Random Seed/ Random Number Generation in EB & RTW

[skidmarktm]

Playing as Rome in EB, I had a somewhat confusing experience recently. Faced with too fair a fight near Mediolanum, I decided to withdraw my army back to friendly territory to link up with reinforcements. My path south was blocked by the enemy horde, so I went north through a mountain pass and stopped in a forest ambush position. Ending turn, an enemy army, smaller than mine and led by a captain, blundered into my ambush position; after a fierce battle, my troops routed the enemy decisively. Unfortunately, the game crashed immediately after the battle. "No biggie," methinks, "I'll just load up the autosave, fight again, and remember to let the music stop before leaving the results screen."

This time, the enemy faction leader showed up with a full stack, foiled my ambush, and utterly routed my stranded men. I have reloaded the same autosave file several times now, always with the same result. I'm beginning to think that the game is sentient, and cheating the system. Kidding aside, what do we know about how the EB/RTW AI makes decisions, and why would the same save file produce first one result, and then consistently produce a single variation of a different one? I know that the first army that blundered into me wasn't the result of an AI vs AI battle, because the units were all full, no casualties, and I'm pretty sure they came from Mediolanum themselves.

[Wulfburk]

well wild guess from one who doesnt understands anything about the ai coding and etc but...

what if the first result, the decision to have the smaller army attack you, was made by the AI who was thinking and making decisions since you loaded the game earlier the day(or days if you stayed up all night at the same playthrough) and made the wrong decision because it had too many variables, such as a rebel army near one of their cities turns ago, etc. While the second decision ai had to rethink all the possibilities only about the turn you loaded, therefore chooses the more reasonate one, attacking you with the larger army.

heh