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Thread: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

  1. #21

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    I had armies outside Seleucia and a fair chunk of the Seleucid armies were conquering some random army in Arabia even after quite a lot of turns after I conquered Charax and was raiding Mesopotamia. I was just willing them to get their act together and go *towards me*. I feel like the AI should know when there's an actual crisis and drop what they're doing and *move*. I don't know if this can really be modded or not. But I feel the AI should just send their armies towards me if I'm clearly invading.

  2. #22

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Ok I think I have exact opposite of what you guys happen. I play at very hard Roman faction. Now when I attack enemy respond within 5 turns and the allies actually attack the designated target unless untill it's across the sea. If it's connected through land they attack the designated target. The enemies also react to my attacks by sending enough troops. Maybe due to tha fact that I turtled intial 100 turns didn't rush after I conquered italia, Latium and cidplania.

  3. #23

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    For some reason it doesn't happen in all campaigns. I haven't figured out why yet but its almost like the AI bugs out sometimes and just stops recruiting and properly moving.

    One thing to try that I have heard helps is to change the option in game to see AI moves (Limited, etc) to another option for a turn. Sometimes that jump starts them.

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  4. #24

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    I will link this post I made some time ago: https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...=#post15616053

    As you can see from my campaign from a long time ago even, the CAI is capable of posing a challenge and a serious one at that. I suppose it depends on the circumstances. If you face an AI empire that has been weakened and is fighting on multiple fronts, then you'll have an easy time. In my campaign, Carthage had carved out Northern Africa and Iberia for itself and thus faced no challenges from either south, west or east. This meant that they only had a front with me and showed up in full force.

    Another campaign I had with the Seleucids I actually lost. I was surrounded and lost the Mesopotamian early on. I fought for survival against endless Arabian and Ptolemaic stacks, when suddenly the Indian factions showed up from the east controlling a large part of the east and now ventured into Syria with their armies. Again, they have no possible front in the east or south, which prevents them from being weakened.

  5. #25

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    some field report - currently playing rome and fighting carthage, its not late game (turn 70 or so) but AI carthage is still a pretty big empire and they DO seem to be sending tons of army against me even though they are simultaenously at war against multiple factions.

    could be stroke of luck, but seems AI is much more aggressive in the current version than before.

  6. #26

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Playing as the Seleucid, I faced quite a challenge against the Ptolemy Egypt. Despite being at war in the West against Kyrenia and in the South against Blemmyes, Egypt thew all 3 of her armies in the Syrian front. We took turn taking Tyros back and forth for 20+ turns allowing Kyrenia and Blemmyes to push Egypt down to only 2 settlements in the Nile Delta. Maybe I was lucky the A.I. decided to focus on me, but I had quite a memorable time fighting the Syrian War against Egypt. Thank you so much, DEI team!

  7. #27
    ♔Greek Strategos♔'s Avatar THE BEARDED MACE
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    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    According to many recent report the AI is much more active (all around)

  8. #28

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Quote Originally Posted by ♔Greek Strategos♔ View Post
    According to many recent report the AI is much more active (all around)
    Hi, really ?

    What I see are mostly reports of a challenging AI in special cases that rarely occurs (one front) or in the early/turtle stages of the game.

    My experience as Rome (Normal, no garrison penalties) is similar. Exciting with constant invasions from Barbarians and Carthage in early/mid game.

    In late game (almost max research, hundreds of turns), after a good fight against smallish gauls and other barbarians in Spain while defending Sicily with 1 stack, I crossed into Carthaginian territory over Gibraltar and just steamrolled with a few legions.

    Garrison fight after garrison fight, very few stacks always alone and sometimes yes - camping in the desert. Was same when I continued into Egypt, I believe they had 1 stack of medium quality troops close to their cities and a half dying slowly in the marshes. They just did not recruit and respond.

    Also I noticed that it is too easy to steamroll as Rome in late game against these passive large empires as you can just move on after 2-3 turns to next city when troops are healed as uprisings just don't happen due to large bonuses. Possibly should increase culture penalties and prolong/slow recruitment/healing/replacements for the player times in newly conquered provinces, although sadly I don't think the AI will use such an opportunity/pause to recruit and respond.

    Another interesting observation was that Egypt and Carthage was at war early on but it seems no action at all was done on their border during hundreds of turns. I checked almost every turn and no border cities *ever* flipped to either side, neither did I see naval aggression between them.

    I remember playing RTW1 mods that had a lot more aggressive enemies with constant recruiting and hammering you with stack after stacks during the entire game, often with stacks working in tandem, with alot of choke point strategy needed and rotation of stacks to defend. I don't see this much in late game in DEI for larger empires, sadly.

    Thanks for the best mod btw! Will try hard setting next and also the tip to flip the "follow AI moves" setting to see if that improves things. Sad to see that the AI does not garrison key cities bordering looming enemies

    As said before - it seems large empires at late stage get stuck in some daft AI infinite loop and just cannot make proper decisions anymore like defending their homeland. Which makes late game not challenging. When I played the Radius RTW2 mod a long time ago this problem was circumvented by some large empires having many (!) satrapies that constantly spat out armies to push you back when you invaded, but there is a balance here and too many city defense fights against endless hordes of persian satrapies can also become tiresome. But possibly add some more satrapies (unbreakable bond if possible, and land-locked without ports) for the large empires to make a late game challenge more likely.
    Last edited by MLKMR; June 10, 2019 at 04:59 PM.

  9. #29

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Challenging AI always denotes early and mid game, because the late game is simply something that we can't realistically mod in a plausible way, we've introduced imperial debuffs, but that's mostly just to limit the player, apart from economy buffs we can't really change anything to make the AI work differently afaik.

  10. #30

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Every TW game suffers from the inevitable steamroll phase unfortunately. As far as balancing the AI goes, often what is good for the early/mid game is bad for the late game.

    From the mixed reports even in this thread alone, you can tell its not an easy thing to track down or even to balance for at all. Its very likely its some sort of core AI issue in the game itself.
    Last edited by Dresden; June 10, 2019 at 05:22 PM.

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  11. #31
    Jurand of Cracow's Avatar History and gameplay!
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    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dresden View Post
    Every TW game suffers from the inevitable steamroll phase unfortunately. As far as balancing the AI goes, often what is good for the early/mid game is bad for the late game
    A small caveat: I don't know how it is in the Warscape engine, but in the Medieval 2 one can actually mod the gameplay in such a way that from mid-game phase (ie: middle-to-large faction) significant anti-snowball effects kick-in, preventing simple steamrolling. In the Stainless Steel submods (the Byg's Grim Reality or the SSHIP) it takes forms of 1) plummeting loyalty due to the distance from capital and number of cities - it makes further conqests very difficult, 2) civil wars erupting after changes on the throne, 3) growing public unrest due to the distance from capital that requires large armies to garrison cities what actually costs more than the income from those cities, 4) increased corruption due to the distance from capital (again, making financing of the armies difficult), 5) traits deteriorating due to the size of the faction. (in the SSHIP the point 2 concerns also the AI faction - I've seen many falling apart due to the internal problems)
    All in all, I think that some TotalWar mods make the steamrolling is not-so-inevitable.

    This said, I think the DeI is a great mod and actually provides a lot of challenges. I haven't played any R2 game without DeI. Thanks guys for all fun I had.
    Mod leader of the SSHIP: traits, ancillaries, scripts, buildings, geography, economy.
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    If you want to play a historical mod in the medieval setting the best are:
    Stainless Steel Historical Improvement Project and Broken Crescent.
    Recently, Tsardoms and TGC look also very good. Read my opinions on the other mods here.
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    Dominant strategy in Rome2, Attila, ToB and Troy: “Sniping groups of armies”. Still there, alas!

  12. #32

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Yes, loyalty and maintenance increases with imperium level, as well as the chance of civil wars, upkeep gets increased as well i believe. But all that is mainly just to make life hard for the player, but apart from giving the AI buffs we don't really see any way we can mod their behavior.

  13. #33

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    I just experienced the same thing in my campaign.
    I'm playing as Carthage, I wasn't at war with a single faction after about 200-250 turns, focusing on a booming economy, I was super rich. Rome had a pretty large Empire conquered, and randomly declares war on me. I make a super elite 2 stack army, and as I approached the Italian peninsula from Sicily, the Romans marched 3 stacks down preemptively to meet my invasion force. I wasn't too keen on the terrain so I waited thinking of taking my army and invading from a different location, but all of a sudden the stacks they sent to face me were sent elsewhere. They left one stack of men that was mainly comprised of Histatii and Principes (I guess they didn't upgrade them) which I brushed aside like a joke. I took my army from the southern end of Sicily to Patavium conquering every bit of the Italian Peninsula without seeing another Roman army. Taking Rome against a garrison is pretty disappointing, out of curiosity I changed my spy cap and sent like 15 spies to all the corners of their empire, they had a total of about 8-10 full stack armies off fighting in other areas and just let me clear the entire Italian peninsula without a single real fight other than garrisons as I marched from city to city.

    I guess this kind of thing is expected from a TW game, the AI has always been the thing that has kept the franchise from being TRULY epic. Battle and campaign AI have always been so horrible it ruins an amazing concept. I think DEI has obv made huge improvements but they cant completely remake the AI from the ground up so it will always be limited.

  14. #34

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    In every game I've played, I've noticed AI Rome vs AI Carthage, the former is able to concentrate its stacks, rushing through Sicily and taking North Africa, while the latter keeps going all over the place.

  15. #35

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    My experience is different. Here are examples.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    Here is situation. It is now 2-nd turn after Parthia and my empire have jointly conquered 3-rd Empire (it's name is not even worth to be mentioned anymore). Parthia is surrounded by my Empire on all sides, except for Parthava, which is a single region satrapy of Seleukidai Empire. Parthia is afraid to attack Seleukidai. So I am. Even considering that Seleukidai is currently engaged in several wars, two of them are with powerful empires.

    Parthia clearly understands that my empire is natural and the only next target.
    I clearly understand that Parthia is my next natural target, because I seek to secure my eastern border. My northern border is secure already.
    Parthia understands that I will attack it eventually.
    So I expect imminent attack from Parthia every turn now.
    And please notice how Parthia is preparing to pounce.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    I estimate Parthia has another army near my eastern-southern border. If Parthia attacks within next 5 turns, I will struggle to keep several regions in my North.

    This situation is not single example of AI concentrating their armies.

    I've seen several concentrated armies of Seleukidai, when we were fighting common enemy. When I was fighting Arche Bosphorus, it brought 1 army to threaten two of my regions (capital and recently conquered). Then it brought 2 more armies to conquer my recently conquered region.

    So in my experience AI is performing very good strategically.

    The topic starter, in my opinion, is missing some important facts. Like maybe his target is fighting other wars now? And therefore his armies are on other fronts.
    Last edited by ♔Greek Strategos♔; June 27, 2019 at 04:53 AM. Reason: Spoilers added.

  16. #36

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    I believe the reason is the ai wage too many wars at once and dont know where to station their army anymore, i doubt an ai cross section file made it properly put level of threats on faction in the different war he wages, the ai cannot make up his mind where to go basically

    i dont have this problem againsty carthage in the first punic war as they advance many full stack against me in sicily

  17. #37

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    In my current Seleucid campaign (age of Hellenism, cultural tension, alternative economy), Carthage has *almost* defeated Rome, which would be the first for me. I’m at war with Rome and captured Pella and Thrace from them. But I’m also raiding Carthage trying to provoke a war (we’re at the end game, turn 105). But I don’t think my conflict tipped the scales at all. Carthage had already made a client state of Syracuse and captured all of Italia before I fought my first battle against Rome. They went on to capture Ascultum and Appolonia, defeating several of the “Italy in Turmoil” spawned armies. I couldn’t see it, but their three armies disappeared in the direction of Roma itself and didn’t come back. Rome has since restored Latium, but Carthage holds the rest of Italy. It’s very cool to see such a robust conflict, so great work to the DeI team (and potentially Seleucus for AoH).

    I don’t mean to contradict what others have said above about the problem the AI has with large empires, but it’s nice to see there are exceptions.

  18. #38

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Quote Originally Posted by davidus terrus View Post
    I believe the reason is the ai wage too many wars at once and dont know where to station their army anymore, i doubt an ai cross section file made it properly put level of threats on faction in the different war he wages, the ai cannot make up his mind where to go basically

    i dont have this problem againsty carthage in the first punic war as they advance many full stack against me in sicily
    Yes, Carthage would do this too, whenever I played as Syracuse, but never happens when it's AI controlled and definitely no coordination when facing Rome. I'd go so far as to say none of the factions are displaying any coordination vs Rome.

  19. #39

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Quote Originally Posted by Condottiero Magno View Post
    Yes, Carthage would do this too, whenever I played as Syracuse, but never happens when it's AI controlled and definitely no coordination when facing Rome. I'd go so far as to say none of the factions are displaying any coordination vs Rome.
    Dude look up. The post immediately before yours is an anecdote of Carthage sending 3 stacks to the gates of Rome itself, having secured much of the peninsula.

  20. #40

    Default Re: Large AI empires do not concentrate their armies, and it ruins an almost-perfect DeI experience.

    Quote Originally Posted by nhvanputten View Post
    Dude look up. The post immediately before yours is an anecdote of Carthage sending 3 stacks to the gates of Rome itself, having secured much of the peninsula.
    Dude, this isn't a MMO and there's no way of replicating it, so in my experience, I've never encountered it.

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