Is Realm Divide just a lazy solution for a bad AI?

[BubbaGump_skrimp]

This is my 1st Total War game and I have enjoyed it thus far....however Realm Divide is just an awfull implementation to balance the AI. I'd rather the other factions maybe get more tech then just for no reason unite against you. I'm not complaining so much about the difficulty... I get it and its cool but I'm annoyed because it basically null and voids the political aspect of the game because its just to much to overcome. CA basically just cuts out half the game because they can't make a decent AI. I enjoyed both aspects of the game battles and politics and now its just a blood bath with no real motive. I held the title of Shogun for 2 years then lost it... Then lost half my provinces and its still not ending. RD should continue until you lose your Daiymo so when you lose him a NEW Daiymo emerges with new motives and ambitions... No they just keep attacking... I'm not saying eliminate this totally but its just badly implemented. In no way should this last until your whole clan is wiped out. Yes I'm complaining but judging by others I'm not alone. I hope Warhammer doesn't have this

[Engineer Weierstrass]

Well tw AI is not the best. I recommend you to play multiplayer campaing. Take the AI just as a silly npc and the human player as your real target. Some mods change the RD to avoid a war agains allies, or just block the RD. But the AI even if better it's not much different

[Iceira]

yeah but if no RD then it will be a walk in the park.

or this game should set better AI to match real player as bots, this is old news and alot of debat on that,

They should do as virtual figther did, use own tactic against yourself so it learn from you, so you will play against your own IQ and you will loose someday...lol ( maybe enable a -25% IQ so you dont get ur butt kicked by your own bot, rofl )

[easytarget]

Yeah, I much prefer every other TW campaign where I fall asleep mid and late campaign and just hit the turn button to victory.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by easytarget:

Yeah, I much prefer every other TW campaign where I fall asleep mid and late campaign and just hit the turn button to victory.

These kind of threads are never going to stop, are they? ;)

[easytarget]

Haha, nope. Everyone's a critic, and none an actual programmer capable of creating this magical AI I keep hearing so much about (and have been for going on decades at this point).

A great AI in strategy games, or for that matter NPCs in RPGs that aren't moronically repetitive, are some of the many facets of PC Gaming resembling Waiting for Godot.

Newsflash for everyone who hasn't read the play, Godot never shows up....

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by easytarget:

Haha, nope. Everyone's a critic, and none an actual programmer capable of creating this magical AI I keep hearing so much about (and have been for going on decades at this point).

A great AI in strategy games, or for that matter NPCs in RPGs that aren't moronically repetitive, are some of the many facets of PC Gaming resembling Waiting for Godot.

Newsflash for everyone who hasn't read the play, Godot never shows up....

Yeah and if he ever does, no one is going to be too happy.

The old saying 'be careful what you wish for' is apt, I think.

The bottom line is that most people want to play strategy games for fun, not to get their asses handed to them. If some developer ever does make an actual intelligence for a strategy game, few people are going to want to play it, because they won't be able to win the game.

Many people already rage quit when they lose Shogun 2 battles online, and most of the player base prefers off line modes, so imo if there was an actual intelligence controlling an AI clan, that had the strategic savy of a Yoshitsune or Kiso Yoshinaka, people would rage at that too. The problem is, whilst you can rage quit an online battle and not really lose anything, you can't rage quit a campaign without admitting you've lost the game.

And people at the end of the day want to feel like winners: they won't want to play a game where they get out foxed every campaign, because it's just a referendum on their strategic ability, or lack thereof.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Favoritehemroid:

This is my 1st Total War game and I have enjoyed it thus far....however Realm Divide is just an awfull implementation to balance the AI. I'd rather the other factions maybe get more tech then just for no reason unite against you. I'm not complaining so much about the difficulty... I get it and its cool but I'm annoyed because it basically null and voids the political aspect of the game because its just to much to overcome. CA basically just cuts out half the game because they can't make a decent AI. I enjoyed both aspects of the game battles and politics and now its just a blood bath with no real motive. I held the title of Shogun for 2 years then lost it... Then lost half my provinces and its still not ending. RD should continue until you lose your Daiymo so when you lose him a NEW Daiymo emerges with new motives and ambitions... No they just keep attacking... I'm not saying eliminate this totally but its just badly implemented. In no way should this last until your whole clan is wiped out. Yes I'm complaining but judging by others I'm not alone. I hope Warhammer doesn't have this

The AI is not "lazy"....It just thinks there is a lot to be said for leisure :D

Seriously though, the main reason RD was implemented was owing to player complaints about the earlier TW games all devolving into "steamrolling" at mid game.

As you say this is your first TW game, you probably aren't aware of how much complaining there actually was in the TW forums.

If you play any of the old games though, you'll see how ridiculously easy the campaigns were, even on the highest difficulty. RTW and Empire in particular had AI that was basically passive.

[shiggies713]

I actually like getting my ass handed to me by AI in games.

Its how I learned to play chess. Some old Gary Kasporov Chess game, put it up to the highest level and got stomped quite a bit. By the time I could actually stalemate and even beat the AI, I could damn near beat anyone I know and even take my queen off the board before we start and still beat most people.

[BubbaGump_skrimp]

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Originally posted by Favoritehemroid:

The AI is not "lazy"....It just thinks there is a lot to be said for leisure :D

Seriously though, the main reason RD was implemented was owing to player complaints about the earlier TW games all devolving into "steamrolling" at mid game.

As you say this is your first TW game, you probably aren't aware of how much complaining there actually was in the TW forums.

If you play any of the old games though, you'll see how ridiculously easy the campaigns were, even on the highest difficulty. RTW and Empire in particular had AI that was basically passive.

My complaint isn't the difficulty or even having RD in the game it is the fact that they take half of the game away (which is the politics) and replace it with all pile on whitey blood bath. I'm not a programmer but I know RD could be better implemented without taking a good portion of the game out of it. This game is supposed to reflect life like scenarios and situations. It loses its immersion when everyone just drops whatever they are doing and go pick a fight with home boy because the she male that has one single province has his panties in a bunch that my clan is as large as Clan Takeda? They don't even fight eachother. Clans that have slaughtered eachother are all of a sudden the best of friends. Makes no sense, which goes back to the title of the thread... just implemented for a bad AI nothing else.

[Mile pro Libertate]

"This game is supposed to reflect life like scenarios and situations. It loses its immersion when everyone just drops whatever they are doing and go pick a fight with home boy..."[/b]

It's not as unbelievable as you might think. The Sengoku period was full of backstabbing, opportunism, and unholy alliances.

Akechi Mitsuhide's attack on Nobunaga didn't make a lot of sense. The resistance of the Asai and Asakura clans didn't either. They were kinda like the "single province [that] has his panties in a bunch that my clan is as large as [so-and-so]."[/b]

The Hojo in 1590 thinking they could hold out against the entire country didn't make much sense either.

Then you have guys like Matsunaga Hisahide (http://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Matsunaga_Hisahide) and Rokkau Yoshikata (http://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Rokkaku_Yoshikata) thinking they could take on Nobunaga more or less all by themselves. Yoshikata basically went to war with Nobunaga because he refused to give Oda military access to move men to Kyoto.

As for "Clans that have slaughtered each other are all of a sudden the best of friends,"[/b] that basically describes the constant back and forth, 2 vs. 1, all-against-all, back to 2 vs. 1 that was the relationship between the Imagawa, Hojo and Takeda.

[tiberiansun371alexw]

You have the three big unifiers, Oda Nobunaga, Toyatomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nobunaga did most of the work. He had 3/4 of the entire population in thier terribtory. Oda Nobunaga only had 3 major clans that still opposed them. They were seperated from each other and neither had the ability nor inclination to work together. After Nobunag's death, Hideyoshi reunited the Oda faction (sort of... he kind of took it over, but most of his immediate subordinates that he gave fierfdoms to were Oda or Oda retainers) from the chaos of thier clan leader's death. He then finished the conquest of the north and whipped Korea's butt. People say there was a geurilla campaign that caused them trouble, but even in the geurilla fighting the Koreas lost three times as many casulties as they inflicted. After he died Ieyasu was able to rise from the seven way split to become the leader of the Eastern faction (one of the 2 surviving ones). He won the Battle of Sekigahara and the diyamos, even the ones never controlled by Nobunaga or Hideyoshi by the vitue of being north, submitted to Ieyasu, who started te Tokugawa Shogunate.

Now, before all that, Oda Nobunaga had several problems on his rise to power. Some guy with 40K troops attacked Owari just becuase it was in the way to his march to Kyoto and in the Battle of Okehazama, Nobunaga's 3K managed to win in a suprise attack. It's thought to occur at Dengakuhazama not Okehazama, but we already named the battle. It is generally thoguht this was his most dangeorus momment in his life, aside from the inccident he died. Nobunaga's father-in-law Saitō Dōsann left him his money, Inabayama Castle, and 3/4 of the land in Mino (Gifu) in his will, but Nobunaga's brother in law Saitō Yoshitatsu killed Dosan and the castle. Nobunaga, betrayed, had to take the castle to avenge his father-in-law. Nobunaga had been previously loyal to the 13th shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru. Yoshiteru was well respected by many daimyo such as Takeda Shingen, Ōtomo Sorin, Hosokawa Fujitaka and others. He was a well respected ruler, known for bringing order to a chaotic period... for a whole single generation. Oda Nobunaga helped Yoshiteru's little brother and shogun canidate Ashikaga Yoshiaki to Kyoto. Nobunaga left 3K Mino cavalry to be used by Yoshiaki to bring order. In return, he just wanted a few favors from the shogun. Ashikaga Yoshiaki interpeted a few temporary favors as permenant restriction of the shogun's power and asked diamyo to stop Nobunaga. The Azai clan, with one third the army of the expanded Oda, betrayed Nobunaga despite Nobunaga establishing an alliance. The Azai siding with the Asakura over the Oda once the shogun told them to (previously they sat out the Oda-Asakura fight), was bascially realm divide and more diamyo would follow, includingt the Takeda.

So, it is historical and it doesn't make too much sense either. Not only was Nobunaga betrayed once Ashikaga Yoshiaki told everyone to gang up on him (altohught only a minority of his allies defected, Ashikaga Yoshiaki's order mainly convinced neutral parties to get Nobunaga), but many of the Senuku period decisions of betraying or allying just don't make any sense without knowing about the code of honor back then and some of them aprticularly betrayals STILL didn't make any sense with hindsight. A more appropriate version of realm divide in the game would be impliment if you meet the current condtions (fame, land, yadda) and the Ashikaga dislike you by -30 or your clan leader is Oda Nobunaga. It shouldalso never apply if your clan has a youngling being held hostage by the Ashikage (they would feel safe). Also, it should limit the opinion modifier to all but 3 allies, since not all of his allies betrayed him.

Oda Nobunaga could have stayed at Kiyosu Castle with the 3,120 guys that were patroling the Kai province as intimidation (and not commited to Hideyoshi's campaign). Instead, he sent those guys to patrol Kai and himself went to Kyoto. He slept at Honnō-ji Temple when Nobunaga had business at Kyoto. When Akechi Mitsuhide betrayed Nobunaga, he only has his retainers and courtiers. If Oda Nobunaga went to Kiyosu Castle and recalled the Kai patrol, do you think he woudl have lived? He couldn't do a repeat of the Battle of Okehazama, but unlike the temple the castle's walls are hard to scale and not decorative. Nobunaga could have just ate the stored food and flipped the bird to the traitors, knowing he could sit for years until Hideyoshi realized he was in trouble.

[Ohio9]

It's not that they can't make decent AI, it's just that without relm divide, there is a good chance you'll never face a significant opponent during a playthrough because sometimes the other clans will fight each other so much that none of them will ever get powerful or gain a significant amount of territory, making it easy for you to pick them all off one at a time.

This often happened in the first Shogun game back in 2000. Whether or not you would ever face a worthy opponent was totally random. Sometimes you would, but other times you could just coast through the game, downing clan after clan before any of them could ever get powerful enough to challenge you.

Is that realistic? Sure it is, but it's not much fun. So it really depends on what you prerfer: A more reaslistic world where random chance can enable you to beat the game with no effort, or a less realistic world which is far more likely to provide a tougher challenge since the other clans will always unite against you before you become too powerful to be threatened by them.

[shiggies713]

still, you can get so powerful pre-RD that even all clans combined cannot threaten you.

I can't tell you how many campaigns i steamrolled and autoresolved all of the final battles.

It is really quite necessary to provide some challenge.

[tiberiansun371alexw]

Originally posted by shiggies713:

still, you can get so powerful pre-RD that even all clans combined cannot threaten you.

I can't tell you how many campaigns i steamrolled and autoresolved all of the final battles.

It is really quite necessary to provide some challenge.

Can't you jsut send 15 units to a hill and wait for the AI to attack with a full stack (it WILL) for your challenge?

[Ohio9]

Originally posted by shiggies713:

still, you can get so powerful pre-RD that even all clans combined cannot threaten you.

I've never had that happen to me, at least not on hard difficulty. You can only get about 20 provinces before RD. That leaves 45 provinces that are going to turn against you very soon if not immediately.