Major Issues of the AI of AoH2 and How It Can Be Improved for AoH3

[QuanaKhrea 16]

Lucasz, a major issue with AoH2 is the AI in war, negotiations, and diplomacy. These should be addressed and fixed/implemented in AoH3, and if so, will greatly improve the gameplay and quality of the game, and if not, will significantly reduce the quality and enjoyment of the game. Please take the time to read all of this

1. The AI almost always goes for total territorial domination in war, especially against other AI, and rarely settles for peace without capturing every piece of territory of the enemy. They tend to stretch their forces and territory greatly and chase unrealistic and illogical conquest like overseas territory, etc. And even when it does settle for peace without total territorial conquest, it results in terrible border gore and very illogical and unrealistic borders. The AI should be coded to make logical decisions and goals in territorial capture and peace settlements and not just be a mindless zombie that wars for no reason and either wants to capture all the enemies territory and sacrifice lots of men and population or end the war with bad border gore

The AI should also be coded with the ability and tendency to not just seek and agree to territorial changes but also demand reperations, vassalship, etc, and sometimes only that with no territory demand. Overall realistic political peace agreements as not every war is fought for land or ends in major border changes. The AI should have some sense and awareness of its country and the other countries and political circumstances, and have the ability to make a diverse array of decisions and actions on par with the player, instead of being so simple and illogical

2. Vassals are very stubborn and rarely listen, in peace agreements in joint-war, or just simple demands or even beneficial trades, even when their superior threatens them with a far stronger army and they should know that and make the logical decision. Almost every time in a joint war against an enemy they demand unrealistic and retarded borders and lots of territory and everything theyve captured even if its border gore and isolated, and what sucks is the player has no choice but to agree to them because the war does not end without all parties agreeing and the AI vassal can just keep rejecting forever until their exact demands are met which is unrealistic and stupid. Which also brings me to suggest that that a state should be able to make peace with an enemy in a war that the vassal is also involved in, without the vassal agreeing or wanting to make peace. Either we should be able to threaten and force the vassal to agree (which should be the case because in real life a state controls foreign affairs over its vassals and would have full negotiation power on their side) or the superior state and the enemy should be able to agree to peace between themselves but the unagreeing vassal and the enemy still continuing fighting eachother until they themselves reach a peace agreement

This also brings me to my next issue/suggestion

3. The AI, both vassals and non vassals, in trade negotations is horrible. They never ever ever accept trading even a single of their provinces away (even if its an unrealistic border or the province(s) is far away and/or undefendable) even if you offer an exorbant amount of gold and a very very sweet deal that benefits them greatly. This is very annoying and hinders the game and is extremely unrealistic. In general they dont agree to most fair and beneficial trades no matter what they are, but yet, they agree to go to war against a very strong nation if you just offer them a little bit of gold. This all needs to be fixed and overhauled

4. The AI just makes stupid, dumb, illogical, and random decisions in general. They go to war with others even if it is illogical and has no valid reason or intelligent motive. and often, a nation very far away will declare war on you for no reason, other than the fact that your relations are poor, which brings me to my next issue

5. The AI often suspends relations with you for no reason and sours and ruins your diplomstic relations just because it feels like it. Even your best allies with even 100 relation randomly suspend and worsen your relations for absolutely no reason and bring them down. These random positive and negative diplomatic actions should be addressed and overhauled. The AI should, along with all decisions in general, make logical diplomatic decisions and be smart and actually know what its doing, instead of just randomly declaring war, sending negative relations, declaring independence, etc whenever it feels like as if its a mindless zombie or just regular code with randomly occuring actions and no real AI

A game like this relies on good AI, so Lucasz please address and fix/implement all these, it will be a very profitable investment for the game as it will drastically improve the gameplay and the game as a whole and would make it truly a step above AoH2, instead of just being AoH2 with updated visuals and some new features (not trying to insult AoH3, it looks great, just being realistic about the AI being a major part of the game that needs to be improved in the ways stated above for AoH3). We the community would not mind at all if you delayed AoH3's release to do these and perfect it especially its AI, as a polished game improved in all categories and fixing these major problems released late is much better than a rushed game with many issues from the previous game not addressed

Good luck and good work so far, for a one man army you are awesome at what you produce. We are all looking forward to AoH3

P.S. Adding multiplayer would absolutely make the game blow up. Please add it, in a future update at least. I know servers cost a lot of money but maybe you could make it peer to peer connection if possible? I dont know, you know much more than me

If or when you do add multiplayer, the limit of number of players should be as much as how many nations there are in the game, including vassals. There should be the ability to send private messages to other players, but no public chat, but maybe a public announcement feature (like what Call of War has), which would add immersion and realism to the game and a political atmosphere. There should also be the ability to spectate games and use the private chat during it (spectators cant see troops and their locations etc or that would allow cheating), and so if people want they can semi-roleplay and ask a player already in the game to release a vassal so they can play as it. Adding multiplayer and doing all this would make the game elevate greatly to another level and would definitely attract much more players, so from a business perspective even investing in servers will be worth it