The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP

[Hadrian_II]

The biggest difference between the AI and Human players is that humans actually use magic (i have never seen the AI to use more than 1 or 2 random mages per battle).

As an example, in one of my early MP games, i created an undefeatable army of 200 principes with Pythium and sent them to attack Marignon (or Abysia i forgot which one) and i lost all of them in a battle where the enemy fielded just 10 F2 mages with some bodyguards. (A fireball kills 3 principes per cast, so with 10 mages spamming fireball i lost 30 principes per turn).

The other important thing is that players at least the good ones will adapt themselves to your tactic if you are at war with them, so its not like against the AI where you can field always the same armies and always win.

[Zeldor]

I played some SP games and never heard about PD stopping AI. How does it work?

[PashaDawg]

Zeldor said:
I played some SP games and never heard about PD stopping AI. How does it work?

The AI will generally be disinclined to attack you if you invest heavily in PD. I don't know the specifics, but PD 15 in the neighboring provinces seems to work well.

[quantum_mechani]

The AI only takes note of every 10 levels, so 1, 11, 21, 31, etc. are the critical levels.

[PashaDawg]

Oh! Thanks, QM. That's good to know.

[Zeldor]

quantum_mechani:

I always kept it at 10 or 20, so it seems I need to move it by one point. And what AI does when all provinces have the same PD? And I am sure it won't attack 1000 army with PD 0 instead of empty probince with PD 21...

[sector24]

It's based on the AI's belief that it can successfully take a province if it declares war on you. For instance, you can heavily defend all your provinces except 1 with no PD and eventually the AI will look at your army graph and decide you're weak. It'll build up what it thinks are a sufficient number of troops and attack you.

Now if you have more than 1 "open" province it just makes the AI attack you faster. It seems like the AI is always at war with at least 1 nation in order to expand, so if all of its neighbors appear tougher than you it's just a matter of time before they attack you.

Further, the reason you get ganged up on is because one nation declares war on you and you expend resources to defeat them, gather more lightly defended provinces while at the same time losing troops. Another nation attacking you just increases the number of lightly defended provinces and lost units, encouraging more opponents to gang up on you.

That's my take on it anyway. I've never had a border nation attack me when they had nothing to gain. Occasionally they declare war on you via a message but they're always ready to take something the next turn.

[quantum_mechani]

As far as exactly which provinces the AI will attack, that's harder to predict, though PD certainly does play a role. The big advantage of the higher PD on borders is preventing the AI from declaring war in the first place.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

The AI only takes note of every 10 levels, so 1, 11, 21, 31, etc. are the critical levels.

Thats true, only so far as it goes.

In SP, I routinely steer attacking AI's where I want them to go by making even a 1 pt difference in pd.

While I usually use the 21 breakpoint, it works pretty much anywhere.