AI Aztec behaviour

[Frunk]

I saw the Aztec Thread and the AI Discussion Thread, but wasn't sure if this fitted into either so I made it its own (just merge it if need be I suppose ).

My question is in relation to both how the AI-controlled Aztecs behave in relation to Europe, and Europeans in relation to the New World. How common (if at all) is it for the AI to sail across the Atlantic to the New World, and on the other hand, the Aztecs to hire Mercenary Cogs and sail to Europe?

Cheers, Reece.

[pwf224]

So far I'm 100 turns into my first campaign with the new Aztecs feature, and I have yet to see them expand to North America, Brazil, or Europe. The Europeans so far seem to be too busy fighting amongst each other to worry about crossing the Atlantic. Basically what I am trying to say is that 100 turns into my campaign, and neither group has come into contact yet.

[Ajax_the_lesser]

Yes, the AI Aztec will just build up armies but never travel anywhere. Though I did manage to make them invade Cuba, and N. America by editing some file that contained "prefer naval invasions" = yes.

[Dave Scarface]

I saw the Aztec Thread and the AI Discussion Thread, but wasn't sure if this fitted into either so I made it its own (just merge it if need be I suppose ).

My question is in relation to both how the AI-controlled Aztecs behave in relation to Europe, and Europeans in relation to the New World. How common (if at all) is it for the AI to sail across the Atlantic to the New World, and on the other hand, the Aztecs to hire Mercenary Cogs and sail to Europe?

Hi Reece,

This is a good question, and one which I can give you an answer for. First of all the CAI is not at fault here. It would not really make any difference what AI you used with this mod. The problem is a pathfinding one which I cannot really fix without big map changes. The new world is just too far away from europe and north africa for there to be any chance for the AI to ever go their. To explain to you a little about map pathfinding, each region centre must be within 50 tiles of the next region centre. The distance between say Portugal and Brazil is far greater than that so this causes problems for the AI. Even if I was to go back and use the small vanilla map for my mod the AI factions would still not be able to find america.

The only possible solution to this problem is to move the America's much closer to europe on the map. So that you could sail your men from say France to America in one turn. These continents would all have to be close enough for this to work however. But even then there would be no guarantee that any european faction would go over to america. I have never heard of the AI going to america in any mod. DLV mod tried many different things to make the AI go to america. But in the end they decided to script some invasions in instead. So that at a certain date a french army would spawn in north america, and english, and spanish elsewhere. I would like to hear your opinions on what you think I should do?

Yes, the AI Aztec will just build up armies but never travel anywhere. Though I did manage to make them invade Cuba, and N. America by editing some file that contained "prefer naval invasions" = yes.

Thanks, I have give you rep you for this suggestion Yes I did not set Aztecs to prefer naval invasions. This will help them go to north america and cuba. But I would be very surprised if you ever saw them go to europe. I know for a fact though that europeans will never set sail to america.

Dave

[Soul Firez]

is there no way to say include some small islands leading to the americas with the ai set to a high priority of capturing these and in such sort of leading them to the americas i only ask as it would be cool to see them invade the place but i guess your region count is already maxed at 198 or 199 what ever the max is?? if not the scripted appearance of those nations if not human controlled doesnt sound like a bad idea ?? just you have made the americas more a part of the game be nice to see it become fully intergrated i guess

[Dave Scarface]

is there no way to say include some small islands leading to the americas with the ai set to a high priority of capturing these and in such sort of leading them to the americas i only ask as it would be cool to see them invade the place but i guess your region count is already maxed at 198 or 199 what ever the max is?? if not the scripted appearance of those nations if not human controlled doesnt sound like a bad idea ?? just you have made the americas more a part of the game be nice to see it become fully intergrated i guess

As I was saying earlier these kind of suggestions have already been explored in DLV. One thing they tried was putting in some of Greenland half way between the British isles and America's. And the AI did not respond to the changes. Its like trying to get France to do a naval invasion against England, its a nightmare. The AI will just not cross the ocean. I am doubtful whether there is much we can do about this.

Dave

[pwf224]

Setting the Aztecs to prefer naval invasions would work for getting them to spread around to North America and Cuba, maybe even Brazil, but I do not think that they will take the time to cross the Atlantic. I think if we take Dave's suggestion and move the Americas a little closer, and have the Aztecs prefer naval invasions, we may see more cross-Atlantic encounters.

[MiiKLL]

Hello All....

I have been playing KGCM 4.1 (also has XAI with personal changes as well) with the Aztecs having "prefer_naval_invasions" = yes. While I have yet to see the Aztecs do a naval invasion of Europe, they are sending ships over and blockading western european ports with a few ventures into the Med. I am waiting to see if the New World discovered event (not sure of its exact name) will change the aztecs invasions plans. By the way they have taken the 2 N. American and the 1 S. American settlements.

Another thing that needs to be taken into account is that as more factions are changed from "prefer_naval_invasions" = no to yes. The AI seems to start to spam ships. I have done some things that seem to help keep this spam in check.

[MiiKLL]

Hello Gentlemen....

Here are two pictures from test hotseat campaigns I have been running....

The first one 0015 you see a weak Aztec fleet outside of Caen. This campaign is set on VH/VH hotseat turn number 36...I am the Aztecs with the aztecs under AI control.

The second one 0017 you see a weak Aztec fleet actually blockading a Spanish port on turn 20. This campaign I am turtling as the Teutonic Order set to AI control...game settings of H/VH. Things of note in this one...the Aztecs blockaded the Spanish port prior to taking any rebel settlements... Norway, Portugal and Turks have been more active early game trying to take territory.

While I have seen the Aztecs move fleets eastward in numerous test campaigns....I have yet to find a way around the pathfinding issue of distance...to actually entice one of those fleets to carry an invasion army with it....

[Userpro]

We at RAE have managed such a eastward shifting of the america continents! But you all should not wait for wonders, after doing this whole work. Coz behind that, there is a full complexity of pathfinding factors that must to be taken into account.
I've talked about that with Dave and we (he) is really not sure if it worth to make so much work, without any guarantee of success.

And if he decide to cut the west side of the map, there is another whole bunch of work to do. He must repositioning all units, resources and other things related to the old map coordinates! And thats more than only much, much work!

[Frunk]

Just wondering Userprobe, did you use any back-up methods (not to talk myself up, but like the ones I suggested ) to encourage the interaction of America and Europe?

It just seems to me that the Aztecs are a waste of potential - especially if the Human doesn't bother with them either. They sit there, either getting super rich or super strong, only to never do anything significant.

I'm wondering, has anybody ever considered adding or actually added another faction to the New World, and what would be the advantages/disadvantages of this?

[Userpro]

If you're talking about the idea of midway-provinces; Its not a solution, coz the existing large distances of the previous settlements will remain the same.
It's obvious that setting the priority of sea invasions to 'yes' will help a lot. But if there allready exists a pathfinding issue due to a vast oversea-distance beetween 2 settlements, this wouldn't help to fix it.
I'm sure, Dave will do his best to increase invasion behavior in some manner, and i'm sure he will archive some good success.
And i will write as soon as possible some advanced tutorial for the whole TWC community, about mapping & Ai-pathfinding, which has never been written and seen before ......

[Dave Scarface]

I am really interested in this theory of moving the americas closer to europe. How will it affect the AI? or will moving it closer make any difference at all to the AI? Well we are going to find out the answer shortly when the beta for Redeo Ad Exordium is released to the community!

I have seen Userprobe's new map and it looks like the best map I have seen yet for any M2TW mod. So basically if the pathfinding will not allow for it in RAE then this whole idea is unworkable. In which case I will leave the americas exactly as they are now. As I would rather not make this change unless there is some benefit to it.

I tried out an interesting experiment in hotseat the other day with KGCM, but sadly it failed. What I tried to do was play as the Aztecs and attack the Papal States. I got my relations down to abysmal with them and declared war. Then I switched to a Catholic faction with a high papal standing and tried to call a Crusade on the Aztec capital. Despite that I made every Aztec region a Crusade target in the descr_regions.txt, there was never an Aztec target. I had hoped that the increased movement points for Crusading armies might have been able to over come the distance problems. But like I say the experiment failed.

Another interesting thing I have noticed is that the pope will never consider a settlement owned by the Byzantine Empire as a target? I decided to test this in detail as I did with the test above. But I am convinced now that this is hardcoded and the engine will not allow Crusades against certain factions.

Dave

[Frunk]

If you're talking about the idea of midway-provinces; Its not a solution, coz the existing large distances of the previous settlements will remain the same.
It's obvious that setting the priority of sea invasions to 'yes' will help a lot. But if there allready exists a pathfinding issue due to a vast oversea-distance beetween 2 settlements, this wouldn't help to fix it.
I'm sure, Dave will do his best to increase invasion behavior in some manner, and i'm sure he will archive some good success.
And i will write as soon as possible some advanced tutorial for the whole TWC community, about mapping & Ai-pathfinding, which has never been written and seen before ......

While I do not understand the complexities of mapping and AI-pathfinding, I certainly respect and acknowledge them.

The main reason I wanted a few midway provinces was just to spice up the Americas (as for all the trouble it surely was for CA to add it in the first place, and in turn for you excellent modders to move them closer) - I like that the Aztecs now have 5 provinces, but the fact that there are only 3 other provinces is a bit disappointing (not to sound ungrateful).

I love the idea of having the tip of Greenland in there even if it doesn't help pathfinding (though Iceland would be a little more realistic of course), and I also thought that the Caribbean and North America could have been elaborated on (it's really weird seeing Cuba and no Hispaniola - especially with all those other miscellaneous pieces of land included in the Havana province - is a little weird, for example), and so on.

Whether that could be done at the expense of course of some parts of Europe is entirely up to you guys I suppose. I'll be happy with it the way it is if moved closer of course.

[Soul Firez]

strangely i have seen lithuania sail all the way to caen with troops and drop them off there( they did nothing with them and put them back on the boat and sail up the coast of england again doing nothing but it was an example of a ai boat traveling a long way with men ( of course there is land all the way around where it traveled but they did sail a long way and there not even set to naval invasion prefer yes but didnt actually invade they seemed to be on more of a holiday with there factions hier they kept getting off the boat standing a turn and climbing back on and sailing off

[Praetorian_BGX]

After About 200 turns with TO, i never saw any faction disembarking troops in New World or reverse. I have sent small expedition squad on Havana first and made castle. Micosukee was second target and now i have nice Teutonic colony there. (Nice but not peacefully ) Thinking about giving one of Aztec cities to some faction to see AI behavior later.

[Dave Scarface]

@Praetorian_BGX,

One of the things we've found is that you can set the Aztecs to prefers_naval_invasions "yes" in the mods\kingdoms_grand_campaign_mod\data\descr_sm_factions.txt. This will work only on a new campaign. But I have found the Aztecs to be very aggressive to anyone who is near enough to them. And they would do naval invasions against both Cuba and North America.

Btw I now have the Aztecs also invading Brazil I will post a pic later.

Dave

[Userpro]

I am really interested in this theory of moving the americas closer to europe. How will it affect the AI? or will moving it closer make any difference at all to the AI? Well we are going to find out the answer when the beta for Redeo Ad Exordium is released to the community!

I'm able to give you an immediate answer about americas-shifting. It will help in solving this pf-issue, but its only a little part of a bunch of mapping work, that has to be overworked. About the main-rules for mapping & pathfinding we've still comunicated in our pm's.

I have seen Userprobe's new map and it looks like the best map I have seen so far for any M2TW mod.

Thanks for that great compliment, Dave!

I tried out an interesting experiment in hotseat the other day with KGCM, but sadly it failed. What I tried to do was play as the Aztecs and attack the Papal States. I got my relations down to abysmal with them and declared war. Then I switched to a Catholic faction with a high papal standing and tried to call a Crusade on the Aztec capital. Despite that I made every Aztec region a Crusade target in the descr_regions.txt, there was never an Aztec target. I had hoped that the increased movement points for Crusading armies might have been able to over come the distance problems. But like I say the experiment failed.

Thats a good experiment, Dave. But remember the test-targeds should remain in a certain reasonable distance. And remember our smalltalk about the findings of the different ocean ground-types.

[Dave Scarface]

And remember our smalltalk about the findings of the different ocean ground-types.

Yup, since I changed the ocean ground types to normal I now have trade routes working between the americas and europe, thanks for helping

Dave

[Frunk]

Wanted to repost this as the size of my post I guess means sometimes some things get missed. What chance is there of the New World being expanded to more than just the 8 provinces and would you ever consider adding another Americas campaign faction there?

As I understand you've used up all the province slots available, so that could really only be added I understand if you amalgamated some in Europe. As for factions, I understand there's a limit to them too, but is this limit in reference to total possible playable factions or total factions (which can be switched from non-playable to playable, with the Papacy of course being an exception)?