Another thought. I don't know what capability you have, if any, to realistically change AI behavior. If none (IE the AI is just going to keep ignoring the penalties and push anyway), then with my suggestion above they will continue to mindlessly push outward, only to constantly lose their outlying provinces, in a cycle which essentially prevents them from growing past a certain size.

A slight modification to the additional stacking penalty might be in order to avoid preventing AI from expanding beyond a certain size forever, which would be to leverage province level even more.

Put very simply, you could add a stacking, factionwide control penalty for any province with a capital below level 3 and a stacking, factionwide control buff for any province with a capital at 4 or higher (maybe 3 or higher? Balance...balance).

What this would do, essentially, is prevent AI (or the player) from expanding TOO far/fast if their capitals are low level, but allow more expansion as they continue to level up their provinces. IE, a more developed empire can support more expansion.

I seem to have very different experiences to you, for example ive never seen an ai lose a settlement to a rebellion, nor have i seen a faction spread wider than normal, less tall so quickly yes, but thats intended to a degree. That being said I rarely play with just this mod in a vacuum, and generally my AI factions have some level of public order bonuses from other mods, which could be the difference?

I don't see how it penalises small factions when it doesnt activate until a faction has either a full province or 4 settlements.

I definitely want to keep the penalisation for trading settlements away, as it is at the moment trading settlements to AI for boosts to diplomacy is an incredibly strong tactic, and so I want to have at least some countermeasures for it in place as without them there are essentially no drawbacks at all.

If you boost small factions youll be even less likely to get bigger factions, as the small factions will be able to hold on more easily to their single province/settlement empires and roadblock larger factions from expanding easily, and at the end of the day I do want larger empires, eventually.

I will likely remove the public order negatives for the AI if you feel like they cant compensate for it sufficiently, and ill look into the scaling long term debuffs, but i believe that will be too difficult to make them stack (the current debuffs do not stack at all).

To be clear, when I say it penalizes small factions, I mean factions that are losing. I'm not talking about starting size, which is why my suggest change for that is for after a certain number of turns.

I'm definitely seeing a lot more rebellions. I guess not a huge amount objectively, but relative to what used to occur in vanilla it's a lot more. Before using this mod I can't remember really seeing rebellions except in regions with high corruption or raiding, now I'm seeing it without that. Though I still see it a little in areas of conflict, this mostly took place in early game and with order factions, specifically dwarves and border princes, though I saw the Empire almost rebel, though those three are who I'm next to so I definitely paid more attention to them. I don't think I have any mods which increase AI control, so you're right that that could affect things. Also, I'm seeing noticeably more ruined settlements all over the place, which I'm not even sure how this mod would cause, but there are definitely more...whatever that means (without beastmen to explain it).

AI is not spreading wider than normal, I'd say they're spreading about as wide as normal, but less tall (I assume due to growth/control penalties slowing down province tier upgrades, though frankly not much). Wider and less tall is meant to be relative to each other, rather than to vanilla. Sorry if I wrote it poorly. My understanding was that the goal of this mod was to promote tall rather than wide growth, and it feels like it does that for the player but not AI. Maybe this is intended.

Certainly some of my suggestions go away if you want more large and less small factions. I like minor factions, but it's not my mod, so you know.../shrug.

I have no idea how scripting works, but maybe you could get around the stacking buffs/debuffs by having a set of 5-6 buff/debuff levels, only one of which is triggered at any given time and which are based on the ratio of capital settlement levels rather than overlapping counts. My initial thought was actually to just add a faction buff/debuff to the capital building itself, but (unless I understand it wrong) that would require you to do more complicated interactions with mods which affect buildings, which sounds like a pain in the ass and I figured I wouldn't even ask.

Last observation is that I'm seeing a lot more AI provinces with +control from buildings than I recall, which I assume is the AI reacting to low control. I also assume this is having a slowing affect to some degree, since those buildings normally would be something more beneficial to growth/military. To be clear, this is a good thing, I think (slowing expansion is the goal, right?). I think this is also part of why the AI can ignore the factionwide penalties, because they probably built +control buildings when first growing the provinces.

With regards to the AI compensating, if anything I think the penalties are too low, since the major factions appear mostly able to push through them. They definitely don't seem to understand the new mechanic (of course they don't...what am I even saying), but they seem quite capable of either brute forcing through it or simply enduring it for the turns necessary for it to go away, with minor exceptions for rebellions which they generally reconquer. The primary result of their not being able to understand the new mechanic seems to be lower province level rather than reduced expansion, likely because of A) the growth/income penalties and/or B) losing levels to settlement rebellion and then recapture.

Anyways, all this is just intended to help with tweaks. I want to be clear that the primary goal, which is to restrain major faction expansion, DOES seem to be working to at least some extent, there are just some side effects. Right now at turn 60 the eviltide factions are between 12-16 settlements each, whereas normally I think they'd be closer to 20-30 (though part of that is because I'm aggressively killing their armies).

Ooh, fun additional note I just discovered. There IS a way to help your allies retake provinces without penalties. I haven't been using the "return province to elector" victory option because I'm not Franz, so why bother with Fealty, but it DOES give your ally that region without any penalty to you OR them. Obviously this only works for Empire and only when the faction you want to give it to is the original owner, but hey, it's something.

Just started a new game, first example I saw was Vlad taking all 4 Stirland settlements in 4 turns, instant rebellion. To be clear, to me this is the mod working as intended, but also evidence that aggressive AI factions don't understand the penalties (of course they don't).

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561198003023777/screenshot/2537298673757382355/
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561198003023777/screenshot/2537298673757385698/

'To be clear, when I say it penalizes small factions, I mean factions that are losing. I'm not talking about starting size, which is why my suggest change for that is for after a certain number of turns.'

Ah yep i understand, it does hurt larger factions less than mid sized ones youre right, but honestly while it wasnt specifically intended this way i do prefer it when factions get large, lots of small factions dont really provide the same challenge later on.

Im also seeing more rebellions, and sometimes even rebel held territory - but i dont really see a problem with that, they almost always fail and just give the faction money anyway.

Not sure about the ruined settlements, it could be that the AI checks current public order as one of the variables when seeing whether it should occupy or raze, and since public order is in general lower, its less likely to occupy and more likely to raze. I know the AI doesnt like to occupy when they dont have high replenishment, and this mod also slightly lowers replenishment, which could also affect it.

Not sure about the wider vs tall aspect for AI, i generally run a fair few cheats for the AI factions which probably helps overcome this issue. I could probably reduce the penalties for AI in a separate mod if you wanted?

'I have no idea how scripting works, but maybe you could get around the stacking buffs/debuffs by having a set of 5-6 buff/debuff levels, only one of which is triggered at any given time and which are based on the ratio of capital settlement levels rather than overlapping counts. My initial thought was actually to just add a faction buff/debuff to the capital building itself, but (unless I understand it wrong) that would require you to do more complicated interactions with mods which affect buildings, which sounds like a pain in the ass and I figured I wouldn't even ask.'

The way its set up at the moment is that when you get given a debuff you actually get given 5, with varying turn timers. Using this i can have the debuff slowly 'go away', while also not clogging the UI up too much. I could make all of the levels visible and call them different things to display it more accurately, but then youd have a ton of visual clutter. The alternatives that i could think of (similar to your idea) would be too complex to implement and also likely not particularly MP compatible afaik.

Did vlad lose a settlement to the rebellion? or just absorb for free money?

Originally posted by Cerb:

Did vlad lose a settlement to the rebellion? or just absorb for free money?

He lost it and then pretty quickly retook it :D

Ah yeah, probably depends which order he took them as to whether the garrison would be replenished enough to take the fight too, but either way, still slowing them down :D

@Cerb I downloaded your hardcore collection, and wanted to ask about supply lines, are these 5 moves per settlement for all factions, including skaven? I understand that for dwarves and order factions is realistic, but for skaven, orcs it would look a bit weird or am i not right?

They all have to supply their ♥♥♥♥, might be abstracting different things, but theyd all have to do something