I'd just like to add another report of an AI "freezing up" when it loses a city.  I took Resoln's first expansion city, and they refused to expand afterward despite having copious room (including some fantastic city sites that went unclaimed for practically forever).

I wonder if they might refuse to build Pioneers while at war?  I made few, if any, aggressive moves after the initial city grab, but I never signed peace.

Hi Frogboy,

i´ve played a little bit with 1.1d. Some very early stuff. (medium size map, challenging world AI, hard faction AI,

I met Kraxxis very early in season 10. But he hasn´t build a capital, altough there is fertile land, iron and a shard. His spouse does nothing and both ignore goodie huts.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12734598/1-1d%20kraxxis%20season%2010.EleSav

Kraxxis built his first city in season 12, but i crushed him with Janusk and two champs. in season 13. Very easy.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12734598/1-1d%20kraxxis%20season%2013.EleSav

@Lantros:

It's a map issue. Kraxis's starting position was in the middle of a swamp.  The map generator shouldn't have put a fertile tile in the middle of a swamp (swamps and fertile land are mutually exclusive).

It has nothing to do with AI.  The AI is told that it can use fertile land plots. But the game put a fertile land plot on a swamp. So when the AI tries to build a town, it fails but does not know why because the condition should never occur in the first place.

Since he does AI, I would expect him to report it and it will be fixed by a codemonkey.

I tried out 1.1D last night and the first city I found was Tarth.  Guess what they were building?  Yep, you guessed it.  Pioneers.  No defenders at all and building pioneers so I killed them.  Freakin wussy AI!

This would look great but would be even better with a nice sound attached also. Shard Hummer...

To the guy with the ridiculous bug, or whatever wiht Umber, when i first installed v1.1 official patch, i had a issue were i set the difficuluty to ridiculous, but then when i selected oppopnets on the next screen, each of them were still set to normal, (i never noticed they had a individual Difficulty selection myself till then, but i had to individually set each one to ridiculous, after i did it once for each opponent it never happend to me again (thx god) but try that out and see if that fixes it for ya , i have a felling that may be whats happening to u. that is if they didnt fix it.

Played a 1.1d game looked good. All that 0 hp stuff is gone.

I played normal world, and 10 challenging AIs. Umber got stuck. He built a bit too far away from the farm. His ZOC eventually covered it but he didn't have any materials to build a farm (confirmed by attempting to trade). He had spent his 10 pop on a tech lab and an arcane lab. So he wasn't gaining any materials either. I have him 5 or 6 mats and it unstuck him. ie he built a farm. Then houses, then was able to get rolling again. Always get at least one workyard.

I whipped my closes neighbor out fairly early because they build their second city right where I wanted too and there was no way I was going to let that stand. I took it easily with my sov a hero and a few early staff guys. I held it until I had some spears units and geared my sov & hero. Then I took the enemy cap.

I saw a couple factions whipped out. Umber (who was stuck for so long) and one other. Altar had about half the map under their ZOC by midgame. Altar should have rolled everyone. They had most of the metal on the map. I had one crap iron place giving me 1.

When I eventually started steam rolling with my sovereign and his son maxed out altar had all old units. I think they looked at thier combat scores and thought they were ok so weren't building anything good. They were obliterated. Altar should have been steam rolling everyone with their sheer size.

Small short wars might actually be very good for the AI. Losing old units in battle will have a cleansing effect. The combat numbers to calculate its miltary health with more recent units means the numbers will be more realistic predictors of actual military strength. If they have alot of old units its military health data is stale.

Perhaps the AI should look around across the border and examines the most powerful unit the enemy/allied has that it can see. Call that unit the the cutt-off point. Any of its units that would do zero damage on average to the should be marked obsolete. Obsolete units should be destroyed one at a time and replaced with a more modern unit assuming there is one. Once all the obsolete units are replaced recheck the area for a new super unit. Mark your obsoletes and begin replacement. This calculation only has to be done once in a while when all the old obsolete units are replaced which may take many turns.

Aggressive personality AI's might go for short wars rather than cycling the troops out. Loosing the crappy troops taking a city. Then being eager to sue for peace, and consolidate its gains. They take a city and say "Your city was build on grounds considered holy by my people.  Now that the lands are back in the rightful hands, I will consider a truce if you pay me 100 gildars."

The combat values assigned to armies is only valid if the two armies are in the same ball park of technology. This is one way to help the AI not be lulled into believing its better off that it really is.

Overall I found "challenging" to be too easy. I'm going to bump the AI's difficulty back up to hard. That seems to be the sweet spot for me. The ai was doing some good stuff and blocking the one man wrecking ball technique with my sov.

Okay, I am sorry for a double post, but it is necessary.

The picture tells it all.

What I said previously about champions attacking cities for no reason, well apparently it applies to faction leaders as well.

I am linking to the save file one turn before this. If you press 'end turn' 50% of the time he will attack me with no hope of winning, and destroy his entire empire.

http://solidfiles.com/d/e07b/download/

Also linking a save from about 50 turns previous when I am weak and ripe for destruction. For some reason he doesn't attack me with his armies when he has the chance, but when I start invading he turns suicide mission on me. The events leading up to this point in the game are, basically me starting with one city, slowly building up and taking over one town, then another, and also razing a few small crappy towns.

http://solidfiles.com/d/3bcd4/download/

One other point I would like to make is the issue with city improvements like farms and mines and such. Seems like the enemy wanders around my zone of control an awful lot, but rarely ever ruins my improvements.  I was able to rebuild them the odd time they were destroyed and I had lots to choose from. They should definitely be a higher priority target.

Side question:  Has anyone tried running D with mods?  Do they get immediate crashes to desktop as well?

Noticed another bad AI behavior today.  The AI will throw troops at a city lose, then throw the same strength of troops again several turns later.

The AI should at least use twice what it did before in that case.