The AI

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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.

This would be my biggest wish for the AI, too. It would be absolutely awesome to have some measure of AI decision making based on the personality of the ruler, even if it would make the game a little easier and put player and AI on different footing. Since CK for me is more like a role playing game for me, i think that would be ok.

Of course one would need to be careful not to overdo it with the restrictions and guidelines, given the sometimes quite large number and contradictory nature of traits.

 

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This would be my biggest wish for the AI, too. It would be absolutely awesome to have some measure of AI decision making based on the personality of the ruler, even if it would make the game a little easier and put player and AI on different footing. Since CK for me is more like a role playing game for me, i think that would be ok.

Of course one would need to be careful not to overdo it with the restrictions and guidelines, given the sometimes quite large number and contradictory nature of traits.

I would hate anything that makes the AI act dumber and do stuff a human player would never do in those circumstances. We should be trying to make the AI more competitive, not less so. It's easy to dumb it down and that's where a lot of complaints with strategy games comes - an AI that doesn't act compitently.

That said, there are a few occasions where a human might do multiple things and in those cases, the AIs traits can be used to help guide them.

 

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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.

great post. all the points make sense

 

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I would hate anything that makes the AI act dumber and do stuff a human player would never do in those circumstances. We should be trying to make the AI more competitive, not less so. It's easy to dumb it down and that's where a lot of complaints with strategy games comes - an AI that doesn't act compitently.

That said, there are a few occasions where a human might do multiple things and in those cases, the AIs traits can be used to help guide them.

In my opinion AI will never be competent enough to give a human player consistently the feeling that he has to fight for it, anyway.

Usually I would say "try to make it the best it can be,anyway", but in this case i think i would prefer the coolness factor of having my "deceitful" ally backstab me, while my "honest" ally helps me. Or having a "vengeful" or "insane" king declare war on a whim, while his "wise" counterpart wouldnt (or wait for better circumstances).
Or consider the ruin of immersion when you have a "peaceful", "modest", "wise", "lazy" and "cowardly" king declare war after war on even his best "friends", just because he can...

This would also entice the player to apply a similar RPG-logic in his decisions instead of seeing the game as a purely competitive race (though of course player actions shouldnt be limited in any way). This attitude is one of the major reasons CK is still fun for me, even though its certainly wasnt "challenging" beyond the first 10-20 games or so, so anything that helps promote it, is good in my book.

Well, I realize that many people will agree with you on this, anyways, so maybe my hope can only be for an option to check before starting the game (sth. like "authentic behavior" on/off).

 

[Buladelu]

Jinnal, you are wrong about competitiveness. CK is not about sport, it's not Starcraft and not even a Civilization (where each leader acts according to it's personality, by the way). And you can make some restriction on player based on ruler personality (f.e. honest person would have troubles with finding good assassins and so on). AI could be personalized and challengeable, but most problems should come from world's reaction on your actions. Coalitions against you if you are bad boy for example - it doesn't requires that much of AI and it wouldn't be much easier if you friend won't join this coalition. But it would be so much cool.

 

[Buladelu]

I have a dream that hte game will allow events of this level of awesomness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_Civil_War_(1381–1384)

 

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In my opinion AI will never be competent enough to give a human player consistently the feeling that he has to fight for it, anyway.

As long as AI programmers think that way then it'll never happen. Instead they should try their best to always surpass their previous efforts and if they fall short, well then that's understandable.

 

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As long as AI programmers think that way then it'll never happen. Instead they should try their best to always surpass their previous efforts and if they fall short, well then that's understandable.

and I said:

Usually I would say "try to make it the best it can be,anyway", but in this case i think i would prefer the coolness factor of having my "deceitful" ally backstab me, while my "honest" ally helps me. Or having a "vengeful" or "insane" king declare war on a whim, while his "wise" counterpart wouldnt (or wait for better circumstances).
Or consider the ruin of immersion when you have a "peaceful", "modest", "wise", "lazy" and "cowardly" king declare war after war on even his best "friends", just because he can...

This would also entice the player to apply a similar RPG-logic in his decisions instead of seeing the game as a purely competitive race (though of course player actions shouldnt be limited in any way). This attitude is one of the major reasons CK is still fun for me, even though its certainly wasnt "challenging" beyond the first 10-20 games or so, so anything that helps promote it, is good in my book.

Well, I realize that many people will agree with you on this, anyways, so maybe my hope can only be for an option to check before starting the game (sth. like "authentic behavior" on/off).