Investigation of AI reassessment upon reload

Simetrical:

Right. Exactly. I think the same thing. As I pointed out earlier, software random number generators are not truly random -- they will produce the same sequence with the same seed. (A timer tic can be used as a seed to introduce more randomness, but the sequence will still eventually repeat itself.) Apparently you're familiar with these concepts. I was comparing it to a random number generator because I think that partially explains the phenomenon -- if the list of possible choices were enumerated, it would seem to always start with the same choice after a load.

We know in advance that it does not have an enumerated list of available, equally viable options for different situations. The reassessment process must construct such a list...and whether it is doing so using recursion, or techniques of combinatorial optimization, or whatever...further complicated by a rule-based heirarchy, topological relationships, and so forth...well, as you can see the end result is a heurism. In the long run, all AI boils down to that, especially with a game as complex as RTW.

I've asked once before if anyone was aware of other triggers which might cause a reassessment. One can assume that they would result in another possible decision-change on the part of the AI midturn (to use the random number example, the next number in the sequence without changing the seed), which would explain why user interaction can change the results of the "sanitized" 20-turn test.

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I agree with roguebolo that this isn't really a bug. That the AI does reassess its move on reload isn't a bug; it's intended. That it reassesses it poorly is not a bug, it's a flaw or a problem. Bad AI does not constitute a bug. However, this is a matter of semantics that doesn't really need to be discussed further on this thread.

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I think it's a matter of semantics also, and I also think it should be dropped. However, I still question the veracity of the statement that it is "poor AI."

HarunTaiwan:

The establishment of alliances will have the most dominant effect on the factions nearest to you and the ones that are bordering them. However, by establishing alliances with distant factions you can still have some control over events on the far end of the map. I generally do both. Is it really going to matter to you who is the strongest faction you have to fight when you expand toward Rome and have to fight Carthage, or the Scipii, or the Brutii, or the Greek Cities? Or some combination thereof?

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The establishment of alliances will have the most dominant effect on the factions nearest to you and the ones that are bordering them. However, by establishing alliances with distant factions you can still have some control over events on the far end of the map. I generally do both. Is it really going to matter to you who is the strongest faction you have to fight when you expand toward Rome and have to fight Carthage, or the Scipii, or the Brutii, or the Greek Cities? Or some combination thereof?

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Yes. Because if the Scipii overrun Sicily early on, they might have more than hastati and velites. If it doesn't matter, then have no AI vs. AI battles and the player can just conquer a static, unchanging world.

And, if alliances are so key, I still can't understand how Scipi overrun Sicily without save/loads and do nothing with save/loads when THEIR FACTION IS LOCKED INTO ALLIANCES WITH ALL THEIR LAND NEIGHBORS EXCEPT IN SICILY.

Not to mention the script or Senate missions that always lead Julli and Brutti to take Segesta (?) and Appolonia like clockwork. I assume Scipii get the same marching orders to take Siciliy, but when it's save/load it somehow goes away?

Scipii are already allies with the other Romans. Without loading they seize all of Sicily. With loading, they do nothing. And somehow the butterfly wings of the player's alliances would alter this result?

Maybe for Greeks and Carthage who definitely can be busy elsewhere your points could be valid, but Scipii? And keep in mind if you are a Roman faction, it will affect your end-game civil war if the Scipii have not expanded enough.

Now, in games where I did not save often, I saw Scipii do better than Brutii...could it be a way to slow down certain factions?

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And, if alliances are so key, I still can't understand how Scipi overrun Sicily without save/loads and do nothing with save/loads when THEIR FACTION IS LOCKED INTO ALLIANCES WITH ALL THEIR LAND NEIGHBORS EXCEPT IN SICILY.

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Umm, heck, I just explained this. I played as the Julii in my experiment, but the Brutii would probably still turn out the same way. All you have to do is make alliances with Carthage and the Greeks, and then your Roman allies will honor that alliance and the Scipii will not overrun Sicily. It depends if you want to weaken your future enemies, the other Romans, later in the game or if you would prefer to weaken Carthage or the Greeks immediately. Carthage is actually considered (historically) as the target of the Scipii and the Greeks are considered (historically) as the target of the Brutii, but both are excellent trade alliances for the Julii, especially if you build a port in Ariminum immediately. However, if you would prefer for the Roman factions to be stronger for more of a challenge later in the game, you can always allow the Scipii to take all of Sicily.

Harun, listen. If you don't feel the game is challenging enough for you, what's to stop you from making your own rules? What's the earliest year that you've hit the victory conditions? Well, OK. Do it ten years earlier.

And if that's not a challenge, then try fifteen. And so on.

Truthfully, Harun, the AI is not even close to a match for me also. Maybe, you know, the very first time you played a TW game, it seemed like a real challenge. You know, maybe, if you think about it, there were numerous possibilites you'd never encountered before in a standard RTS or action game. And maybe you've become so jaded over being a "professional" that you feel content in being critical of an AI.

The first Chess Master that ever got beat by an AI felt the same way. He thought an AI would never be able to beat him, and was so confident that he offered a $10,000 reward (which was nothing to him based on his chess championships). But he did get beat.

I have been asked time and again, and I have been challenged on my theories, to provide some concrete evidence.

Now, I'm going to ask you gentlemen the same thing. You provide me with some concrete, empirical evidence. How, you ask?

Well, for starters, use the first 20 moves in its sanitized format, if you prefer, and add up the relative strength that your own faction needs to conquer to win the game. Consider every single other faction as your eventual enemies -- which, of course, they will be -- add up their armor and arms bonuses, balancing pikement against cavalry, elephants against flaming arrows etc. And you tell ME how much of a differential you can find that is created by those first 20 moves, with or without a save/load. Mathematically. Numerically. Emperically. Prove this to me

Any takers?

Simply do the reverse of your test: prove to me that gaining provinces is not useful in terms of arms, etc. More resources, especialy exterminating, means better armies, more provinces can mean better interior lines, less battle fronts, etc.

I give up, though. I guess we'll never know if it's a bug, a feature, poor programing, or just AI's state of the art.

Next time, may I suggest to CA that any re-assessment should be done on a fixed amount of turns basis with no relation to load/save. (I think that would be obvious to anyone working the problem in their mind, but I'm not a programmer.)

Back to the real job! It's been nice talking.

Please allow me to clarify (I don't have a terribly technical mind!):

If I play the first 15 or so turns straight, no save\load, and let the factions 'settle in' then, if I'm reading roguebolo's posts right, things should be much smoother for me to play in more 'normal' sessions of 1-5 turns (although, the more turns played, the better?)?

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To a layman, it is not desirable to have the AI lift sieges and wander off when you were about to sally and break them. It is not desirable for an AI faction to make a ceasefire with you and attack you on the next click of the end of turn button.

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I usually sally immediately, but the fact of the matter is that in my midgame tests, wherein the AI alternately relieved and reinstated sieges due to save/loads, that was a better strategy for the AI than if they had maintained the sieges (as they do without save/loads). First, it denied me the use of the castle to protect my flanks while approaching them and to protect my onagers, which can fire over the castle walls.

Second, it allowed them to become the defenders on a realtime map of their choice.

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So to the devs, it might be "functioning as designed", but that design is fundamentally flawed. I don't think it's any kind of a reach to say poor design logic is a bug.

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Again, you're assuming that everyone agrees with you that the design is fundamentally flawed. You're saying that you have a bug and I don't because of our perceptions and opinions of the game design? Because our expectations are different?

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Originally Posted by roguebolo

Again, you're assuming that everyone agrees with you that the design is fundamentally flawed. You're saying that you have a bug and I don't because of our perceptions and opinions of the game design? Because our expectations are different?

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No not at all. What I'm saying is that if the AI would have assaulted without a save/load involved, I should be able to get that assault to happen after a load. The save didn't change anything. This special reassessment makes the AI do illogical things because there is no continuity between what it was doing and what it is doing after a load.

You can say it's conditional, and we can test for it, but it isn't logical, and there's no way it makes better sense for the AI to merely harass me with the threat of a siege when the logical, and much better strategic move is for it to capture the settlement outright. The only logical reasons for dropping a siege are to relieve their own threatened outposts, or because they are hopelessly outmatched by the garrison. This is common sense.

I make no assumptions about who agrees with me, as it is immaterial here. We are talking about simple problems in military strategy which can be solved with just a small modicum of logic. There is only one best move for the AI, in each siege situation. That best move is lost quite often by a reload. I say that is a design flaw, and believe from much experience with users and bug reports, that this would show up on my desk as a bug report.

I must also point to the totally haywired Protectorate behavior and say the same thing: it isn't logical for the AI to behave this way; it is a design flaw, and many users would simply call it a bug. I could say it wasn't a bug all day long, but I'd be in there coding a fix for it, just as sure as death and taxes.

As far as the Protectorate issue goes, I've had no luck whatsover duplicating it, although I've only tried it in midgame. I just talked with a friend on the phone last night and he had no luck either.

In the example I gave before, the AI actually was outmatched by the garrison. Also, I've mentioned before that one of my complaints with the load game behavior is that it does not allow me to be the defender in a castle assault.

In a castle assault, the defender has the advantage. So it is to the AI's advantage to taunt me until I attack it. That's not a bad strategy. It's actually a far worse strategy for it to maintain a siege with an inferior force, as it attempts to do without the load game reassessment.

In retrospect, in all of my testing, the only time I've ever seen the AI maintain a siege or perform a castle assault despite successive load games is when it seriously outmatches the garrison. However, I was not the besieged party in any of these instances.

I don't think any of the above behavior is a flaw. If I were to point out some serious flaws, they would include things like how easy it was to bribe your way to victory in previous patches/releases. However, that has been fixed in the latest patch.

I've seen the Protectorate bug in action myself, and seen the test results in graphic detail posted by others. I think that's the worst one yet as it can totally unbalance the game as the AI creates whacky Protectorate arrangements willy nilly as it reassesses after loads. I don't know why you can't duplicate results RB, but our purpose here is to analyze demonstrated, reproducible results. Until you give me a test sequence to reproduce your results, I can make no sensible comments about your data.

I would like to know if others here support my conclusion that the reassessment process is performing illogically? Specifically, when the AI has the means and time to execute a capture of a city, it will do so when no loading of game interferes, but deliberately choose not to capture the city ASAP when a load game happens.

I can send you the save games in question. Since they are midgame saves, I obviously can't describe each and every move from the start of the game in order to duplicate the situation. But I can let you try to establish a protectorate yourself from my save position. It won't work. And that is duplicatable.

I originally encountered the Protectorate exploit because I was bound and determined to have Gaul submit to Protectorate status after laying siege to their last remaining territory in Celtiberia, so that I wouldn't have to worry about having to keep it garrisoned. They would under no conditions yield to my demands. So I went online to see if anyone had any advice about Protectorates. That's when I encountered the exploit; the person described it as working every single time, without failure, so I figured I'd just do it the quick and easy way. After several tries, I decided it just would not work.

One of the developers had also posted in that forum (I wish they'd do that more), and described a process that was somewhat longer and more arduous. I followed his advice, and a few turns later they finally agreed to a Protectorate for about 3-4,000 Florins.

I had the exact same results with Spain in Lusitania a few turns later.

I have a close friend who's also an avid RTW player, and I asked him to try it as well, in his game. He experienced the same results.

The exploit seems to work well near periods of extrema, in the absence of threats or alliances.

However, I HAVE observed an AI faction submitting to Protectorate status to another AI faction, when it did not seem reasonable. Specifically, in the same game Germany is a Protectorate of Brittania -- yet Germany is still strong, with a number of territories. Although this might seem illogical, it certainly doesn't work in my favor. It creates a situation in which they function almost as a single faction -- their alliance and military access and trade agreements give them the combined strength of a very large faction, which seems to be what people are saying they would like to confront later in the game.

As the first respondent, I will state that I agree with you -- but only partially. My agreement is restricted specifically to rebel territories, in which the AI will illogically abandon the territory for no gain. I think this is an oversight in the game design because in general the rebels seem to be treated as "just another faction".

Blasted work and school are keeping me from being able to do this myself, but here's a test I'd like to see. RB has advanced the hypothesis (if I understood him correctly) that most of the AI flakiness we have observed after loads settles out as you approach midgame, especially with the player being active. However, this is tough to test on other machines since being active produces a unique campaign situation and so we don't have a controlled test. I'd like to see someone post a savegame file where we can all download it easily, one from a ways into a campaign. (I'd like to volunteer RB for this since he somehow seems to not have the bu . . fea. . . issue, and I'd like to dig into that a bit. However, anyone's game will do, so long as everyone is working from the same game file). Run the standard player-passive tests from that mid-game point, 20 turns w/o loading, followed by 20 turns loading every turn, and compare AI province conquests. 20 turns loading at different frequencies would be interesting too, and if we coordinated beforehand who would run what frequency test it wouldn't be massively time consuming for any one of us to do. Thoughts?

I'm was curious about roguebolo's claim, so I fired up a game I'd played that was in roughly mid-game state. I was playing the Greeks, and was at war with the Romans (all of them), Macedonians and Pontus.

I had a diplomat in one of my cities, with a diplomat from the Julii near, and a stack of Macedonians. So after loading, I first tried to get the Macedonians to become my protectorate. They refused. I asked for a ceasefire, they demanded 1940 denarii in return.

So no luck with them. I then tried the Julii diplomat. Request they become Protectorate and they agreed.

The only major difference between the two I could see if the advancement of relationships. I've had no real contact with the Julii, they declared war because of the Scipii and Brutii attacking me. In fact, I don't think I've even fought one of their ships.

The Macedonians, on the other hand, I've been fighting since turn 1. I've declared war on them twice.

So it's possible that the "Protectorate bug" only works if you don't have any diplomatic history with a faction?

Bh

I think it's a very good idea, and I'm sure I'm going to get the response that people just don't have enough time, but I think multiple people should upload save games so that we also have tests that eliminate other factors. For instance, my tendency to create a huge number of alliances could affect the way that my games are behaving. In general, I'm finding that a large database of save games is allowing me to test different theories, and to challenge them in situations that are contrary.

At the very least, if I'm going to volunteer, I would like to volunteer the most enigmatic of the situations I've encountered. Specifically, this is the Turn 12 and Turn 14 scenario. Both are very close to the period of extrema, which means they should exhibit at least SOME of the AI behavior exhibited by the sanitized 20-turn test. However, turn 12 exhibits it in the purest fashion -- straight lines across the board under territorial rankings with nothing but save/loads and "End Turn". Turn 14 ends up the exact same way as when I was really playing, with a number of territorial acquisitions. The only difference is that I made three alliances in between the two turns. Those are the ones I would like to submit, because they are the ones that I understand the least. They are the reason for some of the theories that I've promoted here.

If you just want to see a save game where the AI alternately relieves and reinstates sieges, I could provide that too. It does give some information, but I don't think it's quite as useful, nor as enigmatic. You're basically going to come to the same conclusion I did -- you gotta kill 'em, whether you do it outside your castle walls or a few miles away.

One thing that would be very useful is the ability to turn OFF fog of war in mid-campaign. Do any modders out there offer this capability?

[*edit*] Actually, in retrospect, I might be able to hack it in the save game file. But I'd prefer to avoid this extra work if someone can just point me to a mod solution.

[*edit*] Actually, heh, now that I think about it even more, it might be possible to change the load game behavior by hacking the save game files. If "state" information is stored as a numerical value, then changing this "state" information could change the way in which the AI moves after a load game...

toggle_fow in the romeshell window works, although when I loaded your turn 19 game you emailed me I had to toggle it, load and toggle it again before it finally took and began truly toggling. Maybe it gets borked by loading too? ~;)

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Originally Posted by roguebolo

I think it's a very good idea, and I'm sure I'm going to get the response that people just don't have enough time, but I think multiple people should upload save games so that we also have tests that eliminate other factors. For instance, my tendency to create a huge number of alliances could affect the way that my games are behaving. In general, I'm finding that a large database of save games is allowing me to test different theories, and to challenge them in situations that are contrary.

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It may have some utility, but I'm not sure how useful it would be overall. A fair amount of a game's understanding comes from playing the turns to get there. Starting from a set point in would mean that you may have missed a great deal of the give-and-take that goes on. For example, let's say on Siciliy, that Carthage takes the Greek city, but then loses it to the Scipii. If I saw a game after that point, I'd have no idea that Carthage took the city (and fought the Greeks). That could taint the results.

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One thing that would be very useful is the ability to turn OFF fog of war in mid-campaign. Do any modders out there offer this capability?

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Hit ~
type "toggle_fow"
(type "toggle_fow" again to turn it back on)

Bh

Rouge, while the harassment might be better against you, it is only better because your are a much better commander than the AI. You can outsmart it pretty much every time. But since other AI factions fight auto-calc that is not likely to be a good strategy against them.

Result is that the AI does not expand but gains something of a better chance at getting a draw with you. I would rather that it lost its assault on me and gained other cities so it wouldn't be worn down too fast. A war with Dacia as a two province state is no fun when we talk about 40 turns into the game. True that could happen in a no save/load game but at least the Dacians have had the possiblity of expanding correctly but have gotten beaten at it.

And I wouldn't say that harassment is effective. It only gives me more time to bring in reinforcements if my garrison is very small or weak, and if it is strong it means that I will most certainly not suffer much damage to my economy.
I have been half-beaten enough times in sallies for me to believe that a sustained siege is better than a run-around. And it isn't always possible to win a sally. If you sit with 2 Peasants, 3 Militia Hoplites and a unit of Peltasts there isn't much you can do against a large army consisting of archers and/or horse archers plus a bit of other troops.
In such a case a broken siege is very bad for the AI as it will result in it never gaining a relatively weakly defended city.

The LM has webspace available to host files. PM me and I can arrange for the file to be uploaded.

On the issue of this thread, please look through your previous posts and remove anything that is not directly related to the investigation of this issue. That means discussion of patches, CA, Activision, bugs and so on. This thread was intended to be clean of such discussions, and it is our intention that it will be. One way or the other.

Actually, on my way to the store just a few moments ago, I realized that one of my statements about hacking the save files was incorrect. Although it might be possible to modify a save file so that the behavior of the game changes after a load, it would be almost impossible to do so without the benefit of the source code. The reason for this is that typically you attempt to save a game in two identical situations with only one factor changing...then you analyze what data changed in the save file.

Unfortunately, the one thing that I want to try to change is consistently the same after each load game. Hence, no changes in the save file.

I'm going to PM you in a few seconds. I'm going to send all three of these save games -- the ones called "Turn 12" and "Turn 14" are the enigmatic ones, and the one called "DefendThapsus" illustrates the behavior of the AI during midgame.

We can address the issue of Protectorates after you've taken a look at these.

Ahhh but rouge can also be meant in the context of you being 'a rouge', a sort of romanticised bandit. ~:) And since your name is in fact two names (first- and surname) then rouge is fair enough, especially since you have chosen to write it small.
But yeah it is also a colour. ~;) Anyway, I will refer to you as RB from now on, ok? ~:cheers:

I agree with therother that what we call this issue is of little point here. To some it acts too strangely and thus to them it must be a bug, to others it is merely a weak code of some sort, others yet an unfinished feature. But what we can agree on is that loading after a save has a grave impact on the game if done fairly often. We don't agree on how grave it is.

FIRST: Apologies, but I have missed out Rhodes (Greeks) in all of my tests. It's immaterial to the conclusions though.

Summary

Thanks to RB for mailing me his files. I've looked at them and have concluded that they in no way contradict the statement that loading the game damages the AI expansion.

Any other conclusions/theories about the effect of alliances on the AI are for others to advance. My only objective in this test was to determine whether or not save/load produced results that I might expect from earlier tests.


Details

RB supplied 3 files which I refer to as "12", "14" and "19". Those numbers don't directly translate to turn numbers. Assuming that we call the first turn (270s AD) Turn 1, then they refer to turns 14 (264w BC),16 (263w BC) & 20 (261w BC) respectively.

The tests use "12" and "14" and run until 261w BC, which is when "19" was saved. The first thing to note is that these tests cover relatively short periods (6 & 4 turns), so I've also performed an couple of extended runs on "14" that go for 6 turns to 260w.

Thanks to Bhruic for telling us how to turn FOW off on someone else's save. That made the comparison a lot easier and allowed me to see a lot of interesting stuff that I would have otherwise missed. BTW, anybody trying it may find that they have to type it into the console twice to get it working properly.

As well as recording the territory data, I've also listed a bunch of locations that I found under siege in some of the runs. This is not necessarily comprehensive, but they do account for many of the sieges. x means that it wasn't besieged, s means that it was (followed by who is doing it) and lifted means that it was no longer sieged (note that this may have occurred in the previous turn). Likewise, taken means it was taken (duh!) but not necessarily in this turn. If there's no mark then I didn't check on the status.

"12" Test

A simple one to conclude. Look at the increase in total territories from 74 to 81 when no loads are made. As we've come to expect, zero growth with save/loads every turn. Also note that the no-loads column (interval=NIL) has a bunch of cities under siege, whereas the save/load every turn (interval=1) column has none. This means that the difference between the two runs could be expected to increase if we continued for a few more turns.

"14" Test

You'll see that the total territory only increases by 1 up to 261w BC whether you load or not. However, this is not too surprising as there have only been 4 turns. As we're already 14 turns into the game, it's reasonable to expect that the AI has already taken many of the easy Rebels. Indeed, we know that there have been 6 Rebels taken by the start because I recorded to total territory in 270s in my earlier tests as 71.

When I extend the test by 2 turns to 260w BC, you see a huge change. The save/load run shows no change at 78. However, not saving or loading for those two turns allows the AI to expand by 8 territories! That's huge when you think that in the preceding 20 turns it had only expanded 7 territories.

The reason can be seen in the Sieges box. There are a huge number of outstanding sieges at the end of the first 4 turns without saving. A large number of these succeed, along with a bunch of others that I didn't record like Noricum.

So again, this is evidence of the loadgame feature being pants.

"19"

Included for completion, this is RB's save at 261w from when he was playing the game. One possible conclusion is that he reloaded approximately every 3 turns when he was playing, as the total territory increase is similar to my interval=3 test that I ran previously and that covers a similar length period. In fact this conclusion probably applies to "12" and "14" because they similarily exhibit relatively little expansion.

Strangely enough, I did not replicate RB's results where he saw territorial expansion compared to "19" using "14" up to 261w BC. However, I did note that Pontus managed to expand by 1 territory despite save/load every turn. Also, there were a few sieges in place when I finished that run. Maybe sometimes with save/load an army will siege a Rebel and, as the Rebels have their turn at the end, the Rebels may sally before the turn ends? That way, the AI would be able to win a siege in one turn even with walls being present.

http://img205.exs.cx/img205/1680/rou...tstable1qs.jpg

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Originally Posted by Simetrical

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rouge
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rogue

The content of this post will be removed fairly soon. Sorry, I couldn't resist butting in.

-Simetrical

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Hahaha.... I see I have made a fool of myself. I guess I use the term 'a rogue' too little. I wonder at how I missed the point. Maybe because rouge is pronounced in a french style (roosh).

Anyway, thanks Bromley.
Clearly the AI had built up its forces by the end of 14, thus enabling it to expand mightily.
But I think this is obvious proof of something not being right.

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Originally Posted by roguebolo

Well, for starters, use the first 20 moves in its sanitized format, if you prefer, and add up the relative strength that your own faction needs to conquer to win the game. Consider every single other faction as your eventual enemies -- which, of course, they will be -- add up their armor and arms bonuses, balancing pikement against cavalry, elephants against flaming arrows etc. And you tell ME how much of a differential you can find that is created by those first 20 moves, with or without a save/load. Mathematically. Numerically. Emperically. Prove this to me

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So you would like to posit the theory that having all of the factions remain with their original provinces is functionally equivalent to having one single faction that controls all of their combined provinces? That an enemy with 80 provinces is no harder to fight than 20 enemies with 4 provinces?

Because, frankly, I find that idea to be extremely silly. One of the saving graces of mid-game MTW was that no matter where you were, there would almost always be another large empire forming. That gave a focus and credible threat to your position. Yes, there were many things you could do to work around this, but that's outside the main point. In RTW, with frequent loading/saving, you don't get that situation. And working through a smaller empire is demonstratably easier than a larger one (assuming all conditions are equal).

Bh

First, those two turns were not selected because they show an absence of the AI's anomolous behavior; they were selected because they were close enough to the period of extrema that they should still exhibit the behavior in spades, which the one labeled Turn 12 certainly does. That's why I keep referring to it as some sort of "breaking point".

I've had different results playing from the save game labeled Turn 14 until 261 BC, because sometimes in addition to Pontus gaining a territory, the Egyptians and Seleucids will exchange one as well. This might just be due to a different roll of the dice in an autocalc situation.

I decided to move a little further back toward the point of extrema, and started at Turn 10 instead, since it seems to be on the other side of the "breaking point". I played forward to turn 19 without any save loads or making any new alliances, anticipating that the AI would exhibit its standard behavior and that by turn 14 there would be an equal number of territorial acquisitions to those that were in my save game.

Unfortunately, the results were not exactly what I expected. The AI was actually less aggressive up to turn 14, as there was precisely one less territorial acquisition. Pontus neglected to take a rebel territory. I don't know if the lack of alliances had any effect on this or not. However, if I continue playing from this point without save/loads until turn 19, Pontus remains dormant and Brittania and Carthage become more active.

I think I've discovered why "toggle_fow" must be typed twice to turn off fog of war. The fog-of-war flag is set to whatever is in the preferences.txt file and is overridden, but does not change value, by the information in the load game. Hence, if the fog-of-war flag is set to FALSE in preferences.txt, the first time you type it it will be set to TRUE and the new value is applied immediately to the game, so that fog of war stays enabled as it was marked in the save file. On the second invocation, it gets reset to FALSE and fog of war gets disabled.

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So you would like to posit the theory that having all of the factions remain with their original provinces is functionally equivalent to having one single faction that controls all of their combined provinces?

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No, but in midgame when my faction is larger, the remaining nearby factions tend to ally against me, functioning in a manner similar to a very large faction. I have seen no evidence whatsover that pressing "End Turn" without load games will result in a few large and dominant factions within, say 100 turns, nor that the AI would be substantially more challenging in such a situation.

My gut feeling is that however this situation might turn out, neither scenario would provide as much of a challenge as if the AI factions did a better job of producing more elite troops and providing them with the latest weapons and armor upgrades.

Taking Sicily as an example, which seems to be upheld as the prime example of the ineffectiveness of the AI's behavior, I know of several other actions on the part of the human player that will prevent the Scipii takeover of Sicily, in addition to load games. 1) If the human player is one of the other Roman factions and decides to prevent it by forming alliances; and 2) if the human player is Greek or Carthaginian, and decides to resist the takeover through military action. (And why doesn't the AI do this if it hasn't been "crippled" by load games?)

So there are at least four factions whereby human interaction decides the course of the game regarding nearby factions. However, load game behavior seems to inhibit the AI's takeover of rebel territories (with a few notable exceptions), regardless of any amount of human interaction. This is why I consider the rebel territories to be the greatest flaw in the reassessment logic.

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Originally Posted by Simetrical
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rouge
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rogue

The content of this post will be removed fairly soon. Sorry, I couldn't resist butting in.

-Simetrical

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Note that in the case of my handle, as in the case of Laumer's books, "bolo" is a noun and "rogue" is being used as an adjective. To quote the adjective definitions from that link, and show how they apply to a wargaming handle:

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2. Large, destructive, and anomalous or unpredictable: a rogue wave; a rogue tornado.

3. Operating outside normal or desirable controls: “How could a single rogue trader bring down an otherwise profitable and well-regarded institution?” (Saul Hansell).

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Laumer's novel by the same name is, coincidentally, about an AI supertank (a "bolo") with a bug in the AI programming...and it requires the entire US military to bring it down when it goes bersernk. ~;)

OK, I'm a bit confused, been a bad day at the office and my brain is fried. Bromley loaded RB's earlier saves and found that loading had a detrimental effect on the AI when he worked from the earliest save using the standard passive player test technique. RB says that's what he expected, because the early saves are close enough to the start of the campaign that it should still be wonky after a load. If both of you load up the *latest* save and go forward from there with player passive tests like Bromley did, what happens? I guess I still haven't seen (or been bright enough to recognize) evidence for or against RB's theory that the AI gets better in the midgame, away from the starting extrema. I think it's a good theory, and it would explain both what we've tested so far and what CA said to us, so it's attractive emotionally (we can all be right!), but I want to know for sure one way or another.

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Originally Posted by roguebolo

No, but in midgame when my faction is larger, the remaining nearby factions tend to ally against me, functioning in a manner similar to a very large faction. I have seen no evidence whatsover that pressing "End Turn" without load games will result in a few large and dominant factions within, say 100 turns, nor that the AI would be substantially more challenging in such a situation.

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Hmm, then maybe you should look for some. The Roman factions especially will become quite large and quite powerful if the player doesn't do something to stop them early on. Egypt is another powerhouse. Sadly, the other factions don't expand as much as might be hoped for. But suggesting that the AI isn't more effective with more territory seems foolish. They are demonstrably so.

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My gut feeling is that however this situation might turn out, neither scenario would provide as much of a challenge as if the AI factions did a better job of producing more elite troops and providing them with the latest weapons and armor upgrades.

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I'm sure they would, but I think that's going beyond the scope of the discussion.

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Taking Sicily as an example, which seems to be upheld as the prime example of the ineffectiveness of the AI's behavior, I know of several other actions on the part of the human player that will prevent the Scipii takeover of Sicily, in addition to load games. 1) If the human player is one of the other Roman factions and decides to prevent it by forming alliances; and 2) if the human player is Greek or Carthaginian, and decides to resist the takeover through military action. (And why doesn't the AI do this if it hasn't been "crippled" by load games?)

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This is flawed logic. The fact that the player can actively work to oppose the AI in no way excuses the fact that the AI will also be hampered by the save/reload issue. If there was a bug that automatically killed any army you encounter, would you excuse that because you're likely to win the encounter anyway?

I'm really not sure where you are trying to go with that paragraph. I don't understand how you think it reflects on the save/reload issue, or why you think it excuses if (if, in fact, that is what you are trying to suggest).

Bh

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Originally Posted by roguebolo
No, but in midgame when my faction is larger, the remaining nearby factions tend to ally against me, functioning in a manner similar to a very large faction. I have seen no evidence whatsover that pressing "End Turn" without load games will result in a few large and dominant factions within, say 100 turns, nor that the AI would be substantially more challenging in such a situation.

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Hmm, then maybe you should look for some.

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Actually, I just did. I realized that in my current game in progress, I was in a strong enough situation to test exactly that. I control 21 territories and the vast majority of my empire is too far away from the other factions for them to worry about -- such as Spain and Northern Africa from Tingi to Thapsus. There were numerous rebel territories in the North and around the Ionia area, as well as a few scattered about elsewhere.

I have so far played 50 turns without save/loads and with no user activity except to repel Brittania's sieges at Lemonum and Condate Redonum, replenishing the forces afterward, and modifying taxes and games to keep my territories happy and green. The game is running in the background as I type this, waiting for the next 50 turns.

During the first twenty or so turns, all of the other factions quickly nabbed the nearest rebel factions. Pontus was the luckiest (why the heck is it always Pontus?) because its starting position allowed it to grab the most rebel territories. I think it managed to take three.

As soon as most of the rebel territories had been claimed, the game became very static, with no factions expanding or acquiring each other's territories except in one instance when the Brutii took a Germanic territory (I'm obviously watching with FOW disabled).

At a certain point the Brutii got very lucky because all of Germania's territories turned suddenly rebel, and the Brutii began to absorb them into its empire. However, due to bad management or something, it has been losing these territories as well, sometimes reacquiring them.

Other than the original free-for-all with rebel territories, and the Brutii's ridiculous attempt to maintain civil order with its new acquisitions, there has been no expansion worthy of note. No faction has established itself as a dominant one, although Pontus and the Brutii have a somewhat larger "presence" due to their rebel acquisitions.

I'm about to press "End Turn" another 50 times. I would think that after 100 moves, with no save/loads, that SOME faction should eventually establish itself as the dominant AI faction. Don't you? After all, that's about 1/6th the maximum moves allowed in an entire game!

Thanks to therother I was able to get a vanilla 1.2 install going, and ran an abbreviated test while I waited on my grad school team to edit a draft I sent out. Loaded RB's "19" game and ran forward passively for 6 turns. Without loads, five factions took ~ 10 provinces (not keeping close count, sorry). With loads every turn, not one faction gained a single province. Not conclusive, but convincing to me.

Now if I follow RB's last post, he's also advancing the theory that the AI aggression level (and thus siege maintenance) is a function of the player's activity. I can't think of a good way to test this, since activity will produce changes that invalidate the controlled test scenario.

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Originally Posted by roguebolo

As soon as most of the rebel territories had been claimed, the game became very static, with no factions expanding or acquiring each other's territories except in one instance when the Brutii took a Germanic territory (I'm obviously watching with FOW disabled).

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In general, a lot of the factions seem to be almost too balanced. In my games, Germania and Britannia are almost always at war. When I turn FoW off (I don't play that way), I can see armies sieging cities. But I never see them take territory (or, if they do, they lose it again quickly).

But the Julii, Brutii and Scipii will almost always expand after a period of 30-50 turns. For some reason they are very slow starters (other than the initial moves). That is, of course, unless I block them.

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At a certain point the Brutii got very lucky because all of Germania's territories turned suddenly rebel, and the Brutii began to absorb them into its empire. However, due to bad management or something, it has been losing these territories as well, sometimes reacquiring them.

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Unfortunately the AI is remarkably bad at maintaining order in their cities. I'm not sure why. I've done a few things to try and work around it, but they still make bonehead moves from time to time.

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I'm about to press "End Turn" another 50 times. I would think that after 100 moves, with no save/loads, that SOME faction should eventually establish itself as the dominant AI faction. Don't you? After all, that's about 1/6th the maximum moves allowed in an entire game!

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It may happen, it may not. I suspect that some of the empires will be larger, while others will have gotten eaten up. The Gaul tend to fall pretty quickly once the Julii actually get around to attacking them. Carthage will tend to lose its territory to the Scipii. What happens in the Greek area is a little more of a toss up, as Macedonian can sometimes put up a decent fight.

Although, I'm not sure exactly what faction you are playing, so I'm not sure what influence you'll have on the game. From the sounds of it, you are playing out west, possibly Carthage? If so, that will certainly impact whoever is closest.

Regardless of how it turns out, however, I'm not sure whether the general passivity of the AI precludes the existence of an even more passive AI when save/load occurs.

Bh

Thanks Bromley for the outstanding tests. I think that settles it. If we need a game save from later on, I'm sure we can find one.

My theories haven't changed, Bromley. I still contend that AI siege behavior in midgame has no real effect on my gameplay. I've noticed you've made no mention whatsover of the midgame savegame I sent you, called "DefendThapsus", in which the AI behavior seems consistently aggressive toward the human player.

Those early moves were not intended to disprove the AIs behavior in response to a load game; they were intended to illustrate different points where that behavior changes slightly, in an attempt to understand the reasoning behind the behavior. As I've stated before, no one has made any kind of effort to explain the behavior or reasons why, in some cases, it seems to change.

In answer to your question, Bhruic, I'm playing the Julii and Gaul has been reduced to its capital at Celtiberia and is my protectorate while Spain is reduced to its capital in Lusitania and is neutral toward me. So basically the bottom, left side of the map is a non-issue.

I've now pressed "End Year" 80 times, without a load game (or a save game), and the factions are still pretty static across the board. The Brutii are still bumbling their management in the north, gaining and losing rebel provinces almost each turn.

However, Pontus has capitalized on its good fortune in being able to acquire so many rebel territories at the beginning of those 80 moves that it has acquired an additional territory and also managed to convince Armenia to become a Protectorate. Likewise, the Brutii have managed to convince Dacia to become a Protectorate. That particular alliance could present something of a challenge, especially if the Brutii ever figures out how to keep its provinces from rebelling. A few other territories changed hands, with Thrace surprising me when it attacked Macedon.

But the truth is that no AI faction has established itself as a dominant one. Some have gained and then lost territories, but those that managed to grab the most rebel territories in the grab-fest at the beginning are still the ones with the greatest presence. At this point, I have sat patiently in my empire, doing nothing but watching for 1/8th of the maximum number of turns in a game, waiting for some faction -- ANY faction (except, of course, Gaul or Spain) -- to establish some kind of clear dominance, and none of them have done so. If I had actually been playing, the game would surely almost be over.

So has the absence of save loads created a more challenging game?

I think the best point is the one that bhruic made:

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Regardless of how it turns out, however, I'm not sure whether the general passivity of the AI precludes the existence of an even more passive AI when save/load occurs.

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I'm almost sure that it does not. Despite the fact that there is no dominant AI faction, there's still a problem regarding the rebel territories. In my test, Pontus in particular would have had a much smaller presence than it currently does because of the fact that it would most likely NOT have grabbed the rebel territories, at least so quickly, if there had been a large number of load games. Other AI factions would have been similarly affected, but not as much as Pontus.

I don't think this is really specific to any save game. I think I could try it from any save position where I'm sure I can keep happiness in my territories and fend off invasions, so that I can observe the AI factions playing against each other for an essentially unlimited number of turns, and it would yield similar results. I'm also relatively sure that if I had been doing a lot of load games the majority of the territories that were originally rebel-controlled still would be. However, without load games, there are only three rebel territories remaining if you don't count the ones the Brutii keep losing and gaining.

I'm not sure if I'm going to let this go on for another 80 moves or not; it's still running in the background. But I think it's pretty clear that I'm never going to see a game with an ending like MTW, where it pretty much came to a showdown between myself and one other faction -- whether or not load games are a contributing factor. And that's fine with me, since it adds a little variety to the game as well as a little historicity.

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My theories haven't changed, Bromley. I still contend that AI siege behavior in midgame has no real effect on my gameplay. I've noticed you've made no mention whatsover of the midgame savegame I sent you, called "DefendThapsus", in which the AI behavior seems consistently aggressive toward the human player.

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As I stated in the Summary, "My only objective in this test was to determine whether or not save/load produced results that I might expect from earlier tests." My objective was to counter (or support, if it turned out that way), the claim made over on .com by ML Crassus about your posts:

"While it doesn't nescessarily doesn't prove without a shadow of a doubt that the siege bug is nonexistant, it does call into question the effectiveness of these tests."

Although I haven't mentioned the DefendThapsus savegame here, I did in the email that I sent to you. "I haven't looked at the DefendThapsus one because I'm getting all tested out :) ."

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Those early moves were not intended to disprove the AIs behavior in response to a load game; they were intended to illustrate different points where that behavior changes slightly, in an attempt to understand the reasoning behind the behavior. As I've stated before, no one has made any kind of effort to explain the behavior or reasons why, in some cases, it seems to change.

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For me, the reasons why it's screwed are not really important. Even if we knew exactly what was wrong, that doesn't help us if CA refuse to consider it as a bug/screwed feature. Of course, they're now apparently claiming that they never called it a feature. As igaworker asked, "I am not trying to be a smart behind, but my question now is this: If the reassessment is not a feature (as Mike B says) and it is not a bug (as Shogun says) then what is it?"

Of course, as the thread was closed before they could answer, we may never know ~D .

Let me suggets one further test. If we use someone's save game from the civil war timeframe, there should be a long track record of player activity and aggressiveness. Hopefully this info is stored in the file and maintained through the save and load. A short test period of player passivity (5-10 turns) would hopefully not skew that average enough to cause the AI to shift into a passive strategy.
If the AI acts aggressively with and without loads, this test would support RB in saying the AI reacts to player activity. If it is aggressive without loads and passive with, I think we can conclude that the extrema theory is not valid and the original "it's just screwed up" theory best fits the data. If it's passive for both, I think that would show that the AI is reactive but only to the player's current level of activity, which may be WAD but is an astoundingly bad WAD. The last thing the AI should want to do is time its attacks to coincide with when I have armies in the field and am ready for it.
Has anyone taken a 1.2 campaign up to this point without giving up in frustration as I did? Are they willing to post such a game here that we can test with?

Pode,

When I tested from midgame, both with the savegame entitled "DefendThapsus" and with the sequence in which I did 80 moves without save loads (which is still running in the background), the AI never ceases its aggressiveness toward the human player. To be quite honest, the AI doesn't have much of a choice; in both situations, those AI factions had no one else to be aggressive toward; in "DefendThapsus" it was seeking to retake its territories from an aggressor - myself. (In general this seems to trigger aggressive behavior on the part of the AI.)

The difference was the way in which it manifests its aggression. The AI tends to attempt to maintain a siege without a save/load, or relieve one with save/loads, resulting in alternately establishing and relieving sieges when there is a load game each turn. In many cases, relieving the siege gives it a better chance of doing damage to my armies if I decide to attack it in open terrain, since it is clearly outmatched. "DefendThapsus" is particularly illuminating because if you play with save/loads for several turns, Brittania will start besieging two targets in the north (Lemonum and Condate Redonum), while Numidia is besieging two settlements in the south (Carthage and Thapsus). As a result, you can observe the behavior of four sieges simultaneuosly.

However, if enroute to a siege, a "save/load" does not cause the AI to forget its target. So the targets never really change, just the way it manifests its aggression.

In the 80-move test I did observe the AI choosing to relieve sieges despite the fact that there was never a load game. In "DefendThapsus" and similar savegames where sieges were in effect, I have not yet seen it elect to maintain a siege after a loadgame except on rare occasions wherein the target is a weak rebel territory. Bromley and others have reported that there are indeed such instances, but that they are limited to certain settlements which appear to be "immune" to save/load behavior. In the long run, though, I don't consider alternately relieving and reinstating sieges to dramatically effect gameplay. I still need to eventually oust the assailant from my territories.

After allowing the AI to play 80 turns without any load games, I also don't consider the general passivity of the AI to have any dramatic effect on the overall political landscape, with the exception of the fact that loadgames will tend to cause the AI to leave rebel territories unclaimed. Without them, the AI will snatch them up in what I've referred to as a "grabfest". After observing numerous tests in numerous starting scenarios, the behavior of the AI toward rebel territories is still my main complaint regarding loadgames.

80 turns is about 1/8th the maximum turns allowed in a game, and maybe 1/4th the moves I would actually expect in a game. A few minor exchanges of the AI factions' territories changed the way that I percieved certain factions, their "presence" relative to other factions, but did not provide me with any particularly strong factions. However, the takeover of rebel territories had an absolutely profound effect on two factions in particular, Pontus and also the Brutii after Germania went bottom-up. If one considers that Dacia is a Brutii protectorate, the combined alliance will be almost as strong as I am (at least in terms of number of territories) after the Brutii manage to establish civil order in their northern territories. (They've been trying to do that for over thirty turns, though.)

I don't think that pressing "End Turn" for 80 more turns without load games is going to provide much additional information. That will be nearly one half what I expect the entire length of the game to be, and i would expect to have won the game by that point, so it's a fruitless effort.

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For me, the reasons why it's screwed are not really important. Even if we knew exactly what was wrong, that doesn't help us if CA refuse to consider it as a bug/screwed feature.

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Well, an understanding of the AI's behavior is the only thing that's going to lead to a workaround. I can force the AI to behave in certain ways by the use of alliances, but I do not seem to be able to force it to change its behavior toward rebel provinces, where alliances have no effect. If a trigger can be identified for midturn-reassessment, then pulling that trigger might galvanize the AI into some action by forcing it to select the next "equally viable" option in the list.

Such information would undoubtedly have been useful to the developers at some point, but my guess is that they have already studied the situation and understand it more fully than any theorizing that we have done here; and that they have concluded (like myself) that this is not exactly a game-breaker and that any changes we see in the behavior of the AI is reserved for future releases.

I have played 58 turns as Julii in an SPQR mod campaign with FOW off. SPQR mod has about twice as many cities as vanilla RTW v1.2. I use Pode's no walls idea except I've left the walls on the 6 large cities that start with stone walls. With no walls, the AI always assaults cities on the same turn it lays the siege since no siege equipment is needed. I've saved the game 8 times for an average interval of 7 turns per savegame, and there were never any sieges in progress when I made the saves. I use very little diplomatic strategy, and concentrate on a gradual military expansion. Armies can be trained very quickly in this mod because the training time is 0 except for ships. There tends to be lots of full army stacks on the map since the AI ramps up its military seemingly to whatever its income allows in most cases.

SPQR mod also eliminates Numidia, Spain and Thrace as factions. Carthage is given all of Numidia. Macedon gets most of Thrace with a bit going to Dacia, and Spain is all Iberian rebles. Carthage is the strongest faction, and has increased its population and military a lot and its territory slightly in the first 58 turns. It's focused on conquering Sicily and looks like it will succeed in doing so soon. It's has done very little expansion against the rebels on the Iberian peninsula. As Julii, I've tried to slow down this conquest of Sicily by helping to destroy the Carthaginian navy because I'm concerned about this faction's economic power which will allow it to field countless replacement armies. Of course, they keep building new ships, but that should reduce their ability to replenish their land forces if I can keep attacking their ships. This is costly for me, and I've had to stop my own land expansion for the time being.

Egypt is the next strongest faction, and it was very quiet for the first 15 years, but after building up its military, it has been expanding up into Asia Minor. The eastern most faction, which I think is Parthia, got caught between Armenia and Egypt and eliminated just a few years ago. Selucid appears to be next since they are caught in the same kind of relentless squeeze between those same two economically stronger factions. Egypt has been fighting a lot in recent years and its military has actually declined in power due to the casualties sustained in the last 10 years. Dacia is probably the next strongest followed by Macedon. They are both quite formidable.

As Julii, I went right after Gaul and steadily but slowly captured one city after another from them in the first 20 years. I'll have to check later just how many cities I've taken. Gaul has been fatally crippled because after about 10 years Britannia also started taking their cities. Britannia also has been fighting off an on with Germania, and taken one or two of their cities. I eventually took the city Narbo M. from Gaul, and that put me in contact with neutral Britannia. As soon as I had this province adjacent to Britannia, I could see them scanning my city on every turn and moving armies up to within striking distance. For the last few turns now, Britannia has been relentlessly attacking my city, and they have stopped attacking Gaul. This same thing happened on my eastern frontier when I took Segesta from the Greek Cities. That put me adjacent to Dacia, and they started scanning my city. Soon Dacia attacked my city a couple of times. The only reason I've survived the attacks by Britannia and Dacia is because even without walls it's fairly easy to defend the town square. If the AI would simply lay siege with the intent of starving out the defenders, I would be in dire staights because I'd would then have to sally and fight the AI in the open field which is no easy task in SPQR mod because the AI has huge armies and they seem to make sure they have a larger army than the enemy when they lay siege.

I only post all of this because I think it shows first that the AI is cautious when expanding, and second that it does become aggressive against the human player when it comes into contact with him. I could probably have diverted this aggression with diplomacy, but I don't try to do that. Britannia did ask for a cease fire which I accepted after they lost 4 large scale attacks on Narbo M.

Neither of these conclusions causes me to think the loadgame issue isn't a serious one. With walls, I could possibly mod out the siege equipment and force the AI to starve out all cities, but I'd then have to play much longer sessions which just isn't resonable for me. Even without walls, I won't play the game unless I have at least 4 hours available since the battles are larger and take longer than vanilla RTW v1.2 which I will not play.

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I think it shows first that the AI is cautious when expanding, and second that it does become aggressive against the human player when it comes into contact with him.

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I agree 100% with both of those conclusions.

After 80 turns (or maybe 1/4th of a game) of pressing "End Turn" without a load game, I can see that there are some minor changes in the relative strength of different factions, that some have gained or lost a little presence. My attitude to that is "So what?" It doesn't exhibit the projected conclusion that any given faction will establish any clear dominating presence to make the victory conditions any more or less difficult. However their own territorial disputes turned out, they're likely to ally against me anyway when they begin to percieve me as their greatest threat.

The AI's tendency to not take rebel territories is a different issue. That does deny the AI factions the economic and positional advantages offered by a potentially large number of rebel territories, hence weakening the overall, combined strength of the AI factions militarily. A work around for this would be to focus on building an infrastructure for several quick turns (something which I occasionally tend to do anyway) until those territories are occupied, without any load games; and I think I'm going to start checking by toggling off FOW occasionally and doing exactly that.

The mod that you mentioned does seem to have some pretty cool approaches toward eliminating the problem, however, and I'm interested in checking it out because I happen to prefer larger battles myself. I'm a little disappointed that Numidia and Spain were dropped because of the roles they played in history, but apparently this mod is primarily designed for game balance.

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Originally Posted by roguebolo

and that they have concluded (like myself) that this is not exactly a game-breaker and that any changes we see in the behavior of the AI is reserved for future releases.

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This is the crux of the matter for me. In both my original tests and in ones using your saves I can show significant differences in AI expansion between no-load and load-every-turn.

The original test quantifies the effect of the various intervals and supports DimeBagHo's results posted to .com.

Surely you accept that AI factions will not take cities off the rebels or each other as often with frequent loads? And that frequent loads are unavoidable for some people. So I assume that we can agree on that.

That just leaves your belief that many smaller AI factions are going to be just as hard for the human as few larger AI factions. As you know from our emails, I disagree with you on that, but fair enough.

If the AI is so inept that it cannot expand and hold onto new cities when one plays for 100 turns without loading, then that's a different issue. I was working under the assumption that the strategic AI, although weak, wasn't a slathering loon. If I was wrong in this assumption, then that just deepens my disappointment with CA. I never expected stellar (or even fairly good) strategic AI, but that's too much.


EDIT: It would seem that it is too much. With the exception of Egypt and Britannia, no one has really pulled out the stops in this no-save 100 turn extension of the 1st turn of my Brutii test (I was watching Troy ~:) ). They started well enough, but see those Rebels in the middle of Scipian Africa and the Scythian steppes? They were originally the property of the respective powers, but they lost them. How often has a player lost a city in 1.2 to unrest?

This was on medium campaign difficulty but, as I didn't make a move, you would be forgiven for thinking that that shouldn't matter. The only thing I can say is that the strategic element of RTW is some damn shoddy work.

http://img184.echo.cx/img184/4606/br...noloads7ez.jpg

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I can show significant differences in AI expansion between no-load and load-every-turn

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So can I, but I've been looking at the results of that behavior over a very long period of turns, and how much it affects the political landscape and therefore my gameplay. Perhaps, if extended beyond a eighty turns, the results would be more pronounced; but once I get beyond 1/4th the total number of turns in a typical game, it's starting to become irrelevant.

The most obvious and pronounced effects are the way that AI factions will grab rebel territories -- several of them in just a few turns, if they can -- thereby significantly increasing their production power.

I've also been trying to identify player activity (or even a glitch, if possible) that will force the reassessment to select a new plan of action midturn. I think the easiest way to identify such factors is early in a game. That's why I've been going back to early save games.

The one case in which you and I did not have the same results, if I was reading your posts correctly, was the one labeled Turn 19. In the first few moves, with a save/load each move, it exhibits behavior that is entirely contrary to what we've come to expect. I just tried it again to make sure. You don't even need to disable FOW to see it. After the Brutii arrive by boat and lay siege to Segestica, and you do a save/load and "End Turn", they relieve the siege. After another save/load and "End Year", they reinstate the siege. So far, this is what I'd come to expect. But after the next save/load and "End Year", they maintain the siege -- and continue doing so for 3 years until they have occupied the territory. This is so contrary to what I'd come to expect, especially this early in the game, that I assumed something must have happened at an earlier point in the game to modify the reassessment behavior, which is why I started looking at earlier turns for an answer.

I jumped back to the save game labeled "Turn 14" and saw that Pontus took a rebel territory, so I jumped back to "Turn 12". Playing with save/loads from "Turn 12", the Brutii never get on a boat with the target of Segestica. In fact, as we've both observed, nobody ever takes any territories. Somewhere after turn 12, the Brutii made some irrevocable decision to hop on a boat, sail it all the way down to Segestica, and take the place by siege, load games or no load games, and absolutely nothing was going to change their minds.

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If the AI is so inept that it cannot expand and hold onto new cities when one plays for 100 turns without loading, then that's a different issue. I was working under the assumption that the strategic AI, although weak, wasn't a slathering loon.

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LOL. I was hoping that someone would point this out. There are many other obvious strategic weaknesses in this and many other games I play. I obviously have my own list of things I would like to see changed, but I have come to the conclusion that it will be a long time before the AI in a game like this reaches the point where it is any kind of a true challenge. MTW was just as bad at maintaining civil order in AI provinces, if not even worse. At least the TW series doesn't attempt to cheat with respawns and triggers and whatnot, like so many other games.

After a certain amount of expertise, MTW was not even close to being a difficult game for me -- not even on VH/VH as the Polish or one of the other more difficult factions. The thing I learned when I was playing MTW was that when I reached that point of mastery over the game, the strategic campaign was merely a platform for setting up different scenarios that I considered interesting. (One of my favorite self-set goals in MTW was to wipe out the entire Mongol Horde the same turn they appeared on the map; with Viking Invasion, it's possible to do so with an army domininated by units that have about the same support costs as standard peasants.)

I didn't perform any tests on "19". All I did was tabulate its state for comparison. However, my "14" extension with save/load every turn did show the Brutii maintaining their siege of Segestica to completion over 3 turns (with loading at every turn).

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This was on medium campaign difficulty but, as I didn't make a move, you would be forgiven for thinking that that shouldn't matter. The only thing I can say is that the strategic element of RTW is some damn shoddy work.

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Speaking of which (I forgot to mention this) all of my save games are on the hard/hard difficulty setting. I didn't know about the realtime battle behavior of the 1.2 patch when I first started using it...

The only thing I know of that could bring about that kind of unrest intentionally, and also what I witnessed in my own game, is a series of assassinations so that there was no Faction Leader. I actually wondered if the Brutii had done that. At any rate, this is going very far off topic...

I have AI faction expansion in my Julii SPQR mod campaign with no walls, and it is at the expense of other AI factions. Over 58 turns:

Factions which expanded:

Carthage started with 15 cities and now has 19.
Egypt started with 12 cities and now has 24.
Armenia started with 5 cities and now has 17.
Julii started with 3 cities and now has 14. (human player)
Britannia started with 6 cities and now has 12.
Brutii started with 3 cites and now has 6.

Factions which held their own:

Dacia started with 8 cities and now has 9.
Macedonia started with 9 cities and now has 10.
Germania started with 12 cities and now has 14.
Pontus started with 2 cities and now has 3.
Scipii started with 4 cities and still has 4.
SPQR started with 1 city and still has 1.
Selucid started with 7 cities and now has 5.

Factions which lost out:

Parthia started with 8 cities and now has 1.
Scythia started with 4 cities and now has 1.
Greek Cities started with 11 cities and now has 5.
Gaul started with 15 cities and now has 6. (this is due mostly to Jullii)

If I played this campaign with walls, I think the factions that expanded wouldn't have expanded as much, and the factions that declined wouldn't have declined as much because of the broken off sieges. Yes eventually I will have to fight most of the factions anyway, but I don't have to fight them all at once, and I'm in no position to take on either Carthage or Egypt yet. If I have to confront either Carthage or Egypt down the road it's going to be a big deal because they already have a stronger ecomomy than me, and they'll be expanding it. Carthage is twice as strong as my Julii faction in production and military power, and has 4 times the population. Egypt is twice as strong as Julii in production, equal in military power and has 3 times the population. Dacia, Macedonia, Britannia and Germania are all equal to Julii in production, military power and population.

Thought I'd show you the result of 80 moves without loadgames before I start attacking my own ideas.

This is the starting position in the year 163 BC (winter):

http://home.comcast.net/~b.brassfield/images/Start.jpg

This is the ending position in the year 123 BC (summer):

http://home.comcast.net/~b.brassfiel...es/80Moves.jpg

As you can see from the following territorial rankings, the Brutii did take one territory from Germania, as I reported, and not long afterward, Germania just "ceased to exist". All of its territories turned rebel; at that point, the Brutii began to eat up the formerly Germanic territories, and the rebel territories north of them. Although it was losing territories as it was gaining them, it managed to maintain a net gain until somewhere toward the last dozen moves or so:

http://home.comcast.net/~b.brassfiel...s/germania.jpg

I misreported Pontus a little; while the other factions were focusing on rebel territories, it actually took one Seleucid territory and one Greek territory; only the third was rebel. I wasn't paying as much attention in that part of the world and the color coding is pretty close. After that, Egypt managed to take three Seleucid territories -- whether they became rebel first I can't remember. But the last two definitely became rebel before Pontus took one of them. The other one was never claimed.

http://home.comcast.net/~b.brassfiel.../seleucids.jpg

The situation with Thrace and Macedon occured right at the very end of the 80 moves:

http://home.comcast.net/~b.brassfield/images/thrace.jpg

Like the situation in the north, most of the other acquisitions were rebel territories and the situation remained otherwise very static for the entire 80 moves. Some countries got smaller, others got larger, the Seleucids were beat by a war on two fronts, and the Brutii got lucky through mismanagement or something on the part of Germania, but aren't doing a much better job of managing those territories themselves.

However, if you'll look closely, you'll notice that there is a long period prior to the beginning of these 80 turns, of about 50 years or so, when all of these countries had no growth and no losses (except Germania, which was an altercation with Brittania and ended with Germania ultimately becoming Brittania's protectorate.)

It was during these 50 years that I did most of my expansion, and almost certainly never skipped a single turn without a load game.

If I go back to the year 213BC, here is what the territorial map looks like:

http://home.comcast.net/~b.brassfield/images/213BC.jpg

Now, at least you know that I'm not lying about loading each turn. Hehe. As you can see, with the exception of my target factions and myself, there have been no changes except for the altercation between England and Germany.

I pressed "End Turn" with no load games only 16 times, and here was the political landscape in the year 205BC:

http://home.comcast.net/~b.brassfield/images/205BC.jpg

Pontus made all the exact same moves, but 50 years earlier. The Seleucids expanded a little, and it's obvious that Germania is not about to cave in on itself so easily. Almost all of the rebel territories were claimed immediately, as with the 80-turn test. It's harder to just press "End Turn" for a long number of moves at this point, but I think it's safe to say that with 164 turns remaining until 123BC, things would turn out slightly differently than with the 80 turn test. (Except, of course, for my own acquisitions from Gaul, Spain, and Numidia.)

My immediate targets (Gaul, Spain and Numidia) benefited only slightly from rebel (and other) acquisitions -- most importantly, Spain's acquisition of the last remaining Carthaginian stronghold of Corduba which took them 11 turns, and which they succeeded in occupying not long before the same year that I invaded Spain. Considering how badly I plowed right through Spanish territories when I was actually playing, I can't see how this small amount of extra unit production would have helped them very much. Numidia also acquired a rather inconsequential village at a small oasis in the Sahara.

I similarly question how much these changes would affect my long-term targets...at least in terms of the relative strengths of different AI territories. The Brutii are going to find it harder to take a unified Germania than their rapid grabfest of rebel territories, and the Seleucids might be a little stronger but they are still caught in a battle on two fronts with Pontus and Egypt -- not that the Julii care much about that corner of the map. Although those conflicts might take longer to resolve under these conditions, they will probably end up about the same. And I suppose Thrace will probably still wait 60 turns before attacking Macedonia. Who knows?

In any case, I think it also makes a strong argument for the powerful affect of the AI acquiring rebel territories. Because each faction can use its rapid rebel acquisitions to strengthen itself, individually. That will help when they're forced to ally against me.

The AI seems to do a fairly good job of maintaining a balance between the AI factions and the human player. One must realize that chess has been around for thousands of years, and that the algorithms and math studying the game had been in existence long before the first computer program.

In fact, if you ever study the field of combinatorial optimization, you will discover that the Hungarian method of two-dimensional bipartite matching was proposed and published by Kuhn all the way back in 1950. In a game as complex as RTW, the number of combinations of possibilities further complicated by rule-based hierarchy or even simple topological relationships, far exceeds the complexity of even three-dimensional bipartite matching. Since there is no game exactly like the TW games, and the developers cannot turn to a text book for canned algorithms, but must nevertheless write code which causes the AI to select its moves in a reasonable period of time, I think they've done a fairly admirable job of maintaining some sort of game balance and general satisfaction on the part of the average player. Like almost all computer games of its kind, it will fall to the player once they have achieved mastery over the AI; just as Chess Masters were able to consistently beat early chess programs. Despite its weaknesses, I consider the AI to be quite good compared to the plethora of other computer games which do not attempt to rely on AI to create a challenge for the human player whatsover. I also consider lambasting the AI to be in poor taste.

The thread has been cleaned up and I'm trying to formulate a tentative conclusion concerning the siege behaviour. Should you disagree with any of the following, please explain why.

• It is certain that after loading a quicksave (has standard save been tested?), the AI will most of the time break up ongoing sieges in cases where it doesn't do that without save/load.
• It seems that the objective to take the previously sieged city is not lost entirely, as the AI will usually try to reengage the siege the turn after the load.
• As a consequence, saving and reloading will affect the development of AI factions, at least in the beginning of a campagne.
• It is not yet clear to what extent the course of a campagne is influenced in an undesirable way by this. AI factions do conquer new territories at a slow pace, but it is not clear whether this is due to the save/load issue or general weakness of the AI. There are three possibilities:
  
  • Above the weakness of the strategic AI, this issue is irrelevant as its effect is only noticeable under extreme conditions.
  • Saving and reloading often does noticable affect gameplay, but doesn't make the game unplayable.
  • The effect is so pronounced that it can be called a "game-breaker".
• A clearly noticable aspect is that, when saving and loading often, AI factions will not take the opportunity to capture rebel territory to the same extent as it does in continued playing.

Saturnus, I will respond this way. Some of them are not a yes or no.

1. It is certain that after loading a quicksave (has standard save been tested?), the AI will most of the time break up ongoing sieges in cases where it doesn't do that without save/load.

Yes, it is CERTAIN that MOST of the time they will break ongoing sieges. ~;) (Yes, I've tested the standard save.)

2. It seems that the objective to take the previously sieged city is not lost entirely, as the AI will usually try to reengage the siege the turn after the load. Not only that, armies enroute to siegies will not lose their objectives.

I agree. However, you need to qualify this so that other readers understand that even after multiple reloads the target cities are never abandoned, which results in a state wherein cities are being besieged and then having their sieges relieved.

3. As a consequence, saving and reloading will affect the development of AI factions, at least in the beginning of a campagne.

There, I do disagree. As a consequence, reloading a game will have an immediate affect on all rebel territories that can be easily acquired. This phenomenon exibits itself througout the game, not just at the beginning, and is the greatest effect of the phenomenon, rather than speculative projections on its effects throughout the course of gameplay. It can potentially also have an effect on the controversy between different AI factions, which will result in the occasional transfer of territories and an overall game balance for when the human player is ready to confront them. Such controversies are partially "locked in place" by the AI based on their alliances with each other, and can be further influenced by the human player.

I will respond to the last one after a while. I'm having some rather strange feelings about all this, since so many people debate against me and no one has responded in almost two days. I almost feel boycotted...

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Originally Posted by A.Saturnus

The thread has been cleaned up and I'm trying to formulate a tentative conclusion concerning the siege behaviour. Should you disagree with any of the following, please explain why.

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• It is certain that after loading a quicksave (has standard save been tested?), the AI will most of the time break up ongoing sieges in cases where it doesn't do that without save/load.
  Agreed. I'm also happy that quick and normal saves create the same problem, as my first every test (not referred to in this thread) used normal saves.
• It seems that the objective to take the previously sieged city is not lost entirely, as the AI will usually try to reengage the siege the turn after the load.
  Agreed. This may just be a consequence of the reevaluation coming to the same conclusion though (i.e. it is possible that the objective is lost and we just don't discern a difference).
• As a consequence, saving and reloading will affect the development of AI factions, at least in the beginning of a campagne.
  Agreed. A worrying development arising from some of the long campaign tests run is that the AI may be reaching a critical mass at which it just can't manage its empire in a halfway sensible manner (independent of the loadgame issue). That though is for a different thread (i.e., for the purposes of determining whether the AI is adversely affected by the loadgame bug we'll have to assume that the AI is functional).
  RB's point is correct, in that if you defer the start of the campaign (as far as the AI is concerned) by loading every turn, then the initial Rebel land-grab is deferred. It's further correct in that, assuming the AI is competent, this issues affects faction on faction sieges in the late game as well.
• It is not yet clear to what extent the course of a campagne is influenced in an undesirable way by this. AI factions do conquer new territories at a slow pace, but it is not clear whether this is due to the save/load issue or general weakness of the AI. There are three possibilities:
  
  • Above the weakness of the strategic AI, this issue is irrelevant as its effect is only noticeable under extreme conditions.
  • Saving and reloading often does noticable affect gameplay, but doesn't make the game unplayable.
  • The effect is so pronounced that it can be called a "game-breaker".
  
  Assuming that the strategic AI is competent, this effect is extremely relevant if you play sessions of 4 turns or less. If you play for 7 or more, it probably doesn't have a huge effect. As some people really do play for less than 4 turns, it will be a game breaker for them (assuming that the AI is otherwise sound).
• A clearly noticable aspect is that, when saving and loading often, AI factions will not take the opportunity to capture rebel territory to the same extent as it does in continued playing.
  Disagree (semantic though). It will take the opportunity, in that it will march armies out to get the cities, but it will not succeed as it will be forced to break off. The same applies to trying to capture other AI factions, although diplomacy, walls, more coordinated defence, etc. mean that it needs even longer per city than with an average Rebel city.
  So, from my testing, it seemed that the AI was able to reasonably expand if the load interval was 4 turns. However, the Scipii were not able to do well in Sicily with less than an interval of 5 turns. Hence the supposition that there is something that makes taking other AI faction cities harder for the AI than taking Rebel cities (which seems like common sense, but it's nice to have it confirmed).

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There, I do disagree. As a consequence, reloading a game will have an immediate affect on all rebel territories that can be easily acquired. This phenomenon exibits itself througout the game, not just at the beginning, and is the greatest effect of the phenomenon, rather than speculative projections on its effects throughout the course of gameplay. It can potentially also have an effect on the controversy between different AI factions, which will result in the occasional transfer of territories and an overall game balance for when the human player is ready to confront them. Such controversies are partially "locked in place" by the AI based on their alliances with each other, and can be further influenced by the human player.

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Actually, I don't quite understand how you can disagree with that, given that it is more or less a logical conclusion of the first proposition you agreed with. How can the development of a factions possibly be the same when the AI cannot bring most sieges to an end? Note that this point says nothing about the size of the effect. I only said that save/load makes a difference at all.
From my understanding, you argued above that the effects others found at the beginning of a campagne are an artefact of an extremum. You aknowledged the fact that the AI will, for example, not succeed in conquering Sicily early on as Scipii if loaded every turn, but you objected that this has no impact on the later development. If this is a correct description of your position, you cannot disagree with this point.

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Originally Posted by Bromley

• A clearly noticable aspect is that, when saving and loading often, AI factions will not take the opportunity to capture rebel territory to the same extent as it does in continued playing.
  Disagree (semantic though). It will take the opportunity, in that it will march armies out to get the cities, but it will not succeed as it will be forced to break off. The same applies to trying to capture other AI factions, although diplomacy, walls, more coordinated defence, etc. mean that it needs even longer per city than with an average Rebel city.
  So, from my testing, it seemed that the AI was able to reasonably expand if the load interval was 4 turns. However, the Scipii were not able to do well in Sicily with less than an interval of 5 turns. Hence the supposition that there is something that makes taking other AI faction cities harder for the AI than taking Rebel cities (which seems like common sense, but it's nice to have it confirmed).

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I may have misunderstood something, but it seemed to me RB was saying that:

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The most obvious and pronounced effects are the way that AI factions will grab rebel territories -- several of them in just a few turns, if they can -- thereby significantly increasing their production power.

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If I'm reading roguebolo's position correctly, it basically comes down to the premise that the AI plays so ineffectively normally, that the additional penalties caused by the save/reload problem are rendered moot.

In general, I agree with that position. Even with no save/reloads, the AI doesn't expand as much as would be necessary to challenge a human player. Empires end up being relatively stagnant.

However, I disagree with the conclusion that the save/reload issue isn't a problem in and of itself. Any attempt to make the AI more aggressive would be rendered ineffective by this problem. Basically, I'd conclude that the only reason it's not a serious problem is because there's another serious problem. Fixing just one or the other won't work nearly as well as fixing both.

Bh

Bhruic said it so well.


P.S.
Only reason why AI is good against rebels (without loads) is that rebels don't build new units in their cities.

3. As a consequence, saving and reloading will affect the development of AI factions, at least in the beginning of a campagne.

I'm only disagreeing with the wording because I think the description is incomplete, and because I think the development of the AI is most effected when numerous rebel territorories are available, which is true at the beginning of the game but might also be true in other situations. I suppose this degresses into semantics, so I will reverse my statement by saying that I agree with a number of qualifications.

Bhruic, the "other problem" extends itself to other computer games too. Most AIs in most games can eventually be mastered by a human player. Part of the problem has to do with the computing power of computers. "Combinatorial optimization" is a field of algorithmic study whereby you attempt to reduce the number of combinations that need to be analyzed to arrive at a conclusion.

It doesn't surprise me when I master the AI in a game that I once considered challenging; rather, it seems to be par for the course, even with simpler, more straightforward strategy games like "Massive Assault." I think there's a lot of room for improvement of AIs in general and in specific for any given game. However, upon mastering an AI I don't come to the conclusion that it is horribly scarred because I can beat it consistently. I might have some ideas on how it can be improved, but that's about it.

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Originally Posted by roguebolo

Bhruic, the "other problem" extends itself to other computer games too. Most AIs in most games can eventually be mastered by a human player. Part of the problem has to do with the computing power of computers. "Combinatorial optimization" is a field of algorithmic study whereby you attempt to reduce the number of combinations that need to be analyzed to arrive at a conclusion.

It doesn't surprise me when I master the AI in a game that I once considered challenging; rather, it seems to be par for the course, even with simpler, more straightforward strategy games like "Massive Assault." I think there's a lot of room for improvement of AIs in general and in specific for any given game. However, upon mastering an AI I don't come to the conclusion that it is horribly scarred because I can beat it consistently. I might have some ideas on how it can be improved, but that's about it.

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That's going well beyond the scope of the discussion. It doesn't matter whether or not other games have issues. We're only talking about RTW, and the specific issues it has that are related to this bug.

One of the major points is that the AI is not sufficiently aggressive in general, so unlike MTW, there doesn't tend to be much empire growth. This fact, I believe, "masks" the problem that the save/reload issue causes.

If you choose to agree or disagree with that point, that's fine. I'd love to hear your explanation. But you do seem to have a tendancy to jump to off-topic issues that don't really apply to save/reload issue.

Bh

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I'm only disagreeing with the wording because I think the description is incomplete, and because I think the development of the AI is most effected when numerous rebel territorories are available, which is true at the beginning of the game but might also be true in other situations. I suppose this degresses into semantics, so I will reverse my statement by saying that I agree with a number of qualifications.

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Ok, I don't insist on the wording. What is more important is point four anyway. Do I assume right that you agree with point five?

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Originally Posted by A.Saturnus

I may have misunderstood something, but it seemed to me RB was saying that:

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I thought my post was quite good considering I was wasted ~:cheers: .

The point I was trying to make was that I basically agree with what you were saying in 5 (A clearly noticable aspect . . .). The disagreement was only with the wording, specifically, "will not take the opportunity." Not an important point by me - just amplified in my mind by alcohol.

It is interesting this... Now we are finally getting something of a specific direction.

I have just considered something.
Even if the game solely affected by the loadgame issue from its initial positions, then it is still a tough situation for many gamers. They will often suffer the effects anyway, as they don't just kick back and watch for 10-20 turns like we do here. They play and load from the get-go.
A game that more or less forces the player to wait up to 20 turns is not working as it is supposed to. That is how I view it.

I don't know that anyone is questioning whether it is working as it supposed to. The issue right now seems to be the severity.

In general, I find that early turns go by quite quickly. It's not hard to play 10-15 turns in the amount of time it would take to play 2-3 in later stages. So it's less likely people will be in a save/reload situation early on.

Given the three choices A.S. listed, I'd have to go with "Saving and reloading often does noticable affect gameplay, but doesn't make the game unplayable."

Bh

i wonder if our use of the term "reload" can be misleading? it can cause some people to think that we're exploiting the game by "reloading" simply because something doesn't go our way. i would say simply "load" or "loadgame" or such...

Nice to see that some conclusions are coming out of this. I was so busy lately that I quite frankly didn't have time to sit in front of a comp for fun at all. But now that I do have some time to spare, I cannot bring myself to fire up RTW any more, and I don't see myself doing so in near future either - I realise I'm too disappointed in the game to do so. Sorry.

The latest update of the RTW FAQ addresses this issue.

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Originally Posted by The Shogun

Q. What's the latest regarding the load/save/siege issue.

A. Much I want to say this is now sorted and carved in stone, I can't. Please remember that expansion pack is in development and there is still much going on at the moment that I can't talk about for various reasons. I am prepared to say that it is certainly our intention to address the load/save issue in the expansion pack. "And what about a patch?" I hear you ask. Again I can't say this is set in stone but we hope to bring out a patch at roughly the same time as the expansion pack (in reality it will probably be few weeks later).
That's the state of play at the moment. When I know more, I'll make sure that you know more.

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One of the fortunate Swedes (goes by Stalin on TWC and Pippi Longstocking on the .com, the combination of which kinda reminds me of the Bert and Osama photo, but I digress) was kind enough to post this on the .com "bugs after patch 1.3" thread

"from my rather short observation the siegebug is gone...
https://img189.imageshack.us/my.php?image=before8gp.jpg
https://img189.imageshack.us/my.php?image=after1es.jpg "

I will plead with him to read this thread and do a proper test, but if he's right, I can't blame him for getting on with playing the game and ignoring me.

Seems good. The screenshots don't do much for me, but for players to says so makes it much more so. The shot only shows one case, but I suppose they have tried several cases each.