annoying ai

[polyglot]

I've been playing the total war series ever since Rome, and the campaign ai has been broken in every game thus far except E:TW. Im playing a campaign in vanilla right now, latest patch, as england. i've taken 4 provinces on mainland europe and control the entire british island. I have Caen, Antwerp, Rennes, and the city right next to antwerp, so my map looks like 4 squares right next to each other in Northern europe.

Now, i've been at war every turn with atleast 3 factions. They are Denmark, Scotland (defeated), Portugal, and France. My question is WHY is the AI so eager to make war with you every turn? Even if it just borders you? That doesnt make sense, and i dont really see how I can expand my empire; ill be at war with every faction i border. My campaign as france was *hell* on vh/vh, i was at war with 6 factions at once, and if they ever so slightly shared a border they'd declare war, no matter who it was. I thought it was an issue with difficulty, but i toned it down to h/h as england, and same thing is happening. And I remember it happening on medium as well..

Does anyone know of any ways to get this ai to be more peaceful? or atleast smarter about declaring war? Or any tricks i might know about? Im just really tired of having to fight full stacks sieging a castle, win or lose slightly, then recapture it within the next turn with a 3,000 man army flown in from boats. I'd really like to focus more on empire building, and have war with just one or two people at a time, as thats far more realistic than 3 factions at once whose only similarity is you share the border.

So, again, anyone know of a fix or mods? Or tricks to stop this ai from declaring war just for sharing a border?

[Galain_Ironhide]

Diplomacy was never M2TW vanilla's strong point - nor the other TW titles either. If you are looking for a more balanced game, perhaps try Factionheirs VanillaMod (which is a reworked version of vanilla), I believe he may have worked on diplomacy a bit. Otherwise perhaps check out Stainless Steel, which is a rather large mod but diplomacy is LOT better I have found.

I will provide links a bit later for these later when I get time.

[gollum]

Welcome to the org polyglot, enjoy your stay.

The vanilla Ai's relationship with the player are designed to worsen over time, and this leads to the situations you describe, especially if you play hard and very hard.

However AI parameters are given in data form and various mods have calibrated them, so that AI behaviour is far more reasonable. Some of them are mini-mods, and the have the word AI in their title, just seek them out in the mod section here and in the TW centre. I am pretty certain that you can find something that can suit your playing style more or less eventually.

[Grombeard]

I'm using Lusted's Battle & Campaign AI and i'm quite satisfied with it. I had many long-term alliances with the AI with it and enemies who got beaten up by me now accept peace and may even become vassals, too. The game get's somewhat easier with this though, because you don't have to fear unreasonable backstabs anymore... ;)

If you use it, make sure to read through the first 2 pages or so of the thread and look out for Lusteds posts, because complete installation instructions are scattered over his different posts there. Be sure to edit the ai_label of the muslim factions.

Link: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=138529

[Skyshroud]

I've had MTW2 sitting on the shelf for a while, but only recently had time to play it. I ended up finding these boards because of this exact issue. I'm glad that there is still a decent community going strong to provide advice and I'm looking forward to trying out a mod in my second game.

In my first game on medium as England, the only other empire that I attacked was Scotland. Otherwise I did my best to keep everyone happy - only attacked rebels provinces, built lots of churches & priests, joined whatever crusades I could. Yet one at a time I have been attacked by the ai. I fight back and do well, taking cities & castles and only ever occupying - never pillaging or sacking. I have always been ransoming prisoners. Maybe I should be releasing them for free, but I doubt that explains why each of the following factions attacked me with no provocation:

- France (just killed them about 2 turns ago)
- Holy Roman
- Poland
- Hungary
- Denmark
- Milan
- Portugal
- Russia
- Spain (just took the place of France)
- Byzantine declared but after I bet them in one battle they were asking for peace.

My other neighbour, Venice, has not declared on me, but may be that's because they have given me a regicide mission.

The regicide mission also seems to be broken. Their Leader has a Nosey Mother and Food Taster, which add to security. Yet if that is taken into account when I'm told that my top-notch assassin has a 21% chance of success, do I fail more than 20 times in a row.... I admit I saved & reload on this because I wanted to test how accurate that % was. I assume readers are familiar with probability calculations.... there is a ~1% chance that I would hit the 79% fail 20 times in a row. Hardly a completely robust test but I couldn't be bothered testing 100 or 1000 times and I'm sure discussions here will provide feedback as to whether the "21% chance of success" is the truth or not!

[Skyshroud]

I couldn't find an edit button..... but I wanted to add that I wasn't fighting a war one-at-a-time, but rather one at a time those factions joined the war against me, and now they are all attacking at once. Stoopid! Buuuut based on this thread I'm sure it's happened to many people.

[A Nerd]

I've been using the retrofit mod I think for M2TW. I've found the diplomace to be much more reasonable than in vanilla. Many factions actually have made alliances and honored them for quite such time. I am about 80 turns or so into it and have many alliances and have not been back-stabbed at all. Milan (an ally) shares borders and has several large armies milling about and has not attacked. Though one large stack is in my territory and is just sitting there. Only one blockade declaration of war from Poland. I think that was because I'm assassinating alot of his pieces and was caught a couple of times though. AI has been expanding a little. The Pope isn't too annoying. Some other minor campaign tweeks...quite fun. Playing as HRE by the way.

[Grombeard]

The regicide mission also seems to be broken. Their Leader has a Nosey Mother and Food Taster, which add to security. Yet if that is taken into account when I'm told that my top-notch assassin has a 21% chance of success, do I fail more than 20 times in a row.... I admit I saved & reload on this because I wanted to test how accurate that % was. I assume readers are familiar with probability calculations.... there is a ~1% chance that I would hit the 79% fail 20 times in a row. Hardly a completely robust test but I couldn't be bothered testing 100 or 1000 times and I'm sure discussions here will provide feedback as to whether the "21% chance of success" is the truth or not!

As far as i remember, the calculations about if a mission is successful or not are somehow related to your current game state. So if you just save & reload you will ALWAYS get the same result for this particular action. What i think needs to be done is to just move any other agent or army some tiles and then try again. This somehow changes the calculation and only then will you get a new "roll" for the mission.
I'm not 100% sure about this, however... :)

[Skyshroud]

Well I thought that sounded a bit strange - hardly a good representation of a 21% success rate - but I decided to try it. I moved a couple of random armies a few squares and tried again. Success first time! Weird calculation apparently.... thanks Grombeard.