How large is his domain/faction? Has he expanded to a significant number of territories? If he is a high level, then it implies that he has been personally involved with a large number of battles. At level 22 he then probably also has a lot of abilities that buff his replenishment rate. That is the only thing I can think of that would make sense, other than that, there isn't something going on that is just giving Diomedes XP or special abilities that any other AI wouldn't receive (other than Diomedes' own special unit abilities he might gain from leveling up).

It sounds to me like a very interesting challenge has evolved in your game, though, the making of an epic showdown.

I'm playing as Dardania currently... just came up against Diomedes and a couple of notes... on turn 110 he's at rank 22 when other heros are at about 10-12. Secondly he's replenishment is on steroids. I'm getting 3 troops per turn replenished and he's getting 34. Any idea what's happening? He's almosy impossible to beat at level 22 with constant regen skill, and whatever troops you kill he gets back in one turn. Any ideas?

Not yet, I want to - but then Pharaoh came out and I was busy trying to... revise that. I plan on coming back again, though and playing more "soon".

Great mod, you’ve done a great job. Did you manage to test the remaining factions?

fair enough.

That isn't the case after gaining abilities, and after building the appropriate buildings, that is only true when starting out. The point being that it greater emphasizes all the replenishment buffs, making them more important, otherwise they are ignored. But yes, it is difficult in the beginning. In the early game you should be combining units together, and the AI shares the same replenishment, so the idea is that units just fight depleted, in many cases.

The side that can build up their replenishment capabilities will also have an advantage. I think this best represents the early bronze age. So no, not ridiculous, but not everyone will agree, sure.

I personally don't entirely dig the low casualty replenishment meaning it takes 20 turns for units to recover, making it easier to recruit them again wholesale than to recover by such a wide margin that it's kind of ridiculous.

I'll definitely check out the Dynasties mod when CA fix the laggy turn times. As for the happiness changes, they work much better and Aphrodite is no longer as necessary, you only need to max her favor and pray to her when you confederate someone to mitigate the debuff, which is great.

Just FYI for anyone interested...
Dynasties Revised Mod is now available.

...

I did spread around the happiness buffs between different gods, and cut Aphrodite in half in this regard, but still keeping her important for happiness buffs (because it is non conditional blanket across all provinces). Other gods have conditional based buffs, which I think will make things interesting.

Also reduced the difficulty happiness negative value some, but not completely because I think it is needed to be challenging, and to make the happiness buff buildings and hero traits more useful. I have to be careful about major adjustments (because I have over 500+ hours playtesting it), but I think these changes are for the better and are conservative/safe. Beyond that, I don't want to make too many drastic changes, although I could certainly tweak the happiness buff and difficulty values a little more over time. But this should do for a while.

Have fun!

OK I just updated the mod to v3.1, with some improvements based on that feedback (see notes). The dirty little secret to modding the database is that if there is a certain effect in the base game, then that affect cannot be removed. In other words, you cannot remove organized games buff from Aphrodite, because the game's database has it present there, and therefore it will be loaded. The best you can do is override it with "0" but then it will be listed at 0% buff in the game, which doesn't make sense. So you have to work around that limitation.

...

Actually, I have spent about 80 hours creating and playtesting a Dynasties Revised Mod, yes. Hopefully it will be finished "soon". I don't think it would be too risky to do since I try to make "safe" changes, but they could prove me wrong of course.

I would very much love a Dynasties revised mod, even though I think Dynasties is not as strong mechanically as Troy and the factions aren't as distinct. Isn't it a bit early for such a mod, though, especially since CA Sofia are still developing patches? It's still good to see a Bronze Age game regardless, we don't get those very often.

Thanks, glad it was challenging to the end - which is the goal here, because as you know, typically the last half of the standard TW campaign is quite a boring conclusion.
I will take a look at making a slight adjustment to the autoresolve, the problem is that even a slight adjustment could result in it going too much in the other direction as I am working with fractions of a percent.

The AI resource usage is not something I can control - this is simply the coded way the AI behaves unfortunately.

As mentioned before, I will consider adjusting Aphrodite's effects a bit. Perhaps a minor happiness buff, or at least limiting its scope. Of course I am not sure when I can do that, since I am currently working on Pharaoh Dynasties Revised Mod, but I plan to return to Troy at some point when I am burnt out there.

2. The auto resolve is too punishing and forces you to play 20v7 battles which the AI will never win and are played manually on max speed. The campaign is already long enough without this.

3. The biggest issue is still the AI and more specifically its resource accumulation and usage. It straight up gets free resources but then it just hoards them and doesn't use them appropriately. This makes it so the AI fields very weak armies late into the campaign. Would an AI overhaul mod such as Hecleas's ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3044708810) help with this?

Otherwise, it's pretty great but I'll need to play another campaign to be more thorough in my opinions.

I just finished a Homeric victory with Sarpedon on turn 180ish. I won at around 170 but had to chase down Menelaus's straggler armies and remote settlements. I must admit the campaign kept my attention until the end, which is almost never the case in Total War games. There are very few balance issues that I came across but are worth noting nonetheless.

1. Like previously mentioned, Aphrodite is way too useful all the time. You *have* to keep her happy from the start of the campaign until the end. The best you can hope for is having enough priestesses to keep the devotion high so you can build temples to other gods in newly-conquered territory. This does work, but it takes a while before you can even think of attempting it, so gods which are mainly useful in the beginning are never used. I suggest removing the happiness debuff from difficulty and giving her other (economic) bonuses instead.

OK, now in version 3.0, all cavalry units now have zero capture power, which I think makes sense. I had just never tried what was described here and I can see how that is silly. Now the infantry must be relied on to take the settlement, or the battle must be fought to route the enemy.

I will consider the other changes in time, they are more tricky to do.

Ah yes, that's what I am talking about below when I said "buff" -- as in more units. Just giving more units doesn't mean the AI will deploy them to the rear control points, and it is not possible to script where the AI places them as far as I know. What it does is based off of coded routines. There are some "priorities" that can be adjusted, but in the end, the AI basically does what it wants when it comes to deploying units. So that really isn't a reliable option other than making siege battles even more of a grind.

I think that the solution is to prevent "cavalry" units from capturing the control points by themselves, which I think is how it is most of the time in the other TW games. I don't think chariots can take objectives already, though, so that part isn't an issue IIRC (unless I am thinking only of Pharaoh).

But anyway, you have given me some ideas to tinker around with to improve things a bit, at least.

I was thinking more in the lines of giving more units to garrisons, not necessarily the units being more powerful, and scripting some of them to always stay in the victory point so as to prevent backhanded tactics or at least slow them down significantly. Sure, you can just have a bunch of centaur units to demolish any opposition on the victory point itself, but I feel like that's fine because you are investing a lot in centaurs if that's the case. Outright preventing centaurs from capturing victory points won't do much because this can be done with basically any unit, the centaurs are just the most convenient due to speed and maneuverability, but chariots and even fast infantry can also do the job (doesn't Odysseus also have units that are invisible in general?).

OK, when it comes to battles it is difficult to make any "buff" type adjustments that can address cheesy vs. AI behavior. The same type of stuff is still possible in Warhammer 3 versus the AI, for example, and they correct it there by making most fast units unable to capture victory points. Also, the AI would be impossible to script behavior for anyway, so even if they had more troops they wouldn't necessarily defend the objectives. But maybe, as I mentioned above, a better fix would be to not allow centaurs to take objectives, though. I will definitely look into that at least.

Regarding Aphrodite, yes, maybe spreading the happiness buff (of the Org. Games) to another God would prevent her from being all about one thing. I did that with a few of them already, and will think about that here.

I haven't completed a legendary campaign with your mod yet, this is just insights gleaned from the first 50ish turns of a Sarpedon campaign (who is one of the easier leaders after Memnon was added in).

Hey, thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.

RE: Aphrodite - her being mandatory from the beginning and then suddenly dropping in usefulness was the problem in the base game. Troy just doesn't give you enough tools to manage happiness outside of her, especially with the happiness debuff from the difficulty. She not only gives blanket happiness, but also increases the effects of organizing games by 200% (!). I would at least swap this with some other god's tier 1 effect. Maybe Zeus since he was the patron god of the Olympics in ancient times?

RE: Buffing garrisons - since I got the divine smith very early there is no garrison that can withstand my main army and the big sieges are circumvented by bashing down a gate on the opposite side of your main army and rushing centaurs in to capture the victory point. By buffing the garrison, you could script the AI to always have at least 2 units defending the victory point at all times to prevent such cheese.

(part 3 of 3)
-You are correct about the AI factions getting a lot of food, this seems to be something from the code (like they are just given X amount of food each turn). This could *possibly* be improved in Lua code/script as well, I will have to dig down and see (about at least cutting it half).

I very much appreciate the thoughts. I will take it under consideration in a future update.

By the way did you complete a campaign on Legendary with the mod and, if so, which faction?

(part 2 of 3)
As for Aphrodite being the best god, I disagree there. I found that I was using her "services" often, mostly in times of peace (which was rare) but I definitely bounce around between the others based on the other benefits. The way I see it, if you are choosing Aphrodite all the time, then you are sacrificing on some pretty awesome effects from other gods. While you might be getting the vital happiness buffs, once a majority of your provinces are under happiness control (or at least 'out of the woods'), then you should be inclined to swap to some other deity for a while. And that is kind of the point - if you weaken that incentive to take Aphrodite, then I don't see her being very attractive since most of her benefit comes from passive, boring things (like happiness buffs).

But that said, I will certainly consider narrowing the difficulty based happiness buff so it isn't as extreme.

Thanks for the feedback.
(part 1 of 3)
-Controlling what your first epic agent is might be possible, but I will have to dig down into the bowels the Lua code script to see.
-I could probably slightly adjust the auto-resolve. It is tricky, because it is a fine balance between "just right" and "too much" one way or the other, as we are talking about fractions of a percent. I do want the autoresolve to force you to fight most battles, or else settle with some units being destroyed, but of course not the most extreme.
-Just buffing the garrison won't prevent the AI from sieging, at I don't think buffing the garrison would be a great idea anyway as it would make it harder for the player to take settlements, which is already pretty difficult. Overall the AI does do these types of sieges, but I didn't find them that frequent myself.
...

I very much appreciate the thoughts. I will take it under consideration in a future update.

By the way did you complete a campaign on Legendary with the mod and, if so, which faction?

Macelars probably means other factions get a ton of food (not your faction), which is true. Overall, I like the mod but I'd change a few things. Getting a divine smith as the first epic agent from your questline makes your army ridiculously strong from the beginning,so you might want to prohibit getting him specifically if that's possible. Second of all, the autoresolve is way too punishing, I'm forced to play 20v7 battles which the autoresolve thinks is a 50/50 power split. I'd also buff garrisons in some way, playing ping pong with the AI which sends the aforementioned 7-unit armies to siege your small cities isn't peak gameplay.

Aphrodite is still the best god by far and there's 0 reason not to pick her every time in the beginning. I'd remove the difficulty-based happiness modifier (which is what is causing her to be the best choice) and rework her happiness bonus to something else.

@Macelars
Seems that Steam didn't notify me of the comment when you made it, and I have too many mods to remember to check them all, ugh.
Yeah, it is still possible to gain an abundance of resources, but really that directly depends on your play style. If you have amassed 80k food in 50 turns, then that is an achievement I think - certainly it isn't easy to do with other factions. Of course individual tweaks can be made to specific factions (I have tried) to help adjust things there, but I hadn't gotten around to playing Ithaca in "revised" yet, unfortunately (and currently I was revising Pharaoh.

But I will keep it in mind once I revisit Troy again.

If you're goung take up working on the mod again, it would be cool if you would reviset economy. It seems to easy and all factions get excessive amounts of resources. Especially food and wood. I'm 50 turns in and and Ithaca has 85k food. I've played som Agony as well which is cool. For the scope of this mod the economy in Agony is way to harsh, but there may be elements which would be cool to implement here.

Sounds epic, yep this mod does a lot with battle behavior too and that sounds about right. Sounds like you can just disable a certain other mod to get the expedition started, then turn it back on and perhaps should be fine after that.
Have fun.

Yes, indeed.I'll manually run them one by one. I believe your mod it's awesome ..want to keep it .Not sure whether this was affected by your mod or another but i got atacked 4 times from Tracians in the same turn with army full of shades and somehow manage to defeat them but it took me 2 hours lol!Basically, after the first battle second army atacked me on the same settlment i had left like 10 units with 20-30 men and 3 heroes which held the line for hours :D and won.

Well, that is probably why then (the other mod). It certainly works fine with just this mod.
It could be that even if you turn this mod off, it might still not work, and then you could identify if it is a fundamental problem with that mod. I mean, if it was really this mod causing the problem with that one, then you could temporary turn this mod off to start the expedition, then turn it back on once it is going - but I suspect it may not work at all.

None of the party leaders work i am playing with minor nation Heroes of Troy mod

If I recall, you have to select a leader.

hello friends,i can't launch the expedition ..after selecting a hero and 3 units or more just wont let me do it ..any idea ?

Yes, it *should be* up to date, since I created the mod after DLC development ended.
Keep in mind that the damage dealt depends on their weapon type. Some are much higher (like Achilles) and some lower, but in that case they may have some other advantage (like less to do with combat). Anyway, I will double check this soon to be sure.

Is this mod up to date for all dlcs? BecuaseRhesus only have like 1k damage while other heroes have 3-4k damage

FYI to anyone wondering:
I haven't forgotten about this mod, it is just that I spent a long time on a WH3 mod (Better Battle Sound Mod) and then am now working on my Pharaoh Revised Mod (from experience with Troy Revised Mod). Got to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.
Then I will return to Troy Revised Mod, and continue playing out different campaigns. This mod is in very good shape, but I want to play out more factions to fine tune those as well.

@Spectre3
I'd say that is an exaggeration -- I don't see them going red fatigue after 1 minute of fighting. After running, fighting and especially charging, yes, but it rewards the side that has a reserve or that can rest forces rather than throwing everything into a fight (this was carried over from my Rome 2 mode for historical flavor). The intent being - fatigue management becomes important, as do the hero perks that reduce it.

But regardless, when both sides suffer the same condition, it equals out anyway - so again, the side that can maintain fresh forces is the one that gets a bonus here, otherwise when both sides are exhausted, the effect is minimal.

...
It also depends on the mode you are playing, because some of them provide additional replenishment to their army based on their level-up skills chosen. So the point being, all of the little places where you have a choice to improve replenishment or gain some other perk, is taken into account to make those replenishment choices tougher to pass up (making them more valuable).

I would say there are probably tens of little options and choices to in crease replenishment throughout a campaign, some not so obvious. But what I found before was that none of those replenishment choices carried any weight, and now they do, but the negative is that early campaign replenishment is very low (but I do like that feeling for the historical period, though).

Thanks for the compliment, and have fun!

@Macelars
Maybe it depends on the faction to a large degree, but from each the factions I have played there are lots of ways to improve replenishment. Yes, you are correct, Hera provides replenishment bonuses, but there is the technology (decree) that increases replenishment by a large amount, to bring it in line with the standard game's absurd replenishment rate. So, the idea is that decree is your main method of increasing replenishment, then all the little secrets stack with this, or stack without this (if that decree hasn't been gained yet).

Then also post-battle choices are the other way to increase replenishment too.

...continued...

can you remove this getting fatigue after 1 min of fighting ?It is not fun at all watching your high tier units all go red

Regarding replenishment. I see your point and its a good idea. But there really isnt a lot of opportunities to boost replenishment. As Diomedes and Achilles i have only found a replenishment boost for while raiding. And the only god power that provides replenishment is tier 3 cult of Hera. Have i missed anything? If not, maybe it would be a good idea to play around with different ways to boost replenishment, instead of the high constant in vanilla, cause right now, there is not a whole lot to do about it.

Otherwise, great mod man!

Thanks for the compliment. Yes, regarding the replenishment I will try to explain the rationale behind it better:

The unit replenishment rate is intentional because there are quite a few hero skill related perks that increase it, as well as the god powers as well. So the idea being, when you stack these then you can get several turns to recover, rather than the long time period, thereby making those perks more attractive. The reason for this is that in the standard game, all these replenishment perks are *totally pointless* since you can recover so quickly, and the intent here is to make the very important. When the perks are gained it then at that point feels like the base replenishment rate in the standard game - about where it should be when maxed out.

(Also, it causes some battles to be fought with units that aren't fully replenished too, which intentionally makes things tough on when to keep pushing on.)

Hopefully that makes more sense.

The mod is great, I just think unit replenishment is far too slow and makes me do a lot more waiting around than anything, since the point of the game is to use these units to fight battles. Waiting 7-15 turns to replenish half of my units hp got quite annoying after a while

I have a proposal, I send you a private message

Good job man

Recommended battle difficulty for me is always normal/normal. lol

@Infernis
Good question -- I recommend Legendary overall campaign difficulty, which locks the battle difficulty to Veteran.

But after you try things out, if you think it might be too much, then you can lower campaign to Veteran in order to lower battle difficulty to Hard or Normal. I just recommend trying it out at Legendary first.

What is the recommended battle difficulty?