quick question, is the buff Nomadic_Government_Horse_Rider_Buff only activate when players play Nomad? I can see AI's Man-at-arms only got the debuff but the character do have the buff in his buff list.

Does the men at arms stat nerfing have a formula so I can make an edit for Cultures Expanded?

Alright. So after testing the mod, can say it doesn't make Men at Arms for adventurers useless. Which is good. It makes combat slower, so if you have a lot of buffs and damage stacks etc on your people. You'll still win a lot of the time. Higher army stacks then yours should give you a bigger disadvantage, also lowering the advantage damage to 2% also helps a bit. Maybe try 1% as well. Can say though, just from looks combat seems more balanced. Overall pretty good mod.

This seems neat. Question though. How badly are the nerfs to Knights and MaA exactly? Been messing around with mods and landless adventurers. The Aggressive AI was a step in the right direction. And as such, I had a 2k stack take out about a 10/11k stack of viking armies. What would be the difference with the mod? Does it not give a fighting chance?

I feel like 40 40 is kinda a lot

I must admit, I'd very much like a fix to the warfare system. Though, I think it can only come with a major rework. I think MAAs as they are right now have got to go. Paradox have honestly somehow managed to create one of the most atrociously balanced systems ever with this haha

That they should fix combat and take inspiration from you. I like actually having a challenge and having to think about what I'm doing in combat instead of just knights getting a 2000 to 1 KDR

Oh nice what did you say to them?

Your mod is so good in this survey Paradox has I'm directly citing your mod.

I already set advantage effect to 2% per point in my game rules for an ongoing save game. Will this mod compound that nerf if I install it, or does it get overridden?

Also havent been able to find this information anywhere, but when countering a Man-At-Arms type does that also lower that units Pursuit and Screen stat? Example would be the use of Pikemen to counter Calvary.

and to add on context of my below comment, I am playing during the 867 start, so likely I will feel the impact of Men-At-Arms much more as I get into later eras.

been giving this a try and definitely find it interesting so far. One thing I do have a question about, doesnt this just make Men At Arms like the Pikemen quite bad? I feel with these changes to levies (base 40/40 stats) the main use i'm having for Man-At-Arms is their Pursuit and Screen stats, any unit that does not have these stats I don't see much use for.

Overall quite enjoying it so far. thanks for sharing.

@Nye All your mods are awesome Bro. Thanks again !! =)
I was thinking of something To increase the difficulty, what would be interesting is to increase the prestige required to request help from an ally.
Because I realize it's too easy to call on powerful allies who win wars for you.
Would it be possible to release a mod about this, please ?

It will work with anything, I've never heard of that mod so I can't comment on what the interaction looks like.

Hey Nye, do you think this mod would work with Weight of the Crown mod?

I must say this is the best balanced mod I've ever played. It not only brings some dead game mechanics alive, but also comes up with excellent compatibility. Thanks for the genius work!

Thank you so much for your work !!
Your changes make the game ten times more enjoyable. Finally, a good challenge !!
So, YES, you've succeeded in the goal.
Thanks again BRO <3

tldr; this is the actual devs problem now who get paid to worry and have headaches over such things

To be fair, this is an imperfect solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. There is no perfect solution, other than Paradox redesigning the entire warfare, levy, maa system from the ground up. But until such a time, a system like this is probably the best we're going to get while maintaining compatibility with every other mod, which was important to me.

The problem with the game rule is that it would turn it into conditional hell which I don't want to deal with, and also, tuning the main MAA debuff would shift the balance of everything and make all other nerfs / buffs need to be questioned again.

I'm mostly done thinking too much about this mod. It’s been very time consuming and headache inducing thinking about potential solutions. The design intentions I've put forwards are clear, logical, and for the most part, I feel have succeeded in the goal. This mod coupled with my aggressive AI mod actually makes the game feel much better imo, and more interesting.

While it is a bit much, I do appreciate how this mod makes me think about what I'm doing instead of just knights and to a lesser extent MAA go BRRRR. I wish Paradox at least did something similar with the levies just base game and made buildings not just add levy amounts but also small bonuses to levy strength...

The knight debuff is absolutely great. Having 30 knights kill 6k troops is.... not something that should be.

Recently had a mercenary contract with the Abbasids against an independence war with like 6K MAA (2 stacks Varangians, 2 Bondi, 2 Vigmen) and instead of steam rolling everything like normal I actually had to plan my strategy and run from the enemy's 16k troops. Only ended up winning because I'm faster and was able to pick them off when they split.

I'm still leery about the terrain debuffs sometimes making troops completely useless.

One ask as a nice to have would be game rule where you can customize the percentage of the debuff.

not everyone is the target audience, it doesn't matter if you don't like it

Man levies at 40 dmg / 40 defense?! Are you insane or do you actually believe that a peasant with a basic weapon is as impactful as elite infantry?!

It's just handled the same way as the base game would handle it.

Sorry if this has already been addressed, but how does the terrain modifiers affect this? If a cataphract has 37 damage and then the wetland terrain effect applies -80 to damage are they now doing negative damage, no damage...

As someone who's played a number of Nomad runs:

I don't personally think Nomads NEED too many nerfs, as they're meant to be threats anyway

Only thing I can see is if you remove every Regiment Size/Number bonus EXCEPT from the Square of The Tumen main building

Workin awesome now. Really appreciate the help on this one, and the extra info. Excited to get back to playing!

If you want some extra info, your deduction was right, it was the AI kind of, it was the way that a debuff was being applied to peasant leaders.

Updated & fixed.

@Hrothgar, thanks for taking the time to figure it out it was this mod + letting me know about this. It will work just fine now.

Love the mod, I think the rebalance does exactly as advertised and I really enjoy that. The game was way too easy before. Having said that, I'm getting crashes on set dates. It's something the AI is doing, as I'm not doing anything for a couple months prior. I've narrowed the culprit down to this mod though I can't tell you exactly why it's the culprit.

Sure, all changes would occur within 4 months, I'd take a backup save though.

Does this mod work if you add it partway through a campaign?

It's like you've just discovered the entire problem with this game. Anyway moving on, no more pointless discussions or suggestions, please. This is a niche mod and not everyone is the target audience.

It is fine that they are stronger but I was thinking 40/40 or somewhere around there is kinda much considering you also nerfed men at arms by a lot there is pretty much no strategy now either. They are basically a brute force and a better commander just wins, the AI is cheesable anyway you can bait them to attack you into defensive buildings and stuff like that. It is a nice change although just a bit much for me good luck

^
Same, 12/12 is barely a buff, and levies are slaughtered by the thousands. This way also Knights aren't as OP, as coalitions of various vassals could be deadly due to their knights limits combining themselves. Levies are hedge knights, cavalrymen, various armed freeholders too and they are treated as peasants with a fork. They needed the buff for not only the balance, but for historical reasons too and I'm glad someone spoke it out loud and made happen.

Start off at 12/12 +2 every 100 years while fighting MAA which have 100+ stats.... No, I'm happy with the current balancing, the only on-going discussion at the moment is the degree to which Nomads may need to be buffed. I'm not entertaining any other changes.

I think men at arms are fine as they are with a few exceptions, levies could start off with 12/12 and progress +2 each era they will be more in pair with the buffs that occur

@hamlets, all fixed, the issue was with Nye's Aggressive AI

This will be fixed today, thank you for letting me know

@Nye, I'm getting consistent errors right before CTD related to zzzz_nyes_appliers.txt. Error code: Error: has_character_modifier trigger [ Modifier 'top_liege_maa_maint' doesn't match expected type 'character' due to 'scheme_resistance' ]
Script location: file: common/on_action/zzzz_nyes_appliers.txt line: 113 (remove_recruit_maas:trigger). Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated.

It doesn't matter what should and shouldn't be, logically . The only thing that matters, and the whole point of this mod is to make the ai relevant at all. In the base game, other rulers serve no purpose other than being a target dummy for the player to curb stomp.

The only way to remedy this that I can see is make levies, literally better than men at arms, which is explained in the description, and which is also why this dlc causes a problem for the initial solution that this mod proposes.A mod like this most certainly isn't going to be for everyone and if that premise is a problem then I would just pass on this.

As I have said, I have no idea how to balance this for nomads and I'm never really going to play them to find out how it might work. The solution you're proposing brings us back to square one where the AI is a punching bag again and serves no other purpose.

The problem is how powerful base game levies are. 40 damage and 40 toughness is a lot. They are on par with the Armored Horsemen unit that costs 200 gold to get 50 of them. You gave every non nomadic ruler a free full stack armored horsemen unit. Which does not solve the man at arms problems at all imo.

I think Base game Pikemen unit is a good base for a levy. With this mod levies have double the stats of a paid professional pikemen unit.

Nomads are even worse. Horde Riders have 1/4 of the stats of the regular levies. Considering that they are horsemen and you get less of them balancing feels awful.

I did buff them last night after hearing what you had to say, but it's important to understand what the problem now actually is here.

So, Horde Riders are not like levies in anyway as far as the game is concerned, they are not their own separate thing, they are literally Men-at-Arms and therefore are in the same system of modifier ridden hell. I'm sure you can immediately see the issue here is that now this has become incredibly difficult to tune as a result.

It also doesn't help that I have no desire to play as nomads at all. Anyway, do let me know if they need to be buffed further.

Tbh, this dlc just made balancing even more impossible than it already was

Nomads needs some buffs. Full MAA army with superior general and significant advantage should not get destroyed by a full levy army of Siberian tribes. Numbers were similar tho my army was larger.

Updated. Debuffs are now applied more dynamically instead of just quarterly.

The rebels, the debuff is applied once per year (game limitations)

@GameFreak, glad you like it! Just on your last point there about the debuff not being applied, I will look further into other ways of applying the debuffs, but currently they are applied once per quarter, so essentially everybody gets checked 4 times a year. You might want to check the debuffs first before you declare wars! And if not then just wait for them to get applied. I have a feeling that there may be a better way to do it, so I'll do some research.

It is the way it is currently for the sake of compatibility, with this method, you can use it with every single mod, including overhauls

Best mod ever for me i really enjoy this mod so much, started as an adventurer and trying to put my dynasty in as many throne as i can by using your another mod where you can select a beneficiary and i keep baby setting them till they become strong by themselves, my camp is fully upgraded with maximum bones for my MAA but i reached the limits of adventurers and started to get kicked here and there before this mod i used to beat armies 4 times my size but now i have been really humbled (first time since i played CK3 i lose a war i started) so decided to become a conqueror and see how it will go with this mod, really thx for the awesome mod also just onething i noticed some time when i fought some armies some of there MAA dosent have the debuff applied to them i saw it when fighting the beyzntine empire also one time so it when fightitng some repels which by the way kicked my A**

My apologies since I'm not the target user of this mod. I think the root of the problem is AI can't stack MAA buildings in their holdings as effective as the players, and the modifiers from buildings are scaling instead of additives. Hopefully one day there'll be a mod that flattens the modifier stacking, and makes the AI build military buildings and stationing their MAA intelligently, ie, making them behaving more like players.

That's awesome, that was the hope! and you're welcome