AI cheats like in third age ?

[The dead one]

So I wonder if it´s the same thing here and if there is a way to take it out of the game ?
You know when the AI randomly spawns stacks of enemies or get a lot more cash and so on. You can do it in third age with a mod.

I think it´s bygs grim mod compilation but I´m not sure, but there is a mod included that you can choose to take it away so the battles against the AI wont be as repeatedly. So are there any mods that do that or can I fix it myself ?
I would much rather be out smarted in tactics and strategy than lose because the AI apparently cheats .

[HadrianMT]

I believe they do cheat. I'm playing Portugal VH/VH campaign, the first Moors stack that attacked me had 5 Hasashin units. Obviously, they easily massacred my two armies of militia spearmen & Light swordmen and besiged Silves.

[Byg]

Don't get me started...

[sabaku_no_gaara]

I believe the AI get's a money bonus when it hits the red figures

[tudor93]

speaking about AI advantages, have you noticed that their siege weapons have higher speed than those belonging to the human ?

[Peter Bolland]

Look at it from the AI's perspective. Human player cheats too.

He can use battle tactics which the AI cannot think of (stakes in gate, vicious outflanking tactics, ...). Germanicu5's BAI helps, but let's face it, human is human (which won't hold for much longer).

He can use strategies on the strat map the AI cannot (placing family members for max growth AND knowing when to commit them to battle, taking unforeseen attack routes during invasions, knowing when&what to build and when to save for units, keeping public order in conquered settlements, ...). The list goes on.

That's why you have mods that force the human to not cheat, Byg's brilliant Grim Reality comes to mind. They actually make the AI worth fighting and it indeed does put up a fight (within reason, we don't want blitzing AI, now do we?).


The AI doesn't get any free stacks except for one militia half-stack on high campaign difficulty and one turn 10 militia half-stack. It is affected by the same recruiting restrictions. It does get some minor money-making and order bonuses from buildings and it does get pulled out of debt. But when it has too much money, it gets taken away, too.

Be glad the AI is not a total pushover!

[The dead one]

Look at it from the AI's perspective. Human player cheats too.

He can use battle tactics which the AI cannot think of (stakes in gate, vicious outflanking tactics, ...). Germanicu5's BAI helps, but let's face it, human is human (which won't hold for much longer).

He can use strategies on the strat map the AI cannot (placing family members for max growth AND knowing when to commit them to battle, taking unforeseen attack routes during invasions, knowing when&what to build and when to save for units, keeping public order in conquered settlements, ...). The list goes on.

That's why you have mods that force the human to not cheat, Byg's brilliant Grim Reality comes to mind. They actually make the AI worth fighting and it indeed does put up a fight (within reason, we don't want blitzing AI, now do we?).


The AI doesn't get any free stacks except for one militia half-stack on high campaign difficulty and one turn 10 militia half-stack. It is affected by the same recruiting restrictions. It does get some minor money-making and order bonuses from buildings and it does get pulled out of debt. But when it has too much money, it gets taken away, too.

Be glad the AI is not a total pushover!

I agreed with you in what you have to say. But I still think it´s a very cheap trick to make a game harder :/
Look at darthmod for shogun 2, napoleon and empire. He doesn´t give the AI bonuses and so on. He just makes the AI alot better and much much smarter. So it´s not impossible to do thins harder that way to

And the human doesn`t cheat unless he uses the console to write stuff. Like I said, it´s not my fault that I´m smarter then the AI Which is a really good thing hahaha ! XD

[Peter Bolland]

I agreed with you in what you have to say. But I still think it´s a very cheap trick to make a game harder :/
Look at darthmod for shogun 2, napoleon and empire. He doesn´t give the AI bonuses and so on. He just makes the AI alot better and much much smarter. So it´s not impossible to do thins harder that way to

And the human doesn`t cheat unless he uses the console to write stuff. Like I said, it´s not my fault that I´m smarter then the AI Which is a really good thing hahaha ! XD

The AI is easier to mod in TW games after Medieval II (unlike so many other things), because they use a new engine.

The whole concept of modding AI rests on its initial implementation. And let me tell you, making a smart AI is NOT easy, it's much harder than most players can imagine. Most people don't appreciate when an AI is done right, because they don't notice it, unless it's doing something stupid. As a programmer, I can appreciate the difficulties.

Modding it and changing its priorities is easier, you just have to know what each tunning parameter does. Giving it specific bonuses is even easier, but it takes many iterations of trial and error to make it passable. From what I've seen, the AI is not that obvious about cheating, except perhaps being pulled out of debt.

You want an AI that can take you on, not one that just waits to get conquered. So if you can't make it better, you have to give some handicap to the player. Something which Byg's Grim Reality does well. I play with BGR IV because the latest (BGR V) makes things too complicated. I'll leave that for better players.

As for humans, for us it's not cheating. But as I said, look from the AI's perspective. We are doing things it cannot comprehend and which it was not build to handle (like the gate-stakes exploit). I guess empathy only works when the target is alive (for certain values of 'alive').

We should enjoy being better than AI while we still can.
Since the release of the game, game AIs have got better and general AI research is making lots of advances as well. But making an AI smart takes time and running it takes processing power. The computers were not as powerful back then, and release deadlines and executive meddling is an ever present problem.

I hope I didn't get too technical or philosophical for you.

[The dead one]

[QUOTE=Peter Bolland;11727032]The AI is easier to mod in TW games after Medieval II (unlike so many other things), because they use a new engine.

The whole concept of modding AI rests on its initial implementation. And let me tell you, making a smart AI is NOT easy, it's much harder than most players can imagine. Most people don't appreciate when an AI is done right, because they don't notice it, unless it's doing something stupid. As a programmer, I can appreciate the difficulties.


Yeah but darthmod did an excellent job with the AI in Rome, just sayin.
Yes I now modding is hard as hell. I can´t do it but I still don´t understand why some things can´t be optional like a a thing like this. Some people might like it but I think the majority would rather get rid of the AI cheating thing. Like me. However I played it anyway and I like quite much anyway. I play it Medium/medium. So when I know the AI has assembled a cheat I just send a unit do a auto_win attacker cheat so I win that battle. Quite annoying but whatever

Oh and btw, I pretty much always noticed when the AI has been better. Vanilla rome and DM rome is a huge different. Same thing with Roma surrectum. The AI is a killer there

[GiddeeUpp]

There is Byg's mod which is a brilliant, massive overhaul to the game and makes it alot more realistic and alot more difficult. It does get rid of the AI money bonus economy script but also makes it much tougher for you. Another option would be the Carl the Taxman script, which is a different economy script that removes AI money bonus. Cheers.

[dan_457]

There is Byg's mod which is a brilliant, massive overhaul to the game and makes it alot more realistic and alot more difficult. It does get rid of the AI money bonus economy script but also makes it much tougher for you. Another option would be the Carl the Taxman script, which is a different economy script that removes AI money bonus. Cheers.

Will the taxman script remove the AI stack spam? Recently the game has just gotten boring due to the egregious amount of units the AI pumps out, it's not challenging, just tedious. I did a HRE campaign for about 60ish turns and was at war with England, I had over two and half the number of settlements as them and was far more developed and wealthy, but they still were almost out producing me in troop numbers.

BYG's looks interesting, but I think it would just overload me, way too much stuff to consider, and I'm definitely not the greatest player as of now, let alone with all that.

One of the things I love about shogun 2, is how battles are actually decisive, You have maybe a couple stacks at time, max(well, before you control a crap load of territory anyway). But in Medieval, it's just the AI throwing as much at you as it possible can, and then cheats some more for extra measure.

[The dead one]

Well if it wasn´t for bygs grim mod for third age I don´t think I would be playing it sp much as I do. And it´s mainly because of the mod that takes away the AI cheating.
So if there are nu such mods for Stainless I will never even try it out. Scripted invasions woud be cool and stuff but the cheating is just boring. It makes the battles meaningless since you know it doésn´t matter to them if they lost 4 full stacks. It doesn´t feel realistic at all.

It´s true that the human is smarter. But whatever ? It´s not my fault that the AI is not as smart as me. But I really don´t care if it´s as stupid as Romes AI was, I just don´t want it to cheat.
On higer difficulties such as hard an very hard the AI gets bonuses anyway. So It would be cool to make it optional if you still find VH/VH too easy for some weird reason :S
I´ve always played M/M just cause I want it to be fair. I know the player does get a very small bonus on medium but atleast it´s the closest thing to being equally for both human and AI.

Maybe if I play Campagne on easy and battle on M or H, the won´t spawn as much ?

It´s a really good modification and it looks and seems awesome, just like third age . But if you can´t get rid of the cheating I´ll think I´ll gonna drop it I could just cheat aswell though. Add like 10000 every turn, a few more soldiers there every turn and so one

[Miku-chan]

Third Age Ai Cheats !?What the F.... They forbid me to cheat yet the DO Cheat Evil factions Must Cheat Good ones fight the good ol way !

[sabaku_no_gaara]

The stack spam is annoying, especially since I know the AI cheats, it's taken a bit of the fun out, and it made me use the console to win a lot of auto resolve battles, I wouldn't normally do this, but I keep reasoning: it's a cheat stack I wouldn't be under attack in normal conditions so it's fair that I make my 1 unit of cavalry destroy their army

[The dead one]

The stack spam is annoying, especially since I know the AI cheats, it's taken a bit of the fun out, and it made me use the console to win a lot of auto resolve battles, I wouldn't normally do this, but I keep reasoning: it's a cheat stack I wouldn't be under attack in normal conditions so it's fair that I make my 1 unit of cavalry destroy their army

Yeah ! I do exactly the same thing as you. When I´m sure it´s a stack spam I just sen scout and do aut_win cheat since I know it´s a spam.
Why can´t it just be optional? Make a hardcore patch for thoose that wants it ! How hard can it be ? I can´t mod my own but if you can add something like it to the game, it can´t be that hard taking it away with a patch.

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

I wonder if it would be possible to let some of the hard coding for the AI available to humans. I noticed that in the Battle of Hastings, the battle AI uses a "firm" command. I have not been able to make it work. There may be scripts we are not aware of, and maybe new that could be written to improve the battle AI. Stakes at gates (only possible by a few factions) are not very different from spearmen or pikemen at gates. They all would have been possible in a real battle. The problem is that the AI cavalry will often charge through settlement gates, cavalry first. It should be possible to script it not to do that. The AI should not even be attacking well defended settlements unless with multiple armies strong in melee infantry.

The AI getting more money seems unfair indeed as is getting far superior units to yours (e.g trebuchets when you are only starting to get ballistas), especially when you are trying to have your first test campaign. However, until the AI can be sufficiently improved, I would expect more armies per AI faction on the battlefield, especially if playing on hard or very hard.