Any way to further help out the AI?

[popovic]

DeI is a good mod. Besides being good, it can also be a hard mod.
But that only stands if you compare it to vanilla, and if you are playing a weak faction, or playing a faction for the first time, or simply if things go wrong in the early turns.
Once you establish yourself and get your economy going, you have basically won the campaign. It all boils down to grinding it out after that.

Now, I know you guys already did a lot to increase the difficulty. However, I am wondering is there still something a person can do to help out the AI?
As in, make it attack you more ferociously, and more efficiently. That is, of course, while acting within reason (I mean I guess that if you disband all your armies, and then declare war on everyone around you, the AI WILL be ferocious).

The main reason why I`m asking this is because in my last campaign I noticed that the AI is sometimes REALLY reluctant to attack, even if it has a chance to win (from what I can see and guess). Like, having 2 stacks within striking range from 1 of my cities that is defended by 1/2 of a stack, and the garrison. I had a situation where the AI would just sit out that opportunity, and not do anything for like 20 turns.

So, is there anything we can do to make AI more brutal towards us?

P.S. I am playing on Very Hard/Normal. I tried Legendary, but I had a situation where a unit of garrison archers held their ground for 5 minutes after being attacked by my hoplites from 3 sides. I reverted back to very hard straight afterwards...

[gornoviceanu]

OK, so from what I gather you are trying to play Very Hard (battle difficulty) / Normal. Since the AI is not smarter but just has better bonuses I would recommend you to stick to normal at battle difficulty exactly because of what you said: their townfolk killing your legionnaires because "very hard" is nonsense. However, you can make the CAI more aggressive and that will harden the game. I play with Normal(battle) / Hard and it's a good mix of fair and challenge. The AI will have more stacks, it will move those stacks together, it will sometimes raid and sack your settlements and even attempt to ambush your ass.

[airborne guy]

I find that the AI is very passive. I dont think there is much DEI can do at this point...Try out AE when it comes out.

[Tenerife_Boy]

I can understand the feeling of CAI being passive cause at certain level of my campaign, I'm also experimenting it aswell. I guess you should give a try to Junaidi's CAI DeI version.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...4#post14240994

Remember: Once you download it, go for the DeI version right ? you will find a few others.

Taking the oportunity I would like to ask to the Dev team, what do you guys think of this CAI version ? I have experiment great AI behaviour in the past, not only Enemy AI being smart= attacking when and where they could win (at least before they knew they were facing Tene The Great MUAHAHAHA) but Ally AI protecting your settlements for example wich amazed me a lot.

[Lord Damian]

Is this save game compatible?

[Tenerife_Boy]

Yes!

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I can understand the feeling of CAI being passive cause at certain level of my campaign, I'm also experimenting it aswell. I guess you should give a try to Junaidi's CAI DeI version.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...4#post14240994

Remember: Once you download it, go for the DeI version right ? you will find a few others.

Taking the oportunity I would like to ask to the Dev team, what do you guys think of this CAI version ? I have experiment great AI behaviour in the past, not only Enemy AI being smart= attacking when and where they could win (at least before they knew they were facing Tene The Great MUAHAHAHA) but Ally AI protecting your settlements for example wich amazed me a lot.

To be honest, I've tried using it several times and finds it makes the game a worse experience over all.

AI protecting player settlements even happens in base DeI, as long as you are at war with the same people, don't have an army near your settlement, and they have transit rights they will occasionally station armies near cities they deem vunerable to attack.


However I find the ai makes poorer descisions (attacking aggressively when it has zero chance of victory for example), making war then immediately asking for peace with huge sums of money or client state offer attached (even more so than in base dei).


It just did not improve the feeling of the game for me.

[popovic]

I can understand the feeling of CAI being passive cause at certain level of my campaign, I'm also experimenting it aswell. I guess you should give a try to Junaidi's CAI DeI version.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...4#post14240994

Remember: Once you download it, go for the DeI version right ? you will find a few others.

Taking the oportunity I would like to ask to the Dev team, what do you guys think of this CAI version ? I have experiment great AI behaviour in the past, not only Enemy AI being smart= attacking when and where they could win (at least before they knew they were facing Tene The Great MUAHAHAHA) but Ally AI protecting your settlements for example wich amazed me a lot.

I`ve seen that CAI around, but I never used it. The main reason is that from what I understood the guy who made it lowered the probability the AI will attack (unless it has high chance to win).

Personally, I would like for the AI to be somewhat suicidal... I feel that is good both for the AI, and for me.

If the AI attacks very aggresively, and loses it`s stacks, it will have to rebuild them. However, when it rebuilds them, it often recruits new, better units, that were made available by either new barracks or new reforms.

Since I play on Very Hard, the AI usually doesn`t lack either the funds, or the recruitment slots it needs to make new armies.
The downside to this is that sometimes the AI can be suicidal when it really shouldn`t be (like for instance, when it has only 1 settlement left). But mid-game and late game, even doing suicide attacks is better for the AI, imo. Since it already gets huge bonuses over me, even suiciding some stacks will likely hurt me more than an AI empire (that has a few provinces to draw on).

Actually, I was tinkering with the idea of making the AI chances to attack even higher. I will first need to learn how to mod that though...

[popovic]

OK, so from what I gather you are trying to play Very Hard (battle difficulty) / Normal.

It`s the other way around. I play Very Hard campaign difficulty/Normal battle.
I tried Legendary, but the bonuses the AI gets for battles are just ludicrous.

[Tenerife_Boy]

AI protecting player settlements even happens in base DeI, as long as you are at war with the same people, don't have an army near your settlement, and they have transit rights they will occasionally station armies near cities they deem vunerable to attack.

Then wonderful, I'm testing coop campaign (gc) and massalia (hatg) and I'm experiencing a good CAI behave.

However I find the ai makes poorer descisions (attacking aggressively when it has zero chance of victory for example), making war then immediately asking for peace with huge sums of money or client state offer attached (even more so than in base dei).

Sad to hear this as it never happened to me. The only time when they attacked as a suicidal acting was when they lost all their settlements and wanted to retake their homeland.

[Dresden]

I recommend checking out the hardcore submod if you want the AI to be more aggressive.

[popovic]

I recommend checking out the hardcore submod if you want the AI to be more aggressive.

Does that work with the PoR beta patch? Cause I`m not giving up PoR once I tried it .

Also, from what I can see, there are some changes there that I really like (higher imperium penalties, yes sir, why isn`t that in regular DeI?)

But also, there is a bunch of things that I don`t like (Increased squalor from buildings, decreased happiness, Increased food consumption from buildings,Increased cost/upkeepof units). I mean, those look to me like gimping yourself really hard, just to get a challenge. I would preffer to help out/give AI a boost, rather than shoot myself in the leg.

P.S. I am aware that both increasing imperium penalties and these other nerfs are all just... nerfs. However, the catch is that while the imperium penalties kick in once you blob up and are powerful, while all these other changes also make early game harder, which I find is not necessary at all.

[Grigal]

I recommend DeI Hardcore submod if you want more challenge, I tried it some time ago and can't play without it any more - the game is much more interesting and challenging. It works with PoR.

[Dresden]

You can modify it a bit if you wanted. For example remove the building effects table to not have the squalor parts

[balparmak]

Well I don't think that could be solved even with a great AI, cause it all comes down to how terribly designed the game was. Snowballing after mid-game was (imho) the most frustrating issue of TW series in general, and Creative Assembly, not being creative since 2004, still cannot produce a design to decently model overextension and other troubles of larger empires. "Let's throw hundreds of arbitrary units to the player" was the best they could come up with, hence the Civil War mechanism.

[Garbad]

The only TW game that has a challenging endgame is shogun 2 -- where if you expand too far too early all AI declares war on you, and the endgame is basically fighting everyone at once. Rome 2 tried that with civil war, but people hated it and so that removed the intended end game challenge. I think the only way to bring it back would be a similar mechanics. Once you hit imperium 4, every time you declare war on a faction all factions with that culture jump in. By imperium 5, every culture declares war on you.

[Dresden]

We are hoping to add some more challenge for mid game in 1.2. You are right that it is an achilles heel of the series a bit for most of the titles. Hopefully some of our changes plus the PoR mod will help a bit.

[Tenerife_Boy]

The only TW game that has a challenging endgame is shogun 2 -- where if you expand too far too early all AI declares war on you, and the endgame is basically fighting everyone at once. Rome 2 tried that with civil war, but people hated it and so that removed the intended end game challenge. I think the only way to bring it back would be a similar mechanics. Once you hit imperium 4, every time you declare war on a faction all factions with that culture jump in. By imperium 5, every culture declares war on you.

That could make sense in Shogun 2 cause you know, it's like a mini campaign where all the factions shared the same culture, but not for an empire/napoleon or Rome tw, where there are many different cultures, behaviours and different way of thinking and so on...

Plus +1 to what Dresden just said to you

[Tariq]

Only time i have made AI more aggressive towards the player was when i have used modified version of Dresden's Hardcore mod and have increased number of armies per Imperium, starting with Imperium 3 by +1 and in last few levels by +2.

Even Carthage was able to fight on multiple front without aimlessly shuttling troops in ships.CAI appears to play super-safe against human player so it will only go after you only if has overwhelming odds.

To be honest, I've tried using it several times and finds it makes the game a worse experience over all.

AI protecting player settlements even happens in base DeI, as long as you are at war with the same people, don't have an army near your settlement, and they have transit rights they will occasionally station armies near cities they deem vunerable to attack.
However I find the ai makes poorer descisions (attacking aggressively when it has zero chance of victory for example), making war then immediately asking for peace with huge sums of money or client state offer attached (even more so than in base dei).
It just did not improve the feeling of the game for me.

I completely agree with your observation, it doesn't change main issues , it only adds strange and unwanted things. If anything (with no disrespect for author's effort and work) i would strongly advise against using it.

[popovic]

I started toying with the minimum_chance_of_success variable.

I just took DeI Dres_campaign_ai_personality_junctions and and added minimum_chance_of_success with the value of 25.
I only played a few turns since, but the AI does feel more aggresive. For instance, 1 stack that was constantly going back and forth, as it was meaning to attack one of my cities, but was dettered by my half-stack that I was moving around, now just attacked, and took one of my cities.
Took me 3 turns, and a LOT of gold to destroy it.

I`ll let you guys know how this develops further.