Investigation of AI reassessment upon reload

[therother]

Over the past month or so, a new game mechanics issue has arisen: does the AI reassess its actions after a reload of a saved game?

This thread is for investigating that issue, with the eventual aim of understanding the observations already made by many of the community. To be most effective, especially reading some posts from CA staff members, the thread must be as concise, relevant and conclusive as possible. Please try to be as complete and accurate as you can be before posting.

Also, take some time to familiarise yourself with the posting guidelines for this forum. Any post, or part of a post, which is not related to research of this issue will be removed from this thread.

Edit: In answer to Pode's first post, the sort of things we are looking for are: detailed observations, repeatable experiments, community attempts to gather large datasets, analysis of that data, and hopefully possible workarounds.

Which is a very long-winded way of saying, yes, that's fine!

[therother]

added by A.Saturnus

It seems the discussion around this issue has come to a halt now. Therefore I post the conclusion I have drawn later in the thread here. The participants of the discussion have more or less agreed in general to this conclusion. Only the wording has drawn objections. But for simplicity I will leave it as it is. The objections can be found later in the thread.

• It is certain that after loading a savegame, the AI will most of the time break up ongoing sieges in cases where it doesn't do that without save/load.
• It seems that the objective to take the previously sieged city is not lost entirely, as the AI will usually try to reengage the siege the turn after the load.
• As a consequence, saving and reloading will affect the development of AI factions, at least in the beginning of a campagne.
• It is not yet clear to what extent the course of a campagne is influenced in an undesirable way by this. AI factions do conquer new territories at a slow pace, but it is not clear whether this is due to the save/load issue or general weakness of the AI. There are three possibilities:
  
  • Above the weakness of the strategic AI, this issue is irrelevant as its effect is only noticeable under extreme conditions.
  • Saving and reloading often does noticable affect gameplay, but doesn't make the game unplayable.
  • The effect is so pronounced that it can be called a "game-breaker".
• A clearly noticable aspect is that, when saving and loading often, AI factions will not take the opportunity to capture rebel territory to the same extent as it does in continued playing.

It should be clear that point four is the most important aspect here, as it concerns the impact the issue has on gameplay. From reading the evidence in this topic everyone may come to his own conlusion on this.

[Pode]

Not sure if this is the type of post you're after here, therother, but this was what convinced me.

RTW 1.2, mods to build file only, M/M campaign as Britons, toggle_fow off. Zero player activity after first turn, simply hit end turn until an AI laid seige somewhere. When that happened, I hit ctrl-s, then ctrl-l, then end turn. Test ran to winter 265. 13 of 13 sieges were broken off by AI, zero provinces changed hands.

Have not tested the protectorate acceptance implications yet.

[hrvojej]

I'll quote my post from the thread in colosseum where this was discussed (minus the snide remark at the end):

A suggestion for a test:

Start a number of campaigns always with a same nation (one that is regularly unlockable) in vanilla unmodded RTW 1.2. Play a number of turns without reloading and without doing anything. Toggle FoW off, and count the number of provinces that have changed hands. Now do this with saving and reloading every time, and after the same number of turns count provinces that have changed hands. If a few of us do the same thing, take the same nation, play the same number of turns, use the same counting method etc. everything should be controlled for, and we would get a bigger sample size in a less time-consuming fashion. So, we would have to agree on the faction, No. of turns, No. of tests each of us would do, etc., but we would have respectable dataset in a short time, and without any of us spending several nights just clicking end of turn button.

After we gather all the data I volunteer to do the statistical anaysis on it and then we'll have cold hard evidence that something is going on. And no more "probability theory" arguments either - as we would have solid basis to counter them (another reason why we need a large sample size).

If people are interested, I'd be happy to elaborate further. Personally, I'm not sure it will change anything before XP though (if at all), but I'm willing to lend my time to this investigation.

[hrvojej]

Reposting from the Colosseum thread in case not everybody who is interested is reading both threads;

__________________________________________________________________

Ok, so, for those who are interested, here is the setup I would recommend:

- use umodded RTW 1.2; this means no custom mods either; we want everything to be the same and pristine in every experimenter's case so as to make the data cross-comparable
- take the Britons (thanks rcp ), medium/medium imperial campaign
- for the control, play 15 turns without doing anything; this literally means don't touch a thing other than the end of turn button; 15 turns is enough to bring two consecutive sieges that ended in starving the garrison out, I believe, hence I think this is a good number - not too big, not too small
- once 15 turns have passed (you hit end of turn for 15 times, to be exact), toggle FoW off and count the number of provinces that are not owned by the original owners; this means rebel provinces as well; this requires you to know beyond any doubt who was the original owner of the province - write it down beforehand if you think it's going to be necessary, or something to that effect
- for the "treatment" group, do everything like you did it in the control group - Britons M/M, hit end of turn (EoT) 15 times, don't touch anything - with the exception that now each turn you hit quicksave(QS) and then quickload (QL); hence, start - QS -QL - EoT - QS - QL -EoT -... etc. until you have hit EoT 15 times; at that point, turn FoW off and again count number of provinces not owned by the original owners
- if at any point in either your control or treatment campaigns you get attacked, abort that campaign, and start anew; we don't want to interfere at all, even if it's only autoresolve, and hence discard that campaign and instead do a new one fromt he begginging until you have the 5 controls (without reloads) and 5 treatments (with reloads)
- make 5 separate control campaigns (each running from fresh start to 15th EoT), and 5 separate treatment camapigns (again each running from fresh start to 15th EoT); save the campaigns at that point to a regular save, zip all those saves (you should have 10 of them, and this shuldn't take up much space) and keep them on your HD for the time being inc ase we need to send these to someone or verify something
- PM me the results, but keep in mind that I can only have 5 PMs at a time, so if I don't write back saying I got it in a day, PM me again; I'll do the analysis of the results, and post them here; I will not soup up the results, or do anything else to them other than analyze them - I do this kind of stuff for a living, and I know how to keep my personal feelings out of it, believe me


It is paramount that we all do it the same way, so please, if you think that you won't be able to do it in the way we all agree to do it, do not send me your data. I really do not want to deal with falsifications, souped up data for whatever reason, results that were collected through deviation of the basic rules, and similar things, as this would invalidate everybody else's effort as well. Let's do it right, or not do it at all.

This should tell us whether there is something fishy going on or not with saves.If we can't get 10 people (well, 9 other than myself), maybe each of us could do more runs. Say, 8 or 10 per control/treatment. Added bonus to this is that it cannot be said that it is due to a single PC configuration, or having FoW off all the time (which is a cheat and hence not an out-of-the-box game functionality). Please feel free to comment on the guidelines I posted above. If we agree, and there are no further comments until about 6pm GMT Friday, we can get to work, and by the end of the weekend, we should already be able to discuss the results.

Cheers,

[mishad]

Another avenue for testing: can we predict when the "periodic re-assessment by the AI" will happen?

If we could, then we could remember to save only at those points (say, every 5 turns, or whatever). This would minimise the effect of the re-assessment on re-load (since the assessment would have happenned even if we didn't reload).

Problem 1: how do we tell whether there has been a re-assessment? Using broken sieges as our best indicator for re-evaluation, how about: turn FoW off and watch the map like a hawk for broken sieges on every end-turn, log such events, including the AI involved, over a large number of reasonably long (50 turns?) campaigns, and look at statistical patterns (it will have to be statistical, because sometimes there won't be a siege in progress when the re-eval happens, and sometimes the siege won't be broken).

Problem 2: it is quite possible be that (absent re-loads) AI re-assessment is staggered through the turns (AI#1 assesses on turns 1, 11, 21, etc; AI#2 on 2, 12, 22; ... AI#10 on 10, 20, 30 etc.) so there is never a "good" time to save. The test above should show this as separate repeating patterns for the various AIs.

Thoughts, anyone?

Also, we should standardise unit size as well: Britons/M/M/Normal?

[Epistolary Richard]

Another avenue for testing: can we predict when the "periodic re-assessment by the AI" will happen?

I'm not convinced the "re-assessment" only happens once in a while. Surely the AI would perform exactly the same processes between each turn. One of the most obvious examples of this issue is that AI leaves sieges and then goes immediately back to them. That kind of behaviour is not really indicative of the AI reassessing its strategy on reload (per the Shogun post) and then again at the beginning of its second turn. It's more indicative that for the first turn the AI doesn't know what it's doing and then it does a proper reassessment for the second turn.

If this is the case and the AI reassesses its position each turn, it would be useful to know at what point this happened. Of the viable times (beginning of its turn, end of its turn, end/beginning of year) it seems most likely that it occurs at the end/beginning of the year - any other time would not fit in with the available evidence.

A useful exercise would be to use Myrddraal's hot seat mod to halt the turn in the middle of the slave faction, save the game there and reload. The game should then reload from the slave faction's go under AI control, go over the year end, perform the proper re-assessment (hopefully!) and then go to the player's turn. It should be clear enough whether the AI has maintained a siege that on a normal save/load it would have abandoned.

[sik1977]

Reposting from the original Loadgame bug thread at the .com, now in the graveyard. I posted this on 27/02/05 on page 5 of that thread

Na, I am sure the problem wasn't as severe in v1.1. I continued an old campaign from 1.1 after installing 1.2. The AI was doing just fine, specially the Romans. They had made substantial gains, specially Brutii and Julii (I being Parhia never met them in combat till v1.2). After installing 1.2 I couldn't understand why Brutii which was so strong couldn't even take the two rebel settlements it would lay siege to every other turn and then break away. It went on for 50 or so turns. I play very slowly and micro-manage everything, hence quick saving/loading is a norm for me. This was true for 1.1 and never hurted the AI like this.

I did extensive testing after reading this thread. I never jump on the band wagon without first testing something myself. I have too much faith in CA to flame them without good reason (well I still can't flame them, they hold a special place in my heart... hehe). My tests confirmed that AI armies not only lift sieges, it always tends to completely walk away from the said settlement as if it has completely forgotten what it had set out to accomplish. Only to repeat the process ad-infinitum.

I thus played yesterday for 8 hour at a stretch without loading once and because i am quite further down my existing Parthian campaign, I only got some 5/6 turns done. And guess what, the Brutii finally took those two rebel settlements that they couldn't for the last 50 turns. They also laid siege to two other towns. Same with Scipii and Julii who each took one settlement and laid siege and maintained it, to atleast three more. However, after 8 hours, i had to save and go to sleep, and when i reloaded later, the AI had forgiven/forgotten its enemies/goals and walked away from all its previous sieges. When I say walked away, they had moved their sieging armies a whole turn length away from the previously sieged settlements.

Hope this helps.

here is the link

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...rt=81&stop=100

EDIT: Reposting another test i did and posted on 3-01-05 on page 7 of the above mentioned thread, this was while trying if there was any difference with autosaves/quicksaves/regular saves and difficulty settings.

Sorry for all that fuss guys. I just play tested autosaves on VH, and the bad news is that the bug is very much present in autosaves just like quicksaves etc.

I played my existing Parhia campaign for atleast 6 turns without loading and tested on a turn which had atleast 5 settlements undersiege, I checked them all repeatedly (by re-using the same autosave; manually copy pasting it back to check), and every single time the AI lifted all the 5 sieges as i pressed 'end turn', without any nearby threat.

So thats it for VH. Lets see if you guys have any luck on any different difficulty levels.

link is
http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...t=121&stop=140

[Pritzl]

hrvojej, your control/test concept is perfect imo. With enough numbers, we can do a simple statistical analysis (t-test?) to confirm that the AI's reassessment routinely results in much fewer provinces changing hands.

Might I suggest an improvement to the test though? Instead of manually noting the province allegiances, maybe a screenshot of the campaign-map mini-window on the bottom left at the beginning of the test and end of the 15 turns would improve accuracy. Furthermore, perhaps proper random selection of who tests with saves and who doesn't is worthwhile to remove any doubts of bias?

Finally, is there thread for participants to sign-up and post their results somewhere on the forum?

[edit]I should read better. 5 and 5 per tester and PMs it is.[/edit]

[A.Saturnus]

- PM me the results, but keep in mind that I can only have 5 PMs at a time, so if I don't write back saying I got it in a day, PM me again; I'll do the analysis of the results, and post them here; I will not soup up the results, or do anything else to them other than analyze them - I do this kind of stuff for a living, and I know how to keep my personal feelings out of it, believe me

You can PM your results to me. My mailbox is bigger.

It would be ideal if FoW is toggled off all the time (including the controls), so every single reassessment can be spotted. However, please add to your results a description whether or not your trials have been exactly as hrvojej has layed out.

[Simetrical]

Probably a lot of you have seen this, but it certainly constitutes evidence that there's a problem: Protectorate: Total Peace.

-Simetrical

[player1]

The problem I see with Brits is that very soon will Gauls or Germans start seiging your mainland province.

[Pode]

Go out and make an alliance with them both using your lone diplomat, that should hold them off long enough to complete the test, and I don't *think* CA will argue that the approach of a diplomat with no money is enough of a threat to make the AI break every siege on the map.

[player1]

Or you could simple give province as a gift to one of those two factions...

[hrvojej]

It would be ideal if FoW is toggled off all the time (including the controls), so every single reassessment can be spotted. However, please add to your results a description whether or not your trials have been exactly as hrvojej has layed out.

True, but then you would have to scan the map all the time after every turn, instead of just doing it once at the end. Also, you would have to have FoW on all the time, and you wouldn't be able to escape arguments that the game was not intended to run without FoW and that the AI is lifting sieges because it's shy or something... In sum and a priori, I don't think that the information you would get from countinuous sampling outweighs the number of trials you can do by scaning at the end. I know what you're saying, but I predict the effect size to be so large that it won't really matter.

Do people have a lot of problems as the Britons from being besieged? I don't have time right now to do a lot of trials, it ended up being a busy end of the week, but I ran the control twice and was not besieged in 15 turns. Maybe I was just lucky? In any case, I thought that the suggestion to take Britons was a good one, since you're away from the action, and in addition to not being involved yourself you won't stand in a way of expansion of others. Another faction I can think of that also might be good is Parthia, but I have to admit that I have not played the regular campaign with either of the two, so I don't know how likely you are to get attacked.

And to answer therother's point about modding the game: I think that moving a single faction's name from nonplayable to playable factions list is really nothing we should concern ourselves about. I do however think that it is important we pick a faction that is unlockable through regular means, as it would seem that those which are not have some unfinished quirks about them. The only thing that remains to be seen is if with Britons you cannot avoid being attacked all the time, then we should consider other factions like Parthia. I'll test it as soon as I have time (tomorrow night it seems).

Cheers, and thanks to all who intend to participate

[A.Saturnus]

True, but then you would have to scan the map all the time after every turn, instead of just doing it once at the end. Also, you would have to have FoW on all the time, and you wouldn't be able to escape arguments that the game was not intended to run without FoW and that the AI is lifting sieges because it's shy or something... In sum and a priori, I don't think that the information you would get from countinuous sampling outweighs the number of trials you can do by scaning at the end. I know what you're saying, but I predict the effect size to be so large that it won't really matter.

If not, the hypothesis becomes questionable anyway. I suppose we do both. For now, we should do it as you suggested to test our hypothesis. If it is proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the bug exists, we can explore it to more detail by investigating individual AI actions.

[Arphahat]

Probably a lot of you have seen this, but it certainly constitutes evidence that there's a problem: Protectorate: Total Peace.

-Simetrical

I see that Simetrical has already posted the link, but I wanted to elaborate on the exact procedure I followed to gain the protectorates documented in the screenshots.

I started a medium/medium game as the Julii. I split my armies into individual units and built nothing but diplomats, ships and calvary. Each diplomat would travel with one of the army units. When the diplomat encountered a faction that we were not at war with, I would use the army unit to besiege the town and immediately lift the siege (or attack the faction's army) just to get the protectorate option on the negotiation screen. The diplomat would then ask the faction to be a protectorate, offering nothing in exchange. The faction would refuse. I would then use control-s to save and then control-l to load. I would have the same diplomat talk to the same unit or town and make the same offer of a protectorate for nothing. In every case, the other faction accepted.

Occasionally, I would already be on a turn that I had just loaded. When I encountered another faction, I could simply besiege, lift siege and then offer protectorate status and they would accept.

[therother]

And to answer therother's point about modding the game: I think that moving a single faction's name from nonplayable to playable factions list is really nothing we should concern ourselves about.

Okay, just checking to see if you thought it was okay. I think the Brutii are perhaps the best choice, given their sheltered location, the fact that they are unlocked to begin with, and that they are a Roman faction (it is Rome: Total War after all). Of course, that last bit works against choosing them to some extent as you also have the Senate AI hardcode possibly interfering with things. Perhaps we can do both, and see if there are any significant differences?

[Bromley]

Just a basic test along the lines hrvojej mentions. I freely admit that I haven't counted the provinces that changed, but compare the world maps. The start one looks the same as the save/load one, whereas there's been a lot of movement on the no-save one.

Also, for a smaller close-up view, see Sicily. No loads meant that the Scipii went crazy and kicked everyone off. Save/load each turn and all three factions trade love notes.

1.2 Vanilla. Julii. Both tests over 10 years (20 turns).
Move armies into town. No other actions. Respond "no" to everything.

Starting Position


Save/load every turn


No loads


There's been some talk about a similar issue in GalCiv over in the thread in .strategic. Starting post is the Gerry Quinn response to my OP, currently no. 30.

[Bromley]

Just reproducing Arphahat's and Camp Freddie 1969 protectorate posts from the .com forum, just in case it disappears. I know that Sim already linked to the screenies, but some of this text might be useful.

Please note that I have not personally confirmed any of Arphahat's work, although beezer says that he has.

Arphahat.
There is a simple technique for winning the game. Simply siege a city of a rival faction, immediately lift the siege, save the game, reload the game and then have a diplomat ask the rival to become a protectorate. This works every time, without exception! Look at my glorious conquest in picture form below.
www.stampor.com/Rome/exploit.html
EDIT: here is a link to a list of the images, instead of loading all at once, if it helps www.stampor.com/Rome/exploit_links.html

Question.
One question I have is what happens when 2 of your protectorates go to war with each other. Are you forced to choose 1 and thus you loose the other???
You lose one of the protectorates. But, no problem; just make sure you keep a diplomat next to each of the factions. If you ever lose a protectorate, simply save, reload and ask again.

Camp Freddie 1969.
I found that if I declared war then immediately asked for a protectorate (before hitting end turn), I would always get one due to the much lauded re-evaluation feature.
However, I also tried it on the Thracians, with whom I've been fighting a long war. I outnumber them by a huge margin and regularly spank the armies they send my way with losses that are >10:1 in my favour. I've always been suprised that they don't accept being a protectorate in normal gameplay.
So I asked them after a reload - and they refused! Could it be that the auto-protectorate 'feature' is broken?! Then I looked at the refusal message:
"We cannot accept such generosity, since we have nothing to offer in return".
That's right folks. They refused because the AI re-evaluation decided that my demand of making them a slave nation was 'too generous'. They found themselves not worthy of my benevolent (er, yes, benevolent) rule!
After moving on a turn, I asked again and got the normal response of, "We are proud of our freedom and do not give it up lightly...."
So the re-evaluation feature seems to be totally underestimating the strength of the AI nations.

[MajorFreak]

could we workaround this issue by changing all the faction's AI personalities to aggressive ones?

[rcp]

I can also confirm Araphat's protectorate issue. I also agree that using the Brutii would likely be the best choice for this test if we are to ideally do nothing but press end turn during our testing.

[Ramboost]

At the forum in twcenter (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/index...c=27076&st=108) Pode wrote an interesting discovery:

"The AI will almost always, upon a reload, abandon a siege and run as far away as possible. Unless you interrupt it again with another load, however, it almost always returns and lays siege again the next turn."

Has any of you had the same experience? It could be a workaround for the bug to minimize the negative effects, allthough it will not eliminate it.

[chef4fun2]

I never had any issues with the orginally and the first patch on this sieging of cities bug. Now that I have put in the last patch this issue shows it ugly head. I think it is pretty simple: they fixed one issue and created this issue. Now they say that the AI has changed its mind and wants to move the resources some place else. I have news for them I did the save game I was Seleucid and two of my cities were being sieged by Egypt. After I restarted the game the Egyptian left my cities and came right back in the same move. Now did they change there mind and than said no go back to the city!!! I can't see Alexander doing that at the sieging of tyre.

[drone]

Last night I ran a test using v1.1 to see if this was introduced with v1.2. The no-expansion issue is just as prevalent (didn't try the protectorate issue, that was bugged in 1.1 anyway). I played 20 turns for each, Med/Med, as the Britons (unlocked, not mod), FOG_OF_WAR:FALSE in preferences.txt.

With no saving/loading, the factions expanded normally, eating up the rebel provinces and fighting it out with each other.

With a save and load each turn, not much happened. Diplomats and stacks moved around, rebel stacks got pounded, but only one province changed hands, I think (Brutii took Thermon, no siege, just walked right in). It seemed like after a load, the AI would do whatever it could short-term within it's interests (mainly crushing rebels). I don't think I saw any sieges lifted, mainly because the AI never got around to sieging cities in the first place. This would probably be present if I waited 3-4 turns between saves/loads.

I have screenshots at each turn for both test cases, the end result is pretty much the same as Bromley's. These results lead me to think that the reassessment is an integral part of the game, just as the .com post said, not a new "feature".

On the FoW issue, it would be interesting if CA tries to use Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as an excuse.

[Epistolary Richard]

could we workaround this issue by changing all the faction's AI personalities to aggressive ones?

The evidence collected so far indicates that this issue applies to all factions, not just those with a less aggressive personality.

"The AI will almost always, upon a reload, abandon a siege and run as far away as possible. Unless you interrupt it again with another load, however, it almost always returns and lays siege again the next turn."

Has any of you had the same experience? It could be a workaround for the bug to minimize the negative effects, allthough it will not eliminate it.

Yes, I noted the same experience in my post above. But even if the AI immediately returns to the siege it would be at least 3 turns before it could assault. This issue particularly effects users who can only play for one or two turns at a time. Users who play for longer stretches are less affected by this issue in any case.

On the FoW issue, it would be interesting if CA tries to use Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as an excuse.

[Ramboost]

Yes, I noted the same experience in my post above. But even if the AI immediately returns to the siege it would be at least 3 turns before it could assault. This issue particularly effects users who can only play for one or two turns at a time. Users who play for longer stretches are less affected by this issue in any case.

I agree that it certainly does not solve the issue. Personally when I play I play an average of minimum 10-15 turns. If this "workaround" can minimize the amount of turns the AI waste, it is definetely worth pursuing from my point of view.

Unfortunately, I do not have the time to test it until sunday, so I cannot verify the AI behavior descriped by Pode.

[Epistolary Richard]

I don't quite understand what you're suggesting. What would people do differently to try and work around the issue? Just play for longer?

[sunsmountain]

Don't use the quick save at all! Use the normal saves, and it should be okay! Are you guys planning on testing that as well?

ie, 15 turns of doing nothing, versus
15 turns of saving and reloading using normal saves?

Maybe quicksave was MEANT not to save the army status (standing or laying siege) when on the campaign map, therefore you lose the siege, but you gain the benefit of quicksaving and loading.

[roguebolo]

Um, I hate to say this, but the proposed test does not seem to impose any controls which eliminate other possibilities.

For instance, is it possible that as part of game theory that the AI factions are approximating the aggressiveness exhibited by the human player? This is fairly commonplace in computer games. For one thing, it allows players of all different types to stand a chance at winning the game. For another, it offers gameplay which is compatible with the style of the human player. If the human player merely "turtles in", why shouldn't the AI do the same? There is no percieved threat as the human player is not yet being aggressive.

Second, the AI might use a "delta factor" to determine it's reassessment of moves -- in other words, the degree of change from the previous move prompts the AI to make decisions regarding the current move. Maintaining the status quo, as the human player seems to be doing, is not actually a losing scenario. With a delta of zero, the AI factions have an expansion factor of nearly zero.

The fact of the matter is, I have performed the proposed test and came up with identical results -- none of the territories change hands. However, in a REAL game, in which I actually do save and load every single turn -- usually multiple times per turn -- and which I play aggressively, each AI faction actually does seek to expand its empire.

So I don't think this test is a valid proposal. It needs more thought.

I'm a seasoned programmer myself and I've read through some threads by other programmers theorizing on the nature of this problem and one of them was pretty knowledgable. He stated that in order for the AI to remember its long term goals that its planned actions would need to be "serialized" to disk (meaning, stored in the save file along with the positions of units, etc.) which is a nontrivial programming issue because the information is stored in memory using objects that are linked together by pointers. He's probably absolutely correct about the data representation, but the truth is that serialization of such objects is actually not a complex task. I have done it numerous times with numerous software products -- and new languages like C++ make it a little easier since it's sort of a built-in feature of the language. It's actually a rather mundane and simple task when compared with some of the more complex programming that is tackled in a computer game, as another programmer pointed out to him. So I don't think the explanation that the programmers thought it was too difficult or too much work to save information in the save file is a good one. It would only seem the obvious thing to do so that a save game starts where it left off and merely requires a little grunt work.

One issue which even most of the programmers were a little confused about seemed to be the idea that the game looks ahead a given number of turns to make long range plans -- some of them were stating possibly as much as 20 turns. Have you ever played chess? One of the measures of a good chess player is how many half-moves he can look forward into the game. Five is considered good and I believe about seven or eight is the record for a human being. Chess programs do the same thing. So looking ahead 20 full turns is a little unrealistic on a map this size and with this many pieces and factions ("players"). The AI factions might have general goals but they cannot plan ahead for specific movements for too many turns because they need to react to the human player and the other AI factions. So it's not an issue of serializing detailed, long-term movement plans for a projected 20 moves; simply a matter of storing generalized objectives in the save file.

Taking all of this into consideration, if the AI is reevaluatiing its position as CA claims, then it must have elected a NEW set of campaign objectives when it relieves its sieges. These new objectives must take into consideration the fact the besieging faction is at war with the besieged faction and that trade is no longer possible with them. It must be able to find a more desirable alternative in light of that problematic issue. Does it attempt to negotiate a ceasefire and/or trade rights in the same turn? It would be interesting to analyze a move in which the AI has abandoned it's previous objectives and attempt to determine which objectives it has identified as more desirable.

By the same token, if the AI is reevaluating its military objectives it must also reevaluate its economic objectives, since the two go hand in hand. Is it canceling or changing building and economic development to match the military changes?

Also, does anyone know where I can read CA's official response regarding this issue and other bug reports?