What Total War do you think is the best and why?

[TosaInu]

Well... I'll say that each one has it reasons to prefer a game on another. Some other person have as well a reason to "fight" about what is best and why. But here's a difference. When you play a game to get rid of the heavy thoughts of the day, you don't play the same game as when you have been in holidays for a week and are bored: that's why shooting at stupid rabbits while jumping everywhere is a good game sometimes, and managing a whole empire is a good game at other times.

Some people listen to music to ease their mind, some to analyze technically the use of an instrument (I know some of those), some to get some energy, some to sleep.. They could argue for ages, and try to be "objectively saying that their view is the best because"... Forgetting that they don't have the same goal first...

All games have a reason to be the best for someone. Speaking of why you like it can then give to someone else the idea of trying it - but you won't logically force anyone into doing anything.

[caravel]

Completely unfounded.

Really? You had first defined the phenomenon of the "passive gamer" in this thread. Now it seems that you resent being regarded as being among their number, even though all of your previous comments place you firmly in this category? You've just said again that it was a "great move" by CA in making the game easier? I'm not going to collect up a big bundle of your quotes. I invite anyone to go and have a look through the thread.

*Another sigh* Caravel, are you an obnoxious person?

Never ask an obnoxious person if he/she is obnoxious or not. You should know this.

You have purposefully mis-quoted me for your own ends, again. You seem to be having difficuly grasping the whole idea of a passive gamer.

Allow me to voice my disagreement. I have not misquoted you at all, I'm merely trying to illustrate the inane nature of the worthless classifications or "pigeonholes" that you're coming up with. I simply cannot take your "passive gamer" / "average gamer" gibberish seriously, because it is in essence lame marketing jargon that has it's origins in, yes you guessed it, marketing! It was in fact you that directly misquoted me earlier on in the thread. I chose to ignore this as it quite simply wasn't worth the effort of responding to.

Though now I feel that we are wandering offtopic somewhat?

Back on topic: Which TW is the best? Why STW of course! And why is that I hear you ask? Well because it had geishas () and geishas () = better gameplay and if you disagree with me... well errrmmm you're abnoxious and and...

[Gregoshi]

caravel, you remember that STW does not have camels, right?

[caravel]

caravel, you remember that STW does not have camels, right?

Shhhh...














better camels = better gameplay

[Orda Khan]

The battle AI is slightly stronger than the Shogun battle AI in that AI generals don't suicide and cavalry tries to flank. The AI uses a good selection of units, and guns come into use fairly soon in the campaign.

I don't know if I would agree, though it's been a while since I played a campaign with the Samurai mod, perhaps it has been updated.
I completed a campaign with Uesugi and I can remember being particularly sick of seeing endless Kensai on the battlefield. Of course, they soon drop when peppered with arrows but they are still not cost effective.
Generals (Hatamoto) still insisted on riding up to my units to commence fire with their bows, which generally resulted in them dying or being routed by the volleys of arrows they received. Incidentally, I tried some custom battles and noticed that if the enemy general was a cav unit, it would charge your line sooner or later.
The AI has never grasped how to effectively use ranged units but sending a number of units (monks and yari cav) to stand directly behind a unit under fire, incurring all the back kills, is one of the things I was thinking about when I made my earlier 'stupid' comment

......Orda

[Hound of Ulster]

I've been meaning to respond to this one for a while now...

I might try it, but there are serious problems with RTW that Europa Barbarorum can't fix. For instance:

1. the strategic AI doesn't know how to play on the campaign map. on higher difficulty settings it does
2. there is a bias in the strategic AI that makes it underestimate the strength of a player's army causing the AI to attack when it shouldn't. This does not occur on higher difficulty settings or in the mods
3. there is no way to stop the over effectiveness of blobbing units in battle.
4. the battle AI doesn't protect the flanks of its army.generals with better traits will flank YOU, which leaves them vunerable to you flanking them
5. the battle AI frontally charges superior enemy units with inferior units.What's a better way to waist your enemy's missiles than charging with your most useless unit
6. the battle AI doesn't know its men have shields.massed infantry are always more vunerable to archer fire, and only the Romans had the Testudo, and not until late in the timeframe covered in RTW
7. the battle AI won't move a unit that's under fire out of range.That's a serious problem only on sieges with cavalry. The A.I will try to reform its line or charge, depending on the traits of the general commanding the army
8. the battle AI doesn't coordinate multiple armies. Yes it can on the higher difficulty settings and it tries to combine forces that are widely seperated
9. the battle AI runs its units to exhaustion. No it doesn't. If anything the AI is too cautious
10. the battle AI throws pila after a unit is engaged in melee. no it doesn't archers and skirmishers will often either join the melee or retire
11. the battle AI doesn't use the secondary weapon.yes it does, especially with the Romans
12. the phalanx has the butt spike bug which kills cavalry hitting it from behind.not in later versions of RTW, and this is not a bug, its realistic because not even the Samaritians had stirrups. This lack of control makes charging cavalry vunerable to being de-horsed when making contact with the enemy, and have you seen the butt-spike of a kontos spear used by most armies at the time?
13. the differential between walk and run speed is incorrect unless EB made new animation skeletons.fixed in most later RTW versions and the mods
14. the calculation for the effect of armor and shield protection is screwed up.Have you fought a battle between peasants and elite Roman legions? The Romans cut through the lower quality infantry like butter, but will suffer one or two losses on the initial charge
15. the AI doesn't protect its artillery from melee attack (this is a problem in MTW as well).artilllery is slow, unmanuverable and extremely vunerable to cavalry charges. The AI's problem in vanilla RTW is that it places the artillery too close to the front line and not behind the line on higher ground
16. the combat model is not robust leading to too high unpredictability of combat results.

wha?

What you are basically arguing for is an AI that is a combanation of Hannibal, Atilla, and Scipio Africanus on steriods using units built like T-72 tanks. Which would make the game unplayable by everybody except you.

[Flying Pig]

I like Romeon the harder difficulties but easy is useless- you can kill a Spartan Phalanx with 1 unit of Light Infantry and 1 Medium Cavalry!

[Puzz3D]

What you are basically arguing for is an AI that is a combanation of Hannibal, Atilla, and Scipio Africanus on steriods using units built like T-72 tanks. Which would make the game unplayable by everybody except you.

I'm asking for nothing more than an AI that's as good as the one created for Shogun. Of course, it would be nice to have some refinements of that AI, but that's not what happened in this series.

[TosaInu]

What you are basically arguing for is an AI that is a combanation of Hannibal, Atilla, and Scipio Africanus ..

Hello Hound of Ulster,

Sorry for tearing your message out of context, but that would actually be nice.

Very nice indeed, if some factions/generals showed some of the great skills those ancient generals had. Afaik, generals have command stars and that influences how tough his units are, RTW and or M2TW also have things like night attacker and such (?), but I don't recall having seen an AI army on the battlefield pulling off something nasty and unseen in other AI armies.

[The Wandering Scholar]

[Tony Furze]

My head goes with MTW, but my heart is 100% with Shogun.

[Puzz3D]

I've been meaning to respond to this one for a while...

Well I'll respond to this point by point, but I will try EB tonight on the highest difficulty setting.

1. the strategic AI doesn't know how to play on the campaign map. on higher difficulty settings it does.

I play on normal difficulty because I don't want the AI using cheats which alters one's perception of just how good the AI is. It's my understanding that the AI is as smart as it ever gets on normal difficulty. This is certainly the case in STW and MTW, but maybe RTW is different, although, I don't recall any such claim by CA.

2. there is a bias in the strategic AI that makes it underestimate the strength of a player's army causing the AI to attack when it shouldn't. This does not occur on higher difficulty settings or in the mods.

Ok. This will be true if the strategic AI does not factor in the combat bonus given to the tactical AI on the higher difficulty settings. It very likely doesn't factor that in because the strategic AI and the tactical AI are separate.

4. the battle AI doesn't protect the flanks of its army. generals with better traits will flank YOU, which leaves them vunerable to you flanking them.

The best I ever saw the RTW tactical AI play was in a battle using the SPQR mod where the AI held units in reserve, and used them to counterflank the units I sent in to flank the main battleline. There was fog so this came as a surprise to me since I didn't see the reserve units. I was using RTW 1.2 at the time. Generally, the AI just comes straight at you, but it does try to hit one side of your line. It does send units out to flank your line, but this move is not very well coordinated with timing of the frontal attack except in mods that slow down the combat resolution time.

Just the same, the AI doesn't really think defensively in terms of protecting its own flanks. It doesn't with the older STW/MTW tactical AI either unless an enemy unit gets within the proximity range, but the problem was more apparent in RTW due to the presence of the phalanx which is highly effective frontally but very weak on the sides and back and slow to change facing. In either STW or MTW you cannot race around a spear unit with a cavalry unit and hit the spear from the flank or rear because the spear unit can pivot fast enough to always face the cavalry unit. In RTW this is not the case. How can this have been screwed up like this unless CA just isn't paying enough attention to the tactical considerations? They treated movement speed as though it were an arbitrary variable that didn't affect tactical possibilities when in fact it does. If EB slowed down the cavalry then this won't be a problem for a lone phalanx unit, but vulnerability on the ends of the battle line is still an issue for the following reason.

In RTW 1.2 the AI would break up its phalanx line and send individual units to hit the flanks of enemy units in the opposing battleline which completely exposed the flanks of its individual phalanx units. This was corrected in later versions of RTW by making the units stay in line, but it leaves the tactical AI more vulnerable to flank attacks on its line because its reluctant to break a unit out from the end of the battleline even if the enemy's battle line is too far away to engage. In my opinion this needs additional fine tuning to work well tactically or better yet a new defensive mode for the tactical AI. You don't see the problem when the AI's army is stronger than yours because it attacks, but you see it when the AI's army is weaker. At least in STW the AI would withdraw from the battlefield if it was outclassed which is the smart thing to do. In RTW that would be even smarter because, unless the AI is defending a city, there's no important location that is being defended. I'll try EB and see if it plays differently, but even the creators of EB said that they didn't change the tactical AI. Of course, they can't change the tactical AI because its hard coded.

5. the battle AI frontally charges superior enemy units with inferior units. What's a better way to waist your enemy's missiles than charging with your most useless unit.

Come on. I'm not going to shoot its most useless unit just because the AI marches it out. Also, those weak units won't get to your line because when they get close the AI changes its mind and marches its unit back to its own lines. Then you can shoot it in the back, and the AI doesn't even make the unit run back while your are shooting it. In STW, the AI tries to make an indirect attack when its unit is weaker than the enemy unit. This is much smarter than charging frontally into the stronger unit.

6. the battle AI doesn't know its men have shields. massed infantry are always more vunerable to archer fire, and only the Romans had the Testudo, and not until late in the timeframe covered in RTW.

I'm talking about the ability to move a horse archer up on the right most unit of the AI's battle line and shoot into the right side of the unit. The unit has a shield, but the AI just lets the unit stand there. The men in the unit don't try to protect themselves with their shield which is right there on their left arm. I've never seen the AI play this dumb in STW over thousands of battes. Of course, STW doesn't have shields. This is an excellent example of how CA introduces features to their games, but doesn't make the feature known to the AI.

7. the battle AI won't move a unit that's under fire out of range. That's a serious problem only on sieges with cavalry. The A.I will try to reform its line or charge, depending on the traits of the general commanding the army.

How about move the unit back or into some trees like the STW AI does? I've never seen the RTW AI do this.

8. the battle AI doesn't coordinate multiple armies. Yes it can on the higher difficulty settings and it tries to combine forces that are widely seperated.

Yes on the strategic map, but I was referring to the tactical map where the AI will attack with one army instead of waiting for the second army to get into position. Multiple armies on the battlefield is very rare in STW. It happens more often in MTW, and quite often the AI won't charge until both armies are ready to charge simultaneously.

9. the battle AI runs its units to exhaustion. No it doesn't. If anything the AI is too cautious.

On many occasions I've observed the AI running its units in RTW when it should be walking. It clearly doesn't understand that running will cause fatigue. It doesn't understand this in STW either, but at least there the AI doesn't run its units until it decides to charge. I think that CA made the AI unit more inclined to run in RTW because they were obsessed with speeding up the battles in order to capture more of the RTS market. It's considerations like these that adversely impacted the tactical gameplay, and its why CA continues to refuse to impliment the best tactical gameplay they are capable of designing in their newer games.

10. the battle AI throws pila after a unit is engaged in melee. no it doesn't archers and skirmishers will often either join the melee or retire.

Yes they do throw the pila after engaging in melee. It's a known bug introduced in the final v1.5/v1.6 version of RTW/BI.

11. the battle AI doesn't use the secondary weapon. yes it does, especially with the Romans.

Ok. I'll test this tonight because the last time I tested the cataphract they did not use their axe and continued to fight with their lance after the charge.

12. the phalanx has the butt spike bug which kills cavalry hitting it from behind. not in later versions of RTW, and this is not a bug, its realistic because not even the Samaritians had stirrups. This lack of control makes charging cavalry vunerable to being de-horsed when making contact with the enemy, and have you seen the butt-spike of a kontos spear used by most armies at the time?

Yes it's another problem introduced by the patch that fixed the non-reversal of cavalry charge on the phalanx. It appears that the cavalry charge is not only reversed by the sarissa frontally, but is also reversed by the puny butt spike as well. Keep in mind also that the men at the back of the phalanx don't even have their sarissa lowered. The effect is so severe that you are better off walking cavalry into the back of a phalanx than charging into it.

13. the differential between walk and run speed is incorrect unless EB made new animation skeletons. fixed in most later RTW versions and the mods.

It wasn't fixed in the final version of RTW/BI, and you can't fix it with the terrain speed modifier because that slows down both walking and running speed. The difference between the walk and run speeds is still wrong by any kind of historical analysis you want to do. When we asked CA about this they said the game wasn't supposed to be a history lesson. Well that's inconsistent when their marketing department expounds upon how Total War games are based on history and how realistic it is. When pressed further on this they said the game has an historical flavor. Well. the later games fail on that account as well because STW is almost universally regarded as having the best historical atmosphere of all the Total war games not to mention the most realistic weather system as well.

14. the calculation for the effect of armor and shield protection is screwed up. Have you fought a battle between peasants and elite Roman legions? The Romans cut through the lower quality infantry like butter, but will suffer one or two losses on the initial charge.

Maybe CBR will comment because he ran the quantitative tests on armor. I've worked with him enough on testing to know that he's very precise, and I'm not going to repeat the tests because RTW has too many problems for me to waste my time testing the game. Besides, there is no more chance of patching RTW, and this problem is hard coded so mods can't fix it.

15. the AI doesn't protect its artillery from melee attack (this is a problem in MTW as well).artilllery is slow, unmanuverable and extremely vunerable to cavalry charges. The AI's problem in vanilla RTW is that it places the artillery too close to the front line and not behind the line on higher ground.

Every time the AI decides to move its army it leaves the slower moving artillery unprotected. That's when you can jump on it with cavalry.

[Puzz3D]

I don't know if I would agree, though it's been a while since I played a campaign with the Samurai mod, perhaps it has been updated.
I completed a campaign with Uesugi and I can remember being particularly sick of seeing endless Kensai on the battlefield. Of course, they soon drop when peppered with arrows but they are still not cost effective.

I agree with you about the kensai. I would have removed it from the campaign, and the only reason I don't in my own campaign is that I'm playtesting the mod so it has to be left in since barocca wants it in. We did remove this unit from multiplayer because it's impossible to balance it.

Generals (Hatamoto) still insisted on riding up to my units to commence fire with their bows, which generally resulted in them dying or being routed by the volleys of arrows they received.

The hatamoto has a longer range bow, so it will often shoot from beyond the range of return fire, but not always. It might be due to them targetting a unit that's behind your own shooters. It's clear that the AI doesn't understand that the hatamoto has reduced firepower compared to standard size unit. The AI was designed for all units to have the same number of men.

The hatamoto has armor = 5 which is the highest armor value used in the mod and in STW. We did try armor = 6, but that seemed to be too high for penetration of arrows, but it might be worth rechecking that. It might be worthwhile to reduce the power of guns from 4 hitpoints down to 2 to help the general survive better in the face of guns. This won't affect the survivability of men other than the general because they all have only 1 hitpoint. All in all however, I find the general to be highly survivable as he is currently implimented.

Incidentally, I tried some custom battles and noticed that if the enemy general was a cav unit, it would charge your line sooner or later.

Yes, but I think that's good because then the general has a chance of causing the enemy line to break. I use this tactic myself with the hatamoto genreral in multiplayer. At least the AI is not charging the enemy with the general immediately which is suicide.

The AI has never grasped how to effectively use ranged units but sending a number of units (monks and yari cav) to stand directly behind a unit under fire, incurring all the back kills, is one of the things I was thinking about when I made my earlier 'stupid' comment.

Right. The Total War AI has never understood that it is going to take losses from ranged fire. It doesn't react until after a unit has sustained substantial losses. This is an area where the AI should have been improved if not in the MI add-on then certainly by the time MTW was released. MTW/VI has a bug whereby the AI will sometimes move one or more units on top of a unit that is under fire. You could elect not to take advantage of this exploit against the AI when it happens. LongJohn tried to fix this, but he was unable to find the cause in the time he had available for the last patch to VI.

BTW, the AI uses the cav archer fairly well. I'm even reluctant to chase a cav archer with a yari cav because the losses and fatigue that the more expensive yari cav incures is often not worth the damage caused to the cav archer. In many cases the yari cav has to break off the pursuit before contact anyway because of othr enemy units in the area.

[The Wandering Scholar]

I would like to point out that what I said was not offensive in any way and I would like TosaInu to put my post back where it belongs. Or am I not allowed to question authority?

[Puzz3D]

From the Europa Barbarorum FAQ:


Q: Which is the recommend difficult setting for Europa Barbarorum?

A: Europa Barbarorum is best played on Very Hard / Medium. The AI is aggressive (in particular the slave faction) but don’t get stat bonuses on the battlefield. If you want a real challenge try VH/VH but be aware enemy units on the battlefield are getting massive bonuses (afaik: +7 attack, +7 defence, and a huge morale boost), you could have your fullstack army is hacked to pieces by 5 units levies...


Q: Do you have improved the AI in any way?

A: No, the AI is completely hardcoded, and cannot be altered.

[The Wandering Scholar]

EB is hardest on VH/H,

[Puzz3D]

EB is hardest on VH/H,

Well try telling that to Hound of Ulster. The AI is going to play the same way as it does in XGM which I've played extensively. In fact, the BI AI which XGM uses is better than the RTW AI that EB uses.

[The Wandering Scholar]

Right OK, HoU you heard that?

[TosaInu]

Well try telling that to Hound of Ulster. The AI is going to play the same way as it does in XGM which I've played extensively. In fact, the BI AI which XGM uses is better than the RTW AI that EB uses.

We compare the BI AI to the RTW AI then?

[Callahan9119]

i remember all of them differently than what they really are, i went back and played shogun again a while ago and was shocked at how simplistic and <forgive me> boring it was.

i'v played them all since shogun pretty much the day they were released and its just about not getting caught up in the memories.

shogun was the most fun single player and original mtw was best fun i had on multi

but i'd rather play mtw2 than any of the others currently, and i bet if i could take mtw2 back with me in a time machine and had a computer that could play it, my 5 years ago self would rather play mtw2 instead of ol mtw

i do know i wont be playing "empires" or whatever this new thing they are putting out is

[Drisos]

I only tried STW and RTW so far. Stw being my favourite.. well, favourite.. I don't really like RTW so maybe I can't call stw favourite among good games.. :P

STW SP is far more challenging, it seems. In the BI campaign, I take whatever barbarian factian, just build up my army and siege one city after another. nothing stops me. No one ever attacks me. :S There's some cool new stuff in the campaign though. Religion, more difficult loytalty system (though it's ridiculous you'll have to destroy public baths to keep population low enough not to have revolts..), a different style of moving, etc.
But the battles.. yuck. I don't like the graphics over the STW graphics at all. RTW may have more detail, but as Puzz said, in STW the units are recognizable, all have 'their own look', etc. Plus, the way people fight, kill, and fall, are ridiculous in RTW. I don't want to see detail when it looks so bad. Do something good, or don't do it..
Plus, the battles are far from easy. Waaaay too simple. For instance, I had to play stw for months and ask advice here before I could deal with the highest difficulty. With RTW I started the second campaign I played on highest setting, because it had been too easy. I just create 1 or 2 all-cav armies. They move fast across the map, and kill any army to the last man within seconds. No challenge at all. I don't even need flanking, etc, etc.
In STW, I still lose battles now and then. In RTW I have never, unless it was a hopeless situation. (outnumered.)

Plus, shogun has far better atmosphere. For me, RTW is a game. Shogun is an adventure.

And the small MP community I took part of for a few months was great. I still miss it. While I got disgusted about the public in the RTW foyer within minutes after the first time I logged in there..

[R'as al Ghul]

It has been claimed in this thread that the AI behaves differently on the different difficulty levels. That's not quite true.
In STW and MTW there's no difference for the campaign AI.
In STW and MTW the only difference for the battlefield AI is the bonus that is applied to units.

In RTW and M2 the campaign AI gets increasingly aggressive the higher the campaign difficulty is selected. (it can be argued if the AI's behaviour on levels higher than normal is smart or desirable).
In RTW and M2 the only difference for the battlefield AI is the bonus that is applied to units.

Here's an excerpt from frogbeastegg's RTW guide:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Difficulty

Difficulty is split into two categories; campaign map and battle map. Explaining exactly how difficulty works is … complicated. See, there are unknown factors, there is the known set of factors CA themselves told us, and there are the things players have guessed at.

Battle map
Normal is a level playing ground with no advantage to either side. I shall quote CA developer JeromeGrasdyke on the effects of difficulty on combat bonuses: “The combat bonuses are easy; they apply to attack only, while on Easy the human player gets a +4 bonus, on Hard the AI is given +4, and on Very Hard +7. The morale bonuses are much more complex, as they work on a series of sliding scales.” Unfortunately the very hard bonus is rather ridiculous and it allows the AI do crazy things, such as smashing a phalanx head on with plain hastati. The AI achieves results which should never happen, and the general attitude I have seen expressed towards this difficulty is one of frustration. So for now I recommend sticking with normal; it might be rather easy for veterans but at least your phalanx works …

Campaign map
Given that I only play with this set to very hard a true comparison is a tad difficult. This does seem to differ depending on whether you play a BI or RTW campaign, for example you starting money in BI is always the same, regardless of the setting, whereas in RTW you start with less money on the higher levels. The AI in both should be more aggressive on higher levels, and will use agents more to bribe your armies and cities on very hard. On the lower levels I’m told the AI will only target diplomats.

The readme for the 1.1 patch says that campaign map difficulty affects the results of auto-resolved battles. Although it does not actually state what changes are made for each difficulty it seems logical to assume that on easier difficulties the battles are most likely to give you favourable results, whereas on the harder levels you will take more losses and lose more battles.

It's an established fact that the Total War AI does not have different "personalities" in so far as it would act smarter on higher difficulties and afaik CA has never claimed otherwise.
The boni applied to the units and given by generals makes the battles harder to win and may deceive the perception of players.

-----------------------------
On Samurai Warlords:

It's my opinion that the STW and MTW AI's can deal quite good with the limited set of units that STW and the Samurai Warlords mod offer.
I also claim that I've fixed the problem of suicide generals in beta_8 of our mod by changing parameters for the Hatamoto unit. As long as the General is a Hatamoto unit you usually won't see any suicide attacks.
The Kensai is indeed hard to balance and I've not yet succeeded in terms of production of this unit. The AI, although it builds less Kensai than in beta_5, still loves this unit. I assume it's because of the high attack value, which is probably also the reason for Artillery spam in all titles.

[TosaInu]

Hello,

It's also my feeling/observation that the battlefield AI is the same for all factions and levels within a game title.

Tweaking the unitstats can have an effect on the behaviour of a unit, in that it starts making manoeuvres it otherwise wouldn't, but this is, how to say, more a side-effect than changing the AI, which is hardcoded.

It would be nice if generals/factions or even units can be told to adhere to this or that strategy. The Ikko scenario (ADF/BDF) is supposed to have an outraged mob of angry farmers. In some parts they have no hope to win, but they attack nevertheless. The ADF/BDF files leave only two options:

-they are so strong that they act as berserkers and also win.
-they don't win, but refuse to even get close.

[caravel]

I've found that when playing RTW on VH campaign map difficulty that the AI doesn't get any more clever but actually gets more aggressive in that it sends armies continually against it's enemies with terminator like persistence. These armies tend to be much more fragmented (multiple stacks attacking in a non cohesive and uncoordinated fashion) and are still led by captains, lacking the leadership of a general.

[Puzz3D]

I've found that when playing RTW on VH campaign map difficulty that the AI doesn't get any more clever but actually gets more aggressive in that it sends armies continually against it's enemies with terminator like persistence. These armies tend to be much more fragmented (multiple stacks attacking in a non cohesive and uncoordinated fashion) and are still led by captains, lacking the leadership of a general.

IIRC, this is where the BI strategic AI is improved because it consolidates stacks and puts generals into these stacks. I use the XGM mod and that can be played with either the RTW exe or the BI exe, so you can get a good comparison between the two AI's. I just haven't played it with the RTW exe in a very long time because I prefer using the BI exe. I won't say that you never see a general traveling alone in BI, but the AI always attacks me with large armies which does make the battles more difficult. I am playing Carthage, and the Egyptians attack relentlessly across the Sahara desert, which isn't historical, but it forced me to focus on driving back the Egyptians instead of going after Rome, which hasn't been easy because the economics is tight and good units are expensive. I'm playing XGM on normal/normal difficulty. At the strategic level the game is hard, but the battles all exhibit the same problems with the AI that I mentioned earlier and you have to fight a lot of those battles.

[Puzz3D]

It has been claimed in this thread that the AI behaves differently on the different difficulty levels. That's not quite true.

In STW and MTW the only difference for the battlefield AI is the bonus that is applied to units.

Not true R'as, and even I overlooked a change to the battle AI on the hard difficulty setting. This is from frogbeastegg's Guide to Medieval Total War, and I clearly remember the posts by Gil Jaysmith and LongJohn2 which she references here:

On difficulty
There are four difficulties, easy, normal, hard and expert. Your difficulty will decide how much money you start off with, any bonuses given to you or the AI and what tactics the AI will use on the two maps. Starting funds are as follows:
Easy = 10000 florins
Normal= 8000 florins
Hard = 6000 florins
Expert = 4000 florins
On easy the player will get an extra +4 to morale in battle, making it harder for the AI to rout your troops. On expert the AI get this bonus. Normal and hard don't give anyone a bonus. The AI will use different tactics on the battlefield depending on your difficulty. Here is a list provided by GilJaySmith, one of the developers of Total War:
- On expert the AI gets a morale bonus - on easy the player gets one
- On hard and above, AI skirmishers will try to avoid being pincered
- On easy the AI will not consider going into loose formation to avoid being shot at
- On easy the AI will not consider outflanking, double-envelopment, or stop-and-shoot tactics
- On easy the AI won't move troops out of the way of castle walls that may be about to collapse
- On easy the AI will try to hide rather than flee if the battle is going badly
- On easy the AI will not try ambushes
- On easy the AI will not try the 'appear weak' battle plan
- The AI is more likely to deploy in woods on harder difficulties, and less likely to camp near the red zone on easier difficulties
- The AI is more likely to consider scouting the map to find the rest of your army if it can't see it all on higher difficulties
- On easy the AI will not skirmish
- On higher than easy, the AI will specifically consider sh00ting at your artillery
- On easy the AI will generally attack rather than defend, and will not consider withdrawing for a much longer time
- On higher than easy, the AI will check to see if it's marching into enfilade fire when attacking your main body
- On easy the AI may come out of a wall breach to chase you if you attack and are repulsed

In addition to these changes LongJohn (another developer) says the following: The combat strength of the a.i. units is affected by the difficulty level.
On easy its combat effectiveness is reduced by 30-40% (can't remember the exact figure).
On hard it's increased by 10-15%, and on expert its 30%. 30% being around 75% of the increase you'd get from 1 valour upgrade.

[R'as al Ghul]

Not true R'as, and even I overlooked a change to the battle AI on the hard difficulty setting. This is from frogbeastegg's Guide to Medieval Total War, and I clearly remember the posts by Gil Jaysmith and LongJohn2 which she references here:

Yes, true. I had forgotten about that.

- On hard and above, AI skirmishers will try to avoid being pincered
- On easy the AI will not consider going into loose formation to avoid being shot at
- On easy the AI will not consider outflanking, double-envelopment, or stop-and-shoot tactics
- On easy the AI won't move troops out of the way of castle walls that may be about to collapse
- On easy the AI will try to hide rather than flee if the battle is going badly
- On easy the AI will not try ambushes
- On easy the AI will not try the 'appear weak' battle plan
- The AI is more likely to deploy in woods on harder difficulties, and less likely to camp near the red zone on easier difficulties
- The AI is more likely to consider scouting the map to find the rest of your army if it can't see it all on higher difficulties
- On easy the AI will not skirmish
- On higher than easy, the AI will specifically consider sh00ting at your artillery
- On easy the AI will generally attack rather than defend, and will not consider withdrawing for a much longer time
- On higher than easy, the AI will check to see if it's marching into enfilade fire when attacking your main body
- On easy the AI may come out of a wall breach to chase you if you attack and are repulsed

I cut out the parts that are clear and were mentioned before. Like combat bonus etc.
Honestly, I can only confirm that on higher difficulties the AI will try to ambush and will scout for ambushes and hidden units, it also goes into "loose" formation sometimes.
I'm not convinced that the other points are true or can be noticed by players.
Especially the claim that the AI will use "stop and shoot" tactics or will "move units out of the way of collapsing walls" seem more like wishful thinking.
What's the "appear weak" plan?

[TosaInu]

What's the "appear weak" plan?

Pull a tosa.

[R'as al Ghul]

Pull a tosa.

I've seen that and I wish the AI could pull that of.

[Motep]

MTW, it the first I played, and in my mind is the best. (havent played shogun or M2TW, so, meh...) I enjoy the game immensely, and only wish my computer could still play it. Lord knows I miss it. I love the strategic elelment, and I just have so many great memories of that game, that I can harly stand not playing it again. (one of my best is conquering europe with an army of peasants, and later being quickly pushed back to england by the islamic nations and russia. I did lose that one, but still, it was a very fun experience)