Army AI is still the game's biggest problem

[Yertyl]

That and arrows doing more damage than spears.

Take the example below. War with Vlandia, Raganvad takes half the nation's forces to do absolutely nothing in the middle of nowhere. This happened several times with different nobles. I think I have killed literally thousands of enemy troups in this war and it made zero difference because they just keep respawning and as soon as you try to do anything of significance (e.g. a siege) the whole enemy kingdom will converge while yours merrily travels to the other end of the world.
As long as the AI remains this bad, you effectively have to wage war on your own to achieve anything, and of course it takes quite a while to get to the point of being able to do that. I guess I could forcibly disband that army and then spend most of my influence to gather one of my own, but it's frustrating to sacrifice hundreds of points just to combat obvious AI idiocy, and it's not a long term solution since you have to wipe out hundreds of troops to get the incluence to gather a single army.
And combined with enemy nobles immediately being freed and recruits immediately respawning, every singe battle is pretty, but meaningless. Every single "war" is just nobles randomly running around while you kill their troops -> sell their stuff -> they respawn -> you kill their troops -> sell their stuff -> they respawn -> you kill their troops etc pp. It very quickly just becomes and endless, unsatisfying routine. I am really not a fan of "balancing" the game by artifically making every player decision meaningless, because in 90% of cases they can just powerlessly witness the extremely bad decisions of AI agents.

 

[archaicwarrior]

Yeah, AI is TardAI .. I expected far more if i played "realism" option .. FOOLISH me! ..but I don't know any strategic war game that has acceptable AI . TW never did.

.

 

[ayko]

That and arrows doing more damage than spears.

Take the example below. War with Vlandia, Raganvad takes half the nation's forces to do absolutely nothing in the middle of nowhere. This happened several times with different nobles. I think I have killed literally thousands of enemy troups in this war and it made zero difference because they just keep respawning and as soon as you try to do anything of significance (e.g. a siege) the whole enemy kingdom will converge while yours merrily travels to the other end of the world.
As long as the AI remains this bad, you effectively have to wage war on your own to achieve anything, and of course it takes quite a while to get to the point of being able to do that. I guess I could forcibly disband that army and then spend most of my influence to gather one of my own, but it's frustrating to sacrifice hundreds of points just to combat obvious AI idiocy, and it's not a long term solution since you have to wipe out hundreds of troops to get the incluence to gather a single army.
And combined with enemy nobles immediately being freed and recruits immediately respawning, every singe battle is pretty, but meaningless. Every single "war" is just nobles randomly running around while you kill their troops -> sell their stuff -> they respawn -> you kill their troops -> sell their stuff -> they respawn -> you kill their troops etc pp. It very quickly just becomes and endless, unsatisfying routine. I am really not a fan of "balancing" the game by artifically making every player decision meaningless, because in 90% of cases they can just powerlessly witness the extremely bad decisions of AI agents.

they use 3/2 of clans to wander map .while you try to siege or do something usefull.and enemy ai comes at you minimum 1500 to 2500 to defend siege.or my last problem that uninstalled game for me , my army disbanded last second before city walls collapsed .still gives me anger to remember that moment.it could have been the most enjoable game if balanced right.

 

[Adryl]

What you're describing IS absolutely the problem, but it's a game design problem rather than an "Army AI" problem. I think you describe the problem well, but the post title is misleading.

Basically, if you manage to defeat one or two large enemy armies, you should effectively have defeated the kingdom's ability to fight in the field for a long, long time. It should mean you have a clear path to sieging, and for smaller kingdoms you'd probably be able to take all their towns and cities before they had an ability to strike back. It should give you a huge strategic advantage.

I see two ways to do that. There either needs to be a way to deal with / kill enemy lords permanently without taking tons of penalties (as with execute), and/or troops should just not respawn quickly (or lords can't re-recruit from the same place within a month).

At the same time, sieges need to be quicker. Easy way to do this - just make the Engineer perk give larger bonus to siege engine construction and damage. Double it, at least.

If we had a way to deal with enemy lords, and campaign map sieging were quicker, I think the game would be almost playable.

As it is now, it basically is not a game after you make your own kingdom. The game just doesn't work after that without mods.