Unfair Campaign AI advantages

[FrauGloer]

I've been at this game for quite a while now, and there is one thing that keeps bothering me:

If I want to hold on to a Huge City (25000+) with an acceptable public order rating (85+), I have to garrison it to the max, as well as build all possible happiness-increasing buildings, even more so if the city is a long way from my capital. The AI, on the other hand, can maintain a public order rating of well over 90 in a 35000-inhabitants-city with just one (1) unit of whatever kind, even 30-man general's units! I don't like this. Apart from the fact that it's highly unfair, this "advantage" also deducts from the fun of siege battles: most of the time, even huge capital cities lack any notable garrison, making taking them more of a chore than a challenge (What's the fun in crushing one unit of spear militia when taking your enemy's largest bastion?). I want them to suffer from squalor and unrest, just like I am, and I want them to counter the problem with larger garrisons, just like I am!

On a similar note, the AI seems to be completely independent of monetary/recruitment limits. In my current campaign as England, the Danes are down to two provinces, Antwerp (Large City) and Metz (Fortress), neither of which is particularly well-developed. And yet they manage to send full stack after full stack at me. I own the British Isles, western France, Scandinavia, Ajaccio, Cagliari, Palermo, and Antioch and can hardly afford keeping all those cities in check, let alone beating off full danish armies every other turn, which they shouldn't be able to afford/train in such a short time span! I like playing defensively, but the way it is now, you have no choice but to utterly defeat your enemies down to the last province, as even if they just have one province left, they can still come at you with full stacks.
Different example: Venice has only got Ragusa (Castle) left, but they manage to maintain several close-to-full stacks of troops as well as a sizable navy.

I know that the AI needs some advantages over the player to be competitive, but IMO, this is going too far. If I manage to beat the AI back to only a few provinces, I want them to be noticably weakened. As of now, this is not the case.

Sorry for the rant, but I had to get that off my back...

[RZST]

whats your difficulty rating?

oh and i agree about the ai leaving 1 unit in castles thing =P, it is specially disheartening on a crusade to the hold land to see 1 or 2 units defending jerusalem =(, i was expecting kingdom of heaven type of sieges...but...well...yeah...

[Bongaroo]

I was struggling with my large cities late in my last campaign, a big help to the unrest problem turned out to be enemy spies. Finding enemy spies in my cities and killing them or at least kicking them out would drop my unrest from 30-40% to 5% or none. Oftentimes where there is one enemy spy there are 2 or 3 more as well. Try some counterspying, not only will it help drop your unrest, it will also give some nice traits to your governor to help keep the spies out. Just a thought if you haven't tried it.

[Julius_Nepos]

I play on Hard/Hard mainly and the AI seems to be able to cheat at will. I've seen the AI produce units within cities under siege, and put them OUTSIDE the walls. I've seen the AI negotiate with cities under siege (Princess/Diplomat) animation. The AI is able to tech up to Catapults/Dismounted Feudal Knights long before I can and with far fewer provinces. It can use 1 unit garrisons while bringing every unit it has into the field for battles.

While the player must defend his possessions with absolute vigilance, the AI can expand and survive without so much as a whisper of a threat from its neighbors. I can't figure out how to survive as Hungary when I play the faction myself, yet the AI often forms grand empires with Hungary, often all the way up to the Mongol invasion. I don't really care about the difficulty the cheating presents, I don't like it on general principle. Portugal with 3 provinces shouldn't be able to survive much less churn out Feudal Knights and Trebuchet artillery. Anyway that's my two cents.

[Lord Magus]

I left Venice with one castle and they send a half stack to me every couple of turns |:

[SMZ]

Sorry to say it, but my dad plays on my computer and often complains about "cheating" as well... I on the other hand haven't seen any "cheating" yet...... I think it's more likely the difference lies in the player than a randomly evil machine.

---------------

As noted with the unrest, what is your counter-intelligence program like? How devout are you? How respected is your leader? Is your capital centrally located? etc, etc, etc.... There are a host of things you can do, and in fact NEED to do to maintain your empire properly. They aren't difficult things to do; just neccessary, and almost always intuitive - at least to me. If you do these things, I doubt you'll have any problem with unrest... the same way the AI doesn't.

As far as recruiting vast armies quickly and cheaply; the computer isn't cheating. You know why you can't throw out a new stack or two every turn? Because you already have a stack or two in the field, not to mention a bunch of cities - which it sounds like you're over-garrisoning. The AI on the other hand has no upkeep costs and can transfer it's entire income each turn into recruiting a new army of cheap units. How good are these armies? I sincerely doubt that they're anything special. Hence, why you keep beating them turn after turn. You on the other hand, likely try to comprise your field armies of the best troops you can produce - and they are costlier of course. This isn't cheating - it's just the AI backed into a corner and flailing as hard as it can. All you need to do is deliver the knockout punch.

@ Julius, these are bugs, not really cheating. You can manipulate them also. If your agent is targeted on a city BEFORE it becomes under siege, and you just let the computer auto-move them at the end of your turn - they can still interact with said city even if it's sieged by the time they get there. As far as the producing units during siege thing, haven't seen that one personally, but given every other case I'm haveta say it's either a bug that you can exploit just as well as the computer or it's something legit which you're just not noticing.

Re: Teching Up. Once again, the AI is NOT cheating. If you specialize your cities, you'll be a leader in the tech race too. Don't try to build everything in every city. If you know you want Trebuchets, then have one city focus on getting them as fast as possible - then AFTER it's teched to that level, go back and build your markets and your ports and whatnot.

If the AI is handling a faction better than you can, then you just aren't playing to that factions strengths. Alter your play style. The AI doesn't have any special preference for attacking you. As long as you have strong borders you can sit back and watch the AI backstab itself back and forth, scrabbling over every last tuft of grass available...... Now, on the other hand, if you DON'T secure your borders, and you've got prosperous provinces, and you don't play the diplomacy game for strategic benefit... well then yes, everybody near you will attack.

[Julius_Nepos]

You make some good points SMZ, however I wasn't declaring the AI was cheating uniformly at all times. The AI has different concerns than the player does. The AI can tech up quickly and get to better units long before I can because, as I understand the campaign AI it doesn't have to fight all its neighbors at all times. It can put all its money into teching-up rather than having to put on a strong front at every corner of its empire. That's certainly not cheating, its just the AI benefiting from itself, so to speak.

At one point during an early Turkish campaign I was the chief power in the Mid-East and opposed to me was Hungary. Between every 1-2 turns I'd face a full stack army composed mainly of dismounted feudal knights, they'd spam those things like crazy. Each turn they'd ask me to become a vassal, even though they'd won exactly ZERO engagements against me. Even funnier was the fact that even If I accepted vassalage they'd just attack the next turn anyway so why bother?

I find I have to put strong garrisons at every point where my empire borders an AI faction, and even then when they have no chance of winning they'll attack. In the aforementioned Turkish campaign Venice had Jerusalem, and no other borders with me. They had a garrison of say 50 men. So what do they do? they attack, and I easily destroy them. I don't have the luxury of denuding any part of my empire from troops as the AI will attack, under any circumstance, regardless of my strength so long as I share a border with them. Granted, I have yet to determine how to survive as Hungary or Russia but it's not that I'm in danger of losing a campaign. But rest assured when the AI is fielding stacks of Trebuchet and Fedual/Chivalric Knights, I'm probably still stuck with Militia Spearmen.

I have to build big armies to defend myself, the AI does not, its not necessarily cheating but it is an annoyance. Besides the fact that the AI doesn't seem to have any troop production limit and can thus produce say 7 units of feudal knights in one turn. Anyway it is what it is, it does get under my skin though.

[Handel]

Even at medium Milan sends every other turn to my french castles two almost full stacks (15+) of milan crossbow militia and siege machines. They are great units to have them in the yearly game; luckily now I have heavy cavalry to counter them. I started to play those battles on auto because they are the same over and over again, although on auto my losses are greater. I kill every other turn about 1000 milanese troops and they are still coming and coming. And besides I am allied with Venice and they are at war with Milan too, so Milan is fighting on two fronts and I guess it is producing even more units.
When playng as England I saw Milan quickly took almost all the France. Now I understand how it was possible.

[The_Prophet7315]

No crusade/jihad desertion is my main complaint for the AI in this one. If I cant get to a crusade destination via land I have to load up on boats and we all know how that ends up. A bunch of armor at the bottom of the Med.

[Lord Magus]

Let's use our level 10 assassins to assassinate the AI!

[Julius_Nepos]

Handel, I find that if I'm at war with a faction, and that faction is also at war with another AI opponent, the "war" on the AI front seems to be suspended in favor of attacking me (and only me). The AI gives itself breaks, it gets special treatment at all times, and though its not exactly cheating I find it detracts from the game markedly. It may make it harder? but who wants to fight battle after battle all the time, knowing you'll win but having to expend energy, the time and the effort repeatedly? I don't know who thinks this is a good thing, but I certainly don't. I'd rather the AI be hopelessly inept and still behave within the logical rules of engagement rather than it being given all sorts of benefits I don't have.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

I hope the AI is on the lots of special treats patch no. 2!

I agree on cheating....it would be nice to face the CPU player...and have them use some kind of real tactics..rather than brute force..

[Brighdaasa]

simple math: say the enemy has 2 medium sized cities/catsles with 3 recruitment slots, that's 6 units/turn, so in 3 turns it has 18 units (almost a full stack), these are cheap units that will replenish at a rate of 1/turn. So it can keep churning out full stacks for quite a while before its recruitment pools are depleted. And now be honest, the ai doesn't throw you a full stack every other turn, it's a few turns apart; in my simple example every 3 turns is entirely possible. And the ai has the money because destroyed stacks don't have upkeeps.

Now i'm not saying that ai doesn't cheat, but a lot is down to your frustrated feelings about having to fight the same militia stack over and over again every few turns. Sometimes there's a logical explanation within the game constraints.

[Julius_Nepos]

Brighdaasa, in all honesty, Hungary WAS throwing full stacks at me between 1-3 turns for a long period of time, was it the whole game? no, of course not. Did it stop from time to time? Yes it did. But the fact remained that those dismounted feudal knights kept coming, again and again, it must have been some kind of conveyor belt going on there. What I'm saying is, the AI seems to be able to produce, say, more units in a single turn from a single city than I can. It seems to be limited only by cash, not by recruitment slots. I can't really verify this but that's the impression that I get. It's all so hopeless, the men come they die, two turns later more come and they all die. The only thing that really stopped me from just destroying them post haste was my slow style of play and my need to garrison cities with large forces.

Often I DO have the strongest military in game, but I'm still vulnerable to losing cities at strategic points since I can't bring my entire force to bear in the field, and the AI can. They only need one unit in a town to keep it stable. I often need 10-15 as cities get to be massive in size. It's really just a matter of the AI being able to cut corners and give itself benefits more than anything else. How else do you explain Hungary and Russia becoming huge empires under AI control, but being easily overwhelmed (at least with me in charge) by full stack armies early in the game? As Hungary even if I can defeat that first Byzantine full stack there are two more coming for Sofia right behind it, I don't know how to win, yet under AI control Hungary flourishes and becomes a huge empire. And it can't be because the AI is 100 times smarter than I am either. Anyway its just an annoyance as I said.

[The_Prophet7315]

That's funny Julius, as the Turks the Byz seem very intent on wiping me out and are just fine with letting Hungary expand even signing alliances to hasten my death.

[Julius_Nepos]

Yeah when your the Seljuks of Rum you really have to chastise the Byzantines Early otherwise they'll do all they can to overwhelm you. The complete opposite thing happens if you're Hungary. I want consistency! Perhaps someday we'll get it, who can say?

[Zenicetus]

Brighdaasa, in all honesty, Hungary WAS throwing full stacks at me between 1-3 turns for a long period of time, was it the whole game? no, of course not. Did it stop from time to time? Yes it did. But the fact remained that those dismounted feudal knights kept coming, again and again, it must have been some kind of conveyor belt going on there. What I'm saying is, the AI seems to be able to produce, say, more units in a single turn from a single city than I can. It seems to be limited only by cash, not by recruitment slots. I can't really verify this but that's the impression that I get. It's all so hopeless, the men come they die, two turns later more come and they all die. The only thing that really stopped me from just destroying them post haste was my slow style of play and my need to garrison cities with large forces.

I wouldn't discount the possibility of a bug or flawed design with this first release of the game, but keep in mind that the AI is much better than the player (most players, anyway) at micro-managing the economy. It's also probably better at juggling just the right cost/benefit ratio for buildings needed to pump out soldiers when it needs to. I'll never manage my empire's economy as well as the AI factions do.

For that reason, I always try to cripple an enemy's economy with port blockades (VERY effective in reducing cash), and assassins destroying economy and happiness buildings (forcing the AI to spend cash to rebuild), small army stacks blocking enemy land trade route roads, assassinating or taking over enemy merchants, etc. I also sink their ships when I see them, forcing a rebuild cost. I need assassins and a strong navy anyway for my overall campaign strategy, and sabatoge is about the only way to start training up an assassin. So there are no added costs. With this approach, I've never felt that the AI is cheating or had an unfair advantage. I'm matching my relative inefficiency at running the economy, by crippling the AI's efficiency.

The downside is that you can take it too far, to the point where they're bled dry and either flip to rebels, or else they just don't field enough units to make for exciting battles. So I just slack off the economic warfare when I want big battles with full enemy stacks. Obviously this approach works best when you can focus on one enemy at a time. It gets a bit dicey trying to run economic warfare on several fronts at once, until the late stage of the game.

[Bob the Insane]

I have to say I have seen the other side of this as well, in a VH campaign game I have had London (as the capital) with a pop of 40k+ with a governor and 6 free militia units and very High taxes and still happy... Of course I had wiped out Scotland so have the British Isles to myself so I don;t think there where any enemy spies or armies wandering around. Small rebel stacks would occasionally appear but that was okay. I could also remove the governor without any real fallout.

I also had Antioch at the same time and it had a 45k+ population and religion issues plus enemy spies wandering around. But it was still controlable with a full garrison of 20 militia units and no governer provided I maintained a couple of priest in the province and a spy or two in the settlement.

But then playing as spain I was having all sorts of issues maintaining order in my provinces but with Moorish Imans and spies wandering around I think the cause was fairly obvious. One interesting thing is that you can have Religious Unrest even if the province is 100% catholic?!?!?

[Bongaroo]

I've seen the religious unrest with 95-100% catholic as well but I believe this is probably due to the populations high piety (90%+ catholic) compared to the governors low piety (1-3 peity). I remember in MTW that a high rate of catholicism province would get rebellious with a low piety ruler, so this is probably a carry over of that effect. Not terribly sure, but just my best guess.

[SMZ]

wordems to what some other ppl are mentioning - particularly the AI being better at economy management

for the most part I've had very high taxes and minimal garrisons and no problems... but then, I always keep a Spy in each city and continually improve him by taking a peek at anything that comes close... soon enough he's lvl 7 or 8 and any enemy spies have no chance... same thing with religion - I keep 1 Priest in each province and build religious buildings as soon as they become avaliable for the most part - end result? ppl are happy

of course he can flood you with dismounted knights - you get dismounted knights from the castle and from the barracks, so basically his recruitment pool will never run empty... same as yours tho - with just two or three castles pumping out dismounted knights, you could swarm him with stack after stack too!

you mentioned your play style is slow and cautious - well that's a style that can work great... with certain factions - you can't play Hungary or Turks like that tho, no wonder you're getting overwhelmed - you just have to think about the ideas attached to a culture... Huns, Turks... these are aggresive peoples - and you have to play them aggresively to take advantage of their abilities and troops

slow and cautious would prolly be fit best by the Italians with their great garrisons, alternatively if you want a secure base type idea, English, Scots, Portugese, Spanish, Moors and Egyptians will all work good for you - the spanish, portugese and moors have some initial fights on their hands, but after you take out your arch-enemy(ies) you'll be in a great position to kinda sit back, tech up, fill your coffers and begin slowly annexing - Danes have a secure spot too, but expanding afterwards is the hard part...

[Bob the Insane]

I've seen the religious unrest with 95-100% catholic as well but I believe this is probably due to the populations high piety (90%+ catholic) compared to the governors low piety (1-3 peity). I remember in MTW that a high rate of catholicism province would get rebellious with a low piety ruler, so this is probably a carry over of that effect. Not terribly sure, but just my best guess.

Interesting idea... Most of my governors are bums...

I will try moving them around and see what happens...

[Julius_Nepos]

SMZ, don't get me wrong, I wrote a bit of a guide on the Turkish campaign, and you're right in so far as slow and steady does NOT translate to success early. I find with the Turks there are certain moves that have to be made, at certain times to build up a solid empire and economy, and forestalling the Byzantines is one of my chief early concerns. The situation I was relating, with Hungary involved me with all of Asia Minor north to Tibilisi, Rhodes, Cyprus, all of the Levant, plus Sinai. I wasn't hurting economically, but it took me time to focus on Europe as at that moment my only foothold was Constantinople.

At the same time as I dealt with the Hungarians I was conquering Egypt and fighting off stack after stack from Russia at Tibilisi, albeit at a much slower pace than Hungary, obviously since they were coming in from Sarkel and it took them longer to get there.

Your right about Italy too, in so far as with Milan if I move quickly and take Florence, Ajaccio and Cagliari quickly I'll be pretty much good to go from then on. It's quite a different scenario from say the Portuguese who really have to blitz Spain and take care of the Moors before they can even think about consolidating their gains. Personally I have a hard time keeping taxes above normal, and I never have a treasury with more than 5-6,000 florins per turn. Most of my big building has to be funded by city conquests. I do make use of merchants though the agressive AI always seems to have much better merchants from day 1 than I do. I make use of spies as well to protect cities.

The point is, and I don't see how this is disputable, is the AI gets all sorts of special treatment and benefits. Obviously to make the game harder. For me it simply makes things more annoying, but that's another story. If someone here can show me how they can hold down huge cities with one generals unit and high taxes, then perhaps I'll change my stand on that point. Anyway great conversation, cheers!

[FactionHeir]

You can hold a single huge city with very high tax rates in yellow or green using a high chivalry general.

But I found the PO for the AI odd too. Sent in 5 skill 10 spies and PO only went down 30 total. AI sends 2 skill 7 or so to me, I get some 50% unrest.

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

That's strange. As the Turks, some of my cities have reached 35-40,000+, and Sofia and Venice have reached 52,000 population, yet I have no problem at all controlling them with 3 or 5 units of miltia for a garrison.

Did you convert whatever settlement you have over to your religion?

Do you have spies in your rebellious settlements?

Those are the two key factors in reducing squalor. I have Imams all over the place making sure every province is at least 95% Islam. I have 1 or 2 spies in each one of my large cities that are far from the capital. That way, I have no problem controlling public order most of the time. I say MOST, because some cities seem preconditioned to being absurdly rebellious. Jedda and especailyl Baghdad come to mind, the latter of which I have had to reconquer at least three times due to civil revolt.

[Julius_Nepos]

Yes I tend to churn out Imams/Priests and Spies quite regularly. I convert the population as best I can and I build all the appropriate happiness buildings and city upgrades. Oddly enough I've never had a civil revolt, not in Jedda or Baghdad. But I keep them well supplied with troops too. Unrest, Squalor, Distance from Capital are all issues (though not nearly as bad for me as in RTW, where I never finished a single campaign). The experience isn't bad but I do have to keep the major cities well stocked with troops, and I don't know how some people get the massive money-bin-esque economies going. Anyway, if any of you can tell me how to succeed with Hungary send me an IM of some kind, cheers!

[Goofball]

Unfair Campaign Human Player Advantage:




I'll take that over being able to produce a few extra units any day of the week and twice on Sunday...

[Julian the apostate]

i believe in Rome they still had on the campaign map a 10 thou bonus each turn for vh/vh and i believe 7 for h/h. This alone provides a large advantage to tech up early and to be honest its needed by the AI, its not as smart as you, its not as clever.

Plus your biggest advantage is the computer is logical your not, so feignts on teh campaign map will have an affect

[katank]

You can complain all you want. The thing is that if everything is really on a level playing field, everyone will be in here posting "ZOMG, this game is too easy!!!!1111!!!!".

A quick blitz can turn your faction into a 15-20 province powerhouse in around 10-20 turns. If AIs really do field armies in accordance with their number of territories, then 2 province factions will die oh so quickly and be completely outgunned. I don't mind a bit of AI bonuses. Campaign AI isn't that excessive though Mongol bonuses are a bit cheesy.

[FrauGloer]

Sorry, didn't get around to checking the board up till now. Thanks for all the replies!

To answer some questions:

- I have at least one high-level spy in all my cities accessible by the enemy, killing off most enemy spies, so unrest isn't that much of an issue. It's mainly squalor that's causing public order to go down.

-I am always trying to get population growth to 0%, but that means, of course, that I can't build any farm upgrades (+ to growth *gah*). Most enemy cities, however, upgraded to the max on farm upgrades most of the time, so their population growth is just over the top, especially in places like antioch that have a high growth level to begin with.

- my capital is still London (as the English) as I would consider it blasphemy to remove it to the continent! But I doubt relocating it to France would noticably improve the situation in Antioch, anyway...


Sorry, have to get going again, I'll continue this later!

[Von Nanega]

The AI as noted earlier is generally recruiting cheap units by the horde. Also the AI generally garrisons weak most of the time. I changed my tactic in garrisoning to a few units in the settlements unless I can see a immediate threat. In cities I gaarison up to max with free units.

The one thing I can't figure out is I have had 6 spies in an enemy city, bringing down the loyalty nicely. Then BAM! City loyalty shoots up with only the addition of on more militia unit. Wish it was that easy for me.
(No the spies where not kicked out)