The Daily Update at the Com

[TinCow]

A nice picture but... no word about a huge breakthrough in regards to CAI or BAI...

The AI coders are almost certainly not the same people who create units and graphics. The addition of new units shouldn't have any impact on that aspect of the patches.

[al Roumi]

The AI coders are almost certainly not the same people who create units and graphics. The addition of new units shouldn't have any impact on that aspect of the patches.

We don't seem to hear much from those who are working on the CAI and BAI though... New bits are nice, but there's a fair ammount to fix... back in the pressure-cooker now please boys.

[Slaists]

The AI coders are almost certainly not the same people who create units and graphics. The addition of new units shouldn't have any impact on that aspect of the patches.

I understand that aspect of the CA teamwork. Unfortunately, the updates mostly relate to unit design (which is nice) with utter silence from the AI department. Hey, I even have not heard CA acknowledge that the AI IS moronic. :)

Tell me if I am imagining things, but some time before ETW was released, didn't CA hint that the stupidity of the AI in the previous titles was due to the fact that in the previous platforms strategic map diplomatic and military decisions were made separately from military and tactical map decisions. The new engine was supposed to blend them together producing a more sensible overall AI decision making process.

Hmm... the current (game) evidence, for some reason, indicates otherwise.

[TinCow]

Tell me if I am imagining things, but some time before ETW was released, didn't CA hint that the stupidity of the AI in the previous titles was due to the fact that in the previous platforms strategic map diplomatic and military decisions were made separately from military and tactical map decisions. The new engine was supposed to blend them together producing a more sensible overall AI decision making process.

Hmm... the current (game) evidence, for some reason, indicates otherwise.

You're not imagining things, that's exactly what they've said. I do think the ETW CAI is a significant improvement over the RTW/M2TW CAIs. Yeah, it may still declare war randomly, but at least when it does it attacks you and the CAI is perfectly willing to accept a fair peace deal in many situations, even if it will never propose one itself. It still needs a lot of improvement to achieve the level it should be at, but it's still better than it used to be.

I feel the same about the BAI. In RTW, it was possible to defeat a full enemy stack while taking less than a dozen casualties. In ETW, victory is still easy if you know how to play, but casualties are much higher, especially in serious battles, and the AI can regularly win battles if it has numbers on its side. After only a few months of ETW, I've already lost far more battles than I have ever lost in both RTW and M2TW combined. Again, major improvement is still needed on the BAI, but I do feel like it's improper to say that CA hasn't made any improvement at all

[Marquis of Roland]

I've had problems getting peace treaties when the cause of war was a campaign objective region. For example, with Prussia, after taking Rhineland and Flanders (owned by Westphalia at the time), the French, who were very friendly with me, declared war. I wiped out their stacks in France and besieged Paris. I made a peace proposal, but it was rejected. I tried again, this time with a few tech thrown in, still rejected. My last offer, 100k in cash, Flanders region (the reason why they went to war in the first place), and the techs I threw in earlier. Still, rejected emphatically. Oh well, captured Paris and didn't bother to stick around, the following revolution bought me about 10 turns of peace and quiet.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Todays update

May 22nd

We're currently experimenting with a new campaign AI technique called 'faction focus'. This causes the AI factions to assess certain nations as a threat at startup and then focus their efforts on eliminating or defending against that country. This makes the aggression process more streamlined and more 'proactive' on the part of the AI, in the sense that it makes a judgement on its national neighbours and others and focuses aggression based on that and subsequent world events.

This is in very early stages and is really a test tech at this stage, so we can't say with certainity whether it will make it into any forthcoming update.

We're now entering a British bank holiday weekend which means the next daily update will be posted on Tuesday 26 May. Naturally some of us will be working on fixes and issues over that time. We continue to focus the majority of our effort on addressing the remaining issues with Empire whilst increasing performance.

More details of the free units will appear shortly.

Enjoy your weekends!

Kind regards,
Kieran

Nice to know that they are working on the AI

[Servius]

These updates still make me much more patient and hopeful about the patching/improvement process.

[Barkhorn1x]

These updates still make me much more patient and hopeful about the patching/improvement process.

Word.