Mod: Better Independents v2.1

[Agrajag]

Thanks for the mod, will try it out later

[MaxWilson]

Endoperez said:
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?

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

[Ballbarian]

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!)

[DaveCG]

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!

[Edi]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Keep it coming!

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.

[hunt11]

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

[Edratman]

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.

[Edratman]

OOPs, double entry deleted.

[HoneyBadger]

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?

[MaxWilson]

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").