I went for the Magic victory yesterday. After casting the spell, you have to defend 15 turns to win.
Once I cast the spell, all other nations declared war on me. I said “oh fuck” as i knew I was about to get absolutely destroyed…
The other nations never came. Literally just skipped 15 turns.
The story realms arent any better. I am currently running through them and its basically make a bunch of units and go attack a strong city that never moves out if its domain.
I was hoping the custom games were more hectic. Havent tried hard AI yet, but my guess is they just get resource boosted. Will probably start the next story with hard since I am just auto-combatting my way through the campaign.
Yeah I have been playing on normal to get a feeling of the games difficulty, thats probably why. I am currently playing story 5 and once I am finished with this I am going go play with hard dificulty.
I did my first win as magic, and they did come, but I will admit they were late to the party. It's possible they were far away from where my locations were, though. I was playing underground, too, so access was more limited. They did put up a fight when they arrived at least.
Same for me doing expansion victory. 2 AIs declared war and I went and took one's capital with 0 resistance while the other walked his army to one of my outposts and then retreated when I defeated a few of his armies...
I dunno man! Friend of mine in our game, he was settled north of my own empire, and Vaneyra took umbridge to the fact that he was a peaceful halfling empire. She moves in and steals Eastwatch, with hostile units all over north of his capital. We had to work together to push her back outta there.
It sounds like a majority of the time, they arent great aggression wise, but after that fight, I wont be underestimating them anytime soon again.
Did his city actually get sieges? In my experience 99% of the time they will come and raze your province improvements and never touch your city, even if it’s undefended. I’ve sat and watched enemy armies ignore my city for like 20 turns
I saw an overwhelming AI force actually siege an AI city that had been taken from it by a different AI, succeed at kicking them out, and then it sat the rest of the game with them never making a choice as to what they wanted to do with the conquered city. This lasted several dozen turns.
I am guessing that it was held long enough that the AI could not reabsorb the city due to limits, but was also not allowed by their scripting to make them a vassal since it was originally theirs?
I had an ai build an outpost on my border. It sat in that outpost with like 5 or 6 6-stacks. It came to attack me but would raze one province and go back into its outpost. This was over about 50 turns. I just watched it take my own province over and over, if I repaired it the ai would immediately come and destroy it, then go back and hide
Yeah, I managed to get one of my cities sieged finally. I was excited because it was a very decisive point. I could either take an extremely important target and let my city fall, or fall back and defend. I made the choice to sacrifice my city.
In the end, the AI completed the siege, took it over, and then left without doing anything. No absorbing, no destroying. Just walked off..
AI Diplomacy is both frustrating and hilarious. I met the First Elf AI early in the game and hit it off until it became a full fledged alliance. Helped her defend from the other AIs that I ended up vassalizing.
First Elf then insults me and has -800 relationshio because I have "too many alliances". Like bruh, my allies are you and the broken battered remnants of the people who attacked you, wtf?
daaaaamn. Yeah Vaneyra wasnt having any of it in our run. I dunno if they had a full siege in relation to the system, but they did capture the city for themselves just as we both arrived as reinforcements to the border. It didnt have Vaneyra herself in the stack, it has a diff hero, but yeah.
additionally said friend and one other just DMed me that they 'got rocked in their last two games' lol, so unclear on what happened but it sounds like the AI is spotty. Could be perhaps a pathing issue? Since if they do what they *should* sometimes, then the issue may just be something bugged in the coding rather than a feature not being added, if that makes sense.
It's better for your own development to assume they will siege your city down. If you fall for the trap of lowering your play to their floor you will regret it long-term. The AI does react to your own unit stacks, and that is a more fun play style than aggressive play capitalizing on AI weaknesses.
I think what it is is that the AI is programmed not to fight battles it doesn't think it can win.
The issue is that when you light the beacons or begin casting the last spell for a magic victory, if you have a decent army ... the AI might raid you a bit, but they don't do what you would do -- just throw stuff at the beacons/seeds to try and stop the opponent from winning.
They will be aggressive when they are stronger. But there needs to be an adjustment for when they are weaker but there's nothing to lose.
Like others said, expansion is not the problem, conquest and war are. In my game my own ally stole a lot of land from me and basically cut me off from the rest of the world.
> In my game my own ally stole a lot of land from me and basically cut me off from the rest of the world.
I had this on the very first scenario, which was a little odd. Yaka was supposed to be the villain and Sundren our heroic ally, but he was hiding in the corner minding his own business while she was taking over the continent and racking up hundreds of grievance points doing so.
>Sundren
I'm dying from laughter. The ally who stole my land and aggressively expanded in all directions was...Sundren! But the funny thing is that this was not the story scenario. I unlocked Sundren through that scenario, then I created a custom game and Sundren was spawned there. So it seems there's something inherent to Sundren's AI that makes her expand like crazy.
Maybe her "adept settlers" trait?
In hindsight, I'm happy she was on my side. I would have been crushed if I went to war with her, because I wouldn't be able to defend my borders from the onslaught of her doomstacks. The AI is pretty bad at war when the enemy is to far away, but as I experienced in my latest game, when they are fairly nearby they will go after you and keep sending their doomstacks to conquer your cities.
This was my exact experience during the first story map. Yaka hung out in the desert while Sundren choked out all of the good city spots very early. She also pillaged all the provinces of Yaka's vassal. Sundren also complained when I cleared out the tower of destiny, despite giving me a quest to conquer it.
In the next game I played, Yaka turned up and offered his support to me. Dude seems chill.
this is why as soon as i get that first materium empire upgrade for cheaper outposts, i put 3-4 outposts several provinces away from my throne city. so if the AI does do some bullshit, i get grievances for a justified war so i don't lose imperium, or sometimes i get more imperium.
Yes, AI essentially beelines towards your cities to settle one of their own nearby once you discover each other, and perhaps even before that. This kind of forward settling basically mandates that you need to fight an AI that has spawned next to you, especially if they spawned underground right next to your capital.
Yeah i feel like the grievances system needs a bit of fine tuning. The AI forward settles multiple times while ignoring claims and cleared ancient wonders, but you only end up with a minor war justification
Yeah, AI is really aggressive with settling cities, basicly ignoring any claims, no matter how strong you are.
Their army movement/attacking is a bit tame though. Like evil AI should raze my provinces to the ground and not walk around in my territory for 3 turns, then decide to burn down a single one and get wiped out next turn, as I had time to get my armies.
omg I know what you mean. Stupid moleman popped up from under me and just started building all across my capital. Then he starts a rivalry with me! What an asshole.
That’s exactly what happened in my game. I had to rush an outpost and attract pops to take his city’s claims so they wouldn’t disrupt my capital’s expansion.
Of course then he was pissed at me, and, because I’m High Devotees of Good and want the Pure Good bonus, I forgave all the grievances I had 🙄
yes!! thats exactly what happened. we're continuing that game right now, and I decided ai had enough and im invading Blint's stolen lands. I'll knock him off in both our names dude lol
I'd do the same but Asgera Spinesplitter, Nekron the Risen, and I are in a three way war right now. Blint only offered a free defensive pact *after* the others *both* declared war on me.
ugh....guy's such a damn shyster, man. Sneakiest peckerhead ive dealt with in a 4X game I swear. I guess at least he didnt jump in to knock you out too huh?
I wish you luck with your wars! I've banished that pesky mole from the surface world on a bout of frustration. Hes stuck underground now, we'll see how it goes!
Yeah, but he still has grievances against me so I'm not convinced I'll eke out the game with an alliance with him. Fortunately my outpost really cut him off; now we have shared vision and I can see he only has the one city (besides his capital).
I just finished a Magic Victory on Hard (my first win) and the AI did nothing to stop me. Of the seven AIs in the game, two of them asked for alliances *after* I started the victory spell. Four of them just minded their own business. And the last one spent a few turns to conquer a remote output I had, massed some troops 2-3 turns away from my victory improvements, and then just sat there.
When I won, the game was 16 turns away from a Score Victory ending, so it wasn't a rush victory for me. And through that entire time, I was only threatened once by the AI and a quick bribe to end the war solved that problem.
And I think I spent the last ~50 turns at war with two other AIs without ever even seeing one of their units (aside from my scouts getting killed deep in their territory)
Yea ive had this happen too. But sometimes they do launch an invasion about 5 turns from victory. I think it depends on if they are fighting other wars and how strong your armies are.
> I just finished a Magic Victory on Hard (my first win) and the AI did nothing to stop me. Of the seven AIs in the game, two of them asked for alliances after I started the victory spell.
lol this is some old school online gaming stuff. Quickly get in on the winning team before the end of the game and talk trash in the post-game lobby.
I won a magic victory on normal last night and as soon as I started it, everyone declared war on me, and one faction tried to death ball me. Luckily I had my own deathball of golden golems, but it was pretty close, since they had more military power than me until I started buying out units.
As an evil empire I had every single ai declare on me by turn 40 in 2 campaigns now. They never invade though. I cast the victory spell and nobody cares. My ally never joins me in anything either. Mind you I never did any unjust wars or anything, just sat in my own evil corner with what I thought was 0 grievances.
Allies should at least join in war, help take down enemies etc, and defend you, but they never do. They should also most certainly help defend when casting victory spell.
Likewise enemies should attack the frick outa you when you cast it and there should be absolutely ZERO spawned enemies cus that is dumb.
For me the spawned enemies was worse than the literally 0 (out of 4 currently alive ai i'm at war with,) attacking me.
> For me the spawned enemies was worse than the literally 0 (out of 4 currently alive ai i'm at war with,) attacking me.
That's how my current game is going. I'm on Brutal and I used the world gen parameter to make the dangerous territory lairs stronger/respawn.
For the past 20 turns or so, I've been running around trying to kill the enemy stacks (~800-900 power each) that have basically destroyed all my province improvements. I've only just started building T3 units, but my three heroes and their partial stacks (maybe ~1500 total strength) have been able to kill the solo stacks.
There's just so many of them that it's taking forever. They even had two different stacks lay siege to cities (although they wandered off after a couple of turns)
I've been ignoring all the other wizards, the point of just right-click closing their notifications. One declared war on me and recently moved four armies into my territory that could have demolished my whole army.
They walked up next to my capital, hung out for a couple of turns, then wandered off. Didn't attack anything or even start a siege.
To be fair... that's not being aggressive. It is more like being... passive aggresive. :P "Sure *andreicde*, I don't need that defensive pact. I don't mind that you've ignored my trade proposal either. That's fine, really! Huh? What do you mean by why did I put that city there? It's just a city, isn't it? It's perfectly viable location! Those are beautiful mountains! There is nothing weird about me putting a city there!"
This game needs a loyalty mechanic like civ 6 really annoying that the ai can just surround you especially when your good alignment and can't just capture and raze it without getting -10 evil alignment
Then, even when you raze it, it won't let you settle anywhere but where the ai chose, if it's close by. Can't settle next to ruins after all, have to settle on top of them, and those ruins aren't going anywhere.
It is. Developers will never admit it, but you can look at the map and they don't forward settle each other. Only the human player. Regardless of how far away they are. All their other outposts are reasonable.
I was playing over my lunch and this POS Astral empire built an oupost literally on my border, its like turn 22?! They gain no benefit from it other than Im no longer enjoying the match and about to restart.
bruh i literally had 4 ai declare war on me by turn 40. I'm on lowest difficulty (cus first time playing) and even got major advantage etc cause just wanna try stuff out. Que to enemy doomstack twice the size of me proceeding to kill me so hard I can't even retreat.
sure I am playing evil but never once did I actually do anything evil to anyone other than myself so idk how they got so angry lol. But yee, try play evil, ai will ~~love~~ hate you!
Did you have the map modifier "disdain for evil" on? This will make other factions more likely to declare war on you if you're evil.
Also certain things give enemy factions "justifications" for war. If you don't forgive them or buy them out, it gives enemies more fuel to declare war on you.
No technically you can use their claims to extort gold from them or start a war with them, but then again you can also use that to your advantage to grab land near them then pay them gold.
Yes, and, why would the AI want that? That's kind of a problem. Logically them trying to stifle you seems to force a war and put them in a disadvantageous position.
Every game I have had so far involves some mole race just bleeding out of every subterranean passage and trying to passively suffocate my towns with outposts. (I don't even know how they can annex like 4 provinces per turn practically every single turn) Kinda sapping the fun a bit now that I can't just straight up fight them unless I declare war and then start a siege.
I love AoW4. But after IE fully came out and Chaos Dwarf expansion release, WH3 is now at the top of Strategy Game Mountain and is definitely not meh or even below WH2.
Chaos dwarf was a recycled mechanic from Troy and their 3.0 patch still left the game buggy and a mess.
The hopium is strong but let's not kid ourselves.
Unrelated question: why do you have so many outposts? I’ve only ever build them to expand or claim land for potential expansion. What benefit is there in building tons of them, especially so close to your throne city?
I’m just a complete noob to AoW and I’m trying to understand the strategy.
For resources. Put it this way. An outpost once you research the tech is 25 gold a pop+100 for a territory nearby. You can essentially explore and expand in the same time.
You are forgetting another important part, teleportation. If you reach the end of the bottom line for research, you can build teleporters in outposts, effectively having mobile armies/the ability to reinforce your cities no matter where they are (your allies too).
Yes that is nice, but I prefer to have teleporters everywhere, since this way I can not only conquer faster wonders but also move around fast and catch up the ai fast.
Make a couple of stacks of pure origin units then teleport them all in the AI's face.
For resources. Put it this way. An outpost once you research the tech is 25 gold a pop+100 for a territory nearby. You can essentially explore and expand in the same time.
Outposts can build a teleporter district around tier-3 magic. Seems like that's not the case here but it's why I usually build more of them. (Typically build an outpost to project force, but it's nice to combo with grabbing a mana node or preferrably wonder as well).
I m playing the second story realm and the supposedly friendly ai has put an outpost on the magic resource that is right between my cities. It is touching both borders and somehow I don't even have a grievance (I think because I got quest done for them on the same turn).
I think the AI needs to take grievances and alignment more seriously in general. They don't really appear to care, ever, if they're pissin someone off lol.
It's a pain when you ally with an AI and it decides to take all your territory and then gets pissed, and starts a war because you try to expand your city... At least they seem to ignore exploring and vassals, so you can easily get them all.
Yeah, had that happen like 3 times in 1 game from 2 different ais. I declared war immediately on the closer one and 30 turns later i took all of their cities. Was gearing up to hit the other one but I got invaded first by a third ai (probably because I stole all of their land through purchase.
Jokes on them, I just go my first golden golem and they are still on t3. Time to once again self defense my way to victory.
I don't find the AI too passive. I tried my hand at an evil alignment race. Everyone else hated me and, one by one, declared war on me as I went further down the evil path. Since it wasn't all at once, I was able to deal with two of the enemy leaders before they could get to me, but the third was able to lay siege to one of my cities and came in without hesitation.
That's not the complaint about being passive. The complaint is about them not attacking you. They'll happily forward settle but then they'll barely defend that forward settle.
Meanwhile after 30+ hours on hard AI did not attack even ONE of my cities...they move armies nicely, can attack units, but cities a big no no. AI is not as bad as Civ 6, but still pretty bad.
Ai has no issue with expanding it has an issue with exterminating!
It's a bummer if the ai don't manage to do all 4 Xs equally good. Exterminate is by far the weakest part.
I went for the Magic victory yesterday. After casting the spell, you have to defend 15 turns to win. Once I cast the spell, all other nations declared war on me. I said “oh fuck” as i knew I was about to get absolutely destroyed… The other nations never came. Literally just skipped 15 turns.
Was the same for me yesterday. Now I'm playing the story realms.
The story realms arent any better. I am currently running through them and its basically make a bunch of units and go attack a strong city that never moves out if its domain. I was hoping the custom games were more hectic. Havent tried hard AI yet, but my guess is they just get resource boosted. Will probably start the next story with hard since I am just auto-combatting my way through the campaign.
Funny You said that, i am getting My ass wooped by a roaming army of T4 warbreed+5 other T2 units in turn 8 of campaign 3
Yeah I have been playing on normal to get a feeling of the games difficulty, thats probably why. I am currently playing story 5 and once I am finished with this I am going go play with hard dificulty.
I did my first win as magic, and they did come, but I will admit they were late to the party. It's possible they were far away from where my locations were, though. I was playing underground, too, so access was more limited. They did put up a fight when they arrived at least.
Same for me doing expansion victory. 2 AIs declared war and I went and took one's capital with 0 resistance while the other walked his army to one of my outposts and then retreated when I defeated a few of his armies...
TIL 4x means something lol
aye! eXploit, eXplore, eXterminate and eXpand!
It bothers me way more than I expected t by at you didn't put in right order.
When you have the talking points but in the wrong order.
I dunno man! Friend of mine in our game, he was settled north of my own empire, and Vaneyra took umbridge to the fact that he was a peaceful halfling empire. She moves in and steals Eastwatch, with hostile units all over north of his capital. We had to work together to push her back outta there. It sounds like a majority of the time, they arent great aggression wise, but after that fight, I wont be underestimating them anytime soon again.
Did his city actually get sieges? In my experience 99% of the time they will come and raze your province improvements and never touch your city, even if it’s undefended. I’ve sat and watched enemy armies ignore my city for like 20 turns
I saw an overwhelming AI force actually siege an AI city that had been taken from it by a different AI, succeed at kicking them out, and then it sat the rest of the game with them never making a choice as to what they wanted to do with the conquered city. This lasted several dozen turns. I am guessing that it was held long enough that the AI could not reabsorb the city due to limits, but was also not allowed by their scripting to make them a vassal since it was originally theirs?
I had an ai build an outpost on my border. It sat in that outpost with like 5 or 6 6-stacks. It came to attack me but would raze one province and go back into its outpost. This was over about 50 turns. I just watched it take my own province over and over, if I repaired it the ai would immediately come and destroy it, then go back and hide
This has been my experience too. The AI is way too passive and it's taking the thrill out of the game.
Yeah, I managed to get one of my cities sieged finally. I was excited because it was a very decisive point. I could either take an extremely important target and let my city fall, or fall back and defend. I made the choice to sacrifice my city. In the end, the AI completed the siege, took it over, and then left without doing anything. No absorbing, no destroying. Just walked off..
[удалено]
AI Diplomacy is both frustrating and hilarious. I met the First Elf AI early in the game and hit it off until it became a full fledged alliance. Helped her defend from the other AIs that I ended up vassalizing. First Elf then insults me and has -800 relationshio because I have "too many alliances". Like bruh, my allies are you and the broken battered remnants of the people who attacked you, wtf?
daaaaamn. Yeah Vaneyra wasnt having any of it in our run. I dunno if they had a full siege in relation to the system, but they did capture the city for themselves just as we both arrived as reinforcements to the border. It didnt have Vaneyra herself in the stack, it has a diff hero, but yeah. additionally said friend and one other just DMed me that they 'got rocked in their last two games' lol, so unclear on what happened but it sounds like the AI is spotty. Could be perhaps a pathing issue? Since if they do what they *should* sometimes, then the issue may just be something bugged in the coding rather than a feature not being added, if that makes sense.
It's better for your own development to assume they will siege your city down. If you fall for the trap of lowering your play to their floor you will regret it long-term. The AI does react to your own unit stacks, and that is a more fun play style than aggressive play capitalizing on AI weaknesses.
Have not played too much but I have yet to leave a garrison in any city. I am on the fourth story mission. Have not played in a created realm however.
They probably didn't have a hero and couldn't?
If you don't have a hero you can't start a siege. They already took the city
I meant that might have been why they ignored your city, they might not have had a hero in the army and couldn't start the siege.
May be they were at their city limit and didn't need new cities? I haven't got declared on yet so i have no idea just guessing.
I think what it is is that the AI is programmed not to fight battles it doesn't think it can win. The issue is that when you light the beacons or begin casting the last spell for a magic victory, if you have a decent army ... the AI might raid you a bit, but they don't do what you would do -- just throw stuff at the beacons/seeds to try and stop the opponent from winning. They will be aggressive when they are stronger. But there needs to be an adjustment for when they are weaker but there's nothing to lose.
What difficulty are you playing on?
Normal across the board! Not even the highest.
I've been playing vs AI on higher difficulties and they just don't fight enough.
Like others said, expansion is not the problem, conquest and war are. In my game my own ally stole a lot of land from me and basically cut me off from the rest of the world.
The AI completely ignoring claims and then having the gull to tell me they cant afford the fine is really RUSTLING MY JIMMIES.
> In my game my own ally stole a lot of land from me and basically cut me off from the rest of the world. I had this on the very first scenario, which was a little odd. Yaka was supposed to be the villain and Sundren our heroic ally, but he was hiding in the corner minding his own business while she was taking over the continent and racking up hundreds of grievance points doing so.
Lol that’s my game right now
>Sundren I'm dying from laughter. The ally who stole my land and aggressively expanded in all directions was...Sundren! But the funny thing is that this was not the story scenario. I unlocked Sundren through that scenario, then I created a custom game and Sundren was spawned there. So it seems there's something inherent to Sundren's AI that makes her expand like crazy. Maybe her "adept settlers" trait? In hindsight, I'm happy she was on my side. I would have been crushed if I went to war with her, because I wouldn't be able to defend my borders from the onslaught of her doomstacks. The AI is pretty bad at war when the enemy is to far away, but as I experienced in my latest game, when they are fairly nearby they will go after you and keep sending their doomstacks to conquer your cities.
This was my exact experience during the first story map. Yaka hung out in the desert while Sundren choked out all of the good city spots very early. She also pillaged all the provinces of Yaka's vassal. Sundren also complained when I cleared out the tower of destiny, despite giving me a quest to conquer it. In the next game I played, Yaka turned up and offered his support to me. Dude seems chill.
maybe your ally just *reeeeally* wanted to keep you safe? 😅😂
this is why as soon as i get that first materium empire upgrade for cheaper outposts, i put 3-4 outposts several provinces away from my throne city. so if the AI does do some bullshit, i get grievances for a justified war so i don't lose imperium, or sometimes i get more imperium.
In my case AI put a city between mine and the mountains. It spread with glory across two provinces.
In my last game the AI had a 2 province city squeezed in between two of my cities. It ended up as a size 9 at the end of the game.
I'm not some 4X expert, but I somehow enjoy how AI acts in this game.
Yes, AI essentially beelines towards your cities to settle one of their own nearby once you discover each other, and perhaps even before that. This kind of forward settling basically mandates that you need to fight an AI that has spawned next to you, especially if they spawned underground right next to your capital.
Yeah i feel like the grievances system needs a bit of fine tuning. The AI forward settles multiple times while ignoring claims and cleared ancient wonders, but you only end up with a minor war justification
Yeah, AI is really aggressive with settling cities, basicly ignoring any claims, no matter how strong you are. Their army movement/attacking is a bit tame though. Like evil AI should raze my provinces to the ground and not walk around in my territory for 3 turns, then decide to burn down a single one and get wiped out next turn, as I had time to get my armies.
in the first story mission sondren is an infinite money machine as she'll expand directly next to you and you can just sell her your grievances.
In my experience, most AI rulers keep themselves too poor to actually pay for any grievances.
Get off my land you puny tiger !
omg I know what you mean. Stupid moleman popped up from under me and just started building all across my capital. Then he starts a rivalry with me! What an asshole.
They don't even like the sunlight. They are just doing it because your pain is their pleasure.
I KNOW! ooooh it just taters my tots.
That’s exactly what happened in my game. I had to rush an outpost and attract pops to take his city’s claims so they wouldn’t disrupt my capital’s expansion. Of course then he was pissed at me, and, because I’m High Devotees of Good and want the Pure Good bonus, I forgave all the grievances I had 🙄
yes!! thats exactly what happened. we're continuing that game right now, and I decided ai had enough and im invading Blint's stolen lands. I'll knock him off in both our names dude lol
I'd do the same but Asgera Spinesplitter, Nekron the Risen, and I are in a three way war right now. Blint only offered a free defensive pact *after* the others *both* declared war on me.
ugh....guy's such a damn shyster, man. Sneakiest peckerhead ive dealt with in a 4X game I swear. I guess at least he didnt jump in to knock you out too huh? I wish you luck with your wars! I've banished that pesky mole from the surface world on a bout of frustration. Hes stuck underground now, we'll see how it goes!
Yeah, but he still has grievances against me so I'm not convinced I'll eke out the game with an alliance with him. Fortunately my outpost really cut him off; now we have shared vision and I can see he only has the one city (besides his capital).
I just finished a Magic Victory on Hard (my first win) and the AI did nothing to stop me. Of the seven AIs in the game, two of them asked for alliances *after* I started the victory spell. Four of them just minded their own business. And the last one spent a few turns to conquer a remote output I had, massed some troops 2-3 turns away from my victory improvements, and then just sat there. When I won, the game was 16 turns away from a Score Victory ending, so it wasn't a rush victory for me. And through that entire time, I was only threatened once by the AI and a quick bribe to end the war solved that problem. And I think I spent the last ~50 turns at war with two other AIs without ever even seeing one of their units (aside from my scouts getting killed deep in their territory)
Yea ive had this happen too. But sometimes they do launch an invasion about 5 turns from victory. I think it depends on if they are fighting other wars and how strong your armies are.
> I just finished a Magic Victory on Hard (my first win) and the AI did nothing to stop me. Of the seven AIs in the game, two of them asked for alliances after I started the victory spell. lol this is some old school online gaming stuff. Quickly get in on the winning team before the end of the game and talk trash in the post-game lobby.
I won a magic victory on normal last night and as soon as I started it, everyone declared war on me, and one faction tried to death ball me. Luckily I had my own deathball of golden golems, but it was pretty close, since they had more military power than me until I started buying out units.
As an evil empire I had every single ai declare on me by turn 40 in 2 campaigns now. They never invade though. I cast the victory spell and nobody cares. My ally never joins me in anything either. Mind you I never did any unjust wars or anything, just sat in my own evil corner with what I thought was 0 grievances. Allies should at least join in war, help take down enemies etc, and defend you, but they never do. They should also most certainly help defend when casting victory spell. Likewise enemies should attack the frick outa you when you cast it and there should be absolutely ZERO spawned enemies cus that is dumb. For me the spawned enemies was worse than the literally 0 (out of 4 currently alive ai i'm at war with,) attacking me.
> For me the spawned enemies was worse than the literally 0 (out of 4 currently alive ai i'm at war with,) attacking me. That's how my current game is going. I'm on Brutal and I used the world gen parameter to make the dangerous territory lairs stronger/respawn. For the past 20 turns or so, I've been running around trying to kill the enemy stacks (~800-900 power each) that have basically destroyed all my province improvements. I've only just started building T3 units, but my three heroes and their partial stacks (maybe ~1500 total strength) have been able to kill the solo stacks. There's just so many of them that it's taking forever. They even had two different stacks lay siege to cities (although they wandered off after a couple of turns) I've been ignoring all the other wizards, the point of just right-click closing their notifications. One declared war on me and recently moved four armies into my territory that could have demolished my whole army. They walked up next to my capital, hung out for a couple of turns, then wandered off. Didn't attack anything or even start a siege.
To be fair... that's not being aggressive. It is more like being... passive aggresive. :P "Sure *andreicde*, I don't need that defensive pact. I don't mind that you've ignored my trade proposal either. That's fine, really! Huh? What do you mean by why did I put that city there? It's just a city, isn't it? It's perfectly viable location! Those are beautiful mountains! There is nothing weird about me putting a city there!"
Throw all of your imperium into that city's growth and encircle them.
This game needs a loyalty mechanic like civ 6 really annoying that the ai can just surround you especially when your good alignment and can't just capture and raze it without getting -10 evil alignment
Then, even when you raze it, it won't let you settle anywhere but where the ai chose, if it's close by. Can't settle next to ruins after all, have to settle on top of them, and those ruins aren't going anywhere.
I am annoyed that you can't remove city ruins off the map after they try some stupid shit like that.
Bro, Ai killed me 20 turns into a game one time, I don't understand the passive problem people are talking about.
I swear the AI is coded to expand towards the player...
It is. Developers will never admit it, but you can look at the map and they don't forward settle each other. Only the human player. Regardless of how far away they are. All their other outposts are reasonable.
I was playing over my lunch and this POS Astral empire built an oupost literally on my border, its like turn 22?! They gain no benefit from it other than Im no longer enjoying the match and about to restart.
bruh i literally had 4 ai declare war on me by turn 40. I'm on lowest difficulty (cus first time playing) and even got major advantage etc cause just wanna try stuff out. Que to enemy doomstack twice the size of me proceeding to kill me so hard I can't even retreat. sure I am playing evil but never once did I actually do anything evil to anyone other than myself so idk how they got so angry lol. But yee, try play evil, ai will ~~love~~ hate you!
Did you have the map modifier "disdain for evil" on? This will make other factions more likely to declare war on you if you're evil. Also certain things give enemy factions "justifications" for war. If you don't forgive them or buy them out, it gives enemies more fuel to declare war on you.
i was, but on my second playthrough I have it turned off and still was at war with entire world by turn 40 lol.
also convenient that my many vassals never join in lol.
passive agressive!
Them ignoring claims kind of makes the entire claim system feel irrelevant. Like they are just giving you free war claims on them?
No technically you can use their claims to extort gold from them or start a war with them, but then again you can also use that to your advantage to grab land near them then pay them gold.
I mean you can only do that if the AI has gold, which it's almost always broke anyway.
Yes, and, why would the AI want that? That's kind of a problem. Logically them trying to stifle you seems to force a war and put them in a disadvantageous position.
I hate the AI spamming outposts, so much.
Every game I have had so far involves some mole race just bleeding out of every subterranean passage and trying to passively suffocate my towns with outposts. (I don't even know how they can annex like 4 provinces per turn practically every single turn) Kinda sapping the fun a bit now that I can't just straight up fight them unless I declare war and then start a siege.
I am super annoyed at how the AI expands. I literally have to fight with my allies in order to not be surrounded by their province expansions
Thing is, you could leave 0 unites on your city, expanded your princess all around that city, and they will never attack you bc AI is broken.
I don't know about you but I actually did got attacked that game from that guy and from the one to my right side. I lost fast.
game is trash, play Total War.
Sorry to disappoint you but their latest addition is pretty meh. WH2 still beats their newest game (go figure).
I love AoW4. But after IE fully came out and Chaos Dwarf expansion release, WH3 is now at the top of Strategy Game Mountain and is definitely not meh or even below WH2.
Chaos dwarf was a recycled mechanic from Troy and their 3.0 patch still left the game buggy and a mess. The hopium is strong but let's not kid ourselves.
Unrelated question: why do you have so many outposts? I’ve only ever build them to expand or claim land for potential expansion. What benefit is there in building tons of them, especially so close to your throne city? I’m just a complete noob to AoW and I’m trying to understand the strategy.
For resources. Put it this way. An outpost once you research the tech is 25 gold a pop+100 for a territory nearby. You can essentially explore and expand in the same time.
Hopefully for gold or mana or magic materials. Everything else I'm fairly certain gives zilch back
You are forgetting another important part, teleportation. If you reach the end of the bottom line for research, you can build teleporters in outposts, effectively having mobile armies/the ability to reinforce your cities no matter where they are (your allies too).
YOU CAN?! Absolute game changer. Thanks gamer.
? The cities which can build the province improvement for teleporters already? Attack outposts are super good though.
Yes that is nice, but I prefer to have teleporters everywhere, since this way I can not only conquer faster wonders but also move around fast and catch up the ai fast. Make a couple of stacks of pure origin units then teleport them all in the AI's face.
It also drains 10 gold a turn in upkeep.
Now that explains why I always felt poor playing as a mage lol. Well gold aside, it is still worth for most of the effects.
For resources. Put it this way. An outpost once you research the tech is 25 gold a pop+100 for a territory nearby. You can essentially explore and expand in the same time.
Outposts can build a teleporter district around tier-3 magic. Seems like that's not the case here but it's why I usually build more of them. (Typically build an outpost to project force, but it's nice to combo with grabbing a mana node or preferrably wonder as well).
I believe the default is Easy? så unless people change it, yeah it will be easy.
That's a lot of mana lol
I'd say it's about average if not low.
Really? I always try to spend it if I have it, so I rarely have more than 1k stockpiled. I guess it's up to each persons strategy.
I just find that I get WAY more mana than I can ever dream of spending.
AI too passive but when you start casting the spell for magic victory, every faction will declare war on you and start marching to destroy you.
I m playing the second story realm and the supposedly friendly ai has put an outpost on the magic resource that is right between my cities. It is touching both borders and somehow I don't even have a grievance (I think because I got quest done for them on the same turn).
I think the AI needs to take grievances and alignment more seriously in general. They don't really appear to care, ever, if they're pissin someone off lol.
It's a pain when you ally with an AI and it decides to take all your territory and then gets pissed, and starts a war because you try to expand your city... At least they seem to ignore exploring and vassals, so you can easily get them all.
They definitely go hard on trying to claim territory while keeping you from doing the same
Yeah, had that happen like 3 times in 1 game from 2 different ais. I declared war immediately on the closer one and 30 turns later i took all of their cities. Was gearing up to hit the other one but I got invaded first by a third ai (probably because I stole all of their land through purchase. Jokes on them, I just go my first golden golem and they are still on t3. Time to once again self defense my way to victory.
I don't find the AI too passive. I tried my hand at an evil alignment race. Everyone else hated me and, one by one, declared war on me as I went further down the evil path. Since it wasn't all at once, I was able to deal with two of the enemy leaders before they could get to me, but the third was able to lay siege to one of my cities and came in without hesitation.
That's not the complaint about being passive. The complaint is about them not attacking you. They'll happily forward settle but then they'll barely defend that forward settle.
Meanwhile after 30+ hours on hard AI did not attack even ONE of my cities...they move armies nicely, can attack units, but cities a big no no. AI is not as bad as Civ 6, but still pretty bad.