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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 249
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![]() So far my elite soldiers dispatch easily those low ranked enemy ones, though they struggle with the enemy elite. But...
I thought that AI had only minor problems - it was before I played my first mission that involved sailing ships. So, this is how it all started... After "conquering" a few nearby islands I decided to expand into land controled by enemy factions. So, I built a fortress but for some reason no troops came to occupy it. I wasn't sure what was going on, since in previous missions it was happening automaticly, but when I checked it turned out that I had no soldiers left. I made sure that I didn't turn recriutment off and I didn't, my armoury was working at full speed and I had some 200 kegs of beer in storage. The tricky part was that my armoury was on one island and my brewery on the mainland. AI can't recognize recruitment as a need and therefore put beer and swords and shields in the same warehouse. So I decided to build a brewery on that island and another armoury on the mainland, which solved the problem, but I had to wait of course for both productions to pick up. What happened next was that the armoury (and iron smelting) on the island ran out of coal. Now I had around 170 units of coal in my HQ, but none in the harbour connected to it, so AI couldn't think of moving some of that coal to the harbour and then shipping it to the island that needed it. I did it manually (by setting 'Take out of store' for coal in HQ and 'Stop storing' in every other warehouse with land connections to HQ except for the harbour I needed). After what seemed painfully slow since the coal taken out of HQ was first used to fill every production that needed it (with land connections to the HQ) to the brim, harbour finally started getting some coal. But instead of shipping it to the island that needed it, it kept feeding those same productions with it It doesn't end there... My production of soldiers both on mainland and the island was steady again, but for some reason the number of soldiers coming to the latest fortress was still quite low. Then I figured out that no soldiers from the island were coming. Why? Well, I had two harbours on that island. Instead of sitting in one harbour and waiting for a ship to pick them up, they kept walking from one to the other, trying to catch up a ship or something. If only by an accident a ship would arrive at the harbour right on time it would pick up a soldier, but not necessarily - some ships just preferred to go around empty with no particular mission in mind. Setting one of the harbours to 'Stop storing' soldiers didn't help either - they kept walking to it and then walking back to the other. In the end I had to pull down the road between those two harbours so the soldiers would settle in one and wait for the ships. And when I mentioned ships, they are something special. If you call an geologist or a scout to an island, they'll bring every single one they can grab there (instead of just one). Similarly, they brought all gold coins to the the harbour connected to the latest fortification (which is good), but when I build a simple guardhouse back on the mainland in order to be able to access some mining areas, they moved all those coins back, even though the guardhouse needed only 3 coins for its only soilder to reach elite status. And I even had a mint with land connections to that guardhouse. Now back to soldiers - I know this is not exactly AI, but the script, but sometimes I have a fortress close to the border that is full of soldiers and during the time they all become elite. Now, due to some conquests, that particular fortress becomes redundant (it's not on border anymore so it doesn't need to be fully manned). Instead of those soldiers moving straight to the newly coquered fortifications, or to those that send their troops to conquer above mentioned fortifications, they move back to the nearest warehouse/harbour, while empty places get filled in by recruits. Not only those recruits are, well, innexperienced, but in this latest mission they were also coming from another island, which meant they needed time to get there. Because of that stupid algoritam, enemy managed to reconquer a couple of fortifiations And for the end a honourable mention of enemy AI. They don't attack you unless you attack them (at this level, maybe they get more agressive later). That is fine - they're peaceful guys, but I build forts near the border and make their building burn down - they still don't consider it as an attack. I build a catapult and keep bombarding nearby barracks - they just keep dutifully reinforcing those barracks for every soldier I kill. Of course, stupid algoritam for catapult where helpers don't bring next stone until the first stone arrives (and therefore making your rate of fire depending on the proximity of the warehouse) gives them plenty of time to do that. But eventually they run out of soldiers and my catapult destroys the barracks - enemy still doesn't consider being under attack. Then I finally attack their fortification and immediately they start retaliating. How? Usually by sending a ridiculously small number of troops against my strongest fortification in the area. Only those too far to reach it attack easier targets. So, I wait for a bit, kill their elite troops and if I had patience to wait longer I could probably kill them all, but I move in for a kill and capture their HQ too easlily, cause their own catapults were on the opposite side from it (close to the friendly border) and therfore useless to stop my expansion. Like you would think that all forts I built right next to their border would've given them some clue of my intentions So, this is the end of my comments (ok, rants). I'll keep playing the game, only paying more attention not to depend too much on AI for moving goods/resources around and I hope there won't be a mission where I actually must have two harbours on the same land mass (and connected by roads). As for the enemy AI, well, I'll just exploit it
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That said, it's definitely got a few annoying quirks. Luckily though there are ways to work around most of them! Quote:
Or even better try running straight out of windows. When you get an error message on loading just hit "ignore" - (it just can't find a second mouse port which doesn't matter for single player). Quote:
The other trick is to have a storehouse near your buildings that need the raw materials, to catch the overflow. So the excess grain and ore goes into the storehouse, and then when it's needed it's just a short hop to the smelter or mill or whatever. The raw materials (mines/farms) can be a long way from the storehouse, but the manufacturing buildings should be as close as possible. Make sure that the other storehouses/HQ are set to "not accept" the raw goods. If you've got one "city center" with a storehouse and all of your industry around it, the distribution will be very efficient. On huge maps you might need two centers. The other key is to have enough surplus - if you're always on 0-10 grain or coal then new stuff will be sent to empty buildings clear across the map. If your buildings are always stocked then new stuff will go to the storehouse - i.e. in the direction you want it. The AI is actually very good at distributing stuff as long as you get your layout right. If it's not working then you're doing something wrong :-) Also check for bottlenecks on roads - if there's more than one good waiting to be picked up at any flag, add more roads. There's no such thing as too many roads. Quote:
You might want to try editing the World Campaign missions - make a new folder called "WORLDS" in the main game folder, copy over the maps from DATA\MAPS2 and change the extensions to .SWD. Then you can open them with the editor. Add some extra starting positions closer to your own, and maybe adjust the resources. Quote:
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There's so many little things that can go wrong with expeditions and islands, it's the most annoying part of the game to learn. But if you get it right it will work fine. You have to plan a bit more carefully - do you want the Armory etc on the island, or back on the mainland? And what goods do you set the Harbours to accept or not accept. Quote:
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Why? A single soldier will take 5 coins to go from private to general. But 9 soldiers in a fortress will take 12 coins to ALL become generals. So you get roughly four times as many generals from the same amount of gold. Quote:
First up, training - you want to fill towers and fortresses with privates so you can send them gold, then you want those generals to head back into storage. Assuming you know what each slider means by now, choose "Weak Defenders" and "Max # of soldiers" in all three locations. All your buildings should fill up. Set your towers to accept coins and let them upgrade. When they're done, choose "Min # of soldiers" in all three. All your buildings should keep 1 soldier and the rest will head back to storage. Repeat as many times as you like to train up as many generals as you can/want. Secondly, you can now change to "Strong Defenders" and max out the "border" occupancy rate - this will send your new generals off to the front. Another trick is when you've taken over a bunch of enemy buildings and they've all got 1 of your generals sitting in them uselessly. You want to keep the building but you want your general back for attack. Make sure your border occupancy slider is on maximum and change to "Weak Defenders". Then connect the newly-conquered building(s) by road (and set to not accept coins). Privates will march out of storage and fill up your new conquests. This means when you attack you'll get the general back out. Basically you'll need to do a fair bit of adjusting to get the results you want - but there is a way to do everything you want. As long as you have enough soldiers of course... And yeah they do walk all the way back to storage before going out to new locations. So - build a storehouse close to your front line before an attack, and be patient... or if you've got enough soldiers open another front so you can be attacking in one direction while the other is waiting for reinforcements. Quote:
They do a reasonably good job of building an efficient settlement though. The only way to adjust the difficulty is with resources... so if you want to make a mission or map more difficult you can use the editor and maybe give the AI more easy gold. I also like your idea of having to use conquered land - so maybe adding some extra computer players blocking access to iron and farmland would work to give that effect. Some of the World Campaign missions are pretty cool - Africa is huge and a real challenge in terms of organisation. If you do the WORLDS/copy/rename thing you can play them as individual maps. |
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 249
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![]() Haven't really had a chance to play this game since I wrote the previous post, but I thought I should reply to this thread anyway.
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But don't get me wrong. It's still a great game. It's just a pitty some of those issues exist and spoil the overall experience sometimes.
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