The game is just TOO easy!!!! [Archive]

JAG

03-10-2009, 03:21

Alright I am not blowing my own trumpet, but...

I understand I am a very experienced Total War player, I have played every single title from its first day of release and got pretty good online in the old Shogun days, but the game should not be this easy!

Back in the days of Shogun when the game was on the hardest difficulty, you damn well knew it, things were heavily stacked against you - now however it is just too easy.

I play the game on the hardest difficulty - very hard, for both the campaign and battles. Yet I have rarely lost a battle and the campaign is a complete doddle. For instance, I just started a Prussian short campaign a few hours ago and by the summer of 1713, I had completed all my goals - 14 territories in the centre of Europe, and 15 total - and France, united Provences, Austria, Poland, Spain and Denmark were all devastated. This was all with 2 army stacks and at one point being at war with every nation in Europe - over a 13 year, 25 turn period. Crazy.

The difference now I see is twofold - firstly there are so few attempts by the AI to actually take your cities with thier stacks that you can effectively leave cities completely defenceless, while the stupid AI goes around destroying your easily repairable towns and farms - which at the start of the game are NO WAY near as important as the cities themselves. Secondly, it is SO easy to get peace from nations you declare war on. Many times I literally declared war with my armies in striking distance, took over the couple cities I needed and then got a peace deal out of the nation that I just beat, which was extremely favorable to me - anything from 2000 to 5000 cash in hand. So the AI nation loses all thier cash as well as their important cities, while you can effectively gain a huge upper hand strategically for free - as the peace money can replace all your losses in your armies.

It is, quite franlkly, ridiculous. It is ruining the game for me, what can I do - play crap on purpose? Give the AI a chance, be as stupid as them? A brilliant, masterpiece of a work, completely undone by idiotic AI.

So anyone else getting this? I guess if you havent played a total war game before, it takes time to adjust to how to have success in battles and most importantly on the campaign map - but I am sure there are vets out there having the same damn problems I am, with this crazy, rubbish and infuriating AI.

vladiator

03-10-2009, 03:44

I don't know if I agree. I play on H/H, and although it has not been overly-complicated, it has not been a breeze either. Granted I haven't played that much yet, and you probably have much more experience in playing these games, so they are easier for you.

I definitely find battles quite challenging. I MTW2, I could beat 10, or even more, units of enemies with 3-4 units of my cavalry. These days I make sure that I have at least as many units as my enemy before going into a battle..

Suraknar

03-10-2009, 03:59

Yes you are blowing your Trumpet... ;)

But it is ok, I think the AI goes after the farms because these are economical buildings, same as the AI in previous TW games tried to blockade your ports first.

Also I noticed the AI does diversions, it will often send a small stack after the farms if you intercept then a bigger stack waits behind and goes after your city.

I personally like this way, it is not about blitzing town after town. But rather slowly bleeding you to death before the coup de grace.

Makes it a bit like chess, calculated moves, campaigning. I like it.

And I agree it is not like STW, where when they came for you you knew it was for your Castle/Town...all or nothing deal, and powerful factions would just come full stack after full stack sometimes from multiple directions.

ETW's game play is more subtle..it represents the Diplomatic Dance that nations played with one another, until Napoleon came about...but that is why most did not like him either...

And to do that the AI needs to be complex...it is easy to make the AI blitz...it is harder to make it calculate in a more subtle way.

USMCNJ

03-10-2009, 04:03

I would have to agree with JAG. I just started my first campaign as Prussia and by 1713 i control all of Germany. I'm playing on H/H, i didn't play the RTI or read the manual, just wanted to try it out.
and the two biggest exploits that is see (just like JAG mentioned)
1) The AI doesn't go for your cities and doesn't defend it's own
2) The AI will always take your peace offer.

Maybe it's just the Prussian campaign, but there is no way i should be essentially done with the campaign after ~8 hours on the first try.

quadalpha

03-10-2009, 04:06

I think the AI takes the peace offer because it knows it's beaten after you win a few set piece battles.

ArtillerySmoke

03-10-2009, 04:06

It sounds like you're just very good @ Total War.

There's only so much the AI is going to be able to do to you when you are as competent a player as you are.

Players like yourself, and those of us on the org who can eat and breathe a title for ages, are the minority. Looking around the web, most people are getting their rears handed to them by the AI so far.

Myself - I played a good dozen custom battles last night, on all different difficulties. 3000-5000+ men battles. I see the AI as a vast improvement over past titles, but I also see myself as much better in this time period than I was in antiquity and medieval. It just makes more sense to me...I like gunpowder, what can I say.

I'm sure when the mods get rolling you'll run into many a challenge.

Dogfish

03-10-2009, 04:09

I agree. The AI was touted as being a major improvement, and maybe CA has something up their sleeve with some future patches, but in it's current state the AI is lackluster, and that's being kind. Especially considering how much time it takes to go through the AI turns (a few minutes minimum on my machine). It's got to be calculating something.

Reminds me alot of the Brittania campaign of Kingdoms, when I first started I expected England to start coming after my Scottish territories, but no... the AI just sat there, being completely passive.

I was playing through the RtI campaign and reading forums, I saw several posts detailing how the RtI campaign's AI was nothing compared to the GC... so I thought, ok, cool, maybe they gimped the AI in RtI since it's somewhat of a tutorial campaign, at least it will be a challenge when I move over to the meaty GC. But then I started it, and it wasn't. I could leave all of England with no defenses, and I fear that none of it would ever be threatened by an AI faction. This is all on VH/VH (Except for RtI, which was just VH, there being only one slider and such).

Combine that with several bugs and other assorted issues (I was really hyped about the naval battles, but they are arcadey and have some big issues with regard to pathfinding and control of groups), and I'm putting aside my copy until some of these things are addressed, by mod or by patch.

I mean, some of these issues are so blatant it makes me question whether the testers played any campaigns for any amount of time. I still really like the game, and a month or two from now will probably be playing it as much as I have in the past week, but in it's current state I just don't think it's ready. Maybe they should've delayed it again... I just really hope CA is open to making major adjustments via patches, and not just fixes and tweaks.

OT naval rant: Can you not set the speed of a group of ships? and why when you move a group is it like each individual ship getting a move order to that location, and not just the lead ship, with the others always following it? And no formation maneuvers, like turn abouts? And I've said it before, but I don't think I'm going to be able to come to accept that you can sail upwind. The land battle equivalent would be hills and trees not having any effect on gameplay.

ratbarf

03-10-2009, 04:10

How about a sublte blitz? I would love that kind of thing. I also played Shogun and all other titles since '99 and it only took me a year to be able to absolutly thrash that game on Hardest. Oh well, it was too easy to realy turtle anyways unless you where playing Takeda or Oda anyways.

Anyways, one thing from the Original Shogun that I would love to see implemented somehow in Empire is the ability to turn on your enemy in the middle of a battle. Create a peace treaty, get them to go to war with you against a common enemy. Then just when you are about to defeat the enemy forces they turn on you and catch your stacks way out of position screwing your for quite a few turns as they then blitz your castles as you try and rebuild your main army. I did to the Imagawa several times and (Best of all) had it done to me by the Oda. (was playin as Takeda the best freaking faction eva!)

Thats the kind of thing I want to see from the Empire AI. If the Dutch Belgians had turned on Wellington at Waterloo while they were in amongst his formation, that would have won the battle and secured the French for at least a year. Too bad I know it won't happen though. (that also happened in Multi player Age of Empires, my supposed ally built a crapload of Bombard towers next to my buildings in my main settlement then turned off his ally setting while mine was still set to non aggression. To be frank I went into the next room and clocked my brother for his treachery.)

Callahan9119

03-10-2009, 05:06

I have NEVER been so challenged by the battle AI, since 2001 or whenever I bought my first total war game. I play with medium unit size, I read that it makes the AI much better, I have no complaints compared to previous game.

Video problems and my other GPU sitting there useless because of a memory leak in SLI is another story :furious3:

DisruptorX

03-10-2009, 05:52

Problem, as always, is the dreaded Passive AI. If there were full stacks of enemy units coming at you every other turn during the early game, it would indeed be challenging.

Its really the same problem thats always been there. The AI hates sending full armies to assault territories.

Polemists

03-10-2009, 06:04

It all depends upon perspective I guess.

If you pick short campaign I can see why the game would go quickly, but then again it's short, it's not meant to take you the 100 years. Even long is only meant to take you half the time. Only World Domination is about taking the globe.

Again, the goal is to establish yourself.

I've actually found, in my experience the minor factions to be far more aggressive then the major ones.

Nations like Savoy, Wutemburg and Venice have all invaded my cities with full stacks, (Savoy with two armies) and even taken a city. So my border is maintained. Plus as you go on in years, more and more rebels begin to pop up so your bound to increase your local stacks for that reason. Most of my cities have a decent garrison do to slav rebels, who are quite numerous and march straight for the capital.

Not to mention I have found holding territory early on in America against the numerous native american factions quite challenging and enjoyable. I'm only on M/M.

Again it's what you want, but it's like saying you played Short Campaign of Rome, and your 15 years in and you've beaten the biggest challenge. When we all know the other Roman houses not Carthage was the challenge.

Same thing with this game. Beating a handful of smaller Euro states is not the main challenge, or even beating the major ones.

It's global expansion, and revoultion. I personally find it very challenging and enjoyable. I recently had to hold off 1000 Cheeroke from taking Florida who had only a few hundred men. It was quite challenging. :2thumbsup:

peacemaker

03-10-2009, 06:07

Well, that's because you're just great. I understand I'm not that great of a player, and even on M/M, I find myself being almost destroyed several times over. I'm not sure what it is, but you're just reaaaaaly good. I'm sure mods will come out that can help this, right now just hope for the best and find a hard faction to play(I found that prussia was actually fairly easy compared to other factions)

quadalpha

03-10-2009, 06:10

You are missing the point if you play it like a conquer-the-world-o-meter. It is primarily about building something that you can identify with. The direction CA is moving the franchise is more toward balance and atmosphere, exemplified by the fact that the default objectives are no longer "conquer a mass of provinces," but are a much smaller set aimed at recreating the historical aims of the nations involved. The move to reduce the number of armies and provinces, and to take the recruiting of agents out of the players control accentuate this shift in emphasis, and makes the player care more about what he has. So of course you are not going to enjoy it very much if the only reason you play is for conquest; then the game might as well be a chore, much like how the latter parts of previous TW titles often turned out. To get the most out of it, you need to invest your faction with a little personality.

DisruptorX

03-10-2009, 06:12

Mailman653

03-10-2009, 06:44

I'm just the average player who plays on the default setting as far back as MTW so I can't atest to the difficulty of the game on VH etc, but what I have noticed is that I have an abudance of money and a very peaceful excistence. In M2TW I would bulid up trade as fast as I could but I would always be low on cash and waring with one or two other factions.

As opposed to ETW where I seem to have almost an abudance of cash and hardly anyone trying to topple my empire down.

Polemists

03-10-2009, 06:54

It all depends on how you play, I have gone bankrupt several times over in ETW. Do to losing trade rights do to past wars and new alliances.

As for

Its less fun when you don't get to defend your empire because the AI never launches naval attacks, never invades, and generally just sits around

I have had the AI do all of the above quite frequently on M so I dunno, maybe you should go with medium :laugh4::laugh4:

Venice took over two of my ports with large navies, invaded my empire, and took out both my school and new church before it struck my capital, weaving around larger defended cities. I was quite impressed considering it was only turn 16...last time I ask venice to become a protectorate :laugh4:

Dayve

03-10-2009, 07:03

The AI isn't too easy for me... I do win every battle but i lose 90% of my army in doing so. Still trying to figure out a tactic that works effectively. :book:

NimitsTexan

03-10-2009, 07:10

It all depends on how you play, I have gone bankrupt several times over in ETW. Do to losing trade rights do to past wars and new alliances.

As for

I have had the AI do all of the above quite frequently on M so I dunno, maybe you should go with medium :laugh4::laugh4:

Venice took over two of my ports with large navies, invaded my empire, and took out both my school and new church before it struck my capital, weaving around larger defended cities. I was quite impressed considering it was only turn 16...last time I ask venice to become a protectorate :laugh4:

So you are saying you had the AI transport land troops on a ship and invade a costal region/island against you?

Callahan9119

03-10-2009, 07:47

I will agree with you there. I'm attacking france completely in the new world and have no resistance. Indians are another matter though.

Still way more fun than any other TW game, I love techs, makes the campaign map more than just making buildings.

I can complain (my SLI doesnt work) but this is a great game. The game everyone wants, where the AI behaves like a human is far off, so far the AI has been good (try medium units).

Yun Dog

03-10-2009, 07:47

Yeh I hear your concerns but I think theres a few issues here. Bear in mind this isnt a criticism in any way.

I mean you wanna make it harder give the AI insane stacks of death with bonuses and have it attack at all costs, someone can mod that in. I would be bored if I was defending against endless stacks of men.

To some degree wasnt that mid - late game STW with masses and masses of stacks of the few that were left, I dont think I ever bothered to finish a game once it got to that stage. So my first thing would be make sure your not looking at Shogun with rose coloured glasses because it was the first of its kind.

ETW:
I played through the Tute - ok that was alright, but easy yes, but its a tute.

I then went to VH/VH and the few battles I fought I got either pwned or just won by a few stragglers, that was encouraging enough to leave VH till later. As far as the AI sea invasions surely that can be fixed?

Then I went back to Med/Med cause I intend to get some value out of this game, then I will play through at hard, then I will play through at VH/VH, and then I will play all the factions, and then they will have patched/upgraded the game, and Ill play through a few more times, and then I might play it a few more times for old time sake.

On the up side I hear theres going to be a MP campaign so all your challenge issues will be solved then.

Its sort of a glass half full thing. Can you think of alot of recent game releases that had proved challenging for you? or lived up to your expectations, or werent full of bugs? What about the last two titles of this series - were they challenging? Cause I goto be honest mate I dont think your going to get that game you want for a long time to come.

The way I look at it, if Im not going to enjoy this game then I really have to look at why Im still playing games, and what game will ever be good enough to challenge players who have played this game as much as we have. Cause Its along wait till the next one.

Even if I get a month of honeymoon period where Im excited about the game, before I get bored or frustrated... thats sounds like I got a month more than some people. Once I get to the point where that excitement is no longer there, goodbye gaming.

Till the day this incredible game your waiting for comes out, Im going to play this one and enjoy it.

sassbarman

03-10-2009, 08:10

I agree completely with the O.P. the AI is far to passive. CA really have to look into this and stop relying on pretty graphics to carry their games. It's not much a game when there is little to no chance of losing.
Having said that it's still fun to play because there is nothing else out there like it, but it could be so much better.

Polemists

03-10-2009, 08:17

First point

So you are saying you had the AI transport land troops on a ship and invade a costal region/island against you?

Costal yes, Venice sailed upwards from it's city in southern greece. Landed near Vienna, whose troops were trying to take Venice and had lost, and then proceeded to march upon my capital.

Islands, yes. Spain invaded Cuba from Hisponola despite our regional trade 15 turns prior, do I assume to the fact I took Gibraltar and we were at war.

Not saying it happens all the time, but it can happen.

Again this goes back to what you want from your AI, and what people. Want I have lost battles, I have lost cities.

This isn't to say the game shouldn't provide some challenge for all levels, but remeber these forums are by and large veterans. People who play strategy game, after strategy game and never feel the AI is "good enough". The only way to satisfy most of those people I assume is to let them fight each other on MP.

The AI, is AI, it is not a person, it will never be as good as a person can be for years and years.

I find the game challenging and fun, not impossibly easy. I think the average gamer (who CA is trying to cater to do to the fact that apparently veterans and hardcore don't have enough of a market) will enjoy the game.

The fact it has resounding reviews and lots of fan faire I think is good. Is it perfect no? Is there a easy battle from time to time? Sure. By and large though I think the average gamer (Guys used to play M/M, will find it a nice challenge.

The AI at least has some tactics this time, which to me anyway, is a vast improvement over MTW2.

Again, I found MTW2 challenging at times. So take it all with a grain of salt.

AussieGiant

03-10-2009, 08:29

I have one response for all those of you complaining.

Please play the Prestige game on VH/VH...get back to me with your thoughts at 1799...

...and that should not be for a few weeks :egypt:

amritochates

03-10-2009, 08:32

Polemists, you are the first to state that contrary to a large number of players Naval Invasions are working. Are you sure that the order of events was as you stated??

Since, is it also not possible that the port was blockaded by a fleet working in conjunction with an army moving up from either the Italian Peninsula or the Adriatic Coast.

What makes you so sure that a Naval invasion happened, esp. since we no longer have toggle_fow to verify AI actions, and even that did not show armies that were temporarily in ambush position due to it stopping in an forested region.

I am afraid I will have to ask for screenshots or independent anecdotal evidence before I accept what you have stated.

Btw are you playing Austria/Prussia??

Polemists

03-10-2009, 08:39

I am playing Austria.

I can't guarentee it did happen.

It could have been

Since, is it also not possible that the port was blockaded by a fleet working in conjunction with an army moving up from either the Italian Peninsula or the Adriatic Coast.

It could be they blockaded the port and a Italian force had moved forward. Though that would mean Venice would have had to move through Ottoman lands and if I understand the AI right that would have meant a war I think. Since Venice and Ottomans weren't at war, it seemed the army that was there right next to my port had come from the ship.

Next time I see it i'll take a screenshot, though my pc is pretty slow, so it won't be pretty I imagine, even on fraps.

The only island error I encountered was at one point I sold Prussia a island (Sardina maybe?) it moved a half stack down to southern Italy (maybe to reinforce) but they never actually got on the prussian ships to sail down to the island. Though I assumed that was a bug at the time.

As for the Spainish army in cuba, I assumed they had come from Hisponla, but I guess they could have just been a left over from our trade. I assumed tho the Ai disbaned island armies after a trade.

Just some thoughts, could be wrong.

amritochates

03-10-2009, 08:48

I assumed tho the Ai disbaned island armies after a trade.

AI has incapable of manually disbanding armies since STW, figure that out.

Since the 3-D campaign map of RTW, on acquiring a settlement by bribery or diplomatic means the native force is merely expelled.

Which is why on selling/donating a settlement it is better to either manually disband your troops or to shift them out of the settlements before doing so.

It reduces pressure on the processor and reduces chances of a CTD, just as counting to 100 at the end of each battle before reverting to the campaign map.:2thumbsup:

knoddy

03-10-2009, 08:55

Again this goes back to what you want from your AI, and what people. Want I have lost battles, I have lost cities.

This isn't to say the game shouldn't provide some challenge for all levels, but remeber these forums are by and large veterans. People who play strategy game, after strategy game and never feel the AI is "good enough". The only way to satisfy most of those people I assume is to let them fight each other on MP.

The AI, is AI, it is not a person, it will never be as good as a person can be for years and years.

I find the game challenging and fun, not impossibly easy. I think the average gamer (who CA is trying to cater to do to the fact that apparently veterans and hardcore don't have enough of a market) will enjoy the game.

The fact it has resounding reviews and lots of fan faire I think is good. Is it perfect no? Is there a easy battle from time to time? Sure. By and large though I think the average gamer (Guys used to play M/M, will find it a nice challenge.

The AI at least has some tactics this time, which to me anyway, is a vast improvement over MTW2.

Again, I found MTW2 challenging at times. So take it all with a grain of salt.

couldnt agree more. most battles i fight are very close, do i win alot? yes, do i lose occasionally ? yes
most people would find a game that beats u every time frustrating and not fun at all.
AI will NEVER EVER be as good as human so dont expect it to be.

lets talk about the AI my gC, marthras on H/H.

one of the single province factions i was at war with near russia, i was marching my army up what i thought was the only pass to their town when lo and behold a small force marches up from a diff pass which i didnt know was there and besiges my town and attacks straight away. they had 2 units of cavalry and some militia i had my armed peasants and some melee militia so i setup and ambush with my melee guys waiting in the woods to ambush the ai as they ran at my peasants.

enemy advanced they got close enough to spot the ambush and quickly retreated out of range and sent their cav to deal with my hiding units. it was a hard fought battle which my units barely won with both sides wavering at the end their militia also charged at my peasants and the only thing that saved me was their general dying and cavalry routing in time for me to save my peasants with a flank charge. i lost bout 70% of my men and all my units were wavering when i won.

eg 2. i attacked the spanish on sardina with a smaller force and had a hard fought battle against all the odds and won i think simply cos of my military techs :D

eg 3. i lost naples to an emergent faction cos they rebelled and beat my garrison down.

i hear alot of people whining about how enemies send single stacks and plunder all their improvements and how this is Bad AI, this is the stupidest thing ever, every time they pillage you lose some wealth and as such some income for that turn and u have to pay to repair it. i had persian stacks roaming my territory when i was fightin them i was losing probs 3-4k worth of income from them, and i couldnt deal with them cos if i moved troops out of towns to stop them they took teh towns i had to wait to bring up more troops to deal with them.

the ai fights when it has the advantage just because it still loses doesnt make it bad.... it makes it AI it will never be as good as a human end of story.

i dare any1 to find AI like this in earlier games cos it hasnt existed until now. is it perfect...no nobody is saying it is, but it is vastly improved and quite challenging.

do i think the ai should be more aggressive yes particularly towards each other, several factions have been at war for ages in my game and only exchanged 1-2 provinces and pirating each others trade routes.

BACK TO THE DAYS OF MEDIEVAL 1 I DEMAND 20 full stacks of Moors lawl.

wow thats so long i dont remember half of what i wrote hah

cheers knoddy

Fisherking

03-10-2009, 08:56

I am just curious, is anyone who thinks it is too easy playing with small unit size?

I have been lead to understand that the AI handles small units better than large one.

I could be totally wrong, of course. I am still waiting for my copy to arrive, while you guys have already been playing for a week.

I can’t say I will be too disappointed if the AI is not an insane warmongering conquer which will never make peace on any terms. I have had that in the last several games. One that looks out for its best interests may be a good thing.

By the same token, naval invasions are risky to undertake with a lot at stake if anything goes wrong. So if the AI isn’t spamming fleets and armies to invade every scrap of land, that is ok too. If you go cranking it up you are going to wined up with the silly junk you did in M2. Iceland will be attacked by the Barbary states on turn 2, and so on.

Who the heck launched massive sea invasions in this era or any other? If you mess with this too much you will have totally ridiculous happenings and it is just best tweaked a tiny bit or just left alone.
Armies far from home need continued support to win. Leave it to the human players to do that.
I am sure it will be fine when we get the MP campaigns and you can be worries that someone real will be on your doorstep with 3 fleets and full stacks.

Changing some of the AI’s aggressiveness is going to wreck a lot of the history. You may or may not care but some do. It will spoil a lot for the newer players and those who RP the games, and you are still going to beat the AI some how. If you couldn’t the game wouldn’t sell.

Use some imagination to make it harder for your self! Don’t tech up and use small armies. :yes:

Napoleon managed to do much the same thing as you are managing to do, so no big deal and no surprises there.

Maybe I will be singing a different tune once I have played for a week, but for now, I just see it as a bit of boasting.

knoddy

03-10-2009, 09:04

who remembers what M2TW was like when they increased the frequency of naval invasions ?

playing as marthras (SP>?>>????) i have never been invaded from the ocean BUT mughal dominated me on the sea for many years because i didnt have a fleet and couldnt build one with them blockading my ports. aside from that everyone ive been at war with has been able to invade by land cept teh spanish BUT they were at war with england and their navy got smashed.

i would rather not have every state going crazy with naval invasions but thats just my 2 cents

amritochates

03-10-2009, 09:13

BeeSting

03-10-2009, 09:16

knoddy

03-10-2009, 09:20

Concerning Naval invasions:

It is a major problem because now there are three theatres of war instead of a single unified camapaign map, that are connected only through naval fleets. So if the AI is incapable of transporting fleets it implies that for the GC the AI factions will be restricted to their respective theatres, incapable of reinforcing one theatre from the other.I doubt that you think it desirable that I can besiege and take over Paris,France while the AI retains 20 stacks in new France.

Also since the AI is ignorant of the fact that it cannot transport units, it tends treat Islands as normal provinces building up large stacks that then do nothing for the remainder of the campaign except suck up army upkeep and will only come into play If and whwn the player decides to invade.

Read a more detailed expose in my thread:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=114186

not entirely true u can walk through from persia to india and back, but thats a moot point, im all for naval invasions BUT! i dont want them done like the M2 Patch where it was just stupid, every faction would launch naval invasions to the other side of the freakin camp map.

AussieGiant

03-10-2009, 09:22

Dear All,

as a basic rule we should all state our difficulty level at the start of a post in a thread like this.

It's hard to hear people complain about the AI when they are playing anything less than VH/VH.

***plays the broken down record player from 2001***

Complaining about the AI when you are not playing VH/VH, is like a Polar Bear complaining it's hot in Australian around February each year...because I feel like saying; 'No :daisy: Sherlock, you don't say...really it's not very hard...how about that.'

Zim

03-10-2009, 09:22

I play on small unit size (all my comp can handle :clown:). I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but I tend to take very heavy losses on battles that are supposed to be even, and managed to lose one in the Grand Campaign at the end of the tutorial.

The first 40 turns of my (H/H) Austrian campaign have been pretty easy despite my taking things extremely slowly. The most disturbing thing so far has been a number of AI vs AI wars that seem to stalemate forever.

I'm holding out hope that things will become more challenging. Poland-Lithuania has been building up a lot of troops on my border despite being "very friendly" with Austria, and a few factions have been aggressive with their neighbors (Russia vs Sweden, Sweden vs Denmark, and the Mughals completely wiped out the playable Indian faction).

I am just curious, is anyone who thinks it is too easy playing with small unit size?

I have been lead to understand that the AI handles small units better than large one.

ironanvil1

03-10-2009, 09:25

I suspect the smaller number of provinces and ease of making money has something to do with how easy ETW feels even on VH.

When the Dutch declared war on me as Prussia I was hoping for a few epic battles given they're a major faction but it ended up them being destroyed as a faction in a siege of Amsterdam.
Five turns from being a world power to being a disorder stat in my province details.

My Maratha campaign I purposely stopped myself from attacking the Mughals for years to try and build up a challenge but I'm rolling in so much money I could annihilate them at any point.

A larger number of provinces might give the AI more strategic depth and prevent the easy blitzes by making you have to deal with conquered territories.

Having the army stacks of defeated factions remain as rebels would also be good. Atm you can decapitate a large military force by taking out the faction capital and they disappear.

BeeSting

03-10-2009, 09:34

Polemists

03-10-2009, 09:38

I play on M, and I like M.

I'm not saying the AI needs to be "Harder". I do think though if a feature is broke (AI cannot do something), it should be fixed.

It's one thing to say it's less challenging, it's another to say something's broke.

Swoosh So

03-10-2009, 09:51

Strategy

03-10-2009, 10:06

Playing on VH/VH; can only say that I agree with the observations of the original poster.

The AI CAN figure out how to attack lone, vulnerable stacks (though often to its detriment), but it is completely unable to stage any kind of reasonable strategic offensive.

Fisherking

03-10-2009, 10:23

Heh i remember the hojo horde in shogun, i believe the ai used to cheat heavily in those days with ALOT of extra income, the community (the not so good players anyway) complained and it was changed. When playing single player campaigns in previous titles i would play as say scotland and give egypt and surrounding nations a major financial boost modded in and send a crusade there and establish a nation there, was more difficult but still not that hard :\

I think multiplayer campaigns will be a good thing for the game and hope it actually gets delivered this time and that it takes off, having played rome totalwar multiplayer campaigns before i can tell you a full multiplayer campaign vs an old vetaran player like amp is quite bloody hard and brings so much more to the game.

I would agree! If you want a big challenge and lots of blood and surprises play multiplayer!

The AI is not going to be as challenging for some of us as for others, no matter what.

If it wins every battle against the novice player it is just not going to sell.

I suspect that the AI factions have random personalities and may be more or less aggressive in some campaigns than in others. But that is only a guess.

I don’t wish to see every faction in a mad dash to conquer all of their neighbors and launching massive sea invasions to Iceland and the Bahamas. It is silly.

I think it should reinforce its holdings, by sea if that is the very best option, but not large ill considered invasions.

To move a full stack army the AI should want a full stack fleet of mostly 3rd rates and above to move it. Not sailing around with a couple of galleys with a full stack army on board. Some should be more aggressive at sea than others but not every faction in every campaign.

I don’t know how the AI decides what to build where, or how to make it have more logical choices. That is more likely to need FIXING than it’s aversion to launching sea invasions.:smash:

crpcarrot

03-10-2009, 11:08

lol i love it when people say the game is so easy and then go on to explain how they are exploiting it to make it so easy.

Julius_Nepos

03-10-2009, 11:15

As Austria on Hard/Hard I just got annihilated by the Prussian military, not by numbers but by the seeming omnipotence of their soldiery. I had done an example campaign as Sweden on M/M and things were really quite passive for 100 turns. I decided to change nations/difficulty to see what would happen. In this case the Crimean Khanate was eliminated early by Russia and I had a good 10 turns to just build improvements to my nation. Eventually Prussia declared war, and historically went for Silesia, which they took easilly. My relief army came by a turn later and was attacked in the forests south of the city. Even though I had my men behind fenced cover, the AI overcame this by having ring bayonets earlier than I did, and by firing once and charging my entire line all at once such that the battle became little more than one big melee. out of 1500 men I had, 200 survived. I did win the battle.

Somehow despite a 3 to 1 disadvantage in schools, Prussia had out teched me militarily. I'm not sure how they did it, possibly by buying techs, cheating (perhaps due to Hard Difficulty), perhaps a country specific modifier for certain technologies or something else. They got to ring bayonets early somehow, and I paid the price. Later I sent a near-full stack to attack Brandenburg, that stack was also annihilated by Prussia's line infantry, despite tactics that worked on medium. I need more time to digest the AI behavior on hard (battle wise) before I decide if I want to keep it there. On every other Total War title I've used Hard/Hard settings, I might have to change that this time. I'm still learning new battle strategies too though so perhaps in time I'll figure out something better. I wouldn't say the game is too easy though, just a touch too passive.

And you guys should be careful what you ask for, if you want more aggressive AI you might get it, then we'll be fending off full stacks every turn while 6 or 7 amphibious landings are choking our shores with enemy units. Some of you may enjoy spending a whole day on one turn of battles, but I lack actually having down time and fewer but more intense wars. The last thing we need is a hyperactive AI similar to RTW/M2TW in which the game sends wave after wave of full stack armies at you, will never accept a truce/peace and has unlimited man power. ETW is far from perfect but I pray they don't roll things back to earlier installments, the game needs tweaks, fixes and more factions, not a new "attack the player every three minutes" routine. Anyway sorry to rant on this, I just -really- don't want to go back to how things were done before with AI mindless-warmongering.

Pinxit

03-10-2009, 11:19

Concerning Naval invasions:

It is a major problem because now there are three theatres of war instead of a single unified camapaign map, that are connected only through naval fleets. So if the AI is incapable of transporting fleets it implies that for the GC the AI factions will be restricted to their respective theatres, incapable of reinforcing one theatre from the other.I doubt that you think it desirable that I can besiege and take over Paris,France while the AI retains 20 stacks in new France.

Also since the AI is ignorant of the fact that it cannot transport units, it tends treat Islands as normal provinces building up large stacks that then do nothing for the remainder of the campaign except suck up army upkeep and will only come into play If and whwn the player decides to invade.

Read a more detailed expose in my thread:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=114186

A solution to the AI being to predictable and to passive, is to place the AI in the hands of the current ruler. Dont know if that has been done already, since I dont have the game yet, but that would be a good solution. That means that some rulers will be passive and morons, and some very aggressive. That would give your enemies some personality and make the game harder to predict.

I say that, because I live in the land of the :viking:

Polemists

03-10-2009, 11:29

Yes try to remeber one of the major complaints of MTW2 was the fact that by turn 6 you could end up at war with 4-5 factions and nearly excommunicated.

Several things have been improved.

You can now actually have peace and allies for a number of years if you want them. I kept the dutch as my ally for 50 years.

The AI now has mobs, they arn't a fullproof, but they do make it to where even if the AI only has 2 units it will double it's size with armed citizens.

The AI has a very aggressive navy. That will already pirate you, choke sea ports, and blockade and cut off your sea trade completly.

If you want a aggressive land AI go fight the natives in either India or North America who are both quite aggressive and will send full stacks against your settlements if you go to war with them.

At least that's my view. I don't really want a harder AI, only because I know even if they did UBER hard AI half these people still would not be happy.

CA should patch what it can and focus on the Multiplayer.

Hollerbach

03-10-2009, 11:34

lol i love it when people say the game is so easy and then go on to explain how they are exploiting it to make it so easy.

What do you mean by 'exploiting'? As the OP suggests, it is frustrating to have to intentionally play dumb in order to get a challenge (which is what was required in RTW/M2TW), actually doing that is not really a challenge is it? It is not like there is some great glitch that can be exploited in an unrealistic way.

I agree that a diverse game where you need to use trade, diplomacy, research AND war is ideal, but if the game CAN be beaten using war alone, then the other features become meaningless. This was the case with say the Pope and merchants in M2TW. I at first used merchants and made lots of priests go and convert the heathen so I'd have high piety priests to control the vatican. Pretty quickly though it was clear that this was completely unneccesary as steamrolling the map was so simple to do.

To me (and I think many others) the fun of a game is in trying to simply beat it by whatever means neccessary. It should be sufficiently challenging such that even a veteran cannot beat it easily at the first try. Take CivIV for example, it took weeks for the community to collectively compose a playing style that could beat the hardest level, and for many players doing so was never possible, no matter how hard they tried.

With the TW series (from RTW on) you could either play to win, and do so easily and boringly using very few of the features, or you could 'role play', i.e. intentionally play sub-optimally to 'give the AI a chance'. The problem with that approach is that when the going gets tough you can also bend your own rules a bit and stay on top, there is never the seat of your pants thrills of *really* having your back against the wall.

I still don't have ETW (and probably won't for a year or so for various reasons unrelated to the quality of the game) but if ETW doesn't prove to be an interesting challenge maybe I won't bother getting it (or wait till it is a bargain bin game that will run on my future computer with ease!).

To summarise, I love the idea of all the complex features in ETW like trade, genuine diplomacy, research etc, but I want to HAVE to use them to succeed, rather than them being ignorable micro-management and flavour unneccesary to the path of victory.

Fisherking

03-10-2009, 11:41

@ Polemists

I would agree.

I suppose a new AI level could be made…the pawn everything level…where all AI units become as tough as M2 elephants and rolls over all the earth!:2thumbsup:

:laugh4::laugh4:

Namarie22

03-10-2009, 11:48

Polemists

03-10-2009, 11:58

First off

Take CivIV for example, it took weeks for the community to collectively compose a playing style that could beat the hardest level, and for many players doing so was never possible, no matter how hard they tried.

CivIV I found the easiest game I think I have ever played in my life. Maybe impossible is bad but comparing medium CIVIV to RTW is like comparing Medium Red Alert 3 to Supreme Commander, it's not a contest in my mind.

I think perhaps more then all this jazz about new AI difficulties it might be better to go back to the old system of Eras. Such as MTW's early, middle, and late.

Not saying this works for all games (obviously etw had to short a time frame)

but for instance, let's take England.

For those of you who like the Euro theme you could pick early, holding the crown, securing yourself. Building up.

For those who liked more in the thick of it, they could choose middle. When France is a power, colonies are ready to rebel, and your navies are much larger and contesting with Spain.

For those who wanted a impossible difficult they could do late, you've lost the colonies, France's power dwarfs you, and rebellion is abound everywhere.

I honestly think those scenarios would be more amusing. Then say something like Defensive AI and Aggressive AI sliders or something.

I could be completely wrong, and everyone will probably complain but I liked the Eras that MTW 1 had, it didn't mean you couldn't start early and go into the medium, or start med and go into late. If you did the game stayed different because you were shapping it. Yet the later eras provided unique scenarios and gameplay perspectives that may not exist in your own games do to the AI.

Just a thought.

Fisherking

03-10-2009, 12:16

It would be nice to see a more precise choice regarding AI's in games soon, the EASY/HARD/VERYHARD/IMPOSSIBLE thing is like, well, getting old?

How about adding a preference tab for the AI? "Naval invasions on/OFF", "Aggressive Guerilla raids on/OFF", "AI HP boost on/OFF", etc, instead?

I would tend to agree, and I may even remember one or two being in MTW but not since.

Some people will not be happy until they loose. Some want other things, but everyone has to deal with the changes.

While you usually make a very vocal segment happy with a change you disappoint and discourage others.

I have no trouble with people who always play on Easy or VH. It is just that changing some things effect the whole game and not everyone was Iceland to be conquered by the Barbary States.

Not everyone wants to have their hat handed to them every time they go into battle. They should be interesting but not impossible to win.

Lots of people are still having trouble beating the AI, while we have some that want an impossible level.

In the end it is impossible to please everyone. So if it is too easy wait for a mod and don’t try to spoil the fun of those just learning.

Dradem

03-10-2009, 12:16

hmm didn't play that much yet only 2 grand ones don't realy care for the short campaigns,

One with the United Provinces (the dutch) invaded Flanders turn 2 or 3 got it a turn or 2 later. yippie :); Since France was an ally of Spain. they Send in 3 small army blocking my small cities etc
they came with 2 navy's to block my ports. I directly attacked the navy but since there the two ports are close got the 2 navy's against me :oops: so lost only got my admiral out. Tried a few times to get those pesty little armies out, eventualy worked.

I had to take my navys back from India and the Americas to get rid of them, I only managed to get a peace treaty with france after capturing Paris by chance (and offering it back to them I couldn't keep it any way the army was almost gone) got lousiana in Return so not to bad, lucky I did that because Spain was ready to land turn later with 2 armies in Flanders and Holland :help: and that was before 1705, now 5 years later things are a bit better but now those nasty Pirates are giving me a bad time. :wall:

Always play on the Hardest level since Shogun, and only lost a few times doing so :beam:
A well maybe I'll try the short campaign if that's easier :idea2:

Fisherking

03-10-2009, 12:24

..., lucky I did that because Spain was ready to land turn later with 2 armies in Flanders and Holland :help: and that was before 1705, ...

Spain launched a sea invasion?

Maybe there just has not been enough play to determine that it is not done!

:laugh4:

Dradem

03-10-2009, 12:33

Spain launched a sea invasion?

Maybe there just has not been enough play to determine that it is not done!

:laugh4:

What not done?

Fisherking

03-10-2009, 12:44

What not done?

It has been said that the AI will not launch sea invasions.

If Spain landed troops in Flanders, that would not seem to be the case!

foop

03-10-2009, 12:45

I see a thread like this for every TW game, and every time I see it my self confidence shrinks even more. I love the TW games, I'm obviously just not very good at them. :embarassed:

Dradem

03-10-2009, 13:28

It has been said that the AI will not launch sea invasions.

If Spain landed troops in Flanders, that would not seem to be the case!

I just went back to one of the safe games and they came from the East :thumbsdown:

I thought they came by Sea because I had a unit stack under brussels so they had to fight them first but since they came from the East it didn't matter :inquisitive:

but still I think the AI wouldn't have done that in other TW games.

Dead Guy

03-10-2009, 13:55

First off

CivIV I found the easiest game I think I have ever played in my life. Maybe impossible is bad but comparing medium CIVIV to RTW is like comparing Medium Red Alert 3 to Supreme Commander, it's not a contest in my mind.

CIV IV is the easiest game you've played in your life? Wow. I think Total War isn't even a walk in the park compared to the harder settings in civ. I guess I never learned the "spam the world with immortals" technique... I mean the AI is pretty dumb in wars sometimes, but at least it attacks you where you're weak or when you are at war with someone else etc. And falling behind in the tech tree really isn't advicable.

I agree with the OP, the game is too easy. I understand it can't be harder because newbies would cry and quit, but the solution seems simple. Just increase the difference in difficulty between the settings, or actually make the AI behave differently between the settings, making it more aggressive on teh campaign map.

Sir Beane

03-10-2009, 13:57

CIV IV is the easiest game you've played in your life? Wow. I think Total War isn't even a walk in the park compared to the harder settings in civ. I guess I never learned the "spam the world with immortals" technique... I mean the AI is pretty dumb in wars sometimes, but at least it attacks you where you're weak or when you are at war with someone else etc. And falling behind in the tech tree really isn't advicable.

I agree with the OP, the game is too easy. I understand it can't be harder because newbies would cry and quit, but the solution seems simple. Just increase the difference in difficulty between the settings, or actually make the AI behave differently between the settings, making it more aggressive on teh campaign map.

Aggresive AI doesn't always equal difficulty though. Sometimes super aggressive AI factions are easier to beat because they throw low quality troops at you and don't take the time to ttech up and get a strong economy.

If you really want a TW game to beat you you are going to have to fight against another player :2thumbsup:.

Dead Guy

03-10-2009, 14:04

Sir Beane

03-10-2009, 14:06

I recently fought a danish army consisting of 8 regiments of pikemen, 3 militia and 2 regional cavalry, I don't think it will get any worse ;)

Seriously though, you have a point. I guess what I mean is making it more aggressive "in a good way". Aggressive so that you have to worry about defending your land from time to time. Oh well, I still enjoy the game a lot, I just think it could have one or two clicks harder than very hard on the slider.

TW should go the same wasy as Galactic Civilisations 2. That game has so many difficulty settings it's hard to remember them all, I think it has ten or more. They range from pathetically easy all the way up to hellishly difficult.

Polemists

03-10-2009, 14:08

:2thumbsup:It's a personal opinion of course but I never found CIV IV any comparison to TW or even CIV III or CIVII even (which were both far superior in my view.) Yes though, I found civ far to easy, thus the expansion packs I found boring and useless and stopped after I bought the second one.

The AI is where it needs to be. CA most likely will not make a higher difficult level. If they did, you would all still groan and moan and CA would feel like they didn't actually accomplish anything.

As stated, the only way people who want impossible difficult will be happy, is if they fight a real human, who will zerg rush them every turn. If that's what you want, great, go find a player who likes that tactic.

I'm very happy with the game at Medium as are alot of people apparently, so I see no point to mess with M, if CA wants to go fiddle with VH be my guest. Though I imagine H and VH already are more difficult then Medium and the Ai is more aggressive.

As I said, I think CA should just focus on multiplayer. That way the die hards can all go fight each other and leave the rest of us who like the game alone :2thumbsup:

Aggressive so that you have to worry about defending your land from time to time.

This goes back to opinions. I had over 1000 cheroke attack lower lousiana, and then Florida in a wave of blitzes that lasted 5 turns when I had only 100's of men as I was trying to hold off Rebellions back in Europe. That was on M, and is plenty of difficult enough for me.

Sir Moody

03-10-2009, 14:16

Actually i think a lot of jags OP is because of his faction choice - Prussia

My first campaign was Great Britain and its an economical nightmare starting with colonies as you have far more work to set yourself up and you need to maintain a strong navy presence

Prussia is so easy its amazing - It took me 20 turns to get GB ready for war in the Americas and Europe - in 20 Turns Prussia had absorbed Sweeden and Poland and had a good chunk of Austria - not to mention most of the Small German states

Prussia is a small but heavily military nation (its line infantry is second only to GB's) with its total focus on Europe and its only major oponents are Sweeden and Austria (poland is too weak) - Sweeden is easy to crush if you ally with the danes and then move in fast - austria is usually busy with the ottomans and cant defend itself when the inevitable push comes (ive left them alive as a barrier between me and the ottomans for now)

My Navy consists of a single brig I built to move some troops to finland and all my opponents either have no Navy to worry about (Poland, Austria) or have no time to use their Navy effectivly (Sweeden)

Prussia is by far the best starting location with the second best troops - incredible easy (and fun :laugh4:)

Bob the Insane

03-10-2009, 14:30

Speaking for my first N/N GB campaign, the Native American factions certainly have no trouble with agressively and continously attacking both your resources and cities. Even if you garrison a border city they will sneak past to attack the interior.

I have lost settlements this way.

I do wonder if the AI strategic strength caluations are overrating the civilain militia automatically generated in large cities, discouraging the attacks...

Eusebius86

03-10-2009, 15:01

Has anyone tried sitting still for 10 years to give the AI a chance to do something? Sure, I could have taken over Poland as Prussia in 5 turns early on, but not anymore. Its 1718 and Poland is big that they are about to annhilate Austria. Russia is pushing back Sweden. I really think that your bordering neighbors need a chance to tech up, build up, and get alliances. Right now, its GB, UP, and Austria, verse Russia and Poland. I decided to seize the moment, and made a land grab against both Austria and Poland, so everyone's at war with me right now. Needless to say, I'm having severe economic difficulties right now...

Strategy

03-10-2009, 15:06

JAG

03-10-2009, 15:11

Prussia was my second campaign, unfortunately I did a Great Britain campaign first which was, to be honest, even easier. The fact NO reinforcements come from the European nations to the other parts of the world, and you can leave Britain, literally, completely defenceless - I had NO military units in any place for my WHOLE game, except for when building armies to ship out. I took over the whole of the American continent, helpfully aided by the easy mission which gives you all the thirteen colonies territories... and I had all of India bar 3 territories, by 1730 ish.. Sigh. The fact I am now 4 turns into a Spain game and am about to take Amsterdam, having already taken Morocco and crushed the Cherokee.. Its just.. sad :(

If you find it hard, you are not being aggressive enough, at the start you can take territories easy, just because your stacks are not amazingly huge, it doesnt mean you can't use them.

I think some people here have got it spot on, Gal Civ 2 is probably the hardest Strat game I have ever played - if you haven't tried it, GO NOW! It has an amazing range of gameplay and AI, and the AI is super, duper smart - I don't know how they do it, but CA need to get a leaf out of their book. We need more of a range of difficulties or more options or something, so those who find hard too hard can and have the chance to get a level between medium and hard and those who find VH too easy can crank it up to get a real, significant challenge. Surely it wouldn't be too hard to do.

My first campaign was Great Britain and its an economical nightmare starting with colonies as you have far more work to set yourself up and you need to maintain a strong navy presence

By the way to get round that is to only build an army in America - it doesn't even need to be big, transporting your troops from Britain over is the best bet, it is what I did - and only build quality, big ships. Due to the good admirals the British have, and the crap ships the rest buy - except Spain - you can quite effectively control the seas with a roving single big stack, then building up another when you can.... Something I have seen which makes the game prety laughable is that when your trade ships are actually trading from the coast of Brazil or wherever, the AI will loot your routes rather than destroy the ship and take the trading post... Meaning that just get your ships there, asap and you will have them for the whole game.... I had pretty much all the foreign ports my whole game - if you need to go to war, destroy them all, then get peace do it - the revenue speaks for itself. Anyway enough of me giving my secrets away, back to the point - the game is too damn easy.

ironanvil1

03-10-2009, 15:11

TW should go the same wasy as Galactic Civilisations 2. That game has so many difficulty settings it's hard to remember them all, I think it has ten or more. They range from pathetically easy all the way up to hellishly difficult.

GalCiv 2 is a good way ti go, in that the higher difficulties actually made the AI smarter rather than just adding additional resources to a moron.

It also has the various choices of what you want included in each game.

I don't want an AI that's necessarily more aggressive, just one that will surprise you on occasion with sneakiness rather than just spamming elite stacks. Stuff like cutting you off from your allies, building up it's own coalition and isolating you diplomatically before invading, that kind of thing.

zarkis

03-10-2009, 16:32

There are several factors which are contributing to the overall weak campaign AI performance.

(1) Inability to launch naval invasions or transport troops between hotspots.
(2) Wasting their units in endless small scale raids.
(3) AI countries are locked up in endless wars between each other without any progress, which drains their economy. That may be the reason why many factions have a worse financial rating later in the game then in the beginning (exeptions are Spain, England, Holland and France)
(4) Insufficient recruiting behavior, which seems random and not controlled by any plan.
(5) Sometimes strange attack moves, where the AI attacks a stronger force with a much weaker force.
(6) Inability to retreat on the campaign map when facing impossible odds (a feature even RTW had).

So far, I have no idication that the campaign AI was improved or worked on. Maybe they run out of time, the whole stuff is unfinished, and we will get a better AI opponent with patches. Maybe CA failed to acknowledge that this area needs some serious work. However, from the interviews they did, I had the impression, that they were working not only on the battle AI (which is not without flaws but quite improved over RTW/MTW2 in my opinion) but were designing a new campaign AI too. For example they talked about the campaign AI telling the battle AI what to do in certain situations and implementing a more goal based system overall. So far, I can't see any of that. It's a pity because ETW has many neat new design features, great graphics and the battles are quite fun.

Rufus

03-10-2009, 17:05

I think the person who brought up the Prestige campaign raises a good point. If you're going for the Prestige victory in addition to your normal victory conditions, you have to research a lot of the technologies and philosophies that might give rise to a revolution within your own home territory. This doesn't necessarily negate the problems others have identified, but it could make the grand campaign harder.

Alexander the Pretty Good

03-10-2009, 17:06

Heh, at least ETW got JAG to post. :2thumbsup:

Now, what to do if ETW is too easy but Galciv is boring because it doesn't have tactical battles...

AussieGiant

03-10-2009, 17:37

Fisherking

03-10-2009, 17:45

Ok! There is an AI problem. Here is where I see the problem stemming from.

It is resource management.

AI resource management and some sort of threat analyses should be put in place, so the AI doesn’t spam units in isolated areas and redistributes its forces based on thread or intentions, by the most expedient means. This will be by sea in most cases, of course.

It should examine resources (units & fleets) to see if any may be used to aid in its allies’ wars.

They should manage their territories and decide on a military posture toward their neighbors in each theater.

If that posture changes due to war or peace, then the AI should redistribute its forces to match its perceived threats.

How territory is acquired is not important. By diplomacy or invasion, by land or sea.

Does anyone see it as some other problem?

zarkis

03-10-2009, 17:49

I'll say it again.

Please play the Prestige game on VH/VH...get back to me with your thoughts at 1799...

...and that should not be for a few days.

While I expect the AI to be tweaked and made far more challenging now that CA have 20 000 play testers, JAG's comments are telling. Especially about trade war behaviour.

All this should be patchable which is a good thing.

I played Maratha on VH/VH. I reached my long campaign goals at about 1738. At the same time I was already leading the prestige scale (because I downed most of the the British Navy blocking my trade lanes). Sorry, but going for a prestige game is no solution. The solution is CA finishes coding the campaign AI. It's obvious that there a features missing and the whole thing isn't properly balanced yet.

Beskar

03-10-2009, 18:05

1) The AI doesn't go for your cities and doesn't defend it's own
2) The AI will always take your peace offer.

I wish I had this problems, however, it's always been the opposite.

The AI never takes my peace request unless I give them something like 100,000 with it to them.

In my game, AI goes straight for my cities, even my own protectorates stab me in the back the moment they can, especially Courtland taking Riga. Even small nations such as Venice attacked me with a full stack within 2nd turn of the game as Austria.

In the game, there are no clear advantage unless you are lucky enough to be -
a) very high on research
b) outnumber the enemy
c) managed to get into a good defending position
d) confuse the AI system in cities.

All of this is on medium/medium setting, even.

Fisherking

03-10-2009, 18:22

Some are having difficulties and some are not. I know that I have seen previous titles behave differently at times.

More to the matter at hand. There must be some underlying cause if there is a problem.

Is it what I have supposed or is it something else?

Lets try to look at what may be the problem rather than its symptoms.

What do you think?

seireikhaan

03-10-2009, 18:38

Hmm...

I've had a bit of both deals. Playing as the Dutch, I had little trouble rounding the caribbean and Canada, swiping territories with ease from the Spaniards and French. Ironically, after taking most of French Canada, the Huron backstabbed me as I was trying to ferry troops over to Newfoundland, and seized Montreal with a near full stack. Now, granted, it wasn't terribly difficult to get my army back, defend Quebec, and take the offensive to retake Montreal, but that's more due to having more troops and more advanced capabilities(about 1730's or so).

In europe, I had a slightly bizarre expierience...

France built a neat little starfort near our border, but left it empty. When war broke out again, I thought, "hey, why not, I'll seize it!" So I marched right in with a full stack and took it. The Frnech promptly sallied from nearby Paris with about a 4/5 stack, and bashed themselves against the defences. I utterly crushed the army, though I did take some moderately significant losses. The French army, however, was GONE... and Paris was right there... and only citizens to aid the defense(granted, there was a TON of them)

I have had some slight monetary issues, it should be noted. I do not have naval superiority, and the AI has taken proper advantage, raiding my trade routes with enthusiasm.

sassbarman

03-10-2009, 18:39

What do you mean by 'exploiting'? As the OP suggests, it is frustrating to have to intentionally play dumb in order to get a challenge (which is what was required in RTW/M2TW), actually doing that is not really a challenge is it? It is not like there is some great glitch that can be exploited in an unrealistic way.

I agree that a diverse game where you need to use trade, diplomacy, research AND war is ideal, but if the game CAN be beaten using war alone, then the other features become meaningless. This was the case with say the Pope and merchants in M2TW. I at first used merchants and made lots of priests go and convert the heathen so I'd have high piety priests to control the vatican. Pretty quickly though it was clear that this was completely unneccesary as steamrolling the map was so simple to do.

To me (and I think many others) the fun of a game is in trying to simply beat it by whatever means neccessary. It should be sufficiently challenging such that even a veteran cannot beat it easily at the first try. Take CivIV for example, it took weeks for the community to collectively compose a playing style that could beat the hardest level, and for many players doing so was never possible, no matter how hard they tried.

With the TW series (from RTW on) you could either play to win, and do so easily and boringly using very few of the features, or you could 'role play', i.e. intentionally play sub-optimally to 'give the AI a chance'. The problem with that approach is that when the going gets tough you can also bend your own rules a bit and stay on top, there is never the seat of your pants thrills of *really* having your back against the wall.

I still don't have ETW (and probably won't for a year or so for various reasons unrelated to the quality of the game) but if ETW doesn't prove to be an interesting challenge maybe I won't bother getting it (or wait till it is a bargain bin game that will run on my future computer with ease!).

To summarise, I love the idea of all the complex features in ETW like trade, genuine diplomacy, research etc, but I want to HAVE to use them to succeed, rather than them being ignorable micro-management and flavour unneccesary to the path of victory.

BANG ON!! very well said!

Devastatin Dave

03-10-2009, 21:14

JAG, I want to give birth to your children.

Namarie22

03-10-2009, 23:32

Actually, I'm having a harder time on Medium/Medium than on VH/VH as Sweden... :o

Alot more action, on VH/VH, nothing much happened, but on Medium/Medium, everyone and their grandmother is invading me.. wth?

I were going to go for a nice and easy game, focus on research.. guess that's out the window.. :D

JAG

03-11-2009, 00:05

JAG, I want to give birth to your children.

Love you Dave!

Sir Beane

03-11-2009, 00:08

I have devised a method to add increased challenge into the game! It doesn't even require modding.

Play the game blindfolded.

First one to do this and take the map wins :2thumbsup:.

AussieGiant

03-11-2009, 00:37

I played Maratha on VH/VH. I reached my long campaign goals at about 1738. At the same time I was already leading the prestige scale (because I downed most of the the British Navy blocking my trade lanes). Sorry, but going for a prestige game is no solution. The solution is CA finishes coding the campaign AI. It's obvious that there a features missing and the whole thing isn't properly balanced yet.

Well that is interesting to hear, and a little disappointing. Do you think that continuing the game would have lead to any large scale nations providing a viable opposition to you?

Susanna

03-11-2009, 00:42

I have devised a method to add increased challenge into the game! It doesn't even require modding.

Play the game blindfolded.

First one to do this and take the map wins :2thumbsup:.

*gasp* A Mod spamming threads!

You should be ashamed! Ashamed, I say!

Sir Beane, Knight of Spamshire indeed! :tongue: :tongue: :tongue:

AussieGiant

03-11-2009, 00:49

Sir Beane is becoming a little spamaholic don't you think? :beam:

Sir Beane

03-11-2009, 00:51

*gasp* A Mod spamming threads!

You should be ashamed! Ashamed, I say!

Sir Beane, Knight of Spamshire indeed! :tongue: :tongue: :tongue:

A mod cannot possibly post spam. Anything we post is relevant and informative, because it's a mod posting it :tongue:.

I seem to be getting a reputation for 'spam' posts, but I swear I only do it to keep discussion vibrant and active. Sorry guys :sweatdrop:.
I wonder how long it will be before the community develops a set of 'house rules' to make ETW more challenging? Probably not long given the complaints about difficulty.

Meneldil

03-11-2009, 00:54

The game is just TOO easy!!!!

To be honest, set some house rules, and the game stop to be easy. Early game blitz are not a good way to enjoy a TW game.
Blitzing in MTW made the game easy, blitzing in RTW made the game easy, blitzing in M2TW made the game easy. I'm not surprised ETW is easy if you blitz the game.
Even mods such as EB are easy if you blitz early on. Heck, even Europa Universalis II/III turns easy if you blitz with some factions.

So yeah, as I've said, set some house rules, try to play in a historical way, and the game will be much more enjoyable. I'm not asking you to pretend to suck or what not, but things like not going at war with everybody without casus belli for example, does improve the game.
I'm still a bit baffled CA did not even try to make conquering huge chunks of lands harder. The era saw little territorial changes in Europe, yet you can conquer western europe in 5 turns in game.

I don't say the AI isn't bad. I haven't played enough to give a real opinion on it, and to be honest, I doubt it's vastly better than RTW or M2TW AI's. But still, playing agressively has always made the TW games retardingly easy. No news here.

Sir Beane

03-11-2009, 01:00

To be honest, set some house rules, and the game stop to be easy. Early game blitz are not a good way to enjoy a TW game.
Blitzing in MTW made the game easy, blitzing in RTW made the game easy, blitzing in M2TW made the game easy. I'm not surprised ETW is easy if you blitz the game.
Even mods such as EB are easy if you blitz early on. Heck, even Europa Universalis II/III turns easy if you blitz with some factions.

So yeah, as I've said, set some house rules, try to play in a historical way, and the game will be much more enjoyable. I'm not asking you to pretend to suck or what not, but things like not going at war with everybody without casus belli for example, does improve the game.
I'm still a bit baffled CA did not even try to make conquering huge chunks of lands harder. The era saw little territorial changes in Europe, yet you can conquer western europe in 5 turns in game.

I don't say the AI isn't bad. I haven't played enough to give a real opinion on it, and to be honest, I doubt it's vastly better than RTW or M2TW AI's. But still, playing agressively has always made the TW games retardingly easy. No news here.

Some of the previous quirks of the game that made blitzing easy have been removed from Empire. Off the top of my head:

1. It is much harder to hold a region
2. The AI are more prepared to form coalitions to stop the player.
3. No access to another province without military access or declaring war.
4. No loot for sacking a town.
5. Emergent and re-emergent factions make things more difficult
6. No rebel towns to take early on.

It's still a very effective tactic though.

Susanna

03-11-2009, 01:12

I don't say the AI isn't bad. I haven't played enough to give a real opinion on it, and to be honest, I doubt it's vastly better than RTW or M2TW AI's. But still, playing agressively has always made the TW games retardingly easy. No news here.

I kind of agree.

To be honest, personally I hardly play aggressive as I am much to busy building every improvement in my towns and keeping my little serfs happy.
But as soon as I've read some game or faction guide on 'How to conquer the world in 15 turns' I find it very hard not to follow on the advice, knowing its much more effective to spam units than spend the money on city walls.
Somewhat diminishes my game enjoyment :(

I am not sure what the best solution would be. Most probably the modders will come up with something clever.

Susanna/Calapine :pokemon:

Susanna

03-11-2009, 01:17

1. It is much harder to hold a region
2. The AI are more prepared to form coalitions to stop the player.
3. No access to another province without military access or declaring war.
4. No loot for sacking a town.
5. Emergent and re-emergent factions make things more difficult
6. No rebel towns to take early on.

It's still a very effective tactic though.

7. Citizens (armed mob) rally to defend the town. Got suprised by that on my first ever town attack. ~:)

Dogfish

03-11-2009, 01:22

We could make the house rules based upon the current limitations of the AI:

1. No naval transport. You have to get there by land. All recruitment occurs on the landmass where the unit is intended to be stationed. This means as Britain you would have to trade for a province in continental Europe to raise armies on the mainland. After typing that out and re-reading it I think this would be pretty ridiculous, but then again so is the AI in it's current incarnation with regards to this issue. Onward to two.

2. You must have defensive armies on station in all of your faction's provinces.

3. Somebody help me out here. What's number three?

Ardri

03-11-2009, 02:51

3. Somebody help me out here. What's number three?
3. Limit yourself to a specific number of trade resources and let the computer have some instead of monopolizing the worlds trade lanes. Just a thought.

The historian

03-11-2009, 02:57

Dogfish

03-11-2009, 03:02

3. Limit yourself to a specific number of trade resources and let the computer have some instead of monopolizing the worlds trade lanes. Just a thought.

Rushing the trade spots was the first thing I did in the last campaign I played, started and stopped on Saturday. I had all but one of the trade spots in Brazil and both coasts of Africa. Rushed my initial sloops and brigs to those spots and held them until the Indiamen were built 2 turns later. UP and Marathas beat me to Indonesia.

And then once I had those spots, nobody every challenged me for them, not even pirates. Single Indiamen sitting there without any escort in the theater.... nothing to see here, move along Blackbeard, thank you. +16000 per turn. Millions of elephants died per turn for all the ivory I was shipping out of Africa. I could've built a life-size replica of the moon outta the stuff.

Dogfish

03-11-2009, 03:05

Maybe so i have a more non blitzkrieg advance rate true the AI has rarely defeated me(only the native Americans managed it toe to toe other than that maybe while outnumbered some 2-3 to one)
It does not go for the cities and that's important if you have few cities even more so while i find the scorched earth tactic adequate if you have something like 5 plus provinces as the AI can't take you out but if I'm Prussia and the AI Austria it could send 2 stacks and take Berlin without having to burn the countryside and I'd be dead the AI lacks the killer blow tactic so to say:D

I've been thinking that it might've been good for them to have individual provinces for all the farms, towns, etc, and allow those to be taken, instead of having them as they are now. France would be 6 or 8 or however many provinces instead of one big one. Production could be linked back to the nearest city of the owning province; no land link, severe production penalty (or none at all).

Ardri

03-11-2009, 04:29

Rushing the trade spots was the first thing I did in the last campaign I played, started and stopped on Saturday. I had all but one of the trade spots in Brazil and both coasts of Africa. Rushed my initial sloops and brigs to those spots and held them until the Indiamen were built 2 turns later. UP and Marathas beat me to Indonesia.

And then once I had those spots, nobody every challenged me for them, not even pirates. Single Indiamen sitting there without any escort in the theater.... nothing to see here, move along Blackbeard, thank you. +16000 per turn. Millions of elephants died per turn for all the ivory I was shipping out of Africa. I could've built a life-size replica of the moon outta the stuff.
With UP it isn't uncommon to bring in 25-30k a turn from trade which pretty much means you dominate the global economy, especially given that UP is tightly alllied with GB and anyone who tries to go to war with you ends up getting whiped on the high seas by the Royal Navy.

Kulgan

03-11-2009, 08:09

I completeley agree with the original poster. I am too a shogun veteran and find the understanding of the game's new mechanics 10 times as hard as just getting stacks of troops and beating the crap out of anything you see.

I started my first campaign with Holland, took the small german states giving me 3 schools quickly and now am in position to take on any great power. Except maybe Prussia ( Prussia very early conquered austria and some german states ) but I feel very confident I can take them as well. Not breaking a sweat.

And I'm only up to the point of having invented the basic ring bayonet, dragoons ( which I don't use ) and the first movable cannon. And then some non combat inventions as well offcourse.

Now I'll be getting horse artillery, skirmishers, grenadiers, heavy cavalry... which will hopefully make the battles a lot more fun. 1500 line infantry vs 1500 line infantry isn't fun.

I guess that without some serious AI patching, the only way to keep the game fun to me is playing 'weak' on purpose. Which is no real problem but I would prefer things to be different.

Thank you for reading

Husar

03-11-2009, 11:58

Well, I keep thinking you got the wrong game mate, have a look at StarCraft or some of those 5min-per-round RTS games, those are usually pretty hard, I mean at least I got beaten by the StarCraft AI on eh, medium or hard a many years ago. Surely though, there are people who beat even that easily. :shrug:

Being really good in games obviously has a disadvantage at this point and quite frankly, now I know who to avoid in multiplayer. ~;)

I really appreciate though, that you(JAG) get along with DevDave nowadays. :laugh4:

For me the game has been very unnerving so far. Since it still hasn't arrived until right now.

Lord of the Isles

03-11-2009, 13:38

As for 3., maybe a max of 1 trade ship per trade zone? Anyway, I have another suggestion:

4. No replenishment of troops in the field.

To get home theatre troops (e.g. regular line, cavalry etc) replenished (brought up to full strength after a battle) you either need to take the units back to your home theatre and fill up in a province there, or bring new units from home.

To get foreign theatre troops replenished (e.g. Sepoys, East India Co, VoC for Dutch, etc) you need to visit a province in their native theatre or bring out new units from there.

To get Militia and other cheap troops replenished, any province of yours or bring new units from anywhere.

Why? Because at first I was quite pleased that even if the Battle AI wasn't all that wonderful, the battles at least are tougher for the human because you tend to have bigger casualties even when you (inevitably) win. That will slow down blitzing and make a sterner challenge. But then I realized the new replenishment system makes all that moot, since 2 turns after a battle your army can be back to 100% strength and ready to bulldoze through the opposition again.

Rule 4. puts tedious micromanagement back into the game but I still recommend it. In practice, it means you need to bring a large reserve to a campaign, with the extra drain in your economy that entails.

I'm sure they are going to be kept busy with game-breaking problems for a while, but eventually CA could change the system themselves to make replenishment work better. Make it take a number of turns proportional to the approximate distance between the 'home' of the troops and where they currently are. Say, 3 turns for 'same theatre' replenishment increasing in stages up to say 8 turns for 'other side of the world' replenishments. Ideally the actual distance could be taken into account, so that Flanders -> Holland takes min time and London -> Egypt takes ages, but I'd accept the simpler system if the latter was too tough to code.

Meneldil

03-11-2009, 17:01

I kind of agree.

To be honest, personally I hardly play aggressive as I am much to busy building every improvement in my towns and keeping my little serfs happy.
But as soon as I've read some game or faction guide on 'How to conquer the world in 15 turns' I find it very hard not to follow on the advice, knowing its much more effective to spam units than spend the money on city walls.
Somewhat diminishes my game enjoyment :(

I am not sure what the best solution would be. Most probably the modders will come up with something clever.

Susanna/Calapine :pokemon:

Well, that's my main grief with TW games. The fact you win the game by conquering the world (and that said conquest is pretty easy when you get the gist of the game).

I much prefer Europa Universalis, in which you can't simply annihilate a faction by winning a few battles, and rule Europe after ten years. I wish CA would have made ETW more similar to that.

satyr9

03-11-2009, 17:38

I'm a mediocre at best TW player. However, I have played far more civ than TW in my life (although not much of either lately) and I fully admit that I can't speak to VH/VH not being a challenge to very good players, but there is absolutely no chance that multiple people in this thread crush civ on the hardest difficulty levels regularly. Go check a civ board and guys who are absolute addicts about those games will lose on deity (is impossible new? I haven't downloaded any expansions for civ IV, 'cause I haven't played in a while). The AI is still terrible at warring, but the bonuses are extreme. I don't have exact numbers but each AI will start out with an enormous tech/army lead at the beginning and be able to outproduce at least 3:1 from the get go. Your growth curve simply can never catch up and all the advanced tactics in the world can't make up the difference. You simply won't be able to win by domination or anything else before someone launches a spaceship. If you mess with the map settings and game speeds you can find ways to win on any difficulty level, but there are map settings and difficulty levels combinations that I guarantee absolutely nobody can beat without cheating in civ. I'm sure people have gotten better since I last looked in on that community and new tactics have come around, but I'll be shocked if more than a half dozen people are beating any kind of standard civ map regularly on the hardest difficulty with more than a very specialized civilization or two.

None of that is to say that civ is a better game. They emphasize very different parts of the game (titles kinda say it all) and depending on how you like your world domination one or the other will suit you, but when people complain about the difficulty on vh/vh and say they destroy civ series games as well, I have a hard time believing either claim (although admittedly the stock difficulty m/m vs. noble civ is crazy easy in comparison 'cause their AI is terrible at war).

In general though for people who like these games enough to be really really good, I'm sorry but AIs will never be able to compete with you. Yes, you can give them huge imbalances to counteract their total inability to strategize, but if you want to play against a smart aggressive opponent, your only option (for the forseeable future) will be multiplayer.

Anyway, this was probably a little long and rude to a few players for a first post in a forum, but I've lurked here on and off since RTW and just started MTW2 again before I got ETW and some of these claims made me finally sign up. lol

Fisherking

03-11-2009, 17:56

Well welcome satyr9!

Happy something brought you out of hiding.

:laugh4::2thumbsup:

JAG

03-11-2009, 18:19

Civ is much harder than TW, always has been, I can't beat the top levels of Civ 4 or Gal civ 2 - yes I know they are made by different people, that doesnt matter - which is precisely why I get so frustrated by being able to EASILY thrash the AI in TW on the hardest difficulty settings. It drives me crazy.

And Husar, me and Dave have always had a 'special' relationship! :D :balloon2:

Cheetah

03-11-2009, 19:07

Hi JAG. Autoresolve all your battles.

Spino

03-11-2009, 21:44

Hi JAG. Autoresolve all your battles.

Uh, wouldn't that defeat the whole point to playing Total War games?!? The main reason I became attracted to TW games in the first place was the ability to build an empire AND fight my own battles in a pseudo-realistic fashion. Think about it, without the tactical battles the TW games are nothing more than superficial and simplistic empire building games that sport medicore AI. If you want a turn based strategy game that deals solely with the nitty gritty of running & building an empire there are far deeper and more challenging games available on the market.

Spino

03-11-2009, 21:51

GalCiv 2 is a good way ti go, in that the higher difficulties actually made the AI smarter rather than just adding additional resources to a moron.

It also has the various choices of what you want included in each game.

I don't want an AI that's necessarily more aggressive, just one that will surprise you on occasion with sneakiness rather than just spamming elite stacks. Stuff like cutting you off from your allies, building up it's own coalition and isolating you diplomatically before invading, that kind of thing.

Well most people who cry for a better AI opponent simply want one that 1) behaves sensibly and 2) behaves more like a human than a jacked up ENIAC on overdrive. Understandably 1) is far easier to achieve than 2) but the fact that some developers can do both leaves us wondering why the rest don't make a bigger effort to do so as well.

The lackluster AI in E:TW and other strategy games only illustrates the massive differences in design approach between most developers and Stardock. When Brad Wardell & company set down to design the Galactic Civilizations series they deliberately set out to create an extremely effective AI opponent for the single player game. A strong AI was considered one of their top priorities and they applied an extraordinary amount of intellect and resources in order to achieve their goal. As many people have mentioned, this effort SHOWS. The fact that Brad Wardell cut his teeth as an AI programmer didn't hurt either... :wink:

The folks at Stardock knew that if they provided a challenging AI that did not need to resort to cheating in order to make a good show of it would go over well with gamers and they were right!

Husar

03-11-2009, 21:59

Well, for one I never really read guides, I can't remember ever checking the guides section here.
I play the games a bit like role playing games, I build my own empire and also usually start by teching up.
Though for some strange reason I tried blitzing in EU3 of sorts because later on once some super nation becomes Emperor I can't really conquer anything anymore being a small german state. :sweatdrop:
In Total War games I never really felt the urge to rush things, after a while i think the AI can also become quite challenging, most of the problems may be related to the AI being weak at the beginning of a campaign. I absolutely loathe cheating AIs though as well as artificial stats padding to provide more of a challenge, that only leaves clever tactics for the AI to win and that is about the only point where an AI cannot compete with a human player, except maybe in chess.
The AI sending lots of full stacks after me would completely wipe away any immersion that I'm looking for in these games.
So I guess, dear JAG, you may have to wait for CA to release the promised MP campaign option to get a real challenge out of the game, sometimes being good is worse. :shrug:

Dogfish

03-11-2009, 22:06

When Brad Wardell & company set down to design the Galactic Civilizations series they deliberately set out to create an extremely effective AI opponent for the single player game. A strong AI was considered one of their top priorities and they applied an extraordinary amount of intellect and resources in order to achieve their goal. As many people have mentioned, this effort SHOWS. The fact that Brad Wardell cut his teeth as an AI programmer didn't hurt either... :wink:

The folks at Stardock knew that if they provided a challenging AI that did not need to resort to cheating in order to make a good show of it would go over well with gamers and they were right!

I read that and can't help but think back to reading an interview where somebody at CA was bragging about how they spent a couple of years getting the water to look right.

:wall:

Yes, CA, the screenshots are very pretty. Now please make a decent AI and the game will be in the upper echelon as it was expected and hoped to be.

satyr9

03-11-2009, 22:11

Well welcome satyr9!

Happy something brought you out of hiding.

:laugh4::2thumbsup:

Thanks Fisherking.

And for JAG, while the highest difficulty levels of civ are very hard, I really dislike the way it functions. I could beat up to emperor level (which really isn't even that high) playing a little carefully on most typical settings, but the harder levels don't really change anything about how the AI plays. It only gives them larger advantages like tech speed and unit maintenance. I like a challenge, but at some point it starts to feel so false. I think that I can beat the game a couple difficulty levels higher, but it would take me 100 hours of gameplay to pull it off because of the need to really work through so many decisions and plans. That dynamic could be easily re-created in TW games if they wanted to. The AI cities would just need to have cheaper unit costs and building costs and that would pretty much cover it. At some point they will end up with such large armies that no matter how poor their strategy/tactics are you'll have to be perfect to successfully attack anywhere. The problem is what everyone really wants is an AI that actually plays better at higher levels. That being said the AI is more aggressive when it perceives itself as stronger than the human. Pretty sure that was true in MTW2 and it wouldn't suprise me if that held for ETW as well. That means that those of us not expert in the game get a much rougher ride and a more interesting AI because it tries to exploit our weakness, where for the elite players, the AI is afraid and won't push any advantage because it believes itself to be at an overall disadvantage. Obviously without playing ETW it's pure conjecture for me to say that's how it works here, but that's how I've observed AIs to work in previous versions of this game. So the problem is that the stronger players actually end up playing a weaker AI because in general the game AIs don't handle coming from behind type strategy nearly as well as they can deal with exploiting an advantage.

This leads to where I usually get frustrated with all these style of games. If you are playing a winning campaign, at some point in the middle of it, that will become quite clear that you have a winning game and the rest is just playing it through. Handling your early growth curve and negotiating the initial hostilities is so important. Once you've done that correctly, except for the very few times when your progression as a player perfectly matches the difficulty level you're playing, the game is over in all but name. Hopefully soon, someone will invent an overall smarter AI that can continue to throw you curveballs, and the mongol/timurid invasions in MTW2 were a good idea for that as well, but they certainly aren't the perfect answer to that problem.

The most frustrating part for the hardcore base of any game franchise is that new releases are basically betas for you to bug test. The best game developers actually pay close attention and include the best advice/mods in later patches, but as far as I know they are all perfectly happy throwing their game out into the world knowing there are problems and letting their player base work through exactly what they are and give them good ways to fix them (or in the case of games with good modding communities, they just let you fix them yourselves). With most games I usually greet a new release as an opportunity to run through the previous version a couple times and by the time I'm bored again, the patches/mods will have ironed out the largest problems.