XCAI: Campaign AI feedback thread

[xeryx]

Hello all, This thread is for campaign only feedback.

I realize that there will still be issues with your campaigns, like the Romans being unable to keep large amounts of armies going to fend off the hordes.

Please be mindful of your diplomatic relations, and what the personalities are of the nations you are dealing with. Not all are aggressive at the lower levels of the game, the higher the campaign level (which is separate from battle level) you will start seeing many more aggressive personalities. That is what will make your campaigns much tougher.

All feedback is welcome as long as it is constructive. This forum will remain positive as long as I am the moderator.

[Giwrgos Stamos]

First of all congrats,it seems that you put a lot of work and time here,second my feedback i just started a campaign with ERE and in the diplomacy both Sassanids and WRE accepeted to be my puppet states and many other peace treties and client states,is this intended?ps i tried with vanilla first and then with aggressive ai another trully good mod from the workshop just to see if it was intended and in both campaings i manage to have the same thing.

[xeryx]

Thanks for the feedback, I haven't been able to play enough lately. The levels at which deals are accepted (by different personalities) are currently vanilla, so you will see the same results (If personalities are similar). Hopefully, this will be one of the next areas I work on. The tables are pretty intense and I have to make my changes slowly to make sure effects are as desired. That will come out as a seperate test module and hopefully we can take care of those issues. Please keep the feedback coming!

any relation to John?

[Giwrgos Stamos]

thanks for the reply,though i can choose which files i want to play until then?because you really got me with the battle mod i cant wait to try it in my new campaign and the combined work with the skills mod.Now if you are talking about John performer or singer i cant remember what exactly he is,absolutely nothing in common..

[xeryx]

Yes, I made it modular, so you can play the game you want. I highly, recommend at the minimum, the XCAI, and the XBAI. The big thing though is unbalanced morale adjustments in many other mods. All of my modules are calibrated for morale to be balanced. I do highly recommend the dynamic stances as well, it really brings out the campaign and fixes many issues with movement. I love the traits mod, with the offices, as it really just is the icing on the cake, and really ups the role playing and envelopment into the game. The Family integrity and politics mod makes great adjustments to all of those systems and makes those systems fun without being tedious or annoying. The other module is a compilation of roster bug fixes it is pretty much needed too, Take some time and view the info in them but I know if you uses all of them together it will make for a very good game.

Some of the other mods I use in my games to make it tougher are the 1.5 larger garrisons mod. I also like some of the faction leader traits mods. The better weather mod is good too.

Plus you can use any unit mods or expanded roster mods, of course any graphics mods work too.

I will put up a thread of recommended mods in the coming days

[xeryx]

I am fixing and updating the pack, there was an issue with client state initial values not being high enough to hold them in good standing. That should now be fixed. Let me know if it works better.

Xeryx

[xeryx]

Ok Lurkers, I need your feedback, so come join the club.

Today's question is about Client states. I have not really played the Romans or other faction that can form them. Are they are always extremely easy?

I have the option to disable Client states all together, in another table.I think i will do that.

[xeryx]

Well, it looks like I have some adjustments to make to the overall aggressiveness of the XCAI, I lowered many of the personalities to more reasonable levels. However, it appears to me that some attitude adjustments are in order. The trick, of course, will be to keep the AI from over extending itself with the aggressiveness.

I believe that because of the conflict with vanilla, it was giving me erroneous campaign issues. Now that everything is working correctly, I can get some new baselines and go forward from there. I guess this is more of a beta.


Not too happy with Rome though in my campaign, as they have no personality and are just running off of conservative default values. Ugghhhh

But on a positive note I am MUCH happier with the way diplomacy negative and positive values are working. The swings are not as drastic and are staying within reasonable levels. This will make gettign back to neutral values much easier. Instead of having value in the 300 or 400 range. So, far the highest I have seen is about 200 against Rome.

[AnthoniusII]

Well I do not know IF i must post some sugestions observations on Attila here or not.
Please move or delete the post if this is not the right place.
When I started to complain about the idiot CAI of Attila, I made some observations based on reality.
1st Neutral (even in hostile stance) factions do not agree in trade agreements even AI has benefits on those agreements. That makes no sence because even if a state was about to attack an other state would like to have more funds untill the finall momment. Also mercheants were also spies in those days. So "neutral" factions must be more acceptable in trade agreements.
2nd: Vassals can not be bribed in Attila. That makes also no sence, because with money or marriage kingdoms always changed sides in wars.
3rd: AI does not accept peace offer EVEN if its in despert position. That makes no sense because if a king watches his domain in ruins , he tries to save what he can untill the time his kingdom will be strong enough to take back what it lost.
4th: AI brides are by 90% too old when they are offered for marriage.
Civil wars are located in one general only that spawns near capital (if the player is smart enough to remove him from his armies).
The most logical step would be that the rebelion character should have some kind of support with other characters that have minimum or no loyalty. That would make sense your system to increase loyalty if :
marriage
title given
etc...

My two cents I hope it was usefull enough.

[xeryx]

I hear ya!! I will try and work on those issues soon, vanilla really is a drag in diplomacy!!

[xeryx]

Well, today is a great day!!
I got to play for a while, and the changes that I have made to the campaign are extremely impressive and promising.

For the first time I have played my countless games Rome is defending itself like a true Roman!! They are a defensive personality in the game I am playing. The behavior I am seeing is truly remarkable.

The Romans are defending their borders, from my raids. I have been pushed back into my own territory 3x. The AI is also using superior amounts of troops to make sure that I retreat, something that I have strived to accomplish. It has also pushed back all other incursions by the other AI factions. I am actually playing cat and mouse with the AI. Is this really the same game???

I am now thinking that the need for a garrison mod has become obsolete.

Honestly, guys, I am so happy and giddy today, all of these hundreds of hours are showing tremendous progress in the past couple of days. I would like to know what kind of behavior you guys are seeing so please do some posts this weekend and we can celebrate together!!

Cheers

[xeryx]

Ok so now that I have had some time to play for awhile, I see what you guys are talking about with the diplomacy.

Even though I did not change the diplomacy negotiation itself it is much harder to get deals, at least on hard difficulty. I believe there are some hidden difficulty numbers that are affecting this.

So, if one of you could try a game on an easier level and let me know. I will continue my work with the diplomacy negotiation tables this weekend. Hopefully, I will be able to make more progress and get out a basic diplomacy pack this weekend to help with this issue.

[xeryx]

I will work on finding you guys a fix for the diplomacy today, because playing a game without diplomacy working is no fun. So, I may have to strip out the diplomacy segments and make it is a seperate module. I had a setback with diplomacy yesterday anyway, stupid PFM corrupted my work I have been working on for the past day.

Edit; I uploaded a fixed diplomacy version..thanks guys

[Jurand of Cracow]

It'd be useful for me if you'd do it also on AoC
I'm finished with the ATW-GC, after a few games, including the long WRE...

[xeryx]

I am sure it would, many of the modifications will carry over. I will make you a deal, if you will just play a vanilla campaign with my XAI and then add in the mods I recommended....Then I will do you a solid and get that campaign in much better shape..but it will take awhile.

[Jurand of Cracow]

I'm quite sure I don't want to play big campaigns with ATW-GC due to the inharent problem with the "grand strategy" mechanics. With unlimited manpower and automatically replenishing armies what you need is to wipe completely the enemy armies. It doesn't make any sense just to win a battle - the AI will replenish and come back soon. You really need to wipe the armies. You can do it with the numerical superiority (ie more armies to attack 2-1 or 3-2) and then attacking two times in one turn, prefereably on the autoresolve (otherwise they flee, now wiping). What follows, the superior tactics is "sniping the armies": you make a battle group of 2 full stacks and take enemy armies one-by-one. You also take and raze the AI settlements quickly as a follow up (especiall as the WRE - you need to raze constantly the neighbouring settlements, letting the AI to spend money on rebuilding them, and then razing them again).

The interplay between a few elements (1. relatively low prices for the units, both recruitment and upkeep; 2. no-limit of recruits (as it was in the M2TW), 3. automatic replenishent) makes it the superior tactics. Otherwise you face constant flow of enemy armies. Thus, to my mind for the ATW to be playable one must introduce strong mechanism counteracting this mechanics. But I'm not sure it can be done and I'm neither sure AoC would be better even with your work.

(and I'm not tackling here the plethora of other issues M2TW is better from ATW...)

What I have more positive view is the battle system and I hope your mod will provide for more interesting battles.

[xeryx]

Well I can tell you that the AI does have to have some bonuses Because it isn't as good as we are. I keep the bonuses reasonable in the XAI. For instance, the AI does get an addition bonus for all buying and upkeep of units but it is around 25% depending on level. They also get a food bonus because there are so many small settlements and the AI does not always choose the best food option when building pens. It also does get a small bonus for happiness, but is not that large as I still want them to feel the pain. In my current game the AI is doing really well for itself. It is fighting defending and developing all on it's own. It is picking fights with me and I can't leave a settlement undefended if an enemy is near my boarders.

Something truly wonderful is that I have been seeing with my new stances, the AI is actually using them to save itself money. It is leaving good stacks of troops to defend its regions as well. The AI is playing a bit more defensive, and depending on the personality will expand as it should. I am in turn 40 now, and Rome is now starting to take some hits and lose regions. But in all my other games, by turn 20 they were getting beat up much worse.

The game engine is much better than people realize. Even I wasn't sure of what I could accomplish, but now I do see it's potential. I also see that CA still has many internal issues as a team, because of so many discrepancies in the tables. They have made things so overly complicated, and there is so much remnants of old code that should have been exiled long ago. But I will leave it at that because they are more concerned with the coin than actually making sure a product is as good as it can be.

I promise all of you that, when I am done, this game will fully work as WE expected it too. It will take awhile as there are some daunting tasks ahead, and now I will not have as much time to devote to modding. We will however get there and we will finally be able to really savor and enjoy every minute we play this game.

When I am done with this game, I will most likely work on Shogun because I have never really played it and I really want it to shine, because I love that era too and I have heard that it is probably the best of the series.

[xeryx]

I noticed a minor issue today, and I am not quite sure what is causing it. The ranks are off on the displayed army icons..never seen this issue before.

[xeryx]

So what would you guys say if I found the issues with diplomacy and now have the AI offering me deals, and that demands are now much easier with good relations????

[xeryx]

What would you do if I figured out how to balance the diplomacy tables???