What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

See chart: I have been playing a single player for some time now and most of the AI's for once are expanding nicely. All except Rlyeh. They were expanding but for the last 100 turns have just flat lined. What causes this? Theories?

My theory is that the AI just hordes everything in the capitol province and just starves itself to death! Thoughts?

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

Illness? Heartbroken? Unreturned love? Melancholia?

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

AI EA Rlyeh can't get out the sea, so I presume it conquered all the sea provinces it could (in its lake or whatever) and then never lost any of them.

Pretty simple.

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

Ha nope! Long way to go for that! :)

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

Strong indies. When AI faces, like, strength 9 indie knights all around itself, it becomes depressed and dies.

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

Most of the time bad scales. All the games I've played SP, the AIs with hideous scales (Turmoil, Death, Misfortune 3 seems to be a popular combo) manage a strong push in the first 25 turns or so and then they just flatline because their scale combo has wiped out their population and resource base and they just linger on. Contrast with the ones who have good scales, such as high order, some growth, neutral or positive luck and perhaps otehr positives as well, those become absolute steamrollers.

Get an EA Vanheim with the good scales and you may well see an army of 300 hirdmen sweeping away everything in its way and that one being just one of many, for example.

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

That still doesn't explain what's in his screenshots. Rlyeh has a huge amount of units in its cap, but it has completely frozen, not losing a province or gaining one in a large number of turns. Obviously if it was trying to take indies it could, given its massive army there.

Maybe if you could show a shot with eyes of god up or something showing the edges of their territory, rather than just their cap? They do have a decent little empire, they just stopped taking new stuff.

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

A 'Defensive AI' could also be playing a part. Played SP games for over a year before playing MP games, and altered the settings enough to know that 'Defensive' 'Standard' 'Aggressive' AI does have an affect on how the AI plays (as it should do).

Although going nowhere for 100+ turns does seem very odd for any AI setting.

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

Something I have noted on the AI's part at times: It gets into a war and expends all it's effort on it's opponent ignoring neutrals on another side.

Now, if it got into a war with someone on land that it couldn't attack it could get stuck.

I'm in a game against the AI now where I saw that with two empires. They both declared war on me and completely ignored a whole pile of neutrals. In one case I had deliberately left some of those neutrals alone so the AI would have an expansion path that didn't go through me as I didn't want to force a war while I was still expanding. It took the AI a few years to go around the mountain through the neutrals. (My army was mostly involved against the other AI and I was simply holding a chokepoint against the guy.)

Re: What causes the AI to just die and stop expanding?
 

Those are "Polypal Spawns", auto-spawned by "Polypal Mothers" ... which have 0 strategic movement ... so if they where generated into their mothers squad, they'll sit there foreever.

Strange, though, is one thing: the mothers have only leadership 10, therefore the majority of the spawns should end up elsewhere, but maybe there's a bug involved ... .