The Complete Game

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I think that the AI is programmed to lose. Because the AI's (computer controlled factions) always attack at a certain point the player is forced to counter that attack. The AI attack usually end in failure which for them means end of game. Especially on H and VH campaigns the attack will drain their resources. A normal response of a player is counter attacking and take out the AI stacks. This leaves hardly defended cities/castles as a bait. Besides if you handle the pope well your AI opponent will be excommed.

An other point is that factions with one or two regions left ask to be destroyed because they (almost) never ask for a ceasefire to rebuild their strength.

An other AI strategy could be not to attack the player and let the player do the attacking. This will lead to worse diplomatic relations, a worse reputation and an angry pope. If the AI has some nice alliances the human player will have more trouble expanding than with a very aggressive AI.

To summarize: Aggressive AI means that a player is forced to expand, forced to destroy the AI player to take out the threat.
Defensive AI means more trouble expanding. Cities/Castle will be better defended etc.

PS In an other thread someone won the short campaign in five turns playing England. On amazing thing he did was buying Anger and Toulouse in exchange for an alliance and some money. I tried that in a long campaign and it worked. Also I have bought in a Milan campaign Bologna from the HRE for some florins. Trying to bribe these cities won't work but with a good diplomat you can get them almost for free. Need some improvement

[WhiskeyGhost]

I have noticed that within about the initial 20 turns in any game, it feels as though theres some sort of bonus or something for Diplomacy or whatnot. I'm not sure what it is, but its like you can get awesome deals/alliances/bargains if you conduct your diplomacy asap. For instance, in some games i've gotten an alliance with the Papal States as Egypt and Turks pretty quickly, but as England and waiting till about turn 50 or so (with very reliable rep and no war and good feelings all around with everyone thats met me) they would outright refuse to ally with me, despite winning their little crusade.

My guess is the AI is set to get progressively hostile towards you, to either goad you into action via them attacking, or to force you to move quickly and expand so you don't fail the campaign goals because your at turn 200 and have 3 territories the entire game. Of course, i could be entirely wrong about that

[phonicsmonkey]

I have found it possible to keep long-standing alliances (Venice VH/H, playing 1.1 with trusted alliances enabled and carl's problemfixer) with three or more factions, so long as I keep my reputation reliable or better and my relations with those factions at outstanding or better (perfect to be safe).

However, the MAJOR caveat to this is that if you share a land border with a faction, sooner or later they will attack.

For example, I was allied to England for over 150 turns with no trouble, shared a land border with them and they have just attacked out of the blue, even though I just gifted them 14k the turn before. (Even in this case it took some 50 turns for them to attack me)

I put this down to the same "mission" issue that causes the random blockades. I find when I have a stable number of provinces for a long period I inevitably get told by the Council of Nobles to expand into a neighbour's territory, regardless of the diplomatic situation. Not sure if the AI has the option to "decline" such missions....

In order to counter this I've adapted a tactic I used to use in RTW where I would let the provinces between me and the faction go rebel, creating a DMZ.

In M2TW it's even better in that you can gift them to the Pope, effectively creating a penicillin ring around your territory for any Catholic rivals.

I don't have 1.2 but I think I read here somewhere that the trusted allies checks now include the target faction's reputation as well? in which case it's next-to-useless as all AI factions become despicable very quickly...

[Yun Dog]

I think that the AI is programmed to lose. Because the AI's (computer controlled factions) always attack at a certain point the player is forced to counter that attack. The AI attack usually end in failure which for them means end of game. Especially on H and VH campaigns the attack will drain their resources. A normal response of a player is counter attacking and take out the AI stacks. This leaves hardly defended cities/castles as a bait. Besides if you handle the pope well your AI opponent will be excommed.

An other point is that factions with one or two regions left ask to be destroyed because they (almost) never ask for a ceasefire to rebuild their strength.

An other AI strategy could be not to attack the player and let the player do the attacking. This will lead to worse diplomatic relations, a worse reputation and an angry pope. If the AI has some nice alliances the human player will have more trouble expanding than with a very aggressive AI.

To summarize: Aggressive AI means that a player is forced to expand, forced to destroy the AI player to take out the threat.
Defensive AI means more trouble expanding. Cities/Castle will be better defended etc.

PS In an other thread someone won the short campaign in five turns playing England. On amazing thing he did was buying Anger and Toulouse in exchange for an alliance and some money. I tried that in a long campaign and it worked. Also I have bought in a Milan campaign Bologna from the HRE for some florins. Trying to bribe these cities won't work but with a good diplomat you can get them almost for free. Need some improvement

Alphonse makes the point I was trying to earlier

I think one of the biggest problems with the widespread desire for "more sensible" AI faction behavior is that it is really hard to make the AI behave sensibly using the parameters available. Just think about it: how, using strictly mathematics, does one determine when the AI should attack the player, and when it should try to keep peace? Will it be in the AI's interest to drop a full stack on a lowly-defended settlement of yours? Should it attack you if it sees an advantage?

A part of that problem is that players' definitions of sensible AI vary quite widely. Some players expect the AI to largely leave them alone unless provoked, while others expect the AI to come at them at all times. Which road should the AI take?

The AI should not take the road it is currently on which is attack the player at all cost aggressiveness - This is strategically naive. As Alphonse said - it opportunistically attacks leaving itself exposed to either counter by the human - or other AIs opportunistic attacks. It should not attack anything if that means leaving itself exposed

Ive lost count of how many cities/castles I have taken defended by 1 or 2 unit garrison (all of them). Meanwhile a massive AI stack wanders aimlessly from city to city as I reinforce each one, looking for which one it should attack, then re-evaluating each turn and going in circles - meanwhile its citys are all defenseless.

Because of the changes made to strat map in RTW (from risk style) the AI now needs to garrison troops - something not necessary in MTW. And it needs to be programmed to understand that settlements are key to staying in the game.

next it needs to scale its opportunistic attacks against
1. its power
2. the targets power (and counter ability)
3. Its nearest neighbours power

then the Human player needs to have a x2 modifier factored in - because if the AI attacks the human it can expect he will be at least twice as difficult to defeat in the tactical battle

The AI needs to be programmed to know this lesson "together we stand, divided it falls"
Here the AI needs to do some numbers regarding alliance with another AI will make it stronger defensively (also it needs addition of if someone declares war on ally then you have the option of declaring war to increase standing with ally)

and the attacking in concert with the ally against the human aggressor because alone vs the human = loss

it needs to have individual strategies for each nation with biases and favoured targets and enemires and allies
Basically if the AI is england it needs to at least have a framework strategy for winning as england - not stopping the human - it needs to play its own game to win - that will be a greater hinderence to the human than the predicatable attack the human no matter what.

as for the sharing border thing I agree completely with the other posters - as soon as you share a border you can predict war - no matter if they are your most trusted ally.

if the AI allys with the human and wages war in concert with the human - that AI will start doing better - eventually well enough it might be able to confidently backstab the human - and if the computer is going to back stab - then it need to be programmed to have multiple stacks free for full scale invasion - NOT 1 stack (the way it does atm)

I just want to see the days of huge battles return - allied armies on both sides meeting for battle of a scale not seen since MTW - I dont think Ive had a single battle with allies present on either side since MTW


to sum up the AI in my opinion wanders aimlessly over the map looking for any opportunistic attack it can make - this is lame and obvious

the AI needs to be programmed to move with a purpose - if it want to kill the human it should make some friends and move as one with everything to wipe out its enemies - that is what I call Very Hard

unless its going to be a cakewalk - it should avoid war - until it is powerful enough to annihalate its opponent

finally if ships cant be programmed to stop blockading (thereby creating wars) then get rid of them

[anders]

the lack of other means to victory than steamrollering the world is really something that is inherent in the very formula TW was first built on; it is a tactical battle game with a strategy part whose only function is to set the stage for tactical battles, iot is not a grand strategy game with tactical battles.

that sais, on lower difficulty you can achieve a lot with subterfuge, but it is more costly and far less effective than pure military means. and irrational and overtly aggressive AI makes subterfuge irrelevant in some games.

[Yun Dog]

the lack of other means to victory than steamrollering the world is really something that is inherent in the very formula TW was first built on; it is a tactical battle game with a strategy part whose only function is to set the stage for tactical battles, iot is not a grand strategy game with tactical battles.

that sais, on lower difficulty you can achieve a lot with subterfuge, but it is more costly and far less effective than pure military means. and irrational and overtly aggressive AI makes subterfuge irrelevant in some games.

I agree but if you look at the thread on 'the poll results' a few weeks ago, MP was unpopular - most people said they didnt play MP because of lack of context for the battles - this is key

yes it is a tactical battle game with strategy to set the scene

but the battles lose context if they are boring, repeditive or clearly some AI cyclical pattern - those battles your wanting to auto

the battles people love are the battles WITH context - ie the great crusade for constantinople, a huge battle with your allies against your enemy and their allies for control of Italian peninsular - with 10's of thousands of men


if the scene is not set adequately then the tactical battles lose context and become pointless and boring, and at that point you stop playing - atm that point is coming not long after starting the game

[dopp]

Agree 105%, that's what makes Total War special.

[Didz]

I would have to agree with Yunus, whilst the tactical battles were the major innovation of the TW series they cannot stand alone and continue to sell the games.

I for one rarely play the historical battles, never play multi-player and only use custom games for testing and novelty value. (e.g. massed Tim Elephants v Massed Aztec Peasants - hilarious)

The real danger is that as the TW series has matured it has gradually moved further and further towards the situation that Anders has highlighted.

In the original Shogun TW there were valid alternatives to waging a military campaign and many of us completed entire campaigns without declaring war on a single faction. The so called 'War of the Shadows' with massed spies, assassins and geisha's was a valid alternative way to victory.

Unfortunately, the more recent games in the series have lost that variety and the overall replay value of the game has sufferred as a result. Hopefully, in future versions we will see this balance restored and perhaps some more goal oriented victory conditions added.

[crpcarrot]

also in MTW there was a chance that a province that was rebelling would join your faction (usually if it was taken from u recently or if its religion was more in line with yours) so their was more incentive to use spys and priests to convert and to get new provinces without a fight.

personally i think the new strategic map has also done a lot to reduce the significance of battles. in STW MTW if u decided to venture into another factions province (even if you were trying to pass through to the adjoining provice) you had to face the whole garrision and any other army stationed in that province. it only went into a seige if the the defender decided the open battle was not a good choice. this made decisions of moving into another province a much bigger decision. now you can just stroll up to the castle and check out if there is a small garrision there decide if u want to seige or not and then walk away. thats why the AI seems to be so stupid it jut walks around looking for a target that it mathamatically could beat if not it just walks away doing nothing so u end up with loads of stacks doing nothing most of the time. and fighting lots of silly one sided battles that mean nothing other than getting to where u want to go.

what i would like to see is for castles and cities to have a much larger region of control depending on their size. and any army that moves into this zone without military access will immediately take u to a screen asking if u want to attack. all armies in the zone of control will be included in this battle. so if u have 2 stacks standing outside your city u will have both of them plus the garrision in the battle. the attacking faction will have the invading army and any army in the squares adjacent outside the zone of control as reinforcements. if you decide not to do battle then it automatically becomes a seige. when an army decided to retreat to the castle it losed the sone of control round the castle allowing all enemy armies to move freely in the proince. for this to work the the zone of control will have to be pretty large but will still leave plenty of room for armies to go around cities in large provinces.

its silly to think that a whole army can just move into your provice and lay seige to your city without you haing the chance to go out and meet them. and it becomes significant in my games as i have small kingdoms and the lost income can be significant. it will create more oppotunities for more significant (strategically) field battles.

also bringing back civil wars (where disloyal generals went rebel and took whole provines and armies with them) and faction reemergences would be great. but rather than them just turning into armies that are going to sit on the map knowing what to do it should take you staright into a battle for that provice/castle/city.

i think the movement seige system in the current map is really taking away from the significance of the battles. it was a step in the right direction but need to be improved.