Overly Agressive AI: Remedies?

[EmperorJulian]

I realize most everyone around here wants more aggressive and competent AI, and in the latest patch there seems to be at least some steps in this direction. However I'm finding that the AI is seriously cramping my playing style, and it is in effect making playing M2TW more of an endless chore of battling opponents rather than enjoying the game.

I was doing a campaign as Hungary and while I "failed" in the end, I did find some good early strategies, especially with rushing the Byzantines. That said at the end I had many inferior units, no money and little chance of opposing what amounted to a massive AI rush on all points of my territory. Amongst other issues, I couldn't field teched-up armies at all points of my Empire at the same time. Although I had only 15 provinces my frontiers were vast and it was most difficult to produce good units in Durazzo or Corinth and transport them to Buda rapidly.

Mainly, there were four AI decisions that really suck out in my mind as both infuriating, and in the end decisive for the destruction of my Empire.

A) AI Avoiding Rebel settlements nearby to attack me: The Sultanate of Iconium

B) AI Avoiding weaker territory nearby to attack my more strongly fortified cities: Milan

C) AI Faction down to One Province, their solution? Attack me, without any regard to any weaker factions.

D) AI Faction passes through territory owned by another faction to attack me. i.e. The AI had no common borders with me but passed through the territory of another faction to get to me. Quite inventive, also infuriating: The Danes.

The frantic pace of the game grates on me, while I do enjoy a nice strenuous battle and siege from time to time, I tire of 3-4 battles per turn. I am also unsure of how to prepare myself for such attacks when I'm making only about 1800 florins a turn. Even when I was in control of the entire Aegean I could muster only a meager income. No doubt being at war with Russia, the Danes, Milan, the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire, Venice and The Turks didn't help matters.

Of course, the AI seems to pass up NO opportunity to make trouble in my territory. My alliance with the Russians came to a speedy end once we shared a border. And what's more annoying is they didn't even bother to attack, 30+ turns and all they did was blockade a port, the same port, over and over. If I had money to field a fleet I certainly would have, but alas I did not.

To be honest I'm looking for ways to make the game more enjoyable, first and foremost, and to figure out how to earn more money. I never make more than 3-4K a turn and I'm never able to really tech up as quickly as I'd like. Any comments or assistance from you guys would be appreciated.

[Mangalore]

are you playing vh on campaign map? I failed so far in my hungarian campaigns as their troops really suck (I had one Byzantine general unit massacre my whole battleline of Slavic Spearmen) and I'm not too keen of their unit roster, would have expected some more variation.

The problem as Hungary is that of a weaker HRE but without as many rebel settlements, I think. You are squeezed in between quickly emerging faction and have to rush to make a dent into their attempts to cut you off any gains.

As Venice a very successful strategy was to conquer a defenseable triangle: Venice->Konstantinople->Korinth with Venice being kind of an outpost while Zagreb and Sofia covered my northern flank as fortresses and Korinth gave me strategic depth. That allowed me to dig in and secure this line while building up my hold on the Balkans (Thessaloniki and Konstantinople - and also Venice- being rich helped alot of course)

Concerning AI aggressiveness it might be probable that your enemies actively try to drag others into the fight thus making agreements with e.g. the Danes to attack you. Maybe a coalition of alliances has established itself that's very much geared against you.

[EmperorJulian]

well I play on Hard/Hard usually. My only complaint (besides my propensity to "lose" campaigns now, is that the battles are so monotonous, and so frequent, that the game loses all its appeal. As Hungary you can either rush Venice or rush the Byzantines, there really isn't any other option. Thing is Hungary has a bad initial setup as Buda is so far away from Bran. If you develop a Balkan empire, Buda will still be far outside of your normal sphere of defense, and will nominally be on its own.

The interesting part with me is I rarely if ever lose field battles. But, like with RTW I'm prone to losing campaigns since I don't rush fast enough, I don't make the right early moves right away, I don't beat the game in 30 turns like people were doing in RTW. My style of play is simply not geared to the frantic super expansionism that is required to win. And even if it were, I'm not very good at it. As always I have problems with maintaining order in cities (though not as bad as RTW), and with this new 1.1 patch I'm even more at a loss of how to survive.

These days I really miss MTW with its glorious achievements campaign. I actually DID win campaigns back then, starting with just one province, like Aragon or two, like Sicily. I don't know what I need to do to get better, it would be nice if I could just modify the game to make it slower and more to my general enjoyment. Of course that may or may not be possible, we shall see. Cheers!

[Mig el Pig]

and with this new 1.1 patch I'm even more at a loss of how to survive.

These days I really miss MTW with its glorious achievements campaign. I actually DID win campaigns back then, starting with just one province, like Aragon or two, like Sicily. I don't know what I need to do to get better, it would be nice if I could just modify the game to make it slower and more to my general enjoyment. Of course that may or may not be possible, we shall see. Cheers!

Maybe increase the kings purse for all factions and change the time
(it's in descr_strat i've changed timescale first to 0.5 but that was a bit too slow(you got 800+ turns to complete the game,) and now i'm gonna restart with 1. and i doubled the kings purse money, for some factions like Turkey and HRe who seemed to have a rough time i even increased it more.

It was my first game where the danes didn't own the world.

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Da Captain be havin' a solution:
Kill the dastards!!!!!
Arrrgggh.

[Hex Khan]

I think the aggressive ai a good thing, you'd complain if it was passive, theres nothing worse when 'total war' becomes 'total peace' its dull, suicidal or not the aggression is welcomed gives me someone to battle with without dening my fatastically crap rep in the game of untrustworthy.

[EmperorJulian]

Actually I didn't complain about the AI being passive, except to say that it seemed to be unable to take advantage of opportunities for expansion into rebel territory or to act in defense of its own territory. I'd be perfectly happy with a Total Peace, or Total Trade or Total Diplomacy scenario. I like building up territories, getting upgraded units and making war only infrequently. I'm sure I'm in the extreme minority here, but as I said my play style is different. And bear in mind it's not simply the aggressiveness, but the idiotic aggressiveness. The suicidal mindset that's completely oblivious to "winning." That's what irks me the most.

[Hex Khan]

I have tried the more subtle conquer lands refine then move on, and i ended up having the tattered remains of france, the HRE, Milan against me, my only allies were spain and portugal, did have the danes but when the HRE went to war the danes sided with the germans and i was Scotland.

I though ''yes at last a coallition war!" but nothing came of it, milan sends a random army into my lands to have a look at the pretty flora and fuana and move on before being ambushed and maulled.

maybe they still have a rome file running in the documents somewhere that shouldnt be there, which sends little factions against big ones and somehow think they'll win like they're the SPQR or something?
hence ai suicidalness?

[zerathule]

I know this wont really answer your questions, but in my opinion, if you want a slower paced campaign, and have more emphasis on empire building, i would recomand you to choose other factions :
- England : this is one of these forum's favourite as they have a realy good starting position on their island, they can own 7 provinces in a few turns without any kind of serious oposition and wont be hard to keep. Their archers are really good and will thus make a good defensive army.
- Scotland : Same starting position as the english. They have bad archers and bad cavalry, but their infantry owns if you know how to use (and like) pikemen.
- The Danes : you can have a good base of expansion with only one exposable castle. Economy will be ok to build and then its up to you to build your empire. They have excellent defensive archers : they are above average in range fight, but can stand up in melee versus most infantry and are only tier 2, one of the best top tier infantry (those halbardiers) and good mix of cavalry and infantry. Good hit and run faction.
- Spain/Portugal : These two are relatively similar, good starting position (spain is easy to defend from pampelona) and similar units. In the end game, they both rock : the portugal having an adventage in raw power with the best pikemen in the game, but Spain has the opportunity to build all their troops in cities (for late troops : musketeers, Tiercos pikes, canons and gendarmes).
- The moors : same opportunity to have easyly defendable frontiers. they have a difficult to manage unit roster, but they are quite good.
- Milan : last and not least, THE turtler's faction. Best range unit in the game (Genoese xbows and musketeers) excellent cavalry (familia ducale), best cost effective spearmen and decent heavy infantry. And guess what : they are all buildable in a city. You will have only cities to manage, you can spend half the game with only the tier 3 city barracks enabling you to have good armies (italian militia spearmen and genoese militia xbows.) Your economy will go insane (i have 40k profit with 3 full stack standing armies having each 4 familia ducale, 4 Xbows, 7 Spearmen, 4 Dismounted broken lances, 1 general). They are cheap, and ALL my mainland cities can retrain them, and my new cities can retrain more than half the units (spears+xbows). Your empire will be easy to start : mainland italy + Sardigna, corsica, sicilia, rhodes, chyprus and crete. No on will stand against this ^^

Have fun, but remember to choose wisely your starting faction, and if you dont want to be at war with everyone and fight 10 battles/turn, dont take france, hre, hungary, byzantium, turks, egypt, poland, they are have "central" positions ...

[Hex Khan]

Zerathule...
wise words and noble counsel, quite true, tho i'd like to add to the Scotland/England strategy if i may.
once britain is under one ruler its pretty safe to turn the entire island into cities, for that extra florin for prolonged war. since scotland gets awesome pike men from cities and england still get strong archers from their cities

[Hex Khan]

alternatively you could keep something like caernarvon/york a castle just in case the vikings show up or those nast spanish show up ^_^

[EmperorJulian]

I have experience with Portugal, Milan and Denmark of the ones you mentioned. As the Milanese my biggest difficulty is holding Corsica and Sardinia against Sicilian attacks, as they tend to send big armies after the Islands and I don't have enough men early on to send to their defense. Since after the 1.1 patch Venice and the HRE are more likely to attack Milan/Florence.

Portugal is a nice faction, though I worry about French incursions, if the Spanish are eliminated quickly and Iberia consolidated they can hold out fairly well. While the Danes can put up some pretty heroic resistance if they take Sweden, Norway, and Magdeberg quickly. I was able to tech up to Norse Swordsmen, Dismounted Huscarles and Feudal Knights quite quickly. I never do well economically though, even with Milan. If I field 2 full stacks I'll probably make less than 2000 a turn early on. I'm not certain what you guys do to get massive treasuries as I've never accomplished this. The bad-traits a player can get from having 50,000 in the bank is not anything I've had to worry about. Which is odd since with Hungary I effectively controlled the entire Aegean yet I made little to no net profit off of it. I must be missing something because that never happened to me in RTW. Anyway thanks for the input.

[Hex Khan]

if money 'the evil of men' is a problem in some instances ever thought of altering the Kings Purse to get a bit more pocket money per turn?
that is if you think it'll help

[EmperorJulian]

I've thought about editing a lot of the starting conditions for the factions, including reducing starting money to virtually nothing for everyone. As I'm away from the game for the moment though I'll have to wait on those fixes. I don't get to restart with M2TW until jan 4. Hopefully by then I'll have some good ideas on what to tweak and what factions to try out (or to try again).

[Hex Khan]

have you thought about using lusted's mod?
I use it the ai in it is still damn aggressive, they expand quickly and affectively, but they dont overdo it and its not so obviously suicidal plus the deplomacy works alot better too.
Or maybe the Shaba mod? Havent tried that myself but i'm of the opinion its pretty much the same idea.

[PeteSKTemplar]

All I read surprised me for after new patch I have been convinced I have more money - more funny. I agree that a faction attacking player while passing by rebel towns mean either very good inteligence for later it is easy to take them or just opposite (more probability) for usually they lose army and chance to get some provinces. I have to say too I play medium, medium to have fun, relative challenge. My turns are set one per year. I lost once being Poland for Danes ruined my ports, I had insufficient navy. I expect also playing Turks should be easier too (though I prefer to fight against them) for you may have only cities to get good units.

[EmperorJulian]

the campaigns I've lost usually fall into two types. Either A) Being rushed by 4- factions with top tier armies in every corner of my domain. Or B) not expanding fast enough, thus not having enough money, and thus not being able to fend off massive, lower-quality armies at an earlier time period. I've rather enjoyed my Turkish campaigns, they can become quite the powerhouse, but again even after I take the Levant, Asia Minor and Egypt, I still make only 3000 florins a turn. I wonder if anyone can explain to me, step by step how they get 100,000 florins in the bank, I have enough territory but I never pull down the big cash, even with paved roads, markets, and communal farming. surely I could benefit from some better development strategies.

[zerathule]

Englishmen have good archer militia ?

[Hex Khan]

I play on medium more often than not and have good times with it

[EmperorJulian]

I've also heard good things about Medium campaign difficulty/hard battle difficulty. Bearing in mind that I rarely, if ever, loose a tactical battle in the field, perhaps I'd benefit from a switch to Medium on the campaign map itself. Might be something to try next year. Though do you guys know what effect it has on the Campaign "Smarts" for AI Factions?