Ridiculous enemy army numbers

[ChopSuey™]

I do like the game but it seems way out of whack at the moment with huge artificial cheating going on behind the scenes for the AI. Perhaps I just don't understand the mechanics and I'm just not producing enough, but ef me if the enemy army generation doesn't seem out of control

I got myself a neighbour that declared war and I don't blame them, as I was completely disregarding what they called their 'border'. Anyway I'm excited and ready. I crash into and smash the approaching wave coming at my nearest city with my warrior hero carrying godbreaker and then advance into their territory.

Suddenly there's another 20. I crush them and 2 turns later as I get to the city, there's some 30 more units. I dance away a turn and then catch their army split the next turn and then collectively wipe them out.
Start to siege and suddenly another 20 units appear. Take them out and then there is another 20. Heal a turn in my own territory and go back, there's some 30 more and after that, you guess it another 20 are just sitting around the city.

From turn 50 to 75ish they've just been able to replenish their army non stop. I don't know how they can possibly afford that many, how they make them that fast, and how they get them to possibly the furthest city in their empire. They're using some mad next day amazon service its crazy. I'm creating and sending little spats of backup troops every cpl of turns but it just isn't enough to compensate. Its not like their units are getting weaker either... they seem to be getting more and more higher tier units with each wave, more spawnkin beserkers and more masses of t2 healers.

I'm venting a bit but more than anything I just want to know HOW they are able to get that many units, on site constantly. My little 20 army is now down to 12 or so with me still sending reinforcements but they just never seem to run out of resources or powerful armies that its actually bordering insanity. The city I want to delete only takes 2 turns to siege but every time I am there for a turn a massive army suddenly comes out of the fog and I have to backpedal my wounded troops.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by ChopSuey™:

Ridiculous enemy army numbers
I do like the game but it seems way out of whack at the moment with huge artificial cheating going on behind the scenes for the AI. Perhaps I just don't understand the mechanics and I'm just not producing enough, but ef me if the enemy army generation doesn't seem out of control

I got myself a neighbour that declared war and I don't blame them, as I was completely disregarding what they called their 'border'. Anyway I'm excited and ready. I crash into and smash the approaching wave coming at my nearest city with my warrior hero carrying godbreaker and then advance into their territory.

Suddenly there's another 20. I crush them and 2 turns later as I get to the city, there's some 30 more units. I dance away a turn and then catch their army split the next turn and then collectively wipe them out.
Start to siege and suddenly another 20 units appear. Take them out and then there is another 20. Heal a turn in my own territory and go back, there's some 30 more and after that, you guess it another 20 are just sitting around the city.

From turn 50 to 75ish they've just been able to replenish their army non stop. I don't know how they can possibly afford that many, how they make them that fast, and how they get them to possibly the furthest city in their empire. They're using some mad next day amazon service its crazy. I'm creating and sending little spats of backup troops every cpl of turns but it just isn't enough to compensate. Its not like their units are getting weaker either... they seem to be getting more and more higher tier units with each wave, more spawnkin beserkers and more masses of t2 healers.

I'm venting a bit but more than anything I just want to know HOW they are able to get that many units, on site constantly. My little 20 army is now down to 12 or so with me still sending reinforcements but they just never seem to run out of resources or powerful armies that its actually bordering insanity. The city I want to delete only takes 2 turns to siege but every time I am there for a turn a massive army suddenly comes out of the fog and I have to backpedal my wounded troops.

I do not think the army generation of the AI is out of control. I can partially do the same. But I agree it is strongly visible they get more and more discounts at higher difficulty.

You still can starve them to death. That is, if you prove yourself to be a good tactician. They are not immune to starving out of resources. And again: with a good economy you can easily do the same what they seemingly do "spawning 6 units out of thin air". I did the same when I had to with rushing recruitments, summons and rallies.

[Raelic]

The number of armies doesn't matter. Look at the total score. It's never as high as your upkeep can accommodate. Who cares how many armies they have if it's full of 100/200 points?

The AI does get smart with teleporters though. I had assaulted two cities at once and the AI abandoned one city and almost overwhelmed my army at the other. That was interesting to see.

[Teutorix]

Strong gold economy and rally of the lieges with the order empire developments. Have a city with high draft production to produce units constantly use gold to insta train at other cities if you have enough. Never a fan of AI in games just spamming units at you but its better than a complete pushover AI that offers zero challenge.

[Indure]

I do think the enemy armies can get a bit out of control. In my last game I had to go through one that was so well turtled that I almost just gave up and started a new campaign. They had three cities, and around 20 different stacks of +tier 3 units at any given time.

The part that killed me was they had sanctuaries, teleporters and spell jammers in all cities and since they were roving around in stacks of 6, I had to clump my stacks as well and just the moving and razing a sanctuary, to spell jammer, to teleporter, to sieging a single city took 30 turns. All of which were under constant attacks by the enemy in their territory without the ability to heal.

[ChopSuey™]

Maybe i've just got to keep on plugging away then with the war of attrition... even though it seems I'm the one that is wearing down first even with at least a 6 to 1 kill ratio.

Happy for hard.... I've kept the pressure on for 25 turns and just not seemingly able to get anywhere. Was expecting some kind of give by now because I couldn't sustain anywhere near the same kind of hurt than I am laying down on the AI and still manage to send out massive strong armies every 2 turns. They'd be all T1's are certainly not a full 20+ units every 2 turns with 3 cities.

The number of armies does make a difference. Maintenance alone, I can't field anywhere near the amount of armies I am squishing and getting them to the battle region in those turns whilst still managing empire growth, even if slow. The replacements I can get there aren't anywhere near what the enemy is getting there but maybe I've just not geared up my 4 cities as much as I should have.

Plenty that I might not be doing right I guess. I'm Just thinking HOW is the ai doing this if it isnt cheating hugely. Was a hard overgrown world with no extra independent cities.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by ChopSuey™:

Maybe i've just got to keep on plugging away then with the war of attrition... even though it seems I'm the one that is wearing down first even with at least a 6 to 1 kill ratio.

Happy for hard.... I've kept the pressure on for 25 turns and just not seemingly able to get anywhere. Was expecting some kind of give by now because I couldn't sustain anywhere near the same kind of hurt than I am laying down on the AI and still manage to send out massive strong armies every 2 turns. They'd be all T1's are certainly not a full 20+ units every 2 turns with 3 cities.

The number of armies does make a difference. Maintenance alone, I can't field anywhere near the amount of armies I am squishing and getting them to the battle region in those turns whilst still managing empire growth, even if slow. The replacements I can get there aren't anywhere near what the enemy is getting there but maybe I've just not geared up my 4 cities as much as I should have.

Plenty that I might not be doing right I guess. I'm Just thinking HOW is the ai doing this if it isnt cheating hugely. Was a hard overgrown world with no extra independent cities.

It could be all those factors.

In my case the war lasted around 120 turns, with my enemies having had six cities with 25+ citizens, while I just had three. Once I repelled their attacks again and again and managed to establish support routes with teleporters and proper outposts for healing and resupply, I won the war of attrition since I kept expanding while preventing them from expanding.

[Teutorix]

Originally posted by ChopSuey™:

Maybe i've just got to keep on plugging away then with the war of attrition... even though it seems I'm the one that is wearing down first even with at least a 6 to 1 kill ratio.

Happy for hard.... I've kept the pressure on for 25 turns and just not seemingly able to get anywhere. Was expecting some kind of give by now because I couldn't sustain anywhere near the same kind of hurt than I am laying down on the AI and still manage to send out massive strong armies every 2 turns. They'd be all T1's are certainly not a full 20+ units every 2 turns with 3 cities.

The number of armies does make a difference. Maintenance alone, I can't field anywhere near the amount of armies I am squishing and getting them to the battle region in those turns whilst still managing empire growth, even if slow. The replacements I can get there aren't anywhere near what the enemy is getting there but maybe I've just not geared up my 4 cities as much as I should have.

Plenty that I might not be doing right I guess. I'm Just thinking HOW is the ai doing this if it isnt cheating hugely. Was a hard overgrown world with no extra independent cities.

If you are finding it difficult to get your armies to the front line and dont have teleporters unlocked the tome of teleportation can get you special teleporter districts without needing to waste imperium.

[ChopSuey™]

Hrmm. KK. Sounds like I'm jsut experiencing the same kinda thing as several of your other lads. I'll stow my inner raging child and keep at it for another 25 turns or so and see what happens. Maybe I am right on the edge of breaking the enemies backbone and resources.

[Zeromentor]

I'm going to point out that the AI does, in fact, cheat. I was going for a 1v1 game with some Free Cities against a Hard AI (using a Normal AI to stop an unwanted victory, you'll read why later) to see what they can do; by turn 30 I had 4 full stacked armies, and I attacked their Free City Vassal, only to get hit by 6 full stacks on the next turn. So, to see what all they had, I surrendered and with the shared vision I looked over their 3 cities. Well, we had the same amount of cities, but her smallest/newest city had the same population as my Throne City. And, of course, she had 17 armies. Seventeen, mostly full stack armies.

So I reloaded a turn back, before I declared war and sieged the Free City, asked to be a Vassal and again looked over her armies. Suddenly, instead of 17 armies, it was 13, and instead of 6 armies sitting north of the Vassal city, there were only 2. So in one turn, she had 'Built' 4 armies, and teleported those 4 directly to the battlefield?

I sent screenshots to all my buddies that play this game to pass around my research. I always assume my research is faulty on my end, especially when the AI seem to be cheating so blatantly, but they came to the same conclusion. Under Hard, the AI cheats but rarely if at all. At Hard it is pretty obvious, and at Very Hard if you watch long enough you'll see the AI spawn like three Heroes at level 5 on turn 2...

[jest]

The strategic AI's non-existent, just like the previous games.

The draft and resource bonus it gets at higher difficulties means it just sharts out stacks of tier 2/3 units despite owning nothing. Own the map's resources? Have all the free cities vassalized? Down to their last city? Doesn't matter, because the "AI" is like fed. Printer go BRRRRRRRR

[ChopSuey™]

See... I never bother to do any research like that when i should. So i'm not going completely loco and something dodgy is going on.

I honestly don't mind if the AI cheats as you turn up the difficulty a little in the way of resources and that. So mebbe they get 3:2 or something for resources compared to the player, but when you get caught in some kind of programming loop where they just infinitely are able to spawn troops and not even have to build them based on their cities, that's when it starts to get bad.

Wonder if its the type of thing where I just need a cpl of units to 'see' their other cities so it wont just spam create them or something spaz.

Thanks for that input at least!

[D34DLY]

if you want to see what the AI is up to, and don't mind not getting achievements, then type CTRL + ALT + C

this enters debug/cheat mode.

use the command barentz to "Explore the entire map and toggle vision over it."

[CrUsHeR]

Pretty weird when you discover an underground player at turn 5 right below your capital (with massive player distance...)

It takes at least 5 turns to build a unit with slow game speed, yet he already has 2 stacks.

By turn 5.

[camelotcrusade]

The AI even does unaffordable army spam on relaxed difficulty, it just does it slower. It still doesn't have 100 bucks to pay for their grievance, though. Priorities!

[NeonHaggis]

When I heard that the game now limited the battles to 6 armies total I thought 'cool, they have toned down the late game mega-stacks everywhere thing' ... only to find out it's much worse. You get mega-stacks everywhere in early game too now