@stsrwarsfan54 Nobody has ever done it. It's so frustrating.

I'm looking for a mod that increases cp for conquest mode, anyone have suggestions?

Quick question but when/what waves do the enemies start using helicopters?

"Vanilla Heroic"? You know, that IS pretty hard by itself. Correct?

@TENTACLES I don't mind. I would rather see people using what I built to improve things than let it go stale.

@MrThirtyOddSix
Thank you a lot for publishing this.
While it is not exactly what I am searching for, since my group rather enjoys infantry tactics, your angle of approach (and code) gives me a lot of ideas how to tackle our own problems with conquest, even with my limited knowledge of coding.
I hope you don't mind.

Still getting 90 infantry wave attacks...

can you fix the hotkeys on this mod its not working when i use this mod......

you are amazing. Going to try this out right now

@White Please take a look at this mod: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2202438533

In a nutshell it is Conquest with only infantry forces for AI. Player can still choose to use vehicles. I have not spent too much time balancing difficulty yet as with this mod, but I can tell you that even on heroic it should not be hard. Good squad placement should be a good start. However, once you have more flag poles to take, that will become somewhat complicated with infantry squads.

Im thinking you could allow emplacements or anything infantry have to carry around. Up to you of course. I just enjoy fighting with infantry alot and sometimes the maps in conquest can be a bit small for tanks and helis.

@White That's actually a good idea. Completely remove vehicles and only allow infantry. Though would artillery units count as vehicles (those two man launchers) ?

dont you wanna make a mod that reduces or remove vehicles in conquest, i love infantry combat :)

Sounds good I noticed that the new version crashes like a japanease plane in ww2

@Hurt Cobain Developers will be updating game frequently since they rolled out somewhat buggy game version. Right now all my mods are updated.

for some reason it says it out of date

This works quite well as of the last patch. A huge improvement. Flag count was absolutely the right metric for campaign scaling.

thanks

That's smart, since map flags are a good indicator of campaign progress. They are dictated by curves defined in dynamic_campaign.set and affected by conquest duration.

Re: using Lua to edit regex in-game, that's way beyond what I'm capable of doing. I had to Google 'regex' to remind myself what that means. My skills are basically limited to editing arguments and variables in text-based files (or simple hex edits when someone has already figured out what each hex is), and occasionally adding or removing instructions in scripts if I have decent examples to work from in other files.

@BHunterSEAL I've implemented Lua logic to control spawn time based on available map flags. Take a look at changes if you are still interested in making conquest easier at beginning.

@BHunterSEAL One solution, and a crazy one at best would be to read save file corresponding to current conquest game.

We know that upon starting game in conquest, game will write fail state to conquest save gamegame, meaning this is a way for game to mark your game failed in case you exit so that later, when you actually finish mission, it can write new values and mark last mission as success.

Now, why that matters. And here is crazy part. We have Lua execution environment, which would have to locate saved file, un-zip it, parse 'status' file to locate current number of missions played. To locate saved file you would need to assume that game touched savegame just now, so it will be latest modified file. Once un-zipped, you're interested in 'status'. It can be parsed via regex to get 'nextRound' . Upon knowing this number you can adjust to use longer spawn times, along with a different 'purchase' table for AI.

Crazy, but in light of current events, it is not so far fetched....

Yeah, that was my point exactly in the forum thread--the way vanilla difficulty works makes for a hard few missions, then the AI doesn't have enough MP to compete. Part of the mistake in vanilla is the difficulty has a double-impact--it lowers the player's startMP and increases the AI's.

Cool idea on loading your modset later on in the campaign--actually did not know that there was a way to load saves of a different version.

I'm working on my own solution to conquest budgeting--essentially redoing the campaign momentum curve so that the AI gets bonus MP no matter the battle outcome, and with higher bonuses than vanilla. To compensate, the player 's resource income is the same in a win or loss and refunds are increased. StatMPs are also brought closer together.

Plenty of testing is still needed, since the area of the game I'm trying to improve is a few turns' in.

To add to my latest comment. In essence, perfect conquest would be you starting with about 3000 mp and access to all units and at least couple of reinforcement tabs.

To mention one more thing. @BHunterSEAL the solution you seek reminds me of problem starting hard and heroic conquest. AI completely goes bonkers there when you start with very weak units. If we would be able to access to difficulty setting in Lua we can somewhat control pace at which MP would be dispensed by AI, which will help correct starting curve based on progression.

This mod is good if you already have progressed beyond first two rounds of conquest, so that you can get access to better units. And difficulty will slowly be more consistent. However, first three rounds are brutal since AI can use so much MP.

So my current advice for playing conquest with this mod is play vanilla normal till third round. Then edit your savegame for conquest to change difficulty you want and enable this mod. Let's see if developers can expose more information for us to play with, but for now this is the only way to play comfortably.

I see. You want to approach AI size of units vs Player size of units problem. That would be doable if we can get information about Player's forces in Lua so that we compensate. However, I my opinion we're dealing with 'Horde' mode of a game here. AI throws resources at Player and forces ultimatum of sorts. Doing anything intelligent on behalf of AI would require assessment of current game plan. I would love to have this available in Lua so building intelligent AI is possible.

Yeah I get why the MP pool grows and how growtime / growtable govern the curve. The mechanic works for skirmish missions but in Conquest, the player has essentially received his entire MP pool up-front. Using preset base values for start/finish means the curve won't move as the player army gets bigger.

Have you been through dynamic_campaign.set? The devs document how the math works as far as shifting the MP curve based on the state of the campaign. The modifiers are based on momentum and resource setting, not the size of the player's force.

I did try out your mod--by 4:50 into Mission 1 (Normal / Normal) the AI had 4-5 infantry squads and 5-6 light / medium vehicles (many in the 500pt range) coming after my 1,500MP force. So basically the inverse of the problem with vanilla CtA... your lua scripts do help limit the devastation.

@BHunterSEAL Look into 'growTime' and associated 'growTable' in 'campaign_capture_the_flag.set' These define how fast AI will deplete MP resources. CP plays very little role from what I discovered. MP usage per period of time is what determines budget for AI units. You can also inspect my mod for different changes, particularly how units are picked by AI via Lua logic. Ultimately, there should be a way to completely change parameters through Lua only, that would actually solve your problem.

Now here is a question that I still need an answer, since we're talking about guts of AI here. Is there any way to read current game difficulty through Lua?

I've spent some time rewiring Conquest settings and AI behavior--mostly to make the AI more of a challenge over long campaigns (by playing with win/loss streak modifiers, tech levels and CP limits).

Do you have any indication that AI MP trends upward over the course of a campaign, besides the streak modifiers?

nice

Not bad