Is there any way to make the AI more agressive?

[kaka dow40]

I've been playing on very hard campaign and very hard battle, but it seems like i'm the only faction that is trying to expand its territory.
The AI remians extremely passive, withdrawing attacks on the other AI. Not to mention that I've been playing until year 150 bc and the romans still havent expanded their borders.
Actually, every faction has typically the same regions they had at the beginning. Will this be adressed in the port to 1.5?

I assumed very hard on campaign would cause the AI to be more agressive towards each other, and not just me. Is there any way to change this or was it intended to be this way?

[Dooz]

That'll definately change with the port to 1.5 as the save/load bug will be fixed. But even with it, your situation sounds kinda weird. Do you play with a lot of loading between turns or just short spans of time? That could be the cause for the little expansion.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

We like slow expansion. Even with our idea of slow expansion, the game probably moves too fast to parallel historical developments, but some sacrifices must be made. We don't want every province to be taken over by factions within 50 years, as that is not very realistic.

[nikolai1962]

I assumed very hard on campaign would cause the AI to be more agressive towards each other, and not just me. Is there any way to change this or was it intended to be this way?

Very hard gives the AI more money. This might make them more aggressive at the beginning as they build units every turn in every city. The extra units *might* also mean they depopulate their cities faster than on lower difficulty settings so they eventually run out of steam and stall.

The higher attack stats on VH *might* also effect ai vs ai battles in some way in terms of higher casualties which would increase the depop effect *maybe*.

Another thing is the AI tends to attack other ai factions according to their relative strength (the player too but less so). If they all have stronger armies cos of higher money then they won't be more aggressive towards each other.

Basically VH doesn't make the ai more aggresive directly. It just gives them more cash which can make them more aggressive indirectly.

The other thing i noticed recently while experimenting with the vanilla game is the ai constantly stalls because of path-finding problems. They have a target city and can't work out how to reach it and the whole faction does nothing until something happens that un-sticks it, like some rebels spawn and a stuck army moves to attack it and then afterwards it can find path to target city from new position.

[Oleo]

Here is the expansion in a game (Hard/Medium) that I edited to start after the marian reforms. So AI is fighting with reformed armies as well. I am Rome, startdate = 108BC, current date 48 BC. In 60 years the seleucids have been pretty decimated, Makedon has been driven east, the barbarians have been expanding their borders reasonable. I think it works nicely.



Also notice the 121, 122 and 124 Vigiles unit :)

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Were you playing that or was it an AI only game? if you were playing that, you have the patience of Job! Interesting to see that the only faction that is about to die out is the largest one at the start of the game.

[Oleo]

Were you playing that or was it an AI only game? if you were playing that, you have the patience of Job! Interesting to see that the only faction that is about to die out is the largest one at the start of the game.

As I said above the pic , I edited the savegame so after two turns it was 108bc and sixty years worth of turns isnt that big of a deal, especially with the little expansion I did. I am Roma

[Meothar]

Editing the AI to "balanced genghis" makes them much more aggressive. It's unhistorical, but its fun, so choose yourself. Just edit your descr_strat.txt

[BigTex]

Now thats pretty funny, hear all this time i thought Genghis Khan was pretty blood thirsty and wanted to conquer the world, and not so balanced. Btw were do you edit the AI at, in the text preferences?

[Dooz]

Now thats pretty funny, hear all this time i thought Genghis Khan was pretty blood thirsty and wanted to conquer the world, and not so balanced. Btw were do you edit the AI at, in the text preferences?

The "Balanced" and the "Genghis" are two seperate characteristics for faction behaviour I believe. The first refers to what kind of unit production they incorporate and the Genghis is they're aggressiveness, so you aren't mistaken BigTex.

[nikolai1962]

There was a CA post somewhere that said the first influenced what buildings the faction would construct and the second what troops it would build. I f the post was correct I think genghis meant the faction would build more cavalry.

[Meothar]

I dont know about that, but my own modded campaigns (mainly in other mods) made the AI with genghis much more aggressive, e.g. in RTR 6 Gold, Parthia invaded the Seleucids in every campaign, Rome attacked Greece and Gaul...well, it worked. I doubt that Rome created more cavalry units with balanced genghis.

You edit it in the file descr_strat.txt (search for it). There, you find lines like

faction sassanids, balanced napoleon
denari 7000

(this is an example from BI, I have no Vanilla or EB available atm. But it works the same way)

Change it into

faction sassanids, balanced genghis
denari 7000

And thats it. The "balanced" is not necessarily the best, but I havent found a better one. Others I saw in my campaigns were "fortified", "trader", "bureaucrat", "sailor" etc.