AI Suggestion: Shorter Wars

[artaxerxes]

If I should point to THE element that still makes EB and RTW look ahistorical - the ONE thing in all the wondrous historical accuracy that convinces you that its still a game and not an actual time capsule - it is THIS: when two factions have each become great powers - let's say Bactria has usurped Pahlava and India and Seleukeia has pacified Asia Minor and the Ptolemies - it is ONLY a matter of time before a devastating war begins - and this war - faithful to the name of the series (Total War) - usually lasts till one of the combatants is completely torn apart and probably annihilated...

How historical is that? My suggestion - which would alter the way the AI plays quite much and would thus probably offend a lot of players who like the total wars (perhaps this could then be selected from the setup menu as a distinct possibility) - is an AI that, when it seems to be losing (i.e. it has lost a certain percent of its territory - for small factions this would be like 1 settlement and for large ones perhaps 3-5 + that the strength of the nearby enemy armies is superior to the strength of whatever troops it might be able to send to the rescue of the lost towns) it tries to surrender - and, in order to emulate the usual actions of a defeated king in real history, it offers, as well as ceasefire, a respectable sum of money and perhaps trade rights. In some situations, it may also surrender an outlying settlement to the victor (something the current AI is completely unable to do, holding on to each settlement with a kamikaze fanaticism as it does).
On the other hand if an AI is victorious - i.e. it defeats all nearby enemy armies or outnumbers them vastly and it takes a couple of settlements from the enemy - well, as EB and RTW is now, it continus the attack till the enemies are completely destroyed (taking the above example, if Bactria wins, it continues its triumph all the way to the shores of Asia Minor, even if Bactria wasn't the aggressor and really rather wanted to expand in a whole other direction). But how realistic is that (unless we're talking Romans, who should really continue to act that way )? Usually, in the wars between Seleucids and Ptolemies, or even the Punic Wars, the victor would, after having secured himself those enemy lands that he wanted, make peace with the enemy and demand a sum of money and perhaps more lands - but he wouldn't fight all the way to the end of the world.
So if Bactria wins against the Seleucids, my suggestion is that, if they're both AI's, Bactria will perhaps stop after taking five settlements and then offer peace at the price of a sixth settlement and a great sum of money. The Seleucids then decline, and the war goes on. The Seleucids lose two more setllements and then offer peace at a greater sum of money, and Bactria, who didn't want to conquer EVERYTHING ON THE MAP, but rather just wanted a slight expansion into the Iranian lands, accepts...

I know this will be HELL DIFFICULT TO DO, but if it is possible it would really make it easier for small states to survive the onslaught of the big and ensure a more realistic campaign - I know the Roman empire got big, but those kinda empires weren't that ordinary - yet in EB every game ends with 4 or 5 MASSIVE empires and no small states in between at all ;/

Even if it could be done, of course, a lot of players would prolly prefer the old settings, since a superpower AI is more challenging than a peace-loving one, and since the name of the game IS total war, after all. But if an AI as described above was possible, it would really enhance my playing experience, since I'd rather manage a medium-sized empire and fool myself that I'm really a middle-eastern monarch, who just wants to increase his borders a little here and there, but who's otherwise satisfied at developing HIS lands instead of taking everybody elses, than I'd go on a killing-spree wrecking everything with no thoughts of every stopping to stabilize my lands as if I was a hellenistic Genghis Khan. And when I try to live in peace, a handful of foreign lands of course grow into each their Megas Alexandros-sized empires and start crushing me with their boulders. Again, I know that Rome was big, but it was also alone - there wasn't a Germanic and a Hellenistic empire of the same size next to it, no, there were a lot of smaller states, cos smaller states normally prevailed in the history of the old world...

hope this suggestion is useful

[Intrepid Adventurer]

Excellent idea and I think in some ways this can be scripted. However, I fear most of the AI behavior is hardcoded, is it not? That would severely limit the possibilities. Plus, I assume the EB team would already have incorporated this behavior if it had been at all possible. I could be wrong, though.

[Lusted]

Campaign AI is moddable to quite an extent in Medieval II, unlike RTW.

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

I agree with you, artaxerxes.
Many small kindoms is both a lot more fun, and more historically accurate, than a couple of swelling blobs, devouring everything and everyone who happens to stand in their way.
It is probably not the easiest thing to implement, if at all possible, but I cincerely hope it will work.

[The General]

I support this proposition, too.

Death to the "Deaths"!

[Ayce]

I support this proposition, too.

Death to the "Deaths"!

But, in that period, there was always 1-2 „Deaths” (like our good friend the SPQR). One of them is certainly the player. But he needs a challenger, so I suggest keeping one faction at random at the start of the game with a total war AI. (maybe random between an „expansionist freak” and a „strong big regional power” type of AI)

[artaxerxes]

I'm glad you agree (I was utterly convinced that war-loving people would flame my idea to death;) - not that I don't like the occasional world war, but it just doesn't feel so realistic).

I guess, in retrospect, that it's too late to implement this in EB2 (I don't know ANYTHING about programming, but I guess its a fundamental change that you ought to do at the beginning of a project - though I might be wrong). But I wanted to suggest it, cos' sometimes you don't want to "create the great Roman empire" or "restore Alexander's empire" or "conquer all as the Pahlava" - sometimes you want to try and be Pontus - and NOT expand beyond your natural barriers, but rather try how it must have been being an actual king of Pontus, whose chief concerns lay with neighbouring provinces, and not with globe-spanning empires. But every time you try this, you end up getting swallowed by some Galactic Empire-size opponent ;)

Also it feels unrealistic that empires spring up, which contain most of Northern Europe and Russia - and which are stable... even if Barbarian chiefs ever dominated such vast areas, they didn't do it for very long. But the AI builds such an empire, and its infrastructure seems to work as well (in preventing it from falling apart) as that of the great civilisations of the ancient wotld

This is NOT meant as a criticism of the EB team, and all examples of unrealistic AI's are given as humoristic pictures - I hope people understand, that Im not making fun of EB in general, since it isnt the game as such, which is in any way faulty, its rather some delicate features of the AI (and AI's of all games of all ages have always had features which we can only laugh at)

2 reasons why EB team shouldn't think I'm criticizin them: ;)

1) It is a fault of the Total War series and not of EB particularly - had the same problem in Medieval 1, when Spanish and Egyptians (just fx) would each conquer half the world and trash my tiny, esotic Aragonese city state ;)

2) EB has improved the game SO MUCH in SO MANY OTHER WAYS that its quite unbelievable. The addition of most of Asia really had me falling in love - to be able to fight in the ancient lands of Babylonians and Persians - instead of, as in RTW and Medieval 1, just to touch on the western ouskirts of those places - I mean, I LOVE that :) ... And with RTW I NEVER actually felt, that I was back in time - it really disappointed me... EB feels like a time machine - if it wasn't for the

couple of swelling blobs, devouring everything and everyone who happens to stand in their way.

[DefenderofFuture]

I'm under the impression that Lusted is right about this: CA has been making its games progressively easier to mod, and they've publicly stated that Empire is going to be even more so. I don't know exactly how AI coding works, but I'm pretty positive it's a lot easier to change behavior in M2TW than it was in RTW.

[fahrenheit]

This is possible in M2TW if the campaign AI is adjusted right. I have played campaigns where I share Europe with one other large power (which in RTW it would be inevitable until we started fighting) and together we hold Europe till the end of the game.

[General Appo]

Indeed, im my experience alliances are much more likely to hold in MTW2. In my Denmark campaign I stayed allied with Venice for over 400 years, despite sharing borders for over 380 years and leaving my cities bordering them almost undefended, just ´cause I trusted them so much. The fact that we had something like 8 marriage alliances might have helped a bit though.