Experiment to see how hard game is...

[SoxSexSax]

SoxSexSax

1) Please define hopeless then. Its easy to write "If situation = hopeless", but what would the the actual comparison? Would it be hopeless to have 3 provinces lets, 6 stacks, and be faced by an army of 20 stacks from a 20 province empire? Gotta add in what else is going on on the map. Some times yes its hopeless. Other times, it would cost the human 15 provinces if they tried to go after those 3.

(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?

2) Would require your script to be dependant on a known bug. Autocalc doesn't work correctly during siege fights. It compares the fight as an open field battle, not a siege battle. Any script working based on this would give exactly the same problem as now if the human waits for the attack or sallies.

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.

3) Your script is almost as good as the current one. The problem is what is required for a garrison is dependant on local enemy forces and what can be used against the target. That suggestion would result in a worse situation for the AI than the current one. Just as useless while being more expensive.

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.

4) You are not including a strategic picture. As Sicily I'm not sure I need to have an army as large as the HRE before I build a fleet. That would result in the game being a bit easier as some of the smaller coastal nations wouldn't have the fleet to take rebel islands.

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!

5) Correct, there should be a script that identifies what needs to be put where, but the logic isn't trivial as it would require a lot of input based on what is around and what the factions goals are.

No, the logic is (relatively) trivial. Seriously, all it would need are some hardcoded values per faction (probably percentage based) to determine how many castles of each type to devote to each unit class. Nations that rely heavily on horse archers would lean towards more stable based castles, archery heavy nations would have more bowyer based castles and all round nations would have evenly distributed types. Perfection isn't required, but it simply has to spend less per castle/city than it currently does if it wants to keep up.

(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)

From a coding stand point none of these are that hard to do, conceptually. What we need sample scipts for is to develop a specification that nails down the boundary conditions. How you play and how others play are not the same. As such what you would consider a "Trivial" task to make it more of a challenge for you would be seen by others as a major bug that makes the game too easy for them.

I'm sorry, are you suggesting that my changes (properly implemented) could make the game easier for somebody? Are we playing the same game, where winning a short campaign with any nation on VH/VH is EASILY doable in 50 turns without losing a battle? I refute this point entirely.

I'd suggest you put on your project manager's hat or client liason hat rather than your coders hat. What we really need to do is figure out first and for most how to identify different play styles that require different AI reactions. That would be the hard part.

You're making a relatively easy task much harder than it needs to be, for no good reason. Maybe that's because you're a project manager, not a coder?

(EDIT: fixed about 10 typos and finished a half written sentence)