Why Hayasdan always go for the Steppes?

[Marcus Ulpius]

I've played quite a lot of campaigns and without any exception Hayasdan are always trying to get to the Sauros, and then are getting lost in the endless steppes. They totally neglect the southern direction and that breaks their expansion. They never expand beyond their homeland and spend all the time fighting the Sauros for a couple of nearest steppe towns.

In my current Romani campaign it's already late to do anything, but for the future campaigns, is there way to make them interested in the Persian regions, and go where they actually should go - southwards to revive the Persian Empire?

[penguinking]

The reason Hayasdan always goes for the steppe is that they start out at war the the Saurometae. The AI is programmed to target settlements in roughly this order:

1) provinces of factions they are at war with
2) rebel provinces
3) other provinces

So Hayasdan usually targets Saurometae settlements. As to how to fix this, I can't help very much. I usually just give the Saurometae money to help them fight Hayasdan off, but I've never been able to get Hayasdan to expand southward very much.

[Darius]

The path of least resistance, it's the AI way.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

RTW AI likes to expand north first, then clockwise around their starting position.

[anubis88]

In my current AS campaign Hayasdan got almost destroyed by the Sauromatae, but managed to stay alive, and are now expanding only south and west, leaving the steppes alone. They now attacked sinope and amaseia, and have build for them a pretty decent empire

[Aemilius Paulus]

RTW AI likes to expand north first, then clockwise around their starting position.

Wow, that is fascinating. But how do you know?

[||Lz3||]

Wow, that is fascinating. But how do you know?

Experience?