The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP

Zeldor · #1 October 30th, 2007, 03:14 PM

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

PashaDawg · #2 October 30th, 2007, 03:48 PM

Quote:

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 · #3 October 30th, 2007, 04:00 PM

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

PashaDawg · #4 October 30th, 2007, 04:09 PM

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

Zeldor · #5 October 30th, 2007, 04:16 PM

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 · #6 October 30th, 2007, 04:53 PM

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.

Loren · #7 February 9th, 2009, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sector24

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.

Slight disagreement.

My experience is the AI is always at war with somebody other than at the very start. If you're it's only neighbor that almost certainly means war no matter what.

In fact, I've had the AI declare on me once when there was no possibility of attacking me that turn as we had no points of contact. There were two AI's at war with each other. I didn't particularly like the prospects of war with my neighbor so I was pushing dominion. He popped--the remaining AI immediately declared on me, despite the fact that we had the big empty zone of the dead AI between us.

quantum_mechani · #8 October 30th, 2007, 04:55 PM

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.

Ironhawk · #9 October 30th, 2007, 05:09 PM

I've noticed that the AI seems to balance PD vs. gold income. There are probably other factors as well but thats the only one I've noticed a pattern for.

Zeldor · #10 October 30th, 2007, 05:17 PM

sector24:

Well, AI declares war when it is on the other side of the map and no chance to be close to me for many many turns. And just throws some distance spells at me.

I have now strange situation, bordering with Ermor but he didn't attack me even once. And we have border for like 30 turns. And Ermor has enormous army [like 3x bigger then next one, it is MA].