How to know when the game is pissed at you.

[nara shikamaru]

Hi all I thought I'd make a small list of things that the AI could do just to get back at you for all the times you handed it's own arse to it with relative ease.

1. A single unit of peasants has just decimated your fully armored and upgrade uber stack.

2. While in said fight with peasants, your men seemingly put on a floor show for the enemy, allowing them to kill your men.

3. your attack fleet of 50+ ships* is taken out by one single long boat.

4. All of your generals are targeted by an inquisitor with no valor, and they are all burned at the stake.

5. Your 8 valor assassin, with a 99% chance to kill the enemy king, is caught despite there being no border forts, or another assassin or spy in the province.

6. Nobody will ally with you, and in fact the entire map has gone to war with you, one way or another.

7. A massive horde* of camel warriors has come out of the Mid East, and has ravaged your lands

8. No matter what you do, all of your royal line seems to have all of the worst possible vices to get.

9. Your king instead of charging an enemy unit, stops, and waits for the enemy to surround him.

10. You hear your game yell "nuts to this" and you see stacks full of jedi units everywhere, that attack you the next turn.

Notes: 1. ships are whatever the best you may have is, depending on your faction.
2. The camel horde is at least 100,000 strong some how.
3. This was made in a most likely failed attempt at some humor on my part, but if anyone wants to add anything feel free to.

As you can see it doens't have to be something that can actually happen, just something you think the comp would do after all the times you kicked its arse.

[bamff]

11. A crusade passes through your zero zeal province, and every one of your troops joins up and marches off with it.....and you are playing as the Almohads.....

[seireikhaan]

11. A crusade passes through your zero zeal province, and every one of your troops joins up and marches off with it.....and you are playing as the Almohads.....

And the crusade's target province belongs to you as well...

[Raz]

12. You are playing as the Spanish. It's one turn before the golden horde arrives and you march your entire army to the east to prepare for the defence and leave your only King in Castile for safe keeping. You press "End Turn" and a message pops up saying: "Bah, I think I'll do something different today"............ The next turn, Mesoamericans sail to Europe and launch a massive assault on the Spanish peninsula - Your king is annihilated and you lose the game.

Psst, see the irony? =D

[Kaidonni]

13. As your king dies, his heir (the new heir apparent) comes of age. Only, the previous heir apparent who would've assumed the throne had the new one not come of age has disappeared for some reason, and the new one has been crowned king. And he had decent stats, or much better.

*Happened to me, although my guy only had decent stats...good job he wasn't uber or anything!

[Jxrc]

12. As soon as the battle start, you discover that you are in front of big catapult. Seconds later, your general is found having a long nap under a very big rock. His head is missing too.
13. During a siege you've only need to kill the enemy general. Will waiting that your five hundred spearmen manage to pull him off his horse, your general is killed by an arrow fired by one of the tower.
14. Enemy generals with "weak principles" v&v now always refuse your bribes and become men of principles.
15. An earthquacke/floods just happen to destroy your chapter house as soon as you've launched a crusade or produced a few crusade markers.
16. Each sea next to your king becomes a new Bermuda triangle. Any ship staying there to connect your king with the rest of your empire misteriously disappear.
17. One of your king lives until he is 75. His heir who has been married when he was 16 gets cronwed at 49 but has now heir of his own. He dies as soon as he becomes 51.

[Ironsword]

18. The computer kills off your King when your heir is only 14yrs old.

19. Rhodes is invaded and your King resides there, so you try to draft in troops from all over your empire to protect it. The problem is you can't squeeze them all on the tiny $%*&! landmass and lose. Horribly.

20. You've been playing for a while and there are only two powers left, you and the papacy. You begin to gear up for war when a message pops up; The papacy has claimed the lesser victory of 60 territories - You Lose chump.

[nara shikamaru]

18. The computer kills off your King when your heir is only 14yrs old.

19. Rhodes is invaded and your King resides there, so you try to draft in troops from all over your empire to protect it. The problem is you can't squeeze them all on the tiny $%*&! landmass and lose. Horribly.

20. You've been playing for a while and there are only two powers left, you and the papacy. You begin to gear up for war when a message pops up; The papacy has claimed the lesser victory of 60 territories - You Lose chump.

Speaking of number 18 Ironsword, I remember a campaign as the Danish were the French had a an empire stretching from northern Spain thru france, England, and into Germany, were the French Monarch had no heirs of age. Now I notice this only because I use the -ian thing to see how other factions are doing, and see he has an heir at 5 years of age. Later when I check again the heir is now 15, and I thought my ally to stay for another generation. Well I was wrong, end turn, the French king dies before his son came of age, and the whole French empire became rebels.

[Caerfanan]

19. Rhodes is invaded and your King resides there, so you try to draft in troops from all over your empire to protect it. The problem is you can't squeeze them all on the tiny $%*&! landmass and lose. Horribly.

I feel the pain!

On a more serious notre I "discovered" that pressing X or Z allows you to be shown only allies/only enemies, or agents/no agents. YOu can then pile more troops in Rhodes! :-)

[caravel]

21. You were in the middle of fighting a continous series of epic battles against the mongols, the whole lot lasting around 2 hours when this little gem shows up:

Medieval_TW.exe has performed an illegal operation and will close.

If you were working on anything then congratulations you've lost the whole bloody lot!

[Heidrek]

Can the AI actually claim a lesser victory for having 60%? I've always wondered about this.

22. Your uberstack of 13 level 3 ships with a 5* commander is completely destroyed by a storm in the altantic. Conicidentally, the 3 other nations ships in the same region are unharmed.

23. An earthquake in Brittany destroys your recently completed Fortress. You now have to strat from scratch with a Fort.

24. Every time you move a good general out of a province, the AI happens to move every available unit on the borders into the province. It's like it knows or something.

25. Your 8 influence king still seems to produce only 1 or 0 star heirs that are all Lazy and Often Drunk.

26. Your provinces suffer loyalist and peasant revolts in sucessive turns despite having over 120 loyalty and 0% chance of rebellion (this actually happened to me).

27. every time you are 1 turn away from completing a Fortress, Cathedral or Master Weaponsmith, that province gets invaded by an overwhelming force - of your allies.

28. Whenever you give a command boosting title to one of your generals, he magically aquires Pride or Often Drunk.

29. every time you try and reload the quicksave of a crucial battle you get a CTD error with no message, but a strange chuckle comes out the speaker. Your last Autosave was 5 years ago, just before your king dies and 3 factions reemerged on your borders.

30. All of your missile units manage to miss enemy troops but hit any friendly ones nearby. Your own artillery causes your general to break, despite being outside the blast radius and sparks a mass rout.

31. While chasing down fleeing archers, your Royal Knight general manages to die despite the rest of his unit remaining intact. You're troops Rout in response. When replaying the battle, your general seems to be killed first in any engagement and if you dont use him at all, he Routs as soon as you get the "The enemy are fleeing the field" message earning him Good Runner, Alcoholic and Coward.

[Kaidonni]

32. No matter what, whoever you make governor of a particular province becomes inbred to the extreme. You fire each guy, but the next guy just ends up the same.

33. Your governor's are meant to get vices from sitting around for too long in any one province. So you decide to move them around each turn - and they magically get the vices you're trying to avoid. You start another game, leave them alone each turn, and they also magically get the vices.

[Caerfanan]

26. Your provinces suffer loyalist and peasant revolts in sucessive turns despite having over 120 loyalty and 0% chance of rebellion (this actually happened to me).

Not sure about this, but I think that loyalty varies during the council when you are regarding a province which you siege or something. I've notices the color coding about loyalty turn to red, than back to green when you assault a castle (and autocal the battle)

34. One stupid two provinces "empire" attack one of your boat and sinks it when your building your trade routes. Your King is isolated on an Island, and you face thus 4 reappearances at once. Plus a Jihad. Plus a Crusade.

[Kaidonni]

Yeah...I've noticed it too. If you change to assaulting a castle, the loyalty in a province jumps up massively. It can make a big different. You could face revolts while waiting out the garrison, but be well into the green if deciding to assault.

[Ravencroft]

35. You're playing along as the Almos/Eggy/Turks when, wonder of all wonders, the Pope decides to call a crusade vs. you, and every Catholic faction starts a crusade against you.

36. While tinkering with the unit desc file, you forget to add a quotation mark so you can't start your game!

[Kaidonni]

36. While tinkering with the unit desc file, you forget to add a quotation mark so you can't start your game!

37. While tinkering with the unit_prod.txt files, you add Horse Archers to the unit roster of the Serbians in High XL. But you can't start the game now. You undo the work, even copying and pasting the backed-up .txt file without the modifications present, AND YOU STILL CAN'T START THE GAME!

[Ravencroft]

Whoa, that's very bad...

[Kaidonni]

Yeah...the example was specific because it's exactly what happened to me. I was incensed that the Serbs in XL didn't get Horse Archers on their recruitment roster in High (they get them in Early and Late, but not in High...). Tried to remedy it. Of course, it could be that, using the .txt format, and not opening it in Excel, led me to make an error I might not have otherwise made...but when XL wouldn't start up properly after I placed the original file back...

[Heidrek]

I had that unhappiness problem again yesterday. For no reason I can think of all my provinces suffered a huge drop in happiness. There was no obvious cause - no death of the king, no global event, no loss of territories - nothing.

It's like suddenly a flock of enemy spies just descended on each and every province, but only for one turn. The next turn evrything went back to normal....weird.

[Ironside]

I had that unhappiness problem again yesterday. For no reason I can think of all my provinces suffered a huge drop in happiness. There was no obvious cause - no death of the king, no global event, no loss of territories - nothing.

It's like suddenly a flock of enemy spies just descended on each and every province, but only for one turn. The next turn evrything went back to normal....weird.

That's called attacking with your king (there's a loyalty bug there). Or if you can actually see the loyalty drop, your naval network went broken.


38. When your best general beats back a storming in an epic battle, only to die next turn due to the castle falling due to starvation.

39. When the games decide to produce Mongolian Muslim highlander clansmen in Georgia in rebellions.
As the game doesn't like doing that, it will feel like it has hanged up before something happens.

[Jxrc]

40. You send a crusade from Malta, Palestine, Leon or Prussia to get the valour bonus for knights. All your crusades are of course made exclusvely of fanatics and order foot solidiers ...
41. You've wiped a faction and been careful to maintain a minimum loyalty level of 120. Next turn your governor gets a nasty V&v and you get a faction resurgence.

[Heidrek]

Does having your trade network interupted affect you happiness? I did notice that Britain was cut off from mainland europe at the time....and whats the deal with your king? If he attacks your provinces get angry?

I seem to be having a bit of trouble with this stuff at the moment. I've just started a VI campaign as the Irish and I've had 2 civil wars already and I've only just started invading mainland britain!

[naut]

[Spongie]

I've just started a VI campaign as the Irish and I've had 2 civil wars already and I've only just started invading mainland britain!

Maybe it's historic accuracy? Yup, that's the Irish all right

[macsen rufus]

I did notice that Britain was cut off from mainland europe

Get a sense of persepctive, Heidrek, what you meant to say was:

"I did notice that europe was cut off from mainland Britain"

But yes, if your sea lanes are blockaded it effectively cuts the lines of communication from your king to your provinces across the water, and loyalty is very dependent on the distance (or rather travelling time) of the king to the province. A sea blockade can be very very bad as it cuts the king off from a lot of provinces at once - this always has to be a major consideration when starting wars with a naval power. I usually make sure Britain in particular is well garrisoned and able to look after itself in terms of maintaining loyalty, as you never know when Europe may be isolated

Getting your king stuck on an island with no port is one of the most challenging situations of all.... and as has been mentioned above, a king going on an attack also "cuts him off" from the empire at large. Ideally your king should sit in the middle of your empire so his travelling time all round is fairly even, but certainly moving him from one end to the other will have noticeable effects on loyalty at either end. Otherwise, if you have good naval supremacy he can sit in a port province, and have a good "reach" across the empire by sea, but this is vulnerable when new wars start

[Knight of the Rose]

42. You engage in a war against a foe. You share roughly 20 sealanes, and you both have a lot of ships in them. For the next 29 turn NO naval combat whatsoever will occur and you never have a chance to reestablish you trade network. Subsequently you go broke.

[Ironside]

Does having your trade network interupted affect you happiness? I did notice that Britain was cut off from mainland europe at the time....and whats the deal with your king? If he attacks your provinces get angry?

I seem to be having a bit of trouble with this stuff at the moment. I've just started a VI campaign as the Irish and I've had 2 civil wars already and I've only just started invading mainland britain!

There's a factor that gets more influence the larger your empire gets and it's "distance to the king". It basically says that the longer it will take to reach a province from your king's position the lower the loyalty in that province will be. As you can guess, the navy is basically the only way to keep this distance short in a large empire. This is why central Europe is unruly in a large empire for example.

Attacking with your king sets that to it's maximum distance and has the same effect as putting your king on an island without a navy connection.

44 (we have 2 nr 12 and 13).
Your king is very, very fertile and gets plenty of children, all princesses... His tenth child is a son, which the king gets at the age of 43 and you play v2.0 with the 56 year bug...

45. After 200 years of breeding, the king's firstborn matures at the same turn the king dies, making all of the king's brothers into generals. The hier turns out to be the worst king in history.

[Caerfanan]

42. You engage in a war against a foe. You share roughly 20 sealanes, and you both have a lot of ships in them. For the next 29 turn NO naval combat whatsoever will occur and you never have a chance to reestablish you trade network. Subsequently you go broke.

That's why I hate caravels. I tend not to build them. Too slow...