Make the AI more sensative to the economic needs of it's human vassals.

[unmerged(47151)]

It's really annoying when the AI mobalised your troops for you and keeps them standing around indefinately using up all your cash, I think that either the AI should disband the player's army when he/she goes into minus money, or the human player should be able to mantain control over the forces, that his liege officially controls, even if only to be able to disband them.

 

[unmerged(48100)]

Just set the military upkeep to zero, you won't loose a man and don't have to pay

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Just set the military upkeep to zero, you won't loose a man and don't have to pay

Yea, but they won't respawn and they can't be used for your own war.

 

[unmerged(44072)]

Really, it would be better if the A.I. could be trained not to call up forces unless it plans to use them.

 

[unmerged(47151)]

Really, it would be better if the A.I. could be trained not to call up forces unless it plans to use them.

I was actually playing at the principality of Lykia, and Byzantium drafted everyone up and left everyone standing around, what's the point of that I wonder?

The AI should be encouraged to disband un-used armies instead of leaving them standing around in their home provinces.

 

[unmerged(29883)]

True, but teaching the AI exactly how to use its forces must be something of a nightmare.

 

[Gebhard Blucher]

I'd rather see the ai (and human) only use the troops in his domain. Instead of the mobilization option(s), the leige could request a vassal (or all vassals, in the case of a grand mobilization) declare war on his enemies.

Right now the King of Germany can declare war on the King of France and the only provinces they will try to attack are each other's personal domains, that's just ridiculous -- especially when hostile troops (from loyal vassals) are popping up all over the place, sometimes in the backyard of the enemy.

Ideally, if troops of a province are being used against a liege’s enemy, a de facto state of war should exist between the vassal owner of that province and the enemy.

 

[Third Angel]

Really, it would be better if the A.I. could be trained not to call up forces unless it plans to use them.

I think that's the point. The AI does NOT plan anything, ever.

 

[unmerged(47151)]

I think that's the point. The AI does NOT plan anything, ever.

It don't need too, all it needs to do is calculate the visible number of enemies and round up forces from the nearby provinces (vassal or not) to put up a fight, before disbanding them again, until it launches an attack with them. I just feel the AI should never have troops standing still in their home provinces, only when they want to move them to do some fighting.

 

[unmerged(46403)]

I find the tendency of AI realms, especially large ones, to practice warfare by mobilising all their soldiers and then leaving them sitting on their asses extremely frustrating. During periods of waiting for my badboy to come down, i often look at AI wars with the "nofog" cheat. This usually leads to use of the "fullcontrol" cheat, just to ensure something actually happens.

 

[unmerged(47151)]

I'd rather see the ai (and human) only use the troops in his domain. Instead of the mobilization option(s), the leige could request a vassal (or all vassals, in the case of a grand mobilization) declare war on his enemies.

That's a bad idea, beacause it restricts tactical coherancy and the ability to co-ordinate attacks of his vassals armies for the human player.

Right now the King of Germany can declare war on the King of France and the only provinces they will try to attack are each other's personal domains, that's just ridiculous -- especially when hostile troops (from loyal vassals) are popping up all over the place, sometimes in the backyard of the enemy.

Every time a liege mobalised troops from a vassal, that vassal should be at war with their liege's enemy, however it should not be possible to make peace with an occupied enemy vassal, all peace treaties should be handled through lieges, so that the claims on the land of occupied vassals, should still need the liege to be forced to make peace for them. This includes independantly declared wars over border claims, you cannot assimilate vassals provinces into your realm, unless you have managed to subdue their liege.

 

[unmerged(29883)]

I disagree, there. Not all peace should be diverted via the liege - not least since that'll severely cripple the efforts of anyone attacking any significantly sized kingdom.

I agree with mobilisation = DoW between that vassal and your enemies, but fragmented peace should still exist - not least because it did. In the HYW, England wasn't at war with all of France all of the time, nor was it required to crush the army in Paris in order to expand their holdings in Gascony. The logic of that is tenuous at best.

Say that I'm the Duke of Catalonia, pursuing a border dispute against the Duchy of Toulouse, or someone similar. My DoW on him naturally brings the King of France to his aid, and that will bring the King of Aragon to mine. From this point forwards, I have no diplomatic actions available to me except for wiping out the entire French army and hoping my liege makes an acceptable peace on my behalf. That makes that kind of border dispute virtually pointless to engage in unless you're on the Kingdom tier, or are a very, very strong independent Duchy.

Currently, I have the ability to strike Toulouse swiftly, before the French King can respond. I still have to hold him off, or make some kind of peace settlement with him personally in order to save my own lands, which as anyone who has been in similar situations will know is incredibly unlikely without having beaten him conclusively on the battlefield.

If he has no claim on me then I assume you could argue that my swift border move is almost an exploit, given that the French King, even if victorious, cannot require me to give back the land. If that's the logic, then it'd be far easier and better gameplay wise to give the liege a claim on anything which a vassal is forced to surrender.

That way, the Duke of Toulouse would get a claim against me for any of his vassal counts that I depose. Ideally, you'd also pass on those claims to the King, so that for every piece of his kingdom I chip away, he has a legitimate claim to pursue against me in his inevitable counter-attack.

That seems better, IMO, than refusing diplomatic ability to anyone who is not top dog in the pile.

 

[Beauclerc]

There seems to me, no cohesion at all between rulers and their vassals in war and little logic from the AI controlled rulers. The other day, my vassal and heir to my throne of England, was the Duke of Normandy. France declared war on him, so I declared war on France. After a struggle I turn the tide of the war and reduce the French army to small pockets. France has gained control of a couple of provinces, so I then set about reclaiming them before negotiating peace. I then discover the Duke negotiates peace, relinquishing Maine to the French in the agreement!!

When you are in 'alliance' and fighting a common foe, to negotiate peace independently of your ally would represent a breaking of the alliance... a heinous act.

 

[unmerged(29883)]

Breaking an alliance in medieval times wasn't anywhere near as bad as breaking an alliance in the times to follow.

Even by 1453, the concept of a 'country' was still pretty vague, and people held far more to cultural and regional identity than anything even approaching national identity. The feudal system was understood and enacted in the overwhelming majority of Europe, and it had its own system of 'rights' and 'wrongs'. Total war, of any description, was not only unheard of - it was unthinkable, and verging on the deranged.

One part of this was that the loyalty of the various elements of the system was assumed to be questionable, not utterly reliable. Witness the HYW, where significant numbers of the French nobility actually supported the Kingdom of England due to the actions of the French King at the time. Brittany, for example, where each power had its own 'Duke of Brittany' and both sides fought over which would be installed.

In this situation, England and France were supporting the claimants. If, at any time, either duke could have accorded a peace with the opposing side installing them as the 'rightful' Duke of Brittany, then they would have done so. They weren't interested in fighting a war all across France to support the King who put them in place. They might choose to, but giving the support and fealty of Brittany was a valuable enough prize.

In short, the rival dukes cared about their OWN demense, and their own power, and couldn't care less whether that means paying taxes to France or to England, provided they're not going to be a battleground between the two. Basically, just like any player in CK thinks.

I agree that there ought to be some kind of prestige penalty for not DoWing upon an ally's request (and giving the requester the chance to dissolve the alliance as a result), and making peace independently of the alliance leader or your liege ought to carry a penalty (although this would ideally be a 'relationship' penalty, a la EU2).

 

[unmerged(47151)]

I disagree, there. Not all peace should be diverted via the liege - not least since that'll severely cripple the efforts of anyone attacking any significantly sized kingdom.

I agree with mobilisation = DoW between that vassal and your enemies, but fragmented peace should still exist - not least because it did. In the HYW, England wasn't at war with all of France all of the time, nor was it required to crush the army in Paris in order to expand their holdings in Gascony. The logic of that is tenuous at best.

]

The problem is, that if you occupy the lands of a vassal and you are also at war with his liege, his liege isn't going to have to negotiate with you to get the land back, as soon as he can re-occupy the land, that's it. It is perfectly realistic that you would have to make peace with the liege in order to grab claimed lands, unless you can end the war and get the liege to hand the land over to you, the problem is that you do not get enough Warscore for defeating armies on the field, which at this point in history was actually far more significant than occupying land, due to the fact that troops were not easily replaced in the age before total mass mobilization, there was only two ways of getting troops, the local aristocracy or hired merceneries.

The Hundred Years war is somewhat unique in that it was a civil war, the French were fighting the French on behalf of two French kings, one of them which is also happened to be the king of England. It does not accurately reflect a situation in which their is no dispute over the throne and their is simply a clear cut fight bet ween two rulers and their respective realms.

Even by 1453, the concept of a 'country' was still pretty vague, and people held far more to cultural and regional identity than anything even approaching national identity. The feudal system was understood and enacted in the overwhelming majority of Europe, and it had its own system of 'rights' and 'wrongs'. Total war, of any description, was not only unheard of - it was unthinkable, and verging on the deranged.

One part of this was that the loyalty of the various elements of the system was assumed to be questionable, not utterly reliable. Witness the HYW, where significant numbers of the French nobility actually supported the Kingdom of England due to the actions of the French King at the time. Brittany, for example, where each power had its own 'Duke of Brittany' and both sides fought over which would be installed.

No, the concept of country/nation was pretty clear by that point in history, what you're failing to grasp is that there was no neccesery obstactle in the medieval mind as to why a king with a lawful claim to both thrones couldn't be king of both nations. In a funny way their concept of nation was actually stronger than in later eras beacause they saw it as not dependant on actual political existance as a seperate identity, the key here was legitimacy of said ruler.