Jon Shafer's At the Gates

Jon Shafer's At the Gates

Games great but you really need to fix the long term ai.
I love the game but it's more like a city builder since after a few hundred turns all the ais have nothing and don't expand much less become any type of a threat.

1. I would recommend ai buildings after being pillaged auto repair for free after like 10 turns. Otherwise, they will never do anything all game due to having no resources.

2 Adding a line that once a resource that can be built upon would be abandoned once it hits a single turn left till they have enough stone blocks to get them.

3. Spawn a stone deposit near every ai and the player. It's a crucial resource that you will need to have. Without it you will have no choice but to restart till you have stone.

Without it, the game is impossible to play and as a player, you don't get enough from the caravan to substitute it. Salt has the same issue with the caravan. It simply doesn't sell enough to matter.

The problem is that without regenerating resources or new deposits popping up the ais eventually end up with nothing because they don't prioritize a building that can make stone and stone blocks to make resources last forever. Maybe add another resource type or 2 that can sub for it if you want some diversity?

4. Give every ai a free archer as well since from the looks of things they seem to lose everything to bandits first before the forever wars with the romans keep their lands a burning hell.

5. Stop the ERE and WRE from warring each other. They always do every single game which ends up making one of them extremely overpowered and its not as fun with only one.

6. Add a peace option that resets the ai relations from wars or just make each war a set time limit that defaults to peace after that turn amount has expired. Maybe not 0 relations since that would be to high for 2 civs just at war but a -3 or -4 would work. Without this every ai and roman is in a constant war forever which eventually leads to a game where no one has anything.


I really love the game but...

The ais do nothing at all which makes it feel like a city builder rather than an actual strategy which is really disappointing.

I understand if you have a vision for your game but it should at least have an ai that works and feels like an actual strategy right? The ai needs cheats for it to do anything by the look of it. I recommend it. Maybe not on normal or hard but on the other 2 I say they do since I would love to have an ai in this game that can do something.

Also, some achievements would be great and give me more of a reason to play the less interesting civs.
Last edited by The Shadow Rose; 6 Jul, 2020 @ 11:28am
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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
NanoNaft 5 Jul, 2020 @ 1:56pm 
That's right! I totally agree! Two hands up!
The Shadow Rose 5 Jul, 2020 @ 5:32pm 
Edited it a bit and made stuffs clearer and added more issues :D
clayffo 5 Jul, 2020 @ 10:52pm 
My suggestion for the ai has always been to make ai resources infinite and to force it into a building priority. A 1s and 0s computer is not going to be able to figure out long term game strategy with the devs resources

I don’t agree on the stone. One of the original goals of this game ( back in 2013) was to have a nomad phase where you use the resources and move on; eventually coming to the point of having what you need to permanently settle. The point I’m trying to make is if you always start with a known set. Iron, stone, fish, then the game becomes more predictable.

good post. Don’t get too frustrated, Jon rarely gets things done on time or right the first time
Obuw 6 Jul, 2020 @ 9:28am 
Completely agreed on the AI, it's basically totally nonexistant. It looks to me like they just start with a bunch of structures and literally do nothing all game.

Even if you remove every single faction from the game and just have the romans periodically send raids that you have to deal with, it would be a huge improvement over what we have right now.

The whole 1.4 "diplomacy" update was basically a huge waste imho as the factions you are conducting "diplomacy" with don't actually do anything. Not to mention that it's completely broken to begin with - faction declares war on you, doesn't send any units. You can't actually attack half his units. No way to make peace. You ally someone. They start sending units and pillaging your structures. No way to break alliance or declare war. Just... terrible.

But I disagree about the stone and salt. You don't actually need stone at all. You can make bricks using coal instead. And you can make coal from lumber. As for salt, I kept my meat curer going for 6 years just using caravan salt. You can definitely make it work without either resource. My current nightmare game is going strong with 45 clans, and I never collected any stone or salt.
The Shadow Rose 6 Jul, 2020 @ 11:29am 
Originally posted by Obuw:
But I disagree about the stone and salt. You don't actually need stone at all. You can make bricks using coal instead. And you can make coal from lumber. As for salt, I kept my meat curer going for 6 years just using caravan salt. You can definitely make it work without either resource. My current nightmare game is going strong with 45 clans, and I never collected any stone or salt.

Ah well maybe the player doesnt need any but the ai sure does.
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