Better Independents v2.1
 

I recall making some threats about restoring an improved version of the Better Independents mod, so I figured right now would be a good time to do it.

The Better Independents mod aims to improve the SP experience against the AI by reducing the hordes of chaff the AI tends to amass, forcing it instead to rely far more on national troops and some of the better quality independent units. This goal is achieved by artificially limiting the selection of units available and eliminating the undesirable ones as an option so they cannot be recruited.

There three variations of this mod:

• The first one eliminates units by increasing their gold cost to 9000 and resource cost to 800.
• The second variant only increases the gold cost of affected units.
• The third variant only increases the resource cost to 800. This mod has reportedly had problems with the AI not being deterred by the resource cost and ending up with queues of units that take forever to clear unless canceled.

The mod file itself has a section of comments in the beginning, so it is advised that you read those to see if the mod is what you are looking for.

This second version of the BI Mod is a tad less drastic than the earlier one, which eliminated virtually all independent units. After reading several forum discussions and playing some games with the mod (BI Gold), it became clear that not quite such draconian measures are called for. The original mod limited EA nations the most because nearly all archers were disabled. Archers being important to also augment heavier troops, this has been changed.

All archer units are once more enabled in Better Independents v2, as well as some marginally useful units from other poptypes (such as the tribals). This means that there will be AI hordes where independent units still play a role, but it is much reduced. Archer hordes will be very prominent, though, but this is not a bad thing, because it helps the AI more than hinders it. It also makes EA games more tolerable, because otherwise there would be no independent missile units available.

Ryo Akashi was kind enough to provide me with mod code that copies these units to other slots and resets the recruitment of affected nations so the indies can be disabled. I have used a modified version which disables the independent slinger (50) and the light cavalry. Militia 30 is only disabled via increased resource cost because it can appear from events, so a gold cost disabling would bankrupt anyone who got the regular militia event.

This bit of code uses the currently unused unit numbers 1454 (Unused Ancient One), 385 (Lady of Fortune) and 601 (Daughter of the Land).

The old thread is here

Any feedback and observations of the pros and cons of this mod are welcome.



UPDATE!

Version 2.1 enables the standard independent commanders and also enables Jaguar Tribe Warrior, which turned out to be an even more useful unit than the Jaguar Tribe Slinger, though that usefulness depends on the nation you play and is often situational.

This means that if you can recruit units out of a province, you can also recruit a commander out of that same province. Barbarians and Horse Tribe are the only poptypes where nothing can be recruited (though some indies with a bad combination of militia, light infantry and heavy infantry (the weakest type) only allow commanders.

Version 2.1 is also compatible with Worthy Heroes. Version 2.0 was not because they both used the Golden Naga for different purposes, but that conflict has been resolved.

Version 2.1 attachment is included and replaces the v2.0 attachment previously attached to this post.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Thanks for this Edi, I will try to do some testing.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Thanks, I've used BI extensively and found that it really helps the AI. I'll give this one a shot.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

thanks for updating the mod, the only problem i see is that in a few provinces some of the units have their original cost

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

So... how good results do you get from this? Does it help AI in the early game, or does the benefit continue to middle game?

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Thanks Edi.

A quick download, and I will try it at once!

I'm back home, I have diner, and it is evening gaming time ...

Let's try it.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

I am officially a bonehead. I've reuploaded the attachment. The mod has banner pics, but I'd moved them to a subfolder, then forgot to include it in the zip file. That's been corrected now. Sorry about the hassle.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

the only problem i ever had was when i played as lanka the little tiny monkies destroyed my economy when they joined my army bankrupting my nation in one turn.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

im not sure if what i just said is for this mod or the no independant mod

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Monkeys are no longer modded in this version for precisely that reason.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Thanks for the mod, will try it out later http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

I'm not sure what you consider the "midgame" but I was doing pretty well in a recent game as Helheim against 4 or 5 AIs. I had researched up to Cloud of Death and was winning my wars against Lanka and one other nation when Ulm declared war on me too. "Poor little Ulm!" I cackled and got ready to lay some Cloud of Death down on their little MR-less troops. And then they started raining down Steel Maidens on me--I had forgotten how good they are for their cost. After a year or so of warfare I think I was stalemated--I could have turtled and gone for SCs and still eventually won, but I decided I had made a strategic mistake by not paying proper attention to geography and national borders and I conceded defeat and started a new game. I don't always lose to the AI(s) but it happens fairly frequently if I don't take a humongous lead in early expansion. I don't know if that's just because I'm a poor player, but I don't think it used to happen before I started using the NI/BI mods.

So yes, I think it improves the AIs in midgame. I think if Ulm had been raining militia and barbarians on me I would have annihilated them quite easily.

-Max

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

I plan on giving this a spin in my next game. Thanks Edi!

(Oh, and in case I don't catch you before hand: Enjoy your well earned vacation!)

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Many thanks for this Edi, I loved (and still use) BI and too noticed that the AI was much improved, as in no more hordes of death monkeys, anyway thanks!

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Thanks for the feedback guys. Keep it coming! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

MaxWilson, EA Ulm with BI is brutal, precisely because it seems to prefer Steel Maidens and Warrior Maidens to the other stuff and has a decent smattering of Iron Warriors mixed in for heavy hitting. I'm fighting it now in a co-op hotseat game where I play Abysia and the attrition is chewing up my infantry at a pretty good clip. That's with somewhere around 12-15 Salamanders and 2-3 Rhuaxites per army raining fire down on the AI, no SCs. I had one smaller army almost obliterated because they just kept on coming. Without large squads of E9F6 blessed Burning Ones I'd be looking at a whole different picture. Ulm actually chewed Fomoria up and rolled over it like it wasn't there. If the map approaches to my territory weren't through only two bottlenecks, I'd have been history long ago.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

It is so refreshing to not need massive armies, SC or massive spells to actually win against the AI

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

I scanned the dm files and it looks very well thought out. The indies you left are pretty much the ones I recruit.

I'm at the 45 minute/turn portion of my current game, which is about my limit, so tonight I'll start a new game with version 1.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

OOPs, double entry deleted. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Great work, Edi, as usual.

To balance out the theme, does anyone have any suggestions for units to add in, to help the AI, rather than taking away units which don't?

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Okay, my assessment after playing with v2.0 for a week or so and spying on the AI armies fighting each other:

I think allowing archer indies improves AI armies significantly, precisely because missile troops scale well. I just watched EA R'lyeh attack MA Jotunheim, for instance, and get smeared because there were about 70 deer tribe archers mixed in with the Jotun PD + troops. At the same time, you don't see armies composed ENTIRELY of deer tribe archers--the nationals are used where they make sense, and EA Ulm doesn't really use indies at all (preferring the Ulmish archer-maidens instead). So yeah, I think this improves the AI further.

I don't know if it's necessarily more *challenging* because allowing archer recruitment helps me out significantly too. I may (or may not) go back to No Independents on thematic grounds[1]. However, BI was conceived as an AI booster and on that level v2.0 is a definite improvement. Nice work!

-Max

[1] I have mixed feelings about having squads of Woodsmen and Deer Tribe archers mixed in among my Human Slingers and Bashanites. On the one hand, I *did* conquer those lands and conscript the inhabitants, and arguably that's more logical than me building a castle there and suddenly having a pool of Rephaim to conscript in that province. On the other hand, it papers over a weakness in the nation that I should perhaps have to live with (slingers have poor range and have a nasty habit of advancing practically into melee range of one or another enemy group if you leave them scripted to anything but "fire closest").

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

After a couples days of playing I changed all indy commanders back to standard costs because I was having troubles ferrying good indy troops and assumed the AI would have the same difficulty. AI seems to expand slightly better now.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

I was playing a game last night in LA. I was a mod nation named theran the reign of the vampiri if you know it. I was fighting against LA abysia and got smashed when i attacked an army containing crossbowmen and archers because they held my vampirir hoards off with heavy abysian infantry while they peppered me with arrows and bolts. I love 2.0 it works great in my oppinion.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Going great so far, been playing a hotseat game with a friend and LA utgard seems to like the hev inf and crossbow men, and mixed in with it's giants are pretty damn strong, so far so good, shame that the silly sods still keep charging his LA man army of defenders and longbow men with out the mages, ah well, can't have everything.

A.I seems to be expanding fine on mine, everyone's got lots of provinces, the only thing (nothing to do with BI) is that my friend went with a 10 dom SC and is basically dom killing all the A.I's, shame they don't do anything about it.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Heh, I try playing with that + CBM + WH on and it seems it is also affected by some bug. I have full BI version on but there is also resource change for indies, so AI still recruits them... Without WH it is fine [and well, WH are included in CBM anyway]

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

That depends on what order it loads the mods in. The mod manual does say rather explicitly that different mods should not modify the same units or unpredictable results will happen.

In this case, the BI mod works correctly only if it loads last, because changes are applied in loading order and if there are conflicting orders in different mods (e.g. one sets #rcost 800 and the other #rcost 8), only the last to load is applied. If the two mods change different aspects of the same unit (e.g. one changes resistances and the otehr changes magic), there is no problem.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Oh yeah, I think I turned off BI for a whole and turned it on again in my last attempt.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

can somebody tell me why independent units in one province will have their normal cost and the mods cost in the province right next to it?

i really want to try this out because the AI pisses me off but something doesnt seem right. i turned off cbm to make sure its not that.

btw how do i get BI to load last? just rename it to ZBI?


edit: im sorry i forgot that militias arnt changed. i feel like an idiot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

no wait..

seriously im playing a game right now and in SOME provinces the miltia are 9k + 800 rec and the other units are normal priced

and in other provinces the militia are normal price and thje other units are 9k + 800 rec

im not kidding. am i doing somthing wrong? id really like to use this mod

edit: ok i checked the .dm
i guess certain units like militia and light infantry have different versions.. i wasnt even aware of this as i dont use those type of independents.

so i guess the militia is sometimes expensive and sometimes normal because there are two types and the one that is left unchanged is the one u recieve in events.

and i suppose its intentional that units like the light infantry with the javelin are left unchanged?

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

The light infantry with the javelin is left unchanged because it's a decent unit that can be useful. It is better than some similar national units (peltast for Arco, for example).

I would love to turn off that one militia type that is currently recruitable, but unfortunately that is impossible. There is an event that gives militia to a nation, so if I modded them to cost 9000 gold, they would have an upkeep of 600 each and getting 60 of those guys via event would mean instant bankruptcy.

The point of the mod is not to turn off all independents, but to leave the better, more useful units in the game. If they crappy ones are unavailable, the AI is more likely to recruit national troops instead of hordes of chaff.

I hope that helps. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

yeah i played a game and the computer owned me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

and yeah the reason i chose this over NI id because i think independents add alot of flavour

and it was soooooo cool to get my *** kicked by jotuns and goblins instead of kicking (more) militia and light infantry ***. the nations actually use their units. alot more fun heh.

also the ai is harder now. its still insanly stupid of course but now itll at least win when it does attack with 300+ units

it even taught me how insanely strong a horde of archers can be http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

anyways thanks for the mod its made SP alot more fun

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Fomoria still owns me every time I try to play with that mod in EA http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Try playing against Hinnom... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Seriously, I ran into an AI Hinnom with mostly positive scales (including growth) and until I managed to crush his main armies, I was in serious trouble. The chariots were brutal. I was playing Abysia and it was the E9F6 Burning Ones and absolutely massive fireball spam that carried the day. If I'd had just one other nation attack me at the same time, I'd have been done for. And that was in an allied game.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

This is a great mod and I use it all the time.

I have found that the AI seems to perform best when I set both gold and resources to 200 or higher. (I have not done all the increments or combinations below 200.)

What settings do you think work best?

Also I have changed the mod a little by returning all commanders to normal gold/resource costs.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

I'm planning on updating it so that normal commanders will be normal price, but Horse Tribe Chief and Barbarian Chief will stay unavailable like their units. That way you can always recruit a commander wherever you can recruit units.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Could you change the graphics of the affected units to point to an empty graphic, so that they are not even visible on the recruitment screen?

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Sorry, that was an idle thought, not a request! Could be cool though.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

I suppose I could. That's an easy thing to do. Good idea, llamabeast! Great idea, in fact! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Edi:

Nah, don't enable indy commanders. AI recruits more mages or stronger national commanders that way.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

is there a way to turn off the militia event?

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

No. I actually requested that a new militia unit be made for the generic militia event (which some nations get, some others have their own militia events that actually give useful units, like LA Abysia), but that did not happen. It was a fairly low probability feature request anyway, but it would have made it possible to completely eliminate recruitable militia from the game.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Fallacies with this:
1. Assumes that the AI does not recruit at castle because it recruited an indy commander.
2. The AI would have to spend precious turns with castle recruitable commanders picking up scattered good indy troops.
3. Minimizing commander count is not good. I can't count how many battles I have lost because I only used one commander and he was slain.
4. The AI can spend turns recruiting mages at castle instead of mundane troop commanders. (I do not know AI commander recruiting priorities, but if nothing else the probablity is better for a mage.)
5. Mundane indy military comanders have respectable to good stats.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

While an interesting thought, that'd also affect them in battles.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Good thinking Endo. The units will still be available to indy provinces.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Ah, damn. Invisible attacking hordes that spit javelins and become briefly visible when they attack. Though I might try that one just for kicks to see what it looks like... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Ah, poo.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Just found out that Better Independents 2.0 has conflicts with Worthy Heroes 1.8 and later, because WH uses the Golden Naga unit (334) as a Patala hero. The current BI mod copies light acavalry 26 to the 334 slot and uses it to replace the national recruitment light cavalries.

I've attached an updated version to the opening post that removes this conflict. The fixed version uses #1454 instead, the Unused Ancient One. Full changelog added to the OP.

Re: Better Independents v2.1
 

I've made sure the attachment is updated to the latest spec. The version number is not changed, but the mod now shows up as the correct version in the list. The Golden Naga conflict with Worthy Heroes has also been checked to be fixed.

Re: Better Independents v2.1
 

Got a big financial problem here: It's not as bad as the militia but it ran my expenses up to 25k/turn (I have Gift of Nature's Bounty up, I could just barely afford it) before I figured it out.

I haven't pinned down the offending unit yet but I suspect it's a knight. I was using an army of seraphs to take some provinces the AI had lost to indie monsters. Seraph = S4 mage = Enslave. I ended up with some of the random event monsters in my army.

I am not sure that that's the only culprit as I'm still at 18k and trying to drown as many pests as I can. (I am at peace in that part of the world, I can't just suicide them against the neighbors.)

Re: Better Independents v2.1
 

And that's why I use the Resource-Only version of the mod. Edi made three versions available with the mod. One version leaves gold cost alone, but it increases the resource cost of all "junk" indy units by 800. That way, the AI won't ever recruit the junk ... but I won't go into bankruptcy because of a lucky Charm spell or some other occurrence.

As far as I can tell, the Resource-Only version of the mod works great. I'm fighting against national troops, reinforced by the occasional indy missile troop. (The AI really seems to like tribal archers.) It's made the game a lot more interesting ... and a bit more challenging.

Re: Better Independents v2.1
 

The event militia aren't cost altered. Most chaff indies are. Knights are normal price, but the worst of the three heavy cavalry costs a lot. If you have any non-archer tribals, any light cav, those are bad. Check the mod file to see what's modified, then check all the indies the seraph got for you.

The resource version was made specifically to address astral nations and Enslave Mind so the spell can be used without instant bankruptcy.