Attacking Unconnected Provinces

[Makinus]

If i make a map with some unconnected provinces (say around 6) as special "pocket planes", when the AI reaches the research for teleporting/etc... will the Ai attack these provinces?

[rdonj]

The AI is extremely unlikely to teleport/cloud trapeze into them, but could maybe send some remote attacks if owned by a nation they're at war with. Since that pretty much means that having 5-10 PD in those provinces will stop the AI from ever reaching them, the answer is effectively no.

[Makinus]

Ok... then i will simply assign some very powerfull guardians to the "gates" to these provinces instead.... thanks.

[NTJedi]

Here are some other ideas for this solo provinces:

1) add magic sites which curse, disease, bad_luck, or give horror marks so they are poorly guarded by the human player.

2) I believe ballbarian found a method to prevent the option of building castles. I don't remember the details.

3) create a mod which will allow the ranged attack summoning spells to be more powerful, since most are relatively weak. The ghoul one is especially pathetic.

[Makinus]

Thanks for the tips NTJedi... i will not create a mod for the map as i want to be able to play it with CBM and other mods, but since i already was thinking of adding special sites to the "pocket plane" provinces i think i'll also add 1 or 2 sites with bad effects to them too... i want to add 1 level 4 site to each pocket plane and then i will add another 1 or 2 damaging sites too...

i decided that i'll add 8 "pocket planes" to the map, with each one having 1 good level 4 site of a magic path and 1 or 2 bad sites... any recommendations on bad sites? and what are considered the best sites of each magic path?

[Loren]

I doubt the AI would ever do any attacks against the provinces--without any direct access to them the AI would never realize who owned the province and thus it would have no reason to attack. (Admittedly, this wouldn't work if the AI knows things it shouldn't.)

[thejeff]

The AI knows things it shouldn't.

This is why it will occasionally declare war on you and drop remote attacks and seeking arrows on you while you have no idea where it is.

[Gandalf Parker]

Keep in mind that the AI is another nation in the game.
In fact, its 3 nations. Indepts, Spec1, and Spec2. Those "nations" are susceptible to the same things in the game as everyone else. So even the Independents will get random events which attack their locations.

So in that way, YES, the AI will attack unconnected provinces.

[thejeff]

That makes no sense at all. The AI, in this context, refers to AI played nations. It's true that independents and special monsters are implemented as nations, but that's pretty much just for the purpose of figuring out who fights who. They don't recruit troops, cast spells or attack other provinces.

Random events do happen to unconnected provinces, but that has nothing to do with whether AI nations will attack them. (Exception, some nations unlock random events that provinces with national troops. LA Ermor cultist attack comes to mind.)

[Taqwus]

Originally Posted by Makinus

Thanks for the tips NTJedi... i will not create a mod for the map as i want to be able to play it with CBM and other mods, but since i already was thinking of adding special sites to the "pocket plane" provinces i think i'll also add 1 or 2 sites with bad effects to them too... i want to add 1 level 4 site to each pocket plane and then i will add another 1 or 2 damaging sites too...

i decided that i'll add 8 "pocket planes" to the map, with each one having 1 good level 4 site of a magic path and 1 or 2 bad sites... any recommendations on bad sites? and what are considered the best sites of each magic path?

If the intent is to make them difficult to hold by human players, keep in mind that bad sites generally do nothing to weaken province defense. I suppose sites pushing scales to Misfortune/Turmoil 3 might increase turnover, but random attacks will generally be only so strong unless you mod the units involved and AFAIK will never storm a fortress.

The bad sites have a much greater chance of working against whatever independent guardians you put there, unless you carefully choose sites to which they're immune (like disease sites for demons/undead guardians).

I suppose that independent units placed on a map are never in 'hide' mode, right? Otherwise, one could perhaps mod a super-stealthy mega-astral + high-MR commander + mega-recuperation + mega-regeneration that autospawned enough nastiness to overwhelm plausible PD and require a real defense to stop).