Need new campaign AI

I had high hopes for 1.2, those hopes have been smashed of course. One of the biggest fun killers for this game is when the campaign AI acts transparently out of character. In my current campaign, I'm england, I invaded the holy land, everything's good. I control 13 territories. I conquer one more territory - BOOM, France and Denmark attack me in Europe, the mongols attack me in the holy land. I defeat a danish siege, the mongolian siege of jerulsalem, but I lose the siege to france. As soon as I lose that territory to France, I'm not making this up, the mongolian horde, the 5 armies sitting around jerusalem, breaks the siege and heads due east into the desert. Denmark requests peace, France still hates me, but stops attempting to take Caen over and over. I conquer Cairo - back up to 14 territories. SUDDENLY, the mongolian horde appears next to Jerusalem again and France begins sieging Caen and guess what else? Byzantium attacks Antioch, all on the same turn.

I'm sorry, but this AI is blatantly transparent, as you get closer to game winning goals or a certain territory count, all your neighbors attack without any understandable reason. I used Darth Mod prior to 1.2, but the torch bug really bothered me, so I just decided to stop playing til they patched the game. While they may have fixed alot of bugs, the campaign AI is still horrible and breaks the entire feeling of the game. If player has X territories then break all alliances and kill the player - this is ridiculous. Can anyone PLEASE recommend me a campaign AI that at least makes the countries behave as though they were seperate entities and not a team without alliances triggered by territory count? It really kills the feeling of the game when this crap happens, otherwise the game is really great.

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I'm sorry, but this AI is blatantly transparent, as you get closer to game winning goals or a certain territory count, all your neighbors attack without any understandable reason.

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Erm, isn't the fact your nearly winning the game the reason they're attacking you. This is a game, the ai is designed to gang up on you when you get nearer to the victory conditions to try and stop you from winning.

Unfortunently its not even that. I find that even when your not winning and its early in the game, the AI tend to backstab you for no reason (and its not just the ones that aren't allied to you, which I wouldn't mind, but the people you allied only a few turns before).

It is stupid and pointless. As for a mod, I suggest the Ultimate AI mod. From what I heard that it is really good and helps. The creator just came out with a version that is v1.2 compatible.

SpaceUnion, what campaign difficulty are you playing ? (hint : it's a trick question.)

The diplomacy and aggressiveness of the strategic AI is why I play games on M/VH. Although I dislike that the AI is not as aggressive on M, it is easier to forge alliances and keep them. As well as use diplomacy in general. And the AI will seemingly go all out as you near your goals in campaign. Right now I am close to victory in a campaign and I am at war with Poland, Milan, France and Denmark in my HRE campaign. The first of which was my own fault, the latter three attacked me...and are being butchered by my superior (and smarter :sweatdrop:) forces.

Tschüß!
Erich

@Owa
I think your being a bit overcritical, although a couple of the points you make are valid.

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Originally Posted by Owa

In my current campaign, I'm england, I invaded the holy land, everything's good. I control 13 territories. I conquer one more territory -

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I think the point worth noting here is that in game terms you are extremely close to acheiving the victory conditions for the 'SHORT' campaign. e.g. Elminate Scotland, and France and hold 15 regions.

Now, you don't say whether you have elminated Scotland but I'm assuming that you must have given the number of territories you control. Likewise, you may not be playing the 'SHORT' campaign, but I get the impression that whether you are playing to those goals or not the AI is monitoring your performance against them and reacting accordingly.

So, it makes sense that any action on your part to seize a territory in France is going to get a hostile reaction.

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Originally Posted by Owa

France still hates me, but stops attempting to take Caen over and over.

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France is always going to hate you. In fact, Frances strategic goal is to wipe the English off the face of the earth. So, the amazing scenario would be if they suddenly accepted a lasting peace with you.

Likewise, no Catholic faction will pursue a protracted war against you, so they will back off as soon as it becomes apparent that they are not going to win or the threat has passed. The reason for this is that if they don't the Pope will issue an ex-communication warning against them for attacking another Christian faction.

However, you are quite right they will be back, as soon as the Popes back is turned and his papal edict has expired.

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Originally Posted by Owa

France and Denmark attack me in Europe,

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I can't explain why Denmark is attacking you in Europe, unless you've done something to upset them. Their strategic goal is to eliminate the Holy Roman Empire, so they would normally focus on the german cities further north. The only other possibility is that they are allied to the French and are therefore, co-operating with a strategy to keep the French in the game.

Only you can answer that.

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Originally Posted by Owa

the mongols attack me in the holy land...As soon as I lose that territory to France, I'm not making this up, the mongolian horde, the 5 armies sitting around jerusalem, breaks the siege and heads due east into the desert.

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I agree that the sort of behaviour you describe from the Mongols is weird. I've seen it repeatedly in my own games and don't really understand it. If the Mongols were getting some sort of income from blockading the trade from a city then it might make sense, but as far as I know they don't.

The other strange bahaviour I've witnessed is that they will frequently march right past several weakly defended cities to lay seige to a another, and will even completely ignore Christian armies passing through their massed ranks on a crusade.

I'm quite curious how the AI prioritises the Mongols actions, but you're right they do seem almost random.

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Originally Posted by Owa

I'm sorry, but this AI is blatantly transparent, as you get closer to game winning goals or a certain territory count, all your neighbors attack without any understandable reason.

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I think thats partly true, although to be fair not ALL your neighbours attacked you and most that did had valid reasons for wanting the territories they attacked.

I suppose the reverse of this thread would be 'Stupid AI let me win even though they had a huge army sitting in the next province.'

Okay, I knew that in leaked 1.02 patch the AI doesn't behave like this. Is there any way to revert the AI so that it behaves much more logical and make sense (yeah, that's according to me) like in leaked patch 1.02? What do I need to edit in patched 1.02?

[QUOTE=Owa]If player has X territories then break all alliances and kill the player - this is ridiculous. Can anyone PLEASE recommend me a campaign AI that at least makes the countries behave as though they were seperate entities and not a team without alliances triggered by territory count?/QUOTE]

I still can't find anything in the AI files that forces an invasion based on territory count. Anyone else found anything along the same lines?

Nope, but tall poppy in faction_standing gets close to it.
On the other hand, the AI ought to not attack trusted allies when its own reputation and yours are quite high but it does anyway, mostly by doing a random port blockade to trigger it.

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Originally Posted by Owa

As soon as I lose that territory to France, I'm not making this up, the mongolian horde, the 5 armies sitting around jerusalem, breaks the siege and heads due east into the desert.

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The mongols probably retreated because they got the last reinforcement stacks. The initial horde will wander into asia minor, get reinforcements, head back to the reinforcements, then resume their path to whatever they want to do. To avoid this, edit the campaign script file so that all the mongols appear within the first couple of turns. See Factionheirs guide in the mod tutorials forum for how to do this.

As for the other attacks, well... France wants to kill you. The Danes really love the netherlands, and will attack there no matter what. The byzantines wants to reclaim its old empire, and antioch is a part of it.

There are the three "Band together" & three Tall poppy triggers in desc_faction_standing.txt based on Faction ranking overall. The triggers start when a player reach the top 5 in overall faction ranking. Other more aggressive triggers start at top 3 and top 1 so I'm pretty sure loosing a settlement drops him just below a threshold and gaining one into it but which trigger (1, 2 or 3) is anyones guess.

Funny what Tran says. I also found leaked 1.2 way better except for AI passiveness

Thank you everyone, for defending the built in game AI and making yourselves feel better about it. Now you can pick up your "I am a fanboi" flag and wave it proudly again.

In response to the criticisms of me criticising a flawed campaign AI, I will include some more detail. Here's a few extra interesting tidbits that happened in this game, which doesn't mean the AI is bad, broken, or flawed, it's just that it's too good for me to appreciate and I'm wrongheaded for expecting immersion and not playing for the high score of achieving the artificial game goals.

Remember, I'm England in this game.

I have not attacked Scotland all game. Scotland has not attacked me. How did this harmony come about? Well Scotland landed a large army in Bruges near the beginning of the game and it has not moved ever since. I imagine, this is because the AI is trying to do something with that army in Bruges (a land they've never controlled) and is stuck in some fashion. Or perhaps this is one of those things that I just don't get and it really a neat campaign feature, like France attacking Caen over and over despite lossing the battle 50 times.

Moreover, I have never attacked France or any frankish lands. I held, Caen, Bruges and Rennes. France attacked and took Bruges with a failed crusading army..no contest really. Yet France is at war with me. Cool. I can understand where you guys are coming from with saying France hates England and is always fighting them. I can actually accept that, but the fact that until I started losing lands (intentionally) the AI went insane and attacked me en masse. Note, every country that shares a border with me attacked me after my Xth conquest. I didn't start a new war with anyone to get the X conquest, it just happened.

The Mongols, after getting my territory count down by taking Jerusalem has now ignored me and gone after Byzantium. We even have a truce, since I don't trigger there "Everyone hates me because I have too many territories" trigger.

Another interesting note, I'm playing on medium/medium. Not vh/vh. I do have short campaign checked, but I never stop the game once completing those goals and since I hadn't attacked France or Scotland I was not close to completing the short campaign goals.

I'm not asking for an easy AI that lets me win, quite the contrary, I prefer a hard challenge. I will have no difficulty being the only faction at war with 6 other factions simulateanously and still winning. Their motivations just don't make any sense and it smells of Arcade AI, not immersive historical strategy simulation. I may have gotten relationship notices, but it never told me why these things happened. The cause and effect is not evident. I control the Pope completely, we're talking 90% of the cardinals are English thanks to being the only successful crusader and European faction in the holy land, so why the hell did the Danes attack? They aren't allied with the French, they were allied with me from the beginning of the game and broke it to attack me.

So, if you guys want to continue to defend the campaign AI, cool. I'm glad it's enough for you. It isn't enough for me. I would like a new one. Can anyone recommend me a good campaign AI mod that will fix it and make it more comparable to games like Galatic Civilization or even Genghis Khan 2 for SNES.

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Originally Posted by Tran

Okay, I knew that in leaked 1.02 patch the AI doesn't behave like this. Is there any way to revert the AI so that it behaves much more logical and make sense (yeah, that's according to me) like in leaked patch 1.02? What do I need to edit in patched 1.02?

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As far as I have seen, the source of new wishy-washy AI behavior is from two things:

- A set of triggers in campaign_ai_db.xml that give the AI a random chance to attack the player in spite of various good states of affairs between the two factions
- The setting of the AI's required reputation for a trusted alliance to at least 0 as opposed to at least -1.0 as it was in 1.02 leaked.

The first is likely more problematic, since even at the absolute best most trusted relations level, the AI is still allowed to decide to attack the player with a 1 in 10 chance each turn. AFAIK the leaked version had no such system in place, and so the AI either did not attack you if you had at least 0.5 relations and your rep was okayish, or it could if those conditions were not met.

The second simply makes untrustworthy AI factions able to do whatever they want to you, which is debatable as to whether it is good or bad. Certainly it is bad for keeping the peace if that is your aim.

Note I have not looked at this file even once since official 1.2 came out, I am simply regurgitating what I have been reading in related threads.

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Originally Posted by dopp

If player has X territories then break all alliances and kill the player - this is ridiculous. Can anyone PLEASE recommend me a campaign AI that at least makes the countries behave as though they were seperate entities and not a team without alliances triggered by territory count?

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Well I don't know of such a mod, but I can comment on what you've noticed. I think it is good correct AI behavior. It is not simply player-hating as some seem to be suggesting. If you look at the file, the AI is actually programmed to try to crush whoever are the top factions, player or not. If your faction suffers a bit and HRE is a powerhouse, the AI will actually band together (with you if you wish to join in) to beat on the HRE. What's being emulated is simply the concept that everyone loses if someone takes over the world, which history bears out is a perfectly relevant and real concept. When a faction becomes a large enough threat, it is clearly in everyone's best interest to try to bring that faction down a notch. That it is usually the player's faction that is thriving and thus ganged up on is not a reason to fault the mechanic or the logic behind it, which is really quite sound as it turns out.

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Originally Posted by Nebuchadnezzar

Funny what Tran says. I also found leaked 1.2 way better except for AI passiveness

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I definitely agree, but I don't think it has anything to do with the "gang up on the winning faction" code that everyone is complaining about. More likely the things I mentioned earlier in this post are to blame, esp since the AI still had the gang up code in the leaked version, yet it wasn't problematic then. It's all this junk about the AI randomly being able to override sensible actions that make it decidedly worse in 1.2 official.

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Originally Posted by Foz

The first is likely more problematic, since even at the absolute best most trusted relations level, the AI is still allowed to decide to attack the player with a 1 in 10 chance each turn. AFAIK the leaked version had no such system in place, and so the AI either did not attack you if you had at least 0.5 relations and your rep was okayish, or it could if those conditions were not met.

The second simply makes untrustworthy AI factions able to do whatever they want to you, which is debatable as to whether it is good or bad. Certainly it is bad for keeping the peace if that is your aim.

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Regarding the first point, I don't think it's that big of a problem - annoying, sure, but the thing is, your relations with the faction attacking you only drop if you retaliate, and usually if you let them blockade you/walk around your lands for a few turns and lift any sieges they try by parking a big fat stack next to the siegers but not actually attacking, they'll accept a ceasefire +trade and a renewed alliance next turn, especially if your military rating went from 6 to 1 "just to show them you could" :sweatdrop:

The second point I think is completely logical : if a faction is a renowned scumbag that doesn't care one bit about respecting what was agreed on, then you *should* be wary of them and consider their alliance an STW one : only good as long as they're on the other side of the campaign map :sweatdrop:. Of course, the AI being what it is, this logic can backfire, especially coupled with the first point, but it's pretty random. I've had campaigns where most of Europe was at least Reliable and my powerblock stayed together, others where everyone was Untrustworthy Scum and there were 2 reversal of alliances per turn. *shrug*. Makes for different games I guess :beam:

I have also found a good way to keep your catholic neighbours off your back : send a diplo to Rome. Give the pope some bling bling, and ask him for a Crusade. Hopefully most Europeans will join it and send full stacks over to the Levant. You, on the other hand, will not. When the 10th turn passes and the pope tells you he's displeased with you for not joining, give him some more dough to shut him up. When the crusade eventually succeeds, all cath factions will have huge stacks all over the place, ruining their economy and possibly starting wars between them all. And if it fails, well, most of their military forces just died on the way, giving you some time before they can recover from the disaster. Repeat as soon as a new crusade is available :egypt: