AI behaviour and campaign issues

[Resurrection]

version 6.1
RealCombat + RealRecruitment

I played two capmpaigns recently and observed some not so good things:

- AI loves to have really small garrisons in cities. Always I saw large armies standning just outside the city. In my Norwegian campaign I took advantage of this and with my spy and intial army I caputred all of Scotland and Ireland without fighting single battle (aparat from sieges agaisnt 1-2 units). This is incredible stupidness happens at any difficulty level.

- But the most grave consequence of this is rebelling settlements. Settlements of AI rebel simply all the time! For some reason the most likely city to rebel is AI's capital. Very funny, when Scotland loses Edinbourgh and then captues all of England withtout being able to reclaiming it... In my 200 turns lasting French capmaign I simply stopped counting how many times rebeled Sardinia, York and Nurenburg, as these were surely the top three in rebelling :-) Anyway, this is very serious as the AI has hard times even without rebellions at their homelands...

- I never saw Irish to leave Ireland. Wasted faction slot if you ask me... they just repeatedly lose Cork to rebellions and captures it just to lose it in next turns again.

- AI uses desperately small armies. This issue was never resolved by anone, but why it uses always at most equal army to siege a settlement? Only rarely there is full stack doing it. Or why the hell it spreads its armies in small groupes? I does not make any sense to me... Especially early well defended settlements like Milan or Prague are besieged like 15 times before they fall to someone.

- But what I did not get at all, was when I had Genoa as vassal (they had just Genoa and Ajaccio) and yet near Genoa were 7 full stack armies. Where did they get it? How they got money for it? Obviously it had to ruin their economy deep deep into red numbers... No sign of disbanding or using such huge useless armies (full of mercs). It is very common in general that AI has large armies and let them just standing somewhere doing nothing for ages...

- Another never solved issue is the family tree in later generations. It is somewhat better now, but in compare with early family members, those who come later suffers way too many negative traits imho. Education system fortunately compensates it to some extent :-)


But also some good things:

- AI rarely dies. During my 200 turns lasting French campaign nobody dies. Only English extinct at last, because they were almost wiped out by Scotland and had no spare family members at the end.

- The diplomatic behaviour is mostly rational and reliable.

- Education and trait systems seem to be working very well!


And some questions :

- What's the matter with all those pirates? I have never seen any effect of either choice instead of loss of 5000 florins. It also happens very frequently.

- What does the Royal family ends? with "King is that and steward takes place" event means? It happens very very frequently, so either the trigger is borken or all AI's family trees are near extinction all the time...



What do you think guys? Anybody with same experience?

Anyway, SS6.1 is finally a playable version of SS for me (without Byg's traits and supply system).

[Chimander]

Hm, I agree with most of what you said: the AI city management sucks (they always have the taxes on very high), so the cities end up rebelling every other turn. Ireland sits there. And sits. And sits.

But, in my experience, garrisons are only small if you attack by sea. If you approach by land, the AI (somehow) manages to increase the garrisons to a respectable size. I don't know why.

I have also seen many, many, full stack AI armies attacking.

As for your 7 full stacks by Genoa, that's an AI money script. When they're small, they get tons of help supporting armies. When the AI expands, they don't get as much help. This feature renders economic warfare useless, which is something I dislike.

The pirates - I have no idea =/. All the scripted two-choice events are rather lame, if you ask me. It's impossible to figure out the effects. Leave Europa Universalis features in Europa.

[Caesar Clivus]

The pirates and trade fair etc events are ways of stopping the player from accumulating insane amounts of money. I do agree though that their descriptions could be updated to include lists of any benefits and/or penalties involved with each choice. But i'm sure Quark is already working on this

[Resurrection]

The pirates and trade fair etc events are ways of stopping the player from accumulating insane amounts of money. I do agree though that their descriptions could be updated to include lists of any benefits and/or penalties involved with each choice. But i'm sure Quark is already working on this

Well then it's not working at all. As I said, I was playing as France and with simply all of modern France + both flanders (13 settlements) I had around 3 millions nearing the 200th turn and I was wildly spending on bribeing and dispanding enemy armies :-) 5000 florins every other turn is like drop in a sea... Only at the beginning it can be more of importance, but I bet it is linked with the player's treasury as I noticed it happens much more often later in the game and only occasionaly early. So for me it's more pointless and annoying pop-up message unless I see any real consequences of the decision... And same goes for any other tournaments, councils etc. What's the point of all this? No priset and no knight ever got anything useful out of it for me.

[gornison]

I also think Ireland is wasted slot to. And I am not happy with Kwarezm and Cumans. Lets focus on Europa.

[Gorrrrrn]

Depending on which CAI options are current the AI will defend settlements it thinks are under threat.

However this usually means adjacent land, not islands. Unless you script it to garrison regions with sea coasts more heavily, the AI will always be vulnerable to attacks by the human player over long distances by sea, where there is no adjacent land.

I agree it is so annoying when something looks so obvious to the human player, but the AI is doing something like trying to play chess with 30 opponents simultaneously - the more that humans program it (scripting) the longer the turns will take as it has more options to evaluate. The same applies to AI campaign map path-finding.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=82397

already people complain about the end of turn times. If you add more scripting it will (all things being equal) make end turn times longer. You'll also have a major project on your hand testing the scripts and sorting out unintended consequences.

[Kodiac]

SS6.1, Stainless Steel Total Combat 1.2 released (+ hotfix for 6.1), H/VH

I'm finding out it all depends on what settings your playing at as to how the ai plays. At H/VH seems to me the ai plays better then VH/VH and playing at any other setting is just a waste of time I think.
My current late England campaign is of to a good start, with Ireland attacking me at Caernarvon with full stacks and now I got a small Spanish army sitting there where the Irish were.
Resurrection I don't know what your settings are at but, maybe try out a game at H/VH and see if you notice any changes as to how the ai is playing.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Quark]

Resurrection
Quite honestly, you are not looking
Fairs: Chance of increased skill for Merchants
Councils: Chance of increased piety for Leader and makes priest less likely to turn Heretic
Tournaments: Chances of Healthy, Chivalry, and better Princesses

This is if you accept of course.

As to Pirates, yes, thats just to get money off you, it runs on a <10% chance if treasury > 75,000. If that is happeneing to much then there is an issue with the camapign_db, because you should not have that much cash all the time. My game uses my own camapign files, as I like a slower paced game.

If you want you can go back to the old system, where your characters got nerfed by having lots of bad traits like embezzler, so reducing your economy, then fine, but me, I like my characters and hated that approach to economy management.

[aduellist]

I haven't seen that behavior in my current campaign (England - late, M/M).

Ireland almost beat me to Caernaervon, got beat in their siege and I beat them to the follow-up. Ireland attacked Dublin with a nearly full stack shortly thereafter. I destroyed that army and figured they were toast then (didn't take their settlements because the Pope told me not to). However, a wandering spy discovered that the Irish had taken Rennes from the French and were doing a good job of holding on to it. I took Galway from the Irish a couple of turns after Ireland violated the ceasefire, using the "insta-assault" gambit to get it before the Pope told me to desist again. They still had an almost full stack that would have arrived as reinforcements if I had waited the turn to build ladders, towers and rams. They're currently keeping a full stack between me and Cork, but the ceasefire is holding and they're sending a dribble of troops to France.

The Scots attacked York with a full stack the same turn the Irish hit Dublin. They have hit it with another four full-stack attacks in the intervening 30 turns or so (including William Wallace and crew). The only "failing" in the AI is that they don't "insta-assault" even when they have siege artillery in the army. Had they done so, they would have handily overwhelmed York long since. I've managed to get up reinforcements in the intervening turn to beat them back. The Scots also took Bruges, which I subsequently took from them in an "insta-assault". They had a full stack adjacent to the city (which was garrisoned with a half stack) and the assault was a near-run thing. They also sailed across the North Sea and took Norway's capital (not even gonna try to spell it).

The only real wackiness I've seen was two small (3 to 4 units) Spanish stacks land to besiege Exeter.

Yes, the garrisons are sometimes too small. The Portuguese lost their capital to rebellion, which was subsequently taken by the Moors and has since been reclaimed by the Portuguese. One can work around that by increasing the happiness bonii for walls.

I must be doing something wrong, because I've never had millions of florins on hand as some have reported in their games. Then again, that may be because I get somewhat bored with a campaign after 150 turns or so and move on to another faction. Still, at about 60 turns in, I have to cease building and recruiting for a couple of turns to afford the huge wall upgrades (12,000 florins).

[Chimander]

Wow, thanks for clarifying, Quark. This makes me like those features a lot more, especially the pirate one - I've always hated the bad traits that accumulate when you're rich.