A Whole Lotta Stupid

[TechnoSarge]

I'm fighting as a Vlandians this time, and as usual I'm very successful in winning towns and castles because I don't give up and walk away from sieges I start. We reached the magic ratio where all the other kingdoms say, "They have X war parties and Y settlements... They can't defend 'em all, so let's go get us some!"

I spent over 400k of MY MONEY to bring Gyphor into the kingdom, because Derfert wasn't recruiting any nobles. Gyphor promptly got the next 3 castles I took.

So now we're fighting FOUR wars and we recently concluded two others where we're paying tribute ("because we have too many enemies, y'know?"). And I just had to cast my vote against starting a war with the Southern Empire - the only one we aren't fighting or just stopped fighting, and the ONLY ONE that is paying us tribute at present. It took my vote against to keep us from undertaking that fifth war!

I sure would like to see these late-game issues scrubbed up somehow. Other nobles I've dispossessed ought to be coming, hat-in-hand, to Derfert to ask if they might join the mighty Vlandian war machine. Failing that, Derfert ought to be outbidding the field for every mercenary group and thus depriving our adversaries of half their manpower. And my brother Vlandian nobles ought to cool their jets rather than make more trouble when virtually every hamlet on Calradia is raising young men for one reason - to try to stop us.

 

[five bucks]

I think this situation would be hugely improved if:

A - the person who led the army/party to capture a town/castle was always a candidate on the vote to receive it

And

B - if you could actually persuade lords to vote for you more based on your relation.

In addition to

C - if all AI kingdoms were less likely to declare war in general (but with a soft cap so peace doesn't last too long) rather than all instantly dogpiling any kingdom that shows a hint of weakness. So we can get some more peacetime.

I think that should pretty much solve the majority of the problems you mentioned.

I don't see undeserving nobles receiving fiefs as a gameplay problem though - more an enticement to the player to either politically intrigue and spend influence to make sure they get the fiefs, or leave and start their own kingdom - on the condition that the voting system actually works and can be swayed in favour of the player. Which we all know it currently doesn't.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

They'll most likely just make it worse since they seem to think making the AI horrible so you can't paint the map as fast is a good replacement for CONTENT.
Whatever they do, it should be TRANSPARENT, tell the player, even with emblems and emotes if you must, why they not on a ballot and what to do about it.
Oh and there needs to always be something to do about everything in the game, every single thing or there's no point in that thing existing in the game. There is no simulation, it's just nonsense so gut it all and add only player choices and interactions.

 

[xdj1nn]

I'm fighting as a Vlandians this time, and as usual I'm very successful in winning towns and castles because I don't give up and walk away from sieges I start. We reached the magic ratio where all the other kingdoms say, "They have X war parties and Y settlements... They can't defend 'em all, so let's go get us some!"

I spent over 400k of MY MONEY to bring Gyphor into the kingdom, because Derfert wasn't recruiting any nobles. Gyphor promptly got the next 3 castles I took.

So now we're fighting FOUR wars and we recently concluded two others where we're paying tribute ("because we have too many enemies, y'know?"). And I just had to cast my vote against starting a war with the Southern Empire - the only one we aren't fighting or just stopped fighting, and the ONLY ONE that is paying us tribute at present. It took my vote against to keep us from undertaking that fifth war!

I sure would like to see these late-game issues scrubbed up somehow. Other nobles I've dispossessed ought to be coming, hat-in-hand, to Derfert to ask if they might join the mighty Vlandian war machine. Failing that, Derfert ought to be outbidding the field for every mercenary group and thus depriving our adversaries of half their manpower. And my brother Vlandian nobles ought to cool their jets rather than make more trouble when virtually every hamlet on Calradia is raising young men for one reason - to try to stop us.

the campaign AI is so ridiculous that the best strategy is to amass a unbeatable power base and simply start a genocide of all nobles. Since the AI is completely retarded, we are left with no winnable choices, you either erradicate them all (basically turning the game into a boredom amusement park ghost-town) and quit, or you quit before "winning" and start all over. The third option would be to deliberately start losing so you are reduced to crap and grind all up again, but this third option's just as boring as starting a new game.

there are plenty of possible features to address AI's stupidity, like personality traits (already in-game but useless), respect, likeability and fear factors (must have that, just borrow the Dread effect from CK3 and you're golden), so lords fear raiding your stuff because otherwise they are dead. Or fear attacking you directly so they'll try to sabotage you instead. If they love you they'll be more inclined to leave your stuff alone, and if you allow them through your lands unscathed by your clan, they'll love you even more for that. These small details, they all work (in coding) as conditionals, and with enough conditionals the AI will most certainly behave better, more life-like.

There's a lot of potential there, they could determine certain actions as war-crimes, slap in intrigue systems, assassinations, artifact items like we have in CK3 to give buffs and that can be stolen, de jure systems (so original clan owners have always a claim on their original lands). Power factor and loss of power from the kings, which could be addressed if they added rank hierarchy to nobles. There are many things that could be made that would indirectly affect the AI on so many grounds that it would behave logically and life-like. As is, it's pure anarchy, AI is single-minded with no conditionals, they do stuff that don't even make sense most of the time. And since they don't abide by the same grounds as the players, they also have nothing else to do other than go to war infinitely.

 

[Honved]

There are many things that could be made that would indirectly affect the AI on so many grounds that it would behave logically and life-like. As is, it's pure anarchy, AI is single-minded with no conditionals, they do stuff that don't even make sense most of the time. And since they don't abide by the same grounds as the players, they also have nothing else to do other than go to war infinitely.

The AI is primarily driven by the Ransom Number Generator. It doesn't matter what your relations are with another kingdom, whether one or both of you are already engaged in other wars, whether one is significantly stronger or weaker than the other, or much of anything else; if the RNG says "declare war", we get yet another stupid, pointless war.

For all of the complexity put into the combat and animation systems, I'm appalled by the lack of thought and effort that's gone into politics, diplomacy, and economics in this game. Some of this should be almost trivial to add, but nobody bothers. It seems that TaleWorlds is content with the game being nothing more than a battle generator.

 

[xdj1nn]

The AI is primarily driven by the Ransom Number Generator. It doesn't matter what your relations are with another kingdom, whether one or both of you are already engaged in other wars, whether one is significantly stronger or weaker than the other, or much of anything else; if the RNG says "declare war", we get yet another stupid, pointless war.

For all of the complexity put into the combat and animation systems, I'm appalled by the lack of thought and effort that's gone into politics, diplomacy, and economics in this game. Some of this should be almost trivial to add, but nobody bothers. It seems that TaleWorlds is content with the game being nothing more than a battle generator.

I'm pretty aware, but than again, no conditionals nor alternative tasks, all they do is roam around the map warring, be it looters, be it caravans, be it peasants, be it villages, be it other lords.
We as players have layers upon layers of micro-management to deal with - recruitment, leveling troops, moving stuff around for quests, helping our fiefs so they prosper, etc. The AI can rack up a 10k prosp town with a perma sitting within it. I've tested to see the real town condition, and it was actually lacking security from garrison and should've never kicked into 10k mark, yet here we were, 10k prosperity for free while the owner does nothing but moth around and sit in it most of the time.

What would work, first and foremost, would be for AI to HAVE to do the same we do, provide the needed stuff for the fief, do some questing for locals, etc. If that works + they add peace-time activities we'd be golden, the RNG system, even if there, wouldn't be only rolling for wars, it would roll many different things which should mitigate the issue.