VH post 1.02: still way too easy...

[Slaists]

I 'clicked' through the end turns of my Russian VH campaign after the point when I had satisfied the long campaign goals (30 provinces, etc.) in 1780.

Here is the result (see attachments).

1799: Russian empire has per turn income of 86K+ (and growing)
1799: Russian empire has treasury of 2,750,000 ... (need I comment? and that's after I've been buying 1 province protectores for 100K a pop just for fun or just granting AI factions 100K/turn)
1799: The count of Russian provinces = 32 and has been so for the last 40 or so turns. So, there was no "blitzing" involved; neither there is real 'world domination' involved.
1799: No AI faction even tried to challenge the Russian empire's position since it gained the last two required provinces (Poland and Lithuania) 40 turns ago.
1799: Russian empire has 4 full stack professional armies + garrisons + 3 large fleets.
1799: Russian empire has an awful monarch... Still: no problem with unrest, diplomacy or anything...

The second attachment shows commodity prices in 1799. Note: Russians do not control all of the trade nodes: 3 in Indonesia, 1 in Madagascar, 1 near Nigeria, 2 near Brazil. The rest are AI owned.

So, if you ask me: it's still way too easy on VH campaign difficulty. And, game-play wise, there is still no challenge in the end-game, no challenge in 'maintaining' the empire. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the end-game challenge the goal of the last patch?

I suspect, the intent of CA when establishing a system whereby a player needs to MAINTAIN an empire until 1799 was to give the player some (meaningful, hopefully) challenge after the provinces required for long campaign win were conquered. In that regard, I find CA has failed to deliver. And don't take me wrong: I find the start-game and early-mid-game quite engaging and fun. Good job in that part, CA!

--
update: I have added screens with minimaps showing the extent of Russian holdings in all three theaters.

[AussieGiant]

I'd go back to chess mate.

[JAG]

Agreed, still far, far too easy - but I don't know what they can really do about it now except for compeltely re writing the AI to actually be a challenge. Getting naval invasions working probably will help, but that could make the game just as easy... Post patch the game is a lil bit tougher, purely because the AI will attack back every now and then, especially after you have taken one of their territories - but the problems with diplomacy remain etc. Who knows they might make some improvements to make the game harder, but I think I will stop playing until the next patch, like I did last time. :/

[Slaists]

Agreed, still far, far too easy - but I don't know what they can really do about it now except for compeltely re writing the AI to actually be a challenge. Getting naval invasions working probably will help, but that could make the game just as easy... Post patch the game is a lil bit tougher, purely because the AI will attack back every now and then, especially after you have taken one of their territories - but the problems with diplomacy remain etc. Who knows they might make some improvements to make the game harder, but I think I will stop playing until the next patch, like I did last time. :/

I could throw in several suggestions:

1. Allow AI make peace with each other (CA is supposedly working on this)
2. Allow AI to make anti-player diplomatic blocks
3. Add a theater or two which would allow for ANOTHER huge empire to arise by the mid-game
4. #3 would definitely need naval invasions to be fixed
5. Reoptimize the economic AI

As to #5: I see most of AI factions being "feeble and destitute" by late mid-game. As I conquered a few trade nodes from the Dutch, I realized part of the reason: the huge blue stacks sitting on the trade nodes contained mostly fluyts (350 upkeep), warships and an occasional Indiaman. No wonder, a trading nation like the Dutch is not making money. They are spending more in fleet upkeep than they are getting back in trade revenue...

On the same token, I have tried gifting/trading for techs AI factions 100,000 a turn for several turns. The AI faction would still show up as "feeble and destitute". I wonder what are they doing with the money.

[anweRU]

The AI's territorial economic development is also very poor. The AI has a fetish for religious buildings, at the expense of industrial buildings.

It also taxes heavily, so that town wealth does not grow, and new towns don't pop up late into the game, after it has managed to researched several farming & enlightenment techs.

The AI prioritizes unit recruitment at the expense of economic development, and thus fails to utilize whatever financial bonuses it gets from CA in the long term...

In my pre-patch Swedish game, whatever money I gave to the AI was used to recruit more units. As a result, the AI nations fought some pretty epic battles amongst themselves, which I watched from the sidelines (it was a semi-peaceful campaign, only ~35 regions in the end). 600K can buy a lot of units...

[AussieGiant]

I can't help but remain positive.

based on what you guy's are explaining here, if CA manage to get the sea invasions sorted out, which seems to be a product of their new infinity location map they implemented for this game, AND get the socio-economic-political AI sorted out...then we might just have more than we can handle.

Did I just say "socio-economic-political"?

[Slaists]

1The AI's territorial economic development is also very poor. The AI has a fetish for religious buildings, at the expense of industrial buildings.

2It also taxes heavily, so that town wealth does not grow, and new towns don't pop up late into the game, after it has managed to researched several farming & enlightenment techs.

The AI prioritizes unit recruitment at the expense of economic development, and thus fails to utilize whatever financial bonuses it gets from CA in the long term...

3In my pre-patch Swedish game, whatever money I gave to the AI was used to recruit more units. As a result, the AI nations fought some pretty epic battles amongst themselves, which I watched from the sidelines (it was a semi-peaceful campaign, only ~35 regions in the end). 600K can buy a lot of units...

#1: It's reasonable to build lots of religious buildings to bring a conquered province under control fast. However, the AI should be coded to be able to DESTROY the unnecessary religious buildings once the province is pacified. On the same token, the AI should be coded to destroy unnecessary fisheries and replace them with trade harbors.

#2: That IS a problem. In my campaign, economic growth (due to enlightenment techs and medium taxes) was the key to my treasury staying above the water. Interestingly enough, due to bonuses on VH, AI out-teched me by a good margin all through the game, but seemingly the AI DID NOT USE the techs to develop provinces. I purposely did not try to rush the research though. I did not build any other universities just the starting one and added more only as part of the conquest (if there was a university in the conquered province; I left it and used it).

#3: I did the same thing and wondered what the AI was doing with the money. I would give a destitute faction 100K + for several turns just to see it still being "destitute" 5 turns later. In my case, I even did not see them raise more troops and go on a rampage... No idea, what they did with the cash.

I can't help but remain positive.

based on what you guy's are explaining here, if CA manage to get the sea invasions sorted out, which seems to be a product of their new infinity location map they implemented for this game, AND get the socio-economic-political AI sorted out...then we might just have more than we can handle.

I keep my fingers crossed. I'd love to have a meaningful (as opposed to how VH was handled in MTW2 and RTW) and challenging campaign game on VH; Easy should probably be easier than it is now though to serve the pool of players that are new to the game.

[AussieGiant]

As you both describe (Slaists, anweRU) I also saw this in my Prussian campaign.

I took France in 1780...it had 4 fully developed churches...that is just nuts. They could have been a real powerhouse if they had (The French AI) done a better job of managing their resources. And that's what it is really. Managing resources and al the variations available to it. If they can get that done well then we can would really see the difficulty levels come into play. Or if they could just get the AI to work properly and then allocate money or take it away to provide a difference in what the well tuned AI can spend money on. That seems like the simplist way to provide for difficulty levels while keeping the AI logic flat and standardised throughout.

In the end game there were stupid trade stacks of 2 Indiamen with 5 to 6 warships. That would be very pertinent if the AI sent military flotillas to the trade regions to reek havoc and then take over the trade nodes, but it doesn't do this.

It was so funny in my campaign. Pirates dominated the sea lanes by 1765. There were 3 or 4 full stacks of Pirates romaing around with no one to kill. They'd literally killed off most of the worlds shipping except the ships that made it to the trade nodes in the opening few decades. It took my best Admiral two full stack naval engagements to get rid of them. The make up was 2x1st rates, 6x2nd rates and a few 3rd rates. It was an amazing battle.

[Slaists]

As you both describe (Slaists, anweRU) I also saw this in my Prussian campaign.

It was so funny in my campaign. Pirates dominated the sea lanes by 1765. There were 3 or 4 full stacks of Pirates romaing around with no one to kill. They'd literally killed off most of the worlds shipping except the ships that made it to the trade nodes in the opening few decades. It took my best Admiral two full stack naval engagements to get rid of them. The make up was 2x1st rates, 6x2nd rates and a few 3rd rates. It was an amazing battle.

It's true, if you let them survive (I usually have conquering their islands as my campaign goal #1 or #2 since their raiding tends to kill my trade income), the Pirates are the only maritime challenge in the mid-to-end-game...

[Monsieur Alphonse]

The AI's territorial economic development is also very poor. The AI has a fetish for religious buildings, at the expense of industrial buildings.

The AI is also very poor in its decision to always build fisheries instead of trade ports. Hanover's only port was for fish only; great move. Most factions can only have limited trade because they don't build extra trade ports. I assume that most human players maximize their amount of trade ports to have a maximum amount of trade partners.

[Slaists]

As someone requested (in another forum): I have added screenshots with minimaps showing the extent of Russian holdings across all three theaters in 1799 (they have been such since 1780 though).

[Fisherking]

It may be easy for you but it sure is not for the AI.

When you look around all the factions are feeble and destitute and never recover.

The AI is having trouble adapting to the economic changes that made it more difficult for the players. So now instead of facing challenging opponents with large armies and fleets you only face meager opposition.

Before the changes I took the required provinces and had enough money to hold off any attacks. I would expand to perhaps 30 regions.

Now in order to build troops effective enough to hold may primary areas I have to take 50 or more regions to have enough money. So every campaign turns into world domination, even if that is not what I am playing.

The AI doesn’t have the funds to put up good opposition. It is stretched to the limit and can’t cope with the changes.

It is still the same game with the same battle AI so you are going to win, it just takes longer and there are fewer large fights, especially at sea.

The AI now builds churches everywhere because it can be developed to the top but it never has funds for higher level building of other kinds. It can not afford any more than anyone else to build the levels that cause unrest because there is no money for garrisons.

I do the same thing. I need field armies and not garrisons. When there was more money in the game it was no problem to do both. Now that it is tight the AI builds cheap troops and buildings that don’t require a garrison.

The AI and the game were balanced to the old values and now it need lost of rework.

Further changes are going to so weaknesses in much the same way. When one thing gets changed it causes a chain reaction. People will adapt but the AI is going to require a lot more work.

Let them sort it all out before you yell too much.

Yes I know I have done a lot of complaining about the changes because it slowed the game down so much. But now you are only beginning to see what needs adjusted so it can get back to the level it was before.

[Veresov]

Other than a few tweaks to the AI, I don't see CA continuing to work on the AI despite promises that they will. They have already most likely started on an expansion. That expansion will likely feature some AI enhancements just like CA did in Kingdoms.

[Slaists]

It may be easy for you but it sure is not for the AI.

When you look around all the factions are feeble and destitute and never recover.

Unfortunately: quite true. However, there were three notable exceptions in my campaign: Marathas (they took out Mughals and Mysore), Spanish (in mid-game they suddenly 'woke up' and took out Morocco, 2 beber provinces + New Mexico and still had Florida by the end of the game), and French who managed to take out all their North American indian threats. All three of these factions were "terrifying and spectacular" by the end of the game. Unfortunately, they could not get their act together to challenge Russian domination.

The AI is having trouble adapting to the economic changes that made it more difficult for the players. So now instead of facing challenging opponents with large armies and fleets you only face meager opposition.

Before 1.02, post beginning years: there was no opposition whatsoever. The AI just went completely passive. So, I disagree with your point.

Before the changes I took the required provinces and had enough money to hold off any attacks. I would expand to perhaps 30 regions.

Now in order to build troops effective enough to hold may primary areas I have to take 50 or more regions to have enough money. So every campaign turns into world domination, even if that is not what I am playing.

Hmm, I disagree again. As you can see in my main post, I am holding 32 provinces not 50 and more... and still my treasury is overflowing even playing such an economic backwater faction as Russia. In fact, in the end-game I was granting AI factions 100K bonuses per turn, just to see if that would kick them into action. No luck there...

The AI doesn’t have the funds to put up good opposition. It is stretched to the limit and can’t cope with the changes.

It is still the same game with the same battle AI so you are going to win, it just takes longer and there are fewer large fights, especially at sea.

Hmm, I had plenty of large fights. True: not so much at sea, but then again, as Russia, I did not do much sea development until late in the game.

The AI now builds churches everywhere because it can be developed to the top but it never has funds for higher level building of other kinds. It can not afford any more than anyone else to build the levels that cause unrest because there is no money for garrisons.

The church part is true, but I disagree the AI is doing to minimize garrisons. Poland, for example had 3 churches in POLAND... That's their core province and they definitely did not need 3 churches to convert the populace. It's just AI stupidity.

I do the same thing. I need field armies and not garrisons. When there was more money in the game it was no problem to do both. Now that it is tight the AI builds cheap troops and buildings that don’t require a garrison.

Hmm, the Russian empire I described had no problem fielding 3 professional field armies (I did not need more) + garrison forces where needed. The central Russian holdings had no garrison whatsoever.

The AI and the game were balanced to the old values and now it need lost of rework.

Nothing was balanced before patch 1.02. The game was duller than dull unless one enjoyed fighting North American Indian melee supermen hordes; besides them - no AI did anything. At least now we see something happening in the first 30-50 years. My complaint now is about late game activity.

Further changes are going to so weaknesses in much the same way. When one thing gets changed it causes a chain reaction. People will adapt but the AI is going to require a lot more work.

That I cannot agree with more. The AI IS going to require a lot more work. I hope CA is up for the task...

Yes I know I have done a lot of complaining about the changes because it slowed the game down so much. But now you are only beginning to see what needs adjusted so it can get back to the level it was before.

Hmm, that I disagree with wholeheartedly. I personally would not want to see 'the level it was before'.

[JAG]

Fisherking you even play the game before the patch?... From the way you talk about it it seems you didn't and I seem to remember you saying you did not have the game when I was posting in here, what, 2-3 weeks after the launch.

Anyway, I think your points are not based on the reality of what the game was and is.

[anweRU]

The patch made the game more challenging by changing the economy. I think the changes went a bit too far, but it isn't insurmountable.

Patch 1.2 also made the minor nations more reasonable, in that Savoy (or Wurtemburg) didn't go and destroy France by 1720 or so... North America is more challenging, but the Natives are not nuts as they were pre-patch 1.2 (no more five-six full stacks from a two-region NA faction).

The diplomacy went to hell though. We're back to the irrational METW2 style AI. The AI at least had some glimmer of intelligence in the diplamtic routines pre-patch 1.2: maintaining its alliances, and trying to achieve its aims diplomatically (even if it was stuck in an endless loop, without any penalty to the player for refusing the AI offers...). I would much rather have the AI make me diplomatic offers to me for several turns, before declaring war - instead of the backstabbing allies from METW2 that have snuck into patch 1.2.

Overall, I'd rate the patch 7/10.

As for the late game being easy - the CA AI will never mount a challenge to the human player, unless scripted events occur. Note that it can't early in the game either. Instead of improving the AI, CA tried its best to hinder the human player artificially... I wouldn't be surprised if players 20 years down the line still make the same complaints. Artificial intelligence is not easy. That is a general truth, not anything particular to CA.

[Fisherking]

@ Slaists


LOL!!!

No one else ever has cash like that!

I was amazed when I looked at your totals.

I don’t think it is even the same game I am playing!!!

The commodity values are tremendously higher than any I have gotten and my ports are developed and I have more regions and more commodities.

I just finished as the French and it was not hard but the AI suffers form a lack of money.

We don’t want the AI to have all kinds of bonuses but it can not fight a decent game as it stands.

There has to be middle ground. Those who never have cash problems may not understand but it all hurts your opponents much more than you. And in single player it is the AI, and it just can not cope.

@ JAG

You are just too good. No mere mortals can compare.


I tend to agree more with anweRU‘s assessment.

[loony]

I think the real problem the AI faces is a buggy payback calculation of troop disbanding.

It counts like this:
if i disband this unit, i get 300 per turn, but in order to recruit it i need 1170, therefore, I effectively break even at turn 4. What is the % probability i would need the unit before then probablility=function(ongoing wars, unit location, enemy closeby, ability to transport the unit to required spots, population control requirements, etc). It is at war all the time, the function calc is improper, so it gets that it does not pay to disband a unit. it doesn't.

a human player thinks more like: if i disband this unit, i will cover what it does now with those other units I have, hence, risk is increased only marginally (e.g. i can keep both the rebellion down and defend against enemies with a single stack in a region, no need to sit in the city). I will probably need to recruit a unit soon, but i can invest the cash flow now, so I get paid back all throughout the campaign through wealth effect (or exports if it is a plantation.). moreover, I am not sure i will need the new unit in this precise spot as I have several hot zones. therefore, while money is more mobile than units (strategic benefit, hard to evaluate for the ai), I'd rather take the money

[Prodigal]

Dunno if this has been covered, but I'd like to see the AI get a steady income regardless of its trade etc. I guess an easy balance would be max 50% spend on troops with a stack cap based on number of territories, so 1 territory max stack would be lower than 2, 3, or more territories. Otherwise mid game would result in 8 stacks in hannover.

The AI is so stupid its almost painful at the moment, I hoped naval invasions would be a cure all, but that's failed, more aggression is good but still the behaviour remains horribly predictable.

The game actually feels smaller to me than MTW, mainly because you will encounter the same troop types, (with very slight variations), everywhere, the AI will always react in the same manner regardless of its strength, everywhere.

Sure its pretty, & has some interesting twists on the combat mechanic, but its got a massive void that previous versions did not suffer, the flags may be different but its all much of a muchness, which is a crying shame.

Anyway to conclude, I agree, it is too easy.

[Fisherking]

I had hoped that the diplomacy could be almost a game in its self. Staying out of war would bring benefits.

Sadly a lot were crying out for blind aggression. I find that so very predictable and it is never a surprise…even when seemingly friendly states now declare war. If they were stronger than you and could prosecute such a thing it would make it a tad more interesting, but sadly they lack any reason for going to war and not even enough troops most of the time to give a good account of themselves.
They just turn into the next target.

Naval invasions are okay but not coupled with blind aggression.

There should be some rewards for being at peace and penalties for war.

Aggression is only suitable if a faction has the means to actually accomplish something, and once accomplished they should search out grounds for peace.

Well it ain’t going to happen. But at least they can find a way that the AI can have some forces and we maybe have enough to counter them defensively.

Better battle AI is surely and sorely needed, but we will wait an see…

[Slaists]

I had hoped that the diplomacy could be almost a game in its self. Staying out of war would bring benefits.

Sadly a lot were crying out for blind aggression. I find that so very predictable and it is never a surprise…even when seemingly friendly states now declare war. If they were stronger than you and could prosecute such a thing it would make it a tad more interesting, but sadly they lack any reason for going to war and not even enough troops most of the time to give a good account of themselves.
They just turn into the next target.

Naval invasions are okay but not coupled with blind aggression.

There should be some rewards for being at peace and penalties for war.

Aggression is only suitable if a faction has the means to actually accomplish something, and once accomplished they should search out grounds for peace.

I had a diplomatic surprise playing as Spanish (on VH difficulty) the other day. Of course, on turn #2 the Dutch declared war on me and I dragged France (my ally) into the brawl. The next turn, France offered me Newfounland in exchange for Flanders, giving me an easy way out of the lowlands war activity, but that's not where the surprise was. A turn later, Westphalia declared war on the Dutch and was hammering their European armies hard from that point on. A turn later the surprise came in the form of Dutch peace proposal to ME... They even offered me some cash to leave them alone in their mess.

It made perfect sense to me. So, the AI IS ABLE to make peace. For some reason, it does not work between the AI factions themselves or happens only way too rarely.