Can EB stop this from happening?

[Dayve]

One thing that annoys me more than anything in RTW is when you have a nice neat little empire, kingdom or whatever, then one of your cities somewhere in the middle of your empire comes under siege from an enemy army made up of 2 units of the cheapest crappest units you can ever think of, and you have to attack it and have a battle just to wipe out the tiny army...

Can EB stop this kind of stupidity from the AI? It's just a waste of time when you have to spend 5 minutes on a battle to wipe out two enemy units of clydabbre or something crap like that...

If EB can not fix this, then i blame Teleklos for it.

[Foot]

Play it on easy then you wont have to deal with that at all.

And, no, we cannot fix that.

Foot

[paullus]

funny, foot, i was about to say that it seems to be better in the 1.5 build. i've had major cities besieged, but only a couple of times, and by respectable armies. in fact, i very very rarely get rebels in my homeland provinces (with normal or high taxes). maybe i just got lucky...or maybe they're hiding in the woods [goes off to look]

[fallen851]

If EB can not fix this, then i blame Teleklos for it.

[Foot]

funny, foot, i was about to say that it seems to be better in the 1.5 build. i've had major cities besieged, but only a couple of times, and by respectable armies. in fact, i very very rarely get rebels in my homeland provinces (with normal or high taxes). maybe i just got lucky...or maybe they're hiding in the woods [goes off to look]

Yep, we still need to fiddle around with the rebel spawning numbers, but I think we can make sure that heavy rebel spawning is a thing of the past. However it should be noted that rebels should be spawning a fair bit in provinces with high taxes, its quite a nice little thing that makes you think about taxation a little bit more. After discovering about that little connection I only have high taxation when I'm preparing for war. This also has the side benefit of slowing the campaign down a bit and making it just tiny bit harder.

Foot

[Censor]

Thanks a lot Teleklos! We all blame you!

[Olaf The Great]

Play it on easy then you wont have to deal with that at all.

And, no, we cannot fix that.

Foot

Easy?
I wouldn't think easy would stop enemies from coming in a besieging a settlement with Pantodapoi.

[Tanit]

Yep, we still need to fiddle around with the rebel spawning numbers, but I think we can make sure that heavy rebel spawning is a thing of the past. However it should be noted that rebels should be spawning a fair bit in provinces with high taxes, its quite a nice little thing that makes you think about taxation a little bit more. After discovering about that little connection I only have high taxation when I'm preparing for war. This also has the side benefit of slowing the campaign down a bit and making it just tiny bit harder.

Foot

I've noticed oddly that though towers don't help at all against rebel spawning, having fortifications garrisoned with one light unit at strategic points blocking passes vastly decreases the number of rebels you have to deal with. This works well if you like to put your cities on very high taxes.

[Dayve]

I didn't mean rebels... I meant enemy faction forces. Like playing as Carthage... I would have Iberians laying siege to my towns with 1 or 2 units of skirmishers, or those guys that don't wear shoes... You'd think if the AI was going to be suicidal it would have some sort of grand plan to it, but it doesn't! It just wants to lay siege to your cities that have huge armies garrisoned nearby with two units of the cheapest crap it can recruit!

Hmm, i feel like declaring war on that there largest, richest human controlled empire... Shall i first establish an empire of my own, get some denari and build up a large army? NEVER! I shall send in two units of pantopadoi, that'll scare the pants off them! Banzai!

[Tanit]

I didn't mean rebels... I meant enemy faction forces. Like playing as Carthage... I would have Iberians laying siege to my towns with 1 or 2 units of skirmishers, or those guys that don't wear shoes... You'd think if the AI was going to be suicidal it would have some sort of grand plan to it, but it doesn't! It just wants to lay siege to your cities that have huge armies garrisoned nearby with two units of the cheapest crap it can recruit!

Hmm, i feel like declaring war on that there largest, richest human controlled empire... Shall i first establish an empire of my own, get some denari and build up a large army? NEVER! I shall send in two units of pantopadoi, that'll scare the pants off them! Banzai!

Highly amusing, I totally agree there!

Like playing as Carthage...

Power to Carthage!!! The people of the New City shall rule the known world!

[abou]

That is just what the AI does. It wants to win and it knows that to do that it must attack the human player and does this regardless of surrounding territories, rebels, other factions in conflict, and so on. Apparently a lot of work on this has been done in M2TW, which means the AI will take into consideration economy, army size, allies, and resources before declaring war on you.

[Dayve]

Power to Carthage!!! The people of the New City shall rule the known world!

Never!

[Aut Nihil]

That is just what the AI does. It wants to win and it knows that to do that it must attack the human player and does this regardless of surrounding territories, rebels, other factions in conflict, and so on. Apparently a lot of work on this has been done in M2TW, which means the AI will take into consideration economy, army size, allies, and resources before declaring war on you.

This sounds like sweet music to my ears , lets hope the AI has a "Phd" (or wotever it's called) in M2TW.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I've noticed oddly that though towers don't help at all against rebel spawning, having fortifications garrisoned with one light unit at strategic points blocking passes vastly decreases the number of rebels you have to deal with. This works well if you like to put your cities on very high taxes.

They work wonders to deflect the AI too. Simply having a fort with those crappy Pantodapoi, or Akontistai in it, and you won't be bothered with enemies assaulting your precious hughe cities. They'll go for your forts instead.

Dayve: can't you give us a preview of the next thing you'll blame Teleklos for?

[Tanit]

Never!

Foolish little man!!! Thinks he can deny the power of Carthage!!!

Well....um....I hope not...

[Watchman]

I dunno, if I wanted to mess with my enemy while building up a real army for an actual invasion I'd also send handfuls of totally disposable El Cheapo troops to besiege his cities. Buggers their income, building progress, training and all that. The land equivalent of blockading each and every enemy port you can find with your cheapest ships, basically.

Sounds like a sound enough strategy to me, although the AI every now and then tends to forget to bring up the real armies.

Far as I'm concerned saturating strategic approach routes with forts held by totally disposable El Cheapo guys so the enemy armies can't just waltz in and besiege your cities is what forts are for, too. Buys time. Although the AI seems to have unhealthy attitudes about the things - it usually avoids them like an embarassing disease.

[Dayve]

Dayve: can't you give us a preview of the next thing you'll blame Teleklos for?

All the hardcoded material that has impeded the modders at every corner.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Sounds like a sound enough strategy to me, although the AI every now and then tends to forget to bring up the real armies.

And whenever they bring up the real armies, it forgets what 'to finish' means. I've seen countless stacks of AI armies wandering through enemy AI territory, as if they were on a local sightseeing trip. It makes me wonder how on earth those crossed swords ever could have appeared: from my latest campaign it appears as if the Ptolemies have been happily slaughtering massive combined Seleukid forces, even at the gates of Damaskos, but simply refused to take the place.

I guess the AI is a bit of a sadistic maniac a la the Blackadder series... more cunning plans than ever could be dancing naked in front of you painted purple, but with their usual disapointing outcome (well, for the 'sadistic maniac hiding behind the playfull boyish exterior', at least). In other words: ruthless slaughter with(out) a purpose, ending in a status quo. Or simply put: .

Far as I'm concerned saturating strategic approach routes with forts held by totally disposable El Cheapo guys so the enemy armies can't just waltz in and besiege your cities is what forts are for, too. Buys time. Although the AI seems to have unhealthy attitudes about the things - it usually avoids them like an embarassing disease.

Yep, I've managed to trap an scouting army of the Hayasdan between my fort to the south west and Trapezous for about 10 turns now: I'll see how long it tries to get out, before it will lay siege on one of both.

[Watchman]

It has some strange aversions to forts all right. In BI you could hold the assorted Hordes off along the river crossings pretty much indefinitely just by building forts at the ends of the bridges... Actually, any suitable bottleneck tended to do. There would be something like twelve peasants sitting really scared in the fort and damn near the entire Hun faction wandering right outside, and it could take ten turns for one of the stacks to decide to lay siege to it.

It's kind of frustrating when a perfectly solid strategy becomes an exploit due to the quirks of the AI, and yet you can't really not use it either without someone Loitering With Intent right outside your cities...

[Dayve]

Watchman, i've noticed you are a fellow believer in our true lord the spaghetti monster, it's nice to have you here on the EB forum.

All hail his spaghettiness.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Something really weird just occured in my latest campaign turn.

I had been once again chasing this Epeirote guy, beating him at every battle he actually did turn up. Somehow he just managed to run away every time, and get the 'Untouched by Fear' trait.

That's just odd, but there is more: he retreated towards the siege graphics surrounding the Epeirote capital (I'm starving them till they give fight) and when I attacked him once more I got a Heroic Victory ( ), yep that's right he's finally 'finished'. (Now he can't attack my main army that is currently laying siege on Singidunum, in the back.)

But the strange thing is: I had tons of reinforcements and he was with just 3 members of his bodyguard, those 3 being 'Very Unsure Troops'. So the battlestatistics turned out:

Koinon Hellenon (me) : 1398 deployed, 3 killed, 1398 remaining
Epeiros: 3 deployed, 0 killed, 0 remaining.

Could the fact that it appeared (I didn't get to see it happening, because I have the special event bits turned off) as if my own Conquering Hero General killed him be the clue to these amazing 'battle results'?

[Jolt]

Telekos Teleportos Telegramos.