Hi all,
I apologize for not being around in the past few days, life got in the way of testing.

Quote Originally Posted by therother
Okay, just checking to see if you thought it was okay. I think the Brutii are perhaps the best choice, given their sheltered location, the fact that they are unlocked to begin with, and that they are a Roman faction (it is Rome: Total War after all). Of course, that last bit works against choosing them to some extent as you also have the Senate AI hardcode possibly interfering with things. Perhaps we can do both, and see if there are any significant differences?
I don't think the Brutii would be great because of the senate, as you have mentioned, and because they are supposed to be an active faction due to the senate as well. Which therefore means that they are more likely to conquer something when controlled by AI and produce results.

As to the player's activity influencing AI moves, that's a separate variable that the test I originally proposed does not test for. However, it's kept constant in it, and hence does not influence its results. The only thing that is not constant, provided that everybody does the test in the exactly same way, is saving/reloading. This very basic test will tell us whether this single variable is doing something to the game, provided everything else is kept constant. Nothing more, nothing less. I won't go in whether the AI responds to player's moves or not right now, as this test is not designed to test for that in the first place. If really nothing happens when the player just stands still, then we'll go from there and redesign the test. But I can say right now that even though I'm highly aggressive in my campaigns, with sufficient reloads everybody else is static no matter what I do. Also, the preliminary result by Bromley are promising (thanks for posting them btw), and hence I think the save/reload test is worth doing in any case.

As far as my testing goes, I'll do my runs by tomorrow. Feel free to PM me your results if you already did your tests.

Cheers,