Investigation of AI reassessment upon reload

[therother]

added by A.Saturnus

It seems the discussion around this issue has come to a halt now. Therefore I post the conclusion I have drawn later in the thread here. The participants of the discussion have more or less agreed in general to this conclusion. Only the wording has drawn objections. But for simplicity I will leave it as it is. The objections can be found later in the thread.

• It is certain that after loading a savegame, the AI will most of the time break up ongoing sieges in cases where it doesn't do that without save/load.
• It seems that the objective to take the previously sieged city is not lost entirely, as the AI will usually try to reengage the siege the turn after the load.
• As a consequence, saving and reloading will affect the development of AI factions, at least in the beginning of a campagne.
• It is not yet clear to what extent the course of a campagne is influenced in an undesirable way by this. AI factions do conquer new territories at a slow pace, but it is not clear whether this is due to the save/load issue or general weakness of the AI. There are three possibilities:
  
  • Above the weakness of the strategic AI, this issue is irrelevant as its effect is only noticeable under extreme conditions.
  • Saving and reloading often does noticable affect gameplay, but doesn't make the game unplayable.
  • The effect is so pronounced that it can be called a "game-breaker".
• A clearly noticable aspect is that, when saving and loading often, AI factions will not take the opportunity to capture rebel territory to the same extent as it does in continued playing.

It should be clear that point four is the most important aspect here, as it concerns the impact the issue has on gameplay. From reading the evidence in this topic everyone may come to his own conlusion on this.