KI (Abbot) Balancing by increasing monk

[SimonRebholz]

Sorry for reopening this issue

Just run a KI fight. Saladin vs 5 Abbot 2000 starting gold each. Map "Im Alleingang" The Abbot never can harm Saladin during the hole game due to the weakness of the monks. Running 2.06a with Evrey's fixed Vanilla Castles with PitchNeeded Tower defence

Additional to the mentioned suggestions by @Swartonf I have another idea.

• changing from negative fear to positive

-Abbots wave splitting has to be deleted -The Monks need a little bonus of bow and crossbow resis -The cost has to be raised aswell, Abbot is stacking his money 2 fast

_Originally posted by @Swartonf in https://github.com/_render_node/MDEyOklzc3VlQ29tbWVudDQ0MDQyOTk5Nw==/timeline/issue_comment#issuecomment-440429997_

[Sh0wdown]

I'd suggest to should check how a positive fear factor affects the Abbot before changing the monks' stats further.

[PitchNeeded]

Positive fear factor doesn't really go with Abbot's personality though!

A slight increase in arrow and crossbow resistance would be good, and realistic too as the slow speed of monks does suggest they are wearing some armour. But yes their cost would have to be increased to 20 gold to balance things.

[SimonRebholz]

Increasing the cost and arrow resistance will end in a similar result in my mind. Both will take care of two problems.

• stronger monks
• monk doesn’t make so much money

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[Sh0wdown]

Positive fear factor doesn't really go with Abbot's personality though!

A slight increase in arrow and crossbow resistance would be good, and realistic too as the slow speed of monks does suggest they are wearing some armour. But yes their cost would have to be increased to 20 gold to balance things.

Having loads of those priest and cross statues would suit the Abbot imo. You could still add some gallows in the mix, even if the total fear factor would be positive.

[PitchNeeded]

Having loads of those priest and cross statues would suit the Abbot imo. You could still add some gallows in the mix, even if the total fear factor would be positive.

I suppose so, it would be a bit like how Nizar has quite an evil personality but still has good fear factor.

This is of course an AIV issue, I might try and make another Evrey's vanilla castles modification in the future to give an option in the installer to have a positive fear factor Abbot with his vanilla castle.

Does he have enough bakeries in his vanilla castles to make enough bread with positive fear factor though?

[Panbutt]

Something I would consider for Abbot is allowing him to train monks during castle sieges and last stands. Right now, he will only train archers. Even if he has lots of gold, peasants and a Cathedral, he will never train monks to defend the keep when attacked.

[Heroesflorian]

Something I would consider for Abbot is allowing him to train monks during castle sieges and last stands. Right now, he will only train archers. Even if he has lots of gold, peasants and a Cathedral, he will never train monks to defend the keep when attacked.

100% agreed with that!

Does he have enough bakeries in his vanilla castles to make enough bread with positive fear factor though?

I would rather phrase the question wider:

1. How well does his general economy work with positive fear factor?
2. How important is an efficient economy for the Abbot?

Regarding question 1: The Abbot usually has several food types (buys apples), extra/double rations, +3 church and cathedral bonus, religion blessing % bonus and full ale coverage. In other words: A ton of positive popularity. As we all know, very high taxes are terribly inefficient compared to lower tax rates. With negative fear factor, that works well, but with positive fear factor the Abbot ends up in the terribly inefficiently high tax range all the time. Also, the Abbot has lots of (external) economy (4 quarries plus ox tethers, 2 iron mines, tons of farms and bakeries) that gets slowed down A LOT by positive fear factor, and loses a bunch of extra goods when removing negative fear factor in the first place. In other words: The ideal bakery count for positive and negative fear factor differs, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Regarding question 2: Abbot's vanilla castles are not good in terms of economy independent of fear factor. They are nowhere near being efficient in terms of general castle layout / building placement, number/ratio of mills and bakers in relation to his farms, etc. In other words: His default castles already have a rather mediocre castle economy, and yet the Abbot still has more bread and gold than he needs, due to strong external economy, very cheap units, and good tax revenues (lots of positive popularity and high population).

• Will positive fear factor impact his economy? Definitely!
• Will it make him poor? Probably not, at least not in most situations, as he still has very low troop costs.
• Will it make his offense better? Well... fear factor does not affect unit health, and most often he either completely overruns his opponent due to superior economy, or gets shot before his monks even get into melee range. In those cases, positive fear factor will not make much of a difference. It will however benefit him in some combat situations, and slightly buff his (defensive) archers.

---

And now, for something completely different: I propose Abbot's monks don't necessarily need a buff. What does need a buff/fix, though, are some general AI issues:

• Placement of attack siege engines
• Bugged, inconsistent or entirely missing usage of "raid catapults"
• (to some extent) Lack of sufficient archers / ranged troops for (later) attacks

If those points would work as they should, the Abbot would do fine. Buffing monks to the point where they can single-handedly overrun any opponent without proper support by archers and catapults (which the monk sometimes does well, but often doesn't) does not make much sense to me, and would make the Abbot OP.

[Monsterfisch]

I would also add depending on how things turn out and sh0wdown figuring out how to make ai trade with one another the abbot and his gold reserves would play a great support character for chars like Phillip and Marshall, for example, def agree on fixing siege weapon usage and attack units balance for abbot and generally with ais since siege weapons seem to become less and less with later attack for some reason. Partially because sometimes the ai tears down the engineers/tunnelersguild in a way that leaves half of the guild standing preventing it from being build again while being unable to produce the units again. (but I will make a separate post about that anyway)

[Heroesflorian]

Btw, just my two cents on the Abbot: With proper mod castles (and negative fear factor), the Abbot can definitely beat about any other AI with little starting gold currently. I just had him put against a Wolf + a Frederick allied against the Abbot, and the Abbot won. Individually, neither of the two stood even the slightest chance. The main weakness of the Abbot currently are moats, as the AI's moat digging behaviour is completely stupid (see here: https://github.com/Sh0wdown/UnofficialCrusaderPatch/issues/115). Fix that general AI issue, and possibly tweak general AI attack ranged troops usage, and the Abbot is absolutely golden. He is definitely a upper-middle class AI now (with proper attack army size increases), and with weapon purchases and games with fewer starting gold, he is a top tier AI - never mind cute little Marshal with his puny knights, they stand no chance against the Abbot's rushing capabilities!