europa barbarorum Playing EB with BI, the pros and cons.

Ave. I came to play EB using BI after I was told that the AI was a bit smarter. In fact, I never used the vanilla BI, and only came from the official RTW directly to EB. So, I was expecting to play some night battles and all.
But until now, there have been no nght battles in my camapigns, nor skirmishers swimming thru a river to take their enemeies by surprise in a bridge battle. As for the schieldwall and schewmtrph thing, I never encountered it, but it might be caus I only play eastern campaigns.
So the only positive differences i could point between playing EB with RTW or BI are the naval invasions, which happens more oftenly with BI, and maybe, a smarter BI on a strategical scale... I'm really not sure for the tactical one.
On the contrary, some intersting points seems to miss, like the reinforcements delays, wich were making some battle much more exciting (and sometimes, really frustrating, but this was good for the roleplaying). There is another one, but I don't remind it right now (I had a tough friday night...).

I would really like to have some different opinions from othr users of the BI expansion for EB.

Though the engine enables things like night-battles, some files still have to be edited before those effects are enabled in EB. Same with unit formations like shieldwall - the units have to be edited to enable such formations to be included (which brings a host of re-balancing issues with it as well!).

As I never really played on BI for those effects, I can't really point to an easy way to get those effects sorted to your liking.

Campaign-wise the BI-engine can make a huge difference, but it mostly depends on which faction you are playing. If you are playing as Baktria or Saka, naval invasions will be irrelevant, but as a Mediterranean power, they can certainly spice up the campaign a bit. AI seems to be a bit smarter on the campaign level, though for battles it hardly makes a difference. You are probably better of using mods to improve AI battle-formations, than relying on improved performance through BI.

Playing with romani on h/m or vh/m on BI, it will actually feel like a punic war. If on RTW, once you take sicily, you will never be attacked by Carthage ever again unless in Iberia. Similar with other factions. Though I still have yet to see the Casse come into the mainland.

Battles are a little better. THe AI tends to use it's units more wisely. On RTW I will often see an army that should beat me, but they send one phalanx at a time while their archers and cav do nothing. You can take out one garrison at a time until the numbers are evened up and you can take the rest out. You don't see this type of ineptness in BI. Still pretty easy to beat, but a little more realistic. Night battles are fun sometimes too.

Most of those things are novelty, the main thing that makes BI better is simply less CTD. Especially fatal ones. You still get occassional ones after battles and sometimes randomly when the game is simply on. But it seems to happen less often than on RTW. With this point, Alex is supposed to be better than BI.

One note on shield wall: it can be fun and effective and add greater depth and realism in certain situations. However, the AI tends to abuse it. Often when I fight say, romani for example, instead of them lining up to face me, each garrison goes into shield wall and they all become isolated entities that take a long time to kill (like phalanx does) but are easy to surround and flank because there is no line.. it is simply a bunch of individuals garrisons working alone not a cohesive line.

" Though I still have yet to see the Casse come into the mainland. " Yes ! I 've never witnessed a Casse invasion in #EB. Too bad, cause the the sweboz tsunami would be counter balanced.

I think too, that the AI is a bit wiser tactically and strategically speaking.

They are more naval invasions with the BI exe but I have the feeling that there are less fleet and naval battles in Eb than in Vanbilla.

As for the night battles and schield wall, I ddon't have it ;-) might come from my EB installation.In fact I don't remember exactly how I managed to make the BI exe work (I run it on a mac with the RTW gold edition i bought from amazon). After one ore two fatal crashes, I always used a clone installation from an external hard drive to reinstall.
By the way, can I manually activate night battes and schieldwall, or shall make a new install and use the EB for BI installer ?

As for the night battles and schield wall, I ddon't have it ;-)

ERRATUM wrong smiley, it's :-/ I wanted to express.

Though I still have yet to see the Casse come into the mainland.

Yeah, neither have I. I gifted a couple of provinces to the Casse in my last Romani campaign, and if I recall correctly, they took one more province in Gaul with a pretty weak army. They never spawned any family members, so they really never posed much of a threat to the region. Would be great if they would just ship a couple of big armies across the channel tp wreak havoc once in a while. :yes: