superior tactics video

[Vuk]

lol, I know that CA did not do cavalry very well (though M2 was an improvement as they cut down on crazy hitpoints and way too high attack and transfered some of those points to charge bonus), but at the same time people have this general opinion that cavalry stunk, it didn't. In fact, cavalry was generally much superior to infantry during the time of M2, which is one of the reasons that the importance of pikemen increased so much later on. I am not saying that CA's portrayal is realistic, but at the same time, fan's have a tendency to over compensate and say that cav is useless. I think CA was right in making it powerful, they just did it the wrong way (and in an unrealistic way that unbalanced the game). If you look at history though, cavalry charges COULD smash much greater numbers of infantry. My point is that the goal here shouldn't be to make cav bad, but to make gameplay realistic.

[pyradyn]

He does do odd things with his units. Which in all intense purposes would work, just don't expect an army after. Someone who was playing to preserve his army would have a deal of trouble the AI did nothing stupid from what I saw and I am guessing he was playing on Medium

[hoom]

To be fair to earlier TWs, a general charge (downhill preferably & not to be confused with a charge by the General) + cavalry on the flanks was very effective in Shogun too.

Regarding the AI charging up the hill at the programmers army, the Programmer guy did a 'select all, drag & drop' onto the hill after his heavy cav had been mauled by its frontal attack on bayonet equipped infantry.

Those units arrived piecemeal, exposing themselves on the ridgeline above & not very far from the AI position.
Lets look at this situation from the AI point of view:
If the AI has some LoS coding, it probably doesn't know how much force is just over the ridge but it would be aware that it had inflicted heavy losses on the cav section of its opponents cav heavy army so could assume that there was not particularly much force behind the isolated units already in place up there.

Given that situation, I think I'd have quite likely charged up that hill myself.

[hoom]

I'm sure that the AI does have some fancy tricks to play; unfortunately I haven't seen them play any tricks but CHARRRGEE since MTW; maybe MTW's combat was just paced well enough that it allowed the computer to fully utilize their units

I think a lot of this is just bad stats.

Some of the Rome modders have managed to pull out of the AI some behaviour that was mostly missing from the main game but which were more common in Shogun/MTW.
eg RTR:The Iberian Campaign has stats etc balanced so that the AI is quite scary.

Personally, I get all flustered & concerned when the AI comes at you with an approximately equal strength army & without pause, without reforming just slams into your army full across the front, possibly with some flanking.
Those can be the most intense battles TW can provide & RTR:TIC gives a bunch of them.

When the AI is confident & has well setup unit stats it makes good, agressive moves.
When the AI is not confident/confused by unit stats it'll march up to your army then mill around reforming, tiring its troops & taking losses.

[Oleander Ardens]

The cavalry vs. infantry debate is an other issue than the AI. I remember how I conquered in my first Roman campaign the whole of Gaul with dogs and cavalry. I personally would prefer a high/very high frontal resistance - if the AI tries to keep unit cohesion than thinks will become much more difficult. We all know that it was always easy to create a great local superiorty while keeping the rest of the enemy at bay with few, well placed units. After the first routs the snowball effect would set in, unless the enemy was on vh.

[monsterfurby]

It does indeed seem that the AI is not that smart after all. Then again, I already know that there will be AI mods around by the time I get to play ETW, so it's not that big a deal for me.

I am still dreaming of a TW game where the AI actually adjusts depending on the general's skill. I actually have no problem with the enemy being stupid and charging uphill if they are led by a civil officer bureaucrat who never commanded an army before. However if I am facing Bonaparte, I would sort of expect a more sophisticated AI. Maybe, one day, this will be seen in a TW game

[Incongruous]

If cavalry can charge front on into a line of stationary infantry and win the fight, the game is broken. I know that there are cases of such occurances happening in history, but in terms of a game in which gunpowder infantry are the bread and butter of a battle, such an occurnace would be disasterous. It would make more than half the units obsolete, and condemn battles to a simplistic click and charge affair. Its not the bayonets which should be pumped up, if infantry are indeed attacked in a broken formation lacking the ability of controlled musketry, then they should be slaughtered no matter how good they are with cold steel, amping up the bayonet's stats would screw this up and ruin the purpose of cavalry. What clearly needs to be done, is some kind of improvemnt of the firing system, if cavalry run into a hail of musketry delivered by a rock solid wall of infantry, the game should be up for the sake of gameplay and balance.

If a player stupidly orders a general advance with bayonets into an opposing line which has recievd only a few licks of the volley, his men should be shredded. If such acts of tactical idiocy are indeed punished by well balanced stats then manouvre and actual tactical thinking will have primacy on the battlefield and create a far more pleasing game.

[Battlefield Fire]

Nice graphics, though I wonder what battalion square he's talking about that they got from Bonaparte as the squares used by the AI aren't even squares.

[Incongruous]

Nice graphics, though I wonder what battalion square he's talking about that they got from Bonaparte as the squares used by the AI aren't even squares.

Indeed, you hit upon a good point and a great weakness of that DEMOnstration which was apparently meant to show us the ability of the AI to use advanced tactics such as a battalion square. The CA man playing cut his own head off rather fantastically by employing increadibly poor tactics and nullifying any chance of a true demonstration of the AI's abilities, very poor marketing I must say.

The CA rep began an almost immdiate assault upon the AI with his cavalry in an almost suicidal way, charging head on into infantry formations, losing most of his army in the process and in doing so ruined any chance of us seeing the AI's new abilities in action. We did not get a chance to see anything and were instead allowed to see the serious flkaws in the game.

[Battlefield Fire]

Bopa: True. He was trying to duplicate the Mameluke charges against Bonaparte's squares in the Battle of the Pyramids. The only difference is the Mameluke's lost because Napoleon's squares were real squares while those of the AI weren't. ( heh )

[Fisherking]

I think that maybe this is a bit over analyzed. He wanted to see if the AI would act with a particular placement of troops and protect his cavalry and General.

The AI was vastly out numbered. It took one of the actions most likely to put up a creditable defense. With those odds the only other thing was to run.

[Polemists]

Agreed, I was just impressed it didn't ctrl a, and flank with calvary. It actually had goals, a formation.

A AI with tactics is a vast improvement over what we used to have..


I guess this means I have to start thinking in battles :( doh........

[CBR]

Actually Napoleon used divisional squares in that battle he was referring to. So the individual battalions were still in line. And that also seems to be what the AI is using.


CBR

[Schiltrom]

My only fear is that this was a scripted battle and not the real deal.

According to PC Gamer, the AI is improved.

[peacemaker]

i dunno. After watching that video, I think the AI did rather well, and I know that since I'm not that great of a gamer, it provides a decent and challenging game. If you want to go and fight another human with human tactics, go play online. If you want a decent, challenging game, single player works well enough IMHO

[Spino]

Overpowered cavalry charges.. check.
Overpowered artillery... check.
Ridiculously unrealistic casualty rates... check.
Dodgy AI... check.

I can't believe they're using the Battalion/Division Square for the French special formation instead of Mixed Order. The only reason Napoleon used it in Egypt (and to my knowledge, the ONLY time he used it) was because he was forced to due to lack of a large cavalry force of his own. The Mameluks were massacred by French musket & cannon fire as they repeatedly charged the giant square. Very few reached the actual formation and those that did were unable to penetrate its ranks. Watching the AI charge right into the square as if they were a bunch of heavily armored knights sporting couched lances took the wind out of my sails... I guess it was too much to expect AI cavalry to swarm around squares while looking for a weak spot.

But hey... it looks great!

According to PC Gamer, the AI is improved.

We have heard this from the gaming press in every single preview for every Total War game since Medieval and every time they've been wrong. Rome Total War's AI was awful. Medieval 2's AI was barely any better... but whether it was improved or not it was still pretty damn stupid. Only when Kingdoms was released did the AI demonstrate a modicum of intelligence and even then it wasn't enough to provide a challenge.

In light of the strange bouts of spontaneous retardation suffered by the gaming press whenever a Total War game is released I must content myself to wait until the TW community has given ETW a thorough going over before giving it serious consideration.

[Sol Invictus]

Yep, printed reviews mean not a damn thing. You have to actually play the release version to get any feel for how well the AI will perform. I am hopeful, but time will tell.

[Polemists]

I'd settle for playing a demonstration to see how the game works


Yea I mean I'm not going to go nuts over a variety of videos or whatever. I want to have it in my hands, and see how the units behave. Then we can discuss and debate what is and isn't. Till then just all hearsay

[Colovion]

once again Spino hits the nail on the head

[Sir Beane]

Just as you can't judge the game by reading press reviews, you also can't judge the game by watching a short clip that was specifically designed to show one showy A.I tactic and nothing else.

Wait until the game is out before deciding whether things like cavalry are overpowered or not. You may find that problems have been resolved, or never even existed in the first place.

I'll admit the video wasn't hugely encouraging, but it's only one video. I'd like a lot more data before coming to my own conclusions about the game.