AI Control of Factions "FearsRomans"??

[dhague]

After many different and varied attempts, I have been unable to get an AI-controlled faction to be aggressive with the roman factions (with the exception of the Gauls who attack but always lose {perhaps a CA in-joke about the French} ). My observation is that there seems to be a hard-coded "FearsRomans" trait applied to AI-controlled factions except for Gaul. I have tried variations of the econo-military faction type and starting diplomat states. These do affect AI faction actions with the other non-roman factions. AI controlled factions (not Gaul) appear to go on a pure defensive mode with regard to romans. For example, starting with carthage at war with Scipii and a massive carthage stack right next to a weakly garrisoned Silicia_romanus: Under AI control, the first thing the carthage stack does is to retreat to a defensive position in their own territory and wait there until attacked after the Scipii ship in enough troops to take them on. Another example would be where a large stack of "good" macedon units will just sit there two "squares" away while a 2-hastati roman stack sieges a macedon city (garrison larger/better than the attackers) until the romans take the city!!!!

Am I just missing something or is there indeed a "FearsRomans" trait hard-coded into the AI faction control???????

[GreatOne]

Actually, it depends on what the factions are classified as, i.e, the variations of aggression. eg. romans_julii are put as comfortable caesar, on the other hand, the greeks I think is balanced smith , if not smith I know whatever they're put as does not make them aggressive. I was pissed that the Scipii simply went over at the beginning of the game and took Carthage, so I put Carthage as balanced genghis, that made 'em devastatingly aggresive. They eliminated the numibians and attacked the senate, they're fighting the scipii now and spain. So awesome You gotta change it in descr_strat at the beginning of each faction's name. There should be a thread somewhere around here that tells you about the level of aggression for each category. If you can't find it, I'm sure Mryydrraal might be able to help you.

[dhague]

Thanks for the thought, however:

If you suggest "balanced genghis", I may get around to trying it. I think it is one of the combinations that I did not try. I did try about ten of the possible combinations on carthage such as the classifications from the scipii, brutii, macedon, greek_cities, thrace, and some other classifications as suggested by various other threads (here and at TWC such as "craftsman smith") with very little variation in results per my original post. The only "carthage aggression" that I would see in some of the classifications was with 2-3 unit stacks doing an attack/retreat from similiar size roman stacks. The carthage AI would never commit an available large stack to an attack in any of the settings that I tried.

I did notice the the regions.txt file has "Italy" as a hidden resource for the "Alps to Sicily" regions that is not actually used for anything in the export_descr_buildings.txt file. I wondered if this might function as a flag to give roman AI factions an added advantage against AI non-roman factions in those regions and tried removing it but it seemed to have no effect.

[GreatOne]

wow, I didn't have any probelms really. I just did what I told you and now Carthage is the runner up for world domination, too bad I'm at the top and I'll never be defeated . Anyway, as for Italy, they sent troops there and it wasn't a two unit army either. In fact, they have pretty big armies, and if you want to see big, just bring your army near their borders or build a fort there. I hope you'll find some way if this doesn't work for you. Like I said, Myrrdraal will help with this and I'm sure he knows how to mod it so you can get the aggression you're lookin for.

[dhague]

OK, I tried "balanced genghis" and saw the same pattern. The only thought that I have is that all of my testing was done on M/M. Could it be that the non-roman AI factions (regardless of classification) only get really aggressive on H/H and VH/VH???

[GreatOne]

OK, I tried "balanced genghis" and saw the same pattern. The only thought that I have is that all of my testing was done on M/M. Could it be that the non-roman AI factions (regardless of classification) only get really aggressive on H/H and VH/VH???

As a matter of fact, playing oh h/h or vh/vh is a good idea. To me, medium is for amateur players only interested in building and not fighting. I have mine set on h/h, and by the way things progressed with the AI factions I'm pretty sure it'll be too hard on vh/vh. Try doing h/h first, and see how it goes. Also, if you want the starting armies for the ai factions to be bigger, under the general's name with his units, in descr_strat, just add more units but remember not to exceed 20 units per general. In the end, it all counts on how many enemies a given AI faction has. eg, carthage might be fighting 4 other factions, and if you also fight carthage one of the reason they might have a small quantity of units is that maybe their men just simply depleted after all the fighting. That's why sometimes I end my turn a few times and give them a chance to build back up. Besides all this, the only other way to make the ai factions gather men quickly is to go to export_units and change the duration for training..eg, warband for gauls takes 1 turn...If you change that to 0, then every turn the gauls will be able to train a full queue of men, awesome, ain't it? Do that and lemme know how it goes..