XCAI: Campaign AI feedback thread

[Cyber Centurion]

I upvoted the collection and the single items, I think you deserve it! Ok then, I'll monitor if that sudden drop down of food happens again! Perhaps it was also due to that horde mod that was not working well... I removed it now. Thanks again!

[xeryx]

Yeah that mod...delete it completely, I am working on something similar that is mod friendly. Appreciate it!

[davewolf101]

COMPLAIN COMPLAIN COMPLAIN!!

People always complain. The only way to avoid it is to not do anything. But then the wifey will complain/nag even more...

There might have been a slight misunderstanding. It is a great mod (collection). Still love it. My complaints weren't about the difficulty in general, but the Ostrogoth situation. As a counterexample, I've been playing the Vandals. Even on legendary it's been so easy, it's borderline boring. The only reason why I'm still playing that: I anticipate a major showdown with the other barbarian kingdoms.

To be more specific, the Alamans were easily defeated. Then I burned and razed my way through Gaul and Spain, took Africa and Italy. I've been at war with both Roman parties for most of the game and, you know what, they didn't attack me at all. Not even once!

In contrast when playing the Ostrogoths the Romans are always breathing down my neck, waiting for any sign of weakness. And the Huns, following me to the ends of the world, makes no sense to me. They came for the riches, right? But they rather keep raiding the African desert than to loot wealthy Roman cities. It's like they were zombies who only eat Ostrogoth brains...

Again, this isn't about the difficulty, but the AI's strange obsession with the Ostrogoths, rendering them not "challenging", but almost unplayable, with both the Romans and the Huns turning all their attention on them. The only way I can even imagine is to head North and wipe out the Huns first. Not an easy task either...

[davewolf101]

Just forgot to mention: Both campaigns, the Ostrogoth and the Vandal, were with the same mods, on the same diffifulty level. But the Vandals feel like 2, not just one, diffulty levels easier than the Ostrogoths.

[xeryx]

Yeah, the above stuff was just kidding around, there was no misunderstanding. I can look at some things to see if I can find the root of the problem, Please have patience, as I do not have as much time as before. I am having to spend a lot of time studying right now. I have done some adjustments to difficulties over the past couple of days, so that may ease some of the difficulty in dealing with them. There maybe issues with the starting relationships or predjudices of the game, which I have not touched at all, and probably wont. Personalities, can also make a difference, so that kind of information is important. Maybe I can try a short game this weekend and see, if I have the time. I appreciate your report, and any details of relationships you can give me are much appreciated.

I also want to make a distinction between my diplomacy and vanilla, a faction can dislike you greatly in XDAI, it does not mean there will be instant war.

The Romans have had tonnes of issues from day one. The biggest issue with them is the AI building priorities, it is not good at all. Unfortunately, it is just as big of a problem as diplomacy was, which will require a lot of time to correct. One of their biggest issue is being able to support enough armies to defend themselves. I am currently trying to get the AI to fix it's issues in this area because it is just as important as food. Getting the AI to work properly in all situations will never happen, because I do not have access to the EXE code. I also do not have access to the same log files that I had with MED2.

I also was not planning on even touching starting relationships or starting positions stuff because that is very low on my priority list right now. I just wanted to let you know where I am at currently.

What were your imperium levels? For the two factions?

The AI Aggressiveness is more based on personalities and prejudices than difficulty level, but difficulty level leads to either more or less aggressive personalities.

[xeryx]

I finished the new food system for the grand campaign, and also fixed the tax system that I had set too low initially, now it reads correctly. I started the building for the other campaigns, but I won't finish them this weekend. Time to play and test them out thoroughly first, come join me!

[xeryx]

I am taking a break from some building construction stuff.

I have made a beta module for the Occupation decisions for the AI. Even though the values are considered unknown, they have similarities to another table, so I am gonna give it a shot at fixing this issue once and for all. I will need to do some testing, and hopefully I will have some success, wish me luck.

[davewolf101]

The WRE seems to care much more about the Northern border than Spain or Africa. Whenever I lead "my people" down South, the Romans don't bother me much. (Unless it's the Ostrogoths...) But conquering Gaul, e.g. as the Franks, is much more challenging IMO. The WRE does pay attention to that part of the woods.

[xeryx]

See here is the problem with the WRE and ERE, They are so big and have just a million problems to overcome, I could put out a huge laundry list of all the issues with how poorly things have been executed in this game. But that would get us no where, instead I just fight one battle at a time by fixing one issue at a time. It really wont' be until the end of this mod that the Romans will work correctly. See I have to make a balance because what may work for the WRE and ERE for setting will mess up smaller factions. Overall, it will be awhile before I fix all the issues in the game, just so we are clear on that. Remember the AI personality matters a lot, on how it will act. Not all personalities work well for the Romans, but I can't change that right now, that will be later.

Them defending a threatened border with their resources is what they should be doing.

Thank you for the feedback.

[xeryx]

Nevermind

[davewolf101]

Playing as the Romans the hordes are sometimes too easy to kill IMO. Let's say after a siege battle a horde is seriously weakened (<50% strength), they rarely replenish. They just keep raiding. If one has an army nearby, they're easy prey at that point. As I see it, they should rather do everything they can to get their strength up again.

[xeryx]

Thanks for the observation, I can have them retreat back and replenish more. I am working on a module that will help hordes dramatically!! My goal is to hopefully get them to be self sufficient without stupid bonuses like the "WAR Ferver", and I have made significant strides this last week.

Those values were on the low side, I will update the campaign AI shortly. Just make sure that we have not lost aggressiveness too much. It is always tricky to find the sweet spot!

[davewolf101]

Excellent! They do need the help. Because right it's not really hard to keep the Empire together. Let me elaborate a little and apologize in advance if some of the remarks should go in another thread.

ERE: Almost boringly easy. The Visigoths are more annoying than challenging at first. The Huns never attacked me, or the Sassanids. More precisely I attacked them before they were ready to pounce. After a decade or so the ERE had more money than I could spend, especially due to interest. The only serious "problem" was the army limit.

WRE. More intersting, but not really challenging either. The biggest issue at first is the garrison mod, that is the slow growth of the initial garrisons. Once they's up, even a minor settlement can, while unable to survive, still inflict serious damage on a barbarian army. Due to the aforementioned unwillingness of the hordes to replenish they then can be killed pretty fast. Also the hordes don't know what to do with victories. Sacking a town while losing a lot of men hurts them more than the Romans. I'd rather fear them liberate or raze settlements. But they rarely do that.
Just another thing: army composition. Due to the crappy early Roman cavalry I went infantry heavy with Palatinas, some spears plus bows/crossbows and just 2 light melee cavalry. What I encountered a lot were armies with loads of skirmishers. Of course the Romans can just go Testudo and sit out the rain of missiles. Barbarian armies also have too many cheap infantry (like Levies). They might not have the money or buildings for better inf., but they just can't compete this way. What would be much more difficult to deal with IMO, was a lot of cavalry - especially for the Alans or Vandals with their great roster - plus, let's say, axe infantry. That could cut even through Roman infantry.
My point is, I found it rather easy to win 1-2 engagements. As it is hordes need to outnumber the Romans 3-1 or more to win. That also means not dividing the hordes. Something that got the Ostrogoths killed very fast in my game.

And just FYI I didn't dare to play any higher level than "normal" until a few weeks ago. Then I watched a few good videos and sort of got the hang of it. Just saying I'm definitely not an expert. So if I can survive as the WRE, even on legendary, then it's not that hard. To be clear, this is just an observation of the faction-specific difficulty levels, no criticism at all. If the hordes could survive longer and had better armies then the West would still be a challenge I guess.

[xeryx]

Sure Dave, getting the right balance of aggressiveness is going to take awhile, but I do believe I have narrowed down the 2 biggest issues in the game.

#1 Roman construction does not seem to include food and most pre-existing buildings do not include a food building.

#2 The AI personalities need lots of work to work well for certain types of factions. AI personalities controls budget, aggressiveness, tech tree, and construction cues and more.

I think once these things get corrected, then we will see a completely different game. One thing that greatly disturbs me though, is that some of those items above are broken in certain circumstances. I have finally been able to play a game to turn 140 and only the Huns are really up to the challenge of fighting me. The Romans (are aggressive expansionist) are being a doormat and have almost zero armies, that I can see, plus they are still starving. Because the Romans don't build buildings hardly ever. Contrary to them the Barbarians build just fine. I do think the Imperium is still affecting the AI decisions too much with current settings, as I rarely get back stabbed after early game. Overall though the game is playing much better than before, so we are making progress.

I will be releasing the occupation module this week, and it is a pretty radical departure from the original, that supposedly didn't work. Well it works just fine and I have figured out the important parts. I think once I have time to test the personalities, which will take awhile, then I can determine the best ones for the different types of large factions. For example, I already know that the defensive personalities seem to work well for the Romans, but aggressive doesn't. The random pool just does not work very well for certain factions IMHO. I honestly, cannot understand how this game ever got above 7 stars ratings, it's systems are pretty broken overall, and it never should have made it out of Q&A in this state.

So to sum it up, I think some of the construction paths are broken, or improper for certain factions. There are too many personalities for the AI to be a "FIT ALL" and there are some issues with the AI being able to "fix" it's settlements.

You have good points for sure, but you have to look more at the BIG PICTURE!!

[davewolf101]

You have good points for sure, but you have to look more at the BIG PICTURE!!

I might, if I had the insight...

[xeryx]

OK, So when you play you games observe what the situation is. For example you said that there were too many light units. So, you look for the root cause of why are they producing only light infantry etc. If the faction only has one city for example, it is probably because that is all they can build or afford at the moment. Especially, if they are at war and they may have been raided a few times for an example.

Contrary, if it were the Romans and lets say they were only building one type of unit. That could be related to the fact that they are not constructing the proper buildings because they have plenty of money. So, then you have to dig deeper and with Rome it is hard to dig deeper because they are big. Then you have to continue to observe what the AI does. For instance, I am on turn 120 and yet I have seen very few Western Roman Armies to resist me. So, now I have to find out why? Are they occupied with another war elsewhere? Are they just not building units because they are not at war and building their economy? Sometimes, I will use the spy cheat mod that opens up the whole map to see what the AI is doing on the map. You have to save first before using it because you do not want to play with that mod active for more than a turn. The AI will also get the same FOW lift and will know what is going on everywhere, and you will get extreme slowdowns of the game turns, and it can crash the game. That tool, can help you see the "Big Picture" because you can see what is going on with settlements and armies.

[davewolf101]

So... here's the Alans, turn 78:



Started 3 days ago. That's current enough, right?

The AI is definitely more aggressive, or rather: less passive. If that was the intention, then job well done! They do hunt you down, even through neutral territory. So if they got the numbers and you are their only enemy, you're pretty much screwed. As one should be...

But the AI still has a particular weakness: fighting at multiple fronts. No criticism intended. That is a difficult thing, even for a smart human player, let alone an "AI".

Therefore the strategy was to wait until they were distracted enough. It took more than 30 turns until I had an opening! Until then the ERE always had at least one stack at Macedonia - This time I went westward. - ready to strike. So I always kept my two stacks together and didn't risk any siege battles, just assaulted minor settlements.

But suddenly those armies were gone. They just abandoned that front. Apparently the AI saw my hordes as the lesser evil, while fighting the Sassanides. A serious miscalculation as it turned out... Somewhat strangely they never returned. The first counter attack ever only occured when I was already at Anatolia.

Taking the rest of the Empire shouldn't be too hard. By now I'm already stronger, both in terms of economy and military. Also, they still have two fronts to deal with. I don't.

Something odd I'd like to share, although likely totally unrelated to your mods:



I have really good relations witht he ERE. Taking almost half their empire only generated -15 in total. LOL

[xeryx]

on the -15, how long had it been since your military actions? Also they are are bout the best you can have in forgiveness in a personality.

Keep up the good work, and thanks for letting me know about the bug, I really don't know how the changes I made could have affected a save game.

[davewolf101]

on the -15, how long had it been since your military actions?

Don't remember exactly. (That's already ancient history to me. Cheap pun intended...) But I just conquered another city of theirs during the last 1-3 turns.

[xeryx]

OH I can't wait for you to try my new version this weekend, and I will reccommend starting a new game..it will be worth it.