LOL

This is no longer true. The AI armies are ignored by the monsters. I've 'trapped' an AI pioneer unit that was 1 square away from a mob and left it there for 10 turns. The monster was a stationary camp one, granted, but in 10 turns, had it been MY pioneer, I know what would happen.

I read in the patch notes about monsters attacking the player as much as the AI but it seems that this 'fix' broke them from attacking the AI as well. I know in 1.01 the AI would get ate by the mobs, but no longer.

First, hat tips to Sweatyboatman for trying explaining the big picture.

I am not aware of the environment and AI difficulty levels you're referring to with this preferential issue. Having both at least challenging level there has been event notification not more than 5 seasons since the start when the wildlife has destroyed a faction, and this is not once-in-a-lifetime-event. Some "neutral" monsters do take note of possible fight outcome, e.g. Darklings. Step with a sole pioneer (or bunch of pioneers for that matter) and prepare to fight and lose. Take a deadly task force instead next to them they will just whine you a little bit and leave you be. Like in real life, if you needed to choose someone to bully on would you choose the target that's certainly going to mop the floor with you? Some monsters don't care, they will battle no matter how epic your team vs. medium theirs. This include Scrapyard's Golems and most elemental teams. Additionally, some laired monsters are less interested in bloodbathing, but in case of pioneers without escorts: never put bets on a gamble it will survive. Never.

But there is a point of unfairiness and this is simply a bug: an enemy army can "get covered" by a caravan unit and becomes unattackble. Player can browse between multiple stacks of units on a single tile. The one that has been chosen should be the one interacted with, even if it were a monster lair with the initial group and in addition to that the spawnling groups.

The game is about surviving and winning. If you lose faction power, on which the most score comes from "military power" you're stepping towards "the path of please, punish me". I know it is hard to think about training "primitive spearmen" and even from non-fortressed settlement, instead of topping first out the technology and military buildings to bring out the flawless task force you can walk the park from coast to coast. But you must resist this temptation. The best way to ensure you get enough land, settlements, resources and even peace, is to make sure everyone else will agree. So, if you like peace and harmony, this is completely wrong game to express and to expect having it back. If you have an early opportunity to capture a settlement or two from your neighbour, don't spend your time hesitating.

The question is: do you want to win or not?

I'm not saying that it doesn't happen. Hence the 'preferential' However, How many times do you get Wrecked by the Ai setting up next to some HUGE ass monster mob that's near your teritory, The ai has no fear of mobs because they rarely if ever attack them.

Two things, as far as I'm concerned:

1) Monster behaviour needs to be less random. I've said it before, they should have things like 'kill the problem' scripts where if their home is disturbed by border, they go find the problem. If they're powerful enough (and intelligent enough to make that decision), they kill the problem and go back home. There needs to be a greater degree of consistency in making it a seriously bad idea to explosively expand on top of all sorts of nasties you haven't at all bothered to clear out or know you can't hope to challenge. Monsters should not be freaking chaos theory. Even my damn hamster was in a fair few ways pretty predictable, and he literally had a brain the size of a garden pea.

2) Notices of places being burnt down. That 'customer is always right' rant was utterly bloody daft. The problem here is irrespective of the reality, people feel cheated, and people don't keep playing a game they feel is being unfair. In fact, the best designers and developers put a shitload of effort into hiding whatever cheating the game is doing to keep up with the player, because although everyone knows AI usually has to cheat in some way to challenge us, we also hate seeing them visibly not playing by the same rules.

We can deal with the problem of people feeling like the AI is getting too free a ride by everyone in the game getting a notice that a settlement has been killed by the wildlife. We don't need a name, or a location, just shit like, "Rumours reach your realm of a town devastated by denizens of the wild."

I agree, and this part doesn't bother me.  I'd expect on higher difficulties for the AI to get preferential treatment--and on lower levels, I'd expect some things to break in the player's favor.  I would like to see a list of exactly what things the AI/human players benefit from, however.  We've never received that.  And I wouldn't mind having the ability to toggle this monster behavior on/off at the appropriate difficulty level before you start the game.

But we have people complaining here that the AI gets preferential treatment from monsters regardless of level.  And that's incorrect.

It's not a linear progression, though.  Brad once discussed a starting zone--I think it was around 10 spaces from your first settlement, but don't quote me--that had easy kills and goodie huts.  After that, however, it's a matter of difficulty level and randomness factor.  You can literally end up with a dragon 15 squares down one side, and a group of ophidians down another.  Or you may find things relatively easy.  It's something the developers have wanted to keep just this way.

There's enough space on medium maps, and certainly on large ones.  The AI gets the same starting conditions.  You can check this out yourself with the cheats, revealing the map, and/or switching players.

I have yet to have a monster take/raze one of my cities. Granted I'm only on my fourth game and I am playing on modest settings. I am also sure it is going to happen eventually. What I am not going to do is start a post that says "Players getting preferential treatment from AI Monsters."

Just because I flipped "heads" four times in a row doesn't mean the coin doesn't have a "tails."

If I'm wrong, I'd like to know it.  This isn't aimed at you; I'd just like to see evidence, so that I can change my opinions accordingly.  I'm not doing myself or anyone else any favors if my facts are wrong--and that's true for you, too.

Shouldn't this age old question be easy to verify?

Just load up the game with the /cheat flag and hit ctrl-u to unhide the map and watch.

The AI cheats when I lose. It doesn't cheat when I win. That's all the proof I need.

I think what I'd rather like here is more options with the Monsters rather than just keeping them streamlined with the AI.

I'd really prefer it if the 'Boss monsters' that are in heavy defendable camps , STAY in those camps and just attack if you're a square away, sending out hordes of mid level monsters to attack you instead.

But yeah. EVEN IN HARDEST MODES.. A pioneer from the AI should not be left alone by the monsters. It should be Hard environment, not preferential environment.

And once again, This is from 'normal' on up that the ai gets preferential.

I wasfollowing an AI pioneer unit through wildlands to see what will happen - guess what - he was never attacked by anyone. and eventualy settled on a piece of land I didn't see as settleable..

You cannot make a custom pioneer.  Tarth has the stealth ability by default, and so could a custom race, but there's no such thing as a pioneer with 'ranger'.

And that's a bad thing.

I really wish these hidden racial abilities were explained more in depth, I'd of used Tarth for my rangers then.

No, you are wrong.

When you are inside someone else's territory, the roads will not work for you if you are at war with them.

Thus, a monster can use a road to travel quickly when it's outside of any nation's dominion.  Wildland monsters can use roads within a wildland dominion.  Those are fine.

But if you see a monster moving more than one tile per turn, on a road, within an AI dominion, you know that the monster does not consider itself at war with the AI, i.e. it will not raze improvements or attack troops.