Unfair Campaign AI advantages

[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.

[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.

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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.

[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!

[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..

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.