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Thread: AI Stack Spam Rant

  1. #1
    Civis
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    Icon4 AI Stack Spam Rant

    Does the Ai get free stacks? Im currently playing as Gongsun Du (Top Right behind Gongsun Zan) I allied with Yuan Shao right at the beginning and then attacked Gongsun Zan and pushed him to his capital which the yuan captured. I bought it from yuan clan then began fighting off the 3-4 stacks of horse archer barbarians that invaded me from the north (Wuwan Steps) Then after that was dealt with i invaded the bandits from the north while the Yuan hit from the south and (For some reason) As soon as i captured that northern gate above there capital like half there cities went Rebel.. Thats one odd issue i noticed.

    After dealing with the bandits the next plan was to attack Guan Du from the east so the Yuan clan could invade the central plains

    I moved my considerable navy(almost 20 Ships) down to attack Pu Yang which was the last territory lubu had and i had a pretty nice income and dropped 4 stacks along with 2 spys a diplomat and merchant right on him and took the city only to see to my horror that every faction in the central plains even those only owning maybe 4 cities had 10 or more stacks!!! I had 4 and a navy with 10 cities and could have afforded maybe 1 more stack before i probably would have went in the hole.

    Needless to say Cao cao attacked Pu yang with stack after stack and i killed them one after another until he killed my entire army and he still had at least 10 stacks left.. What in the actual &^%$.. and the entire time Yuan clan with probably close to 20 stacks, the guy that starts off east of lubu and his 10+stacks and the Liu clan with there 4-5 All enemy's of cao cao just sat there doing nothing..

    Moral of the story,
    To many stacks, Ai gets 10 to your 3 its rediculous.
    Passive AI
    Short campaign made extremely long because you have to grind down 40 stacks while trying to keep 4 decent stacks alive long enough to take a city.

    Love this mod anyway but we need a fix of some kind guys.

  2. #2
    Seether's Avatar RoTK Workhorse
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    Default Re: AI stack spam rant.

    First, this does not belong in the 'Error Reports' thread, as you are not reporting an error, so I moved it to the main forum.

    Quote Originally Posted by sickNsane View Post
    Does the Ai get free stacks?
    No.

    As soon as i captured that northern gate above there capital like half there cities went Rebel.. Thats one odd issue i noticed.
    You killed the entire family tree. This is default behavior for when the last family member is killed.

    every faction in the central plains even those only owning maybe 4 cities had 10 or more stacks!!!... Yuan clan with probably close to 20 stacks, the guy that starts off east of lubu and his 10+stacks and the Liu clan with there 4-5... To many stacks, Ai gets 10 to your 3 its rediculous.
    Do you have screenshots? Are you playing with Patch 01? The 'Recruitment Limitation' script shouldn't allow for such large numbers. 10 stacks for 4-settlement factions, in particular, should be impossible, so should 20 stacks as that is above the set maximum ceiling. So the only way this could happen was if your campaign_script became bugged (through saving/loading) or was manually disabled or you're not playing with Patch 01.

    Passive AI
    I have noticed this issue as well. Will talk to Gig and see what can be done.
    Last edited by Seether; August 28, 2014 at 07:43 AM.
    Member of the Imperial House of Hader - Under the Benevolent Patronage of y2day
    A Wolf Among Sheep: A Rise of Three Kingdoms AAR

  3. #3

    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    @ RoTK team
    Just some thoughts and experimentation.

    I’ve been trying various combinations and tests.

    It’s hard to clarify, but it seems almost as if the king’s purse script (any Prefactionturnstart or Factionturnstart etc) finances “operate” independently to a factions regular “turn” finances.

    ie, has preturn cash, spends it all preturn...doesn’t really encroach on its regular finances and turn go too much..??????

    Secondly, (and I may be mistaken) but I thought the “recruitment” freeze wasn’t stopping recruitment per se, but merely “freezing” any turns to build, ie, if a unit takes four turns to recruit in the EDU its that bit that’s frozen, allowing the Ai to churn it out after 1 turn etc instead of 4...??? (may have this bit wrong but it seems something like this..????)

    As a consequence, I’ve tried various things, removing parts, changing prefaction/turn start to turn end and moving to the end of the campaign script (so all finances are calculated “together” at the end.

    So far my best medium is proving this.

    I have removed the Ai debt script and all “freeze recruitment” and just have a knockback script.
    I’ve doubled the building costs in EDB (except 9600 which is now 16000 seemed high enough) and upped some costs in descr cultures for agents

    So far 171 in Quinzhou, it’s tough but very manageable.

    I’m still testing, when I have a spare minute, I haven’t noticed any adverse effects so far ( I’ve uploaded the files as an example to view/ponder etc etc and to show I am considering what I write)
    The pic shows the only "spam" on the map, and one is Xiliang vs Liaodong and the other is Yuan moving south reclaiming buffer states

    Obviously, balance is the Holy Grail, and this is not to discredit the mod, merely put beta ideas out there...
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails test.jpg  
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Last edited by Voice of Treason; September 02, 2014 at 10:44 AM. Reason: cut paste from doc

  4. #4
    Civis
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    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    Thanks seether, I still have the save ill try to get some screenshots for some reason my prnt scrn button never wants to work. I am using 01.

  5. #5
    Gigantus's Avatar I am not special - I am a limited edition.
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    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    thanks for all the feed back - here some info regarding the points you raise:

    king's purse - this amount will be given to the faction regardless of circumstances - it can be varied through the script. Not sure whether it's given preturn or at turnstart' but it should be before settlement start whch is responsible for recruting and buildng.

    freeze recruit pool will disable recruiting and is triggered by a relation of units to settlements and has a maximum set which should eqaute roughly 10 stacks. You can roughly muster one stack per huge city until the mx number. smaller settlemetns give smaller credit towards the freeze 'cut off'

    the debt script should only grant small amounts of money so as to prevent inactivity of the faction' it will not be sufficient to build anything in a hurry.
    Last edited by Gigantus; August 29, 2014 at 05:10 AM.










  6. #6

    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    Just a little feedback
    After using the files in #3, (and reading Gig's conditions like Huge City to 10-ish stack equation in #5 etc) and getting 363 turns into Qingzhou,
    personally I think I'm gonna develop my best medium (#3) and continue without AI debt and freeze recruitment and just have the "knockback" as stated in #3 for now.

    After 363 turns, Sun gave enough indication of development, (pic minimap) but I definitely felt the campaign was better and more manageable, obviously just needs some more tweaking for malleable non linear play to campaign against over-developing factions at the map periphery etc.

    This time round I'm adding 2 turns to construction in EDB (ei 6=8, 5=7 etc so minimum turns is now 3, maximum is 8) and added a generic 250 Upkeep cost to all the "0" listed upkeeps in the EDU (there were quite a few)...

    I've restarted Quingzhou and will see how it goes again...when I get time.
    Just putting this out there. All for now
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Sun363.jpg  

  7. #7
    Seether's Avatar RoTK Workhorse
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    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    I believe the only 0 upkeep units left in the EDU are bodyguard units, and this was done by design.

    As far as the pic, I believe there is an unmarked crossing between Yongan and Yiling. I'm not sure whether it should stay or not, as I haven't purposely observed AI movement there over a period of time. If it isn't utilized enough and/or caused game-balance issues, then probably best to remove it by removing a land tile.
    Member of the Imperial House of Hader - Under the Benevolent Patronage of y2day
    A Wolf Among Sheep: A Rise of Three Kingdoms AAR

  8. #8

    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    @ Seether #7

    Fair enough about the O upkeep, (I was just experimenting as the next logical step for my own empirical observations)
    (I'm not expecting/forcing any radical mod changes, merely just seeing what works best for me and reporting out there)

    Concerning the crossing though, personally, I would leave it. Obviously it is a tight spot between the two cities...but I feel the AI will use it eventually..????

    bear in mind the current released version is
    a) physically a very compact map
    b) designed with deliberate mountain passes and choke points etc
    c) financially supporting factions longer than my experiments...hence map movement dynamics (may) appear slower in your version than to mine...hence maybe that is why there appears lack of AI movement there..????

    But I honestly don't think that crossing is detrimental to "either" versions.

  9. #9

    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    Much of the passivity of the campaign AI is caused by the fragmentation of the map. I am quite certain you will not find any regular campaign AI that will be more aggressive. The AI is not using those passes because it cannot calculate what to do. If you check the AI logs, you will probably find out that even when a faction's priority is to invade the human player faction, it will do nothing.

  10. #10
    Civis
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    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    Using the second patch im on turn 43 as qingzhou and so far so good, lubu is dead and me and liu clan will soon be turning on Cao Cao, Yuan Shao owns all of the north all the way to the border with Liang. Didnt seem that any of them had any more men then me then i decided to use the toggle_fow to have a look at the rest of the country and it seems nobody is spam stacking other then sun clan, if thats even possible. Cao clan has a huge army but many are broken into fragments at the moment so i cant tell exactly how many men he has so i guess he could be but yuan clan even with they're massive territory seem to be around 10ish stacks and myself and liu clan have roughly 6 each but the sun clan look like they have closer to 15 stacks! I have 8 cities and sun only hold 6 currently.

  11. #11
    Gigantus's Avatar I am not special - I am a limited edition.
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    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    That's great feed back - seems the limitation script is working as intended.










  12. #12

    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    still loving it

  13. #13
    Adonnus's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    It's a bit frustrating I'll admit to have to beat 20 full stacks of Cao Wei troops just to get to their capital... espeically when you finally crush all their armies and find you have not enough men left for a siege.


    A solution - maybe reduce the overall number of stacks by doubling the upkeep for every unit?


    This is one random location in Cao territory... whenever I try to cross the river they just surround me with a wall of disposable men until I have to retreat.

    http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7...35138938795724
    Last edited by Adonnus; November 01, 2014 at 10:38 PM.

  14. #14

    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    Sadly I have no time for an AAR, but I finished a short Qingzhou campaign a couple of months ago, and it was fun not least because of the relative AI spam and the difficulty in making progress towards your objectives. I was using a version prior to the patch that removed the siege engines, so I expect the mod should be harder now. The slow going at sea also avoids the use of naval invasions as an exploit.

    For the game to remain interesting in the later stages you must somehow get a challenge from the AI and the many AI stacks make that difference. It was a struggle and it felt that perhaps in an entire year sometimes I would not manage to capture a single settlement. I never got to the Cao capital but I got to the end of my campaign and it was a satisfying campaign nonetheless. I do not remember the difficulty level, I was testing the water following the patches and it may have not been on very hard.

    One somewhat unrelated or perhaps indirectly related point is whether the economy script could be tuned down a little so that the merchants and trade continue to provide a small income longer, even if something very minimal. There is a limit on the number of merchants, so they would not change the game if they made a few coins per turn. I ended up using them as spies.

    Once the various new scripts are done, could we have some suggestions on which factions would be with lots of scripts and which with few or none?

    Edit: One great thing was that Qingzhou never became the top faction in the game. They remained around position 6 or 7 or so even at the later stages, which is probably a first!
    Last edited by Geoffrey of Villehardouin; November 02, 2014 at 06:46 AM.

  15. #15
    Gigantus's Avatar I am not special - I am a limited edition.
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    Default Re: AI Stack Spam Rant

    Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!










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