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Thread: Maritime Borders

  1. #1

    Default Maritime Borders

    Sharing a land boundary with a faction invites a land invasion from that faction, but naval incursions are a bit more murky. The AI behavior regarding expansion by sea is a bit strange but hopefully this thread will elucidate y'all.

    It seems that certain regions have a maritime "link" between them which causes the AI to launch invasions to and fro. These "links" are:

    Pergamon - Rhodes
    Pergamon - Crete
    Kyrene - Crete
    Athenai - Crete
    Alexandreia - Crete
    Alexandreia - Rhodes
    Halicarnassus - Rhodes
    Salamis - Rhodes
    Salamis - Ptolemais-Akko
    Salamis - Tarsos
    Taras - Epidamnos (special)
    Syrakousai - Crete
    Arretium - Nesakton (special)
    Sinope - Olbia (special)

    Most of these are obvious (finally a villain origin story for the island of Crete!) but some of these are unintuitive. The Syrakousai - Crete link is especially egregious. Expect a faction that controls either to attack the other. An interesting thing to note is that some of these links only work if one of them is AI-controlled. A faction controlling either of these special links would prevent invasions. The most memorable one would be the Romans utterly giving up on Epidamnos once, say, the Epeirote player conquers it. Another example I've noticed is any AI faction controlling Sinope sending expeditions to Olbia. However in most cases the AI doesn't care; if a maritime link is present, it's free real estate

  2. #2

    Default Re: Maritime Borders

    This is really interesting! I don’t know if the above information is up to date, but isn’t there a lot of potential to add more naval links in order to encourage the AI factions to pay more attention to overseas regions that they historically had an interest in?

    The first thing that comes to mind is to add links between mainland Italy and Sicily, and possibly between Sicily and Tunisia. Perhaps we could get some more action between Rome and Carthage that way?

    IIRC, it’s a huge headache to redraw campaign map regions for some reason that I can’t remember. Would that be true for adding new naval links as well?
    Last edited by Paltmull; August 11, 2021 at 05:39 AM.

  3. #3

    Default Re: Maritime Borders

    Quote Originally Posted by Paltmull View Post
    This is really interesting! I don’t know if the above information is up to date, but isn’t there a lot of potential to add more naval links in order to encourage the AI factions to pay more attention to overseas regions that they historically had an interest in?

    The first thing that comes to mind is to add links between mainland Italy and Sicily, and possibly between Sicily and Tunisia. Perhaps we could get some more action between Rome and Carthage that way?

    IIRC, it’s a huge headache to redraw campaign map regions for some reason that I can’t remember. Would that be true for adding new naval links as well?
    Unfortunately the game engine does not explicitly have a "naval link" feature that modders can directly modify. It's just a theory that explains why only some regions separated by water would support invasions into each other. Naval links are probably generated from the campaign map using some algorithm known only to the original developers of M2TW. Modders and fans can only piece together clues to figure out what the game engine is doing. IMO the only way to fully understand naval links is through extensive and time-consuming experimentation. You'll need to create a copy of this mod and create campaign maps and starting situations that encourages the AI to launch naval invasions in different scenarios. This involves a ton of pressing "End Turn" and waiting. We're probably better off cyberstalking the original programmers of M2TW and begging them to reveal algorithms such as these.

    And yeah, this stuff is whack. The Pergamenes for example will launch naval invasions from Pergamon to Krete and Rhodes despite that you need to take a lengthy and curved route to get to those islands. Meanwhile a much closer and more direct route exists between Pergamon and literally the entire eastern Greek coast, yet the Pergamenes will NEVER attempt a naval invasion that way.

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