Problems With Scotland AI

[WhiskeyGhost]

The only times i've ever seen Scotland actually hold its own against England, is through personal meddling of my own. Often in the form of either military assistance, funding, alliances, or the dreaded "Giving Scotland London" strategy.

The same can be said of Portugal too though, i never seen them have more then 4 territories, before either being obliterated by the Moors or Spanish

[Rhyfelwyr]

I'm on my 6th campaign right now, and IIRC the Scots have dominated the British Isles twice, the English twice, and once it was even with the Scots owning Scotland, Ireland, and York, while the English held London, Nottingham, and Caernarvon.

In my current campaign, both have done exceptionally well. Turn 140 as the Turks, I use the 'toggle_fow' command every 10 turns to see how the AI is doing. Its been a bizarre campaign of superpowers so far. Scotland owns Inverness, Edinburgh, Dublin, as well as Norway and Sweden. The English own the rest of the British Isles and also own pretty much all of France, except Bordeaux, which belongs to the Spanish. The Poles are an absolute menace, owning eastern Germany, all of Poland and the eastern Baltic states, and this realm continues to Sarkel, from which they even attacked me in Tblisi!

Iberia had a period of Spanish domination, while Sicily took almost all of North Africa. Somehow, the Moors revived and conquered nearly all Iberia and retook most of North Africa. Sicily has lost most of its land now, with the HRE taking Tunis on Crusade and continuing to hold it. The Papacy is a monster, which I have never seen in previous campaigns. The Pope at one point had Florence, Rome, Naples, Durazzo, Sicily, and Caglairi, but since then I've taken Naples and Durazzo.

But back to topic, on the whole I find the Scots AI is OK, they're weakened to play as however since most of their units are bugged (pikes and 2h).

EDIT: And as for Portugal, in all my previous campaigns bar one (before I patched) the Portuguese have done well, just not where you would expect them to, usually taking Bordeaux, Rennes, and/or Ireland.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Scotland will only ever ship troops into Belgium and Denmark or Scandinavia. I have seen them get slightly offensive; but often times they land their troops and do nothing with them unless the province is rebel. I've never seen Scotland actually beat England, but none of my campaigns last past 90 turns. I rarely reach 50.

More often Scotland will settle for the few northern british isles provinces, and take Scandinavia. That's all they can do. Only if England has been weakened by France and Denmark will Scotland become more aggressive. But usually England beats France. I've never seen the AI command France properly.

The AI seems to be patterned on striking "mission-related" provinces, or betraying your alliance by attacking an underdefended one. They rarely strike a well-defended province (not that it would be much help if they did) and they rarely attack outside their pre-programmed mission-related regions.

You will never see the HRE take all of the British Isles unless it's a human player. It's that simple. Even if you gift them endless florins, I don't think it will happen in the given time frame.

The AI needs SERIOUS tweaks to it's attacking strategy. It seems to need tweaks to defense as well.

It can field a semi-competent battalion and fight decently (nowhere near what humans can do) but it has no campaign strategy as we know it.

It's life, Jim... but not as we know it. Certainly not intelligent life.

[Old Geezer]

Why would you expect Scotland, which has few units and poor provinces, to do well? In about 1 in 20 cases it will get 5 or 6 provinces which is apparently due to England being unlucky and fighting on several fronts or being excommunicated. This seems to be just about right to me. In my present French campaign the Scots held 5 provinces and then stupidly came over to gratuitously attack me in Bruges. If they somehow manage to get York and Nottingham they can field some decent large armies.