Experiment to see how hard game is...

[Didz]

What seems to be lacking amongst the AI controlled factions is situational awareness. They don't seem to take into account their relative strength to each other or the player controlled faction, or the threat currently posed by other factions to each of their settlements. Their actions are purely reactive to local opportunies and events no matter how dumb that action is given their overall situation.

There is obvioulsy some sort of mechanism in the game assessing the relative power of factions because we actually get a graph showing precisely that information. There is also a constant montoring of factions to determine how close to victory they are because we are warned when a computer controlled faction gets close to victory. So, in theory at least it should be possible to modify AI behaviour to take into account where its faction is in the pecking order relative to the others and to modify its strategy and goals to take this into account.

e.g. Do I need more income?, Do I need more troops?, Do I need more settlements? Do I need more Allies?

The risk is that what results is a Settlers IV type game where the AI faction remains totally passive until it has an overwhelming advantage and then swamps the human player. This produces a rather poor gaming expereince where the AI does not challenge the player at all, unless it can win the game and is then virtually unstoppable.

However, with so many factions it seems unlikely that this sort of result would occur. Most factions would find themselves neighbours to at least one faction which was weaker than they are and one which is stronger and should be coming up with sensible strategies for dealing with all of its neighbours, not as individuals but as a group. The idea being to try and reduce the threat these neighbours pose whilst increasing the threat it poses to each of them.

The following is my attempt to come up with a foundation model for a strategic decision making routine based upon relative power, using four neighbouring factions.

North (6) bordered by East (11) and West (12) total threat (23)
South (5) bordered by East (11) and West (12) total threat (23)
East (11) bordered by North (6) and West (5) total threat (11)
West (12) bordered by North (6) and West (5) total threat (11)

North and South cannot hope to survive an attack by either East or West and so must avoid any direct hostility towards their neighbours. However, were they to form an alliance they would significant reduce the overall threat posed by either East or West by creating a power block of (11).

Both East and West are reasonably confident of victory over either of their immediate neighbours North or South, but only if they can be sure that the other remains neutral and does not intervene. Therefore, they will be seeking some sort of alliance with either North or South which will ensure that they remain passive whilst a war is pursued against the other.

Both West and East need to increase their power base before their factions come into direct border contact, because whoever is the stronger at this point will be in the best position to win. Merely, annexing North or South will not ensure victory, unless you can also prevent the opposition to annexing the other smaller faction, the goal must be to secure one or both of the other factions whilst denying either to your main opponent.

Therefore, if East were to invade the North, then West must react immediately to protect the North either by forming an alliance with it, by moving troops into the North to counter the Eastern invasion unilaterally, or by persuading the South to launch a counter invasion of the East.

An alliance between West and South would produce a power block of (17) to oppose the Easts (11) which means that the East would need to break off hostilities with the North immediately and seek a ceasefire in order to prepare to meet the new threat. The most obvious counter to a West-South threat would be an alliance between East and North producing a power block of (17) to match that of the West-South alliance. The North currently has a power block(17) and a power (11) block to deal with and so has little option but to agree. If it doesn't the most likely result is an invasion by the West which has just succeeded in neutralising the threat from the South by allying with them. The only other option it has is to try and break the alliance between the West and South thus returning the situation to its initial state.