AI on the strategic map

[Blodrast]

Let's try to make a summary of the good and bad things about the strategic AI... if this has been done before, I apologize, and you may delete the topic.

Pros:
- factions do tend to go according to their profile, to some extent: the expansionist ones are expansionist (eggys), the crusader ones are crusading a lot (spanish), etc. It makes for good roleplaying, and (some) historic accuracy.
- they tend to use assassins and inquisitors quite a lot, and pretty efficiently
- ok, all in all it's not the worst strategic AI I've ever seen, but it would be helpful to have difficulty levels as there will be in RTW; but overall, if you pretend to forget most of the tricks below, well, it may put up a decent challenge...some of the time.
Sorry, I can't think of any other good traits right now.


Cons:
- diplomacy SUCKS. period (what diplomacy ?)
- doesn't always garrison its border provinces properly
- the pope is the biggest nuisance ever, and even though i understand his role as a mediator/balance-factor, it's way too annoying (matter of personal taste though)
- the AI has hardly any sense of strategy: it may attack a province, even though:
- it may not need the province (poor, undeveloped)
- attacking the province will cause it to be excommed,
and/or attacked by my allies
- attacking the province will do absolutely nothing for
it except increase the number of border provinces
- doesn't seem to retrain units for upgrades (yes, i believe that a +2 weapon is definitely worth it for my swordsmen/cav).
- the AI can be easily manipulated into:
- attacking a province (drop a lot of troops in there, or the opposite, remove all your troops from that province)
- constant retreat (just overwhelm him in numbers and you will be able to take all but one province without a single fight)
- poor evaluation of enemy forces (how many times have you been attacked by an AI into a province for dozens of years in a row, just to have the AI retreating w/out a fight every single year ? for pete's sake, if I have too many troops in there this year, and next year _you_ don't have any additional troops, well, it's likely that I'll kick your ass this year just as last year...)
- can be quite easily tricked into constant capture of king/heirs, and thus bled dry of every last florin..


Feel free to add to this list.
Blodrast

[Doug-Thompson]

Cons: Severe over-reliance on bad units, and a habit of taxing everything to death.

This is a compound problem. Province loyalty for AI factions is often close to zero and maintained by huge stacks of unarmored units, all of which can be easily massacred.

It's easier to find fault with what really is a good AI. Designing a challenging AI must me the most difficult part of any game design.

[Blodrast]

Quote[/b] (Doug-Thompson @ June 29 2004,12:11)]Cons: Severe over-reliance on bad units, and a habit of taxing everything to death.

This is a compound problem. Province loyalty for AI factions is often close to zero and maintained by huge stacks of unarmored units, all of which can be easily massacred.

It's easier to find fault with what really is a good AI. Designing a challenging AI must me the most difficult part of any game design.
Don't get me wrong, Doug-Thompson, I'm not trying to blame CA or say it's a crappy AI. I've already mentioned that it is overall a decent AI (strategically speaking, if we don't consider the inexistant diplomacy).
I'm just trying to make a list with good sides and bad sides, hoping for as good a characterization of the AI as possible.
Just for the sake of it, not to point out any fingers or put the blame on anyone. Hell, I love the game and play it all I can, of course I like it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

re overtaxing: shrug, I always tax them on very high. I never have garrisons of more than 100 or 200 peasants in non-border provinces, except for the more rebellious provinces, of course, like portugal/scotland/lithuania/livonia, where I do keep more stacks of peasants. Usually the miserable rotten slaves are happy with some happiness buildings and that's it. Squeeze every last florin out of them, I always say ;)

But I agree with cheap trash units, Doug.

[foop]

Con: The AI sometimes takes insufficient care of the royal line.

The Poles had reappeared in my English campaign last night, with a few nice stacks of fairly high-tech units. Their first act was to invade one of my provinces (to be fair, it used to be Polish). Rashly, they used their heirless King as the general.

Although they outnumbered me, it was a foregone conclusion. I had the benefit of defending, and some handy woodland and 6 units of Pav Arbs enabled me to construct a nice killing ground. The King's unit of knights was dead in about three volleys. Next year, the Polish faction had crumbled.

I certainly wouldn't risk my only royal invading a teched-up province a year after my faction reappeared.

[mercian billman]

Bloodrast, not once has the AI ever successfully assasinated one of my gens, they have taken soom of my emissaries though. Most of those emisssaries were low valour types which could easily be replaced.

The AI did manage to bribe one of my generals once. He was a 0 star gen, in command of a border garrison of 200 Slav Warriors, in the province next to him I had a 6 star gen in command of a army with 600 troops CMAA, CKs etc.

[Blodrast]

Quote[/b] (mercian billman @ June 30 2004,11:12)]Bloodrast, not once has the AI ever successfully assasinated one of my gens, they have taken soom of my emissaries though. Most of those emisssaries were low valour types which could easily be replaced.

The AI did manage to bribe one of my generals once. He was a 0 star gen, in command of a border garrison of 200 Slav Warriors, in the province next to him I had a 6 star gen in command of a army with 600 troops CMAA, CKs etc.
whoa, hold on a second, mercian billman.
I have to disagree with you on this one. The AI kills plenty of generals, not with assassins, but with inquisitors. They are real bitchy about that, and you really need to watch out for inquisitors. As for assassins killing generals, it's usually almost impossible anyway. _I_ can't assassinate generals (decent ones, of course, we're not talkin 0-stars generals, are we ?).
The odds of killing an enemy general with 3+ stars are veeery slim even for high-star assassins. And if you don't have Syria, you can't really raise your assassins higher than roughly 6 stars (although I personally only had 5 star assassins (not using Syrian ones)).
Whereas with inquisitors, I burn princes and generals like matchsticks...Assassins are good vs spies/emissaries and religious dudes, not vs generals and royalty...not unless you have really high valour assassins..so we can't really blame the AI for that. Maybe if it sees that the odds are too small, it won't bother to send the assassin at all...
Also, I catch quite a lot of assassins in my own territories. WatchTower/BorderFort are always the first buildings I build, and I do catch a few assassins every turn...

[Despot of the English]

The AI is incredibly dumb when he attacks a province with just his monarch and his bodyguard http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif .

[Lil' Timmy]

eh, i kinda like the dumbness of the kings.. at least sometimes. i can imagine that a new warlord who has just cobbled together a kingdom, putting himself in power by his own hand might be a bit on the rash, head-strong side.. rushing valiantly into battle as a sign to his people of his prowess. sure, in the gameplay, it's stupid, but i don't mind it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif (sometimes)

i took down 3 kingdoms with one 5-6 star assassin. maybe i got lucky, but i assassinated the swedish 3-star king and his two 1-star heirs (5-star assassin) to reduce a third of the map to rebel factions. my assassin (diego de molina) picked up his 6th-star when the 3-star pope somehow got a little belladonna in his vittles http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif (perhaps god was mad at him for excommunicating my innocent french allies http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif). only two years later, the 2-star king and 2-star heir of the backstabbing danes met with unfortunate ridding accidents in britanny to reduce almost all of europe (britain, most of western europe north of north of switzerland, and basically all of eastern eurpoe except the steppes) to rebel feudal states.

after a while the swedes re-emerged with lots of units and provinces (23). after trying to sue for peace unsucessfully, their 4-star, heirless king met with misfortune as well.. tragically slipping and falling on his own dagger http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif (an ill-fated line of rulers, the swedish monarchs...)

one reason i decided to assassinate the swedes to begin with was that they had a 6-star inquisitor that was running amok through my provinces, he got three of my generals, and i wasted 7 3,4-star assassins trying to kill him. the when i sent my 5-star diego de molina after him, a funn,y several-year, around-the-world chase ensued. i finally decided to give up the pursuit when i wound up in the same province (loraine) as the swedish king.. and a tragic tale ensued http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-curtain.gif

i've also had a couple of low-level generals assassinated in newly conqured provinces before.

it's pretty bad AI, i'll admit.. but it helps a little if you try to bulid a little story around it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Good story there, Timmy http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

I once had a great assasin, like 7 stars or something, took down a king or two, key generals had misfortunes much along the lines of those in YOUR parallel universe. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif But then the assasin himself got nail...

He slipped and fell out of a twelve-story castle, trying to knife a lowly, 0-star garrison commander. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

And about the AI, the worst is how stupid the computer factions are in invading/defending provinces. They'll attack when the have large numbers of CRAP but run away if threatened by even slightly superior numbers, most of the time. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif Rome better change these things, or I'll... I'll... buy the game and then complain about it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-blush.gif .

[Lil' Timmy]

lol, yeah i forgot to mention the demise of the great molina.. after all his years of killing and subterfuge, he was caught be the mongols in crimea.. he was on his way back from meeting with a hungarian princess who was on her way to court the mongol khan. legend has it that she was lost to the wolves somwhere in the wilds of the steppe.. it was so sad http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/ht_saint.gif

maybe he was getting sloppy in his advanced age, but good(bad) ol' molina was spotted by a well-informed mongol agent at the crimean port. though he was killed in a brutal fashion, i imagine my trusty left-hand smiled as he died, knowing he had brought about ultimate ruin for my most powerful enemies, and in a last act of cunning wickedness had helped insure that the powerful mongols would not cease their war with the powerful hungarians for years to come.