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View Full Version : Monitoring your Rival Empires



Rhyfelwyr
04-05-2008, 19:55
I've played quite a few campaigns now, and I've noticed that some factions clearly do better than others on the whole. Take for example Poland, the most monstrous faction in the game. Maybe its due to the spamtastic Polish Nobles, but when I use the 'toggle_fow' function every ten turns to check the map, Poland always looks gigantic. Poland will nearly always advance as far as Kiev and Caffa, and will take Sarkel 50% of the time, and sometimes even Bulgar! On the western front, I've noticed Poland tends to take Magdeburg, well into the HRE heartland, and usually takes Prague as well, although sometimes the HRE beats them to it.

Another overachiever is Milan. I've noticed either Milan or Venice tend to focus on each other, and the victor will absorb the loser after maybe 70 turns. 90% of the time, the victor is Milan. In my last campaign, Milan took all of Italy, the Balkans, and western France, and even parts of southern Germany.

Spain tends to do well in most cases once if goes south. Usually Spain will take southern Iberia from the Moors pretty quickly and have Marrakesh and Algiers by the mid-game, if Sicily don't beat them to it.

For the underachievers, the Scots are no.1 at performing poorly. In one campaign, they had failed to conquer anywhere by turn 80! Sometimes they will take Inverness, Ireland, and if they're really lucky York and Wales, but they never make it onto the continent.

The Moors also tend to perform poorly. They tend to lose either their Iberian or African provinces, depending on whether Spain or Sicily strike at them first.

I've also noticed the Byzantines struggle a lot. The tend to have some success against Venice and will often take the Balkans early on and make assaults on Crete and Rhodes, but I've only once seen them advance into Turkey, and they often lose Thessalonica and even Constantinople to the Hungarians, the latter also seeming to be a popular target for Jihads.

The Danes always appear to be doing well early on, always going into Antwerp rather than the Scandinavian provinces first. But after that they tend to get stagnant and take an age to conquer the three provinces to their north, although Russia often beat them to Helsinki.

Anyone else had similar experiences with the AI factions?

Duke Bart
04-05-2008, 21:03
Most things except poland being sucessfull. In my games they are often confined or at least stalled. If i play as poland, well thats another story :beam:

Ramses II CP
04-05-2008, 21:13
Poland is the only nation I've noticed doing exceptionally well without my help. The Pope tends to control a fair amount of territory in my games because I generally give him whatever I don't want.

:egypt:

Duke Bart
04-05-2008, 21:20
Maybe the poland in my games just happened to be unlucky since now that you mention it in my new sicily game they are doing amazing! 20 turns in and they took out russia, have denmark on the run and of course they took all the rebels in their area.

Rhyfelwyr
04-05-2008, 22:21
Speaking of the Papacy, I remember in one campaign the Pope went crazy and conquered all of Italy, including all the islands, and even Durazzo.

That was a one off though, he usually doesn't take much more than Florence. And sometimes he gets eaten up by the Milanese militia monsters.

Duke Bart
04-06-2008, 04:40
I really have to say that rival empires are rarely actually seen, AI never get too big without your help.

Also, one time i made a huge mistake with the pope, playing as spain i tried to get on the popes good side so i gave him jerusalem. Thirty or so turns later i get map info and they own the whole middle east! i guess the pope aquired a taste for expansion

Rhyfelwyr
04-06-2008, 22:22
Noticed some unusual results in my Danish short campaign I just completed, took 80 turns. The English didn't even take Caernarvon, but took Oslo. Western France was left untouched, with the French doing absolutedly nothing except give provinces to Milan. Usually one of the Iberian factions take Bordeaux and Rennes when this happeans, but they actually expanded more realistically, and the Portuguese for once didn't take Dublin!

In the east, the Polish war machine managed to take Tblisi, which is I think a new record for them. Towards the end though they seemed to collapse and Hungary took most of the provinces in Poland itself.

It was also a game for both the Italian city state factions. Usually its only one or the other, but Milan dominated in the west and took most of France, while Venice went rampant taking all the Balkans, including Constantinople. At one point, Venice owned Cagliari and Caffa, quite a wide reaching empire for the AI.

Other factions did as normal.

Orion66
04-07-2008, 00:22
In the game I'm playing now as the Spanish, the Scots are doing quite well. England didn't do anything, so the Scots got all the rebel provinces in the isles, plus Bruges and Rennes. The English are on the verge of losing Caen also.
Poland is also going gangbusters.

Pater Familias
04-07-2008, 01:36
I would say either Poland or HRE do well ... I'm in a Russian campaign where Poland is stalled at three territories and the HRE and I are the two biggest factions on the map. I have had other games where they were much more successful. Right now, they have 4-5 big stacks milling around their capital, as if they can't decide where to attack.
I've never seen a game where they both took off. It seems whoever gets the Baltic corridor to the north of their starting position dominates the other one.
It's my first game on the Retrofit mod, though, and I'm wondering about its campaign AI. Denmark sat in its starting square until I crushed it, and I've never seen Denmark not at least take Oslo ... I was very aggressively after Stockholm, so no surprise there.
And I just took Inverness from the rebels, leaving Scotland with one territory (temporarily ... I want to make sure I'm invading the Holy Orthodox Duchy of Scotland, not some Catholic country). And there's a pope, although the Papal States have had 0 territories for a couple of dozen turns, since they were assimilated by Milan.

ReiseReise
04-07-2008, 03:31
Poland always does well, although I don't exactly agree with their strategy of "Blitz for Magdeburg" skipping over the one in between Breslau and Magdeburg. Breslau is obviously useless but the other one I( forget its name. South of Stettin, its been a while since I played.) Also they tend to attack Kiev with a useless stack (2-3 units) before they actually take it. They could really be a powerhouse if they knew how to attack Kiev en force instead of waiting 40 turns.

PBI
04-07-2008, 14:07
I always find Poland seems to do well at first but then stall once it runs out of rebel settlements to capture. It is one of the few factions with lots of nearby rebel settlements to grab and no initial threats until it has expanded enough in any direction to meet another faction, but the settlements near it are pretty worthless. This is what I found in my Polish campaign; I very quickly had a huge empire of worthless settlements.

I've never seen France do very well, nor Hungary. I suppose the way the game works guarantees that as soon as they start to do well against one enemy they will be backstabbed by another.

I've actually seen the Byzantines get quite powerful and conquer most of the Turkish provinces, in a game where the Turks and Egyptians got bogged down fighting one another. Those three factions seem quite well balanced to me, the outcome in that region seems quite unpredictable. A pity it is all rendered completely irrelevant by the inevitable Mongol steamroller.