Increasing historical realism: tips from the team?

[Thrond]

Hi all,

Having read Zaknafein and M.Aurelius Antoninus' respective AAR's, and their replies to comments, it seems possible to increase realism by using diplomats and force diplomacy.

My question therefore is if you have any tips for such a process when constructing our own AARs.

Redistributing cities and giving money to other factions seems almost a necessity to keep factions progressing in a manner which is accurate for roleplaying purposes, though how would you push the AI into attacking settlements and the like?

I used move_character for example, to put a full KH stack on Crete and it didn't assault the city in 20 turns.

Basicaly, a handy but brief list of tips on how to "cheat" more accuracy into the game would be very useful.

[konny]

I used move_character for example, to put a full KH stack on Crete and it didn't assault the city in 20 turns.

You must not expect the AI to do the most logical thing under a given situation. If it has destinated that stack, for example, for Demetrias or Thermon and it happens to be 'beamed' to Crete, it will most likely be stacked there for the rest of the game or until another stack accidently conquers the respective town and the Crete stack is again available for new orders.

[Thrond]

The stack I moved had been sitting outside Athens for some time.

I found a similar Pontic full stack army outside Mytilene, with Mithridates Kianos, which I moved to Bithynia (it had been idle over about 7+ turns), once in Bithynia, it captured Nikaia after 2 attempts.

So it does sometimes work, though with the KH stack it was just a hit or miss.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

It is hard to get the AI to do what you want them to do. When I 'herd' the AI, I'll usually stick to preventing the AI from taking certain cities, returning lost cities (through diplomacy), and weakening the strong (through cheats: character_reset & auto_win attacker with an army of mercs) so that the weak might rise up.

You can also conquer a city and give it to the AI with diplomacy, but the problem of correct government causes problems (since aquiring a territory through diplomacy doesn't handle governmetns). In these cases, I'll either repair the previous faction's government or build one of my faction (through cheats) based on whichever one fits best. For instance, you are Rome, you take Korinthos from Makedonia and want to give it to KH, since it has a Mak TypeIII, I'll tear it down and build a Roman TypeII, then give it to the AI, which will now have a government # better suited to the town for the recieving faction.