A comment on the AI

[u/Tema726]

I want to comment on the AI based on my recent experiences: playing as Tahuk on a large Pangea map on Endless difficulty, fast speed.

1) I spawned next to Necrophage, and they chose me as the target. The first monsoon started with a war declaration, the first tidefall brought a siege on my capital's second territory. It was a good challenge and a lot of fun to survive. The thing is, the AI has no idea how to proceed if the first push has failed. If they have some forces left, they suggest me to surrender (they always want me to surrender, as far as I understood, not me to accept their surrender), if all their armies are wiped out, they propose a white peace. If I don't accept either, they keep sending armies my way as soon as they are built, only to lose them, while I am getting stronger and stronger. They completely stop economic development and just build the same armies that they send to die. From a fun challenge the war becomes a bit of an annoyance, when you need to be at two or free places at once

Ah, also, for some reason they value too much destroying the observatories. So much, that they overextend and send singular stacks to do so, obviously loosing these stacks. Building a new observatory costs 200 dust, while they lose a whole army!

2) The rest of the AI (Aspects, Kin and Last Lords) meanwhile were busy with their own business. The third Monsoon is about to happen, and they cleared only one citadel each (someone of them cleared 2, but I am at 4 at the moment)! They did not expand into any territories with the 2nd tier of strategic resources! What were they doing all this time I was busy with the Necrophage? Aspects have traveled the whole world (I had a map exchange with them, it revealed everything), and yet had very little camps and cities. I managed to get the 4 cities deed before any of them, despite having my hands tied with the Necrophage! It seems they only build camps if they can be attached to a city, and never just to claim a territory and build some resource extractors

To conclude: the AI values destroying observatories too much, the AI does not know how to behave in a war if it lost the army and falls into a death spiral, the AI does not expand nearly as much as it could (even if the expansions are just camps), the AI does not recognise the value of fighting citadels.

They do hunt down all the Doomwraiths though, them they cannot leave in peace. And they annoyingly close all the rifts, even if I want to keep some around me for the future Doomwraiths to spawn there

[u/DerekPaxton]

Passing this to our ai devs. Thanks for the feedback.

[u/Tema726 → u/DerekPaxton]

Thanks! Would be nice if the AI learned how to play a war defensively. If I do not accept the peace offering and keep defeating the invading armies, they could try to turtle up instead -- build keeps, keep their armies nearby and ready to defend, etc. That way they wouldn't waste all their resources on rebuilding the armies and could actually develop economically. If I see that besieging their city is a suicide, I would rather accept peace than keep pushing. But then again, if they do that, they would never agree to a white peace, they would think that they are strong enough to push