AI faction expansion in your campaigns?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Not much has been said about this. We change builds so often internally up to the open beta, that very few long campaigns were run. I know I would (and I think most all members) love to see some screenshots of how the AI controlled factions expanded over the years in your campaigns. If you've run some for 20+ years, how about posting some shots and your thoughts?

AI expansion seems to be a lot more slow in the open beta with some changes made recently in regards to rebel family members, troop strength, and city development. So let us know how it's gone and what you think about it! Thanks!

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Here are some examples from older campaigns (on older wacky builds) from the internal boards. Basically just to show different ways you could post these things:

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[Dayve]

There's my campaign after 12 years (only got that far up to now), i'll post more as i progress.

(I am ze Romans by the way)

[khelvan]

Woo! Sweet, sweet Zeus, I finally got the Sarmatians to expand!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Woo! Sweet, sweet Zeus, I finally got the Sarmatians to expand!

Just as amazing that the Yuezhi took Chighu too, but it is nice to see the Sarmatians do that. Maks are looking good. Also it seems as though the Seleukids keep getting provinces either bribed away by Ptolemies or are giving them up in a deal. Greek_fire had a nice expansion in another thread too.

[Spendios]

My Pontos campaign in 258 BC :

[khelvan]

Oooh, that's a nice one too.

[Cybvep]

256 BC. I'm playing as Aedui. Currently, there is only ONE war - Arche Seleukeia vs Ptolemaioi (they are fighting with each other from the start almost constantly...).

[Thorn Is]

Here I've been playing as Pontos with the fog of war turned off so i could pay attention to what is going on everywhere around the map, which is taking forever to watch all the moves

This is after 10 years....
The Aedui and the Arvernos have been in constant war. Arvernos seems to be winning, though they havent really taken any land from their Gaulic counterparts and now the Romans have several armies in southern Gaul and are expanding very aggressively. The Casse are on their way to ruling Britain very soon. Epeiros and Hellenon have allied together and have given the Macedonians a thrashing. Getai is coming along nicely. Sauromatae, rather then taking the northern rebel cities has just attacked the expanding Hayasdan, wonder what will happen from that... I'm allied with Hayasdan and has even tried to help them take a rebel city which borders both our borders. We were defeated though. My economy is now stable, but I'm low on troops and will take some time to gain enough money to expand some more

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Nice guys. Keep 'em up. Especially when you get further into a campaign.

[Chester]

How to I view my .tga file?

[Big_John]

hi chester, what i did was to press "print screen" on my keyboard to capture the display to the clipboard, while in rtw. then i press "ctrl+esc" to get out of rtw and opened an image viewing program. i use irfanview, but any image viewer should work. i pasted the clipboard data into irfanview and cropped it and resized it, viola.

http://www.irfanview.com/


edit: in other words, i don't bother with the tgas at all, though any image viewer should be able to open a tga file.

[Epistolary Richard]

Here I've been playing as Pontos with the fog of war turned off so i could pay attention to what is going on everywhere around the map, which is taking forever to watch all the moves

On the campaign selection screen try unchecking the Follow AI Characters box

[Greek_fire19]

You can use imageshack.us

Here's a map of 246 B.C.

I was the Casse, and I had absolutely no interaction with other factions whatsoever, I doubt they even knew I existed.

One interesting thing you'll note is that somehow from the other side of the world the Aedui took over Galacia. Is that just a random fluke or have Eb made it more likely for celts in various places to join forces?

https://img326.imageshack.us/my.php?image=map6iw.jpg

EDIT: I'v played a few campaigns to about this stage now, and from what I'v seen this is pretty typical. Noone becomes the absolute supreme power and basicaly noone is totally destroyed. In fact it seems as if the A.I is perhaps actually more cautious in EB, in partiuclar in it's dealings with other A.I factions.

I played on with that particular campaign for about another 5 years, but nothing much happened so I didnt bother taking another screenshot. I took over Ireland and the bactrians took those 2 rebel provinces near the caspian sea. The Macedonians expanded into asia minor a bit after a few seleucid provinces rebeled and I think carthage lost another iberian province

[Greek_fire19]

One little thing: Has anyone had a game yet where the seleucid empire was totally crushed? It just dont seem to happen very much, in fact more often than not they actualy expand.

[khelvan]

One interesting thing you'll note is that somehow from the other side of the world the Aedui took over Galacia. Is that just a random fluke or have Eb made it more likely for celts in various places to join forces?

When provinces rebel, they have to "rebel to" someone, we can't just make them rebel to the slave faction (believe me we wish we could). So instead we have them rebel to people they have the closest affiliation with. So the Aedui in the case of the Galatians.

[Thorn Is]

On the campaign selection screen try unchecking the Follow AI Characters box

Ive been playing like that so I could keep track of all the factions. I've noticed that even though some factions might not expand they are usually always trying to expand, but either losing to the rebels or to other factions...

GreekFire

what looks interesting in your map is going to be the battle for Gaul, with the Romans having a presence in the south and the Sweboz looking pretty tough...
Although with my game the Seleukos are still dominant in the region the Macedonians have taken another hit - losing another city just after I took that picture.... If they don't rally they might be the first to be destroyed.

[PseRamesses]

After kicking out the Epirotes from W.Greece/ Balkans my spies returned some 10 years to Italy and to my amusement they had not only survived but taken the whole island of Scicily, S.Italy and was hammering the gates of Rome itself. I do love this game!

[Tricon]

I have no pics, but in my last two campaigns (one araound 150 bc, one 200 bc) pontos is doing extremely well.

[vizigothe]

262 BC


Not much going on so far, I am Casse btw.

[Cheexsta]

Since this pic, Rome has taken a couple more settlements and have made the Averni a protectorate. The Ptolemies are coming very close to taking Carthage out (they have around 4 full stacks in the area, give or take), and Iberia has also taken the whole peninsula while Baktria has firmed her grip in the East, scattering the remaining Parthians. The Seleukids declared war on me and are about to lose a few more of their Asia Minor provinces, and the Getai have nearly taken the whole Balkans and have become my ally (with a little help from 200,000 mnai).

This is definately an interesting situation. Go east and face the monstrous Ptolemies or head west and take on Rome, one of the richest factions aside from myself. The recent war with the Sels (even though they were my loyal allies for 52 years!) has made me want to go east, though...

[GMT]

Since this pic, Rome has taken a couple more settlements and have made the Averni a protectorate. The Ptolemies are coming very close to taking Carthage out (they have around 4 full stacks in the area, give or take), and Iberia has also taken the whole peninsula while Baktria has firmed her grip in the East, scattering the remaining Parthians. The Seleukids declared war on me and are about to lose a few more of their Asia Minor provinces, and the Getai have nearly taken the whole Balkans and have become my ally (with a little help from 200,000 mnai).

This is definately an interesting situation. Go east and face the monstrous Ptolemies or head west and take on Rome, one of the richest factions aside from myself. The recent war with the Sels (even though they were my loyal allies for 52 years!) has made me want to go east, though...

1090618 mnai?? how the hell did you get that much dough??

You've got to be using some kind of money cheat..

[Trithemius]

1090618 mnai?? how the hell did you get that much dough??

You've got to be using some kind of money cheat..

Look at all those trade routes! It's not inconceivable a person could get that much if they tried a bit and had a reasonable fiscal policy. I've got about 250k as the Romans, and my game is a couple of decades earlier and I have not been pushing trade hard in my development programs.

[QwertyMIDX]

Mines are the really money maker, I will have to cut income from them a bit...

[Cheexsta]

1090618 mnai?? how the hell did you get that much dough??

You've got to be using some kind of money cheat..

Nope, no cheats. Just top-level mines and trading ports

Yes, I think mining income will have to be tweaked. Pella alone is making ~15,000 every turn just from mining income alone, while Byzantion and Athens are each making ~5,000 or so. I'm currently earning a good 49,000 per turn, and that's with 4 full stacks in the field (two of which are mostly levies, but still...).

I've been concentrating on trade for the past 50 years and regularly give 200,000+ to the Romans to keep them going

Good fun.

[QwertyMIDX]

It won't all go away, mines will still be a huge source of income, just not quite so much.

[Simmons]

Nope, no cheats. Just top-level mines and trading ports

Yes, I think mining income will have to be tweaked. Pella alone is making ~15,000 every turn just from mining income alone, while Byzantion and Athens are each making ~5,000 or so. I'm currently earning a good 49,000 per turn, and that's with 4 full stacks in the field (two of which are mostly levies, but still...).

I've been concentrating on trade for the past 50 years and regularly give 200,000+ to the Romans to keep them going

Good fun.

I guess the only reason I don't have such a surplus in my current Seleukid campaign I have a lot of under developed rebellious eastern provinces to dump a whole lot of cash into

[Trithemius]

Okay, not the exhaustive documentation I had originally (before I discovered my screens were bad) but it might be interesting/useful all the same (I also realised that I am only thirty years in, not forty - I guess I am slow :P).

I'm the SPQR and the game is VH/M. Click the thumbnails for bigger images if you are inclined to do so.



At this point in time I had just begun, after ten years of war against the Epeirotes and Eleutheroi in southern Italy, to tackle the north. The AI factions, for the most part, seem to be a bit sleepy. The Averni seem to be going okay though.



Now the map shows the results of some of my antics in Gaul. My princeps, Blasio, obtained Vanquisher of the Gauls after a big battle and some enslavement in the taking of Mediolanum and decided that he wanted a triumph (or another one, since historically he'd already had one, according to his biography?). He lead a consular army through Massilia - which we permanently colonised - and then on through Gergovia, Viennos, Vesontio, and Bagacos, enslaving and burning everything down for plunder. I managed to buy peace and an alliance with the Aedui by giving them former Averni lands (although the Averni got Viennos back) and got an alliance with the Sweboz after I gave them Bagacos. I hoped, at this point, that the Sweboz and Aedui would tussle and that I could use the time to take Tolosa and wipe out the Averni - alas it was not to be...

The Seleukids seem to be making a bit of a comeback in the east, and the Yuezhi are taking territory too (which is not something I had seen much of earlier). The Hellenes, Epeirotes, and Makedonians are in a three-way war with fullstack armies wiping each other out left, right, and centre - I have a diplomat stationed in Demetrias who is monitoring Athens and Pella as well and its complete madness! The Aedui have a real bother in taking Eleutheroi towns in Gaul, and seem get rebuffed a lot - and even the Getai are having trouble marching to the Alps.



As of this map, my adventures in Gaul are over. I have fortified and colonised Viennos - and it and Massilia are my depots for future expansion. I have an army moving back across the Alpine settlements, and garrisons of roarii and gallic auxiliaries (sotaroas from Massilia) ready to move in and man the walls. The Aedui, rather than using their newly granted lands to improve their armies and finish off the unification of Gaul, decided to improve their armies and attack me in Viennos (Blasio went back to try for Imperator again - but apparently the triggers were excessively stringent - poor old Blasio, the disappointment was the end of him :(). The Sweboz are now my marcher lords in Gaul and they haven't garrisoned the territories because I burned all the barracks and the Aedui hold Vesontio; I really hope the Sweboz and the Aedui fight a bit, but the Sweboz are getting a bit large under my patronage... Greece is also a bit more peaceful now, since I kicked out the Hellenes and the Epeirotes and Makedonians made a peace deal. The Makedonians and I allied to expel the Hellenes, but I am waiting for the backstab - or rather the frontstab - from them now.

The Carthaginians are ripe for a bit of a kicking too. I think I can hop an army over the Carthage and sack it and surrounding settlements good and proper then get the hell out before their big stacks arrive which might be good for long-term strategic positioning in the region. I have fought a few limited wars with the Carthaginians, but I've always been able to buy back their trade after taking my objectives. The Pontics seem to have stalled in their advance, and the Baktrians, Yuezhi, Pahlava, and Sauromatae are all running out of independent settlements to grab so perhaps there should be some wars in that part of the world soon.

[Dooz]

Getai, 210 B.C.



Damn Persians, always scattered all over the place. Now in the middle of Africa? Yikes.

[Angadil]

Interesting that Sauromatae expansion.... They seem to have taken 5, maybe 6 provinces (hard to tell if they own Bosporion Tyrrannesis). Hmm... I used to think the Sarmatians had a hard time to grow, but looking at this thread it would seem they manage some conquests reasonably often. Is that a correct impression?

Also, some input on the Sauromatae from the player's POV would be greatly appreciated. Has anyone played Sarmatian campaigns? We are concerned about them and they will be tweaked in oncoming releases. For example, the price of their cavalry units is likely to drop meaningfully. Are there other things you think we should worry about?

[Dooz]

If Bosporion Tyrrannesis is that piece of land to the east in between the Seleukids, Yuezhi, Pahlava and Baktria, then yes, that belongs to Sarmatia... those little devils. They've only recently started to expand this way as they were a protectorate of Hayasdan for a good while. However, that's all over with now, they're at war. The Sweboz also had a huge surge in conquest, having lain dormant for decades. Now they're in a see-saw war with the mighty Romans, gaining a lot of victories under they're powerful leader. And at this point I've kicked the Seleukids out of Turkey, launching raids from the strategic islands of Rhodos and Salamis. However, I'll probably give those back in the peace discussions as I have no interest of keeping them. They have been reduced to rubble after all .

208 B.C.