AI faction expansion in your campaigns?

Teleklos Archelaou · Dec 29, 2005

Not much has been said about this. We change builds so often internally up to the open beta, that very few long campaigns were run. I know I would (and I think most all members) love to see some screenshots of how the AI controlled factions expanded over the years in your campaigns. If you've run some for 20+ years, how about posting some shots and your thoughts?

AI expansion seems to be a lot more slow in the open beta with some changes made recently in regards to rebel family members, troop strength, and city development. So let us know how it's gone and what you think about it! Thanks!

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Here are some examples from older campaigns (on older wacky builds) from the internal boards. Basically just to show different ways you could post these things:

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invictus · Dec 29, 2005

Psssst, iv been going 10 years or so, how do i remove the fog of war so you can see all the ai? I am casse, and have all england and ireland so yay

and my leader 10's on everything, though his 10 star comes and goes -Leon
Edit

Teleklos Archelaou · Dec 29, 2005

hit the ~ key, then type in
toggle_fow

voila!

LorDBulA · Dec 29, 2005

Lol you captured whole britain and irland in 10 years?
On what difficulty level are you playing?

Solar · Dec 29, 2005

I haven't gone very far yet, will post when/if I do. But looking at the screenshots, it seems the AI will quickly occupy the saharah, but not arabia... is that intended, or is it just one of those things that can't be helped? And what's that pink faction (parthia?) doing in southern arabia??? If it's really parthia, I imagine it would be the player's faction... Or does the AI really expand to faraway places like that?

Teleklos Archelaou · Dec 29, 2005

Pay no attention to those first ones. We were trying to get faction_creator down right and it affects who they rebel too. This issue is solved. The ones in my first post are just examples - weird ones, but very old ones too.

invictus · Dec 29, 2005

Im on vh/vh im currently invaded the denmark provience, the adjacent 1, and some other 1 east of germania, my faction leader still and is 10 on everything, no lie everything stars, management, and influence, he is the leader you start the game with as casse and he is simply amazing.

mike^_^ · Dec 29, 2005

campaigns going good so far, only thing I'm a little disgruntled with is, I'd like to see (if possible) something done to keep factions out of the sahara and arabia. also something that seems to be a recurring problem in most mods, I'd like to see (if possible) something done to "steer" the parthians south towards the middle east, as it is now, they just love to send their men north into the comparitivly worhtless steppe regions.

I still haven't had a faction defeated, it's great, overall I find the campaign extremely enjoyable and balanced.

riginal:

Chuffy · Dec 30, 2005

This is the problem with including all those huge desert provinces, the AI loves to go and capture them.

I had the same problem in RTR, I downloaded a gameplay fix that made the saharan and Arabian provinces uncapturable and the steppe provinces north of Parthia and Baktria uncapturable.

Carthage decided to hold onto Sicily and expand in Iberia, the Pollies and Sellies fought numerous huge wars around Syria and Parthia and Baktria expanded south and slowly ate away at the Seleucids eastern provinces. It improved the game immensely.

mike^_^ · Dec 30, 2005

yes I saw that little mod for RTR too, never got around to playing with it though. maybe EB can put something similar in place?

Chuffy · Dec 30, 2005

mike^_^ said:
yes I saw that little mod for RTR too, never got around to playing with it though. maybe EB can put something similar in place?

Well it's quite easy to mod yourself, you just need to go into the maps ground types file and draw low mountains (or dense forest) around the cities you want to be uncapturable. However it's probably not a good idea to do it in the beta as it's not exactly stable and could cause some problems here and there (plus I have no idea how to replicate the colours in the ground types file).

I've just checked it....where are the map_regions, map_roughness and map_groundtypes files for EB!?

mike^_^ · Dec 30, 2005

data\world\maps\base

Chuffy · Dec 30, 2005

mike^_^ said:
data\world\maps\base

....no. If I'm talking about changing the map_groundtypes file I would obviously know where it is located.

The problem here is that in the base file it's all vanilla maps, no EB maps.

LorDBulA · Dec 30, 2005

try patch_1.pak. Basicly evrything in EB that could be packed is packed.

Cheexsta · Dec 30, 2005

data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign is the correct location of these files. Anything in a campaign folder is used in preference by the exe over the base folder.

Epistolary Richard · Dec 30, 2005

Chuffy said:
This is the problem with including all those huge desert provinces, the AI loves to go and capture them.

I had the same problem in RTR, I downloaded a gameplay fix that made the saharan and Arabian provinces uncapturable and the steppe provinces north of Parthia and Baktria uncapturable.

Carthage decided to hold onto Sicily and expand in Iberia, the Pollies and Sellies fought numerous huge wars around Syria and Parthia and Baktria expanded south and slowly ate away at the Seleucids eastern provinces. It improved the game immensely.

All sounds most interesting - if one of you guys decides to give it a go, do let us know how it gets on.

A$$A$$IN · Jan 1, 2006

Heres mine from playing as bactria in 233bc. Everyone is expanding and no faction has been eliminated yet.

eadingas · Jan 3, 2006

The problem with deserts being "captured" is that you're using toggle_fow, which is not really the intended way to play, and so you see the desert provinces as "entirely captured" - all of Sahara is white, all of Arabia is yellow etc.
If you switch the fog of war back on, and send your diplomat/spy there, you'll see that only small parts of the desert are accessible. Only a northernmost part of Sahara, with a border fort as its 'capital' can be accessed by units, for example. The rest, the "deep desert", is as inaccessable as it should be.
With limits CA has put on number of provinces it simply seemed a lot of waste to have an "unreachable" province this big. Instead, we used some smart tricks to have most of it unreachable, but the province itself can still be used. It only "looks" wrong when you turn off the fog of war.

The White Knight · Jan 5, 2006

A$$A$$IN said:
Heres mine from playing as bactria in 233bc. Everyone is expanding and no faction has been eliminated yet

Lol, I wonder how Macedon is feeling there. :laughing:

Chuffy · Jan 6, 2006

eadingas said:
The problem with deserts being "captured" is that you're using toggle_fow, which is not really the intended way to play, and so you see the desert provinces as "entirely captured" - all of Sahara is white, all of Arabia is yellow etc.
If you switch the fog of war back on, and send your diplomat/spy there, you'll see that only small parts of the desert are accessible. Only a northernmost part of Sahara, with a border fort as its 'capital' can be accessed by units, for example. The rest, the "deep desert", is as inaccessable as it should be.
With limits CA has put on number of provinces it simply seemed a lot of waste to have an "unreachable" province this big. Instead, we used some smart tricks to have most of it unreachable, but the province itself can still be used. It only "looks" wrong when you turn off the fog of war.

Thats not the point, the point is the Ptolemaioi will go off and conquer african and arabian desert provinces instead of going after something worthwhile....i.e. Syria/Levantine coast. In RTR I downloaded a gameplay fix (mentioned above) that made the desert provinces uncapturable and guess what! The Pollies actually fought for Syria instead of marching into the desert.

Teleklos Archelaou · Jan 6, 2006

No one can stop the AI from automatically going after rebel cities first though. Everyone has this issue. What does it matter if they send an army to capture a worthless city in an oasis? Let them have it and then the real fight will take place elsewhere. They can't go in and guard the other parts of the desert.

QwertyMIDX · Jan 6, 2006

The point is that they only control the a few peices of the edges of those provinces, which were important trade nodes and well worth conquering (it happened quite a bit in fact).

eadingas · Jan 9, 2006

Thats not the point, the point is the Ptolemaioi will go off and conquer african and arabian desert provinces instead of going after something worthwhile....i.e. Syria/Levantine coast.

The Arabian provinces are not "worthless". Most of them are rich, plentiful and well worth taking. Seleucids historically tried to take them, and even Rome has sent some legionnaries there. Sahara and Arabian Desert are just one province each, easy to capture, so there should be no efffect on gameplay from that. I think it takes about two turns to capture Sahara and move on. It's not really THAT much of a problem.
We could restrict the map to only the provinces we deem "worthwhile" of capturing by playable factions. Or we could start the map with every province owned by some faction, so that they attack each other instead of going for the "worthless" provinces.
This would make the map about half the size of what it is now, and quarter as much fun.

Aristocrat · Jan 9, 2006

I don't have a screenshot (at "work" heheh), but in my game as Rome (in which the west is pretty much my plaything....or was until my protectorates got into wars a few turns ago) the Getai are expanding rapidly, Epeiros does little (took Athens, lost it, took a macedonian island and then stoppped) the Greeks simply cannot expand now matter how hard they try, Makedon marched east conquering to Byzantium, The Yuezhi are struggling tos survive, thanks to Baktria who grow steadily and threaten the Selukids, whose war with the Ptolemai has gone on for 50 years with not one province changing hands (except those central selukid ones that rebel).
The Sauromate slowly build their steppe kingdom.

In the west things are controlled by me pretty much, the casse have taken Britain and tried to invade Gaul once (but were eventually repelled by the tribes), the gallic civil war finally broke out (after I had them locked in as protectorates for years....stupid Casse). The Sweboz expand very slowly. The Iberians are defeated (I had to take Spain before Carthage (who was another protectorate) did.
Carthage as taken the west african provinces, and is now my enemy. (I would have their capital but get a CTD after taking the city....Got to experiment around a bit, probaly due to the amount of Carth armies that I destroy at once (3 full stacks).

Marcus Scaurus · Jan 10, 2006

Pompey the Great said:
the Getai are expanding rapidly

Had the same in both EB and RTR (Thrace), though they only managed to expand north. The barbarian troops are no match for the superb Epirian/Macedonian cavalry and phalanx.

Teleklos Archelaou · Jan 10, 2006

Maybe when they get some more of their units in subsequent builds they can occasionally find a way south. I'd like to see a little variation there.

azek · Jan 10, 2006

I'm playing with carthage and i'm war against egypt and allied with seleucids (i dont remember those EB names). I havent had any CTD, so that is good. I will conquer all africa provinces, because i have one full army near Kyrene. Should i destroy ibearians, before they attack against me?

Cheexsta · Jan 10, 2006

Interesting that Kart-Hadast has such a high population. I noticed that in my Romani campaign, too, and almost freaked at the prospect of trying to keep unrest down there...

Aristocrat · Jan 10, 2006

Just exterminate the population, if your afraid of bad traits (sleeping poorly) just use a captain and not a family member.
Funny how my general exterminated his way through Carthaginian spain, then Carthage then when he exterminated the new capital he finally felt a little troubled.

Arman616 · Jan 12, 2006

Enslave instead.

And yea, parthia needs to expand southwards.

AI faction expansion in your campaigns?

AI faction expansion in your campaigns?

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