Has anyone ever seen the AI...

[Procrustes]

Has anyone ever seen the AI…

(1) … bribe one of your generals? I mean, I randomly get the hard to bribe/easy to bribe V&V’s. Should I be cautious and move those generals away from important/border provinces, or can I pretty much ignore these vices?

(2) … attack with a “rebel” faction? From what I can see, the rebels always just sit there, waiting to be picked off. You can’t trade with them or ally with them, only bribe or attack them. (I don’t mean rebellions or reemergences, but the non-faction provinces that lie around like candy.) And they never seem to build anything, either.

Just curious.

[Blodrast]

1. nope. However, there is something you should note: the cost of bribing a faction's stack is usually pretty steep to begin with (much much more than a rebel stack, for example).
Most human players tend to arrange their armies in such a way that they have the smallest number of stacks possible, with as many units in each stack as possible (who likes to be able to see nothing on the strategic map because they have 200 stacks in each province ? thought so).
So a human player would have very few, if any, small stacks. So the overwhelming majority of the human's stacks will be VERY expensive.
Also note that usually a human player does not allow the computer to form an extensive trade network. If they do, the AI attacks you sooner or later, and you have to crush it.
That should tell you that usually the AI can't really afford to pay sums like 30-40k for one of your stacks, if not more. Even if it does have that kind of money, it probably considers that it is not feasible to spend 90% of the current treasury for a few troops.
Also note that in order to even attempt the bribing, they need to get an emissary near that particular stack, and most humans kill all AI agents (I do) in their provinces.
Put all these together, and I believe you'll see why that is quite unlikely to happen.

2.I am not sure if rebels ever build annything.
It is true that I've never managed to be allied to them, but I have been neutral. I don't remember the exact circumstances, though, and whether they were religious rebels or bandits or what.
But I'm pretty sure you can be neutral with them, and that means you can trade with them.
Most of the time they're enemies, though.

[Malachus]

Procrustes, I have seen the computer do both of these things. The bribing is not as common from what I can recall, as the computer in my game only bribed a couple of units of peasants I had garrisoned in a province i had recently conquered from another faction. As far as I know, the comp doesn't bribe very often, only when it can afford it- and you should be beating the tar out of the comp in any case so that it never will have the money to bribe your armies

Secondly, in terms of rebels attacking, yes, it does happen. For example, play as the English and don't do anything to the Scots in scotland, and leave a small garrison of a unit of peasants in Northumbria. After a while the Scots will invade Northumbria if it is weakly defended. In general, the rebels who do decide to attack do so when you're an enemy of theirs (if you attacked one rebel group, all of them become your enemies, at least for a while... i think this is true? someone correct me if im wrong). Furthermore, they'll attack if they can win, so keep good garrisons in provinces bordering rebel ones. Ultimately, don't worry as much about the rebels in the game, as most of them won't attack you (except for the Scots, who will for sure attack the English).

Hope I helped in some way.

[eadeater]

Yeah, I think the rebels start off neutral to you when the campaign begins, but once you attack them, they are enemies and sometimes randomly become neutral again, but you can rarely trade with them anyway because they don't (and can't) build ports, and if the AI built ports there for them, then when they took the province, chances are the port was destroyed (the port always seems to get destroyed.)

[Midnj]

In MedMod, the AI bribes quite frequently (when they have the money). Usually a couple of actions become powerhouses through trade in MedMOD, and they run around bribing/attacking everything in sight.

I've had rebel factions attack my provinces, again in Medmod. Rare though.

Rebels do build. YOu can verify this by running in debug mode and switching to the rebel faction.

[mfberg]

I have seen the rebels attack several times, but only after they have two stacks in the province they are attacking from. I have had one army bribed out from under me, and had to move armies into the province to keep it. Remember to keep units outside of the castle, otherwise you could end up losing a province or lose buildings to looting.

mfberg

[Procrustes]

Thanks, folks - this helps/makes a lot of sense. Sounds like it's rare, but it can happen if I set it up (i.e. do something dumb.) I like that - anything that makes the AI more wiley is good in my book. May have to toy with trying to provoke a rebel invasion - I like the idea of the Scots attacking England! (My Scottish grandfather would be proud. Not sure what his English wife would have thought.... ;-) )

MedMod sounds like fun - I'll have to try it after I've played MTW/VI a lot more. Right now I'm trying to gather a lot of experience with the commercial version before I start trying different tweeks.

Best,

[katank]

1) I've played as French through all of early and then switched to the Byz for a challenge to try and take down the beast I created.

a 5 province faction against one that has something like 50 provinces with a fully connected trade network and agents is suicide.

the 2.4 million florins the French had was used to bribe all the nonheir stacks in a single year!

2/3 of my armies defected and I was overwhelmed.

Never figured out how to beat that game.

2) In another campaign, the steppe rebels went berserk and destroyed the Nov and the Poles, got the Huns down to 1 province and was beating up oth HRE and the Byz as well as having citadels in about 6-7 provinces!

Without bribing, my French troops went in and it took a decade or so of seesaw battling to finally quell those rebels.

they can be very aggressive if they aren't broke.

I've also seen rebel ships and agents in many games.

they can be a force.

As for Scotland, 3-4 stacks of highland clansmen with some pictish cav are often created in Scotland by the rebels and it's kinda scary.

they took Northumbria and then Mercia once but often just stay there.

[CherryDanish]

I've seen the AI bribe rebel armies while I was playing the Elmos (Early, hard, the spanish bribed the V named province that borders on Aragon). They beat me to it by one round and boy, that ticked me off.

[katank]

that's expected. what's rare is bribing faction armies, esp. yours.

I've seen it in the case I described above and also in medmod games with the AI frequently bribing some worthless spears.

the AI spends its money anyway it knows how when it can afford it.

It rarely makes sense.

[Procrustes]

1) I've played as French through all of early and then switched to the Byz for a challenge to try and take down the beast I created.

That sounds like a fun way to play - how do you do it? Switch factions in the middle of a game, I mean.

[Blodrast]

start the game with -ian and then use SHIFT+# (where # is the number of the faction).
Great idea, Katank !

Sure, your case was extreme, but I can see myself doing that half way, i.e. stopping at some twenty-odd provinces and then switching sides (most games now I stop early anyway, if I just keep on killing the game ends w/out too much of a challenge - for my taste).

Great idea ! why didn't I think of that until now ??
(can't wait to go home and try this )

[Sociopsychoactive]

I've seen the AS (Artificial Stupidity) bribe a few times, infact more than once I have attempted to bribe a stack of rebels, only for them to turn over to another faction before my emmisary can seal the deal. This seems to happen more early on in easy games (the AS has more money to throw around for a few turns). Also, though this has only happened once, I recieved a message saying that th french (I was german) had attempted to bribe my general, but he had resisted the urge and remained loyal. First time I ever got that one, he was a crappy spear general with 2 stars and low loyalty, but it seems they didn't offer him enough

Also, rebels do build, do train, and do attack. They will train whatever units they can if they feel threatened, often peasents but if a civil war went on i've seen the rebels train knights and other high class units. They will attack often, again if threatened or if they have loads of troops, the rebels always seem to favour huge odds, especially on the viking map, how often have e all seen a few squads of beserkers, huscarls and the likes having great fun smashing away at several thousand peasents and spears.

[katank]

yep, my case was too extreme. no matter what, they bribed everything off me and overwhelmed me.

No faction on the map was capable of resisting the French beast.

[Despot of the English]

In order to have your armies bribed it helps to have your generals with no loyalty whatsoever, i.e. no shields, otherwise the cost is astronomical (as you can see if you attempt to bribe an enemy commander with several shields worth of loyalty.) Since I always "remove" generals of that calibre I have never had any of my armies bribed. I guess it would be funny to see it happen, but as long as it wasn't in a good province of cause!

In the Medmod Rebels are true challengers on the map. They multiply very quickly if left to their own devices. For example, I remember one time when Lithuania and Novgorod each had armies totalling 5,000 men and they resisted crusade after crusade. One of the armies was also led by a 5-star general (who also happened to be an artilleryman ).

[katank]

this is another reason to have a highly influential king in that loyalty will be high, often maxed out and thus be pricey for them to bribe you.

[Lonewarrior]

I saw it one time attack with a rebel faction, but this was after I launched and inicial attack and decided to retreat. The next trun, the rebel where marching on me, and they died, they went straight to my 7 honor general province, hahahaha what a bunch of foolish peseants.

But the Ai bribing.....mmmmmm........yep saw it once, although it was not agains me, it was in the battle between the Mongols and Russians, I remember that I saw a division of Mongol army, chaning color to Russians, but after that never again did the AI bribed.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I was playing Hellenic Total War, an ancient Greek mod, when one of my Spartan stacks was bribed before I could kill the emissary. Of course, in H:TW, even the AI can get filthy rich off trade. Needless to say, I slaughtered the whole faction and put their heads on pikes.

The rebels act as one whole faction. One developer said that they would build, but they are often deeply in debt and so unable to build or train anything. I have seen some rebel built ships, however.

Crazed Rabbit

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I was play testing my mod yesterday and the french brirbed one of my armies successfully in Gascony.


In the late the period the italian factions do it quite a bit and its probably due to the money there roling in thanks to some new buildings i've added. Still its bloody annoying anyone doing it, especially when your enemies are closing in all around you