Slitherine

I did this mainly for my own fun, but I'm putting here for anyone else who may be interested. NB I've not been able to extensively test the impact of this, either for bugs or balance etc, so caveat emptor. I think I've quashed the obvious bugs, but there are a variety of cases I haven't seen in my playing or probably even thought of. This is obviously done as a scenario, but it is just the base campaign. The actual mods are around leader and battles. I may still play around with some of the logic, this last few days were just me having a play around to get familiar with the game scripts.


Extending slightly on the notes in the scenario description:

"This mod has the following:

Changes to working out who attacks or defends in battles, better leaders and being in home region etc are more likely to get to choose something they are good at or the worst for the enemy. It can drop to the old logic if there is no clear winner in the initiative check or both are balanced leaders.

Changes to deployment, leaders with different ratings have slight tweaks to who they will line up front. E.g defensive leaders put a bit more weight on effectiveness and experience (i.e. minimum roll) whilst attacking leaders go more for raw attack power and balanced leaders a bit in between, I don't expect radically different deployments but just a slightly less predictable one as generals change etc. As above I haven't had chance to test on a wide range of battles in a short time, so it may do something bizarre at some point. Also The support line will be filled with ranged units as much as possible, there should be no frontline units sneaking in unless there is spare room. That last bit may be the key part for some people from what I've been reading on the forum.

Slight changes to Frontage, mainly to have larger frontage on wider terrains where very large armies are involved (I think plains should be able to handle the larger battles a bit more).

These can be disabled individually via the Scenario.bsf if you only fancy one or two of those options. Cross fingers they can each be enabled or disabled in isolation without bugs, but as above; caveat emptor (set options to 0 to disable and revert to normal functioning):
gLSFOptions.ldrInitiative = 1; <-- attack or defense choice
gLSFOptions.ldrDeployment = 1; <-- new deployment logic
gLSFOptions.varyFrontage = 1; <--- varying frontage for small or very large armies.

First bug fix.

Following what someone else said on a thread, I played around with some simple migration.

At the end of each turn every faction has a chance of some internal migration (if they have more than 1 region) and a chance of some immigration.

1. The capital has a chance of pulling a pop from another random region it owns. Chance is based on Its commerce +culture vs the other regions commerce+culture. If success a citizen (not slaves) move to the capital from that region (this is not free pops). NB the commerce does not include tax, it is pop +building + trade I believe (existing function I called).

2. A random region the faction owns compares with a random region within trade range, for now that may be another of yours or not. The base chance of pulling a pop is the same as above, but further modified by the other regions loyalty and whether either faction is Glorious. On success the pop comes to that factions region.

NB enemy ethnics are excluded, so you may lose the chance if an enemy choice is randomly made. No target region can lose pops of it would leave them less then what they need for their structures. There is a max chance to cap if it feels to much.

I had a few very quick plays to spot obvious bugs, and check what happens, like I say the maths is hardly awesome. I have put the values as properties to be tweaked (or switched off).

Some cities like Carthage, Macedon, Tanis etc can be real hoovers pulling in pops and quickly gaining in populations size if you want to allow such values. Large commerce and large Culture is hard to resist even with high loyalty. On the other hand it is hard to stop the flow once you get going, you can move pops to commerce or culture to boost your sucking power or resist enemy influence, but if you have a lot of yellow and purple buildings those pops may keep on arriving, with the loyalty issues that will eventually ensue. It may make some of those conversion buildings more useful, though I haven't really looked into what happens with mixed cities etc.

Per the last features the values to tweak are in Scenario.bsf

// simple migration logic, each year chance of internal and external migration for each
// faction. 1. check capital vs random owned region. 2. check random region vs any random region in trade range.
// note that 1 region factions (e.g. rhodes) in essence only pull external but they always go to that 1 region.
// migrate score = (region commerce + region culture) - (other commerce + other culture)
// if external modify by score - (other loyalty) - (other glorious) + (me glorious)
// apply the percentage adjust from below, and cap at max chance.
gLSFOptions.internalMigration = 100; // % of score for chance to internally migrate, 100=100% of score
gLSFOptions.externalMigration = 100;// % of score for chance to externally migrate, 100=100% of score
gLSFOptions.gloriousMigration = 25; // bonus/penalty for gloriuous nations to attract or resist external pull
gLSFOptions.maxMigrationChance = 75; // final chance to migrate cannot be more than this.

So for example.

Rome = 10 commerce and 22 culture = 33 points of pulling power. Random internal target = 3 tax and 1 culture = 4 points of pull (or in this case counter pull).
Base score: 33-4 = 29.
If the internalMigration is 100 then that is 29% chance of pulling a pop. If it was set at 50 it would be halved to 14%.
If maxMigrationChance is set at 20 then 20% chance would be the highest chance possible.

If the target region was another faction the its pull resist would be boosted by its loyalty, so any loyalty over 29 means no chance of pop pull.
However, the gloriousMigration is a further value added to a glorious puller, or against if the target is glorious (the can both cancel out if both are glorious). So if that was set at 25 and Rome was Glorious then Romes pull power is 29+25 = 54.
That is still likely beaten by most decent loyalties.

Now imagine Carthage, with vast commerce and good culture it can easily overcome 90 loyalties. You may want to consider war as soon as possible before your pops move that way

Setting both of the internalMigration and externalMigration to 0 disables the feature.

Fixed a bug in migration.
Changing to use properties I also switched a sign = fixed.
Also stopped migration from those you are at war with, where the ethnic is the same (it didn't allow enemy ethnics, but that excluded yourself)

Also tweaked the leader initiative for attack/defense to account for who owns a region and who really owns a region, now no matter whether you are in physical possession and the owner-occupier, or the legal owner you both count as owning the region for a bonus.

And a fix for supports not going in the support line at times.

I've been playing around with the empires to FOG conversion and think I've more or less settled on a conversion that meets my own preferences.

Part of this is based on some niggly bits that I wasn't keen on.

1) One of the things that was really starting to bug me over one game with Sparta was that my uber veteran units who had campaigned for years were no different to other newer units on conversion. The existing conversion does unit experience by stars, so two units that are both 4 stars gain the same exp modifier in FOG. That sort of works until I am running an Empire with a massive exp->level boost, at which point I can build units that start as 4 stars at 75exp in some cases. There is then no FOG difference between my 150 exp grizzled veterans and the trained newbies at 75. It may be minor, but it was annoying me that I was losing that differentiating factor in FOG2 (as well as empires). It's probably almost an RPG thing, but I want to play my FOG battles and be identifying and relying on my most reliable longest serving vets to take the most crucial point in the line, instead I get a line of cutter cookie units.

2) Whilst I understand why the the leader conversion is done as they did, when I'm playing the battles I am the leader not the leader in empires. I do want the leader difference in there somehow, it is a crucial aspect in Empires, but not in a way that impacts the troops so much. This also follows on from the above point, the leader conversion is by default quite major at a 2 point difference and again starts to make all troops look too similar.

3) Where are the raw/poor troops? Pushing aside leaders for the moment, the only negative to FOG unit quality is effectiveness loss in Empires which only really happens much by fighting battles themselves. That is perfectly fine, but whilst I am not expecting literally raw legions, I'd like a little more of a feel that the just raised zero star no exp legions are raw recruits and maybe a bit below normal quality. Those veteran hastati maybe 'veteran' hastati but they have still only just left the training ground and haven't seen an enemy yet. Part of the problem here of course is that FOG assumes a certain quality for a given type, and Empires will currently only largely boost that, so it doesn't really do 'raw' versions of certain units so well, they are assumed to be born superior almost by definition.


Clearly FOG and Empires are different games with different goals for the attributes etc, but on looking at FOG I discovered a few bits I hadn't realised.

1) There is an elan and experience stat, which in most cases directly equals experience. So elan 100 and experience 100 etc. But apart from some text change (in limited cases) there is no actual function to having the 2 stats - quality is the average of the 2 and that is it. Reading some notes/forum threads it appears Elan is partly for campaign purposes to represent unit morale/elan. Experience is for, well, experience. That felt like a way to start looking at conversion, after all Empires is really just a campaign to convert into FOG in one respect.

2) Despite there only being a limited 'visible' number of quality brackets (average, elite etc) the actual quality is tracked to the point, so there is a difference between quality 200 and 205 etc. It may not be much for 5 pts, but never the less it is there and as it gets larger it can be noticeable.

3) I can set the morale break points of the 2 forces, Which impacts how much each has to do to win.


With those in mind I've changed the conversion as follows:

A) Leaders now impact only the morale break point. Of the 3 factors that I can most readily play with, this was the only one which didn't impact units directly. I can convince myself the elite leader being able to keep the army in the field either a bit longer or a hopeless politician general of the day losing a lot faster. Leaders are still a morale change, but moved from a version that assumes unit morale boosts to one that impacts army morale. It's probably not perfect, or realistic etc, but tweaking an extra setting also gives more range to a battles parameters which is nice.

So a 1 point difference gives the better leader a 5 point bonus on his break points, 45% and 65%. If there is a 2 point edge then the worse army also gets a 5 point penalty, so 35% and 55%. I may not be a FOG2 guru, but I've played enough games where a few percent difference has been pretty major - in particular for some games playing the underdog it can be a close struggle to either break the enemy at 40 or be overwhelmed before you can do 60. So this feels to me a reasonable way of representing the Empires leader difference as a 'difficulty' factor.

B) Experience is only affected by actual experience points, rather than stars. By using the actual points of experience I get a real difference between those with just experience from training vs those who have more points of actual experience even where the stars are the same, and even more so those who have reached the major 150 mark. Under the hood every FOG unit may be a few points different which feels nice. I'm currently halving this, so a 150 exp unit gets 75% extra experience in FOG2. Note this will be halved in the actual quality impact as it averages with Elan.

I've also assumed a slight experience penalty by default, so by those with no exp to have a star (common early on maybe not so much later) will have a quality a little less then 100%. As this is halved with Elan it is minor and doesn't usually show on the textual description; but it is there. I am wondering whether to change some breakpoints for the text or maybe have a slightly larger penalty to push those who would normally be 'average 100' into the 'below average' text.

C) Elan, as now, accounts for effect loss in Empires and can be a major modifier if you have little effectiveness left. This is where I've also added in Empires exp->level modifier. It sort of differentiates actual experience a unit has from the faction level logic that says what level (stars) that experience gives you. I see this as more a faction level belief (self or in others) that impacts Elan/Morale etc, everyone 'knows' you are the invincible army (or maybe the never ending loser if it is negative) which has a direct impact on morale/psychology. In empires it also helps explain why I can suddenly gain or lose levels as that modifier changes irrespective of experience. By default of course the modifier is 0, so no Elan impact. But if you have a faction modifier of say -60% meaning that you need far less exp for each star then I apply this as a direct % bonus, so a units Elan is boosted by 60% in that case (assuming full effectiveness) Equally if you have a penalty so you need more exp per level then everyone gets an Elan penalty. Again, these are halved to get quality in FOG, so +60% elan is +30% quality.

The result of this is that I have units with very different Elan and experience, that feel they are closer to the Empires game, and the leader mod impacts at a higher level that still impacts the difficulty without losing the feel of the units so much. Ultimately of course a lot of this is still just a quality adjustment at the end of the day and maybe doesn't really make a big difference, but I feel I can much more easily picture what is going on now, and that it reflects more the actual units in the battle and the faction/leader ratings.

Note I have had to change both the conversion script in Empires and the script in FOG2 for this (So i haven't put it here, especially as the FOG one is awkward as a mod).

I thoroughly agree with the logic behind this mod, it will render obsolete my dislike of the conversion procedure for FoG2.

I am prepare to volunteer my services as a play tester at any time to suit yourself!

(does the attached mod involve the conversion changes?)

"Note I have had to change both the conversion script in Empires and the script in FOG2 for this (So i haven't put it here, especially as the FOG one is awkward as a mod)."

Where can I find said beasty please

I'll try and get the files needed sorted over the next couple of days. I was hoping to get it done last night, but there is some other very experimental stuff in their I was also playing with I need to clear out and work out what files are still needed (mainly on the FOG side where the mod issue with LiaisonTools has made it a little messier than I'd like).

Attached might work - downloading the Persian dlc added another issue, hopefully sorted. I think I've teased this apart into a standalone mods for the 2 games (so you don't get all the other crap I've been playing with). It seems to be working on my games, but I haven't tested it on clean deploys yet - so I may not have spotted some dependency that is still there. PM me if you have issues. PS the persian DLC meant I had to change the Empires part of this mod so it will only work if you have the Persian DLC now. PM if me if that is an issue, it is only a 1 line change that I can let you know about.

This is slightly complicated due to 2 games and FOG being a bit awkward for the conversion part.

There are 3 folders in the ZIP.

Empires contains 1 file, the conversion script that writes out the save file for FOG to load. As empires works with scenarios as mods you will have to decide what scenario to put it in yourself. E.g. I've copied the all scenarios into the correct folders for Modding/Creating scenarios and then copied this into them.

FOG-MOD contains the fog files that live in the correct mod area for that game. So put this under your Documents/.../FieldOfGlory2/MODS folder (you may have to create the MODS folder if you don't have it already). This is a global mod so will apply to any FOG 2 game you play with it active, however, it only affects games launched from Empires (unless something else sets a flag for what I think is specific to this empires-fog conversion) and other games should still be routed to the original code (I haven't fully tested that, I've only been playing Empires recently, but if it doesn't just disable the mod when you want to play something else). The global mod will be the folder name, so you may wish to change it to something more meaningful than fog-mod!

The FOG-REAL folder is a bit icky. These files won't work in the correct mod area, so you have to overwrite your main install, there is one brand new file (so I didn't have to overwrite an extra main file) and LiaisonTools.bsf. Take a backup of that! Also keep a copy of this new version for when any updates etc clobber the main install and you need to replace again.

I'm going to look at putting in some config so you can tweak the maths a bit should you want, but that will come later.

thanks, it'll be a day or so before i can check it out but i'm grateful for your efforts