Some factions AI even worse on VH campaign???

Ive noticed in my current VH campaign that certain factions seem a lot weaker (militarily) than on Medium campaign

In this case it is rome. In my medium difficulty campaign, Rome had 20 fullstacks sitting around Europe. Most of these were like 70% triarii and gave me a very hard time. However in my VH campaign, Rome has 6 stacks, mostly made up of crappier and expensive mercenaries. I think its because mercenaries cost more and instead of 1 stack of mercenaries they could have fielded 3 stacks of triarii for the same price. Has anyone else noticed this?

since the bonus on vh are higher a few factions have an easyer time holding on also more mercenaries means there´s less of a diference in troop quality beteween for instance kelts and romans regulars

Really hard to say if AI for some factions is worse on higher difficulties. What may also happen is that other AI factions do a lot better, which can put other factions under bigger pressure. For instance, I found that Lusotanna tends to better on higher difficulties, which negatively impacts on their neighbours.

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Originally Posted by d'Arthez

Really hard to say if AI for some factions is worse on higher difficulties. What may also happen is that other AI factions do a lot better, which can put other factions under bigger pressure. For instance, I found that Lusotanna tends to better on higher difficulties, which negatively impacts on their neighbours.

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nah i was really only talking about recruitment. It seems that on VH, the AI annoys you by pulling a stack of mercenaries out of thin air in the middle of your undefended cities, however, they now only have 1 stack of expensive mercenaries instead of the three stacks of uber triarii

also im using realistic movement mod which means rome Always dominates Europe. In realistic movement mod, Sweboz stays at one city for about 40 years. There are about 10 rebel stacks in germany who help each other other and stop the sweboz from expanding :/

Lusotanna usually becomes brwon death on H and VH but with realistic move they are getting pwned by Carthage

I used to love realistic movement, then I got dependent on it, and it messed up my groove.~:smoking:
Now I have since returned to normal after enslaving my self to it.
The game is far more fun with normal movement on. The AI can't handle the increased movement. The factions with good starting positions grow monstrous! When you use toggle_fow you no doubt notice too.
I enjoy hard and very hard! (with normal movement) It usually stops yellow fever (sometimes) and keeps the Romans on their toes. But with realistic movement, the romans get steamrolled by either the Green Fungus (Monster Epirus) or the late great maksplosion (Macedonian refulgence), it just takes a while.
You see, Rome dominates western Europe way to early; the automatic AI polybian reforms usually have NOT kicked in yet (They kick in sooner for the AI), so they are left with crappy Camilan troops and have to no ability to build MIC's that get them good units for the fight they get into.
I have seen it myself:
Playing as Pahlava, its 240 and I'm wondering when will I get my late bodyguard, only to find out that the Romans steamrolled the Gaul and made too many enemies to early in the game; case in point:
I turn on toggle_fow to see that Capua (the city that usually triggers the MOT) does not have enough people.....in fact it only has 5000 people.....Epiros just exterminated it!:wall:
I had to assume control of the Roman faction and cheat Arrimnium up a huge city and try to fix the Roman position.....heck I even arranged their forces to defend their city's...
And guess what, when I put them back under AI control, they fudged it up all over again, but at least I had my late bodyguard...
Simply put:
Realistic Movement is bad, becuase the AI is not smart enough to use it....

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Originally Posted by seleucid empire

nah i was really only talking about recruitment. It seems that on VH, the AI annoys you by pulling a stack of mercenaries out of thin air in the middle of your undefended cities, however, they now only have 1 stack of expensive mercenaries instead of the three stacks of uber triarii

also im using realistic movement mod which means rome Always dominates Europe. In realistic movement mod, Sweboz stays at one city for about 40 years. There are about 10 rebel stacks in germany who help each other other and stop the sweboz from expanding :/

Lusotanna usually becomes brwon death on H and VH but with realistic move they are getting pwned by Carthage

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Which suggests that the AI of smaller factions (1-3 provinces) is rather hampered by the realistic movement mod, rather than helped by it. Of course this is a natural outcome. Also, because movement is greatly increased, AI will probably find it easier to send its armies to do something somewhere. Bear in mind that the AI completely forgets about its plans when you load a game (!), which has the unfortunate effect of leading to a million and one stranded superstacks. This of course will be more of a problem with lower movement speeds, due to the time (and reloading) involved. Hence those triarii stacks doing nothing. Realistic movement mod goes some way to eliminate that particular problem and eliminate said stacks as well, due to them being used!.

Major factions will find it easier to send fullstacks somewhere, while smaller factions lack the economic resources to compete with the fullstacks that are sent to them. Hence Lusotanna being owned. Their economic basis is too limited to compete with the bigger factions around them. Upkeep costs are much less of a barrier to bigger factions than to smaller factions (if it would take you a year before a superstack saw some action, that could well mean an additional cost to your treasury of 25000 Mnai, due to upkeep). This is completely consistent with the SPQR being the dominant faction in Europe (it is the biggest faction in Europe, and the only real competition is locked in a three way war in Greece). Thus the realistic movement mod may have the effect of making money scarcer for smaller factions. They can get rid of more expensive troops more easily, but they also need the troops more, since a new superstack from Carthage knocks on the door every 3 or 4 turns for Lusotanna.

Sweboz suffers from the problem that too many roaming superstacks are within its reach. Beat one, and another one will defeat them. As far as I know, the realistic movement mod does nothing to increase the speed of recruiting, so their bank account takes quite a hit each and every time they have to raise a big stack (due to upkeep).

Only way to know for certain is to disable fog of war, and follow all AI factions to see how they are actually doing, rather than taking a peek every now and then.

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Originally Posted by d'Arthez

Bear in mind that the AI completely forgets about its plans when you load a game (!)

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is this true?

I don´t really know if that´s the case, but i´ve noticed that AI seems to have lots of pathfinding problems, which don´t have the same impact when extended movement is activated. I´ve played several campaigns with Arverni/Aedui/Sweboz recently, and i´ve played it with fow-off, mainly to see, how AI handels the changes. This are some observation of mine:

- the value of 260 in descr_character is a bit too high, imho. I changed it to 200 ( original value = 80 ).
- speeding recruitment time with realistic mov. settings is not really wise - actually, it´s quite the opposite; i´ve changed the recruitment times similar to the 3xupkeep/recruit mod, increasing them even more ( see those topics ), which also would eleminate many unrealistic recruitment AI habits.
- even with the lowered realistic movement, Carthage now, for instance, manages to perform some real d-day landings with fullstack on Roman soil, or icelands if they are threatened/taken by enemies.
- there are no more "sitting around" stacks of Gauls, for example, which linger in enemy Eleutheroi territory; i always asked myself: why are they sitting there, devastating the tile? and 2 simple reasons came to my mind: 1. The AI seems not to be sure, whether to move or not, since it would take way too long to reach the target settlement, and/or 2. The AI tries to provoke the town garrison to move out of that settlement and engage it´s army in a field combat. With the realistic movment active the garrisons of normaly immobile governeurs move out and engage the invaders, which also leads to a faster expansion of the factions against the Eleutheroi.
-> the only really good solution to this would be to adjust descr_strat and give all the Eleutheroi towns a second general, a commander with decent abilities additionaly to the governeur ( similar to the second general in charge in Aitoila ), and also to increase the strengh/experience/sort of troops present in those settlements to counter the fact that a field battle seems very much easier for the faction AI against the Eleutheroi.
- i´ve adressed the rebell "superstack"- problem in one of the recent postings in the initial realistic movement mod by Atraphoenix.
- bear in mind that AI becomes enourmous support from the EBBS script, which doesn´t seem to make really difference to the factions in several cases; the Eleutheroi there are concidered simple Brigands, instead of real "Free People" - a big mistake, imo; a substantial script/manual money support allows the Eleutheroi to actually train/retrain (BI/alex only for the latter, iirc ) troops, and build up it´s settlements; about 200k per turn, i´d say ( 4x40.000 give_money slave command )
- with realistic movement active everything on the campaign map happens faster; it is wise to slow down as much as you can. One part is adjusting unit training times, another altering the stats of many units to prevent the AI from building "all Triari" stacks for instance; and also changing the AI behaiviour in desc_strat concerning their general goals.

All in all, there are very many things which can, and should be changed in EB if one´s going to use the realistic movment ( and even without the changes ). Some mods adress those things, but it would be good to see it in one single mod, with optional features i´d say. And, as i already mentioned in other postings, i concider it a big mistake for the historical accuracy in detail to overwright the one in "big picture", aka faction balancing ( and especially due to the AI not beeing able to understand those changes, if only made for human players, and not "translated" into the "game language" ).

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Originally Posted by vollorix

I don´t really know if that´s the case, but i´ve noticed that AI seems to have lots of pathfinding problems, which don´t have the same impact when extended movement is activated. I´ve played several campaigns with Arverni/Aedui/Sweboz recently, and i´ve played it with fow-off, mainly to see, how AI handels the changes. This are some observation of mine:

- the value of 260 in descr_character is a bit too high, imho. I changed it to 200 ( original value = 80 ).
- speeding recruitment time with realistic mov. settings is not really wise - actually, it´s quite the opposite; i´ve changed the recruitment times similar to the 3xupkeep/recruit mod, increasing them even more ( see those topics ), which also would eleminate many unrealistic recruitment AI habits.
- even with the lowered realistic movement, Carthage now, for instance, manages to perform some real d-day landings with fullstack on Roman soil, or icelands if they are threatened/taken by enemies.
- there are no more "sitting around" stacks of Gauls, for example, which linger in enemy Eleutheroi territory; i always asked myself: why are they sitting there, devastating the tile? and 2 simple reasons came to my mind: 1. The AI seems not to be sure, whether to move or not, since it would take way too long to reach the target settlement, and/or 2. The AI tries to provoke the town garrison to move out of that settlement and engage it´s army in a field combat. With the realistic movment active the garrisons of normaly immobile governeurs move out and engage the invaders, which also leads to a faster expansion of the factions against the Eleutheroi.
-> the only really good solution to this would be to adjust descr_strat and give all the Eleutheroi towns a second general, a commander with decent abilities additionaly to the governeur ( similar to the second general in charge in Aitoila ), and also to increase the strengh/experience/sort of troops present in those settlements to counter the fact that a field battle seems very much easier for the faction AI against the Eleutheroi.
- i´ve adressed the rebell "superstack"- problem in one of the recent postings in the initial realistic movement mod by Atraphoenix.
- bear in mind that AI becomes enourmous support from the EBBS script, which doesn´t seem to make really difference to the factions in several cases; the Eleutheroi there are concidered simple Brigands, instead of real "Free People" - a big mistake, imo; a substantial script/manual money support allows the Eleutheroi to actually train/retrain (BI/alex only for the latter, iirc ) troops, and build up it´s settlements; about 200k per turn, i´d say ( 4x40.000 give_money slave command )
- with realistic movement active everything on the campaign map happens faster; it is wise to slow down as much as you can. One part is adjusting unit training times, another altering the stats of many units to prevent the AI from building "all Triari" stacks for instance; and also changing the AI behaiviour in desc_strat concerning their general goals.

All in all, there are very many things which can, and should be changed in EB if one´s going to use the realistic movment ( and even without the changes ). Some mods adress those things, but it would be good to see it in one single mod, with optional features i´d say. And, as i already mentioned in other postings, i concider it a big mistake for the historical accuracy in detail to overwright the one in "big picture", aka faction balancing ( and especially due to the AI not beeing able to understand those changes, if only made for human players, and not "translated" into the "game language" ).

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Hmm. Well. I don't actually use realistic movement either. I go about 160 to 180. But I am also using city mod and roman allied recruitment and a few other things that don't really effect AI. What I have noticed is that my combo of mods:

1. sweboz and luso are unstoppable. At this point I send all their original armies to briton on the first turn. My last several campaigns leaving both unchecked, they automatically have massive empires within 20 years. They basically have no competition - weak ai cities which they can get to quicker - while rome struggles to take taras & deal with constant naval invasions from africa and greece. the gauls have to compete with each other as well as their nieghbors rather than a bunch of weak ai cities.
2. Hay and Pontos are weak. after switching to alx pontos is less weak, but tends to be obsessed with Tylis and usually ends up dead by 220's.
3. Pahlava is the weakest faction in the game by a longshot, dying as early as 269 and is typically down to 1 territory or gone by 240's
4. Eborunum armies tend to roam around, this i find very useful. With that and a little help from me, they can help keep the western Greeks in Greece (if left unattended, either Eperios or Mak will be hellbent on conquering south germany while ignoring macedon), keep germany in check, and can help keep galatia independent.
5. ptoly and AS are supreme and totally unstoppable, and if once gets weak the other is even that much stronger. AT this point I take away all of their money on the first few turns just to keep them in check but it does very little good.
5. AI Romani is very weak and usually conquered by 200. At this point, if i am playing an eastern faction, i give them taras and 1 mill in cash on first turn. Only sometimes this helps. on BI and ALX they have no answer for the naval invasions of carthage and epeiros. And they never respond by invading africa or greece (thus stopping the threat). So they struggle the entire game.
6. Sometimes when i move an army, they either get pinned or simply go back to where they originally were (example, i once moved ptolemaios aiakides to carthage on turn 1 to keep epeiros in check and keep carthage busy, 5 years later he made his way back to epeiros and eventually was attacking eborunum)

I cannot at this point play with default movement points or without city mod (I cannot accept the worlds population trippling in only 30 years i.e 272bc rome has 9k people and 232bc scandanavia has 20k people). But the combination of extendede movement and citymod seems to screw certain factions and help others too much. At this point when I play it is more of an experiment to see how close to reality I can get the game without spending too much time every turn moving people around. Also, at this point the only factions i play are Pahlava and Rome (unless i do the occasional fantasy campaign where i just rape everything sarmations/saka/briton/etc.)

As for the AI forgetting their plans, that could be possible. A later re-laod, they could notice they happen to have an army near a lightly guarded city with mines and 'decide' to take it (even though they 'forgot' they already decided that).

I used to think the 12 turn per year ideas was ridiculous. But now after vast experimenting with movement points, I fully understand and hope someone continues the endeavor. I beleive it would only require altering the time it takes to build buildings and recruit troops, then you could go back to default movement (or less, maybe 60?). And the game could possibly acheive that nice slow pace the team was hoping for when they created the game in the first place.

12 turn per year is easy to script but the population boom is out of control that is why many quit it. To strengthen AI you can easily disable middle Europe defending script in the EBBS. That may give AI Sweboz a chance to breathe. No matter what percentage you use for movement points above the default one, AP factions (Lusos and Getai) will dominate the game. When I do not play with them, pontos, hayasdan and pahlavs dies quickly. In fact I planned to auto-recruit script for AI capitals but EB2 takes enough time for me and I have already quit modding EB 1.