Computer opponents give up much too easily.

[Stubbs]

Hello. I have been playing this game for many years. It seems in this version the computer gives up too soon. My goal if it can be done, is to change all of that.
I always play, Single Player/Skirmish.
My Victory conditions are either, Standard or Conquest.
Difficulty, Standard.
I play against 3 Computer Opponents.
There you have it. I have opponents with lots of buildings and units just surrender. What I would like to do, is kill every unit and burn to the ground every building if possible. Questions or comments are very welcome. Thank you.

[DMg Halt]

104

[spaceweezle]

I would say up the difficulty but from what I can tell the threshold is the same for all difficulties.

The criteria for capitulation seems pretty straight forward and seems based entirely on infrastructure.

Not a lot you can do about that it seems. I enjoy long drawn-out games of attrition. I just treat it like tower defence and typically don't touch their base unless I want to end.

Playing against many lesser AI is an interesting idea. I need to give that a try. Perhaps there will be a use for walls in that scenario.

[Stubbs]

Hello spaceweezle. Pleased to meet you. Mind if I make some comments to you? I like games of attrition too. Right now, I'm using towers. I clicked a button that shows range on my buildings. I get 15 villagers and 10 priests and slowwwly move on a opponent.

[Flakstruk]

I would opine its a scaling thing. 1 level up in difficulty greatly increases the tempo of the game.

[DMg Halt]

Use the 104 taunt - "Don't Resign" and the AI, regardless of whether its your ally or enemy, won't resign until you kill every last unit/villager/building of theirs.

At least that's what it's supposed to do. I'm unaware of this taunts current state of functionality, but you might give it a shot to see if it works.

[spaceweezle]

Originally posted by Stubbs:

Hello spaceweezle. Pleased to meet you. Mind if I make some comments to you? I like games of attrition too. Right now, I'm using towers. I clicked a button that shows range on my buildings. I get 15 villagers and 10 priests and slowwwly move on a opponent.

That pretty much sums up my strategy. I find that I need only one tower to stall until castle age and then spam defensive castles with an army of priests healing from behind.

I still have a lot of problems controlling my armies, which probably explains why I need castle support. My fingers keep tripping over themselves trying to use hotkeys lol.

Originally posted by Flakstruk:

I would opine its a scaling thing. 1 level up in difficulty greatly increases the tempo of the game.

It seems like the main and possibly only difference is the production rate. Through observation I speculate that the surrender condition is formulated based off of an infrastructure coefficient between the AI and player. Either that or it's runs between infrastructure vs the current age.

As someone who plays exclusively on Hard setting, the only discernible difference was the AI macro timing, which was incredibly tight. From memory I was almost 1k points behind them at castle age. Guess I was lucky that the AI like to spaz out and turtle instead of capitalizing on it.

[Stubbs]

Good morning to you all. Thanks to you all for your input I appreciate it. When using carts and wanting gold, can you get it at your allies markets, or only from your enemies markets? I think I'll go back to hard today and see what happens.

[Krosis Priest]

I proposed a while ago that there should be an AI Persistence setting which would solve this. I tend to have the opposite problem, I like big free-for-all style games with 5-7 opponents and huge maps, and the AI has a very annoying habit of refusing to resign and trying to build the 20th town center somewhere with its five remaining villagers after you've destroyed its entire army, all castles and 2/3 of its buildings. Would be good to be able to adjust this depending on taste and the game setup.

[Marco]

Originally posted by spaceweezle:

The criteria for capitulation seems pretty straight forward and seems based entirely on infrastructure.

I'm not sure it's about buildings. I've watched replays of some of my own games I recorded some months ago at Moderate, Hard and Hardest. AI will usually resign if its number of villagers goes below a certain threshold, for example when they have 17 villagers left. Even when playing at Hardest, I managed to completely destroy AI in only a single game while in others it resigned despite of its skill level.

During the past few days, then, I noticed Hard AI was less aggressive towards me. I don't know if it's just me trying to play faster or it's linked to villagers once again. In some random maps I played a while ago, AI usually rushed me in Feudal with scouts+spearmen or archers+skirmishers, but I didn't create many villagers. Now, I keep my TC always busy and if I have a large amount of villagers (like 61), then AI never attacks me until I'm ready to invade them in Imperial. Also, AI tends to retreat now. At the end of the game, AI always has 48 villagers (as a maximum number in the stats).

Originally posted by DMg Halt:

Use the 104 taunt - "Don't Resign" and the AI, regardless of whether its your ally or enemy, won't resign until you kill every last unit/villager/building of theirs.

At least that's what it's supposed to do. I'm unaware of this taunts current state of functionality, but you might give it a shot to see if it works.

Thank you for the suggest! I think I will try this, since AI gives up in Regicide too: yesterday I've managed to kill only one king, the other two Hard AIs resigned...

[spaceweezle]

Originally posted by Marco of The S.o.D.:

Originally posted by spaceweezle:

The criteria for capitulation seems pretty straight forward and seems based entirely on infrastructure.

I'm not sure it's about buildings. I've watched replays of some of my own games I recorded some months ago at Moderate, Hard and Hardest. AI will usually resign if its number of villagers goes below a certain threshold, for example when they have 17 villagers left. Even when playing at Hardest, I managed to completely destroy AI in only a single game while in others it resigned despite of its skill level.

During the past few days, then, I noticed Hard AI was less aggressive towards me. I don't know if it's just me trying to play faster or it's linked to villagers once again. In some random maps I played a while ago, AI usually rushed me in Feudal with scouts+spearmen or archers+skirmishers, but I didn't create many villagers. Now, I keep my TC always busy and if I have a large amount of villagers (like 61), then AI never attacks me until I'm ready to invade them in Imperial. Also, AI tends to retreat now. At the end of the game, AI always has 48 villagers (as a maximum number in the stats).

Originally posted by DMg Halt:

Use the 104 taunt - "Don't Resign" and the AI, regardless of whether its your ally or enemy, won't resign until you kill every last unit/villager/building of theirs.

At least that's what it's supposed to do. I'm unaware of this taunts current state of functionality, but you might give it a shot to see if it works.

Thank you for the suggest! I think I will try this, since AI gives up in Regicide too: yesterday I've managed to kill only one king, the other two Hard AIs resigned...

Yeah I think you may be right about the Vill count being part of the formula. To what extent is another question.

According to popular belief and my own observations , each AI are either assigned a personality or choose one from a pool. I think that might explain the huge amount of variability irrespective of difficulty. It would also make sense that the AI are programmed to play to their Civs strength, which I think is where the personality comes in.

I'd say they went a bit overboard with the retreat and turtling behaviors. It's good that they give the impression of reactive AI, but it's also in equal parts counter-productive and counter-intuitive, particularly on the harder AI settings where they have a noticeable macro advantage.

Originally posted by Stubbs:

Good morning to you all. Thanks to you all for your input I appreciate it. When using carts and wanting gold, can you get it at your allies markets, or only from your enemies markets? I think I'll go back to hard today and see what happens.

From what I've seen in team games on youtube you can send your carts to your allies markets. Not sure if it works for enemy markets. I've not yet created a trade cart lol.

[Stubbs]

Hello. The 104 Taunt fixed it. Plus, I've been playing Regicide and it's lots of fun. Attacks by the computer opponents have increased, and are fierce.

[Stubbs]

Hello. Trade carts go to enemy markets but they take a beating.

[Flakstruk]

Not if you bash the said enemy to clear the road

[The_10th_Man]

Originally posted by Stubbs:

Good morning to you all. Thanks to you all for your input I appreciate it. When using carts and wanting gold, can you get it at your allies markets, or only from your enemies markets? I think I'll go back to hard today and see what happens.

You can definitely trade with your allies - both with markets and with docks. However because they are located next to you, you will get less gold from each trip as the further they travel, the more gold they will bring back on their return trip.

Trade carts and trade cogs (trade ships) will always make their return trip to the market or dock which is farthest from the market they are trading with, so to increase your gold from trade with your ally, build a second market as far away from your ally as you can, without entering an active enemy's territory.

Priests will automatically heal damaged trade carts that pass by them, so you can put a priest next to your market and a couple more along the main trade routes to extend their life if they keep wandering into zones where they are being attacked. Cogs can only be repaired by a villager.

Trading with enemies is not advisable until after you have defeated them. Just be careful not to let your military destroy the markets and docks and don't leave your military unattended in the defeated enemy's town as they will eventually go to the market and wreck your supply of gold. IE - don't burn every building to the ground.

However, DO make them destroy all the towers and castles of a defeated enemy as they will continue to fight anything that comes into their attack radius after surrender, including trade carts and cogs.

[Marco]

Originally posted by DMg Halt:

Use the 104 taunt - "Don't Resign" and the AI, regardless of whether its your ally or enemy, won't resign until you kill every last unit/villager/building of theirs.

At least that's what it's supposed to do. I'm unaware of this taunts current state of functionality, but you might give it a shot to see if it works.

Originally posted by Stubbs:

Hello. The 104 Taunt fixed it. Plus, I've been playing Regicide and it's lots of fun. Attacks by the computer opponents have increased, and are fierce.

Hello guys,
Last night I've played a match Teutons vs Saracens against Hardest AI in a Random Map on Steppe, with Feudal to Castle Age and 200 pop limit settings, after I haven't touched the game in about a month. Let alone that I won at 4th attempt thanks to fortified walls (AI only spammed knights+rams, with occasional light cavalry and I used INFANTRY ONLY, TKs+ long swordsmen + pikemen), I haven't been able to make the 104 taunt work. In the last attempt (in which I won), I erratically sent "You can resign again" while AI was attacking me, but I've suddenly sent a new taunt which is the 104. However, when I destroyed some castles and 2 or 3 TCs the AI resigned anyway.

Note: on Hardest, this time AI had 135 villagers while I had around 60-70. What was that ".io" website name that allows you to upload a recorded demo? I forgot its name...