Bad AI recruitment

[Sun Tzu]

I am on very hard on the Fall of the samurai campaign, the AI is usign swords like yari and samurai against my guns line infantry at like turn 140+ now. Any mods or idea why this happend|?

[porkchop]

bad ai is bad, what can i say. does roaming around with 2 deathstacks of samurai, when you can only afford/have time to recruit 1 mixed samurai/ashigaru army count as broken? obviously, the ai uses a financial rulebook other than what the player does ;p

it's just bad at managing economy/food/etc... so in harder difficulties it uses hacks, so it doesn't actually have to 'manage' ;p

seriously, i made a vassal (dont try it, you cant cancel it and they will start declaring war on random factions/allies haha)... and from 1 province they could support 2 stacks of mostly samurai, and 2 navies (honma) ;\

benefit is they can support a larger army/navy than you ever could from that 1 province, and their navies give you line of sight when they explore. but the negatives far outweigh that :\

[The_Yogi]

Because The AI is simply bad. They won't bother to replace Dojo with Barracks, so they'll just keep recruiting from Dojo.

After all, The BAI is just not bright enought to form Gun Lines for Gun Units in Battle.

Originally posted by porkchop:

bad ai is bad, what can i say. does roaming around with 2 deathstacks of samurai, when you can only afford/have time to recruit 1 mixed samurai/ashigaru army count as broken? obviously, the ai uses a financial rulebook other than what the player does ;p

it's just bad at managing economy/food/etc... so in harder difficulties it uses hacks, so it doesn't actually have to 'manage' ;p

seriously, i made a vassal (dont try it, you cant cancel it and they will start declaring war on random factions/allies haha)... and from 1 province they could support 2 stacks of mostly samurai, and 2 navies (honma) ;\

benefit is they can support a larger army/navy than you ever could from that 1 province, and their navies give you line of sight when they explore. but the negatives far outweigh that :\

That's CA giving them unfair advantage rather than the bad AI itself (which is the reason why CA gives them unfair advantage in the first place...)

[porkchop]

meh, more bad bad mechanics:

ai drops an army off from fleet, picks it up with another fleet, double the distance travelled. wonder if you can chain this 'hack' to traverse japan in 1 turn :\

more instances of units retreating 'through' my zone of control. like when cornered, or sometimes not even, just randomly.

ambush/hidden armies cannot be revealed even if your army is right on top of them, or spy, or whatever, until the next turn. the ambusher has complete control over whether he wants to reveal himself or not.

you don't get reinforcements from a castle if an army outside its walls is attacked. vice versa, if the castle is attacked, you get the reinforcements. you also get no reinforcements from garrison unless you have less than 20 units in that town (minus the garrison units obviously).

you can't cancel vassals. they count towards your 25/40 province total though (they also increase your fame though), and keep declaring wars on people.

as for ai economy hacks, according to the game data files: the ai gets -50% costs, you get +25% increased costs on very hard difficulty. this means the ai gets 2.5x economy bonus. they also get repression, happiness, etc... bonuses, and get zero resistance to invaders, meaning they don't have to garrison units after taking a town, or exempting from tax. this basically amounts to 3.0x economy bonus effective (if you've ever wondered why you see death stacks early game taking towns and moving on instantly on very hard).

simply speaking, if you can support 1 stack of samurai per 3 towns mid-late game, the ai can support 1 stack for every town (plus more from trade), they actually build 2 stacks mixed samurai and ashigaru with only 1 town, plus 2 fleets.

theoretically speaking, this means yamana in my game has 20 stacks, mostly which i can't see since theyre fighting chosokabe, ikko ikki and honma, and one other who they just killed.

[Sun Tzu]

My problem is not the AI being strong, my problem is the AI being dumb and passive on very hard by not getting more hun armies out on very hard difficulty. When you get good infantry you steam roll through the map

[porkchop]

yea, i just noticed it too, since first game on very hard. and they are still using ashigaru. some mix it in on purpose. ie: ikko ikki uses cheap units, light cav, yari ashigaru monks, and ronin bowmen, ronin katana samurais, and uh, doubt he uses ronin yari, can't remember. tries to bog you down with cheap ashigaru masses, and volley you with arrows.

of course, that doesn't work vs a ranked up samurai shock army which can literally break the ashigaru frontline in 2. plus heavy cav, which tramples their light units. :\ like wet toilet paper.

no, its not strong at all, it just has bugs, and uses economy 'hacks' to cover it up ;p

[Brotherscompany]

Yeah I know that feeling on FoTS.

I quit playing the game because of it, even if the AI did better units it wouldnt be able to use it because can form lines in the battle.

The creators must have seen the answer was use samurais since you dont have to form lines.
Ehehehe, just kiding but might be an explenation