Mid/late game economy balance

This mod attempts to balance the campaign by pacing difficulty to suit both early, mid and late game, as-well as introducing more interesting campaign aspects to the game.

This is done through the following:

- New start date and reform dates

Start date is 220 BC. Roman Polybian reforms will occur at turn 20 (215 BC), Marian reforms at turn 400 (120 BC) and imperium level 6, Imperial reforms at turn 800 (20 BC) and imperium level 8.
Other nations reforms have been changed accordingly.

Technology and building times+cost have been adapted from the official 2x Building/Tech Costs submod and altered so starting building will be quicker to build while later technologies will take longer to research.

- Consistent economy.

Tax rate, army stances, imperium and seasonal effects have all been changed to provide more consistent financial challenges and army management.

In vanilla, tax rate as well as corruption can go above 100%. Now both factors have been reduced to be more sensible.
Low, minimal and normal tax rate will have less PO penalties, high tax rate will suffer more penalties, and extortionate tax is now almost impossible to maintain for long without having local armies and investments towards PO.
Banditry have also been directly tied to tax rate which means that maintaining high taxes for long periods increase the chance that taxes and food will be stolen at provincial levels.

Logistics and Army stances now have a much bigger impact on army upkeep among other things, armies encamped in friendly territory will be much cheaper to maintain and feed than armies on enemy territory with unsecured supply lines. This effectively means that campaigning is much more expensive now.

During the roman era, rapid fort construction were a vital part of Roman warfare and one of main reasons the Romans were so successful in both conquering and holding new territory.
The Romans were known for making use of fortification to both envelope their enemy with double sided fortifications or as support for their flanks during offensive actions in open battles.

This is a sorely underutilised feature in total war, so to try and remedy this, the fortifications and the fortify stance in particular will now be much more useful, both in defensive and offensive actions. This include significant upkeep/logistics benefits in fortify stance as-well as placeable fortification being made available in most other stances. Additionally, fortification have been made impervious to fire which result in up to 200% more fps in cases where the fire plumes could bottleneck the engine.

Imperium and government types have been changed. Now there is less emphasis on empire maintenance and more on a mix between balancing corruption with unit upkeep. As imperium increases more generals becomes available to serve as governors as-well as the total amount of edicts. When reaching imperium level 5 there will start to be considerable bigger loyalty penalties from other families. It is now much more beneficial to form an kingdom/empire to mitigate the initial loyalty penalties, but as your faction grows it will still become significantly harder to avoid secessions or all out civil war.

- Turn based recruitment

Units will take between 1-4 turn to be recruited depending on type and occupation, levy and peasant units will take 1 turn to recruit, dedicated warrior units 2 turns, elite units 3 turns and very elite units 4 turns. There are a number of exceptions to this logic however.
For example auxiliary and and area of recruitment elite units will generally be faster to recruit than dedicated factions elite units. Also volunteer legionaries will be faster to recruit.

Unit upkeep and recruitment cost have been adjusted overall. Elite and general units are now much more expensive to employ and maintain compared to levy troops. Mercenaries are now cheaper to employ but more expensive to maintain compared to regular troops. Additionally, AOR and AUX troops will be cheaper to employ and maintain compared to faction troops

Units will become more capable as they earn chevrons, however, promotions will be gradually slower as units earn more chevrons. Additionally replenishment is slower and often tied to province and season effects as-well. This means that loosing a substantial amount of highly experience units will have a much greater effect of the effectiveness of that unit both short and long term, thereby increasing the risk/reward of committing experienced units to dangerous/critical engagements.

- Seasons & provincial public order effect

There are more penalties and benefits associated with seasonal and provincial PO effects, e.g. now winter and harsh seasonal condition will have a bigger impact on replenishment, growth and public order, food among other things, while PO in provinces affect banditry, tax, upkeep and more to a higher degree.

- Many more balance, qol changes


This mod is harder than vanilla DEI, if you try to play it as you would in vanilla DEI you will likely struggle. To succeed you will have to pace yourself. The AI will be more reserved in the beginning which you can use to your advantage to either quickly expand or build up forces/economy. However when the enemy do attack they will usually do it from a place of strength so try to prepare and use army stances and the environment to your benefit.

Recommended mods:
Cultural tension, https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?795186-Cultural-tensions-(new-post

Early game balance changes