Has anything really changed from CA?

[Didz]

The basic problem is that the Campaign AI doesn't understand the principles by which the game works.

If you do a simple test you can easily prove this for yourself. About a month ago I decided that the campaign game was simply too easy if you expliot the loopholes in the game mechanic's, and I imposed a few basic house rules to limit my own options and give the Campaign AI more of a chance.

One of these rules was that I would never ever occupy more than one Trade Portal in the same Trade Theatre.

Typically, human players begin their campaigns by what is usually referred to as 'The Trade Race', which basically involves defeating the pirates guarding the trade theatres and posting trade ships on every Trade Portal to secure a monopoly in the trade of Ivory, Spices or Sugar. I played my first few campaigns this way and it nets the player a huge income that then allows them to dominate the game.

I figured that if I limited my acquisitions to one Trade Port per theatre maximum, I could still place 14 x East Indiamen on that spot and earn a decent income, but that there would always be other trade ports open for use by the AI, and so they would also be able to make a decent trade income and the resulting challenge would be greater. I even thought naively that it would result in an ongoing naval challenge as various factions fought over domination of the various trade theatres.

In fact, when I analysed the Campaign AI's response to this opportunity it was quite obvious that the Campaign AI had no idea how to expliot the trade theatres.

In many cases trade posts were simply left unoccupied despite the fact that for some reason factions do send fleets into the trade theatre zones and have them hang about pointlessly.

In most other cases even when the trade ports were claimed by the AI, little or no income is generated from them suggesting that most of the ships positioned on them are warships rather than traders.

In one particular incident I actually attack one of these fleets to discover that it consisted on one trade ship and four warships. In fact, the stack was producing a Net Loss for the faction that sent it, as the ships maintenance costs exceeded the potential income.

On another occassion I discovered that Great Britain had dispatched a fleet of seven ships to a Madagascar Trade Post which was not only not producing any income (e.g. it was all warships), but also had an almost full army stack aboard. The cost of that fleet and the army must have been huge and it just sat on the Trade Post for most of the game.

When the Campaign AI is that 'ignorant' of how the game actually works, let alone what strategies to employ to win then there is very little that we players can do to help, and as CA will not release the Mod Tools necessary to change the AI and Diplomacy behaviour it seems unlikely that things will improve any time soon.

[Slaists]

The basic problem is that the Campaign AI doesn't understand the principles by which the game works.

If you do a simple test you can easily prove this for yourself. About a month ago I decided that the campaign game was simply too easy if you expliot the loopholes in the game mechanic's, and I imposed a few basic house rules to limit my own options and give the Campaign AI more of a chance.

One of these rules was that I would never ever occupy more than one Trade Portal in the same Trade Theatre.

Typically, human players begin their campaigns by what is usually referred to as 'The Trade Race', which basically involves defeating the pirates guarding the trade theatres and posting trade ships on every Trade Portal to secure a monopoly in the trade of Ivory, Spices or Sugar. I played my first few campaigns this way and it nets the player a huge income that then allows them to dominate the game.

I figured that if I limited my acquisitions to one Trade Port per theatre maximum, I could still place 14 x East Indiamen on that spot and earn a decent income, but that there would always be other trade ports open for use by the AI, and so they would also be able to make a decent trade income and the resulting challenge would be greater. I even thought naively that it would result in an ongoing naval challenge as various factions fought over domination of the various trade theatres.

In fact, when I analysed the Campaign AI's response to this opportunity it was quite obvious that the Campaign AI had no idea how to expliot the trade theatres.

In many cases trade posts were simply left unoccupied despite the fact that for some reason factions do send fleets into the trade theatre zones and have them hang about pointlessly.

In most other cases even when the trade ports were claimed by the AI, little or no income is generated from them suggesting that most of the ships positioned on them are warships rather than traders.

In one particular incident I actually attack one of these fleets to discover that it consisted on one trade ship and four warships. In fact, the stack was producing a Net Loss for the faction that sent it, as the ships maintenance costs exceeded the potential income.

On another occassion I discovered that Great Britain had dispatched a fleet of seven ships to a Madagascar Trade Post which was not only not producing any income (e.g. it was all warships), but also had an almost full army stack aboard. The cost of that fleet and the army must have been huge and it just sat on the Trade Post for most of the game.

When the Campaign AI is that 'ignorant' of how the game actually works, let alone what strategies to employ to win then there is very little that we players can do to help, and as CA will not release the Mod Tools necessary to change the AI and Diplomacy behaviour it seems unlikely that things will improve any time soon.

Yes, the campaign AI is a disaster still, especially the economic AI... Post 1.3, the only thing that keeps it afloat is the seemingly huge cash infusions it gets on VH. To be honest though, the economic AI was never CA's forte. I remember it being absolutely moronic in all TW titles all the way back to Shogun.