AI faction expansion in your campaigns?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

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]

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]

hit the ~ key, then type in
toggle_fow

voila!

[LorDBulA]

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

[Solar]

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]

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]

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^_^]

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. :original:

[Chuffy]

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^_^]

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]

Originally Posted by mike^_^

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^_^]

data\world\maps\base

[Chuffy]

Originally Posted by mike^_^

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]

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

[Cheexsta]

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]

Originally Posted by Chuffy

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]

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

[eadingas]

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]

Originally Posted by A$$A$$IN

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]

Originally Posted by eadingas

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.