What, the Amazon DLC for Total War Troy isn't out today?!

I know there's a Three Kingdoms DLC out today buuut... Not sure I want to keep investing in that game

Holy dang, the autoresolve is so generous to me when I'm playing Aeneas (in Troy)

Did they move the autoresolve difficulty setting to "Battle" instead of "Campaign"?!

(I'm playing normal campaign and easy battles. Auto-resolve is usually tuned with the campaign difficulty)

Gonna download the Rust Pack File Manager to see if I can use it to mod Troy...

Holy shit lol, this new RPFM (Rust PackFile Manager) isn't just a re-implementation of the old PFM lol (Pack File Manager), they changed quite a bit of the options in the menus lol

Wait, why is there 2 tables for the same stuff??

Omg lol, did they (Creative Assembly) use the "champion" agent type for Priestesses?!

Omg, did they use the engineer, runesmith, and wizard types for the epic agent!?

Well...

All the "epic" agents are of "engineer" type lol

Yooo, I think I got my two mods working now?

One gives 2 skill points per level until you can't spend anymore of them, and the other makes all researches take 1 turn.

And both work for player and AI

Hold on, none of them are functional

Omg lol, do I have to use this old trick of declaring the pack types as "movie" lol?

Okay, so my tech mod is working for me, and presumably for the AI as well, although that's harder to test lol

Oh yeah, and my skill points mod works

Fighting battles might be more interesting now that I can afford to pick the ability skills early instead of saving the points

Anywayz, this new RPFM has a couple of table it can't decode in Troy, which was also a problem with the old PFM lol.

Too bad it can't decode the one I find the most interesting lol: building effects

Holy shit lol.

If you don't colonize the empty settlement immediately with Aeneas, another faction who has a non-aggression pact with you will colonize it during turn 1 fucking lol

Yeah, I'm glad this one has generously easy early battles lol

Oh dang, and if colonize early, now Hector doesn't want to ally anymore lol?

Yeah, this is like my 4th restart if this campaign by now today lol?

Oh dang, if you offer a military alliance to Hector at the very start, before the first battle, he's willing to give you 240 wood for it!

But if you offer after the first battle and after capturing an enemy minor settlement, he's only willing to give 170 wood

Oh wow that's interesting

If your military ally owns in full a province but you have no region in that province, the missions about controlling X number of provinces will still count it

Yoo, I think I found a spot to recruit units that will be able to reinforce both of my front-line minor settlements if they're attacked

Oh shit lol. The gold cost for agents isn't trivial if you're not playing as Agamemnon with vassals, lolsob

Oh dang, I really like my 2 skill points mod now that I've recruited my first level 6 agent lol

Omg lolsob, Paint 3D from Microsoft doesn't have layers?!

Alright, time for my first real battle with Aeneas lol, where I have a full army lol

Welp, 11 units are expandable, and 8 aren't lol

Holy shit lol, my Growth Planning spreadsheet from Warhammer 2 needs soooo much modifications for Troy lol sob

This is my current template sheet for Warhammer 2.

The user (me) is meant to copy a new sheet for each province in which to track growth

The idea is that in the main orange table, you have a row for each turn, and you only need to write down *changes* to have the totals calculate correctly

And once you write a change, 2 other tables off-screen will work their magic:

The first will convert your "change" to a growth value. (more on that later)

The second will then calculate what is the actual growth value in this row and column

The second table simply calculates this by checking if the corresponding cell in the first (off-screen) table has a value, or if it's empty.

If there's a value, it uses that. If it's empty, it goes back to look in its own table, and uses the value in the row above

Screenshot of the 2 intermediary off-screen tables:

Notice how the columns in the 2nd table (right) have the same value for many rows before changing, but always have a value, even if only 0.

(Twitter image compression may have made the text illegible tho )

Anywayz, the idea of the main table that the user is meant to act upon is to make notes of things that make sense in-game.

So like, to say that you have a Tier 1 settlement, you write "1" in the column with the for that region.

And if you write text instead of a number, the intermediary tables will understand you want them to keep going as if nothing was written.

That way, I can note when a construction starts, and then I put a number when it's finished

So that's a change in building tier.

Another kind of change is in a number of characters.

Some characters can increase growth in their local province, so you can add more to get more growth

And this added growth is by a skill that can have many levels.

So on the top, in the blue tables, you manually make sure that the growth value per skill level match what's in-game,

And then you can just write in the column the number of characters with that level skill

There is 1 column for each skill level.

Lords can have 3 levels, and agents can have 4 (level 0 to level 3), so that's a total of 7 columns

Then, you have 2 columns that are for mechanics specific to some cultures.

Food for Skavens and Happiness for High Elves.

For these, you write the index of the effect bundle, and then a blue table on top is used to convert this index in a growth value

Anywayz, I made the template to cover many edge cases, which is why there's a column for a road building in each region, even tho only like 2 cultures can build roads.

That's because there are 3 tables that need to work toghether, so adding 1 column means adding 3 actually

Oh, right!

There are 2 other groups of columns in the main table:

The first is on the left, before the buildings. It's for technology, commandant, and event.

And finally, there are 7 columns to the right that are for other arbitrary sources of growth

The long sideway orange cells above them are to write what this arbitrary source actually is

In these last 2 column groups, you write the change in actual growth value

Finally, there's a thinner table to the right of the main table that extends as far down as the main table.

This one tracks how much growth you have each turn, and it's where you can write your growth expenses for when you upgrade a settlement

Anywayz, the Warhammer growth spreadsheet needs 4 building columns per region.

For Troy, it came down to 6 columns for the major settlement, and 5 for each minor

The Warhammer spreadsheet had, for each region, a column for:

Settlement
Port
Growth building
Roads

In Troy, each region has a settlement, and can have a port. So these 2 are staying.

Also, major settlements can build an administrative building that gives growth,

And minor food settlements can make a production building that increases growth, but produces less food

So that column can be assigned to that, but I can't give them the same emoji, because they don't (always) have the same growth value at the same tier

So I need to add a column in my reference table (in blue, at the top rows) for buildings

Then, major settlements can have a temple of Hera that gives growth.

And minor settlement can make a building that produces a *lot* of their resource, but also *reduces* growth by 70(!)

(70 growth is huge! The biggest positive bonus I've seen is 80 from tier 5 major settlement)

So like, there goes the 4 column, but I'll need to add another column in my reference table. (the column for the roads can be repurposed)

And then, the troubles begin...

See, now I have address all the buildings common to every (currently playable) factions

But are there factions that can make more?

Yes.

And like, yes, I could relegate those to the arbitrary columns, but like...

I've already decided when I made a column for roads that culture-speciric buildings should be with the other buildings

Like, I don't mind relegating region-specific buildings to the arbitrary columns, but buildings you can build everywhere feel like they belong in the main columns

There are currently 3 faction-specific building chains that can give growth:

Odysseus has a majors-only building that reduces growth

Hector and Paris can build Priam's Residence in major settlements

And Paris can build Helen's residence *everywhere*

So I decided that each region would have a column for a faction-specific building, and major settlements would have an additional column for a 2nd faction specific building

Also, the template is meant to be used as a new workbook (file) for each new campaign, and then I manually check the growth values for skills and buildings before I start to copy-paste the worksheet for each regions

(I did consider automating the growth values checking phase, but it happens so rarely, and it's so quick to do, that I know it would be a big waste of them.

And it would also add *so much more* complexity to the spreadsheet)

Anywayz, now I need to find new emojis lol

Oh right omg I had forgotten about favours with the Gods lol

In Troy, you can worship gods and gain favours with them. If you have enough favours, you can upgrade to a Tier of worship, and get bonuses

Some of which are growth lol

Tier 2 with Aphrodite gives +30 growth everywhere.

Tier 2 with Hera gives +50 growth in provinces with at least 50% influence.

And you can pray to Athena to get a growth bonus during 4 turns, and the bonus depends on your tier of worship

Also, you lose 10 favours with each god every turn.

So your value of favour fluctuates with time

And the question that I'm asking myself is if I should be tracking the favour, like I track the building tiers, or just the growth?

Me to me: Start with just the growth, and then you can include the favours later if you feel the need.

Me: A sensible idea

Me to me :

Anywayz, now I need to find emojis to represent the concept of a faction-specific building lolsob

Flags? Shields?

But flags feel not really appropriate for buildings?

Oooh, medals?!

Yoo, maybe I could use Greek letters?

Oh yeah, I'll go with the Greek letter Phi

Uppercase (Φ) for major settlements only, and lowercase (φ) for both major and minor settlements