Rome: Total War - AI Statistics
This post presents trends of AI-only games in Rome: Total War.
20 games from 270 BC until about 500 AD were recorded.
General observations:
- The three Roman families followed by Egypt are the strongest AI factions in the game and most often take over the game world
- The Brutii appear to be the strongest Roman faction on average.
- The three Roman families often hold their alliance, but sometimes fight each other
- Some islands are safe from the AI (for the AI), like Britannia and Sicily
Background:
Rome: Total War has a command to let the AI play completely by itself, i.e. your own faction is also controlled by an AI. I "hacked" the game so that it would output data whenever a faction is eliminated. Additionally, video and audio were disabled while only showing the turn number. That way I could run multiple instances in the background up to about 500 AD (turn 1540) where I stopped the game to check the status and save some data of the leftover factions. Over a time of about 4 days I recorded data of 20 games. Sometimes I also checked the status of ongoing games for interesting developments.
Keep in mind that the sample size is only 20 games which is rather small.
This chart shows the average year at which a faction is destroyed.
Being surrounded by powerful enemies, the Seleucids are the most short-lived faction. Macedon and the Gauls do not fare much better though.
The Britons survive the longest on average. This is because the AI does not like to invade certain land masses. From my observations, Britannia has not been targeted once, although the Britons sometimes invade by sea f.e. Spain. The Romans also frequently invade Africa by sea.
Sicily seems also pretty safe from the AI which is why the Scipii almost always survived (because they always take the whole island).
The few times the Britons and Scipii were destroyed was due to the death of all family members or losing the last city through rebellion.
The black indicator lines are the deviations of the average value. For people who don't know what this means: If the average value is almost always the same through the 20 games, the deviation is small (f.e. the Seleucids). If the average value varies greatly, i.e. the faction sometimes lives long and sometimes short, the deviation is large (f.e. Thrace).
This graph shows the five earliest eliminiations throughout all 20 games. Macedon takes the cake with once being destroyed at turn 18 by the Greek City States. The Seleucids follow close though.
This chart shows which faction conflicts appeared the most frequent (more than 5 / 20 times). The victorious faction names are listed above the chart and the destroyed ones below.
We can see all the classics like Julii vs Gauls, Scipii vs Carthage, Egypt vs the Seleucids, Pontus vs Armenia but also some unexpected ones like Julii vs Scythia.
This brings us to the greatest faction destroyers of the game. How many enemy factions each faction destroyed on average can be seen here. "Other" describes all defeats not directly related to enemies, e.g. through the death of all family members or the rebellion of the faction's last city.
Excluding "Other", the Romans are obviously the most genocidal. Also interesting is that the Rebels actually managed to destroy one faction throughout 20 games, which is more than f.e. the short-lived Seleucids accomplished.
This chart shows by which factions the SPQR was destroyed.
The Julii are obviously the highest threat to the Senate with destroying them in almost half of all games.
Weird is the appearance of the Britons here. Either they actually invaded and took Rome or it was a bug.
This pie shows which factions died most often due to the death of all family members or losing the last city through rebellion.
Here we can see how much territory the factions had on average at about 500 AD. If a faction is not listed here then it never survived to this date.
The Romans appear to be the strongest factions with the Brutii as the lead.
Parthia and the Senate both survived once with one city.
This brings us to the six greatest realms of all 20 games at 500 AD.
The Brutii once had a stunningly amount of 71 territories. This is really high compared to the following realms, which are all at about 50.
Generally one can observe the establishment of a balance between realm extents and rebellions: At one point the amount of territories the AI captures per turn becomes about equal to the amount of territories the AI loses to rebellions per turn.
Extraordinary Mentions:
That one time Egypt fought alongside the Julii against the Scipii. There was a massive front at Libya-Tripolitana where neither the Scipii nor Egypt seemed to be able to advance for decades.
Extraordinary Mentions:
The time Thrace took over Europe.
Extraordinary Mentions:
The time Spain took over Europe.
Extraordinary Mentions:
The time the Greek City States took over Europe except for Rome.
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