Has anything really changed from CA?

[Quickening]

As disappointed as I am with Empire I have to say that the land battle in the demo is a terrible example of the land battles in the full game. I to thought it was atrocious and it put me off the game but it isn't reflective of the average battle.

[resonantblue]

Wow! Did we get the same game?

I personally think the CAI and diplomatic engine in ETW are beyond question the worst of any TW game, and I've been playing them since Shogun.

As others have stated, ETW's CAI simply cannot handle this complex new map. It's really struggling with it.

It can't manage the economy so it's often bankrupt or on the point of bankruptcy. (By early mid-game in almost all of my campaigns my nation is terrifying and spectacular while the AI nations are meagre and destititute.)

Diplomacy is completely broken. The AI nations don't use it amongst themselves: they don't declare peace, they don't make new alliances or protectorates, and they don't max out their trade routes. Instead they declare wars on their friends, on their sole trading partners, and regardless of how many other wars they're currently fighting. And they will stay at war until one nation is eliminated or the game ends. I don't think 90+ and 80+ year wars were common in the 18th century. They also declare wars that they can't even fight, let alone win!

The result of the AI continually shooting itself in the leg due to its inability to handle or use the economic and diplomatic engines is that the AI nations are turned into easily conquered weaklings. Eventually, I'm the only one doing anything on the campaign map while the AI nations are struggling just to survive.

The overall campaign AI is dismal. It's completely confused by what it should put into garrison and what it should put into field armies. Thus, it often puts too many troops into garrison or none at all. And it fails to build proper field armies that can actually threaten the player. As a result on the battlefield the player almost always has more and better troops, and a player with more and better troops on the battlefield simply cannot lose!

Further, the AI is completely inept on the strategic offensive. It often resorts to raids which is a completely pointless feature: doesn't hurt a region's economy, does minimal damage to the town, and provides no benefit to the raider. A human player won't waste his time on it. Instead the human player builds up a large army and either attacks the region capital or uses the nice exploit of sitting in an outlying town to let the town's garrison come to him. The result is that player gets bigger and stronger with an accumulation of provinces and wealth. Meanwhile the CAI is sending pathetic little stacks (often consisting solely of artillery units) to raid outlying towns and where they are quickly stomped out by an annoyed human player. Oh, the AI doesn't know how to retreat so it fights every battle no matter what the odds resulting in tiresome "whack-a-mole" battles. Basically, no AI nation can win this game! So the player is in a non-competitive environment- it's just a matter of WHEN the player will either win or quit out of boredom.

The pathfinding is atrocious. AI armies and navies routinely get stuck on the campaign map. (I quit my last campaign when I realized that I could easily crush Russia because most of its army was stuck in West Prussia alongside that bridge. The AI also struggles with landbridges.

Then you got the problems of the AI treating each individual province as a seperate fiefdom. It won't move armies from one friendly province to assist another friendly province. I don't know how may times I've witnessed a tiny AI raiding army burn down a province while in an adjacent province a full stack army does NOTHING to assist one of its OWN beleaguered provinces. Nor will the AI move an army from a neighboring province to relieve a siege.

Then you got all the new features that CA introduced with ETW that its AI simply cannot handle. My "favorite" is the hostile fleets entering a port: AI army ejects hostile fleet from port, AI moves its army out of the port, and hostile fleet immediately moves back into the port. And this process repeats the next turn and the next and the next.... I've seen the above scenario in almost every campaign I've played. Oh, sometimes the AI won't even bother ejecting a hostile fleet from one of its ports so that a single ship will stay in a port for decades stopping trade and prohibiting shipbuilding.

Then you have naval transport. ETW wasn't released with an AI capable of using naval transport. It was only AFTER the game was released that CA started programming AI naval transport, but then discovered it was tougher than they anticipated. So we have a game where AI use of naval transportation is rare to non-existent. Thus, playing the British or the Marathas is a complete joke (even more so than the other factions). Further, AI controlled Britian is completely neutered due to it being stuck in its homelands. The AI also doesn't know how to use the "theater" feature so that the Carribean is the personal playground of the human player and India the Maratha's little sandbox.

I don't think the above issues are "annoying idiosyncracies," but serious CAI issues that almost completely ruin the game. I want to fight big, important battles against powerful opponents, not stomp-out pathetic little stacks from bankrupt nations in repetitive, cakewalk battles. Unfortunately, the later situation has been my experience with ETW. I started campaigns as France and Sweden under the 1.3 patch and have shelved both of them because the CAI is so abysmal that completely ruined any immersion.

I do dream of how much better ETW would be with a much more simplified map. ETW with its breathtaking battles and improved BAI (I think its better than RTW's and M2TW's) might have been a classic with a "Risk-Style" map- no more whack-a-mole battles, no more pointless raids, no more pathfinding issues, no more problems with the CAI having to choose between units in garrison or in field armies, but lot's of big battles (which the AI could sometimes win just on sheer strength of numbers) that emphasize ETW's biggest strength- it's battle engine!! However, that's just wishful thinking and I have to hope that future patches will alleviate some of the above issues, but that's probably just wishful thinking too. And that's saddest thing about ETW.

Most of the problem syou mentioned do happen. But these things have been inherent in every TW game in the series. This is _not_ new stuff. The campaign AI is better then it has been, which may not be saying all that much, but it's definitely better. In every TW game until now I've struggled to actually have stack on stack battles. In ETW I get them _all_ the time. On Very Hard the AI is not short on money, whether it's getting it via cheats or legitimately - I don't really care. Granted, the battle AI still stinks compared to a human, but I'm fighting full, balanced stacks all the time. I'm playing on VH and there's no shortage of enemy armies to blow away.

Comparing AI reaction to how a human would AI is just plain silly. No one has yet built an AI that is as intelligent as a human, or even close to it. To fix those situations you describe, the only way to really do that is to hard code reactions to certain situations. Which is exactly why the AI constantly declares war on the player if territory is adjacent and the AI has it as an objective. We need less of such AI code, not more.

I, for one, am grateful that I now have a campaign AI that can setup some good land battles on a consistent basis. The battle ai is another issue entirely (and oh how I wish it were better).

[mkeogh]

Most of the problem syou mentioned do happen. But these things have been inherent in every TW game in the series. This is _not_ new stuff. The campaign AI is better then it has been, which may not be saying all that much, but it's definitely better. In every TW game until now I've struggled to actually have stack on stack battles. In ETW I get them _all_ the time. On Very Hard the AI is not short on money, whether it's getting it via cheats or legitimately - I don't really care. Granted, the battle AI still stinks compared to a human, but I'm fighting full, balanced stacks all the time. I'm playing on VH and there's no shortage of enemy armies to blow away.

Comparing AI reaction to how a human would AI is just plain silly. No one has yet built an AI that is as intelligent as a human, or even close to it. To fix those situations you describe, the only way to really do that is to hard code reactions to certain situations. Which is exactly why the AI constantly declares war on the player if territory is adjacent and the AI has it as an objective. We need less of such AI code, not more.

I, for one, am grateful that I now have a campaign AI that can setup some good land battles on a consistent basis. The battle ai is another issue entirely (and oh how I wish it were better).

Again, we obviously got different versions of the game because I haven't encountered these epic land battles that you describe, and I also play on VH/VH. Instead I feel like General Zod screaming out in exasperation: "I win! I always win!" as I blow through the pathetic little stacks that nearly bankrupt countries send against me. Oh, I do get the occasional "big battle" when I besiege a large garrisoned town, but because I almost ALWAYS iniatiate such "big battles" then I make sure to bring more and better troops so I can't lose. I'm almost never outnumbered or outgunned which is really the ONLY way the TW BAI can win a battle and so I win ALL the time. (Further, if the AI nations are only getting by economically on the higher difficulty levels due to bonuses then give'em bigger ones because they're all broke in my games!) I have NEVER felt threatened with being defeated in this game. Not once. With apologies to General Patton and Vince Lombardi, but winning all the time isn't exactly fun.

You're right many of the above issues were found in previous TW titles. But that's not entirely true either: the CAI in previous TW titles knew how to use the diplomatic engine, how to use naval transport, and that different regions within the same nation were still part of that nation. Additionally, ETW has exacerbated many of these issues and created new ones due to all the added features to the campaign map that the AI doesn't understand. The CAI had a difficult enough time with the far less complex maps of RTW and M2TW. So why then did CA add on even MORE features to the campaign map that its CAI cannot handle? I guess to sell more copies to people who will steamroll through a campaign once or twice, kick the game into the dustbin, and move onto the next big thing. However, they really did a disservice to those strategy gamers who actually play games for the CHALLENGE!

Further, no where in my post did I allege that I wanted CA to design an AI as intelligent as a human. I'm fully aware that no AI can beat a human player on an even playing ground (and I've never had an issue with an AI getting bonuses on higher difficulty levels. I love how Civ4 has numerous levels of difficulty with the AI getting more and more powerful bonuses on each level so that the player can find a level at which he's comfortable and not feel overwhelmed.) My example of how a human plays this game vs. the AI was just to show the problems CA created by adding more features to the map. The raiding feature is a perfect example: a human player will quickly realize that it's pointless, but the AI won't. So why is it in the game? It hurts the game because it makes the CAI even more ineffective on the offensive than it was in RTW and M2TW, and it was abysmal on the offensive in those games. (STW and MTW had a LOT of faults, but at least their maps forced the AI to concentrate its forces so that it would sometimes win offensive battles just on sheer strength of numbers. Remember the Almohads? The Hojo Horde? In fact, MTW was the last game that CA designed which had a CAI that could handle most of its map's features, and I do wonder how ETW would be if CA had just kept on refining and updating those "Risk-Style" maps instead of moving to these "free-style" maps which have just played havoc with their CAI.) Thus, I believe the mechanics should have been simplified to at least give the AI a chance to compete with the human player and maybe even more of a chance with the right allocation of bonuses. When it became clear during playtesting that the CAI was having a tough time with the raiding feature then it should have junked. Same with that idiotic "hostile fleet entering a port feature." What did that add to the game other than confusing the heck out of the AI? And how did that benefit the game? So you're darn right- CA needed to add far less code than more, but adding more code is EXACTLY what they DID DO!!!!

Additionally, as a fan of the strategy games EU3 and Civ4, I know that getting an AI to act in semi-rational way in a PC game diplomatic engine is not an impossiblity. (EU3 has a feature similar to ETW in which the AI is programmed to want certain provinces, but in that game the AI only declares war when it thinks it can win it! How come CA's AI programmers cannot do that?) Further, those games also demonstrated that it is possible for the AI to be effective offensively on the stratmap if you tailor the map to the AI's strengths. In fact, the stratAI's in those games can actually win their games. (If you removed the player from ETW and let the AI nations battle it out for 200 turns would any of them even come close to fulfilling their victory conditions? No.) Quite simply the AIs of those two games, both of which have been on the market for years, put the CAI of ETW to shame. They are not even in the same league. (And, yes, I know the argument that ETW is different due to it having tactical battles, but with each new TW release CA appears to ape more and more of Civ4's and EU3's strategy maps and thus I think comparisons are perfectly fair.)

Hey, it's great that you're having fun with ETW and find it's campaign improved. However, I truly believe that ETW's campaign AI is the worst one I've experienced in ANY TW game. It's a darn shame because I love this period of history, love the battle engine, but HATE the campaign AI. I truly wish I didn't, but unfortunately I do. It's so inept that it ruins the game- steamrolling a hapless and hopeless AI opponent has never been fun for me. (And I pull my punches in ETW by not blitzing and not using trade nodes. I've always been a big believer in allowing AI nations in the TW series time to build up before I go knocking them down, but in ETW, due to the constant wars and the AI's inability to handle the economic engine, the AI nations actually get weaker as the game goes on. It's just awful.)

[Didz]

The basic problem is that the Campaign AI doesn't understand the principles by which the game works.

If you do a simple test you can easily prove this for yourself. About a month ago I decided that the campaign game was simply too easy if you expliot the loopholes in the game mechanic's, and I imposed a few basic house rules to limit my own options and give the Campaign AI more of a chance.

One of these rules was that I would never ever occupy more than one Trade Portal in the same Trade Theatre.

Typically, human players begin their campaigns by what is usually referred to as 'The Trade Race', which basically involves defeating the pirates guarding the trade theatres and posting trade ships on every Trade Portal to secure a monopoly in the trade of Ivory, Spices or Sugar. I played my first few campaigns this way and it nets the player a huge income that then allows them to dominate the game.

I figured that if I limited my acquisitions to one Trade Port per theatre maximum, I could still place 14 x East Indiamen on that spot and earn a decent income, but that there would always be other trade ports open for use by the AI, and so they would also be able to make a decent trade income and the resulting challenge would be greater. I even thought naively that it would result in an ongoing naval challenge as various factions fought over domination of the various trade theatres.

In fact, when I analysed the Campaign AI's response to this opportunity it was quite obvious that the Campaign AI had no idea how to expliot the trade theatres.

In many cases trade posts were simply left unoccupied despite the fact that for some reason factions do send fleets into the trade theatre zones and have them hang about pointlessly.

In most other cases even when the trade ports were claimed by the AI, little or no income is generated from them suggesting that most of the ships positioned on them are warships rather than traders.

In one particular incident I actually attack one of these fleets to discover that it consisted on one trade ship and four warships. In fact, the stack was producing a Net Loss for the faction that sent it, as the ships maintenance costs exceeded the potential income.

On another occassion I discovered that Great Britain had dispatched a fleet of seven ships to a Madagascar Trade Post which was not only not producing any income (e.g. it was all warships), but also had an almost full army stack aboard. The cost of that fleet and the army must have been huge and it just sat on the Trade Post for most of the game.

When the Campaign AI is that 'ignorant' of how the game actually works, let alone what strategies to employ to win then there is very little that we players can do to help, and as CA will not release the Mod Tools necessary to change the AI and Diplomacy behaviour it seems unlikely that things will improve any time soon.

[resonantblue]

Again, we obviously got different versions of the game because I haven't encountered these epic land battles that you describe, and I also play on VH/VH. Instead I feel like General Zod screaming out in exasperation: "I win! I always win!" as I blow through the pathetic little stacks that nearly bankrupt countries send against me. Oh, I do get the occasional "big battle" when I besiege a large garrisoned town, but because I almost ALWAYS iniatiate such "big battles" then I make sure to bring more and better troops so I can't lose. I'm almost never outnumbered or outgunned which is really the ONLY way the TW BAI can win a battle and so I win ALL the time. (Further, if the AI nations are only getting by economically on the higher difficulty levels due to bonuses then give'em bigger ones because they're all broke in my games!) I have NEVER felt threatened with being defeated in this game. Not once. With apologies to General Patton and Vince Lombardi, but winning all the time isn't exactly fun.

Give TROM a try. I'm engaged in an epic struggle against the Mughal Empire which owns all of India. Every turn a new stack shows up (of course I haven't raided their trade, which would certainly help, but I'm enjoying the epic land struggle) and I've only got one understrength army there to fight the hordes, running from province to province to try and stem the tide. The AI is building balanced armies with artillery, cavalry and infantry and I'm actually forced to withdraw from a good number of battles (VH/H) because my army is not at full strength. I'm losing provinces every other turn and gaining them back once my army replenishes.

I can't spare anything else because in Europe as Austria I'm engaged in conflict on three fronts - against the Russians who send a stack (not always full, but at least 14-15 units strong) to my borders to seize Galcia every second or third turn, France who continues to try to seize my protectorate Westphalia (whom I have had to protect with an army because, unfortunately, the AI fails to build settlement defences so it loses to a French full stack everytime) with a seemingly endless number of stacks and against the Ottomans who are desperately trying to expand into the Balkans after I seized most of it from them.

You're right many of the above issues were found in previous TW titles. But that's not entirely true either: the CAI in previous TW titles knew how to use the diplomatic engine, how to use naval transport, and that different regions within the same nation were still part of that nation.

I disagree. I can't tell you how many posts I recall from previous TW games where people are complaining about the lack of AI amphibious assaults. Oh yes, they happened once in a while, just like in ETW. Of course in MTW it was a non-issue mostly because for example England and Flanders were connected by a land bridge - but do you not remember people compalining about the CAI mostly ignoring the fact that a land bridge is there? The diplomacy was horrible in MTW, RTW and M2TW. THe only difference was that it was easier to make peace. And in 1.2 ETW it was relatively easy ot make peace. They changed that for some reason and we might disagree about the reason, but the fact remains that this is not something that was never fixed. Obviously they felt the design needed to be different. The random DOWs were just as bad in previous games of the TW series as they are now.

Additionally, ETW has exacerbated many of these issues and created new ones due to all the added features to the campaign map that the AI doesn't understand. The CAI had a difficult enough time with the far less complex maps of RTW and M2TW. So why then did CA add on even MORE features to the campaign map that its CAI cannot handle? I guess to sell more copies to people who will steamroll through a campaign once or twice, kick the game into the dustbin, and move onto the next big thing. However, they really did a disservice to those strategy gamers who actually play games for the CHALLENGE!

When you embark on a 2-3 year software project, you can not perform a proof of concept on everything. That's just not how software works. I'm sorry you think it should be different, but as someone who manages software projects let me just tell you that thinking is totally detatched from reality.

Further, no where in my post did I allege that I wanted CA to design an AI as intelligent as a human.

You are certainly implying it whether you know it or not. Whenever you make a case that the AI does X when it should do Y (such as why does the AI declare war or not make peace or whatever) you are implicitly comparing it's "irrational" behaviour to what a human would do.

Additionally, as a fan of the strategy games EU3 and Civ4, I know that getting an AI to act in semi-rational way in a PC game diplomatic engine is not an impossiblity. (EU3 has a feature similar to ETW in which the AI is programmed to want certain provinces, but in that game the AI only declares war when it thinks it can win it! How come CA's AI programmers cannot do that?) Further, those games also demonstrated that it is possible for the AI to be effective offensively on the stratmap if you tailor the map to the AI's strengths. In fact, the stratAI's in those games can actually win their games. (If you removed the player from ETW and let the AI nations battle it out for 200 turns would any of them even come close to fulfilling their victory conditions? No.) Quite simply the AIs of those two games, both of which have been on the market for years, put the CAI of ETW to shame. They are not even in the same league. (And, yes, I know the argument that ETW is different due to it having tactical battles, but with each new TW release CA appears to ape more and more of Civ4's and EU3's strategy maps and thus I think comparisons are perfectly fair.)

As a fan of the EU and HOI series, let me just say that the AI there sucks horribly too. Ever seen an amphibious invasion in EU2? Yeah right. You think "mini" raiding armies are a problem in TW? Did you even play EU2? it's funny because mos tof the things you complain about in the TW series have also plagued the EU series. One great thing about the EU series though is the diplomatic model is way ahead of the TW series. Protectorates/vassals all automatically are a part of your alliance and no one can dow them without dowing you, etc. But the AI there is also problematic. Like when your bad boy rating goes up everybody DOWs you even dinky little Savoy that has a tiny army will join in.

Hey, it's great that you're having fun with ETW and find it's campaign improved. However, I truly believe that ETW's campaign AI is the worst one I've experienced in ANY TW game. It's a darn shame because I love this period of history, love the battle engine, but HATE the campaign AI. I truly wish I didn't, but unfortunately I do. It's so inept that it ruins the game- steamrolling a hapless and hopeless AI opponent has never been fun for me. (And I pull my punches in ETW by not blitzing and not using trade nodes. I've always been a big believer in allowing AI nations in the TW series time to build up before I go knocking them down, but in ETW, due to the constant wars and the AI's inability to handle the economic engine, the AI nations actually get weaker as the game goes on. It's just awful.)

You're certainly entitled to your opinion and I can not quesiton the integrity of your feelings. But the arguments and comparisons you're making don't really add up.

If you're angry because you think CA is omnipotent and when they start a 2-3 year software project they knew the CAI would break on certain new campaign map features they added, well yes, I can see why that would frustrate you. But that's rooted in ignorance - that's not how it works and if they halted all progress on the rest of the game until the AI was good enough we'd still be playing Medieval Total War and CA would be bankrupt.

[ReluctantSamurai]

If you're angry because you think CA is omnipotent and when they start a 2-3 year software project they knew the CAI would break on certain new campaign map features they added, well yes, I can see why that would frustrate you. But that's rooted in ignorance - that's not how it works and if they halted all progress on the rest of the game until the AI was good enough we'd still be playing Medieval Total War and CA would be bankrupt.

Yes......and no.

CA, as a business, certainly needs to turn a profit. However, the way it has chosen to do this, IMHO, is to appeal to the casual gamer by adding tons of new features irrespective of whether the AI can handle them or not. This trend started with RTW and has continued to today. Economically, judging from the record sales of ETW, this was a wise decision but....................only because there is no real competition in this genre, allowing CA to pretty much do as it pleases.

I disagree that designing a challenging AI is akin to building the Pyramids. When CA started with STW & MTW, the simplicity of those games made for great gameplay as the AI was capable of handling what needed to be done to actually win the game. With RTW, the decision was made to go for the 'glitz and glitter' and the AI has never kept pace since. Since 'glitz and glitter' sells CD's, that's what CA has concentrated upon. I'm sure there are competent programmers over there, capable of designing a strong AI (it don't gotta be perfect, nothing ever is).

A recent experience of mine hits right to the heart of the matter, I think. I am enrolled in a program to teach me the basics of game design. In my very first course, the professor asked our class this question: What is the most important feature of game design?

Two of us answered for a strong AI and replayability. The rest of the class were for a$$-kicking graphics and complex play. I'm 56, and the other person who answered as I did is in their mid-40's......the rest of the class is late teen's, early 20's.

That about sums it up, AFAIAK.................................

[Slaists]

Yes......and no.

CA, as a business, certainly needs to turn a profit. However, the way it has chosen to do this, IMHO, is to appeal to the casual gamer by adding tons of new features irrespective of whether the AI can handle them or not. This trend started with RTW and has continued to today. Economically, judging from the record sales of ETW, this was a wise decision but....................only because there is no real competition in this genre, allowing CA to pretty much do as it pleases.

I disagree that designing a challenging AI is akin to building the Pyramids. When CA started with STW & MTW, the simplicity of those games made for great gameplay as the AI was capable of handling what needed to be done to actually win the game. With RTW, the decision was made to go for the 'glitz and glitter' and the AI has never kept pace since. Since 'glitz and glitter' sells CD's, that's what CA has concentrated upon. I'm sure there are competent programmers over there, capable of designing a strong AI (it don't gotta be perfect, nothing ever is).

A recent experience of mine hits right to the heart of the matter, I think. I am enrolled in a program to teach me the basics of game design. In my very first course, the professor asked our class this question: What is the most important feature of game design?

Two of us answered for a strong AI and replayability. The rest of the class were for a$$-kicking graphics and complex play. I'm 56, and the other person who answered as I did is in their mid-40's......the rest of the class is late teen's, early 20's.

That about sums it up, AFAIAK.................................

ouch... even though... my son is 19 and he craves for better AI in all the games he plays.

Also, hasn't anyone noticed. To play TW games tactically one rarely gets to appreciate the graphics...

Vice versa, if one plays to appreciate the graphics, rarely the right tactical decisions are made...

[mkeogh]

Give TROM a try. I'm engaged in an epic struggle against the Mughal Empire which owns all of India. Every turn a new stack shows up (of course I haven't raided their trade, which would certainly help, but I'm enjoying the epic land struggle) and I've only got one understrength army there to fight the hordes, running from province to province to try and stem the tide. The AI is building balanced armies with artillery, cavalry and infantry and I'm actually forced to withdraw from a good number of battles (VH/H) because my army is not at full strength. I'm losing provinces every other turn and gaining them back once my army replenishes.

I can't spare anything else because in Europe as Austria I'm engaged in conflict on three fronts - against the Russians who send a stack (not always full, but at least 14-15 units strong) to my borders to seize Galcia every second or third turn, France who continues to try to seize my protectorate Westphalia (whom I have had to protect with an army because, unfortunately, the AI fails to build settlement defences so it loses to a French full stack everytime) with a seemingly endless number of stacks and against the Ottomans who are desperately trying to expand into the Balkans after I seized most of it from them.

So essentially you've admitted that you're playing a MODDED version of the game. Why? Could it be possible that you felt the vanilla CAI was subpar? If your arguments about an "improved CAI" are based on your playing a mod then your entire argument here is disingenuous. I'm NOT talking about a MODDED game!

I disagree. I can't tell you how many posts I recall from previous TW games where people are complaining about the lack of AI amphibious assaults. Oh yes, they happened once in a while, just like in ETW. Of course in MTW it was a non-issue mostly because for example England and Flanders were connected by a land bridge - but do you not remember people compalining about the CAI mostly ignoring the fact that a land bridge is there? The diplomacy was horrible in MTW, RTW and M2TW. THe only difference was that it was easier to make peace. And in 1.2 ETW it was relatively easy ot make peace. They changed that for some reason and we might disagree about the reason, but the fact remains that this is not something that was never fixed. Obviously they felt the design needed to be different. The random DOWs were just as bad in previous games of the TW series as they are now.

Amphibious assaults in ETW are rare to non-existent which was NOT the case in previous TW games. Further, when I'm talking about the AI not using diplomacy I'm NOT talking about the player being able to squeeze a deal out of the AI, but that the AI nations are not using it amongst themselves which is a FAR bigger problem and something I made very clear in my first post. This was NOT the case in previous TW titles. The AI nations in ETW is not making peace amongst themselves, not maxing out their trade routes with each other, and not making new alliances. It's killing their economies and killing the game! (Well, at least, the vanilla version, maybe not the modded version that you're playing.) The AIs of ALL previous TW games were able to do the above. Further, the AI knew how to retreat in all previous TW games (in STW and MTW the AI even knew how to make tactical retreats), but not in ETW. I actually had to fight a battle in which 12 men attacked my 1000+. Of course, I auto-resolved and suffered over a hundred casualties! Also, you keep ignoring my statements about ETW's AI treating each province as a seperate country which was NOT the case previously and is HUGE problem with the game.


When you embark on a 2-3 year software project, you can not perform a proof of concept on everything. That's just not how software works. I'm sorry you think it should be different, but as someone who manages software projects let me just tell you that thinking is totally detatched from reality.

So my expectations of the AI being able to function within a game are detached from reality? To expect the AI to be able to handle new features introduced in a game is not part of the deal when I purchase that game? Sorry, but I think that is absurd. That sounds like you're grasping at straws to find some excuse for a proven fact: ETW's AI doesn't know how to handle MANY of the game's features. That's not an industry standard, but just shoddy work and excusing it sounds like rabid fanboyism.

Plus, CA has been making these games since 2000- they are not some start-up company. They're the BIG BOY on the block with massive resources in comparison to other PC game makers. There is no excuse for the state ETW was released in especially in comparsion to other strategy games on market. Further, ETW has been in development longer than 2-3 years. It's been development since 2005.

You are certainly implying it whether you know it or not. Whenever you make a case that the AI does X when it should do Y (such as why does the AI declare war or not make peace or whatever) you are implicitly comparing it's "irrational" behaviour to what a human would do.

Nonsense. You're just ignoring what I wrote to attack a strawman argument. My point was simple: CA should not have added in a new feature that made the game MORE difficult for the AI which is what the addition of raiding did. I'm ALL for simplification to help the AI (as you chose to ignore by not cutting and pasting my remarks on it. I guess they didn't fit into your version of my argument.)


As a fan of the EU and HOI series, let me just say that the AI there sucks horribly too. Ever seen an amphibious invasion in EU2? Yeah right. You think "mini" raiding armies are a problem in TW? Did you even play EU2? it's funny because mos tof the things you complain about in the TW series have also plagued the EU series. One great thing about the EU series though is the diplomatic model is way ahead of the TW series. Protectorates/vassals all automatically are a part of your alliance and no one can dow them without dowing you, etc. But the AI there is also problematic. Like when your bad boy rating goes up everybody DOWs you even dinky little Savoy that has a tiny army will join in.

Again you're creating a strawman argument. I didn't say word about EU2. I specifically mentioned EU3, which has a pretty darn good AI by PC gaming standards (all of which are exploitable, but some are clearly better than others), and certainly vastly superior to ETW's CAI. If you want to compare the AI of a game released almost a decade ago to ETW's then go ahead, but you're being disingenuous again. And it's a sad fact that EU2's AI is still better than ETW's.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion and I can not quesiton the integrity of your feelings. But the arguments and comparisons you're making don't really add up.

So my arguments and comparisons, which you either ignored or purposely distorted, don't add up, huh? Well, if you're arguing against a bunch of stuff that I didn't actually say and then of course its not going to add up in your estimation! How convenient! Further, the few of my statements you have directly addressed apparently have the fatal flaw of being at odds with your opinion so undoubtedly those don't add up either. Wow! Big surprise!

If you're angry because you think CA is omnipotent and when they start a 2-3 year software project they knew the CAI would break on certain new campaign map features they added, well yes, I can see why that would frustrate you. But that's rooted in ignorance - that's not how it works and if they halted all progress on the rest of the game until the AI was good enough we'd still be playing Medieval Total War and CA would be bankrupt.

Thanks for the condescension.

I never said anything about CA halting ALL progress. (You just looooove "the strawman", don't you!) For the record, I love ETW's battle engine which I've mentioned before so don't pretend I didn't say it. The battles are gorgeous and undoubtedly CA's best work of any game of the series. Who is to say that ETW would not have sold the same or even more units with this battle engine and a refined and updated version of the earlier "Risk-Style" maps? Afterall, it's been the battles that have been the showpieces of the TW series and the new candy definitely moves units. Combine this battle engine with a decent CAI that can work within its map and CA would have a classic on its hands. That's what I mourn about this game- so close, but so far away.

Omnipotence wasn't needed for CA to be aware that its CAI would struggle with ETW's map. RTW and M2TW both fully illustrated the problems the CAI were having with these free-style type maps. So it wouldn't have taken much to figure out that adding more features to the campaign map would make things even tougher on the AI. Yet CA pushed forward. Also, CA knew about these CAI issues prior to release because a blind man can see them in the dark. I just wish CA had used some common sense during testing: if they saw that the AI couldn't handle a new feature then get rid of it or find a workaround. Maybe some people would have been ticked off if one of their favorite "features" (exploits) was taken away, but ETW would have been a better game for it. I'd far prefer a simpler but more challenging game than having a game full of features that I can use but the AI cannot. Basically, CA reached beyond their AI designing capabilities for this game. One may applaud the ideas and effort, but it simply didn't work and ETW suffered for it. And, unfortunately, I don't think CA will be able to ever get their CAI to function well within ETW's map- it's too complicated and CA has no record of vastly improving their AIs through patching or an expansion. I'd love to be proven wrong! Sadly, however, I think ETW will be the PC game version of "A Bridge Too Far."

Anyway your disingenuousness, strawman arguments, and condescending insults has convinced me that our little debate is at an end. You obviously cannot debate without resorting to such tactics so what's the point of continuing? If you want to keep stating how wrong my impressions of the sorry state of ETW's CAI are and rail about my "ignorance" of the software development world then go right ahead. However, I've never enjoyed someone p%ssing on my back and telling me it's raining, and that's what your defense of ETW's CAI feels like (especially since you're not even playing the game with it!)

[Cecil XIX]

So many of these problems could be aleviated by having a full-blown, all-inclusive online hotseat mode. Who cares how many years it would take to finish? It would be the ultimate succession game!

[Didz]

Give TROM a try. I'm engaged in an epic struggle against the Mughal Empire which owns all of India.

TROM does seem to make a big difference to the battle AI, which is why I don't comment on it anymore, as I'm no longer sure if the performance I get is representative of the game or the mod.

I certainly wouldn't waste my time going back to vanilla to find out. If your interested in the history I would certainly urge anyone to try TROM. Although I hear good stuff about DarthMod too.

[pevergreen]

So many of these problems could be aleviated by having a full-blown, all-inclusive online hotseat mode. Who cares how many years it would take to finish? It would be the ultimate succession game!

1v1 campaign is coming.

Its coming. Its coming. Its coming.

*holds teddy bear tight and rocks backwards and forwards*

[Didz]

So many of these problems could be aleviated by having a full-blown, all-inclusive online hotseat mode. Who cares how many years it would take to finish? It would be the ultimate succession game!

I'm a bit more sceptical about MP campaign mode. I played an MP campaign of MTW2 and one of the problems is that human players just naturally use all the expliots available so it becomes a sort of battle over 'who knows the best cheats' rather than actual gameplay.

[Schiltrom]

I love virtually everything about Empire, in fact the only thing I can thing of that I REALLY hate is the fact that besieged AI NEVER surrender even if I can't see the red in the balance of power (BOP, he he) bar. Perhaps they just can't comprehend their utter lack of chance.

[Slaists]

The basic problem is that the Campaign AI doesn't understand the principles by which the game works.

If you do a simple test you can easily prove this for yourself. About a month ago I decided that the campaign game was simply too easy if you expliot the loopholes in the game mechanic's, and I imposed a few basic house rules to limit my own options and give the Campaign AI more of a chance.

One of these rules was that I would never ever occupy more than one Trade Portal in the same Trade Theatre.

Typically, human players begin their campaigns by what is usually referred to as 'The Trade Race', which basically involves defeating the pirates guarding the trade theatres and posting trade ships on every Trade Portal to secure a monopoly in the trade of Ivory, Spices or Sugar. I played my first few campaigns this way and it nets the player a huge income that then allows them to dominate the game.

I figured that if I limited my acquisitions to one Trade Port per theatre maximum, I could still place 14 x East Indiamen on that spot and earn a decent income, but that there would always be other trade ports open for use by the AI, and so they would also be able to make a decent trade income and the resulting challenge would be greater. I even thought naively that it would result in an ongoing naval challenge as various factions fought over domination of the various trade theatres.

In fact, when I analysed the Campaign AI's response to this opportunity it was quite obvious that the Campaign AI had no idea how to expliot the trade theatres.

In many cases trade posts were simply left unoccupied despite the fact that for some reason factions do send fleets into the trade theatre zones and have them hang about pointlessly.

In most other cases even when the trade ports were claimed by the AI, little or no income is generated from them suggesting that most of the ships positioned on them are warships rather than traders.

In one particular incident I actually attack one of these fleets to discover that it consisted on one trade ship and four warships. In fact, the stack was producing a Net Loss for the faction that sent it, as the ships maintenance costs exceeded the potential income.

On another occassion I discovered that Great Britain had dispatched a fleet of seven ships to a Madagascar Trade Post which was not only not producing any income (e.g. it was all warships), but also had an almost full army stack aboard. The cost of that fleet and the army must have been huge and it just sat on the Trade Post for most of the game.

When the Campaign AI is that 'ignorant' of how the game actually works, let alone what strategies to employ to win then there is very little that we players can do to help, and as CA will not release the Mod Tools necessary to change the AI and Diplomacy behaviour it seems unlikely that things will improve any time soon.

Yes, the campaign AI is a disaster still, especially the economic AI... Post 1.3, the only thing that keeps it afloat is the seemingly huge cash infusions it gets on VH. To be honest though, the economic AI was never CA's forte. I remember it being absolutely moronic in all TW titles all the way back to Shogun.

[resonantblue]

So essentially you've admitted that you're playing a MODDED version of the game. Why? Could it be possible that you felt the vanilla CAI was subpar? If your arguments about an "improved CAI" are based on your playing a mod then your entire argument here is disingenuous. I'm NOT talking about a MODDED game!

I already alluded to this in another post in this forum, but the two big changes TROM makes that I like are - less lethal long range musketry and much more accurate artillery. It does improve some other facets of the game (cash infusions to AI nations, etc), but I played vanilla and was doing just fine.

Amphibious assaults in ETW are rare to non-existent which was NOT the case in previous TW games.

Shrug. I can dig out a bunch of threads from people who disagree with you. Not that it would help - you've got an axe to grind and no amount of fact or logic is going to get in the way!

Further, when I'm talking about the AI not using diplomacy I'm NOT talking about the player being able to squeeze a deal out of the AI, but that the AI nations are not using it amongst themselves which is a FAR bigger problem and something I made very clear in my first post.

The AI does make peace. Just not very often. For the same reason in 1.3 it doesn't make peace with the human very often. They chose to make the diplomacy highly dependent on relations between the two countries and when war and territorial expansion can result in something like -200 relations, it's going to be hard to make peace. Things were different in 1.2, making it clear that this was a _choice_ by CA. They may find later it was a bad decision (I hope so), but what you're complaining about is not relevant.

This was NOT the case in previous TW titles. The AI nations in ETW is not making peace amongst themselves, not maxing out their trade routes with each other, and not making new alliances. It's killing their economies and killing the game!

See this is what I mean about you comparing the AI to human behaviour. A human player will do this because frankly the human player, end game, is going to take over the entire world anyways. In real history, nations did not make trade agreements with every nation they were at peace with. In fact, quite the opposite - mercantilism was still a favoured trading philosophy in the 18th century - and the idea that trading, while it may benefit you, but would benefit your trade partner relatively more is something that was long recognized by whoever the dominant trading nation of the time was. So they often did NOT trade with a nation that may have wanted to trade with them.

But none of that matters, because a human player always maximizes trade agreements and you, regardless of your protests otherwise, expect the CAI to act like a human.

A human player would, of course, request a trade agreement with everyone its not at war with. To the point that if that's how you really feel, we ought to just remove the "Request Trade Agreement" option from the diplomacy menu since you feel all AI players should act like humans and trade agreements should be implicit with peace.

(Well, at least, the vanilla version, maybe not the modded version that you're playing.) The AIs of ALL previous TW games were able to do the above. Further, the AI knew how to retreat in all previous TW games (in STW and MTW the AI even knew how to make tactical retreats), but not in ETW. I actually had to fight a battle in which 12 men attacked my 1000+. Of course, I auto-resolved and suffered over a hundred casualties! Also, you keep ignoring my statements about ETW's AI treating each province as a seperate country which was NOT the case previously and is HUGE problem with the game.

If you think they can't make the AI perform a tactical retreat you're kidding yourself. They _chose_ not to allow it, for whatever reason. Perhaps to shut up your other half, all the other people who endlessly complained about chasing little raiding armies all over the place and how annoying that was? Now there's a thought.

Thanks for the condescension.

No problem. It only took one response from you to realize that you're really angry and not likely to be persuaded by rational discourse. Embarassing you won't change your mind either, but it might make you think twice before listing all the reasons CA is evil, bad and should be punished for their insolence.

I never said anything about CA halting ALL progress. (You just looooove "the strawman", don't you!) For the record, I love ETW's battle engine which I've mentioned before so don't pretend I didn't say it. The battles are gorgeous and undoubtedly CA's best work of any game of the series. Who is to say that ETW would not have sold the same or even more units with this battle engine and a refined and updated version of the earlier "Risk-Style" maps? Afterall, it's been the battles that have been the showpieces of the TW series and the new candy definitely moves units. Combine this battle engine with a decent CAI that can work within its map and CA would have a classic on its hands. That's what I mourn about this game- so close, but so far away.

If you don't want them to add any features the CAI can't handle and your position is also that the CAI is totally broken and can barely stand on its own two feet what other conclusion should I draw? Obviously it's exaggerated to make a point, but the point stands.

Omnipotence wasn't needed for CA to be aware that its CAI would struggle with ETW's map. RTW and M2TW both fully illustrated the problems the CAI were having with these free-style type maps.

Okay so the obvious solution was for them to what... ? Roll back the campaign map back to the Risk style map because you don't think they should be allowed to release features that the CAI may not perfectly handle? Or just keep the campaign map there without any progress - progress that I will say personally I really like - until they can perfect the campaign AIs ability to manage it (eg never)?

I hate to break it to you, but to plenty of consumers, myself included, the CAI handles reasonably well. Well enough to play and enjoy the game. Is it perfect? No. Does it react how a human would react? No. Are either expectations reasonable? No. Am I willing to shell out $60 for the game, CAI and all? Absolutely. Has CA done its job in providing me what I consider value for my money? Yes. The number of hours I"ve spent on ETW would cost me about $5000 in movie tickets, for the equivalent entertainment level. I'm certainly appreciative of the value in ETW and other video games.

So it wouldn't have taken much to figure out that adding more features to the campaign map would make things even tougher on the AI. Yet CA pushed forward. Also, CA knew about these CAI issues prior to release because a blind man can see them in the dark. I just wish CA had used some common sense during testing: if they saw that the AI couldn't handle a new feature then get rid of it or find a workaround. Maybe some people would have been ticked off if one of their favorite "features" (exploits) was taken away, but ETW would have been a better game for it. I'd far prefer a simpler but more challenging game than having a game full of features that I can use but the AI cannot. Basically, CA reached beyond their AI designing capabilities for this game. One may applaud the ideas and effort, but it simply didn't work and ETW suffered for it. And, unfortunately, I don't think CA will be able to ever get their CAI to function well within ETW's map- it's too complicated and CA has no record of vastly improving their AIs through patching or an expansion. I'd love to be proven wrong! Sadly, however, I think ETW will be the PC game version of "A Bridge Too Far."

Yes, they're evil and they thought about this very scenario and decided to screw the consumer. Yes.

Anyway your disingenuousness, strawman arguments, and condescending insults has convinced me that our little debate is at an end. You obviously cannot debate without resorting to such tactics so what's the point of continuing? If you want to keep stating how wrong my impressions of the sorry state of ETW's CAI are and rail about my "ignorance" of the software development world then go right ahead. However, I've never enjoyed someone p%ssing on my back and telling me it's raining, and that's what your defense of ETW's CAI feels like (especially since you're not even playing the game with it!)

That's a shame. The sheer voulme of your irrational rantings has almost given me enough source material to complete my new book. I just need a few more posts from you to finish it off and we can probably even swing a movie deal.

Bottom line? Yes there are problems with the game. Was there nefarious intent of some sort at CA to extort you out of your hard earned $60? No. Is it playable? Certainly. Is it worth $60 or whatever you paid for it? That depends on you doesn't it? I certainly found plenty of value in my ETW purchase. Your mileage may vary.

[Martok]

Gentlemen, please dial it back a little. It's been an interesting conversation thus far, but it's gotten a bit....heated, shall we say? I understand all too well that a lot of folks have strong feelings on this subject -- including Yours Truly -- but we have to be able to discuss things calmly and civilly.

[Didz]

I love virtually everything about Empire, in fact the only thing I can thing of that I REALLY hate is the fact that besieged AI NEVER surrender even if I can't see the red in the balance of power (BOP, he he) bar. Perhaps they just can't comprehend their utter lack of chance.

I've actually had a besieged AI surrender once.

I think I even had the AI ask for peace once (however, I may have been dreaming)

[resonantblue]

I'm sorry. It's a character flaw I have. I rather enjoy heated online discussions.

I will back away from this thread now :).

[Yun Dog]

As some closing remarks to this thread I will add a personal measure of where I think this game is at.

Look at my sig. 6.5hrs/ 2 weeks

pre 1.3 this was 80hrs/2 weeks

I dont think Im the only one who has stopped playing this game

Last night I tried to pick up my game again - 2 turns - 2 more nations on the 'at war list'

meh tell em to take a number and get in line

I didnt click a third turn

nothing wrong with this game? then why arnt I playing it

And with Anno 1404 (dawn of discovery), HOI3 on the horizon

TOO SLOW!! CA

[oldpiker]

My first computer was a VIC-20 and my first gaming machine was a C-64. I am not new to gaming. I felt I needed to comment here. Your points are all well-taken. I agree with most. At some point in every game you become aware of the compromises and lack-of-reality of the whole shebang. My immersion in disbelief is usually over at that point. Up til that time I enjoy being part of the deception. After that I can frequently get many more miles out of just finding ways to "outsmart" the AI. It becomes an interesting challenge all its own. In a sense...figuring out how to "break" the game. In spite of its many and obvious flaws, I have found ETW to be one of the most engaging startegy titles I have ever owned. Its tactical battle engine is pretty impressive overall. Anybody who ever set up toy soldiers or "marble armies" as a child, would certainly find it amazing. Still, what I'm not getting is how so many players are able to run this monster, seemingly without technical difficulties (constant CTDs, migrating to the inability to eventually load saves and even finish the game). I don't usually have a cutting edge box, but I do roll my own, and normally have a machine that is lean enough and mean enough to run just about anything succesfully at some level. I have researched the forums and now think the game's memory address issues may be what have finally halted my ability to run ETW at all. How are so many you able to run this software long enough and hard enough to even discuss AI issues without it crashing constantly? Seems to me that this game's conceptual and AI issues rank far below its stability problems. This is one of the most unstable pieces of software I have ever run.

[jsberry]

My first computer was a VIC-20 and my first gaming machine was a C-64. I am not new to gaming. I felt I needed to comment here. Your points are all well-taken. I agree with most. At some point in every game you become aware of the compromises and lack-of-reality of the whole shebang. My immersion in disbelief is usually over at that point. Up til that time I enjoy being part of the deception. After that I can frequently get many more miles out of just finding ways to "outsmart" the AI. It becomes an interesting challenge all its own. In a sense...figuring out how to "break" the game. In spite of its many and obvious flaws, I have found ETW to be one of the most engaging startegy titles I have ever owned. Its tactical battle engine is pretty impressive overall. Anybody who ever set up toy soldiers or "marble armies" as a child, would certainly find it amazing. Still, what I'm not getting is how so many players are able to run this monster, seemingly without technical difficulties (constant CTDs, migrating to the inability to eventually load saves and even finish the game). I don't usually have a cutting edge box, but I do roll my own, and normally have a machine that is lean enough and mean enough to run just about anything succesfully at some level. I have researched the forums and now think the game's memory address issues may be what have finally halted my ability to run ETW at all. How are so many you able to run this software long enough and hard enough to even discuss AI issues without it crashing constantly? Seems to me that this game's conceptual and AI issues rank far below its stability problems. This is one of the most unstable pieces of software I have ever run.

You answered your own question. Figuring out how to outsmart the CTD is the MOST FUN thing about Total War games. Save every turn! Still crashes? Don't move the ship into the port. Now save again! Try a saved game from 3 years ago. This time, auto-calc that battle. The strategies are endless, as is the CTD frustration. Turn the CTD frustration into your ally, by making it part of the game. That's what Total War is all about.

[Slyspy]

It was clear when RTW came out that the AI couldn't play it's own game. It just couldn't cope with some of the extra features, especially the open map. To make matters worse some issues were carried over from STW! Things haven't really improved. The game has become ever more complex, which makes it excellent for the player, but the barely improved AI just can't handle it.

[oldpiker]

I'm in synch with that. Trouble with ETW though, is that you can get to a place where none of the saves will load, or, if you find one that will, and play a battle through again from that point, you get a CTD immediately after, especially if you are going through an end-of-turn. It becomes impossible to get any of the saves to play through to a point where the game will advance and offer up a new save point. I don't keep more than a handfull of saves (at a gig or so of disk space apiece), so my options quickly become limited. This is obviously turning out to be a bad strategy with ETW! After quite a bit of research, I believe most of the issues commonly being experienced are due to the well-documented large memory space issues. I tried the suggestion by "Mad Boris," to no avail. Also have tried totally minimizing all settings just to see if I could get one of the saves to load up and play. No joy there. I do wonder if there is some corruption issue with the save games. I'm pretty much at the wall now. About the only option, if I want to keep running this software, is to start a new campaign, play it through till the memory problems bring everything to a halt again, and accept that I will never be able see a campaign through to the end. Bummer, since a lot of the research goodies don't become available til near the end game. BTW...I am running: Gigabyte GA-M59SLI, AMD\A64x2-4600,2GB Corsair 6400C4, 9600GT 512MB on Win XP SP3. I shut down all uneccessary processes before running ETW

[Divine Wind]

As some closing remarks to this thread I will add a personal measure of where I think this game is at.

Look at my sig. 6.5hrs/ 2 weeks

pre 1.3 this was 80hrs/2 weeks

I dont think Im the only one who has stopped playing this game

Last night I tried to pick up my game again - 2 turns - 2 more nations on the 'at war list'

meh tell em to take a number and get in line

I didnt click a third turn

nothing wrong with this game? then why arnt I playing it

And with Anno 1404 (dawn of discovery), HOI3 on the horizon

TOO SLOW!! CA

I'm exactly the same. After 1.3 came out, the frustration I had with ETW just made me give up entirely with the game. I tried reloading a new campaign last week after work, and almost instantly I was at war with half the world. I was clicking "quit" shortly after.

Empire (and MTW 2 to some extent) just lack something that Shoggie, MTW 1, and Rome had. The latter 3 gave me thousands of playing hours, replayability, role playing, and satisfaction. ETW, and MTW2 have been incredible disappointments for me and I will have to consider any future purchases in the total war series very seriously.

[oldpiker]

ETW is an excellent example of modern gaming trends that promote eye candy over gameplay. The old Commodore 64 from the 1980s hosted some really fine gaming challenges all running within 64 kilobytes. Two I remember fondly are Red Storm Rising, and the original Pirates from Sid Meir. They featured very basic graphics, but both totally immersed you in interesting play. Designers were not tempted to overdo the graphics because the capability was just not there. Instead, they worked within a very limited palette to deliver some genuinely challenging gaming. Don't get me wrong. ETW has the potential to be one of the finest RTS titles ever developed. And let's give them credit...it's a gorgeous piece of work. It just doesn't work because they chose eye candy over effective gameplay. If it didn't have potential I wouldn't have let it torture me through so many crashes over the last few months.

[anders]

about gameplay versus eye candy, and the AI not being able to play its own game from RTW and onwards, I think I would be very happy if we could have the old MTW campaign game back, where apart from economy ( no AI trade lanes) and diplomacy the CAI worked well enough within the games parameters, and add the beautiful looks of MTW2/ETW.

[antisocialmunky]

As some closing remarks to this thread I will add a personal measure of where I think this game is at.

Look at my sig. 6.5hrs/ 2 weeks

pre 1.3 this was 80hrs/2 weeks

I dont think Im the only one who has stopped playing this game

Last night I tried to pick up my game again - 2 turns - 2 more nations on the 'at war list'

meh tell em to take a number and get in line

I didnt click a third turn

nothing wrong with this game? then why arnt I playing it

And with Anno 1404 (dawn of discovery), HOI3 on the horizon

TOO SLOW!! CA

Anno is out and quite interesting(I like their depiction of land warfare and hte city building in topnotch though I will always say the Pharoah style was better) though ships are too slow even with '+' pressed. What's HOI3?

[Owen Glyndwr]

Well, I just played EUIII, and it really gave me some perspective on this AI. In my first campaign I invaded Scotland as England, and France was immediately dragged me it. I was expecting it to be a proxy war but oh was I wrong. I managed to steamroll Scotland, and had successfully captured the lowlands within 2 years. And then the French came. Being the shortsighted fool I was I neglected a navy, and France wholeheartedly took advantage. Soon they were send stack after stack of troops in, invading my west coast, and taking Glamorgan and Cornwall from me. At the same time they took advantage of my lack of naval support and took Dublin and Calais Naturally I was forced to abandon the lowlands to go defend my country. After a series of stunning defeats I was on the ropes. Scotland came back and retook Lorian and Ayshire, and were starting to move into Yorkshire and Lancashire. Meanwhile the French were pushing from two directions into my center. I was forced to change my strategy. This would no longer be a simple matter of me crushing Scotland into my empire. So I crashed my economy and created the biggest army my country would allow. And it still wasn't easy. I spent the next 10 years of my game kicking the French out, and moving up into Scotland. Finally I did that, but lacking a navy, was unable to push further in on the French. Not to mention my my kingdom was in shambles and my people were on the verge of revolt. So finally I went into peace negotiations.

Here´s another aspect of EU that I really like. Making negotiations is really intuitive, and they have a neat little map so you can see what they're ceding, you can order them to become your vassals, you can even force them to renationalize nations that they once destroyed (for example you can force England to give Wales its freedom .

Anyways, to Scotland I wasn't pleasant. They were physically broken, and had nothing to negotiate with. I essentially destroyed their nation, taking everything from them, but leaving them Lothian as a joke. As for France, even though I managed to kick them out of my country! At this point the French still held Dublin, but they didn't own Calais any more. Burgundy entered into a separate war with the French (I tried allying with them once I realized this, but they flat out rejected it. That is one thing I don't like about the game. Getting anything out of the AI can be extremely difficult, even when both nations have something to gain.) Anywho, the Burgundians came in and recaptured Calais for me! So now I had a bartering chip. At that point the French were re-besieging Calais, and me, without a navy, stood no chance of holding it. So In exchange for Dublin, I agreed to give up Calais. The French accepted this wholeheartedly, and we went about our separate ways. It's been twenty years now, and the French, while not being outright amiable, are at least neutral to me.

Now there were some things I truly liked about this.

1.) The first part was that I was severely punished in the game. Not for being the human player, but for blindly running into a war without considering the tangled web of alliances, and the implications of doing such a foolish act. Because of this, I found myself quite unprepared for the three front war I got stuck with (Me vs. Scotland, France and Norway), and doing this had a severe effect on my economy as my merchants were kicked out of nearly every country, and I was left friendless for my aggressions.

2.) France got dragged into the war due to it's alliance. But despite that, turned out to be my greatest foe. They actually cohesively invaded my country, and damn well near beat me. At the same time Scotland was acting in conjunction, and put me on a multi-front war. Even Norway got in on the action, reinforcing Scotland, and invading my East coast.

3.) Fighting the war was fun, but extremely tiring. I don't know about other people, but I do actually like to lose once in a while. WHen you're small, or on the ropes, the game is actually pretty fun. When you're so powerful that you can basically do whatever you want, the game is boring as hell.

4.) The AI identified weaknesses that I possessed, and then exploited them, namely, my lack of a navy, and the fact that I only had one army, which was distracted up north. And when this happened, they attacked en force.

5.) The AI actually settled for logical peace treaties. With Scotland, who really didn't exist, I could be harsh, and Scotland took what it could get. With France and Norway, with whom I didn't have a position to bargain from (They never really lost anything), I had to give a little to coerce a peace out of them, though it still wasn't outrageous. A couple ducats here, and a worthless territory there.

Anyways, it was a very cool engine, and the AI (to me, anyways) seemed very intelligent and reasonable.

Maybe the fact that the game plays on a tile system similar to M:TW has an effect on the AI's cohesiveness, but I really wish it was something CA could look into. (Oh, and I think the fact that things happen in realtime is pretty cool!)

[oldpiker]

ETW is really two games -the political/diplomatic and empire-building element, and the tactical battle element. I doubt that CA will ever put in the effort or resources to effectively rewrite the empire-building element. I would like to see them at least offer an add-on or separate stand-alone that simply featured the tactical battle engine and the option to set up totally customized battle scenarios on interesting and varied terrain. That could be a nice consolation prize that would offer an hour or two of interesting battle action. They should also offer it free to those of us who ponied up for ETW.

[nafod]

ETW may be two games....neither of which function.

I was in a serious drought for strategy play. Having exhausted CiV4 I reached for EU and found quite the delight.

I can't say RTW or MTW2 are "deeper" than ETW, but they sure as hell seemed to be.