Experiment to see how hard game is...

[SoxSexSax]

Just responding to a few individual points:

The game does seem to fail to hold its own when confronted with a capable blitzkrieger. Does that mean its a rubbish game or that the AI is rubbish? No. Because someone with a different approach would have found the game more interesting and challenging.

I disagree. Blitzing (AKA Rushing) is a very common occurrence in any strategy game, and if the AI cannot cope with it (and let's face facts, M2TW's cannot) then the AI is, if not rubbish, very weak.

I know that by turtling for 50 turns, never blitzing, adopting a host of house rules, I can make the game more of a challenge, but this seems to be the complete opposite to the principle of the game.

As a leader you are to use your skill and experience to conquer the other factions as efficiently as possible. You should be aggressive and use any weakness in the enemy’s defences to your advantage. Your enemy should be trying to do the same to you.

This seems to be a misrepresentation of the situation. The game includes a diplomatic and economic element that is clearly intended to be significant. The fact that your playing style doesn't lend you to utilise these elements doesn't mean the game is at fault, necessarily.

I don't see this as a misrepresentation at all. The most EFFICIENT strategy is the strategy that wins the game the quickest, simple as. It is therefore entirely inefficient to build any non-military unit, as they are simply not needed to win within 50 turns with any faction.

The fact that a particular playing style makes winning it too easy is regrettable but it doesn't mean the game is flawed.

I disagree again. Actually, I don't disagree with the statement, but I disagree that it applies to M2TW. M2TW isn't just "too easy"...it is "easy to the point of worthlessness". Big difference. I just cannot lose a campaign unless I deliberately use a very unsound strategy. And frankly I don't feel like I should have to deliberately play badly to have fun.

I very much doubt they forgot experienced gamers when they made M2TW. It seems they didn't do a good job of preventing blitzkrieg from being too easy a route to victory. That's a whole different thing. Most other approaches are far less easy and so the difficulty levels work well enough.

Please provide a brief summary of a playstyle that is not deliberately weakened to give the AI a chance that will provide me with even a modicum of challenge. And I do not consider "it takes longer" to be the same as "it is harder".

Sacking is just too powerful, it should be dropped altogether or at least the AI should defend their settlements more effectively.

Totally agreed. This would SERIOUSLY help fix the problem of "Steamrollering" and would add some much needed tactical decision making to the game. (Right now the only choice is "who's next?")

[Ulstan]

Likewise, MTW2 would not be a flawed game if we could play it against 15 other human opponents, in fact it would be absolutely brilliant, the reason it is a flawed game is precisely because it lacks strategic challenge and options.

Precisely!

At the very least, people shouldn't be able to gain money from sacking or exterminating cities: it should spread mayhem and destruction and maybe keep their troops free of upkeep for a turn or two, but it's not a huge revenue getter.

Ideally, it should take a while to assimilate new cities into your empire, so that you can't just blitz your way across the map in 20 turns. You would need to tear down old buildings (which should take time) and rebuild your own, convert them to your faith, and reduce the cultural penalty. This should all take time and someone who didn't take the time should have a nice civil war on their hands :)

[Dorkus]

pretty much every TW game has been incredibly susceptible to the blitzkrieg strategy. my two biggest complaints with game design are:

1. ease of the game for aggressive players

2. imbalance of units and buildings

[Kobal2fr]

imbalance of buildings ?! What, like, "Drill_Square pwnz Fairgrounds all the time on Grassy Plain", sort of thing ?

[SoxSexSax]

imbalance of buildings ?! What, like, "Drill_Square pwnz Fairgrounds all the time on Grassy Plain", sort of thing ?

My assumption is that he meant it is too cheap to upgrade towns and castles. If so, I'm inclined to agree. If not, well he'll need to clarify won't he?

[Kobal2fr]

(my own guess was that he really meant that "Faction X gets building Y, and Faction Y doesn't", but it's such a minor detail that I just had to make fun of him )

[Malkut]

Megaman 2 is an extremely easy game if you forego the main weapon and use Metal Blades all the time, and there's no reason not to, because it throws power-ups at you like candy.

You can beat either God of War game by putting all your red orbs into your knives. They level up faster, and you can just destroy everything in the game with ease. You don’t need anything else to beat the game, anyway.

Building a character with 10 Luck, five in every other stat, and the Jinxed trait will make Fallout 2 an easy, quirky game.

There has yet to be a Final Fantasy game where you can't just power-level and completely obliterate the last boss in five seconds.

My point being, if you set out to find flaws in a game's level of difficulty, then you will find them, far more often than not. Every game ever made, regardless of complexity, can be exploited, but you have to chose to do so. Amping up the game's difficulty will never remove this choice, nor will it make it similar to playing against another human being.

[SoxSexSax]

Megaman 2 is an extremely easy game if you forego the main weapon and use Metal Blades all the time, and there's no reason not to, because it throws power-ups at you like candy.

You can beat either God of War game by putting all your red orbs into your knives. They level up faster, and you can just destroy everything in the game with ease. You don’t need anything else to beat the game, anyway.

Building a character with 10 Luck, five in every other stat, and the Jinxed trait will make Fallout 2 an easy, quirky game.

There has yet to be a Final Fantasy game where you can't just power-level and completely obliterate the last boss in five seconds.

My point being, if you set out to find flaws in a game's level of difficulty, then you will find them, far more often than not. Every game ever made, regardless of complexity, can be exploited, but you have to chose to do so. Amping up the game's difficulty will never remove this choice, nor will it make it similar to playing against another human being.

I (and nobody I know of) am not asking for a game that cannot be beat, I am merely asking for a game that provides some semblance of resistance if I choose to be a bloodthirsty warmonger right from the start. Is that honestly too much to ask? It's blatantly obvious what the AI does wrong so how is it remotely unreasonable to complain until its fixed?

Edit: As a side note, the game actually FORCES me to blitz on VH because the FUBAR diplomacy will quite literally never accept a ceasefire with me if we share land borders, not matter how much its getting crushed. This mechanic practically forces me to eliminate any faction I war with...sacking as I go.

[John_Longarrow]

Kobal has been so nice as to ID what couple lines need to be changed to make sacking/exterminating less cost effective. I'm wondering if that can be nested inside of an IF of CASE statement that will make both less effective as you increase the diplomatic difficulty.

NOTE: Military experience doesn't mean that you would be better at this kind of game. Playing strategic games would.

2nd NOTE: The test subject had one of the easiest factions to learn with as their starting faction. If they had either Venice of the HRE they may have discovered very quicky that blitzing wrong results in you loosing quickly.

[Dorkus]

Imbalance of buildigns means just that. You want a building's real value to reflect its monetary cost in the game. This is part of what makes well-balanced strategy games (such as COH or blizzard games) so long-lived, in both the multiplayer and singleplayer settings.

The TW games are notoriously bad in that regard. Late game buildings are far too expensive for what they're worth. You are far better focusing on a few key early game units with all of your resources, than teching up to largely ineffective late-game units. The same is true of non-military buildings. The first level port, for example, is by far the most valuable economic building (at least in coastal provinces).

The upshot is that players who naturally favor aggressive, early-game strategies tend to dominate the map with ease. The AI, which does not realize the inefficiency of teching, and the ineffectiveness of most units, will necessarily lose.

[Malkut]

I (and nobody I know of) am not asking for a game that cannot be beat, I am merely asking for a game that provides some semblance of resistance if I choose to be a bloodthirsty warmonger right from the start. Is that honestly too much to ask? It's blatantly obvious what the AI does wrong so how is it remotely unreasonable to complain until its fixed?

Edit: As a side note, the game actually FORCES me to blitz on VH because the FUBAR diplomacy will quite literally never accept a ceasefire with me if we share land borders, not matter how much its getting crushed. This mechanic practically forces me to eliminate any faction I war with...sacking as I go.

It's not an unreasonable request, it's an unnecessary one. The only 100%, sure-fire way to get the AI to build a big enough army at the start to stop a blitz and still be able to afford it during the money-tight early game is to make them blitz.

That's exactly what you're complaining about in your edit, though, except that the AI loses, and you didn't.

I don't see how balancing sacking would help, either. You'd just have to blitz with smaller armies, which can easily be done if you use spies on the cities and don't auto-resolve any of the battles. It still wouldn't be even remotely challenging. If anything, that would put the computer at a disadvantage by limiting a source of starting income.

Even if they made the AI build huge armies to just set around in their cities and wait for you to come and conquer them, then you’d still find a way to totally annihilate the AI (because it's an AI), and be right back here, complaining about how easy it all is.

The company's limited resources should be aimed at fixing actual problems in the game, not patching exploits that people could easily avoid simply by not doing it.

[Didz]

I don't see how balancing sacking would help, either. You'd just have to blitz with smaller armies, which can easily be done if you use spies on the cities and don't auto-resolve any of the battles. It still wouldn't be even remotely challenging. If anything, that would put the computer at a disadvantage by limiting a source of starting income.

The removal or reduction of income from capturing settlements would prevent both 'Blitzers' and the AI financing the retraining their armies from the proceeds of a seige and thus force them to rely on earned funds to finance their war. That means that they cannot simply ignore their economies, or use the proceeds of their wars to finance their build strategy.

You're right that this might just result in the determined Blitzer using smaller armies, but if this change was also allied with penalties for mantaining armies on foriegn soil such as doubling or trebling maintenance cost and constant attrition I've mentioned then any army on foriegn soil is going to be both expensive and difficult to sustain.

That should put any attacker at a distinct disadvantage to an army defending its homeland, whether AI or Player controlled, and mean that any attacks will need to be conducted with enough strength to ensure a quick, but limited, victory. If nothing else this would make the game more realistic, but it should also change the game play.

It would certainly need more planning and strategy to work.

The use of spies would need to be countered with counter-spying, but at least using spies indicates a slight expansion in the utilisation of the games features, so it would be a step in the right direction.

Even if they made the AI build huge armies to just set around in their cities and wait for you to come and conquer them, then you’d still find a way to totally annihilate the AI (because it's an AI), and be right back here, complaining about how easy it all is.

That has already been tried in STW with the purple horde, and it has been repeated in MTW2 with both the Mongols and Timurids. It doesn't work unless the strategic AI is capable of making effective use of the massed troops it has been given.

The issue of sacking cities is not about the quality of the AI, its actually about poor game design. There is a flaw in the basic structure of game play that allows players to expliot the game to win without playing it.

I agree with you that the AI is a seperate issue that cannot be resolved by merely throwing more resources at the AI factions.

The company's limited resources should be aimed at fixing actual problems in the game, not patching exploits that people could easily avoid simply by not doing it.

I disagree, in many respects the Blitzing expliot is one of the fundemental flaws in the game, highlighting a problem with its basic design and if anything it should be dealt with first simply becuase until it is resolved its impossible to determine how many of the other flaws are being fed from it.

Changing the game design to make it harder to sustain large armies in the field might actually have a big impact on the strategic AI and the way it plays, until that has been established its difficult to see how one could begin to address the other AI issues.

[Derventio]

Well I enjoyed the generally intelligent discussion here, but it left me totally depressed.
You see I am a pretty intelligent man (IQ 149) I have an interest and understanding of military tactics. BUT I CANT WIN THIS GAME!
I'm great at CIV and I beat Shogun but stuff since I suck at.

Ah well the siege of Dublin awaits ---again.

[John_Longarrow]

Marius Dynamite

I don't think its the programmers who are making the AI do dumb things. I think its the person who's supposed to be generating the spec for how the AI handles conditions that is doing it. I drop it dead in the lap of who ever is supposed to be in charge of the AI team / development. That's the person who has to be shown "Here is what we wan't, not what you are giving us".

Telling someone "It sucks, fix it" gets interpited as "I'm whining and I've got no clue what I want". That is from sitting on the other side of the table and asking "OK, so show me the problem" and having the other person not be able to. If you can't tell someone how it is broken, give examples of how it is broken, and show what you are looking for, they will NEVER be able to produce what you are asking for.

[alpaca]

Well I enjoyed the generally intelligent discussion here, but it left me totally depressed.
You see I am a pretty intelligent man (IQ 149) I have an interest and understanding of military tactics. BUT I CANT WIN THIS GAME!
I'm great at CIV and I beat Shogun but stuff since I suck at.

Ah well the siege of Dublin awaits ---again.

Are you kidding me? If the game is really hard for you (and you're pretty intelligent as you claim ) I daresay you never thought about it properly. Once you sit down to figure out how it works it's damn easy (especially the battle part)

[Didz]

Are you kidding me? If the game is really hard for you (and you're pretty intelligent as you claim ) I daresay you never thought about it properly. Once you sit down to figure out how it works it's damn easy (especially the battle part)

Actually, when I read Derventio's post my first thought was that this demonstrates the difference between having an understanding of history and tactic's and being a game player.

A gameplayer will work out how to expliot the weakenesses of the game in order to win, an intellient person with an understanding of tactic's will tend to do what historically and logically ought to work and trust the game to reward him for doing the right thing.

A classic case of too much knowledge being a bad thing.

[John_Longarrow]

SoxSexSax

(Code is abstract)

If (CitiesLostInWar > 0 and CitiesTakenInWar < CitiesLostInWar) _
And (MyMilitary < TheirMilitary / 2) Then AcceptCeasefire.

If I have lost more cities and my military is less than half theirs, accept a ceasefire. Acceptable?

As it doesn't take into account either factions other war commitments, I'd have to say no. If you go up to Milan after you've just taken a city or two of theirs, and you offer a cease fire, I'd say they would be nuts to accept it if you've just been excommunicated and your capitol is now the target of a crusade. More would need to go into this decision than just a simple calculation of "Us VS them". That is why I think we, as a community, would need to work out what we think would be a good way to handle these situations. If we can create an actual specification, the coding would be very easy.

This is just plain pedantic. When PLANNING, you ASSUME everything else is bug free, otherwise what's the point? ASSUMING the bug was fixed, my original method stands. Even if it wasn't, divising a noddy but workable strength value from a stack would be trivial.

Other issues also arise. What is the religious situation in the city? What other armies are around? What are the real chances of holding it once you've taken it is the better question. If I'm the player and I have only two units of town guard in the place, the AI would be very dumb to attack with 4 units of town guards if they can't hold it after taking it. We'd have the same disappointment as now, but the AI would be further limited because it would waste more resources in trying to take the city and losing it.

No, my script is vastly BETTER than the original, as the original will not prioritise defence for frontline cities for multiple turns even when they have less than 4 units, which is just wrong. Mine might be wrong in certain cases too, granted, but it is better to have and not need than need or not have. And as for being more expensive, some of my other changes would recoup the money.

For reference to number 4, please see your own post on number 2. You are stating "We can make the AI spend more, but thats OK because we will fix it some where else". The AI shouldn't be forced to increase its expenses when it has a hard enough time handling a player as is. This is why we would need to actually work out how the AI should garrison a city by taking in to account what could be used against it. The Moors should never have a large garrison in Timbuktu unless there is a reason for it. Deciding that they should always have 8 units in it once they've take it is less useful than the current situation. There is no way to say an arbitrary increase is better in all cases than working out a good solution. That sounds like something a customer would come up with, followed by them being pissed off when it doesn't result in their expectations.

Thinking primarily about the strategic side of things gets AI nations killed. Furthermore, my formula would take all land border sharing nation's militaries into account, meaning sicily would need less defence than the HRE before building boats...but still MORE THAN NOW!

Odd, I've never heard someone state that planning strategicly isn't the best way to handle decision making in a strategic game before. It is not something I've ever encountered, but I've seen many people who concentrate on tactical situations lose horribly in strategic games.

So it would be a good thing for the player to have unrestricted access to all AI boarders without the AI being able to counter? So playing as the Danes, I SHOULD be able to attack any other nation that boarders the Atlantic secure in the knowledge that they won't build a fleet that can oppose me for a looooong time? Hmm. I don't think you have thought through the player's options for this.

(BTW, when I say something is trivial, I mean compared to, for instance, writing an 8 way A* pathfinding algorithm, or an efficient alpha blending routine...trivial to a professional coder, basically)

Ah, I see the problem now. You are thinking like a programmer, not a developer. Now I'm not sure how long you've been coding for (any suggestions for keeping proper track of punch cards besides writing sequence numbers on them?) but I've met too many "I can write the code" guys who have no understanding of how to actually meet the clients demands instead of the clients needs.

I may have only been doing coding for about 12 years, but I have learned that giving the client what they need instead of what they ask for often has made me a lot more money in a lot less time. Since I do know that asking a developer (or a coder) to simple "Make it work" or "Fix it" often results in the exact same arguements I read on this board, I'd prefere to tell CA WHAT we think is broken, HOW we think its broken, and WHAT we really want them to change.

I also know that I've gotten very tired of these types of meetings because too few of the individuals involved were versed well enought in the clients business, how businesses need to work, what the employees in the business were actually doing, and what can reasonably be expected from programs that I've gone on to a much more enjoyable career. Now I only have to talk folks currently serving in or recently returned from combat deployments into staying in the military. Much less stressful for me.

[Jambo]

All TW games are easy. The only way to lose a TW game is if the objective is to lose. You see, TW games are unique in that it's actually harder to lose a game than to win.

I now have my game modded through scripts to give the AI money and city garrisons upon being besieged by the human, and even now I still win 95% of my battles; the ones I lose tend to be from the odd unexpected naval skirmish.

The problem is incurable. One can endeavour to make the campaign as hard as you can through modding, but ultimately you still win every tactical battle you play. In effect all you're doing is giving yourself twice the number of dough-ball AI stacks to fight. Remember the Hojo "Stack of DOom" from Shogun? The only way to nullify a human player is to bore it into submission through sheer weight of AI numbers and the enormity of time it then takes to complete each turn. ;)

I remember when CA removed the AI's ability to outspend its money in Shogun. With the Hojo hoarde removed the challenge disappeared immediately. I actually preferred Shogun with the cheating horde, and so did many others once they realised their complaints of "AI cheating" resulted in an easy game.

On the battlefield there's only ever one winner. The reason for this is the formula for winning on the battlefield is so simple. Shoot missiles as the AI approaches, engage infantry, then once engaged use cavalry to flank and initiate the chain rout. This could be made more difficult to achieve if the AI acted in a similar way. Unfortunately, it doesn't. It likes to charge its cavalry first!

So, make mental note everybody - don't buy a TW game for a challenge. Buy it for immersion (sometimes), graphics and ... um... fun...

Edit: It would seem that CA's way of introducing the challenge for Med II revolves around the greatly reduced timescale to complete the campaign. 225 turns instead of 400+ in Rome.

[John_Longarrow]

Jambo,

You could also mod the game so that all AI factions are Mongol hordes. They seem to know how to shoot first and charge later!

[Jambo]

John,

I think one of the best ways to make the harder might be to use a script that spawns a Generals unit for the AI every 5 turns or so as long as they're underneath a certain amount cf to their city number. The AI using captains to lead big armies does a lot of harm.

[Didz]

So, make mental note everybody - don't buy a TW game for a challenge. Buy it for immersion (sometimes), graphics and ... um... fun...

Whilst I don't deny that what you say is true, do you really think that its inevitable and can't be fixed?

[Jambo]

Whilst I don't deny that what you say is true, do you really think that its inevitable and can't be fixed?

I'd love to say no Didz, but I really believe the current format of TW games makes them impossible to make difficult per s&#233;. They're just too complex with too many variables to enable competent AI to be designed. Maybe under the "Risk" style of campaign map, as seen in Shogun and Med I, the campaign element could have been made more difficult?

However, the Battle AI hasn't improved one iota from the days of Shogun and Med I so it's difficult to believe it's going to improve drastically in subsequent titles as the maps, units, etc, get more complicated in design and function.... What I'm alluding to here with respect to Med II is that the complexity of siege warfare has far surpassed the ability to program competent AI to deal with it.

Where did they go wrong? Well, for starters I believe the more advanced campaign map was a bad move. While there's no doubting that it adds to immersion and realism, I'd argue it's far too complex for the AI. I'd have much preferred a more traditional and simplified boardgame style of map layout; one which has less freedom and the AI can utilise choke points, river crossings, high ground, etc to its full potential. Secondly, the idea of captains... urgh. Why o' why captains? They're the bane of any AI army. All armies should automatically contain a general unit thereby eliminating this particular AI weakness in a oner.

[John_Longarrow]

Jambo,

I do think the AI can be improved to the point that it will challenge any player. Half of the problem is that they don't have any way to push updates for the AI scripts on a regular basis.

If you take a couple hundred players who like to mod and let them regularly update the campaign AI to counter existing player tactics and strategies, you will eventually get an AI that can be a challenge. I'm not sure how long it would take to do so, but I'm pretty confident in the abilities of the players to come up with continual tweaks to make the game better.

One behavior that I personally think needs to be changed is the predictability of the AI. I personally think there should be multiple different AI scripts to reflect different leadership styles. One for an isolationist AI, one for an expansive AI, etc. By having varied responses to a given player generated situation you will find out that the player has a hard time coming up with a "Best solution", especially if two scripts behave radically different to the same player actions.

Think of how a player would react to an AI that follows AskThePizzaGuy's blitzing strategy. That could result in just enough of a stalemate for the player to allow several other AI factions to really get ahead.