Are we stuck with small (non empire building) AI opponents?

[Slaists]

It seems, RTW 2 has a built-in mechanism that prevents AI's from forming larger states and it seems that no patch can fix this.

The devil lies with the current army limit system. Take the example of a 6-region AI nation. How many armies it can field? It depends on the value of the regions controlled as their value will affect the imperium, but the range is 3 to 6 armies.

Now, look at the scenario where the same area (6 regions) is controlled by 6 separate AI's? How many armies can they field? 6 x 3 = 18 (not counting fleets)!... So, 6 one-region AI's have military advantage of 6 to 3 times over a single AI nation controlling 6 regions. This ratio quickly grows worse in case the "bigger" AI grows even bigger.

One might say that the one-region minors cannot afford 3 armies. Actually, at least on harder campaign difficulties, they can. So, this is probably the main reason why we see no AI grow larger than a few regions. At least, the ones who do grow larger, do not stay large for long. They just get swamped by a swarm of minor AI's. As the formerly small AI's grow, the cycle repeats.

I wonder if anyone has seen any different on lower campaign difficulties. Theoretically, if the AI is not getting the harder difficulty cash bonuses, the smaller nations might not be able to afford their 3 stack allowance. This might give some advantage to larger, economically better suited AI's.

[Myth]

I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. I think we should get a hidden "major faction bonus" based on difficulty level for all playable factions except for the one chosen by the human

Food Bonus:

+5/turn on Normal
+10/turn on Hard
+ 2 per settlement on Very Hard
+ 5 per settlement on Legendary

Income Bonus:
+500 on Normal
+1000 on Hard
+ 1000 flat + 150 per settlement on Very Hard
+ 1000 flat + 350 per settlement on Legendary

[Hooahguy]

I personally feel that certain AI factions should have double the limit for armies. The reason for the limited armies for the player is to put more of an emphasis on strategy and where to put armies for ideal defense and offensive operations. If you have only 6 armies you have to decide where it's best to place those armies, assuming you can afford them, so you can conquer new lands and to protect the ones you own. The radious mod doubles the number of armies you can field so this problem is pretty much neutralized (I can now field 18 armies at the 3rd level of imperium) but even now I can't defend every town I have with an army, and it's a huge risk I take leaving a border town undefended, especially since with the better AI army compositions they are sending stronger armies against garrisons of mostly tribesmen.

Also I would like to say that in my campaign I have seen both the larger nations like Rome become large as well as some of the smaller ones become large. There doesn't seem to be a discernible pattern, at least not to me.

[Slaists]

I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. I think we should get a hidden "major faction bonus" based on difficulty level for all playable factions except for the one chosen by the human

Food Bonus:

+5/turn on Normal
+10/turn on Hard
+ 2 per settlement on Very Hard
+ 5 per settlement on Legendary

Income Bonus:
+500 on Normal
+1000 on Hard
+ 1000 flat + 150 per settlement on Very Hard
+ 1000 flat + 350 per settlement on Legendary

I think, in addition to what you say, in order to fix the inability of larger AI's to protect themselves against the swarm of small ones, we need to increase the AI's (not the player's) army limit for higher (than one province minors) imperium levels. I also posted this very topic on the official forum. From the responses there, it seems the AI has an easier time maintaining multi-region states on lower game difficulties. That is what I suspected: the minor AI's are not able to maintain their 3 stacks per region on lower campaign difficulties. So, larger AI's have a better chance to leverage their economic/quality advantage.

I personally feel that certain AI factions should have double the limit for armies. The reason for the limited armies for the player is to put more of an emphasis on strategy and where to put armies for ideal defense and offensive operations. If you have only 6 armies you have to decide where it's best to place those armies, assuming you can afford them, so you can conquer new lands and to protect the ones you own. The radious mod doubles the number of armies you can field so this problem is pretty much neutralized (I can now field 18 armies at the 3rd level of imperium) but even now I can't defend every town I have with an army, and it's a huge risk I take leaving a border town undefended, especially since with the better AI army compositions they are sending stronger armies against garrisons of mostly tribesmen.

Also I would like to say that in my campaign I have seen both the larger nations like Rome become large as well as some of the smaller ones become large. There doesn't seem to be a discernible pattern, at least not to me.

It seems, we need a mod of Radius' mod, LOL: increase the army limit for 2nd (and higher) imperium AI's. Leave it as is for the player and the minor AI's.

As to Rome (and others) becoming large: In several campaigns (vanilla, not modded) I've played past turn 100, the largest AI Rome has gotten was: all of Italy + all of Sardinia + Magna Graecia and Carthage. Once Roman AI grows to that size, a decline is imminent. One (or several) of Roman Northern, Eastern neighbors marches in and grabs pieces of Italian heartland.

[Myth]

Frequently Rome gets pulverized by the Adriatei or the Venetii who are the REAL powers in that region...

[Sp4]

Since the AI can't really beat the player, unless it has some sort of numbers advantage (to the point where sometimes actually fighting the battle is pointless), it suffers from always concentrating its armies wherever it decided the action is.
From that point of view, the decision to limit armies per faction at all was a pretty crappy one.

[Kamakazi]

For the most part I see AI fighing in one concentrated area. Blemmyes Axum and Egypt are fighting over about 3 territories in the south near Alexandria. They just trade them up. I had to leave 2 armies down there in case they try to spill into my land. As for mods what do they do to help? and what is a good mod to get?

[Sp4]

I'd say anythign that increases the amount of armies and AI can have but that brings with it other problems. I really don't think you can 'fix' that part without breaking something else.

[Bramborough]

The AI already has a rather annoying propensity to have a bunch of small armies running around. I do notice that it seems to correlate with whether they have a port or not. Landlocked factions usually seem to build good-size armies. Those with coastal access seem to do so as well in the early going, but after a while little 1-4 unit armies and fleets just start proliferating everywhere.

Either way, increasing the number of armies available to an AI faction might help some factions but just exacerbate the problems of others.

[Myth]

The AI already has a rather annoying propensity to have a bunch of small armies running around. I do notice that it seems to correlate with whether they have a port or not. Landlocked factions usually seem to build good-size armies. Those with coastal access seem to do so as well in the early going, but after a while little 1-4 unit armies and fleets just start proliferating everywhere.

Either way, increasing the number of armies available to an AI faction might help some factions but just exacerbate the problems of others.

I'm playing Legendary and since patch 4 the "small armies" turned into full stacks for me. The only time I see a small army is if he just raised a new one to fill it up with troops. Every 1 settlement minor has at least a fullstack. If coastal, it has a fullstack and at least 10 ships...

[Slaists]

I'm playing Legendary and since patch 4 the "small armies" turned into full stacks for me. The only time I see a small army is if he just raised a new one to fill it up with troops. Every 1 settlement minor has at least a fullstack. If coastal, it has a fullstack and at least 10 ships...

Yes, definitely, since patch 5, I do not see many "small" AI armies anywhere. That's on VH and Legendary difficulties. Any self-respecting 1 region minor AI maxes out their army allowance asap. The larger AI's: that's a different matter.

As to lower difficulties. On the weekend I played an MPC which was set to hard difficulty since we were going to play the battles as AI. I noticed that the AI armies I encountered were smaller/lower quality than the ones I tend to see in my VH/Legendary single player campaigns.