Trusted allies in 1.02

[Foz]

i dont think foz is trying to be fair hes just stating how things are. having a game with victory conditions that the AI doesnt attempt to meet is pretty lame. wheres the challenge in that?

Yes, exactly. At the very least it should try hard to block me from meeting victory, as it cannot do so if another faction (currently bound to be the player) does it first.

I totally agree. In my opinion, I don't see any noticable difference between patch and pre-patch. If someone said AI will attack more intelligently in 1.2, personally I would not expect to see a 1 region faction attacking a strongest and most advanced faction. An intelligent thing to do is to go for a weaker one.

Case in point. Milan is down to only Ajaccio left, and we're at war. I made a ceasefire offer, and they turned it down. I clicked on "Make Offer" again and offered them a ceasefire again. This time they accepted. Two turns later, they sieged my full garrisoned city with a half stack, leaving only a general and a spear unit to guard their only remaining region. I obliterated their 1/2 stack unit, and send a 3-unit army (a general, a spear unit, and a heavy infantry) to take their remaining region. Their 1/2 stack can easily take one of the Sicilian's region.

Why would you not expect to see that? What you are saying is rather like saying "in world war 2, France and Great Britain shouldn't have attacked Germany, they should have attacked each other b/c they were weaker." It's simply not a valid viewpoint. The biggest nation should always be the priority target, because it is the biggest threat to the others. Even a 1-region faction should still attack the juggernaut, realizing that only by ganging up on it do the smaller factions stand any chance. To fight amongst the weaker factions is only to doom everyone, as they clearly have no chance alone against that huge faction, and any side fighting diverts vital resources from trying to win the fight against it. All attacking a smaller faction accomplishes is assuring that both of you will lack the power to repel the larger faction when it attacks, which is not even remotely intelligent.

I don't dispute that the AI's methods of implementing this strategy are often less than stellar, and it certainly plans its attacks poorly sometimes, I'm just saying I don't think you can fault the overall strategy behind it - it's far more clever than it looks upon initial examination.

That's not very fair to those of us who do enjoy roleplay. Go check the PBeM section of these forums to see some examples of roleplay in action. I at least can make the claim that I have won 20 grand campaigns in M2TW by 'roleplay'.

I feel the need to draw an important distinction. What people are trying to enforce on the AI here is in many cases not the same roleplay that they employ themselves - it is realism. People have repeatedly asked for the AI to behave like real countries. That is where my issue lies: the lopsided requirement many players are voicing. They want realism from the AI that would have it ignoring victory conditions and good gameplay strategy entirely, when they themselves do not play that way. I am only advocating that the AI should play back at you with exactly the same style you do yourself. Most players here seem to roleplay some but in the end are still playing to win the campaign - essentially some realism, but heavily tempered by the understanding that it is a game which must be won. Given the need to do so, they will often break the realism in order to accomplish the game's objectives. They don't simply try to maintain peace with everyone around them for indefinite periods of time. I'm just suggesting that if you can break realism to suit your own needs, then the AI must be able to do the same, or you'll have ruined the AI's ability to play as well as you do (not that it can anyway, I'm just saying it's absolutely impossible for it to compete if you impose more strict limits on it than the ones you play under).

In any case, I fail to see what the fuss is all about. The computer does NOT, to my knowledge, play specifically 'to win'. It is programmed to expand, of course, and conquer the player if he gets in the way. But it appears to me that the current fragility of alliances post-v1.2 is the result of the computer faction's 'untrustworthiness' being taken into account. I have not found any trigger in the AI file that says 'if the player is about to win, stop him'.

Actually, that code is in there. There are various measures of your success, and the game is constantly using them to make the AI hate you if you are successful (see the tall poppy code, for instance). The game mechanics essentially ensure that you can't hold alliances with the AI if you are doing really well, which in turn is of course meant to thrust you into war with everyone. Generally it's effective.

So while the AI itself doesn't necessarily understand the concept of winning, the mechanics that control the AI implement the key points of the concept, at least far enough to dispose the AI against whichever faction is in the lead (player-controlled or not).