AI aggression/passivity

This is a 2-part post:

Earlier there was some discussion about the battle difficulty and how on VH the AI would *always* move to attack you, even when it should be defending, even to the point of sacrificing advantageous terrain. Some suggested that this behavior didn't occur on M battle difficulty.

Well, I most often play H/H, and I too was noticing the aggressive battle AI. So I put the battle difficulty down to M and started an Irish campaign (campaign difficulty still H). And I saw the exact same behavior in battles: I'd attack, the AI would leave the hill and come at me. Frustrating. The only time the AI would hold its ground and defend was when it had reinforcements. The original AI army would still rush at me, but when the reinforcements came they stayed put and made me attack them.

To be honest, I didn't see much difference at all between H and M battles.

Has anyone noticed the AI take a proper defensive stance on the battlefield?

Second, I'm curious about the campaign AI. As Ireland, H campaign difficulty, England is incredibly passive. I waited something like 35 turns before attacking any of their towns or forts on Ireland, and in that time all they did was take *one* of my forts. Even when I had Derry besieged, their large stacks, which were well within reach, never attacked -- they simply let the garrison starve.

Partly this passivity could have been due to the fact that Wales is a monster in this campaign, and had taken almost all of England in the first 30 turns. But you'd think that would make the English *more* inclined to actively defend their Irish settlements.

I've seen similar things in other Kingdoms campaigns. Does VH cause a more aggressive campaign AI? If we could have a little more defensive battle AI, and a little more offensive campaign AI, things would be great.

I'm now playing VH campaign, H battles with England, and I notice that Wales is very aggressive on campaign -- but I'm wondering if perhaps the Welsh AI is simply coded to be more aggressive. When I played Wales (H/H) the English barely reacted as I took their towns. Wales, surprisingly, seemed too easy, while England is giving me a good challenge. The Britannia campaign seems to me to be skewed toward giving the English player the most enjoyable game.... any thoughts?

Curious about others' observations regarding difficulty on battle and campaign, and which factions seem to offer a decent challenge.

I play on medium and am always the one doing the attacking. I'm playing the Crusades campaign now as Antioch and the Turks never leave their defensive position. Occasionally, they'll send out their Turkomans, but that only happened twice.

I notice the other Islamic faction, Egypt, isn't attacking me, I am tempted to say it's passive, but I think it's just getting it's butt kicked by the KoJ.

M/VH
Battle AI depends.

If I'm defending, they'll advance on me (Typical of course)

If I'm attacking, there are two situations.
a - The AI advances on me (usually if were about equal in strength or if they are superior)
b - The AI holds their position but will advance skirmishers to engage (This is if I'm the one with superior numbers and strengths)

I've turned off AI reinforcements so two things happen when the new AI enters.

a - The AI takes up a position and holds it. It'll only advance once you get it into missile range (Which is a lot better than the real passive AI which just stands there).

b - THe AI advances to attack.

It's been 50/50 for this situation.

As for your campaign passivity, I dunno but after a few turns the AI will start its assault depending on the situation. As Britannia the Welsh didn't attacked me until they had the numbers and strengths to do so. Scotland stayed away because of a marriage alliance and Ireland didn't attacked me fully until it controlled the majority of the island.

So I dunno but the AI seems to like consolidating its strength before assaulting.

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I notice the other Islamic faction, Egypt, isn't attacking me, I am tempted to say it's passive, but I think it's just getting it's butt kicked by the KoJ.

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Exactly, the AI's busy attacking another front rather than waste time with you. HRE never attacked me until it kicked the crap out of Poland and Denmark when I was the Teutonics.

If your Jerusalem, if Antioch is doing what its suppose to do, the Turks will never almost touch you.

Interesting points.

I've played some battles against the Turks and I've noticed they seem to be generally more defensive anyway on the battlefield. Even when attacking they'll tend to do the missile duel thing, which is good.

It's mostly the "charge 'em all in" stuff that annoys me about the AI -- not even allowing time for archers to do their thing. I know this has been generally the case ever since RTW, but was hoping M difficulty would cure that behavior across the board.

I've played mostly Britannia and some Crusades -- just scratched the surface with Teutonic and Americas. In Crusades (H/H) I've noticed that Egypt seems to be pretty aggressive on the campaign map when you're the KoJ; but the Turks seem fairly passive when you're the Byz. That could be due to Antioch driving a wedge between the Turkish starting positions.

It's just too bad that England doesn't seem to become a threat in Britannia when you're playing one of the other factions. As I said above, I imagine it's because they wanted England to be a challenging faction to play. The downside of course is that Wales and Scotland never really feel like they're being crushed by the English when you play them. As the Scots, I put a single spy in Carlisle for 1 turn and the Baron's Alliance emerged. Not that the English were going to attack me even before that, but that definitely was the death-blow. By the time Wallace showed up it felt more like the Scottish War of Aggression rather than the War of Scottish Independence.

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Originally Posted by CountMRVHS

It's mostly the "charge 'em all in" stuff that annoys me about the AI -- not even allowing time for archers to do their thing. I know this has been generally the case ever since RTW, but was hoping M difficulty would cure that behavior across the board.

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Think about what you said: the AI will rush to you if you attack it with your missiles. Wouldn't you do the same? Or would you hold your hilltop and wait, while your troops are being decimated by the enemy missiles? I don't think so...

The AI rushing to you when attacked by superior missile force is tactically logical move, and I do not see anything wrong about it. And it doesn't have anything to do with difficulty settings (fortunately!).

No, that's not what I said at all -- what I meant by "not allowing time for archers to do their thing" was that the AI won't let its OWN archers shoot; its cav and inf will charge through them and into your lines.

I'm talking about the phenomenon where the AI advances to your position, when you're attacking, before you so much as lift a bow in their general direction. If the AI was set up on a hill and I moved my forces forward and started shooting them up, then yeah, I'd hope they'd have the smarts to come down and chase off my archers and engage. But as soon as I click "Start battle", before I get off a single shot, they'll leave their defensive position. That's emphatically not a tactically logical move.

And when did I say I had missile superiority? The battles I'm thinking of were ones where I had maybe 3 units of archers. The AI always had similar missile strength or more.

The flip side of the aggressive stance is that the AI will now engage you and attempt to disable any artillary. This is a plus as in the vanilla campaign, you could blow the snot out of his army and all they would do is stand there defending.

My understanding is that if you have an advantage in missile units, the AI will attempt to negate that even if it means moving from a better position.

I have seen a smaller AI army stand there. I assume that the AI figures if it can charge your lines, they may break, not a bad strategy.

The campaign map is a different story. The AI will menace certain towns but attack others. I have no idea what that is all about.

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Originally Posted by CountMRVHS

No, that's not what I said at all -- what I meant by "not allowing time for archers to do their thing" was that the AI won't let its OWN archers shoot; its cav and inf will charge through them and into your lines.

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Sorry, I misunderstood you...

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Originally Posted by CountMRVHS

I'm talking about the phenomenon where the AI advances to your position, when you're attacking, before you so much as lift a bow in their general direction.

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The AI doesn't actually need to get shoot at, to decide not to engage in missile duel but rather to attack you before getting shoot to pieces. Even if it means to leave a good defensive position.

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Originally Posted by CountMRVHS

And when did I say I had missile superiority? The battles I'm thinking of were ones where I had maybe 3 units of archers. The AI always had similar missile strength or more.

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I guess your concept of missile superiority differs to the one of AI ~D

Playing H/VH
AI will hold position if it has missile superiority if it is the defender
AI will attack if it is stronger/has less missiles than me even nif it is the attacker
Sometimes there will be missile duel untill one side loses then engagement.
If AI has horse archers it will always flank with them and attack from behind.
Oh and the general waits 5 mins before doing the suicide charge

Its sad, I rarely see the AI take a defensive position when attacked, even when vastly outnumbered or in a perfect spot. I've had entire AI armies rush down steep hills and onto the gentle slope I was on...while having numerical superiority and multiple seige engines. If it had waited and made me assault it, my losses would have been tremendous. It doesn't seem to make a difference M/H/VH on how it decides to attack.

Usually its response to any given situation is to rush. If it took defensive positions more(especially when ON DEFENSE) i'd suffer alot more losses of men. I might even lose more than one or two battles a campaign. But at this point, its too late to expect them to teach the AI new tricks. Even if another expansion or two follow Kingdoms, them prioritizing AI is pretty unlikely. But, there is always hope I guess.

I haven't noticed a difference between the difficulties. Playing the Ghazette Challenges it was striking that several times I sacked cities with small garrisons while full, powerful stacks sat perhaps 2-3 steps away on the campaign maps. I sacked Rome with the Pope in the city and a full stack of Papal forces one step away across a the bridge, where they sat through the 4 turns it took me to reinforce my original force.

In battle I've observed more or less the same as Gaius, except the enemy General often seems to be right at the front of an attack.

The AI is grossly incompetent compared to a human player. There is no rational justification for it's behavior except that it doesn't know what to do.

From my own analysis of how the AI behaves, if the AI believes you to have missile superiority (now remember how you may define missile superior and how the AI defines missile superiority might be slightly different) or feels it's missile troops would be too vulnerable to a human player's calvary to be effective, it will abandon it's defensive position (no matter how advantageous, apparently the battle AI only takes into account a certain fixed and unchanging factor for a defensive position; it doesn't understand that an extremely steep mountainside with ledges to protect missile troops is much more defensible than a small rolling hill).

If the AI moves to attack, they will attempt to engage your missile troops and calvary by outflanking you before you can bring them to bear, however the computer tends to be fairly incompetent at this, and without having a numerically superior army often has trouble moving units to outflank and/or outrun you. It is also easy for a human to "read" the computer's strategy (or in a worse case scenario, learn how it operates after being defeated once or twice), and it becomes easy for the player to reposition their troops to give himself the maximum advantage. The computer isn't very good at assessing relative strengths of soldiers, and will thus often sends their "flanking" units to their doom against superior units. The player can also exploit this known AI behavior by assessing what will cause the AI to determine hate player has missile superiority, and then take up defensive positions deep inside his own side of the battlefield, even on the attack; causing the AI to needlessly tire itself out attempting to get to the player.

As to the campaign AI, certain factions seem to be set up to win and lose automatically, as it is rare that I see it play out any other way. Like the original M2TW, there is probably some variation, but it seems like Britain in Brittania and the Aztecs in America will almost always get toasted unless the player explicitly goes out of his way to prevent it. Perhaps it is conflicts between their starting positions, economic strength, and the AI behavior chosen for the faction, or else the difference in unit strengths in the auto battle calculations.

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Originally Posted by Ramses II CP

...it was striking that several times I sacked cities with small garrisons while full, powerful stacks sat perhaps 2-3 steps away on the campaign maps.

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Yes, in my Brittania campaign as the Norse, the Scots had 2 and a half stacks of elite troops next to their last city. As i approached with 2 full stacks of my own, they moved the bulk of their forces away to a fort in the opposite direction. Needless to say, I took the city, and eliminated the scottish faction. Quite bizarre.