Let's Discuss Some Game Mechanics

[CaptainCrunch]

Like to get some thoughts about a couple of gameplay mechanics that seem... inappropriate, and bug () the hell out of me. If you're interested, or just bored then please read on. In the first screen we see what I'm certain is a familiar sight after an attempt to coerce an agent away from another faction;

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Now let's discuss specifics and how this feature can negatively affect the intelligence and special operations game-within-the-game. In this particular scenario, I represent Epirus and I'm protecting one of my client states Pontus at their settlement in Sinope. Pontus is at war with Galatia, Armenia and Colchis and have asked me repeatedly to enter the war on their behalf against all 3 of these factions. Pontus has been a long time trade partner and my relations with them have been very good, quick to support me in conflicts against other states and willingly submitted themselves as a client to come under my protection.

Keeping Pontus in the game is very useful to me right now, after I captured Nicomedia from Tyllis they not only served as a buffer state, but also helped keep the balance of Hellenic influence in the province while I developed my settlement. Galatia is growing strong, and they've formed alliances with Rhodes, Cypress and Egypt (who are not very friendly towards Epirus to begin with) as well as being very friendly with Armenia and are currently in possession of Cabira in the province. I want to protect my client and strengthen my presence in all of Asia Minor, but I'm currently involved in a rather large scale war with Cimmeria, up north subjugating the Dacians on 'behalf' () of military ally Macedon, and consolidating my holdings in all of Greece while keeping an eye on Rome who is openly hostile towards me (in my Epirus campaigns I don't attack Rome in Magna Graecia or the Apennine Peninsula so they stay in the game longer, but they can quickly become a threat to Apollonia if they get the upper hand in their other numerous conflicts).

In order to effectively protect my client and interests in the area without becoming openly involved in wars against 5 or more factions, I decide to use military presence, subterfuge and agent action. I send a fleet to protect the port at Sinope and park a force outside the settlement (obscured by the alert window), now enemies of Pontus have to think very carefully before attacking Sinope again (which they were taking turns doing continuously before I showed up). I also used my spy to poison the provisions of approaching forces to seriously reduce their fighting effectiveness and stun them in place so they can't support other armies and become vulnerable to counterattack by Pontic forces. This worked like a charm until the AI began spamming agents, which of course I expected. To stop these agents and keep the peace I had a converted champion from Tyllis in-play and my highest level spy who has at least 19 cunning through an attached dancer buff and literally never gets discovered.

So how does this game mechanic obstruct these types of strategies? The way the game works now, I can send a champion to literally slaughter another faction's agent in plain sight of everyone, or assassinate them through any other means without the need to declare war on that faction. I can also fail to coerce them to my faction without the need to formally declare war, but the minute I'm about to successfully manipulate them I'm forced to either declare war or cancel the mission. How is this a reasonable game mechanic? You can overtly assassinate agents of another faction and at the most incur some diplo penalties, but the minute you succeed at stealing them away through some backroom deal veiled from prying eyes you have to declare war? I feel that this in not only an irrational game design, but also seriously limits the nuances of the intelligence game by basically leaving you with one choice if you need to take proactive action against other agents.

The rules also don't seem to apply to the AI, as they can manipulate an agent away from you without declaring war. The alert in the screen also states that I'm "attempting to manipulate a non-hostile agent over to my faction", which is not the case. While maintaining my military presence the AI continuously tried to attack my force so I wouldn't be able to support the settlement if they attacked (foiled repeatedly by my embedded spy). At that point shouldn't any action I take against that agent be justifiable?

Next up we have a tactical scenario on the campaign map;

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In the first screen I had a general's unit of cav that I had to force march back towards Larissa as support for an expected attack from Athens. In the pic stand 2 more forces, the one closest to the general in question is mustering, and the other is in standard stance and has an area of influence that covers the entire approach to the area. All of these forces are in reinforcement range to the settlement. During the AI's turn, Athens attacks the lone general in forced march, who of course cannot be supported as a result. Nothing surprising here, as ambushed armies cannot be supported. But, they traveled right through the area of influence of 2 other forces to do so.

In the second screen we see the result of the attack. My defeated general retreats back behind the province, but the other 2 forces, that were not allowed to participate in the battle by design, were also immediately forced to retreat as if they suffered losses. They were moved out of range of the settlement and then attacked by another force sent up from Athens (that was now conveniently in range to attack since my forces were moved towards them). The force that was mustering also now cancelled all recruitment as a result of this displacement as it counted as if it was attacked. Now, I crushed these forces so this event was not really a problem at the time, but if this isn't some bug how is this even remotely fair to the player? Especially if this was some late game battle that I wanted to auto-resolve.

How does the tactical placement of forces on the campaign map make a difference if the AI can move right through an area of influence whenever it benefits it? (Another example is when you 'trap' an enemy fleet against a coastline with no place to beach and they move right through the area of influence of your pursuing fleets as if they weren't there on the AI's turn). But getting back on point, why should armies that weren't even attacked suffer penalties in the fist place? I find these things to be some real boowshiiit that I think need to be addressed and I'm interested to get some thoughts on it.

[nearchos]

Nothing surprising here, as ambushed armies cannot be supported. But, they traveled right through the area of influence of 2 other forces to do so.

This ive noticed many times since the latest patches, i think is after patch 9, the AI armies can actualy pass through the area of control of your armies and attack an other army in forced march behind.
And this is for certain, since just yesterday, an AI army came through 3 of my armies standing together at a narrow pass between cappadocia and Armenia provinces and ambushed an army in FM behind and there was no way to get there going all around the mountains.
So they broke something by fixing something else, otherwise they did that on purpose just to make the AI harder, which is very anoying.

As for the agents issue you are right, this shouldnt happen when manipulating an other agent to be at war with the faction, its just i assasinate only and i havent faced such a situation.

[CaptainCrunch]

Out of curiosity did you win the ambush battle? You say it was an army, so I'm inclined to think you did. In my situation it was just a general so I had no chance to escape until his unit routed, but I'm interested to know, if you lost the battle what happened afterwards to the other armies standing next to it? I don't mind the AI receiving help to create a more challenging experience, but the rules on movement should be the same, otherwise it makes the tactical game irrelevant. It's bad enough that they can move freely through zones of control, but then to force your other armies to move elsewhere as if they were defeated as well is either a bug or a joke.

And there's no doubt that the rule does not apply both ways, as I've been locked into the AI's zones of control on many occasions with no options to move. There's absolutely no doubt that the AI pulls off some crazy BS at times that's simply impossible to do otherwise, anyone that's fought a few naval battles knows all about it

Have you ever found an AI agent to be absolutely impossible to take out, even when the chance of success is 95%? The AI seems to do this at times when necessary, I've tested it out with 4 level 10 agents attacking a level 2 spy and level 4 diplomat that were continuously attacking one of my settlements. The chance of success for every one of my agent actions was 95%, the level 2 spy I attacked had just failed a mission as well, so it was 10% more vulnerable to attack (but I don't think it goes over 95% anyway). Not only did they foil all 4 attempts to stop them, but they managed to put some of my agents in a stretcher as well. Finding this a little hard to believe, I reloaded and tried again, and got the same results. I reloaded 20 more times and got the same result all 20 times. That's nonsense. Is the probability for success calculated when you carry out the attack, or at the beginning of the turn I wonder? Because on more than one occasion when this has happened on the very next turn I could take those agents out with ease, even with much lower probabilities of success (55-65%) from my lower-level agents.

I think I'm gonna post these issues over at the official forum and see if they reply.

[nearchos]

Out of curiosity did you win the ambush battle? You say it was an army, so I'm inclined to think you did. In my situation it was just a general so I had no chance to escape until his unit routed, but I'm interested to know, if you lost the battle what happened afterwards to the other armies standing next to it? I don't mind the AI receiving help to create a more challenging experience, but the rules on movement should be the same, otherwise it makes the tactical game irrelevant. It's bad enough that they can move freely through zones of control, but then to force your other armies to move elsewhere as if they were defeated as well is either a bug or a joke.

I didnt win the battle, so after that all of my armies in the area, 3 in normal stance the amboushed one and 2 more also in forced march behind all moved away as they were all defeated.This is not the only time the AI has "violate" an area of control in my campaign, its the third time, but this was outrageus, since it came through 3 armies pack together in a narow passage.
The previous two cases to be honest i thought, ok maybe i didnt calculate correctly the distances.

It ok for the AI to cheat, ie, with more income or food or reqruitment slots etc but i dont like it with the rules of the game, since im thinking my strategy accoiding to them.

[/QUOTE]Have you ever found an AI agent to be absolutely impossible to take out, even when the chance of success is 95%? The AI seems to do this at times when necessary, I've tested it out with 4 level 10 agents attacking a level 2 spy and level 4 diplomat that were continuously attacking one of my settlements. The chance of success for every one of my agent actions was 95%, the level 2 spy I attacked had just failed a mission as well, so it was 10% more vulnerable to attack (but I don't think it goes over 95% anyway). Not only did they foil all 4 attempts to stop them, but they managed to put some of my agents in a stretcher as well. Finding this a little hard to believe, I reloaded and tried again, and got the same results. I reloaded 20 more times and got the same result all 20 times. That's nonsense. Is the probability for success calculated when you carry out the attack, or at the beginning of the turn I wonder? Because on more than one occasion when this has happened on the very next turn I could take those agents out with ease, even with much lower probabilities of success (55-65%) from my lower-level agents.[/QUOTE]
I have noticed that some times certain AI agents are imposible to be killed and after a few attempts my own agent gets wounded but i havent checked in detail.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Have you ever found an AI agent to be absolutely impossible to take out, even when the chance of success is 95%?

Is the probability for success calculated when you carry out the attack, or at the beginning of the turn I wonder?

This has been an ongoing FUBAR (IMHO), since Shogun I. The probability is, indeed, calculated at the beginning of the turn and you have to do something in game beforehand to change the "seeding", as I've heard it called. In Rome I, the ONLY time I allowed myself a reload was to attempt to eliminate an annoying superspy that was causing loyalty problems in a settlement, or to kill a "toga army" (usually from a faction with a huge bankroll) that was bribing everything of mine in sight. Changing the order of battles, or attempting an act of subterfuge somewhere else first, etc. I noticed that you could only change the "seeding" once. If the outcome was not what you wanted the second time around, no amount of reloading would change the outcome that turn.

[CaptainCrunch]

@ReluctantSamurai - This is exactly what I suspected. Everything makes perfect sense now. This is why some lowly enemy agent can become literally invincible. In the original Shogun or Rome the way I used to 'change the seeding' was to go out and win a battle if possible. This would very often result in a successful agent action immediately after that was previously impossible. R2 doesn't always give me that option with the agent war game, with limited armies and agent spam all over the place. Bottom line - LAME.

[Sp4]

There are lots of mods that reduce the amount of agent spam/power of agents. I have not tried one of them yet because I never really found agents to be as much of a problem in this as they have been in S2 or M2 until very very late in the game, where it literally doesn't matter and everything is a huge drag anyways bug I guess people made them for a reason.

[Slaists]

Out of curiosity did you win the ambush battle? You say it was an army, so I'm inclined to think you did. In my situation it was just a general so I had no chance to escape until his unit routed, but I'm interested to know, if you lost the battle what happened afterwards to the other armies standing next to it? I don't mind the AI receiving help to create a more challenging experience, but the rules on movement should be the same, otherwise it makes the tactical game irrelevant. It's bad enough that they can move freely through zones of control, but then to force your other armies to move elsewhere as if they were defeated as well is either a bug or a joke.

And there's no doubt that the rule does not apply both ways, as I've been locked into the AI's zones of control on many occasions with no options to move. There's absolutely no doubt that the AI pulls off some crazy BS at times that's simply impossible to do otherwise, anyone that's fought a few naval battles knows all about it

Have you ever found an AI agent to be absolutely impossible to take out, even when the chance of success is 95%? The AI seems to do this at times when necessary, I've tested it out with 4 level 10 agents attacking a level 2 spy and level 4 diplomat that were continuously attacking one of my settlements. The chance of success for every one of my agent actions was 95%, the level 2 spy I attacked had just failed a mission as well, so it was 10% more vulnerable to attack (but I don't think it goes over 95% anyway). Not only did they foil all 4 attempts to stop them, but they managed to put some of my agents in a stretcher as well. Finding this a little hard to believe, I reloaded and tried again, and got the same results. I reloaded 20 more times and got the same result all 20 times. That's nonsense. Is the probability for success calculated when you carry out the attack, or at the beginning of the turn I wonder? Because on more than one occasion when this has happened on the very next turn I could take those agents out with ease, even with much lower probabilities of success (55-65%) from my lower-level agents.

I think I'm gonna post these issues over at the official forum and see if they reply.

Hmm, I have never seen an "invincible" AI agent and I've seen a great many of them. Probably because I usually concentrate my agents in the area where the AI is spamming them. So, I end up counter-spamming. If one of my agent's fails, I send another one and repeat the attempt.

I often go for "disabling" rather than converting or killing if the AI agent is very powerful (chances are better that way).

Also, my most successful converters tend to be champions (using the third conversion type available to champions). Often their chance of conversion is more than 50%.

[CaptainCrunch]

Hmm, I have never seen an "invincible" AI agent and I've seen a great many of them...

You sure about that? I could've sworn I read a post from you somewhere just recently where you discussed sending a team of agents at somebody and they not only withstood everything you tried, but they also laid some of your people out. Don't know what the various probabilities were for you, but it could've been because of this scenario we're on about.

It jumped out at me immediately cuz it reminded me of the BS I've seen before.

[Slaists]

You sure about that? I could've sworn I read a post from you somewhere just recently where you discussed sending a team of agents at somebody and they not only withstood everything you tried, but they also laid some of your people out. Don't know what the various probabilities were for you, but it could've been because of this scenario we're on about.

It jumped out at me immediately cuz it reminded me of the BS I've seen before.

@CaptainCrunch, I guess, I remember the post you're talking about. In that one, if I remember correctly, I was not complaining about the AI target withstanding everything, just showing how it goes at times, LOL. The next turn, that very agent was converted ;)

As to probabilities, one really has to drill down deeper (look at the details for every action). Then, on top of what you see there are also bonuses to the AI side on harder difficulties. I think, the effect of the agent bonuses do not get displayed.

The agent war easily turns into a mini-game of its own on harder difficulties especially if one has several AI enemies in the same area. It is a real pain when the agent war starts, but by concentrating agents in one place it is possible to turn the tide (and more). Better though, if the agent war is delayed until the player has a strong economic base otherwise agent missions can bankrupt the state.

[Veho Nex]

My biggest gripe with Rome 2 mechanics is the stupid map maker thing it comes up with. Every damn battle is fought on the flanks of mount Everest. Drives me off the dang wall.

[Drake1983]

I for once cant get the Sieze the Initiative achievement. I tried everything. Captured all vic points. But I never managed to get the achievement

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

[Kamakazi]

id really like to know where force march went...

[Sp4]

My biggest gripe with Rome 2 mechanics is the stupid map maker thing it comes up with. Every damn battle is fought on the flanks of mount Everest. Drives me off the dang wall.

It is better than Rome 1 or Medieval 2, where as soon as you went anywhere near the alps, half of the generated map was impassable.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I have always argued for the potential battle map (ie. the one at the co-ordinates you are currently standing on) to be displayed on the campaign map instead of your general position on said campaign map. The AI is already keeping track of that information so how much more difficult could it be to make that information accessible to the player?

[All I ask for is a pair of boots. How hard could it be???---lonely Argonian standing at the Solstheim dock]