SP - World Map Army AI behavior and priorities.

[echoco]

After seeing an army of 200 lay siege to a castle, having built a ram and a tower only to break siege became it ran out of food (5 days of food when it started), return to besiege the castle again. It broke camp again to go defende someplace far away but didn't make it out of sight of the castle before the siege it wanted to go defend ended and return to the same castle to lay siege for the third time. This third time it managed to build a ram and two siege towers and it sat there waiting until an enemy army came to drive it off. All these time the castle had less than 100 defenders (60 during the first siege attempt).

I've seen a lot of things loiek this, including an army marching pass an on going siege because the besieging army is slightly larger than itself. Armies also rushed to defend a siege, arriving just as the castle is captured and simply turn away.

Suggetion.

• AI should do a calculation on food supply and travel time vs its current action. Ignoring other events if its current action like besieging a town/castle is far enough for an assult. Passed a certain point a besieging army should commit to taking the castle/town.
• After a town/castle is taken the army should enter it and stay there until most if not all of its casualties are recovered or there is enough garrison.
• If an army arrives too late to defend the town/castle it should check if it can take the castle/town back. If it can then it should lay siege, else return to what it wa doing or look for another objective.
• A besieging army should have a chance to assaut anyway if an army in approaching to defend. this could be based on the leader's valor or some other stats/traits

I don't know if armies are created with an objective already set or if it is created and then look for an objective. The second shouldn't be the case but would explain why armies are created and then travel to the other side of the map to besiege some castle.

• War objective should be set before armies are created. Once an objective is set (say, capture so and so castles) then lords should be allowed to create armies somewhere near their objectives. Once their objective is completed the army could disband (free up parties) or move on to another objective, if it is nearby.
• Once a faction achieved all its war objectives it could then offer peace.
• Maybe fation leaders Honor trait could affects its declaration of war. High Honor wouldn't declare war on a faction already at war while -2 Honor will jump at the chance to attack a faction already at war.