Is the AI schizo?

[LordCurlyton]

Yes, I mean it. So far I've played 4 campaigns in EB (not fully, since 3 were 0.81 that became incompatible with the hotfix) and it seems like there is no discernible pattern, especially in AI aggresiveness. I've personally played as Romani, Carthage, Sweboz, Romani again (current campaign) and its behaved differently each time. In the first three, the AI was expansionistic and very aggressive towards my faction in 2 of the 3 (my Romani and Carthage one), to the point where I was getting worried that my economy might implode (in Romani) or that I had severely stretched my frontier to an untenable position (Carthage). Incidentally, in one the AS beat the Ptolies up and in the other the Ptolies came out ahead. In both the Sweboz and Gallic factions expanded nicely as well, but the Sweboz only became true monsters in the 0.81 Romani game. However, my Sweboz and 0.81a Romani campaign feature(d) almost no expansion with the exception of the AS/Ptolie war and the inevitable Baktria/Pahlava war. In fact, it seems like the AI is completely dead in my 0.81a game. The only things of note are the AS-Ptolie Alliance :dizzy2: which has let AS chew into Baktria and the Arveni and Aedui each taking two or three settlements by 230BC. The only real constant is that the Casse in all 4 campaigns have slowly been working on unifying the isles. So what gives? Why is the AI seemingly on and off with being aggressive? Ironically, I never had that problem in vanilla.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

How could EB have made the AI schizo, or like anything really? We just set starting diplomatic relations by a number, attitudes of factions towards other factions at start by a number, and sometimes try to play with terrain and buildings to get AI to do things a little more likely. What exactly is the problem that you mention though? Is it just balanced well enough to provide good variance?

[Numahr]

Lord Curlyton,

Actually I think that an unexpectable AI is a good thing. Thus every game you play, you will get a different experience. As long as the factions' behaviour is historically "plausible" (in the sense that it may not have happened but could possibly have happened), I see this only as one more positive "feature"!

[GodEmperorLeto]

Absolutely. The AI behaving differently in every campaign is not only a sign of excellent balance, but of infinite variety. I enjoy playing games where I am always guessing. If the AI didn't behave differently each game, I'd get bored. I've played three Romani games, and in each one, Carthage pursued the "Punic Wars" differently. In one, we got down and dirty in the trenches in Sicily, in another, they handed Sicily to me, but launched an invasion from Sardinia by sea, and in the last, they blockaded all my ports and tried to wreck my economy while forcing me to besiege their cities throughout Sicily. Sometimes I started the wars, sometimes Carthage did, and the one time, Carthage essentially brought an entire pan-Mediterranean alliance against me, much to my surprise.

This is a strength that the game displays, in my opinion. I find this a fantastic development, and it makes the experience new and interesting every time.

[Domitius Ulpianus]

LordCurlyton was praising the AI...I think...I guess...:dizzy2: or was that a critic...ummm I'm lost...~:doh: in an case "that is a feature, not a bug"
HA always wanted to say that, makes me feel like a game designer!...it's a lil like saying: "Hurry, follow that taxi!!!" LOLOL

[LordCurlyton]

Nah not really complaining just wondering why it seems that sometimes the AI will expand against the rebel cities very aggressively and other times it just seems to sit pretty and lay around like a lamb for the slaughter. I know that can't really be EB's fault, since I never "noticed" it in vanilla mainly because I was too busy thrashing everything at an extremely fast pace to notice. It just seemed odd in a WTF manner, since my only consistent performer has been....the Casse. And I seem to remember seeing some posts bemoaning the Casse's lack of progress. I do wish the Sauromatae and Getai would do more, especially the Getai, since I've seen screenshots showing them expanding when the player is another faction.
And maybe its just me, but if the base AI (which EB can do nothing about) was good, I'd expect that if I ran an all-AI game 100 times the most likely results would be ones that follow historical paths or the alternates deemed most likely to have happened. While admittedly there can be a large number of possible "alternates" that I'm sure could be argued for, the ones I would most likely expect would be, in no particular order:
Rome become a dominant power (in a sizable minority of the 100 at least)
Carthage becoming a dominant power (in a slightly smaller minority of the 100 than Rome)
AS remains a superpower, crushes Ptolies (decent minority of 100)
Ptolies enhance their superpower status, crushes AS (same amount as previous)
AS/Ptolies remain at status quo, sign peace/alliance (small minority)
Baktria and/or Pahlava become regional powers (would hope for a small majority)
Maks beat KH or vice versa (sizable majority for one of the two)
Epeiros becomes a player (decent minority)
Getai, Sweboz achieve roughly their historical expansion (nice majority)
Nomad factions decide they want to par-tay (decent minority)
Aedui or Arveni achieve dominance, perhaps more (foughly 50/50 chance)

Of course there are many more possibilities and the permutations of them could lead to funky situations (Sweboz bordering Hayasdan anyone?), which is a GOOD thing. My question, now that I am more coherent (I hope): is there any way to ensure that the AI is consistently aggressive in expanding? Not necessarily the same factions all the time with the same sort of expansion, but in general? I mainly posted this because at 40 years in, no one outside of Casse, Lusotanni, Baktria, and Pahlava had expanded much,if at all. I was really disappointed to find Carthage having not taken a single settlement. And I even waited to trigger the Punic Wars until almost 7 years after their original start time. I dunno, maybe its just me. Its not like I'm going to stop playing the mod. I love it, its just that the base AI can...irk me sometimes.

[HFox]

o.81a

Ai sweboz currently beseiging Kallatis

player KH pondering what juggernaught he will unleash if he attacks them

[LordCurlyton]

I will say that I like the Sweboz AI since it has seemed to be one of the most aggressive. In my first campaign they got to be bigger than the AS almost before turning their beady eayes south, and allying with the Aedui and Arveni against me. Most painful, it was. Though for some reason they are just sitting around with 2 full stacks by their two cities in my current campaign. I wish I could make them get up and go somewhere.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

The thing is the sweboz haven't changed. It's just the variation that a given campaign can produce. The AI has no idea of historical expansion - it just expands as it can.

[adishee]

I agree, I hate the inconsistancy. Sometimes the AI is extremely challenging, sometimes it just sits there, its' full stacks staring off into the ocean. A roman game I had in .80, 1.5 exe., the Carthies put up a monstrous fight for Sicily, I was constantly ferrying re-enforcements down to recoup the losses, and I was personally fighting the battles. It was insane, I loved it. Eventually I beat them off the island after about 10 years of bitter war. Never been repeated, .81, .81a, BI exe., niente. Another as KH I expanded a little too thin, Maks came down and slapped me and took Athens, then Epirots blitzed from Thermon (somebody actually took Thermon!?) and besieged Korinth. That hasn't happened again. Sometimes this game is brilliant, sometimes it is boring as hell. :wall:

[bovi]

I can't understand that some consider variation in a game to be a bad thing. It's called replay value.

[LordCurlyton]

The thing is the sweboz haven't changed. It's just the variation that a given campaign can produce. The AI has no idea of historical expansion - it just expands as it can.
Well is there any command console I can use to at least move the AI armies to a more suitable locale (say near a rebel settlement) to hopefully "encourage" them to get started expanding? Or maybe even a command to just flat-out give them a settlement? It does seem to me that once an AI faction passes a certain threshold, around 6-7 settlements I'd say, that it really starts to move and become the aggressive style of AI that makes for some truly fun playing. Note that my thoughts on AI expansion in my previous post are assuming an AI that can do what we want, which the AI we have to work with can't. Given its limitations, I am on the whole fine with it, just that sometimes these situations of AI laziness arise and I feel like there is something I should be able to do to help them along when in fact I can't (or at least I don't know how). I know in my current campaign money wasn't an issue with the Carthage AI (at least until I obliterated it), yet it failed to take a single province. There was evidence it had tried though, as Kirtan's defenders were greatly weakened and double silver chevroned. But usually after 20 years it has taken Kirtan, the two towns S and SW of Lepki, is working on the one W of Ippone, and occasionaly takes a province or three in Iberia. So is this just a case of an unusually large number of the AI factions suffering crushing defeats against rebel towns, which seems to throw them off far more than would be expected?

[Will_YouFight_ForME]

whenever i play my campaign each nation is really passive
then when i kick start them buy giving them money they become impossible
and very aggressive
cathage has been the exception having hordes of money and doing nothing!

i wish they'd put up a fight worthy of their history! lol

[bovi]

If you really want to, you can teleport armies using the move_character <character name> <x,y> console command. Make sure to toggle off fog-of-war first so you see where they turn up! For characters with spaces in their names I've heard you need quotation marks BTW, I haven't tried this myself.

[The Errant]

whenever i play my campaign each nation is really passive
then when i kick start them buy giving them money they become impossible
and very aggressive
cathage has been the exception having hordes of money and doing nothing!

i wish they'd put up a fight worthy of their history! lol

It's all about the money. The AS steamrolls everyone around them because they have a virtually limitless treasury. The Carthies make tons of money but need the motivation of a war with another faction to get them going. The Lusotannan or Romans tend to do it sooner or later.
By 218 in my game Pontos, Saka, Lusotannan and Ptolemai are gone. Saka got wiped out by Pahlava. Lusotannan by the Carthies and Pontos along with Ptolemai by the Seleukids.
It's all about the money. With enough money the AI factions will keep training armies and if they can't train decent troops the AI will hire mercs to help it expand.

Giving the smaller factions huge cash bonuses for the first twenty or so years will propably get them going though.

[Veris]

The lack of money definitely hurts the steppe factions greatly, which is why they rarely become a threat.

My experience has been that while many nations are poor or uninspired attackers, aside from Seleucia, many still provide excellent resistance on defense. And once certain ones like the Sweboz get started, they have a very strong momentum that can create a very strong empire.

[Danest]

I think variety is a good thing... when it make sense. It's great that sometimes a faction expands, and other times, perhaps loses to another faction. The problem is when a faction seems to spend 200 yrs. collecting seashells with several full stacks. It seems to happen more often with the smaller factions, even when they obtain sizeable armies. That's just weird. Are they playing defensively, or just confused? If they're playing defensively, I guess that's ok, but probably not a sound strategy in the long run for a small faction.