Simple changes by CA that would improve the AI

**Lord Preston** · 08-16-2005, 17:47

I was just trying to make a general point that while they "seem" simple changes it could be more complicated and hard to impliment without serious performance problems.

using auto resolve to judge what they attack i serously doubt is a viable option, what if there were 3 of your armies and 3 of the AI's armies within attacking distance of each other.

It could attack each army with 1 stack of its own, of group 3 armies and attack 1..... theres 18+ possible auto resolves for it to calculate on just a small area of the map without a actual battle occuring.

im the same as everyone else, and i do expect some of these improvements listed to be included, if a enemy General charages a phalanx in BI i would be very shocked.

**pezhetairoi** · 08-17-2005, 05:06

Maybe one thing to make auto-resolve that much more realistic is to take into account the inherent strengths of some units. For example, rather than calculate hoplite attack at 7, they could give a bonus of 5-6 for its capability to form phalanx, etc. Also, some immense extra bonuses should go to ranged troops, and their chances of loss should be reduced--I have noticed that in autocalc all units lose troops more or less equally. But by right archers should lose virtually nothing unless you were getting a crushing defeat.

**HarunTaiwan** · 08-17-2005, 09:03

Prediction: There will be virtually no change in the AI for B.I.

Sorry to be a pessimist, but it's what I expect from CA.

and look at all those pretty pictures of night battles and units that can swim!

ooooh! ahhhhh! I better pre-order B.I. right now before they run out!

It's so depressing.

**Duke John** · 08-17-2005, 10:43

I did some testing to see what the AI was doing. Below are screenshots of my Sengoku Jidai mod and the AI faction is left alone on the island with no where else to go:

After pressing more End Turns there wasn't any building up going on anymore. Units from the settlements were immediately merged with existing armies (I gave armies plenty of movement points, enabling them to cross half the island in 1 turn and thus being able to merge with an army before said army was already gone).
I don't know how bad this is. It appears as if before saving the AI had a different set of routines (when there were still enemies) than after loading (when it was all alone).

After this test I saved, quitted, then set training times to 10 turns and reloaded. Very little merging of armies was made. Which made it become clear that the AI does not merge armies that are together more than 20 units. So you will very rarely get full stacks and plenty of stacks that range from 10/20 to 19/20. The code might look something like this: if size_armyA + size_armyB > 20 then stop, while it should be something like if size_armyA + size_armyB > 20 then size_armyA=20 and size_armyB = leftovers.

Edit: And now some praise for CA. I made a new test. Made a few turns, saved and reloaded. Then I saw some very nice manuevring:
- 2 or even 3 armies merging before attacking an enemy
- 1 army moving next to the enemy and another attacking resulting in a 2vs1. Sad part was that 6 armies did this in the same turn resulting in 3 2vs1's with the AI losing all. How much better it would have been if it had first merged into 2 larger armies before performing the pincer movement... the AI performing a pincer movement on strategic level?! There is hope for CA!

- and stretched out frontline with several (small) armies opposing each other; if only the AI also reinforced some of the armies and build some forts to strengthen the frontline it would be something much more worthy of a screenshot then some guys farting in a river.

**player1** · 08-17-2005, 13:16

Hmm...

This reminds me of one of my own games, when AI has city with low public order, but maxed out troops.
It tried every turn to put more troops in city, but since it was impossible, it just had much of high stack armies around of the city. Kinda resambles screen you showed.

**Duke John** · 08-17-2005, 14:08

Thanks player1, then I must remember to keep the AI's settlements happy so that it doesn't use its armies to create one big party.

**Puzz3D** · 08-17-2005, 16:03

Originally Posted by Duke John

Thanks player1, then I must remember to keep the AI's settlements happy so that it doesn't use its armies to create one big party.

That's a good idea because in addition the AI is terrible when sallying from a city. The AI would is better off protecting its provinces with armies positioned outside of its cities.