How do I run in battle?

[Brandy Blue]

There was a whole thread on the subject of exploits, if anyone could figure out how to dig it out. Here are the ones I can think of:

1: the AI does not know how to exploit trade. So using it too much gives you an unfair cash advantage.
2: The AI cannot hire mercinaries. I only hire them if there is a cool unit I really want, and then I send it to my captiol as an honor guard unit and don't let it fight. Mercinaries can give you a huge unfair advantage.
3: The AI cannot disband troops or destroy buildings for profit, except it can destroy buildings when it takes a castle in the same way your troops do. It cannot intelligently eliminate buildings for cash later on
4: The AI cannot choose to dismount troops before battle
5: The AI can use inquisitors, crusades and jihads, but not nearly as well as a player can, so most veteran players use these items with restraint
6: The AI doesn't really have the hang of using weapon/armor upgrade buildings. I think it sometimes builds them if needed to get a particular troop type, but not simply to improve troops. Something like that. I don't really remember.
7: The AI cannot farm rebels (cause rebellions on purpose either to give generals and troops practice or for profit from confiscated estates)
8: The AI is not much good at getting a killer unit and spamming it. Some would say that you should train and use really fine units (like Janissaries, Varangian Guard, etc.) with restraint.
9: I don't think the AI can merge or retrain units.

[gollum]

Nice list BB; some comments on it:

1. Existent but overestimated in my opinion. The reason for this is that the advantage is temporary. Of course it can make quite a difference by kickstarting a faction to a local power - however after that, once other factions have also strong navies, it simply becomes a drain on the treasury and a necesasry one in order to guard from invasions. Even after the player becomes really big, navies do not add to his wealth - even when sea lanes are open there are few ports to trade with most of the time. However, navies are required to make felt the king's presence across a superstate.
2. An absolute killer for the AI. Mercenaries needed to be very few, select local units (Alans in Khazar, Armenians in Armenia etc) having common units as mercs in relativey large numbers is a superexploit for the player.
3. Another killer. It can be tackled in three ways: one is not to raid. Two by hardcoded means to allow only autoraze. Three by spreading hapiness bonuses and fixed income over the many buildings of the building roster, so that the player actually loses more time and money by razing than by keeping. However, even then it is still a potent exploit.
4. Another biggy. Fun but crap for gameplay. You can win the camp as a catholic by making only chiv knights and use half of them or so dismounted. SOlution is take out the dismounting and make the dismounted units available for training.
5. Crusades are ok - the main reason they hurt the AI is that he overuses them and oversuffers the influence penalty that comes with a failed crusade. Switching faction personaities for catholics from the CRUSADER personalities, goes quite some way to alleviate that. Jihads however acn be spammed and win infinite influence to an exploiting Muslim ruler. Only by iron man rules or hardcoded means can this be sorted. This is because only one active crusade per faction is allowed, while multiple active jihads per faction are actually allowed.
6. Somewhat disagree with this. Its true however that the player can be far more methodical and consistent in that.
7. Although an exploit it comes with a battle and some risk - so, as long as rebel forces can be sorted to somewhat decent via modding could be ok.
8. Absolutely. JHI and varangians in particular are way way too good. varangians all the more because they can be very early and widely available. With half decent tactics they can win you any battle against any foe if in decent numbers (generally tree units and above).
9. The Ai can't retrain units but that's ok because the player is wasting a turn to build a fraction of the unit he retrains when he could be training a new one and get more men for the same time. That's because unlike in RTW/M2, there is only one retraining slot.
The only thing that disadvantages teh AI is that the player can keep his royal family and line alive by retraining hair units. However the battle AI somehow compensates for that with the clever addition of withdrawal of very small units in long battles - especially general units.
The Ai can and does merge units, because his stacks are autosorted ie they are put together and in that action depleted units do merge. Not in the most intelligent or fruitful manner of course, but better than being pittiful remnants like in STW sometimes.

[caravel]

Nice list BB; some comments on it:

1. Existent but overestimated in my opinion. The reason for this is that the advantage is temporary. Of course it can make quite a difference by kickstarting a faction to a local power - however after that, once other factions have also strong navies, it simply becomes a drain on the treasury and a necesasry one in order to guard from invasions. Even after the player becomes really big, navies do not add to his wealth - even when sea lanes are open there are few ports to trade with most of the time. However, navies are required to make felt the king's presence across a superstate.

Not at all overestimated, think about it. It's actually one of the biggest exploits of the game. If you are playing as a faction that has a strong trading base, i.e. Egyptians, Turks, Byzantines, it's possible to have the game won and ships in pretty much every sea region on the map well before the end of Early and before the AI has even gotten started trading. The AI's trading capacity is pathetic due to it's inability to build soild trade routes. Ships clumped together in one sea, or scattered about individually far from home and serving new purpose, is not a "trade route". The AI simply cannot manage trade in the way the player can, which is why maritime trade is a huge exploit, even when tweaked. The player can rake in millions of florins trading, the AI rarely ever gets off the ground.

I still hold by my theory that the AI "trades by accident". Certain in game factors see ports, traders and ships build, then ships just end up in the right places now and again causing trade to occur for a time. There is never a constant level income from trade for the AI. When the AI has money it spends it on building training, once the trade routs are cut off - which doesn't take long - the AI quickly goes into the red due to sky high support costs from units it cannot disband.

6. Somewhat disagree with this. Its true however that the player can be far more methodical and consistent in that.

BB is right about this in fact. The AI could be tweaked to want to build the armourers more, but in general it doesn't build them for the upgrades but because it wants to build units that depend on them. The AI also fails to selectively armour up the correct provinces and thus optimise the application of armour upgrades to the most desirable units.

9. The Ai can't retrain units but that's ok because the player is wasting a turn to build a fraction of the unit he retrains when he could be training a new one and get more men for the same time. That's because unlike in RTW/M2, there is only one retraining slot.
The only thing that disadvantages teh AI is that the player can keep his royal family and line alive by retraining hair units. However the battle AI somehow compensates for that with the clever addition of withdrawal of very small units in long battles - especially general units.
The Ai can and does merge units, because his stacks are autosorted ie they are put together and in that action depleted units do merge. Not in the most intelligent or fruitful manner of course, but better than being pittiful remnants like in STW sometimes.

AI unit merging is indeed the result of auto-merging. If you leave "tidy up units after battle" enabled, you will be on a more even footing with the AI.

[Gaiseric]

Thanks for the pointers!!! It might be very hard and sometimes counter intuitive, but I will try my best to avoid these AI exploits. The more I know about how and why the AI does things in MTW, the more I can try to equal the playing field. My ultimate goal in every game is world conquest, but it is so much more fun if the game is challenging. That is actually why I have come back to MTW. The AI, despite its flaws in this game, seems to be the most competent and offers the best challenge. You can give the AI unlimited funds in RTW and M2TW so that it can build 100 stacks, but it is very very sad that it does not know what to do with them. Most will wander around the 3D campaign map aimlessly. In MTW, AI Stacks are confined to provinces. They reinforce each other well and guarantee epic battles. If you do not exploit the AI, the battles will be even more epic!!!

Sorry to go off topic here, but I got a quick question: Do agents in MTW cost any upkeep? (I am on a tight budget) I dont intend to spam them to exploit the AI. I need them to bring up the loyalty and religion in my newly conquered territories. This too may be an exploit. In the few games I have played, I have seen the AI have a lot of trouble keeping peace in territories that they take. They can take the territory ok, they just move too much of their army away from it before it is totally loyal. The province then rebels and defeats the tiny garrison, and then the AI has to take it back....rinse, repeat.

[gollum]

I am pretty certain that agents are free of upkeep. In addition they don't die of natural causes - ie unless eliminated by other agents or forts.

[Ironside]

For fixing trading, there's two fairly easy ways. One is to reduce the trade goods or their value, the other is to increase the import income.
Unmodded the AI earn 20% of your trade income, but you can easily make that 50-100% in the text files. The plus is that you can still trade as normal, thus not worrying about money after setting the network up. Downside doing this is that wars hurt the AI really, really bad. They don't have a stash (give them a huge stash and they'll start to bribe) and can't disband troops. But they'll have larger armies at the start of the war.

Also adding the dimounted unit to the building rooster is simply to add buildings for it. The AI will catch on (hey, what are you doing with that stack of dismounted chivalric knights?)

And unomodded you also have the AI building way too much peasants. I count that as a bug. That they are even overcounted in autocalc, while still being lousy there, doesn't make it better. I've lost a battle with 4000 of my peasant/UM army (jihad spam leftovers) vs 600 steppe cav rabble in normal battle. Auto calc woud've given me a huge victory).
Add the muster field from VI or make them unbuildable.

The AI doesn't use spies for framing your own generals to get the loyalty boost, exposing vices or opening sieges either.

[gollum]

Actually, Ironside's comment suggests that perhaps banning emissaries may be a good idea. In a triple blow it would disallow the bribing spree by AI factions, make assaulting castles a necessity for the player in order to capture castles and their facilities intact (in 2.1 there is no autorazing between AI factions, this was hardcoded in to increase the challenge for the player, i guess), increase the importance of princesses and make it more difficult for the player to optimize output and get rid of disloyal vassals by re-distributing titles. Bishops would also gain in importance, as they should - that's actually a really good idea...! Thanks Ironside

I think there would be little point to set the earning more than 50% for the trader - considering that he has to spend the resources and time to build a trade network. This appraoch can have good results, however, if one plays somewhat restrained in order to keep the peace, the AI factions will also build up trading fleets and the player would now be getting 50% from their effort. If he has many ports he may be getting even more than what the measure otherwise saves, especially in the long run.

Another possible tweak that can be applied seperately or in combination with the aforementioned evening of earning rate is to decrease the trade value of goods. This means that the player can make much much smaller profits, that although still count, decrease the advantage he gets. However, AI trade of course suffers too that effect.

One more potential tweak is to spread more even the rich trade provinces. Obviously, places like Venice, Const., Egypt, Cordoba, Antioch, Flanders should be trading centers and rich in agricultural output, but some of the goods and agri. income can be shared with other provinces that have no goods and meager agri. income.

Another way to deal with the trade "problem" is to reduce the maintencance of boats to nil. The AI seems to be treating them like agents, and that would be consistent with their use. In this case however, all the subtleties of making a profit out of the goods of your lands would dissapear - there would be no long term cost to naval network, neither a reason to conquer stratigic provinces that would allow you to cut your shipping costs significantly. In addition, if memory serves, there is the danger of the AI overproducing ships if cost nil to maintain.

The most radical of ways to "fix" the "trade exploit" is to remove navies altogether and connect all islands with landbridges to the mainland. This is an appraoch that has indisputable advantages - more resources avilable to the AI to be better spent on teching and armies, and Ai factions being freed from suffering civil wars that would result from the silly AI "invasions of Ireland" etc that happen just because the opportunity exists and the AI does typically with his King. Long story short, the port is raided in the invasion and the King is isolated from his sprawling Kingdom that suffers a devastated civil war - bye bye challenge. The Ai would also be saved from the fleet maintanance weight that he can't shake off and oftentime prove the undoing of AI factions that have been going naval - this can also be exploited by the player in a strategic fashion; if say the Hungarians have been making themselves felt on the seas and you have the chance to take on Serbia and Croatia and/or whatever other sea provinces they have, just conquer them and watch Hungary drown under the financial weight, with little margin to increase its land armies, to have good cash flows and so be able to replenish their losses in battle. Trade could still play a part without navies, by increasing a lot the value of trade goods. In this way, the fixed income from the trader for land trade would increase and still rich trade provinces would benefit the most and actually continuously.

However for a 1000+1 reasons* (as i said elsewhere we have exhausted this line of arguments with Caravel), and despite fully and really understanding his side of the argument, i personally prefer playing with the navies and naval trade on at the end of the day - although admittedly they both do require tweaking to cut the margin of the exploit for the player.

Finally, there is something to be said about the AI personalities. The maritime oriented AI personalities for factions, make them overspent in making navies and this becomes a choking hold on their financies (the maintenance costs), as the AI can't disband. it would be ideal for the AI if factions that are in the red autodisbanded their ships at once and then gradually their armies - however, this is a pipe dream as such a feature would require new code. Its even worse when the AI factions have no ports left, or even without that, because the AI is known to use ships for reconaissance, or to disrupt enemy naval networks that entails long distances from home ports of large stacks of navies, which of course means huge maintenance costs. Such personalities, are (from memory), the CATHOLIC CRUSADER TRADER, CATHOLIC TRADER, CATHOLIC NAVAL EXPANSIONIST (probably the worst of the lot).

In addition the AI religious personalities. (MUSLIM DEVOUT, CATHOLIC CRUSADER of various types) and also the EXPANSIONIST attribute are as well to be avoided; the fisrt make the AI go overboard with Crusades and Jihads, typically failing and suffering the infuelce penalty or perhaps worse(?) succeding and being stuck with large maintenance costs in some God foresaken faroff provinces that prevent him from doing anything where it matters: at home; with the second the AI spends very little time in teching and reaches forth to grab land constantly. This drains both, the faction that attacks as well as those that are targets of its aggression, and the player can take his time to buildup before taking both of such neibghours out.

The best AI in terms of a balance between teching, defending, and attacking at the right moment, crusading/jihading, naval network production rate and use, is in my oppinion the DEFENSIVE one, for both Christians and Muslims (ORTHODOX DEFENSIVE, CATHOLIC DEFENSIVE, MUSLIM PEACEFUL). However, it should be borne in mind that this obseravtion applies for the long run ie it presupposes that a faction does have the time and funds to set up before it is majorly attacked. Say for example, putting the Turks in early to PEACEFUL, will only make them go steppe wise (to take the rebels out if/once Georgia rebels), while its clear that their position isn't stable and that they should take over either the Egyptians, or Byzantium or both instead of teching up - it would be the Byzantines or the Egyptians that would simply have better castles once they conquer their provinces. Similarly, very small factions that lack the funds to develop, like the Aragonese and the Danes, are not going to do much with DEFENSIVE under the AI.

One way to deal with this problem, is to set up the initial conditions with enough rebels between factions and directions to expand at the start. One such possible set up could be to say, in Spain, give Leon to the Rebels or, alternitavely, give Valencia or Navarre to the Aragonese, with the first option being much better for me - both in terms fo gameplay and historical plausibility (accuracy is out of the question anyway). In addition, make Cordoba and Granada strong rebels to represent the taifa kingdoms. In this way, the situation in Spain would develop more gradually and so be far less predictable. It would depend on what the Almos and the Spanish kingdoms built and also there would be more targets for both sides to expand, bringing the Aragonese in as a real player as the AI, while maintaining them as a challenge to play for the player. The Castilan Spanish would also be far less overpowered than they are in vanilla - as they will start with less resources and be in a more equal footing with their Aragonese competitors.

Another Example is Anatolia and the Middle East. The Byzantines can be confined into continental Europe, with Nicaea and Trebizond set as rebels. The Turks, can be given the lands of the beydoms that would later form the Sultanate of Rum/Konya, rather than give them all the lands of the Seljuk Empire, that historically covered all land from Nicaea and Trebizond (the province), to Syria, Bahgdad, Antioch and Tripoli. So they can have Anatolia, Rum, Armenia. Lesser Armenia, Antioch, Syria, Tripoli, Edessa can be given to the rebels (with significant - but not huge - strength), and the Egyptians can have Jerusalem, Arabia, Sinai and Egypt.

Again with such an arrangement, factions can have time to build up (typically, even if one doesn't use mercs, the Egyptians can be overrun by the Turks if played somewhat boldly at the start, and the same is for other factions across the board), and there is more room for play and counterplay as opponents try to grab the rebel lands before they come into contact and finally conflict.

In addition, starting forces should be quite small, both for leaving financial space to the AI at start, and for requiring some buildup before going to war (again discouraging blitzing at the onset).

Factions that start out too small, like the Novgorodians and the Danes for the AI to be able to do anything with them could be given something more in order to make them easier for the AI, but not as much as to take out the challenge they present for the player - although inevitably some of that will be gone, essentially what i am proposing with this, is evening out the starting situation of factions.

Other such examples would be: making the Novgorodians, the Kievans, that would give them more sensible expansion options, more starting money, and will stop the Byzantines from taking it into the steppes too early; Turning the Italians into the Venetians with only Venice or Venice and Milan under their control and making the other Italian city states provinces pretty strong rebels; Giving to the HRE only the core German provinces (Franconia, Bavaria, Austria, Bohemia, Bradenbourg, Swabia, Switzerland, Tyrolia, Frisiland, Saxony), and leaving Provence, Burgundy and Lorraine for competion between them and the French, the Italians, the Aragonese, or whoever else may land there at a later date; reducing the French kingdom to its historical extent in early, ie Ile de France, Champagne (with Flanders optionally French or a strong rebel to be competed for between the French, the English and the Germans) and with Aquitaine, Toulouse, Brittany and Anjoy as relatively strong rebels; England being given Mercia, Essex, Nurthumbria and Normandy plus a single navy to connect them across the channel; Sicily could be given straight out Naples - as an Orthodox province. I think that Poland and Hungary are ok in the set up - only Wallachia and Moldavia need to be stronger (steppe like to represent the Pechenegs) rebels, as well as set to Pagan (in vanilla they are Orthodox). They would be competed between the Byzantines, the Hungarians and the Russian Kievans; finally the Danes can be given either Sweden right off the bat, or simply starting with 2 boats and 2/3 Vikings (to saturate the profits and "push" the AI to invade) and making Vikings buildable from the swordsmith, in order to counter the overeffective blitzing that their availability allows to the player - that would enable them to quickly invade somewhere as the AI (or player), with all the opportunities and risks that this entails, but then they would have to undergo a period of trial to establish themselves.

Along such lines, i would set all factions to DEFENSIVE. The key then, would be to tweak the rebels (that is the quantity and quality of their forces) such that they remain as possible challenges (both if played - as the player - or autocalced - as the AI), with an associated risk however (making oneself vulnerable at the home province that contains all the buildings, or making onerself vulnerable in the newly conquered provinces by a neibghour that exploits the weakness of the invader after suffering losses or facing a rebelion from a weak hold onto the newly conquered province). Removing the relatively high happiness bonus from the watchtowers and border forts and introducing the same more gradually for every level of castle build would go a long way to make rapid expansion even more difficult for the player and add to the DEFENSIVE AI in terms of gameplay.

This idea (the idea of space) exists in nearly all strategy games, including chess. At the beginning of a chess game both sides struggle to develop as effectively as they can in order to obtain the centre (the high ground/rich province), by grabbing the space that separates the two sides. Rebel factions in between playable factions would act as empty squares do in the chess board, and they do act in this way in M2TW. However, MTW has an advantage over that game, that of province rebelions of weakly held provinces and of faction reapperances, that creates a far more fluid and interesting game progression by accentuating the risk in a newly conquered province - if you wait too little you may be beaten by the rebels and held back in development; if you wait just enough you are opening yourself to a counter or are risking a rebellion; if you wait too much you may find that someone else got the province and perhaps you can counter attack them while they are week at the risk of stifling your finances for quite some time and falling back in development that would disadvantage you against perhaps your third neighbour (hence its best for three factions to compete over an area - directly or indirectly, that is three with rebel provinces amidst the three, or three set in a way of fact1-rebels-fact2-rebels-fact3). In that last case, the shifts in the balance of power would provide for interesting and challenging battles.

The next stage would be to determine with playtesting, by both using the autorun function and also by actual playtesting that most local challenges resolve at about the same time in all areas. If some resolve too quickly, then the faction that comes on top is too easy to play as it can overpower its second next neighbours and become a superpower. This is clearly not the best turn of events for the game remaining challenging in the long run, and for making all factions interesting to play. There should be a margin for unpredictability so that various factions from an area can come on top, but the struggle should be resolvable within some time, else the factions remain in the loop of local competition as other factions rise from other places to local powers. Of course this latter turn of events would still be possible, but even then the game would be better if a local power, say a relatively strong France that has set up itself in its native area, has to deal with decent size Kingdoms in, say, Spain (its usual expansion ground). I mean say having to deal with the Castilan Spanish holding say Leon, Castile and Cordoba and the Aragonese say Valencia, Aragon and Toulouse or something to that effect.

Anyway, these are some ideas i've tried over the years with varied degrees of suceess in my home mods.

*Some of these reasons are:
a) when a campaign is dynamic with many powers vying for supremacy, then the exploit is insignificant past the initial stage of the game, even for factions like the Egyptians, the Byzantines and the Italians. I have played Egypt many times, and not in one of them did i manage to make "millions", no matter how peacefully i played - at most above 100k total over the initial periods of peace. Once war starts with the catholic world (through a crusade or otherwise), the usual trading targets in the Adriatic, Sicily, Tyrrhenian sea and Genoa are blocked or outright don't trade. The only time that trade does matter and give a huge advantage for these and other factions is while setting up. The Danes and the Almohads can and do make a kickstart in this way to become a local and then a superpower. While this is of course a significant event, in the long run, navies become a necessary evil, rather than an exploit. If you add fleet costs (training, maintenance, training time that is spent on fleets and so detracts from building armies that could be getting you more land etc) and trade income in the long run of a long campaign, you'll be surprised to find that they aren't as many as you make them Caravel. This can be all the more countered if other aspects of the game are optimized for the AI, enabling AI factions to be more stable and so provide naval competition.

b) While its true that several AI naval invasions are not sensible, and some others are outright catastrophic, it is also true that quite a few others are valid or even desirable as strategic options. Invading the Holy Land, or Egypt via the sea lanes in an entirely realistic and challenging eventuality that is rendered impossible if navies are made redundant. There are many examples from the medieval times of Kingdoms being literally carved out of vanal invasions - or anyway attempted. There would be no possibility for the Sicilians to invade the Balkans. The Rus' to invest Constantinople etc. I think that having the possibility to make and guarding against naval invasions strategically makes the game better in terms of gameplay.

c) Its absolutely true that a faction that has lost its ports and provinces (say to a civil war) is left with a choking meintenance cost by a large navy (such a typical case is the Sicilians in vanilla that are set to NAVAL EXPANSIONIST). However, if the player plays without disbanding, he is also subject to the financial weight that it entails - maybe not all players play without disbanding but i do and i know that you too do Caravel. of course the player can manage it better - but so can he all the rest - with that logic there is no point to play the game, at least in SP.