Is there a way to tone down shipwrecks et al

[lordhoff]

1. Shipwrecks are a love/hate thing with me. I like that they happen but don't like how often. Heck, I had one fleet that got hit five turns in a row! I'm guessing that means that damage (if not totally sunk) is a percent so never goes to zero. So, is there an easy way I can tone this down?

2. I'm still wondering why the AI is so in love with cavalry. I just invaded a large island with 12 Greek-style infantry units. In about six turns, all survived but the enemy lost in excess of 20 cavalry units and had nothing left to fight me with there. I think there was a single warrior unit and maybe two nomads. Maybe if I played on a harder setting this wouldn't happen?

3. I read somewhere that this game was based on a board game. I tried to research it but came up empty. Does anyone know the name of said board game and whether or not it had sequels?

4. Oh yeah, I lied! I haven't moved on to another game - got kind of hooked on the island campaigns .

[pavelk]

Hello lordhoff,
good to see that you keep enjoying Aggressors:) Let me answer your questions:

1. Shipwrecks are a love/hate thing with me. I like that they happen but don't like how often. Heck, I had one fleet that got hit five turns in a row! I'm guessing that means that damage (if not totally sunk) is a percent so never goes to zero. So, is there an easy way I can tone this down?

There is no way how to tune this in game. You can decrease the chances of this happening by lowering the difficulty (which has a linear impact on these events happening) but that's probably not what you want. You can manually change it, if you find file scenario.ag in folder \bin\Scenarios\Ancient_Mediterranean\ where the game is installed and find line with "<scenarioDifficultySettings>". Here you need to find such ScenarioDifficultySettingMemento (such id) which corresponds to your difficulty (0=noob, 1=beginner, etc) and once you find that part, find <MoveEventsDifficultySettingMemento id="3"> and change inside the probability value to lower one.
For example for easy difficulty this is the part:

Code: Select all

              <MoveEventsDifficultySettingMemento id="3">
                <moveEventVariables>
                  <moveEventVariables>                    
                    <MoveEventVariableDifficultySettingMemento name="probability" value="0.004" />
                  </moveEventVariables>
                </moveEventVariables>
              </MoveEventsDifficultySettingMemento>

You just change the 0.004 to lower value.
Btw. just in case - the probability is higher when you transport units in a ship or your ship is damaged (the higher the damage is the higher the chance is). For boat this chance is also increased when it is not close to shore.

If you find this too difficult, please come to Discord, I am happy to help you.

2. I'm still wondering why the AI is so in love with cavalry. I just invaded a large island with 12 Greek-style infantry units. In about six turns, all survived but the enemy lost in excess of 20 cavalry units and had nothing left to fight me with there. I think there was a single warrior unit and maybe two nomads. Maybe if I played on a harder setting this wouldn't happen?

Agreed. AI likes cavalry too much. They are good for getting quickly where they are needed but they cannot replace the melee infantry in battle.

3. I read somewhere that this game was based on a board game. I tried to research it but came up empty. Does anyone know the name of said board game and whether or not it had sequels?

It was based on a board game but it has not been publicly released.
Have fun!:)

[Morbio]

2. I'm still wondering why the AI is so in love with cavalry. I just invaded a large island with 12 Greek-style infantry units. In about six turns, all survived but the enemy lost in excess of 20 cavalry units and had nothing left to fight me with there. I think there was a single warrior unit and maybe two nomads. Maybe if I played on a harder setting this wouldn't happen?

This is one of my biggest gripes with the game. I have been playing on the hardest settings and the AI still builds cavalry far too often (I reckon about 90% cavalry to 10% infantry).

[pavelk]

This is one of my biggest gripes with the game. I have been playing on the hardest settings and the AI still builds cavalry far too often (I reckon about 90% cavalry to 10% infantry).

It is very likely less but when a unit is damaged, AI withdraws it from the battlefield, which is easier with cavalry. So AI eventually ends up with more cavalries than melee units.
It doesn't build different unit types equally though (AI decides what to build per situation) but I think the cavalry "need" should be tuned down.

[lordhoff]

3. I read somewhere that this game was based on a board game. I tried to research it but came up empty. Does anyone know the name of said board game and whether or not it had sequels?

It was based on a board game but it has not been publicly released.
Have fun!:)
[/quote]

Darn! It would have been interesting to see how it was handled although it would be pure curiosity. I started playing board war games in the early 1970s with no desire to return but so many early PC games were based on war games and were rendered too faithfully neglecting all the benefits of PC while AAR didn't fall into that trap.