Peter Ebbesen said:
It is up to the nation, which land is trespassed upon, to choose whether to react to the provocation by declaring a fully justified war or to let it slide.
If there is an issue here, it is that the AI seldom if ever sees it as a reason to declare war on the trespassers but rather chooses to let it slide time and time again.
Fair point if the AI is working effectively and various realms, duchies and counties are able to band together to fight off the invader, be they muslim or christian. I guess your point is that the root of the problem is the deficient AI rather than the actually rules and I agree with you to an extent. But I'm fairly sure that a muslim army marching through Europe might attract the attention of some rulers who might decide to do something to stop it. Maybe there are examples in history of muslim armies marching across Europe, but I don't think it should be the rule. But until there is some sort of AI in place that does react with hostility to armies marching across it's lands there needs to be something to stop this happening. If not from the historical perspective then from game balancing view point. As an example let me recount what happened in my game.
Playing as the Duchy of Österreich in my first game the Kingdom of Germany broke up very quickly. Caught between Bohemia and Hungary I had to pledge allegiance to someone or I would be torn apart (I thought) so I pledged allegiance to Bohemia. My plan was to slowly grow in prestige and lay claim to provinces around. With timing my hope was, eventually - after a couple of centuries say, to usurp the Kingdom of Bohemia. A difficult prospect as they had huge armies courtesy of Plzan and Praha. As it turned out all my planning to grab titles and the like proved to be meaningless. The Muslims stripped the land from Bohemia and I was able to take all the land, actually gaining prestige and piety along the way.
The game is balanced based on the connection between prestige, BB and title grabbing. (presuming you're playing expansionist, that is
) That balance is completely ruined if you can grab some of the richest lands in the game, and grab a moarch's title with so little effort on your part. I had been envisioning a long term plan to hem in Bohemia while expanding my own influence, that's what I wanted. But instead I was handed it on a plate. Admittedly I could just have ceded all the land back to the King (I think), but I'm not that much of a saint. I think that makes it more than a little bug. Perhaps not as big a bug as the problems finding a bride or with the AI but a major bug nonetheless.
Arguably this situation could have been avoided had Bohemia refused to support me when I initially declared war (then it would have been me that got whomped). Or if Bohemia had made a better hand of it's own defence (consolidating its army and moving into the region being attacked springs to mind as a basic strategic ploy). But of everyone I have spoken to, everyone feels that the concept of the muslims cutting through Christian lands, and vice versa, is stupid. Personally I have my doubts about the way in which christian armies can romp over other christian powers' land but that's by the by in regards to this argument.
I don't know enough about programming to make much of an attempt to offer a solution. Is it not possible for the AI to consider every province it has to move through in order to get to the target province. If it is unable to enter a province as a target province then it should not be able to use that province as a route on the way to the target province.
Erm, that got a bit longer than I intended. I guess that shows that I do think the game has the potential to be, at least, as good as EU2. It's more "my period" so I would really like it to be a challenging, interesting game. Hope I wasn't too boring.
*The point that the Muslims ought to be acting as aggressively as christians for game balancing purposes doesn't really hold up. Maybe if the game allowed you to play the Muslim powers. But it's a Christian game, the game should be balanced in terms of the Christian powers. I think, as the poster above said, that the Muslim powers' AI should concentrate on defending themselves, making it as hard as possible to take land off them. If you deny them the ability to cut through christian territory you're not actually depriving them of all outlets for aggression. They can still attack bordering lands. If they defend themselves well, that is a huge deterent to stop people attacking them. Lose your army on a crusade and you're liable to be attacked by someone else at home. I think the loss of game balance is much less in this case than the example I mentioned.
