EB 2.X AI Faction Progression Thread

[Poppis]

Are those the Getai in the province above Pontus?

Yep.

[Poppis]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Romani campaign continued
Turn 200
First faction destroyed: Makedonia(turn 191, I was amazed how long it took for somebody to go)

Romani campaign continued
Turn 250
Factions destroyed: Makedonia(turn 191), Epeiros(turn 250)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Pretty quiet session. Took Syracuse and the last province south of the Alps. I was planning on going for Greece next but then noticed that it had been overrun by the Getai already(I'm still allied with Getai and Areuakoi). Carthage managed to take one African province but lost it almost immediately.

Top 5 military rankings:

1. Seleucids
2. Getai
3. Aedui
4. Massylim
5. Taksashila

[Poppis]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Romani campaign continued
Turn 250
Factions destroyed: Makedonia(turn 191), Epeiros(turn 250)

Romani campaign continued - Last update
Turn 300
Factions destroyed: Makedonia(turn 191), Epeiros(turn 250), Aruernoi(turn 280), Pontos(turn 289)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I am allied to Getai and Areuakoi. I am at war with Carthage(due to a bug).
I was quite surprised that Carthage managed to stay alive this whole time. They have been stuck to one iberian province for ages and are at war with Lusotannan, Areuakoi and Massylia. They still kept invading africa(several times) and taking one province, which they then lose as soon as Massylian stacks come in. At turn 300 they are besieging the little Areuakoi island province with a full stack. Areuakoi and Lusotannan are at war with each other which has probably helped Carthage a lot.

Getai took all of Greece except Sparta. They are currently at war with Aedui and Sauromatae.

Massylia has been extremely passive. After taking all of Africa from Carthage, they have done nothing. They are in no wars(apart from Carthage) and they got no Allies(haven't seen any ships either).

Pritanoi are still missing one of the provinces in Britain(though they did have a full stack in the mainland back when they were at war with the Aruernoi).

Pergamon is doing pretty well even though they are at war with Seleucids and Ptolemaioi:

Most of the Seleucid stacks seem to be nowhere near the pergamon border.


Top 5 Military Rankings:

1. Seleucids
2. Getai
3. Aedui
4. Massylia
5. Rome

[Mantaprey]

Taksashila M battles/ H Campaign, CAI v.3a, BAI v.1, Moros faster battles,
Short Campaign- 20 regions, Baktria and Saka Rauka destroyed

Turn 300 - 430



300 = 198BC
400 = 173BC



After turn 300

when my faction leader died my new shaka faction leader gathered a cavalry army and headed north into the steppes. With the help of elephant generals i easily defeated both Baktrian nomads and Saka Rauka. I gave the nomad provinces to Pahlava for an alliance.

A unique experience was hunting down a nomadic tribe on the move i needed to defeat them for victory conditions. The Saka rushed west toward the Saromatae and assaulted one of their camps then turned back and slowly wandered south. As my armies were shadowing them i could see the tribe fall apart. Nearly every turn full stacks lead by captains would rebel and join the native province rebels. The native rebels did not move or attack at all.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

After i dealt with them i created 6 armies to assault Seleukia and gain the 20 regions for VC. i simultaneously attacked the 5 cities adjacent to my regions while the sixth army would repel any counterattacks. It seems they did not see the threat on their border as i lined up my armies they had few garrisons in their cities so i just auto resolved. The difficult part of this plan was finding loyal generals. One loyal general lost heart as i did Alexanders march though the desert, lucky my faction leader is a God Incarnate.

Because of their multiple wars the Seleukid response was weak. The 2 nearby full armies were defeated by my counter attack army then they would send small armies from inside the empire, to hover around the region too scared to attack anything. I even got some Noble Gallic cavalry marching around Karmania. Strangely i asked for a cease fire and they happily accepted. Looks like i became the most powerful faction. Soon after Getia asked for an alliance.

Short Victory Achieved! the message works but their is no picture. The music is the same as a battle victory.

Turn 400

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

WMWMWMWM - Red Zigzag mean hostile border or invasion (at war)

OOOOOOOOOO - Green circles mean allied border

R - Single letter means alliance over borders or sea. First letter and colour of the faction indicate who they are allied to. I only choose one side of the alliance to reduce clutter.

/////// - Crosshatches mean vassal

[Tsar Ivan Asen II]

Playing as Saba VH campaign / M battles / CAI 3.0 currently at turn 100.



The Boi were slaughtered quite fast at turn 61 by the Sweboz. Now they are currently sitting at 4 place in the overall faction ranking holding 9 provinces and looking strong. Seems a war with either the Romans or the Lougiones is inevitable. Speaking of the Lougiones - they are doing good too and have conquered 7 provinces for themselves.

The Areuakoi got all their leaders either assassinated or killed of by the Lusotannan at turn 91, forcing the remaining of their forces to rebel. Thus Iberia is now free to be colonized. The Lusotannan are doing fairly well, but nothing spectacular either.

In Western Europe the Gauls are waring against each other for full control over the territory, but nobody seems to be gaining the upper hand. The war is raging for at least 30 turns. Overall the Aruernoi tribe seems to be slowly winning the war. Speaking of barbarians the Pritanoi isn't doing well as they are still trying to pacify the local rebel tribes.

The Romans are doing very well so far. They have conquered Sicily from Carthage and are now invading Corsica and Sardinia. Rome slowly pushes into Barbarian territory as well so far without much of a problem. They are currently holding second position on the overall faction standings controlling 17 provinces. Also Epirus is their vassal since some turns now.

The Greeks have been slaughtering each other since the begging of the game and Macedon seems to be gaining the upper hand signing truce with KH against Epirus. KH is doing well, holding still holding all the territory that they start with and in addition conquering Corinth, Byzantion and Kyrene. Interestingly Both Macedon and KH have an common enemy - Epirus, but they do not sign an alliance.

In the steppes the Sarmatians are the might to be reckon with. They are in war with the Bosporans for at least an good 20 turns and are slowly winning the war.

In the East things are kind of stale. The Sakas are in a long war with Baktria, while she is in a alliance with the Parthians and they have no enemies and are enjoying the view(?) I guess. While the Indians are doing good and have conquered 7 provinces, they too seems kind of passive and are afraid to attack the Seleukids(with a good reason).:p As the Saba I was wating for a big a** war to break lose against them but I guess I'll have to make the first move. Both Pontus and Armenia were kind of stale too and havent been conquering much. And Pargamon havent conquered anything whatsoever but have 4.5 stacks in their territory chillin' & drinking coffie - just chattin'.:p

Egypt is doing great as well too conquering the rebel provinces around her terrotiry but as far as the war with the Seleukids going, not much progress - if ANY has been made. I know they have a lot of troops but I have no idea why are they not attacking each other?

Numidia is kicking Carthage a** thanks to the Romans as well as the Areurakois(witch were in a war with Carthage before all their leaders got assassinated/killed off). It seems like the Numidians are winning slowly the war but it's very close and the war can be turned around. Carthage also now has the option to recounqer the territories witch has lost against the Iberians.

Overall the campaign is going well and it's quite fun so far. I haven't gotten any CTD's nor problems of any technical matter and everything runs smooth and tight as heck. I do think that the east is kinda on the passive side however. Not much action is happening if ANY(in case of Pargamon) at all.

[jvass]

turn 91 saba medium medium

[Mantaprey]

Continuing from Z3n's test

Sauromatae M/M Z3n's files (CAI V2.0 with BAI and pathfinding) Turn 150

I created an alliance with the Getai by gifting Alazonea and i have expanded into the Lugian empire. Those endless forest tribes were cut down on the steppe but now I'm in their forests so the game has changed



WMWMWMWM - Red Zigzag mean hostile border (at war)

OOOOOOOOOO - Green circles mean allied border

R - Single letter means alliance over borders or sea. First letter and colour of the faction indicate who they are allied to.

The star is a nomadic horde

[Josh Mahurin]

That actually looks really good progression wise! Gandhara is probably still a fluke do to their script problem in the last patch. Would be interesting to see the difference with them. Also surprising the Arevaci not the Lusotannan have united Iberia. And Epeiros taking Sicily. Sad to see Armenia gone though

[Mantaprey]

2.02a M/M Nabatea 100 turns





Pahlava made an alliance with Baktria and Saka resulting in Saka and Baktria peace.

WMWMWMWM - Red Zigzag mean hostile border (at war)

OOOOOOOOOO - Green circles mean allied border

R - Single letter means alliance over borders or sea. First letter and colour of the faction indicate who they are allied to.

Star is a nomadic horde

[Josh Mahurin]

May I ask where you got that map base from?

[Mantaprey]

CanOmer made it when everyone was waiting for first release.

there was another map with faction names on it

[Kranos]

why is so much friendship on central Asia?

[Mantaprey]

why is so much friendship on central Asia?

Pahlava made an alliance with Baktria and Saka resulting in Saka and Baktria peace.

[Mantaprey]

H/M 100 turns Areuakoi 2.03a

Turns 20-100


Turn 100


WMWMWMWM - Red Zigzag mean hostile border (at war)

OOOOOOOOOO - Green circles mean allied border

R - Single letter means alliance over borders or sea. First letter and colour of the faction indicate who they are allied to.

Star is a nomadic horde

[Sylon]

EBII 2.03a

World maps are taken every ten turns.

The most curious occurance here is the Seleukids losing Tarsus to rebels, causing their lands in Asia Minor to be cut off from the rest of their realm. Oh, and the Pahlava declared war on the Seleukids and invaded them. Also, the Carthaginians rushed for Kyrenaica, possibly due to my cutting them off at Siga. Oh, and I'm allied with them, for now.

If you're wondering why my income skyrocketed after turn 30, well, let's just say the Carthaginians are willing to part with a lot of gold in exchange for not raiding them (+1000 income per settlement with the Governed Tribe government, as long as you're not too big and at peace with the Carthaginians).

[Shadowwalker]

Version:
EB 2.03a+Colony Hotfix

Faction:
Sab'Yn

Difficulty:
H/M

Personal changes:
Debt Help for AI factions decreased from 15k to 11k
Eleutheroi Kings Purse decreased to 75k
Eleutheroi starting money decreased to 15k

[The decreased money help was the result of a first EB 2.03a campaign as Hayasdan where the Seleukids suddenly had about 25+ stacks and several factions (aside the known "problem childs" like Pergamon, Pontos etc) never got around to conquer a second province. I can say though that my changes didn't have any significant effect so I will return to the original settings for the next campaign.

First off, the visuals (I took a screenshot every twenty turns, last screenshot was taken at 260 turns)
:


Then, some general feedback about EB 2.03a. Not exactly the right place for that, I know.

Graphics: I love the new factions colours and minimap. I love love love it!

Gameplay (campaign): 2.03a is - generally spoken - a definite, significant improvement in regards to the campaign AI. Some things that stand out in a positive or negative way I'd like to mention, though:

(1) The fact that the AI always retreats when a settlement is attacked (regardless if the attacker is another Ai or the player) unless the field army is exactly next to the settlement is annoying at best. I have no idea if this is fixable at all, though.

(2) If you play a faction that has access to ports you should either make sure to ally with every other seafaring faction (hardly possible) or prepare to be "attacked" (as in: your port gets blockaded) for no reason, just because that faction at the other side of the sea built a ship. I had my ports blockaded by Areuakoi and Aruernoi for example. Although I have to admit that this doesn't happen that frequently anymore, compared to earlier versions of EB 2.
And after all, it's rather annoying, but not at all gamebreaking, especially since ....

(3) The AI almost exclusively allies to the player faction. In the campaign above Saba was at turn 260 allied to Taksashila, Massylia, Sweboz, the Bosphoran Greeks, Makedonia and the Saka. I could have been allied to virtually everyone, though, since all factions approached me at some point to offer an alliance. AI-AI alliances I remember only two: Saka - Pahlava and Pahlava - Sauromatae. There was not even a Rome - Pergamon alliance.

(4) The AI is possibly still too "friendly" towards the player faction. Don't get me wrong - the last thing I want to see is the return of the RTW AI that was annoyingly predictable: you share a border, you are attacked. But I was never attacked (the port blockading I don't count here ) in all those 260 turns. The Nabataeans never tried to attack Dedan (although they had at some point 3 full stacks near the boarder and Dedan was defended by 4 units only), The Ptolemaioi never attacked, neither did the Seleukids (although Gerrha would have been easy prey).

(5) Some diplomacy actions are much too easily successful - especially buying settlements. I bought Ptolemais-Akko and Bostra from the Seleukids (for 12k each) and Ptolemais-Theron from the Ptolemaioi for 10k. It's of course nice to expand without a war (especially as Saba against those two superpowers who field units you simply cannot match in the early game). But it should not be that easy/cheap in my opinion.

(6) The new money script is not that bad, but not really good either, to be honest. In comparison to EB 2.02x there are a lot more AI stacks around. I have no idea about the reasons, though.

(7) The new stat/cost system is so much more reasonable than the old one. Love it.

Gameplay (battles): One word - superb. I rarely encountered cohesion problems, the AI is a way more capable opponent than before. I never saw a general suicide charge into amassed ranks of spearmen, for example. Sometimes it's even frighteningly clever. If you are outflanked by cavalry (which the Sabaeans lack completely as long as they don't get up to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea where mercs are available) and then charged by Hetairoi from both sides at the same time .... priceless Almost costed me my faction heir and a full stack designated to take Alexandreia. Thank god (aka Quintus Sertorius ) that the "frighten enemy infantry" attribute was removed from the cavalry. Otherwise my whole army would have fled, I'm sure. One of the best battle experiences I ever had in any TW game.

Okay, enough general rambling, onto the campaign above.

What I especially loved about this campaign is the fact that I had serious money problems until about turn 200. Even when owning the whole peninsula you only make a couple thousnad mnai per turn. And this is with only 3-5 units per settlement (even Gerrha and Dedan were never defended by larger garrisons) and no field army.
Once I conquered the Ptolies and as a result made Dedan the capital this radically changed, of course.

What I don't really like is the fact that except the south arabian provinces (plus Mleiha and Dedan) you cannot raise your culture and establish anything else than Allied governments as the Saba, because they need their factional governments to have their temples of Almagah raise the culture, and they need a certain culture level to establish the factional government.

In case of Qarnawu it is tedious but doable:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You start with 20% "Eastern Tribal States (ETS)" culture. The missing 5% (you need 25% ETS to establish the "Aqib" government) you can get within about 120 turns, although you have to refrain from building ANY temples of Almagah in any province until you can build the lowest factional government in Qarnawu. If you don't follow this advice, the culture of the Saba empire at some point changes to "Eastern Imperial (EI)"and Qarnawu suddenly needs additional ~20% of that EA culture to build the "Aqib" government. And since Qarnawu is your (potentially) richest province and needs to be upgraded with 2nd level mines and port patrol to provide you the money for any real expansion that would mean a delay of another 480 turns before you can even think about looking beyond South/East Arabia.

But Bostra and Axum have not changed a single percent - and looking at the maps above you can see that I own them for quite some time already.

Seleukids are apparently on their way back to once again become the feared Grey Death. They seem unstoppable by AI factions. Same goes for Rome - but only until they meet the Areuakoi and/or Lusotannan. Both are still Rome's Nemesis.

EDIT: Reading Sylons post above reminded me of something I'd like to propose: It's probably a smart move to remove the "AI governor" trait - or more exactly level 2 and 3 of that trait. It gives such a high happiness/public order/law/whatever bonus, that a single FM (wihtout any garrison) is enough to keep far away provinces in check. In the campaign above no roman province ever rebelled and no Seleukid province rebelled, either (except Tarsos at turn 2 or 3). More rebellious outer provinces would prevent superpowers for a longer time or at least force the AI to leave garrisons behind, preventing them from blitzing each other (sea Bosphorans blitz against the Sauromatae or Romes blitz against the Aedui/Aruernoi).

The Nabataeans didn't horde, by the way, nor had I anything to do with their vanishment. I suspect that all their family members fell to Ptolemaioi assassins since I often saw yellow assassins attack a Nabatu FM. And then at one point they suddenly went rebel.

The Carthaginians have in all campaigns since EB 2.02 lost to the Massylians. Once or twice (in 2.02) they were winning first but fell to the Horde, but now they are always attacked around turn 30-50 and lose their possessions one by one. I wonder what happens there, as their units are way superiour to the Massylia skirmisher army and their economy should be way superiour, too....

To have a handful of superpowers and half a dozen extinct factions by turn 260 sounds a bit too fast for my liking. May have something to do with my money changes, though. I'll test that again (if I have time, that is ).

Okay to prevent that post from becoming another wall of text, I'll stop here.


tl;dr: Nice progress, fun campaign.

[b0Gia de Bodemloze]

The new money script is not that bad, but not really good either, to be honest. In comparison to EB 2.02x there are a lot more AI stacks around. I have no idea about the reasons, though.

About this we can't change the hardcore limits. For example when the AI has money he builds army and not upgrade his economy.
And i has an explanation about this, according to dv901 one from the creators of the rs ii, the ca build the engine in order to player always! but always win in the end. All are programming in such way in order to player win and again and again and again. No challenge at all. ca policy maybe marketing? Be the greatest general of all times (well we made the ai stupid in order to achieve this but ok)

[Mantaprey]

Areuakoi H/M 2.03a
Boii changes colour currently 'green-brown'

100- 200 turns


Diplomacy map - Turn 200

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

WMWMWMWM - Red Zigzag mean hostile border (at war)

OOOOOOOOOO - Green circles mean allied border

R - Single letter means alliance over borders or sea. First letter and colour of the faction indicate who they are allied to.

Star is a nomadic horde

[LusitanianWolf]

Sweboz campain H/H with EB2.03c

Turn 21


Turn 30


Turn 40


Every single faction is expanding and making alliances! I allied myself to the Lugiones so I could focus west on the celts but I have still yet to face any major faction because the Eleutheroi and the economy have been trouble enough.

Loving the campain so far!

[QuintusSertorius]

Whoa, that is rapid progression going on there. Half the rebels gone by turn 40?