I got severely outplayed by the AI and it blew my mind

[Andrei[beast]]

So i started my own kingdom, and i'm at war with the west imperials. I get one of their clans to join me and took 2 fiefs. Then my brother gets captured and i go to talk to one of the enemy to pay them for peace(it was 1 denar anyway xd).
After i declare the peace with them, the Aserai declare war to me. I think cool, it's gonna be easy, they'll rather siege Garontor castle(i own it) because it's right in front of the land bridge they use to come to my lands. I gather all my army (340 men because my brother got freed and lost his 140 men, and one of the guys from the clan lost his men as well) and go to Garontor castle to defend it. I must say now that i also own Ortysia(which is right next to the castle) and have about 350 men there as well but 200 are militia. So i see Unqid's army of 1100 men, the game saying they're going to Ortysia. I think cool, they'll go to the city and i'll just siege the sht out of them because i have better siege conditions there. The next part blew my mind. When they saw me exit the castle they didn't go to attack me, but siege the castle instead. When i went back inside they went again for Ortysia. These guys are basically making me choose what i lose because where ever I go they will go to the opposite one. And I can't go there to reinforce the garrison because they will block it so i'll need to break through them and lose like 90 of my men. The AI just outplayed me like that...
In the end i went back to the save where my brother got captured and went again to make peace with the imperials but they still declared war and did the same thing again. Much later i went to the save and declared peace via kingdom screen with influence and got like 2000 denars tribute from the west guys and the Aserai didn't declare war again.
It just blows my mind how the AI discovered what will just screw me over and went ahead and did it

 

[Ferisko]

I use that tactic to break armies, when they get close to the castle I get inside and wait for the army to go elsewhere, then I leave and they come back and repeat, until their cohesion hits 0 and their army disbands.
Then it's hunting season.

 

[Andrei[beast]]

I use that tactic to break armies, when they get close to the castle I get inside and wait for the army to go elsewhere, then I leave and they come back and repeat, until their cohesion hits 0 and their army disbands.
Then it's hunting season.

Well, yeah i should've thinked of that there, but at that point i forgot about cohesion and everything at how terrified i was at the AI being smart

 

[Nalgasucia507]

Well, yeah i should've thinked of that there, but at that point i forgot about cohesion and everything at how terrified i was at the AI being smart

Dope! Good story. Thank you for sharing!

 

[black_bulldog]

The ai is responding to you reinforcing the garrison so when you leave it "sees" it as a softer target when you go inside it "sees" it as much harder and goes to Ortysia. As the 2nd poster said you can abuse this if you want til they run out of steam. I personally try not to do such things but players will always try to game the system.

 

[Andrei[beast]]

The ai is responding to you reinforcing the garrison so when you leave it "sees" it as a softer target when you go inside it "sees" it as much harder and goes to Ortysia. As the 2nd poster said you can abuse this if you want til they run out of steam. I personally try not to do such things but players will always try to game the system.

I always underestimated the AI based on what i ve seen and read on the forums and still i did not expect that
I'm still trying to play fair. I mean they outsmarted me so now i ll have to outsmart them

 

[black_bulldog]

I always underestimated the AI based on what i ve seen and read on the forums and still i did not expect that
I'm still trying to play fair. I mean they outsmarted me so now i ll have to outsmart them

 

[Benjamin Bones]

Yeah, I utilize this tactic when large forces threaten to overwhelm. I wouldn't say you were outplayed... More like: you neglected to take into account how the AI works. The AI always targets the most vulnerable settlement of their adversaries. Distance may play a roll, but as AI routinely goes deep into enemy territory to take weak castles, I'm not sure how much distance plays a part in their targeting.

There isn't some grand strategy at work here that "outplayed you", it's simply: oh, settlement x has 300 defenders while settlement y has 500 defenders - we'll take settlement x... wait, settlement x now has more defenders... we'll take settlement y... But wait...

 

[Andrei[beast]]

Yeah, I utilize this tactic when large forces threaten to overwhelm. I wouldn't say you were outplayed... More like: you neglected to take into account how the AI works. The AI always targets the most vulnerable settlement of their adversaries. Distance may play a roll, but as AI routinely goes deep into enemy territory to take weak castles, I'm not sure how much distance plays a part in their targeting.

There isn't some grand strategy at work here that "outplayed you", it's simply: oh, settlement x has 300 defenders while settlement y has 500 defenders - we'll take settlement x... wait, settlement x now has more defenders... we'll take settlement y... But wait...

Yeah yeah, by now i got it, you guys did explain it enough, it was my ignorance that got them to do that
But again, at that point i wasn't in fully working order as i was tired asf and it took me by surprize then

 

[Benjamin Bones]

Yeah yeah, by now i got it, you guys did explain it enough, it was my ignorance that got them to do that
But again, at that point i wasn't in fully working order as i was tired asf and it took me by surprize then

 

[Andrei[beast]]

Ahh piss off XDDDD

 

[NLCRich]

Honestly it's kind of glitchy and it can be abused. The A.I. should change target to neither of the two after a while. There needs to be more chance. I've run back and forth from fief to fief to get armies to starve or lose cohesion as well. They would just go for one and then for the other, and I bought out all the food from nearby towns. You can beat armies 4x your size or more with this tactic.

 

[Andrei[beast]]

Honestly it's kind of glitchy and it can be abused. The A.I. should change target to neither of the two after a while. There needs to be more chance. I've run back and forth from fief to fief to get armies to starve or lose cohesion as well. They would just go for one and then for the other, and I bought out all the food from nearby towns. You can beat armies 4x your size or more with this tactic.

Yeah, it's a rather a using "mecanic" at this point

 

[PSD]

So i started my own kingdom, and i'm at war with the west imperials. I get one of their clans to join me and took 2 fiefs. Then my brother gets captured and i go to talk to one of the enemy to pay them for peace(it was 1 denar anyway xd).
After i declare the peace with them, the Aserai declare war to me. I think cool, it's gonna be easy, they'll rather siege Garontor castle(i own it) because it's right in front of the land bridge they use to come to my lands. I gather all my army (340 men because my brother got freed and lost his 140 men, and one of the guys from the clan lost his men as well) and go to Garontor castle to defend it. I must say now that i also own Ortysia(which is right next to the castle) and have about 350 men there as well but 200 are militia. So i see Unqid's army of 1100 men, the game saying they're going to Ortysia. I think cool, they'll go to the city and i'll just siege the sht out of them because i have better siege conditions there. The next part blew my mind. When they saw me exit the castle they didn't go to attack me, but siege the castle instead. When i went back inside they went again for Ortysia. These guys are basically making me choose what i lose because where ever I go they will go to the opposite one. And I can't go there to reinforce the garrison because they will block it so i'll need to break through them and lose like 90 of my men. The AI just outplayed me like that...
In the end i went back to the save where my brother got captured and went again to make peace with the imperials but they still declared war and did the same thing again. Much later i went to the save and declared peace via kingdom screen with influence and got like 2000 denars tribute from the west guys and the Aserai didn't declare war again.
It just blows my mind how the AI discovered what will just screw me over and went ahead and did it

ye this is what i hate in this game the most. stupid ai win chances calculating

 

[Andrei[beast]]

ye this is what i hate in this game the most. stupid ai win chances calculating

Well it's not quite stupid, bad made, yes, but it's rather a common option by now, go to the weaker one

 

[Shatti]

that Ai existed since the beginning of Ai
i expect more Ai in 2020

 

[NamFlow]

I use that tactic to break armies, when they get close to the castle I get inside and wait for the army to go elsewhere, then I leave and they come back and repeat, until their cohesion hits 0 and their army disbands.
Then it's hunting season.

I don't know, defending besieged castle is kind of fun at least IMO it's more fun to do than what you did. I had it happen to me only once through my playthrough though so far, however I plan on leaving significant number of my troops in nearby garrison to not scare my enemy and do it again, as it's a lot of fun defending your castle with bow and arrows and smashing your enemies down the ladder they just climbed.

 

[PSD]

I don't know, defending besieged castle is kind of fun at least IMO it's more fun to do than what you did. I had it happen to me only once through my playthrough though so far, however I plan on leaving significant number of my troops in nearby garrison to not scare my enemy and do it again, as it's a lot of fun defending your castle with bow and arrows and smashing your enemies down the ladder they just climbed.

i've never expirienced a siedge from the defenders side. ask me anything

 

[Blood Gryphon]

Honestly it's kind of glitchy and it can be abused. The A.I. should change target to neither of the two after a while. There needs to be more chance. I've run back and forth from fief to fief to get armies to starve or lose cohesion as well. They would just go for one and then for the other, and I bought out all the food from nearby towns. You can beat armies 4x your size or more with this tactic.

This is the problem I'm trying to get at when I suggest things like this

Great points.

But just because at that moment they would lose an actual siege, as long as they would win a open field battle I think they should stay until the defenders numbers have dwindled (so above 0.5x forces and below lets say 0.8x forces they stay, but above that they GTFO) . The attacking AI army could try to starve them out, along with bombardment (we need a way to bombard the town when the walls are down), the AI could just stall until the castle defender numbers is within the range for them to have a decent chance of success. Also giving the defenders enough time to maybe raise another army to help if it isn't preoccupied. This could seriously help factions like sturgia who have to cross the entire map to defend castles sometimes.

To help with these long sieges, maybe you could develop a way for AI armies to send out their smallest AI party (or fastest) to try and get more food for them (or offer the player a quest to do it if they are in the army, or let the player do it as well). Also would be cool if they sent a party out on scout missions to get vision of enemies and castles then rejoin the army. These kinds of features would lead to cool moments where you could capture/take out an enemy armies scout or food supply, or even devastatingly lose yours.

Also on a side note, I think the AI armies need to act more defensively when their kingdom strength is lower (making them the weaker faction). Wars right now feel like two attackers who defend if they happen to be near by and not already on their way to siege something. Weaker faction armies should patrol and focus on fighting enemy lords/armies (before the enemy sieges something) to try and even out the faction strengths and then once evening out the strength they switch to sieging the enemy faction. It hurts to see armies of the weaker faction walk by losing battles in their territory to go siege a far off target just because that target was recently taken and has no defenders in it.

 

[NamFlow]

I don't know, defending besieged castle is kind of fun at least IMO it's more fun to do than what you did. I had it happen to me only once through my playthrough though so far, however I plan on leaving significant number of my troops in nearby garrison to not scare my enemy and do it again, as it's a lot of fun defending your castle with bow and arrows and smashing your enemies down the ladder they just climbed.

i've never expirienced a siedge from the defenders side. ask me anything

If you do what I mentioned in the second part of my comment, then you should increase the chance of experiencing it, but a lot of times the enemy simply abandons the siege or peace agreement ends the war. Gotta love short wars...