Does the AI ever attack you?

I've been attacked many times. It's all about the player being vulnerable, which we tend not to be for very long.

I had a messy succession as Ireland (eventually inherited Hereford, but my son was raised in the wrong castle and that led to trouble), England immediately DoWed me for Cornwall. In prior Ireland games I've lost Ulster, early, to a unified England. The trouble is that players set about both becoming strong and making the obvious enemies weak. As Ireland, England typically isn't strong enough to take me for too many years. One bad English civil war, I join the fun, and I'm in pretty good shape.

Heck, I've seen Game Over when the Infidels romped through France and I was the vassal of a crappy HRE (I had tried to stay Count for a long time on purpose)(failed). My Doomstacks were even doing well against them, but the Emperor gave my lands away regardless.

Antiscamp said:

Are you guys using a mod or something, I can't seem to be able to start a game as Pagan. Or can I convert?

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Non-Christians aren't meant for players, but if you want to, just use a few console commands. "charinfo" will show a characters id number in the tooptip when you hover over their portraint. Use that to find the id number of some Pagan you want to play and then use the command "play [number here]".


One data point on AI attacks I tested a few times. In one game played a duke in a kingdom where I controlled all but three of the counties, including a couple on the coast of Jerusalem taken from holy war single province counts. Anytime I declared a war on my King for whatever reason the Shia Caliphate would immediately declare war on me. Because the king was so weak I wasn't actually much less powerful without him, but I guess the AI either sees the time during a war as the perfect time to invade, or really is afraid of the King title even when it only represents 3 counties of troops.

Lac du Bois said:

Non-Christians aren't meant for players, but if you want to, just use a few console commands. "charinfo" will show a characters id number in the tooptip when you hover over their portraint. Use that to find the id number of some Pagan you want to play and then use the command "play [number here]".

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Thanks! Will try that at once.

Antiscamp said:

Are you guys using a mod or something, I can't seem to be able to start a game as Pagan. Or can I convert?

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You don't need to get a mod to play other religions just need to change the religion.txt file to make it allowable.

But I for one think the AI is decent at this, it jumps all over me if it can when I'm in a weakened state. And have had to fight off claimant wars and the likes. Even had a Holy War declared on me when I wasn't weak so I guess it all really depends on your game and where you fit into things. If the AI wasn't aggressive there would be zero wars going on anywhere except those started by the player...and not sure about you but my war panel in the ledger is a long one

I aggree I was attacked twice in many games and those were retaliation attacks after indepedence..

The problem has been pointed out, but I think it can be expanded.

We players aggressively grab territory and CBs. The AI only uses what CBs it randomly acquires. I'll play as Ireland, see England at war with France, and I'll invite an ex-Duke to court, offer him a county, and invade England for York. Same with Scotland - Scotland presses de Jure claim on Caithness vs Norway, ships all its troops off, and I invite a Lothien claimant. But when I go Holy War for parts of Iberia, England doesn't try to grab parts of Ireland from me because they can't - no CB.

The few times I've been attacked were when I was weak and the AI had a CB already - Brittany tried to take out my excommunicated ruler and England tried to reclaim York, for example.

Personally, I think the AI needs to aggressively grab claims if we're to keep the current claim methods.

But really, pushing claims for courtiers and count-ifying them into your realm should be less of a process and "neighboring territory" or "coastal territory" should be a CB. I know little of history, but I do many times land would change hands simply because it was the-land-next-to-you and it seemed like you could get away with it. Claims, probably, should be necessary for vassals.

I liked the EU3 system of "declare war at any time, but beware the world's wrath" however that system doesn't make much sense here. Decisions were more local. The world was so much larger. You wouldn't send your armies on a 5 month voyage to stop some faraway king from taking more land from some other faraway king because your neighbor would march his levies to your doorstep as soon as your troops were 9 months away (2 months communication time, 2 months leave time, and 5 months travel back). You'd be starved out before your levies would even set foot on your soil again.

So any sort of "knock this guy down a peg" CB should take distance into account for any AI decisions or we'd see a similar cry on the forums "Byzantium stupidly sending troops to Norway while I sack it".

The preceding paragraphs would be a larger rework.

Depends where you are. In England all the wars we've fought were instigated by us, or were internal revolts. As a pecheneg chief, or any other pagan..endless messages along the lines of "You're ugly and we hate you, die infidel :angry:"

I've been attacked multiple times by Scotland, while playing Irish. Couple times during after succession crisis and suppressing vassal revolts, and once because they chose to press a claim on Kingdom of Ireland of my king's daughter that I married off to Scottish prince.

grommile said:

Keep more gold on hand. Mercenaries are awesome.

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Funny story that.

My king lost a excom war, he was deposed, I got a new king YAY, but the old king kept all the money. I was utterly broke. I convinced another player to assassinate the old king, and all his money was inherited by his MOM, the queen of Brittany.

Oh I also got "Recently Conquered" modifier on all my desmesne. Which meant I made almost no money.

Ha
Ha
Ha

NO, i lost count of how many times dammed England attacked me as Ireland when i was bullying Scotland, or when my Welsh/Breton vassals revolt. They just dogpile you to death if you are at war, or god forbid, a sucession crisis.

I have to agree that the AI does not on average attack a huge deal, mainly due to their not actively seeking to acquire CB's and their timidness in taking on larger nations, even when said nation is at war and not at full strength.


I did have a rather fun war recently however while playing as a large nation. I had formed the kingdom of Aquitaine not long after starting the game at 1066. After taking over most of France and Spain of the next 100 years or so I switched from the Catholic faith to the Lollard Heresy (Mainly to see how fast I could drop the MA of the Catholic church to 0 and thus bring about the death of Catholicism, plus the Holy War CB is pretty handy ).

After a period of peace in my realm, where I was able to convert the majority of my lands to the Lollard faith, I received a notice that the Pope had called a crusade against me! This was both exciting and terrifying as most of the major players were still intact, still Catholic and seemed very eager to jump on the crusade bandwagon. I managed to beat them all back in the end as all my crown laws were on max and I could field more troops than all of them combined, plus it was a defensive war so obviously my vassals took no relation hit with my summoning all their troops out for extended periods.

Anyway the point was that even as the greatest power on the map militarily the other nations still took action against me. Unfortunately it was only able to do so through the Crusade mechanic, which is obviously limited.

I can promise you that I've been attacked by the AI when I'm weak... I went from king of Poland to count of some Polish county that way once...

Or when I as king of a weakened Denmark-Poland-Lithuania was attacked by my cousin the king of Croatia-Hungary. EPIC.:ninja:

Heck, I've seen Game Over when the Infidels romped through France and I was the vassal of a crappy HRE (I had tried to stay Count for a long time on purpose)(failed). My Doomstacks were even doing well against them, but the Emperor gave my lands away regardless.

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Whaat?

On topic: I've played some 50 or 60 years in the demo (start date modded), as some count in Ireland. Either other counts in Ireland attacked me, or Gwynedd did. But it was 1 war in 60 years...

Zireael said:

Whaat?

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I played Lusignan and tried to just hold my county for 400 years. Just for fun. Well, I accidentally gained my whole Duchy, then added all of Brittany in another series of accidents, then the HRE and I lost Brittany to the Infidels. I had very early been dumped into the HRE, I forget how, and then Al Andalus or someone DoWed the HRE for all my remaining holdings. I was wearing down the infidel with Mercs, and doing reasonably well, when the Emperor decided to cut his losses, costing me all my holdings, and the game (around 1215 iirc). I still had plenty of fight left in me and would have been able to get a WP had it been up to me. It was not.

On topic - I do agree that the AI needs to grab claims more, but I don't want the AI to behave like us or it'd be a madhouse. Perhaps a bit more consideration to claims in marriage proposals? That would make the AI more aggressive, and more dangerous to players than it is now.

Ive been attacked maybe 2 or 3 times total, most wars i see are when a civil war breaks out and some other country declares war on the revolter, usually thru de jure cb, that and excommunication wars.

I know I'm interjecting in the middle of a conversation - but let me ask you a question:

Are you playing games where your neighbors are naturally inclined to be your friends, or your enemies? You talked about the Muslims attacking you when you were Galicia - well, that sounds correct.

You say your Christian neighbors don't attack you? Well, that sounds correct too.

Holy War CB is the easiest CB there is in the game. And no, I wouldn't expect a smart AI to attack the player if they didn't think they could pull it off. So if you're surrounded by countries that don't have a reason to attack you, and if you're stronger than them to boot, then no, you aren't going to be attacked.

On the other hand, I can share several game saves where I absolutely will not rebel against my liege, because doing so places me in the crosshairs of a very hungry Beja. I have a window of 1 month to win a rebellion or else the 6k Muslim stack is in my demesne and I have to surrender or White Peace for their Holy War to end inconclusively - not very satisfying.

Think about how much harder it is to conquer a Christian neighbor - even if you get their leader excommunicated, that sort of war can only depose them - you don't get their stuff. You need an Invasion CB and those aren't easy to come by either.

Once again I have my doubts on generally increasing the AI aggressiveness since it would make it insanely hard if not impossible to play Minor Counties (something I get the feeling most people enjoy playing). Sure right now the 'Big Dogs' might be a bit to strong but is it really worth removing the fun in playing Minors just to present people playing with the 'Big Dogs' with a challenge. Also I fear that this game will 'deteriorate' into EU III by increasing the possibilty of AI going after anyone it feels is 'weak'.

To clarify when I say 'Big Dogs' I mean any 'big' Duchy, any Kingdom or any Empire.

iron0037 said:

I was attacked twice as Galicia in the first 15 years of my game by the Muslims and never again. After this initial period, there were times in which I was less powerful than Mauretania or Africa. And there were numerous situations where I was indisposed putting down rebellions, fighting a Christian neighbor, or sending the bulk of my levies on a Crusade to the Levant. Yet they never used their Holy War CB to even attempt to take me down a notch. Similarly, Rum never attacked me as a weakened Nicaea, nor has a massive Egypt ever decided to tussle. Don't you find that peculiar?

The sentiment I get from this thread is that
1) Yes, lack of aggression is a problem unless you're significantly weaker than the aggressor.
2) The AI's perception of "weakness" is quite conservative. There are many instances when they should be bolder.
3) There aren't enough CB's or active seeking of CB's for the AI to always capitalize on weakness.

And while the AI's aggressiveness against the weak makes for an interesting initial game, it makes for a boring game once you've climbed out of the chasm. I don't want the AI suiciding against me when it has no chance of winning. But I do want it to gang up on me when I am ruthlessly expanding. I want to have to worry about Rum attacking my eastern front when all my troops are invested fighting Hungary. I want Sicily to present a claimant to the throne when my unpopular son inherits.

Not only would improved AI exploitation of weakness make for a more interesting late game, it would help with the blobbing of HRE, France, etc that people keep observing. And to top it off, it's historically accurate. There are countless instances in the Middle Ages when otherwise unfriendly powers would temporarily unite to halt a third party's expansion.

As far as adding more CB's and the AI going after them, that could be a much longer conversation. I'll table that for now .

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Completely agree with this.

I have certainly not experienced much, if any agression as Norway, but I think that's because I've been constantly attacking my neighbours, whenever possible.