The Imperial Republic of Arse and mighty empires of a tiny villages in the desert!

[NeptuneUK]

Having every single faction set to Aggressive/Reliable except Rome, just feels like a cheap way of artificially increasing difficulty, and feels immersion breaking for me. I would like a bit of variation in the faction personality traits!
Seeing a tiny desert village of 800 people declaring war on every faction on the other side of the continent just seems daft to me. I can understand why some factions would be aggressive, but I haven't seen a single faction try to be defensive, every minor faction in the game just declares suicidal wars constantly until they get wiped out until one or two little factions get lucky and carve out hilarious empires from a little cave in Gaul or something. Will there be some variation added later?

[Daergar]

Weird, it works very well in my campaigns, with random results every time. I've not had "green" factions declare war on me, and the AI seem to get along with their natural allies just fine.

Luck of the draw, or does this happen in all the campaigns you've tested?

As for "cheap way", it's done to lessen the complete mayhem of random back-stabbing that made no sense previously. Not sure what immersion is breaking?

[NeptuneUK]

It's not the backstabbing that's any issue any more, it's the fact that every single faction on the campaign map wishes to rapidly expand no matter if it makes sense to do so or not.

[Dresden]

We had variation before with factions set to various levels of aggression and the result is an unaggressive AI that does not perform well when at war and was awful in the mid/late game against larger player empires. We cannot predict which faction will necessarily become a threat to the player in the mid/late game so we can't pick and choose. Also if we did, then the campaign would become predictable since you can pretty much guarantee those set to not be aggressive would die out every time.

Difficulty also matters alot. Hard is fairly aggressive and Very hard will be unreasonably aggressive. The softcore CAI submod has aggression turned down one level if you want to try that out. I may update it in the future to make more variations for aggression levels.

[Falco]

We had variation before with factions set to various levels of aggression and the result is an unaggressive AI that does not perform well when at war and was awful in the mid/late game against larger player empires. We cannot predict which faction will necessarily become a threat to the player in the mid/late game so we can't pick and choose. Also if we did, then the campaign would become predictable since you can pretty much guarantee those set to not be aggressive would die out every time.

Difficulty also matters alot. Hard is fairly aggressive and Very hard will be unreasonably aggressive. The softcore CAI submod has aggression turned down one level if you want to try that out. I may update it in the future to make more variations for aggression levels.

So, since I'm playing on Very Hard, that would be the reason no body wants to non aggression pact or do a trade agreement with me? No matter what their relation?

[NeptuneUK]

When playing on hard, I soften up my potential diplomatic allies with 4-5 turns of tribute, usually works. On normal, it usually takes a single gift of coin and they take the pact immediately.

I don't mind aggressive AI as such, I would just prefer to have at least SOME of the factions not set to suicidally aggressive.... Of course like you said, you can't predict which factions will be a danger mid-late game, so maybe setting some factions to defensive may pre-emtively choose which factions get wiped out over others... :/


Additionally, there are a LOT of things that I like about the current system, the main one being that each playthrough is VASTLY different with different factions gaining power in different areas each time. It's just each time I see a mighty empire forged from a backwards village with a population of 800 village idiots somehow dominating an entire continent. It doesn't happen a LOT, but it happens often enough that I make a note of it. It just so happens that these little factions tend to have less impressive rosters, so the mighty imperium of backwardsville tends to be a less menacing adversary than some larger factions, despite somehow overcoming the AI.

After some more playthroughs with different factions and some thought on the subject, I mostly recant my initial complaint. But I'm sure there are others who may have thought the same.

[Meraun]

Wierd, in my games, the AI is more agressive, yes but they also forge alliances.

For Example Massilia: Its strong and defeat some minor Gaul Barbarians, but at the same Time, has alliances with Iberian Tribes as well as the Veneti. So i woud call the AI Mindless, infact i have not seen any of your discribed Mindless War declariotions between minor Faction. I play H/H as Rome.

Nice Detail: in my War against Carthage over Sardinia/Corsica and Sicilia the Regions have been conquered by both sides several times. Last time, Carthage freed to Regions, Corsica and a Region in Sicilia :-) Wihle i was able to take the one
on Sicilia, i had not enough man to sent an other Legion to Corsica, espaically beacuse of Carthages much stronger Navy. BUT they offered vassalisation to me.

So now we have and Corsican State wich is Vassal of Rome and in an Military Alliance with Carthage. Wihle Rome and Carthage at War with each other. I wonder how this will turn out ;-)

[Rosbjerg]

I've tested a few games now, into the 50-60th turn, and normal difficulty seems to produce the most logical wars and alliances. Weaker factions will seek NA pacts and defensive alliances, or even become client states of stronger culturally similar neighbors.
While on Hard or VH the smaller AI states will take massive risks and attack the moment the percieve even the slighest weakness. While the bigger factions blob immediatly.

[nunz]

What I've noticed playing on Hard is the rise and fall of factions. Very often they will grow rapidly within the first ~100 turns, but then get ganged up on by multiple other factions until they no longer exist. I noticed this with the Edetani in my last campaign. They conquered most of Spain, and had beaten Massalia as well as ventured into Gaul. As Rome, I let them be and took a trade agreement/non-aggression pact after I joined one of their wars. After maybe 20-30 turns of dominance, the Lusotanians declared war on them as the Edetani had pissed off Carthage by attacking the Ruteni (Lusotanians and Carthage were buddies), who Carthage had liberated after a rebellion. Then, the Nervii seen weakness, and decided to attack the Edetani on the northern flank. Then, my client-state, the Veneti who I had displaced from Patavium and sent east, also joined the war against the Edetani. Eventually they were wiped out. Rise and fall of many nations in my last campaign, it was fun to watch. I just started a new Roman campaign as I was too passive in my last (I was on Turn 170 and still hadn't reached Imperium 5) mostly due to watching the craziness like I just mentioned, so I'm being a bit more aggressive this time around, currently sieging the Insubres, ready to unite Cisalpina in the first 15 turns. I've already killed Liguria, who was weak after a lost battle to Massalia

The one faction that almost always becomes quite strong near Greece (and IMO it's really annoying that they kill off Macedon almost every campaign on me) is the Basilica Odryian (sp?) Daco-Thracian faction that always seems to expand rapidly and aggressively, and they dominate all other AI in the region. I wonder if there is a way to turn down the auto-resolve strength of their Falx units that they get early on, because that is the one thing that is predictable when it comes to the campaign. I made sure they died last campaign as I went east as Rome to get rid of them and save the Ardiaei from destruction.

Oh, another thing that was interesting -- The Ptolemaic peoples came all the way from Egypt and declared war on Carthage in my last campaign, around turn 120. They kept bringing full stack fleets and shredding the Carthaginians near Sicily. It was pretty awesome to see the AI stretching it's navies intelligently and not throwing them away.

[Fluke]

The one faction that almost always becomes quite strong near Greece (and IMO it's really annoying that they kill off Macedon almost every campaign on me) is the Basilica Odryian (sp?) Daco-Thracian faction that always seems to expand rapidly and aggressively, and they dominate all other AI in the region. I wonder if there is a way to turn down the auto-resolve strength of their Falx units that they get early on, because that is the one thing that is predictable when it comes to the campaign.

I too have noticed this on a quite a few campaigns. They always dominate their region and neighbors.

[Dardo21]

Yeah Thrace dominates all, Macedon gets bullied and trashed by everyone.

[Dresden]

We did lower the unit size of their falx units from 300 to 200, maybe we need to adjust some of their recruitment entries since they get a lot of units available by tier 2 barracks/city.

[nunz]

In my new Roman campaign with the Feb.20th update, it is turn 25 and Macedon has just been destroyed by the Odryian Daco-Thracian faction.

I think they can use a tweak, yes, but could Macedon potentially need a small buff? It's sad to see a faction that was still prominent in the region destroyed within ~8 years of gameplay lol

[Dresden]

Macedon is one of the only factions to get a direct income boost in the db tables themselves. So, they do indeed get help already.

The issue with them is probably their diplomatic negative to greek factions.

[NeptuneUK]

Macedon usually always gets wiped out, sometimes to be replaced by the Usurpers, who then get wiped out after a bit. I've been struggling on a lot of my campaigns, but seemed to totally steamroll as Odrysians!!
It was based on some clever Diplomatic pandering meaning that I only had to worry about invasion from the west. My relatively newly recruited low to mid-range army beat a veteran Roman army with minimal losses! Even the Auto-Resolve was like 70-30 in my favour. It has to be the falx and/or pike units?

[Dresden]

Probably their high attack values in auto resolve, not sure exactly what to do about that. Perhaps assign them a special unit set and try to modify it directly somehow in the auto resolve tables. Unfortunately I think those tables rely on unit classes which is a very broad category.

[Dardo21]

perhaps Macedon could recieve a buff in terms of units? Like adding some better units to the lower barracks tier, like the Leukespidai for example?

[Dresden]

Macedon is getting an entirely reworked roster in the hellenic overhaul

[NONOPUST]

Should I hold off on my Macedon campaign? My campaigns tend to last a long time based on my available time

[nunz]

I would hold off. KAM has hinted a few times that the hellenic overhaul is insane Try an Edetani campaign to change things up! I'm currently enjoying one as I got bored of two back-to-back Roman campaigns.