Kingdoms: the AI doesn't build agents

[DrJambo]

Other than the agent pieces the AI starts with, they won't build any other agents for the duration of the campaign. This has been confirmed by a few dummy runs through the Britannia campaign (haven't tested the others yet). If anyone has any bright ideas as to how to make the AI build merchants, diplomats, assassins and the like, then please post here.



Thanks

[Lusted]

Well i've certainly seen the ai recruit agents in the Crusades campaign, i had to have quite a few assassins as Jerusalem to deal with the enemies never ending supply of thier own and imans.

[mel26]

Maybe raising the difficulty settings might help in terms of training non combat units for the AI. I remember in MTW2, when I put the difficulty in the campaign to VH, my low level generals are dying left and right. The Moors kept sending in thier priests and assasins at my cities and castles.

[Schwertmeister]

Well i've certainly seen the ai recruit agents in the Crusades campaign, i had to have quite a few assassins as Jerusalem to deal with the enemies never ending supply of thier own and imans.

Affirmative. But did the enemy assassins ever try to kill any of your characters? For my campaign, they did not. They were not very aggressive, though the assassins seem to have a much better hit-chance esp. for religious units (which I think is great). So killed their Imams, sent over my priests, and even when the enemy had some assassins in the field, it seemd to me he didn't try to use them very effectively. I'm almost thru the crusader-campaign, I can only recall one single assassinaion-attempt.

[DrJambo]

Well i've certainly seen the ai recruit agents in the Crusades campaign, i had to have quite a few assassins as Jerusalem to deal with the enemies never ending supply of thier own and imans.

How do you know they're recruited agents? They could just be the agents they start the campaign with. For example, as Ireland, you start with 2 assassins.

I've now run through 3 Britannia campaigns just clicking the turns by as an automated Norway. No agents (spies, assassins, diplomats or merchants) have been created by the automated function, and none of the the other AI factions have recruited any agents either. The starting agents have just lived until they've died of old age and that's it.

I've no idea about the other campaigns, or priests for that matter since there are no religious agents in the Britannia campaign.

[Kambe]

hm...I`m certain that I have seen English and Welsh spies near Stirling, but I have`t seen any merchants other than Norwegian and Scotish.

[DrJambo]

Bingo - commenting out the recruit priority entries in the export_descr_units text file gets the the AI factions building merchants again. Within 50 turns both Ireland and Scotland had built at least 2 new merchants, something they had not done before in a Britannia campaign.

Sad. While the new build priority feature seems good for the military side of things, it seems rather goosed for the agents.

[nameless]

I dunno there are quite a bit of merchants running around in my teutonic campaign and I know that not many start out with merchants. There was also an HRE assassin running around and then the priests of course.

[Chlodwig I.]

yeah it feels there are less assassins on the field,

but honestly its good that way, I remember the OC when 9 Assassins where standing around your cities trying to kill your General
and you had to create assassins to kill the assassins and that made my Emperor loosing his chivalry

[Jonni_g_n]

gotta disagree there guys, just playing brittania as welsh. Shrewsbury area was full of english spies (partly because barons revolt started just to south). So far i had a prince killed due to spies and many family members are developing paranoid traits, every turn there is at least 2 to kill right on the welsh marches.

However in my game Norway and scotland have done nothing- really, they are at war but not invading one another, wallace came and didnt even invade england! norway and england have just amassed loads (i mean Loads!) of ships around isle of man and stopped there

[Lusted]

How do you know they're recruited agents? They could just be the agents they start the campaign with. For example, as Ireland, you start with 2 assassins.

I've now run through 3 Britannia campaigns just clicking the turns by as an automated Norway. No agents (spies, assassins, diplomats or merchants) have been created by the automated function, and none of the the other AI factions have recruited any agents either. The starting agents have just lived until they've died of old age and that's it.

Because i killed off all their starting agents, and they were sending a steady stream of them at me so yes they were recruiting new ones.

[CamelKing]

Almost finished the Brittania Campaign on vh/vh as England. Must say the campaign is much harder than I anticipated which is good but that does not seem to be because the AI has improved but the other factions seem to produce endless stacks! Still - early days though . . .

I really am happy to be beaten by the AI on occasion but I have really not seen much in the way of a real improvement.

It is fantastic using these new units with great backdrops etc,, but I do hope CA put much more effort into these aspects rather than fancy graphics.

Does anyone think too much attention is being placed on Multiplayer ?? I wonder what percentage of Total War players play Multiplayer ??

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I have seen Aztec assassins in America, an unit they don't have at the start of the campaign.

[DrJambo]

Lusted et al, this is with specific reference to the Britannia campaign and merchants. Alas, the title of this thread is a bit misleading and I should have made it more specific to merchants and possibly the Britannia campaign.

Anyway, have you played the Britannia campaign? If so, has the AI been building new merchants and challenging your merchants? My tests showed that the AI never recruited new merchants other than those they started with. I have a potential modding solution to try (thanks to Unspoken Knight), which if it works, should increase the AI's recruitment priority for merchants (file is descr_cultures.txt). If successful, I'll post the solution here for those that are interested.

Regards

[Каие]

They do build agents such as Imams priests, merchants but they just dont spam them anymore like in M2TW. Since the maps are smaller they dont need ten diplomats to walk th earth, they only need two or one.

[DrJambo]

They should always train the maximum number of merchants possible, particularly when a merchant in the Britannia campaign can earn anywhere from 100 to 400 florins per turn.

[Dagda]

They should always train the maximum number of merchants possible, particularly when a merchant in the Britannia campaign can earn anywhere from 100 to 400 florins per turn.

Protip:

Ally yourself with the Welsh and send a merchant to their goldmine. My Scottish lvl 6 merchant is pulling in 1750 gold per turn.

[Каие]

You need merchants in the crusade campaign as near the city of Alia far south there are two gold mines. Another gold mine near Kerak and one near damascus. Overall there is a lot of riches to be won if you use merchants effectively.

Especially if you use the merchant glitch/exploit/bug/technique/genius.

[DrJambo]

Ok, I was advised that there may be a way to alter the AI's recruitment priority for agent units (thanks to Unknown Knight for the tip). I was suggested that this can be done in the descr_cultures.txt file under the appropriate faction's culture. For example, in the Britannia campaign each faction falls under the "northern_european" culture. Here's the specific line for merchant:

merchant		merchant.tga		merchant_info.tga		merchant.tga	550	1	1

Apparently, adding a third number after the 1 will alter the recruitment priority for the AI. So this is what I did:

merchant		merchant.tga		merchant_info.tga		merchant.tga	550	1	1	100

Now, for the first time in the Britannia campaign I've seen Ireland create merchants, as I have seen other AI factions now recruit new merchants. The AI is by no means prolific and it's quite hard to test, but I did see an improvement. There may also be a hardcoded limit, as a value of 500 seemed to have no noteworthy effect whatsoever. My guess so far is 100 is the limit.

Regards.