Recent content by Gunmars

To me it's still a little too off. Usually one or two factions are gutted way to early for my taste but it's much better than it was early on.

Another issue that has popped up in the lastest patch doing the no player interaction sim. Randomly a faction will declare war on the player.

sherdil said:

Interesting how Battania expanded then collapsed.

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Was a combination of being in multiple wars at once and taking places like Poros and Vostrum, they are so far from their home territory the AI just couldn't sustain. I did also notice doing all this that AI lords prefer they own culture troops and will sometimes travel long distances to try to replenish instead of taking the local troops if they are severely low on manpower.

+1. Early game AI seems capable of managing recruitment and food. When they are at war, especially prolonged or two front wars they seem to forget about food and die off from starvation.

Here is another timelapse of e1.0.5. Start of game to 1090, roughly 3 hours of no player interaction sim. This is the third run I have done for comparison between patches. I have done others since launch of game and can say the issues is getting better, still not flawless but much better.



In my experience just running these no player interaction sims there is definitely a trend of Factions that are weaker then others. From strongest to weakest for a best chance at a good sim while player progresses to Clan Rank 1 to join as mercenary.-

1- Vlandia
2- Southern Empire
3 Battania
4- Khuzait
5- Aserai
6- Sturgia
7- Northern Empire
8- Western Empire

By the time 1090 rolls around if one faction is dominant, not even taking a major city but castles seems to put them at a massive numerical advantage the opposing AIs can't counter, especially when they make poor decisions all the time like running their armies pass weaker enemy armies laying siege to a castle or city to raid a town. In the sim time lapse in this post I joined Battania as a merc to see the War stats and Khuzait had almost double the manpower of the Northern Empire, the next strongest faction. With this current AI and balance I don't see a plausible way for AI to effectively fight back against the dominant faction. Actual AI diplomacy, better threat awareness and decision making needs addressed. Random war and peace deals give a faux perception of political intrigue but it's way too off balance to be effective for long term campaigns.

Army AI also needs addressed in this. I don't know how many times I scream at my monitor because our army of 1000 runs past a enemy army of 800 just to raid a village. Needs prioritization, they just make questionable decisions, especially when a castle or city is under siege, we have the bigger army and a garrison, lets attack the hostile army not run up, stand for a second then run away to raid a village.

Here is almost 5 hours split between two different campaigns sped up 24x time to show the overall map progression of snowballing. It's not nearly as bad as it was before but there is still some work to be done. One faction always seems to be wiped out but it takes more time compared to older patches.

Run #1-


Run #2-

Goonty said:

Thanks to the devs for this updade !
Even if the balance is still not there, seeing the evolution after 3 days is very encouraging.

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+1. Devs have been going nuts with the updates. Thank you devs if you see this.

Northcott said:

It makes sense if a second kingdom declares mutual war on an enemy for treaty reasons, or just because they want to take 'em down. We used to see kingdoms ganging up on each other, too (X and Y have declared war because they consider Z too strong and want to check its power).

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I agree to a point but I still think having 1 or 2 factions being gutted within the first 80 days isn't ideal, especially if a kingdom getting destroyed is one the player wants to align with, depending on what difficulty you play on getting to even be a mercenary in 80 days is tough, let alone doing so and your faction is gone.

blazerules said:

I got a suspicion that factions don't actually declare wars but theres some script that just randomly makes 2 factions at war every now and then.

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Yep. It makes zero sense why they do what they do. It seems like they put in specific scripts to make faux AI diplomacy.

Snowballing via lack of troops seems to be better, not perfect but now the big issue in my game is factions being dismantled early by dumb AI thinking 2 wars at the same time is a good idea.

Western Empire. Day 82 is down to 77 total strength because they were at war with Battania then declared on Southern Empire. Fighting two different wars, Battanias only major enemy was West Empire and South Empire peaced with Aserai leaving them only at war with West Empire so it's basically a 2v1.

AI needs to understand that fighting one war is fine with 5500 total strength vs 6000 total strength BUT letting another war open with another 5k+ total strength becomes 5550 vs 10k two front war should be avoided at all costs.

what contributes to this issue is lords not being able to have garrisons.

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I am right here with ya. I think a lot of this could be alleviated quickly with a few small tweaks to things including sieges, better garrison and city mechanics along with lords not running around by themselves.