The AI

[LordofSaxony]

This is just an open discussion of what you would like to see in CK2's AI (artificial intelligence). I know that Paradox is pretty competent concerning making a challenging AI, but perhaps we can give our thoughts and input. On another note, you could also mention what behavior in CK1 that you didn't like concerning the AI, and hopefully it will be fixed for CK2.

I'm hoping that the AI will, a lot of the time, go after remaining provinces to get a title. In example, the AI has 2 out of the 5 provinces needed to establish a dukedom, so it will go after one of the remaining provinces minimum to accomplish that. Perhaps the "ambitious" trait could increase the chances for the AI in attempting this (higher %, more likely it would).

Secondly, I'm hoping the AI will "clump" it's lands, in other words, I'm hoping that it will try to carve out an area instead of flying blind in any direction. If the AI's kingdom falls apart due to duress or whatever, and it looks like a giant checkerboard, that it may actually attempt at re-establishing it's original borders before doing anything else. If the AI is clumping it's lands, it may help with this issue as well. This may also help with a more structured appearance when zoomed out, otherwise we may be seeing a lack of cohesion.

Any other thoughts? Suggestions? Input?

 

[.Spartan]

I would like preset or programmable AI personalities to assign to a campaign or individual kingdoms. This of course assumes a highly competent AI to begin with.

 

[Orinsul]

Id like the AI to put family interest before personal. to consider Long term consequences not just go for the instant goal but work up to something. is that possible?

 

[Count Lake]

Paradox will do a competant job with the a.i. but there will be two or three glaring problems that reveal themselves after a few weeks on the market. These and other issues that crop up will be addressed by modders and Paradox through patches.

I called it here first.

 

[ollobrains]

some form of moddable AI along with the advance AI paradox will give it

 

[sortulv]

I think the biggest thing would be to have the AI good enough not to have to cheat...

 

[Boshko]

I think the biggest thing would be to have the AI good enough not to have to cheat...

With a game as complicated as this? That's pretty much impossible unless they spend years and years focusing solely on the AI.

 

[TempestDK]

I think in recent titles, the AI have become good enough to not use glaring cheats like in CK1. But there might be places where they have to let the Ai do "cheaty stuff" to make it work as intended. I am fine with that.

What I do not want to see from the AI:

- Less attrition than the player. It should be smart enough not to load 50k troops into a desert province.

- Free finances. Be capable of handling costly wars AND finances without the CK1 no-debts-cheat.

- Greedy lieges. The AI not claiming every title of vassals that border it's personal provinces. Makes it really hard to play as a loyal subject when you know your king will be gunning for your lands eventually.

- Excomming villy-nilly. None of this nonsense of excommunicating anyone and anything it can within reach, just for the hell of it. Excommunication should be only used by the PC sparringly, and for the AI reserved for true rivals.

- No Defence of the homeland. Be capable of defending it's homeland when at war somewhere else. I doubt that the King of England would move ALL his troops to France for a war, just to see the welsh, irish and scots rise up and take over the british isles with no or little resistance.

- BB free. AI should get BB just like the player, so if HRE hyper-expands, then other rulers might gang up on him. The Ai should recognize BB as an issue and be able to handle this by giving out titles, even if Intrieque score allows for 100% efficiency. Also Ai should be more willing to give up a far-flung personal demesne of high income, instead of giving away a lower income province in the homeland. This should keep the ruler's power centralised and not make HRE have two provinces in Germany, one in Sicily, two in the Outremer, one in Iberia and one in eastern Russia.

-Suicidal tendencies. On any aggression level above 'Coward' the CK1 AI would go to war with ANYONE it had claims on, even with absolutely no chance of winning. This helped the blobbing on the map. The AI needs to be better at biding its time for when the time comes to strike, instead of just striking when it can.

- Same laws across the map. The AI should be able to handle changes of inheritance laws, realms laws and religious laws (assuming that all those will still be there in CK2). This only happens by event in CK1, but would be nice if the AI was capable of seeing the benefit in changing their laws to something else, depending on the situation.

Those are the changes I could think of right now ... but basically most of the AI would need to be changed in CK2, since CK1 AI was pretty moronic and incapable of even the simplest of decisions.

 

[Count of Reval]

A relevant list and good post, TempestDK.

 

[LordofSaxony]

A relevant list and good post, TempestDK.

I agree, it's a good list.

 

[yourworstnightm]

We all want a good AI that don't need to cheat.

 

[.Spartan]

I think in recent titles, the AI have become good enough to not use glaring cheats like in CK1. But there might be places where they have to let the Ai do "cheaty stuff" to make it work as intended. I am fine with that.

What I do not want to see from the AI:

- Less attrition than the player. It should be smart enough not to load 50k troops into a desert province.

- Free finances. Be capable of handling costly wars AND finances without the CK1 no-debts-cheat.

- Greedy lieges. The AI not claiming every title of vassals that border it's personal provinces. Makes it really hard to play as a loyal subject when you know your king will be gunning for your lands eventually.

- Excomming villy-nilly. None of this nonsense of excommunicating anyone and anything it can within reach, just for the hell of it. Excommunication should be only used by the PC sparringly, and for the AI reserved for true rivals.

- No Defence of the homeland. Be capable of defending it's homeland when at war somewhere else. I doubt that the King of England would move ALL his troops to France for a war, just to see the welsh, irish and scots rise up and take over the british isles with no or little resistance.

- BB free. AI should get BB just like the player, so if HRE hyper-expands, then other rulers might gang up on him. The Ai should recognize BB as an issue and be able to handle this by giving out titles, even if Intrieque score allows for 100% efficiency. Also Ai should be more willing to give up a far-flung personal demesne of high income, instead of giving away a lower income province in the homeland. This should keep the ruler's power centralised and not make HRE have two provinces in Germany, one in Sicily, two in the Outremer, one in Iberia and one in eastern Russia.

-Suicidal tendencies. On any aggression level above 'Coward' the CK1 AI would go to war with ANYONE it had claims on, even with absolutely no chance of winning. This helped the blobbing on the map. The AI needs to be better at biding its time for when the time comes to strike, instead of just striking when it can.

- Same laws across the map. The AI should be able to handle changes of inheritance laws, realms laws and religious laws (assuming that all those will still be there in CK2). This only happens by event in CK1, but would be nice if the AI was capable of seeing the benefit in changing their laws to something else, depending on the situation.

Those are the changes I could think of right now ... but basically most of the AI would need to be changed in CK2, since CK1 AI was pretty moronic and incapable of even the simplest of decisions.

Ummmm.... Lets see.... Yep that pretty covers it. I would add better tactical planning (somewhat addressed in the attrition comment and defending of the homeland but there is far more to it than those key points.

 

[Arizal]

Personally, I like the friends and ennemies stuff. All decisions are not rational and one can make a mistake because he want to punish an ennemy or help a friend. Personnal relations are not completely meaningless in history and I think I would like Paradox if they don't make an AI who work like a predictable robot, but have some confusing behaviours (not to be dumb, but to be more human). I know this is impossible to make a computer to be not a computer, but I would like to have this impression, like I have sometimes in EU:Rome.

 

[Sinbuster]

An AI that comprehends distances would be nice. While a moorish invasion of England is plausible, though highly unlikely, the thought of one of the middle eastern sheikdoms waltzing across the whole map is absurd. While on the subject, can we do away with the whole paying for boat transport. Naval warfare really needs to be flushed out in CKII.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

All of these would be nice, however I don't think many are feesible.

Less attrition than the player. It should be smart enough not to load 50k troops into a desert province.

I don't know, given how other Pdox and other strategy games work if this is even within the ballpark.

- Free finances. Be capable of handling costly wars AND finances without the CK1 no-debts-cheat.

This probably caused the most problems. Given the work in Vicky2 on bankruptsies, this one might be feesible.

- Greedy lieges. The AI not claiming every title of vassals that border it's personal provinces. Makes it really hard to play as a loyal subject when you know your king will be gunning for your lands eventually.

Actually the leige should be greedy - its his nobles who need more of a backbone.

- Excomming villy-nilly. None of this nonsense of excommunicating anyone and anything it can within reach, just for the hell of it. Excommunication should be only used by the PC sparringly, and for the AI reserved for true rivals.

No. The AI should excommunicate for the same reasons as the player. If a player wants to take a title for cheap or excommunicate another family's insane son whose next in line to the thone, so should the AI.

- No Defence of the homeland. Be capable of defending it's homeland when at war somewhere else. I doubt that the King of England would move ALL his troops to France for a war, just to see the welsh, irish and scots rise up and take over the british isles with no or little resistance.

Actually...that did happen quite a lot. In that respect the AI acts historically if not smartly.

- BB free. AI should get BB just like the player, so if HRE hyper-expands, then other rulers might gang up on him. The Ai should recognize BB as an issue and be able to handle this by giving out titles, even if Intrieque score allows for 100% efficiency. Also Ai should be more willing to give up a far-flung personal demesne of high income, instead of giving away a lower income province in the homeland. This should keep the ruler's power centralised and not make HRE have two provinces in Germany, one in Sicily, two in the Outremer, one in Iberia and one in eastern Russia.

should be fessible as the ai gets bb in other pdox games.

-Suicidal tendencies. On any aggression level above 'Coward' the CK1 AI would go to war with ANYONE it had claims on, even with absolutely no chance of winning. This helped the blobbing on the map. The AI needs to be better at biding its time for when the time comes to strike, instead of just striking when it can.

This has and almost certainly will be an issue because the human player tends to blob and the AI is made to be comprable to a human player.

- Same laws across the map. The AI should be able to handle changes of inheritance laws, realms laws and religious laws (assuming that all those will still be there in CK2). This only happens by event in CK1, but would be nice if the AI was capable of seeing the benefit in changing their laws to something else, depending on the situation.

probably possible.

basically there are just some things that its easier to teach the AI than others. This is a complex game and cheats are added because sometimes no matter what the AI programers do, the AI acts stupid, like muslim invasions into Britian when they don't focus on Spain.

 

[TempestDK]

Actually the leige should be greedy - its his nobles who need more of a backbone.

Well I don't mind greedy lieges as such ... but even back in the middle ages lieges were not free to just claim all their vassals' titles. The main obstacle is probably that it has no consequences as they do not get any BB for grabbing 6 titles within a year, and then proceed to attack the vassals.

So I guess it should be more like not having consequence free liege title-grabbing, and vassals with more backbone. Most vassals should be outraged if the King suddenly started to claim and then push these claims in wars against his own subjects. Maybe even the people of the lands would reject this utter disrespect for his subjects.

No. The AI should excommunicate for the same reasons as the player. If a player wants to take a title for cheap or excommunicate another family's insane son whose next in line to the thone, so should the AI.

Then perhaps letting the PC excommunicate as he sees fit needs to be removed. It felt very gamey and random who got excommunicated, so the player or the AI rulers could grab cheap titles. Maybe all the PC can do is remove excommunication, and leave the power of excommunication in the hands of the Pope.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Well I don't mind greedy lieges as such ... but even back in the middle ages lieges were not free to just claim all their vassals' titles. The main obstacle is probably that it has no consequences as they do not get any BB for grabbing 6 titles within a year, and then proceed to attack the vassals.

So I guess it should be more like not having consequence free liege title-grabbing, and vassals with more backbone. Most vassals should be outraged if the King suddenly started to claim and then push these claims in wars against his own subjects. Maybe even the people of the lands would reject this utter disrespect for his subjects.

Yes, I agree with most points there save the type of realms where the king can revoke titles.

Then perhaps letting the PC excommunicate as he sees fit needs to be removed. It felt very gamey and random who got excommunicated, so the player or the AI rulers could grab cheap titles. Maybe all the PC can do is remove excommunication, and leave the power of excommunication in the hands of the Pope.

Actually while it felt gamey, that is often how excommunications were used when they were petitioned to pope by nobility.

 

[Negru Voda]

Secret pacts, between rulers, vassals, or even the landless?

Kinda like secret ambitions.

I Duke of Awesome, will not start a civil war with you now that you're fighting a war. But when we win the war, you give me that sweet province I've been looking for.

Or marriage with your hottie daughter, at least that

 

[.Spartan]

An AI that comprehends distances would be nice. While a moorish invasion of England is plausible, though highly unlikely, the thought of one of the middle eastern sheikdoms waltzing across the whole map is absurd. While on the subject, can we do away with the whole paying for boat transport. Naval warfare really needs to be flushed out in CKII.

No doubt. I hope it will get a serious overhaul and some features added to it - hint, hint.

 

[Buladelu]

AI personality should be based on ruler. Selfless ruler will set low taxes and build province improvements, warmonger will try to conquer something, fanatic will crush heretics/heathens and will create bishop lands and so on.