Something's wrong: campaign AI and dodgy battles in Rise of the Samurai

[frogbeastegg]

EDIT: This issue is now fixed. There was a small file missing from my original install of RotS. After getting steam to verify the game cache and replace that file, the AI has transformed from senile ditherer to the ferocious daimyo we all know and love. Phew!



What are people thinking of the AI in the RotS campaign? I'm very sorry to say that I am finding it to be a massive step backwards. It's awful, so much of what made me love Shogun II's AI -and thus S2 -is now missing in action. This is ETW wearing a kimono. S2's easy mode is harder than this, and its very hard was more logical in clan behaviour!

I'm seeing loads of nonsensical declarations of war. Clans which are on the far end of the map declaring and then not doing anything at all. Friendly clans rated at honourable and trustworthy, which I have trade routes and good relations with, and which are 100% under my family's influence are also abruptly declaring war. My sister clan prefers to support tiny minors over me. Meanwhile the people who hate me, or sensibly placed to wage war on me, are peaceful and happily signing trade agreements. I'm not a large force, I've not been conquering large areas in a short amount of time, and I have been paying attention to keeping my friends. In S2's campaign I would not be seeing this.

The diplomatic AI behaves as if there is a pre-built toggle tied to turn limit. For the first 25 or so turns everywhere was peace-peace-peace. It felt like the AI had gone to sleep, as few provinces were changing hands and only a couple of minor clans were destroyed. I saved my game and quit for the night. On loading today it's non-stop war-war-war without reason, logic, or cause. On turn 37 I quit.

One of the clans which declared war on me immediately turned around and offered peace the next turn. Another clan did the same thing later, and re-declared the turn after that.

The campaign army AI is much worse as well. It's shuffling armies back and forth, back and forth in a never-ending conga. I've witnessed one army running back and forth burning two little locations of the map turn after turn, year after year. Meanwhile the massive garrison in the nearby castle watches while sipping tea. When the AI declares war on me it basically does nothing. It ignores my unguarded castles. It struggles to capture any enemy castle. It sails its ships past my unguarded trade fleets.

I am also finding the battles to be a significant step backwards. On very hard I am waltzing through them as if I am on easy with a set of stat and morale boosts for my men. I'm getting legendary victory after legendary victory, dicing my way through much larger forces, and absolutely destroying evenly matched ones. I can't credit it to my stunning tactics either as I hardly know what most of these units do and am basically just standing there in my deployment position, letting the AI come to me. I loose a few volleys with my archers, let them automatically skirmish out of the way, let the AI charge into my naginata levy line, and then flank with my pair of swordsmen. Every single time, easy victory with manageable losses. I'm not using superior units either. With the bonuses the AI's army should be better than mine. I should be taking a heavy mauling at best and being routed at worst.

I defended a level 2 castle (fort?) once against a vastly superior force. I completely destroyed the enemy with only a handful of men making it onto my ramparts. I issued 3 orders, one each to a melee unit requesting that it move up to stand closer to the ramparts in case the climbing enemy made it inside. I didn't move the rest of my melee force, and let my archers fire at will. Based on my siege experiences in S2, I was expecting a tough battle, perhaps even defeat, based on the armies and fortification level involved.

While it's able to advance in good formation, the battle AI has a single tactic: charge! It barely tries to flank. It doesn't use missile superiority. It doesn't try to lure me out. It doesn't hide. It won't make me come to it.

I actually went into the menu to check that I hadn't chosen easy instead of very hard by accident.



I am close to heartbroken. I loved Shogun II's AI because it was smart, dangerous, and mostly sane. It helped make Shogun II one of the best strategy games I have played in my ~15 years of gaming. Sure the AI made some bad moves or did silly things now and then, but far, far less often than most strategy games. Heh, it probably made fewer dumb mistakes than me! And I loved S2's battles - it was easy to lose with bad tactics or inattention. I had high hopes for the RotS campaign, I've been anticipating it since the day I first heard about it. It should have been a guaranteed hit. While some of the ideas and changes are interesting, without the capable AI and meaningful battles the game is empty to me. It's not worth playing because there is nothing to play against.

This is not the S2 I know and love. This is a shambling zombie. What's gone wrong?

[Hamata]

I think it's fine i like the campaign mechanics etc

[econ21]

This is not the S2 I know and love. This is a shambling zombie. What's gone wrong?

Oh crumbs. Now I hurriedly take back my desire to have the RotS changes (e.g. the campaign map) retrofitted to the original campaign. I hope it has survived in tact, as it was - as you say - a formiddable challenge on higher difficulties. One I confess I have hitherto largely ducked.

[Marshall Louis-Nicolas Davout]

I'm lucky I didn't buy it first. When it goes to March 2013,maybe I'll buy it then.By then it should be fixed.Of course,the campagin shoulnd't affect SH2TW.You can still play the orginal campagin as well.

[Monk]

I've noticed some really troubling things the same as you have froggy.

Enemy armies actively avoiding cities i've left unguarded, odd troop movement, passive AI... It's very strange and has made getting a handle on the new DLC decidly uninteresting. I can't deny the new map looks great, but everything else..

[Madae]

All the problems I have with the game aside, I've only noticed a few things that make me scratch my head. AI agents have a tendency to get stuck and stop moving/acting, and I've also noticed small armies doing that too (but maybe that's some kind of new tactic - stand in my territory an inch or two away from my castle for a few turns).

The only thing that has changed with the battles as far as I can tell is what units you field and, coincidentally, what kind of tactics you'll be using with said new units. A lot of my best troops are archers and archers/melee, so my tactic has always been pretty straightforward - shoot until they get close or die. AI still runs for the high ground, tries to engage in said archer-duels, and as far as I can tell, does it's best in sieges, though my overwhelming and experienced forces will have no problem in defeating a few levies. AI seems a lot more rough than in the GC, but not really that much worse off.

Diplomacy I actually don't have anything wrong with... Hell, it's about the only thing in ROTS that I actually really like. My Daimyo has 7 honor. My allies love me and my enemies respect me (I even got a global message that all of the clans had sincere respect for me, regardless of our disagreements). I have not once had someone declare war on me that seemed completely unwarranted or otherwise unintelligent. I'm about halfway through my game, and my allies have stuck with me every bit of the way, regardless of whether or not I've helped them (my honor seems to be making up for my lack of being a helpful ally). These guys have all given me units as a show of faith in my ability. I guess I could probably go on for awhile with the things I like about it, but I'll just say that I haven't researched any diplomacy stuff, and I've been doing great. Also, the mid game is a lot different than the early game. I was at war and taking a beating, and was getting attacked at inopportune moments by differently aligned, and angry, clans. I almost quit at one point, but I fell back, suffered my losses and then regained them when I could.

At the current stage; Ochi attacked my sister clan who has been taking a beating most of the game. I was just about finished with Fujiwara when this happened (had them both down to their last provinces), so I hurried up and took everything in the north and moved back down south, which was slow going for my main army. Meanwhile, I built up a new army and moved them in on Ochi. The first province I took (Uesugi's home province) had been getting converted by my agent for about the last 20-30 turns, so it was ripe. I immediately turned it with my agent and had a good defensible position between that province and the one below it that I had already owned (these were the only two ways in for Ochi). Ochi's big army stack in Uesugi's province that had been slowly trying to backdoor through the forest to the province next to it in the east (which is seriously the first time I've seen the AI try to do that, but that was pretty much the only way for him other than ship to get there - I owned the province next to it that had the road-way in) was now sandwiched between the big forest and my army, so I took it out and that was that. They immediately attempted for peace after that, but I can't really do that considering how they've been treating my sister ally. This is where I stopped playing last night.

In closing, I'm still torn on whether or not I like this as much as the GC, but it's Shogun, and Total War, so it's still fun in its own right. The things I've seen that are wrong with the game are just small bugs that can easily be fixed. To me, everything the AI does is relatively the same as the GC, with minor differences because of agents and unit types.

[frogbeastegg]

Which difficulty level are you playing on, Madae?

I have been doing a bit of reading over lunch today, and I've noticed the beginnings of a trend across the three TW sites. Most of the people talking about the AI are playing on normal or easy. The descriptions they give are pretty much the same as yours, in that it describes an AI similar to that seen in the original game but with a few minor hiccoughs. The few people who are reporting problems like the ones I am seeing are all playing on very hard. I begin to wonder if something is bugged on that level.

If I get chance to play this evening I'm going to purge all of my savegames, get steam to verify the game files are all undamaged, and start a new game on a different difficulty. See what happens.

[Madae]

I usually play on Hard, though I don't remember if I set it at that or not (I'm not at home at the moment). I can understand the AI being quicker to take advantage of a situation or attempt to do something that may seem like a dumb idea in higher difficulties - I have played on Very Hard, but I rarely play Legendary - but I don't consider that a problem with the AI. The AI will try to win, regardless if the situation is hopeless for one clan or another - you really never know what can happen and it may turn out good for them. Ultimately, it makes more sense for them to throw themselves at you then to just sit back because you're too strong. They simply won't win if they do that. Even then, it's more difficult when you start having wars pop up everywhere, because that subtracts from potential trading partners and makes it more difficult to defend your territory. I like to think of it as the AI using weak clans as fodder to take away your attention so a stronger clan can make their move(s). Logic doesn't necessarily factor in to that - you'd like to think they're separate entities, but they're really not.

I say give it a shot again. Maybe you'll see some different results. You'll never really know what goes on in the AI's "head". There might have been perfectly good reasons for one to declare war on you thinking it was a good idea, just to retract it because someone more threatening stepped up (this also subtracted from potential trading partners, and you never know when someone will land an invansion army).

The problems with AI charging in battles is also something I commented in another thread - you basically only have a few types of units in this game; you have infantry, you have archers, you have archer/infantry, and then bow cavalry. Variances in tactics, I think, will be because, without a variety of cavalry, the slow moving nature of infantry and the prevalence of archers, you won't see much flanking trying to take place, because most battles I'm in are decided before they even get near me, and I think this has a lot to do with some units just being simply overpowered (foot samurai).

I've also noticed that, typically, allies are harder to control in harder difficulties - having just a high positive relationship is rarely enough. Most of the time, wars will start and I usually think its because I'm not a very good ally (which is mostly the truth with some clans). Others could simply be that they're taking advantage of the situation. Besides, in the GC, everyone wants to be Shogun.

My problem with higher difficulties is that it's not harder because the AI is "smarter", it's just that they get more bonuses to their units in battles, which isn't really fair. Sure, it's hard, but it's hard because they, technically, cheat. In a perfect world, they would just be smarter, and difficulty would be rated not by a generic difficulty setting (easy/normal/hard/whatever), and more like in Galactic Civilizations, where it was based on intelligence of the AI (from dumb, to smart, to godlike). Stat bonuses factored in to it somewhat, but it was more or less how well they managed their economy, how aggressive they were in capturing territory or taking advantage of weak races, and other things. A fair bit of luck also factored into it to, however, in concerns with how they dealt with other races, and how lucky they were to get a few good core planets under their control early in the game (maps are randomized).