The AI cheats financially in Kingdoms

[Rumpole]

I have been playing as the Chichimecs in America and decided to start by wiping out the Apaches. I played with fog of war off and noticed two strange things:

1. The Apaches conquer rebel villages with almost no losses.

2. True, maintenance for Apache troops is low, but they cost mony to build and income is small. When I wiped out the Apaches after 17 turns, they had over 50,000 florins. Pursuing the same strategy as the Apaches, I had been almost broke after 17 turns.

[Matty]

You don't want a challenging AI?? I would love it if it cheats - it would save me having to give the AI loads of cash each turn

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I have been playing as the Chichimecs in America and decided to start by wiping out the Apaches. I played with fog of war off and noticed two strange things:

2. True, maintenance for Apache troops is low, but they cost mony to build and income is small. When I wiped out the Apaches after 17 turns, they had over 50,000 florins. Pursuing the same strategy as the Apaches, I had been almost broke after 17 turns.

Correct. In the campaign_script you can read that the AI gets extra money because the AI doesn't get any missions with which it can earn some money. The script also adds some extra money for higher difficulty levels to make the game more ah.... yes indeed difficult.

[NagatsukaShumi]

Correct. In the campaign_script you can read that the AI gets extra money because the AI doesn't get any missions with which it can earn some money. The script also adds some extra money for higher difficulty levels to make the game more ah.... yes indeed difficult.

You are indeed correct, the AI is programmed to gain money should they hit the red, which is clearly making them more of a challenge to just stomp on, I also belive its available to get them to declare war should you grow to a certain extent.

[nameless]

You can still cripple the AI though. THe Lithuanians have been smashed down to two villages and they can no longer retaliate.

[DVX BELLORVM]

You are indeed correct, the AI is programmed to gain money should they hit the red, which is clearly making them more of a challenge to just stomp on,

That makes economic warfare pretty much useless. But then again provides more challenge.

Is it known how much money the AI gets, and under what circumstances ?

[alpaca]

That makes economic warfare pretty much useless. But then again provides more challenge.

Is it known how much money the AI gets, and under what circumstances ?

Yeah, you can check the campaign_scripts for the different campaigns.
It differs from campaign to campaign and faction to faction.
If the AI has less than 0, they get 2000 and if they have less than -5000 they get another 6000, in addition to that they get an increase for their king's purse depending on your difficulty setting.

In crusades for example, the KOJ gets +500 on easy (while the player would get 1000 extra playing it), +2000 on medium (no play bonus), +3500 on hard and +5500 on vh.
In addition the Turks get a 15k extra per turn in that campaign when not played by a human.

[DVX BELLORVM]

Yeah, you can check the campaign_scripts for the different campaigns.

I don't have the Kingdoms yet
But I've checked campaign_script for the vanilla, and didn't find anything. Does that mean that in vanilla AI doesn't receive financial bonuses, or have I missed something?

[lars573]

I have been playing as the Chichimecs in America and decided to start by wiping out the Apaches. I played with fog of war off and noticed two strange things:

1. The Apaches conquer rebel villages with almost no losses.

2. True, maintenance for Apache troops is low, but they cost mony to build and income is small. When I wiped out the Apaches after 17 turns, they had over 50,000 florins. Pursuing the same strategy as the Apaches, I had been almost broke after 17 turns.

The AI in every video game out there cheats to one degree or other. I can't see how you'd be surprised the TW AI cheats?

[Didz]

The AI in every video game out there cheats to one degree or other. I can't see how you'd be surprised the TW AI cheats?

Personally, I'd rather the AI was actually programmed to play a challenging game rather than given unjustifiable advantages. So, I'm a bit dissapointed that this was the best that CA could come up with to give players more of a challenge.

In my opinion it should have been an option at least, not a mandatory feature.

[Noir]

I agree with Didz and the dissapointment is all the more so since the TW AI has always cheated in pretty much the same way since day immemorial.

Not that i was expecting Kingdoms to fix this in any case though.

[Lusted]

It will be interesting to see whether any human can win with a faction other then the Apaches, given this misguided code in campaign_script.

Yup, i've won with New Spain, though i did lose 39 battles in the process.

I checked campaign_script for the original MTW2 and found no special code to give money to AI factions. This is a new feature(bug) in Kingdoms, and it wrecks the economic foundation of the game, since you are watching your finances and the AI effectively has infinite cash. I cannot imagine how this made it through beta testing.

It's not a bug, it's designed that way so to provide more of a challenge on harder difficulty settings.

[Rumpole]

Yup, i've won with New Spain, though i did lose 39 battles in the process.



It's not a bug, it's designed that way so to provide more of a challenge on harder difficulty settings.

The bug (in my opinion) is in the part of the script that gives 10000 florins per turn to the Tarascans and the Chichimecs, independent of the difficulty level.

As an experiment, I set up a game at Easy/Easy and ran through 10 quick turns.
Almost everyone was broke, but the Tarascans and the Chichimecs had about 40K.

[Jambo]

If a game provides a challenge to succeed, it retains its interest. Ideally, if the AI can be programmed to provide this challenge without a dearth of cheats, this is clearly the best option. Civ 4 BtS has gone a long way to accomplishing this. If however, this is a problem, as it has been throughout TW games, then I'd always take a cheating AI that provides a challenge over a walk in the park. If they go on to differentiate this through difficulty levels then everyone wins.

Kingdoms is far better in terms of campaign AI and battle AI than patch 1.2/1.3 vanilla. As a result, it goes a long way to restoring some of the challenge without the cheats. Having said that, it is by no means perfect and it's still a far cry away from the level of AI in Civ 4 BtS (not surprising given that Civ 4 is a turn based strategy game).

[NagatsukaShumi]

Everyone who seems a bit disappointed with this way of making the AI more difficult baffles me somewhat. CA were NEVER going to revolutionise the way the MTWII AI worked, its an expansion pack, they don't do that, the work into making a new AI is solely going into the next two next gen games.

CA could have released the new campaigns with no AI bonuses, then we'd be complaining that it was far too easy. I am glad they get bonuses and get to cheat to provide a longer campaign.

[alpaca]

If a game provides a challenge to succeed, it retains its interest. Ideally, if the AI can be programmed to provide this challenge without a dearth of cheats, this is clearly the best option. Civ 4 BtS has gone a long way to accomplishing this. If however, this is a problem, as it has been throughout TW games, then I'd always take a cheating AI that provides a challenge over a walk in the park. If they go on to differentiate this through difficulty levels then everyone wins.

Kingdoms is far better in terms of campaign AI and battle AI than patch 1.2/1.3 vanilla. As a result, it goes a long way to restoring some of the challenge without the cheats. Having said that, it is by no means perfect and it's still a far cry away from the level of AI in Civ 4 BtS (not surprising given that Civ 4 is a turn based strategy game).

Sorry for going OT but BtS does exactly the same on the difficulty settings where it becomes challenging (for argument's sake let's say Prince and above, although it depends on the player's skill level), AI builds cheaper, researches faster, has less maintenance and pays a lot less for upgrading units.
The AI is actually so easily exploitable by gifting them, giving them tributes and paying them to attack other people that I can win about 2/3 of the games with a decent starting position on Emperor difficulty. Most through domination, admittedly, where it's very hard for the AI to keep even (on the tactical level I mean - a lot of times I have K:D ratios of 3:1 and more) but still.

All in all it's as I said on a thread on civfanatics: The AI is very much shorthanded in the brains department so consider handicaps as a way to partially make up for the unfair advantage you have over the AI.

[lars573]

Personally, I'd rather the AI was actually programmed to play a challenging game rather than given unjustifiable advantages. So, I'm a bit dissapointed that this was the best that CA could come up with to give players more of a challenge.

In my opinion it should have been an option at least, not a mandatory feature.

That's not possible. It might be possible if PC's came equipped with a specific AI CPU.

[Mad Mac]

This explains a lot, especially with the Americas campaign. I just might have to step back from VH to Hard, and see if that can get me past my little problem of not being able to even attack the Tarascans with the Aztecs, because they literally have this non-step stream of units coming out of their cities towards mine. I'm swatting them down as they come, but I can't build up enough momentum to win the 10 consecutive battles just to siege a city. I suppose that's how Very Hard should, be though.

[Zenicetus]

That's not possible. It might be possible if PC's came equipped with a specific AI CPU.

Sure it's possible. There are good games out there where the AI doesn't cheat, like GalCiv2. It's programmed to recognize and counter common player strategies, and it's very tough to beat at the harder levels, with no cheats like economic advantage, lifting fog of war, etc. GalCiv2 does have the advantage that it has no separate tactical AI (all battles are auto-calc'd), so the programmers can focus on turn-based strategy without any distractions.

I probably won't buy Kingdoms for other reasons (see the SecureRom discussion), but just as a personal opinion... since they weren't going to rebuild the AI from scratch, I don't mind this way of making the game more challenging. I do think it's unfortunate that it's tied to the campaign difficulty setting. It would be nice if that were separate, so you could use a medium difficulty where diplomacy isn't broken by the constant normalizing towards aggression that happens at H and VH settings. Maybe the same thing could be done by modding in a King's Purse boost for medium difficulty.

[Didz]

That's not possible. It might be possible if PC's came equipped with a specific AI CPU.

I disagree, I've played games where the AI provides a challenge without cheating. (Combat Mission being one example that springs to mind)

What we are looking at in this case is a simple example of lazy programming and game design. CA can't be bothered to go through the effort of making the AI more of a challenge as its far easier just to have it cheat.

[Jambo]

Didz, have you played Kingdoms?

I've found the AI to be far better than it is in Med II 1.2. I should say I also use a few personalised AI tweaks to help the AI armies reform better when on attack and defence, but on the whole, Kingdoms is the best TW to date, and by a long way. So, I think you're probably being a little harsh here.

I also can't actually think of any strategy game that doesn't impart bonuses (read "cheats" for some here) to the AI at tougher difficulty levels...

[Moah]

Yes - It's fantastic!

I'm playing the Welsh in britannia and now have built up to 1/4 the map with irish, scots and english remnants controlling 1/4 each. I am totally bankrupt and average around 5th (sometimes 4th if norway having a bad day) militarily with 42-59% of the top military (varies between above 3).

Capturing English cities they make me hardly any money. So it appears the AI cheats, gives them more money to maintain troops and lets teh English build entire stacks of armoured swordsmen and fuedal knights vs my crappy spears, skirmishers and saefwyr.

Fantastic! I'm forced to regularly win with half the army. I have to fight canny, defensively and skirmish. I count every man and count it as a disaster when I lose 1/3rd as many men as the english.

In normal TW I would be swimming in cash and beginning to bulldoze the enemy now. As it is I'm not even winning and live in fear ogf the scvots or irish turning on me.

It seems CA are listening. I, for one, am happy.


p.s. Ok so there's still no chance of me losing really and the Ai still fights like a girl but it seems to be as good as they could make it....

p.p.s. And Teulu Skirmishers are fantastic!

[MStumm]

Same in the Teutonic order campaign. As landlocked Novgorod I am stealing candies from babies to feed my troops, yet Teutons keep sending more and more armies. I am not outnumbered but definitely outclassed by their heavily armored soldiers. I think in the first 20 turns I had more heroic victories than in whole vanilla Grand Campaign. Good thing Mongols are duking it out with Poland.

Also in the campaign script I see that in addition to bonus income factions get a "last stand" bonus of $10000 if they have only a few settlements left, and the "debt bail-out" bonus of $10000 if they go in the red, finally they all are supposed to turn on the player if he is close to winning.

[Per Ole]

Good thing Mongols are duking it out with Poland.

Goddamnit are the goddamn annoying mongols in kingdoms as well?!! ugh, that just ruined my day :(

[MStumm]

No the Mongols are just a regular faction now.

[Schyzzo]

I have been playing as the Chichimecs in America and decided to start by wiping out the Apaches. I played with fog of war off and noticed two strange things:

1. The Apaches conquer rebel villages with almost no losses.

2. True, maintenance for Apache troops is low, but they cost mony to build and income is small. When I wiped out the Apaches after 17 turns, they had over 50,000 florins. Pursuing the same strategy as the Apaches, I had been almost broke after 17 turns.

Well, me and my wife are playing with maya and apaches... I can say that she never gets under 40.000!! Even when I need some 10.000 to stop those damn english!!!!!! And when I talk 10.000, I talk 3 or 4 times!!!!
lol!

[IvarrWolfsong]

What is even more annoying than 10k armies spammed at you is taking Jerusalem with your Ghulam/Mamluke horde and still having the AI launch armies with Marshals and Constables every turn. It has been 16 turns since I took the city and the AI still keeps cranking these REQUIRES JERUSALEM units out.

I am all for AI boosts but it really takes the fun out of capturing key cities if the AI just ignores the rules.