn 100-150, but not earlier? Just an idea.

Skaven: here the problem is with autoresolve, nothing else.

Mannfred and Zhufbar: is it possible to work on climates and increase the chances he will only sack/raze Zhufbar and not conquer It? Just to have more diversity?

Finally, one question since I don't know exactly the extent to which It is possible to mod the game. Is it possible to add a random element to the game, in terms of giving to different races each game a buff to confederations? For example, on game A Empire, Skaven and Lizardmen gets a boost to confederations, becoming larger empires. On game B, Dark Elves, Greenskins and Bretonnia get randomly selected. This way, each game would are different races become global powers, and the player would have different late game challenges.

adreeasa

I tend to play with a mod that disables Confederating for everyone, makes the games more interesting and less of a green/blue/purple/etc blob after turn 100.

I would also be interested in a mod that severely tweaks AR, it would help getting the dwarfs back in line with everyone else.

Sagranda

Overlord87 said:

Skaven: here the problem is with autoresolve, nothing else. .

Most Skaven stacks I encountered/observed had a huge amount of Skavenslaves and normal Clanrats.
So I think that their recruitment needs to be looked at, too.

uriak said:

Finally, scripts can help push the odds in one way or another, but they are complicated to write and very uncompatible with other script changes from other mods.

Just out of curiosity (I know nothing about that area), but doesn't Crynsos' "Community Modding Framework" address this issue?

Would you as a player, only want a mod that change the AI, or be interested with these kind of tweaks to the game rules for the sake of more diverse situation in the campaign?

As long as those tweaks are AI only, it would be the later for me.

Overlord87#6613

sagranda2 said:

Overlord87 said:

Skaven: here the problem is with autoresolve, nothing else. .

Most Skaven stacks I encountered/observed had a huge amount of Skavenslaves and normal Clanrats.
So I think that their recruitment needs to be looked at, too.

In general, I have always thought that vanilla recruitment is subpar, so I agree. That is only part of the problem, though, and AR should be looked at, too.

uriak

sagranda2 said:

Just out of curiosity (I know nothing about that area), but doesn't Crynsos' "Community Modding Framework" address this issue?

As long as those tweaks are AI only, it would be the later for me.

Yes, but I've not contacted him yet, especially since there would be the need for the mod to be pretty stabilized I guess.

Where should the limit be? Are confederation conditions in or out (they do impact the player, even if it's only AI deal acceptation.

For the skavens, I'm gonna give a look at their AR especially. I've modified most army compositions already, but preffered to focus on OW factions so far. Should skavens eskew slaves ? Have a predefined proporition of them?

@Overlord87 :

I've changed the norse income, and recruitement. So far I'm pretty happy with elven/LM/empire/dwarfs/GS. recruitement. I'm a bit bothered by bretonnians and vampires and skaven. For bretonnia I make sure they have the chains for knights but are stuck with yeomen they don't disband, and since they are poor they can't recruite more stacks usually.

Your final remark is something I have in mind. Once I start focusing on scripts, it could be a thing to boost factions, sometimes randomly.

Iron_Crown#5779

It's a double-edged sword. In vanilla, Dwarfs and Varg always seem to crush their neighbors quickly and become very strong. VC too I guess if you are not playing them.

That can lead to boring always-same situations. But by rebalancing the game so that these factions have a more even fight against their respective enemies, you inevitably make the game easier for the player, because two or three small factions are easier to pick off one by one than one large and powerful faction. If Dwarfs don't quickly dominate Greenskins, but instead are locked in a protracted war, with a stalemate or even still a win but very slow one, obviously they will be much weaker and easier to conquer for the player. If the Greenskins win, they will still be quite weak compared to how strong the Dwarfs always are in vanilla.

So the only solution to change balance but ensure that the player faces strong opponents would be to make e.g. the Greenskins superior to the Dwarfs, so basically reverse the roles. Which would create a new always-same situation.

Other games deal with this problem by having random factions in every new game, but of course that is not an option with the Warhammer setting with its deep lore and the world map that is the same in every game and not procedurally generated.

So imho the only reasonable way to shake things up would be to randomly roll a die at the start of a campaign and assign some factions a strong advantage, like giving them extra starting settlements or a stack of gold or whatever. So that faction is almost guaranteed to quickly vanquish its enemy and become a major power, but it could be a different faction in every campaign.

uriak

Oh, factions can still snowball, the mechanisms of this game kinda ensure that. Sure the worst situation is making a losing faction strong enough to resist assimilation.

One important aspect are confederations. These are quite flexible, you pick the odds for each level of appreciation, and add the impact of the war situation. There are mostly 3 kinds of attitude : normal, subordinate (more susceptible to join regardless of war situation situation) and joins strong (very influenced by war situation, not by friendship)

I've begun tinkering with the dwarfs (and bretonnian) to make them a little less susceptible to confederate depending on friendship alone (they are all best buddies at lest when played by the AI) but more in case of extreme danger, put it as the stubborness and pride.

Wood elves have a quasi automatic confederation setting, but it's triggered by scripts. Bretonnia when non played by humans could benefit from this.

BTW I've started restrincting a lot occupation, but it seems the effects aren't outstanding. Either something disables my new settings are the colonization itself depends on entirelety different factors (they do, but I don't know how much)

TheShiroOfDalton

I think there are just too much unknown dependencies in the various tables governing the CAI that "improving" it is a shot in the dark. I found out that dabbling with the difficulty tables for example could very quickly break the AI and cause weird behaviour. Removing the difficulty-reliant PO penalties and buffs for example turned the AI extremely opportunistic and cowardly, just like it was in TWH1, plus it tended to do those blasted endless sieges again.

That's why I will stay away from AI mods unless they've been tested thoroughly multiple times in several campaigns and different difficulties. Unfortunately a lot of modders don't really bother testing their mods much, especially when it's concerning lategame factors.

uriak

The AI system is opaque truely, but pretty good results have been obtained in the past. Testing is indeed difficult and pretty uninteresting. It should be CA work since they use a framework to play campaigns. It cannot be possible that dwarf and norse domination haven't been caught up by such a system.

I've got relative nice feedback so far with the CAI, so I'm focusing more on the specific help for certains factions.

cool_lad#3330

From my last campaign:-


The main culprit for the huge Dwarven presence seemed to be Karak Azul, with relatively minor contributions from the remaining Dwarven factions. This was observed across 2 campaigns; 1 each as Empire and Dwarves (in that order)

The Greenskins could possible do with easier confederations; they seemed to be producing armies alright, but the kept sending those armies against the Empire (me) instead of defending against the Dwarves.

Mannfred focusing on the Dwarves seems to not be detrimental to the campaign overall as the Von Carsteins tend to coexist with the main VC faction and expland into territory held by the Empire provinces (usually Stirland).

Suggestion: The Skaven could possibly be given a greater presence overall; they really should be just as prominent as the Greenskins in the Dwarven campaign. Really don't know how that can be done easily; maybe give territories around Karak Azul and Karak 8 peaks to Skaven factions (also makes the Greenskin and Dwarven campaign more diverse overall and therefore more fun.

uriak

I think the maybe more organic way to do this would be to spread skaven corruption in area devoid of them. But under which guidelines?
I agree that they feel too much like an afterthough. Skavenblight ought to be way more menacing presence, just as an exemple. But Estalia's additionnal income really keep them as way, as well as Tilea.


The southern realm are a bit of an annoyance. They are quite defensive, don't tech up much and sit with their large income with many low to mid level stack, making them quite difficult to move and standing in the way of larger empires. Though from time to time you see an outlier, such as Skavenblight conquering Estalia or Wurrzag outsting the princes.

I admit there is sample bias, I'm using malagor as a hidden neutral faction, whereas Kharzrak should start in Estalaia and create havox there. I should use an unlocker and play as another beastmen horde. I don't want nor could playtest campaigns with a regular faction, it would both be long and boring. At least with BM I can just skip turns quite fast. without much input.

(as an aside I do this to enjoy the game too, which may be difficult after so many hours spent doing "dummy" runs)

Iron_Crown#5779

My first campaigns in TWW2 were with Carcasonne, which I restarted several times, and every time Estalia was razed by Beastmen in the first few turns and Skavenblight took over the ruins until I took them from the Skaven later on.

Tilea is also often doing quite well in my games. For some odd reason, I often see them crusading far from their home in the Eastern orc realms. Sometimes holding a settlement or two far in the East when they have no settlements between there and Tilea. Almost like they are scripted to send expeditionary forces deep into Greenskin lands.

And they NEVER trade with me, even when attitude is good.

uriak

Usually, if a faction attacks always another it's because they are the most evident enemy. That's VC just attack zhufbar, since they are blocked on the western side by the von Carstein.

What you say about Estalia however makes me think I really should avoid using Malagor as my play test LL, the lack of beastmen in Estalia can change quite a lot, because on it's own Estalia can handle Skavenblight.

Iron_Crown#5779

Yeah although I don't think the Skaven fortresses in the Old World are meant to really conquer much. Aren't the Skaven a thing mostly in the Vortex campaign? To me it seems Skavenblight or Hell Pit are just added for flavour as minor obstacles. With very strong garrisons so impossible to just wipe out in the early game, but cannot do much except occasional harassment.

I don't see that as a negative btw. Yesterday I had a great battle when Morlocke swooped out of his fortress and ambushed my LL's army and I had to fight for the life of my LL and my two best heroes. It was pretty tough but I made it and to me it felt like what stinking little rat people would do. Take opportunities but not able to really build an Empire.

endurstonehelm#6102

uriak said:

I think Bretonnian kingdoms deserve a nice boost in income. They have a difficult starting situation that doesn't make them likely to play a role in the late game. Making their main settlements produce income could be a start. Remember they have a complicated chain that requires farms/mills, they need to complete the stable/forge duo to get acces to their main line of units (yes, the noble ones)

Finally, scripts can help push the odds in one way or another, but they are complicated to write and very uncompatible with other script changes from other mods.

Would you as a player, only want a mod that change the AI, or be interested with these kind of tweaks to the game rules for the sake of more diverse situation in the campaign?

My general response is I like options. So if it is just as easy to create two mods, i.e. an AI mod and a Bretonnian income mod vs. creating one mod (a joint AI + Bretonnian income mod), then I would like the two mods over the one mod.

This allows the player to pick and choose AI only, or income only, or select both.

I think your testing is really cool, by the way.

Personally, I think the Bretonnian income chain with the two inter-related buildings is too complicated for the AI to handle. While its a cool idea for the player, the AI needs a simple building upgrade process. Greenskin and Beastmen Waaggghhhs also are too complicated for the AI to handle.

Overlord87#6613

Well, in my Queek campaign Tilea was destroyed, Miragliano is owned by WE, Luccini by Dwarfs (that confederated Belegar ofc). Estalia is owned by a rogue army lol.
Border Princes only own Akendorf.
Skaven in Skavenblight, but they're stuck there. I guess Skavenblight won't become a real threat until a Skaven LL is placed there.

Wood Elves are number 2 power despite owning only 7 settlements. That was a bit surprising. Lothern rank 1 with 29 (I'm sitting at around 20).

Re:Skaven, there should really be more around. Perhaps a couple of settlements from Karak Azul could be re-assigned to Skaven. Same goes for the Greenskins tribe in Karak Azgal.

Alternatively, I've seen an interesting mod in the workshop, aimed at making the race for K8P more interesting. It basically moves Skarsnik to Eight Peaks if you play with Belegar or Queek, otherwise It moves Queek there if you start with Skarsnik.
Now, something like that sounds very good to me. Mutinous Gits don't really do much, but adding an aggressive LL there could make things really interesting.

Just throwing around some ideas.

uriak

I have good news, I've found a way to embed scripts without changing any original files, which will let me have fun with adding specific thing without mod incompatibility

I've still to gauge how exactly to call things at the right time (I can make it at the start of a campaign) but I think i've found how to discriminate between campaigns and all. The main catch is that I can't change existing script, I can only possibly undo what they did if possible.

But for new features, it's quite perfect.

InuOkami#8640

uriak said:

I have good news, I've found a way to embed scripts without changing any original files, which will let me have fun with adding specific thing without mod incompatibility

I've still to gauge how exactly to call things at the right time (I can make it at the start of a campaign) but I think i've found how to discriminate between campaigns and all. The main catch is that I can't change existing script, I can only possibly undo what they did if possible.

But for new features, it's quite perfect.

That's great to hear man, i'm really looking forward the next update, keep up the good work.

uriak

Thanks!

Since it's now possible to envision scripting without much cons (other than the difficulty of scripting, but I'm starting to become quite knowledgable) I may revert my changes on Bretonnian diplomacy and use targeted buffs instead.

In the Advanced AI mod, I had written a couple of specific buffs for Louen and Karl Franz when not played by humans, that would remove their stack upkeep. I may try to give this another spin, and possibly for faction like Carcassone maybe give them some buildings right from the start. (Yes, I think the economic situation of Bretonnians is dire)

In the meantime I've raised the priorities of their farms/harbours.
I could try to and check what to do about Skavenblight. The largest Skaven settlement is currently a joke.

Keklemeshekles

Hi Uriak

Just wanted to post and thank you for your work in looking to balance mortal empire and improve on what is a somewhat opaque and certainly unoptimised AI strategys and behaviours.

I always used Celtiks recruitment and BAI fixes and is good that you are keeping it up.

My experience in multiple campaigns are exactly as you described so far and also understand the limited toolset you have available.

Dwarfs snowball due to Auto resolve and confederation. Turning off confederation helps limit this however somewhat limits all factions.

I always imagined that dwarves would be as isolationist as wood elves not venturing from their mountains unless a grudge needed settled however the Dawi Tide as is aptly named seems a little odd.

I dont know how effective altering personality traits could be but one would expect the roving raiders being skaven beastmen chaos and orcs as is loreful.

Anyway thankyou for making a good game better and although I dont have time to constantly test and give feedback on your changes I appreciate what you are doing/have done so far.

Cheers!

Kekles

caffeinatedneil

Keklemeshekles said:

Dwarfs snowball due to Auto resolve and confederation. Turning off confederation helps limit this however somewhat limits all factions.

I think it's more their solidarity as a race and willingness to band together rather than fight amongst themselves that leads them to snowball. Their immediate neighbours, the Greenskins, Vampires, and the Empire provinces, all tend to fight each other as much as they do other races. If the Dwarves were to act more like everyone else, it would balance things out a little bit more.

I don't know how well that fits Warhammer lore though, but from a gameplay perspective, it's a racial trait that definitely gives them an edge.

uriak

Hey, thanks @Keklemeshekles that's appreciated.

I've explored limiting dwarf confederation, they are very often allied, which is quite enough. Geography and racial trait explain this, dince the dwarf kingdowms are quite dispersed in the western area (and don't compete with each other) whereas the eastern kingdoms basically all have a more pressing enemy to fight against.

On that note, it's not that absurb that the Empire provinces are much more prone to infighting, since lorewise we are playing in a "fractured empire era" and gameplay wise, whole parts of the empire would not see much action initially.

That said the confederation system does insist on smallish subfactions getting a pounding. It's super true for the greenskins but I've reinforced a bit that aspect for the dwarfs too. Note that in vanilla, the game gives a substancial bonus for AI confederation that are under a set percentage of the player own power (I reduced this without removing it)

From what I've managed to identify, both Empire and Bretonnia take maybe too much time starting to confederate, compared to say the HE (if you though dwarfs were buddies, just check Ulthuan in ME) this maybe a because of a difference in confederation chance or more prosaically that their main faction doesn't get the change to be much stronger than the others. The best example would be Louen, who can't confederate at all if he does not get Marienburg, or other bretonnians aren't quickly in a dire situation.

Sagranda

Btw, the Dwarfball aside.
This is my current Queek campaign on VH



The bright red are the glorious Skaven
White the Silver Host
Purple the Necrarch Brotherhood
Blue...well...we all know who are those...
Fawn the Vampire Counts
Red the Von Carsteins

This is not the first time this happens in one of my campaigns.
The Vampire Counts and Von Carsteins are known to do so, but if left alone for a bit the Necrarch Brotherhood and the Silver Host are just going going out of control, too.

daelin4#9896

Keklemeshekles said:

Dwarfs snowball due to Auto resolve and confederation. Turning off confederation helps limit this however somewhat limits all factions.

I always imagined that dwarves would be as isolationist as wood elves not venturing from their mountains unless a grudge needed settled however the Dawi Tide as is aptly named seems a little odd.

I dont know how effective altering personality traits could be but one would expect the roving raiders being skaven beastmen chaos and orcs as is loreful.

Well the thing is that the isolationist factions end up not having much interaction with the rest of the world, and thus the ability for them to ally against common threats (say, Chaos stacks) becomes very limited since the only things going for a diplomacy effect are the few "At War with X faction" buffs.
Given how the Wood Elfs behave in my current campaign I'd actually hate for Dwarfs to mimic the same behaviour. Passivity never translates well to playing Total War campaigns, and neither does it benefit the turtling factions either.
I'd say this is the main problem with Kislev, which just gets rekt once Chaos rolls around because it's been fighting Norsca all this time yet isn't keen on being friends with anyone else.

Just feels like those problems where if the game functions more to the lore it ends up being more boring, and vice versa. Mind you, this is more due to the game itself not having much depth in terms of interaction- factions can't exactly get bogged down when it is possible to assemble large armies (actually, it's not possible to NOT do that given how armies work) and steamroll when a weakpoitn is exploited.

If anything, changing startpos to allow for Dwarf factions to re-emerge, and disabling confederation altogether may well solve the Dwarf steamroll issue. The only problem is that you can't get other LLs via confederation.

madskittls

So I've played Queek and Kemmler plays and it really seems that at the start, the Greenskins dominate the dwarfs and typically expand very fast all the way to 17 settlements and the Dwarfs have 2-4 settlements... Until they stall and then get beaten back into oblivion.
So I believe any changes should be taken very carefully, because the Greenskins could very easily just become the new Dwarfs.
Have you noticed, none of the AI's ever make it to 8 peaks? Kinda makes it a bit sad of a "race"

steam_164191850448yoMgfCp

madskittls said:

So I've played Queek and Kemmler plays and it really seems that at the start, the Greenskins dominate the dwarfs and typically expand very fast all the way to 17 settlements and the Dwarfs have 2-4 settlements... Until they stall and then get beaten back into oblivion.
So I believe any changes should be taken very carefully, because the Greenskins could very easily just become the new Dwarfs.
Have you noticed, none of the AI's ever make it to 8 peaks? Kinda makes it a bit sad of a "race"

it isnt cioded to do the race only when one of the 3 factions is plyer they try and even then it is low priority
at least in my experience

GeneralConfusion#6341

I've found Belegar seem to make it *to* Right Peaks pretty well, even taking Crooked Fang Fort or Valaya's Sorrow nearby sometimes; he just can't actually take Eight Peaks because there' four stacks standing there at all times.

uriak

I've changed Bretonnia building priorities a bit i'm experimenting with some AI cheats I did for the Advanced AI mod. Those are aimed at making both Louen's and Karl Franz's starts a bit more explosive to help them in the long run.