Pauses in an Ai Castle

[Asophix 113]

Stronghold Crusader for its time had a fun little Artificial Intelligence. Above all, that was - and still is - defined by a pre-defined castle template that varies per character.

The AI tries to build a castle gradually, where each building has an order (1 being the first one, etc.), so the castle can be built starting with the essential buildings, with the less important ones added later. Some opponents build include a few pauses in their construction, allowing for a more gradual build-up. This is in force for example for Frederick and the Marshal, who don't build their full castles right away, but rather build in three or four larger steps.

I was wondering, what purpose a pause could have? While construction is paused, the AI seems to devote its efforts towards building up defenses and patrols more instead of attacking, but is it meaningful at all?

In later games such as SH2 and SHL, the pause mechanic is present but seems to be completely unutilised by the opponents. Crusader 2 and Warlords has completely phased it out, so even Firefly deemed it an excess feature.

Do you think having pauses is an advantage, or rather a disadvantage?

[Sir Windows 34]

Interesting, I didn't know they paused castle construction. I don't see a reason why they should, and that's probably why Firefly abandoned the idea in later games. 

You mention Frederick and the marshal, but is the pause before or after they build their stables? If it's before then, my guess is that it's a balance decision to prevent them from harassing too early.

[Asophix 113]

Well, I found the pauses again in the Crusader: Definitive Edition castle files. 😄 

The pause effectively signals the AI to halt construction for a long time. Back a few years when I was experimenting with custom AI castles for vanilla SHC, I found that the bot was much more stable financially, and it could set up its patrol groups much earlier than he usually would, if at all. But this could set back the defensive capabilities of the AI, given how it can build its first walls for free.

In the case of Frederick and Marshal, stables came after the first pause. Frederick usually builds his first walls along with a few workshops, then extends his castle with moat and more buildings, finally comes the complete castle. Marshal is sort of like this, but his castle is kinda unremarkable so all you see is that he adds more stuff.

To be fair I doubt that this is supposed to be a leash mechanic, as Frederick has a balanced personality and Marshal's economy is not very strong on some maps (with the weapon buys included).

On another note: Crusader 2 also has a list of build order on top of the castle definitions, where certain buildings cannot be skipped in the list. There the AI castle is also not allowed to loop, meaning that the castle gets stuck on the same development level for some time until the AI can build the building (mostly walls or a tower).