The Complete Game

[Yun Dog]

Well personally, I think a 'Get off my land' function would be a sensible solution to this problem, plus the obvious increase in the diplomatic and political penalties imposed for breaching another factions soveriegnty.

The problem with instantly creating a battle scenario is that it would merely increase the level of aggression within the game.

I like the idea of this type of Civ4 diplomacy the addition of defensive pacts would be nice too

but as said the AI doesnt pay heed to consequences now - the excommunication and reputation are suposed to be the mechanisms controlling the AI - it wants to avid excom so it makes peace - the next turn however it declares war again - and them makes peace - it would be the same with getoffmilanddude - it would get off - but then back again the next turn

Also people saying the AI more readily accepts ceasefires when its in a bad way in 1.2 - not in VH anyway - Poland down to 2 provinces, few family members left - war with me the whole game - peace - nah dont think so

One thing I have noticed is the AI is continually switrching beteen citys and castles in it provinces obviously as it goes broke it changes to citys - this also seems flawed to me - switching back and forth - and kills the immersion again - and its rediculous really

I have also noticed the small stacks AI against big rebel stacks

As said the failing strat AI is noticable now because of the change from the risk map - and because of this fact alone - the strat game now needs to become more than it was... and it could be great... it is the great timeless game of medevil warfare.. and it can be made great, and the strategy came be made to be complex and appear devious and many layered, it just needs development within the confines of the progamming.

think about this

instead of citys vs castles - we go back to MTW - each province has a castle - with a surrounding network of small towns like a web throughout the province, when attacking you can choose to scorch the earth and burn the towns (if your try to economically starve the enemy) - eg. poland has good cav, it could have all cav armies roaming the countryside burning towns but never seiging - you would be forced to attack them in the field to stop them. Alternately if your planning of taking the province you wont want to burn the towns but will want to head straight for the castle and seige it - taking the province and the town intact, at this point the enemy could abandon the castle and burn as they retreat.

the towns would be attached by little road networks like an spiders web

then add in some nation specific programmed behaviours

some goal oriented objectives

tweak some of the provinces to give them some differing characters and build lists eg +1 to bowyers built in this province

add the re-emergence and titles

and the hardest of all attempt to progrem some type of scaled priority model for the AI - ie it wants to expand, not be excommunicated, have a good or bad rep depending on what nation it is. It want to make itself stronger by defensive pacts, and a set of scaled factors for declaring war (at this point should the human declare war then its all out war the AI and whatever allies it has against the human) otherwise it should try and avoid war at least with its own religeous group.

looking at that big mass of text posted on the previous page - looks to me like all the necessary parameters are there - the numbers just need tweaking and some will need scaling factors applied

we'd need to look at how those parameters 'fill out' as far as numbers generated during a game - then look at the numbers when the AI does something silly and tweak the numbers

frontline_balance="0.0":: ratio of factions frontline military strength vs the target
military_balance="0.0":: ratio of factions overall military strength vs the target
production_balance="0.0":: ratio of factions overall production strength vs the target

for the AI looking at a human these values need to have a *3 multiplier for the target ratio


strongest_neighbour="false" :: is the target the factions strongest neighbour (if this is true the AI nation should seek alliance with this neighbour)

the more I look at it the more I think its all there - the numbers just arnt working the way they should