The New Patch

[Claudio]

Several problems i have come across. The AI still isn't the revolutionary, breath-taking spectacle we were promised. It still can't approach me in line formation and chooses instead to send single units piecemeal to be annihlated. It still sends its cavalry ahead of the main body of its army to take out artillery, getting torn apart in the process. It still does not make sensible declarations of war and does not understand the concept of warfare, preferring to spend all of its time raiding a farm in a province, even though the main city in said province is undefended and could be taken with a handful of militia.

The AI still recruits navies largely made up of brigs and sloops, with the occasional sixth rate thrown in, or in the case of muslim factions, galleys and light galleys. The only faction able to field a decent navy are the pirates. On the plus side, however, the AI does block trade ports very often and for a good length of time.

My very friendly allies still refuse to trade with me. Single-state factions still declare war out of nowhere against much larger factions and do nothing but occupy a farm on your territory for 10 turns, despite the fact that the city in that province is undefended.

The AI are still taxing their provinces so high that they do not grow financially or in population. The AI also are still clearly out to get the human player, with amazingly stupid declarations of war and refusals of peace. For example, the Italian states declaring war on Spain when you, the human, are playing as Spain, yet in every other campaign where you are not playing as Spain, they remain friendly and allied for the entire campaign. Same with Georgia and the Ottoman empire, Huron Confederacy and Great Britain, Innuit nations and France, Iroquois and France, Dagestan and Persia.

Nice try CA, and thanks for the 12 new units. They're very shiny and beautiful, no doubt, but there are more pressing issues at hand. I think i'll wait for yet another patch before i continue to play this trainwreck of a game that cost me $50.

[Durallan]

actually I just played a land battle and it approached me in a line formation, although that wasn't smart because then the cannons shot buckshot at them and they kinda fell apart lol but it most definetly did march up to me in a line

[Dradem]

wel I tried a campaign with austria last night. Played for 11 turns.
for the first time (atleast for me) there was a Demand to surrinder when Poland sieged Hungary.
I also send ships to get some control over Trade slots I sailed to East Asia, no Dutch ships found in any slot. put my ship in one and Pirats attacked it a turn later. So no more parking ships in any trade slot.:2thumbsup:

I'm playing on VH-VH

[Ethelred Unread]

what difficulty you playing at claudio?

[Megas Methuselah]

Why didn't they extend Spain's uniform change to New Spain and Mexico??? :wall:

[AussieGiant]

I started a new GB campaign last night on H/M

It's going very well.

Obvious improvements:

* Performance on the Campaign map!! It's as smooth as a babies bottom now...very nice.

* Frame rate performance in Land and Sea battles are up on my machine by about 10 to 15 fraps.

* No random DOW's to date and their has been a few DOW's. I'm in 1707 and the various sides have been drawn into two separate camps. I declined a few alliance obligations and have noticed immediate and negative impact on my relationships.

* Trade Nodes are a complete %^#$ fight!! It's a war within a war now.

* Land battle movement rates are noticeably slower. I've only had a few skirmishes in the colonies with Indian’s so I have not seen too much.

* Naval battles are looking great with the increased performance allowing better settings.

[Durallan]

started a new campaign (world domination) as Prussia, most likely on M/M.

Started the first turn by getting as many minor nations as possible to ally with me and let me be their protector in exchange for moolah, Managed to get Hannover, Bavaria, Wurttemburg few others I don't remember, Savoy (lost that one when the french decided they wanted it and there was no way to reach them by land to help)

don't know what would have happened had I not asked them to do so, but Austria declared war on Wurttemburg and I decided to join the fight, sent an army past the city south of brandenburg (trade treaty and military access treaty) my army sits outside the austrian region beneath it and they declare war on me the next turn, so I turn my army around and take it for myself, it was a protectorate of poland so they declared war on me, and that other protectorate of poland declared war on me aswell.

However got a peace treaty by sending an army to the gates of warsaw and asking very kindly if they wanted me to demolish their capital. They rudely accepted my peace treaty which left me with austria which I'm currently kicking the crap out of. On that note most fights I've had have been heroic victories, and Vienna and Hungary are rebelling.

Strange though as an army of 8 magyar militia went to try to reclaim hungary from me and I had 2 milita guarding it. It was a fort battle and somehow the AI got incredibly distressed at trying to take the walls and began routing while they were still scaling the walls, sufficed to say it was a heroic victory, with 2 milita defeating 8 milita, just because they wet their pants at climbing the walls.

Although i am having trouble trying to keep vienna from rebelling, when I got there the peasants had -22 happiness, demolished the schools and need to improve the army but otherwise hasn't been too much of a worry got it down to -3 before the game CTD going through my turn in 1707

[Zarky]

I think they made auto-resolve somehow easier, I haven't lost singe auto-resolved battle expects for when I attacked ten times stronger enemy just to see if I can lose.

[Xipe Totec]

Had some weird stuff in my new Sweden campaign today. First was a bridge battle north of Moscow where the only bridge across the river was outside the red lines forcefield. Managed to ford the river by ordering units to cross but I couldn't see where the ford was.

After routing a unit of Cossacks on the other side I sent one squadron of horse to run them down but they killed 10 of my own infantry in passing through. :oops: Several more infantry were killed by my own cavalry again in my next battle too. Did this happen before the patch because I've never seen it like this before? I do think it is fairly realistic though, albeit annoying as when you need to stop the scum escaping to pillage you want the cavalry to know how to do it without being micromanaged over every obstacle and have to move your infantry out of the way first.

The weirdest thing was in my attack on unwalled Copenhagen. Wondering why their cannons weren't turning to fire at my cavalry as they attacked across an open green field, I was stunned to see two units of cavalry almost destroyed in two neat lines of neighing and twitching bodies. There was no firing at the time, no fences to trip over etc. so I was a bit confused. Later I hit another invisible wall of death again with another cavalry unit and just managed to stop my great general going the same way. I realised eventually what it was. The cavalry were being ripped apart by invisible spiky deployable defences, and the artillery were unable to turn because they were trapped in the incredibly useful cannon picnic basket sandbag and dry stone wall defences, which were also invisible. Uh oh, my poor long suffering cavalry now just got another reason to be an expensive anachronism. Chasing routers and protecting howitzers is all I use them for. Those long spiky things are bad enough in the heat of battle without being invisible as well.:wall:

Great battle though which I won in the end despite the Danes trashing one of their own buildings with roundshot the instant I captured it. Aargh - I had four line infantry units inside it! :laugh4:

[Lemur]

I played a little last night, UP on H/H. Lots of improvements, and I love the fact that trade ships are now fair game for all and sundry. That said ...

... how do you make peace in this game? I had Prussia DOW on me, and I took their capitol, offering it back in exchange for peace. No dice. Then I offered them their former capitol, 50k florins, and two juicy Indian provinces. "We have never been so insulted ..."

I get that they're angry, but I can crush them like a bug, and I'm offering sweet terms. What gives? (Same with Sweden, BTW, so it isn't just stiff-necked Prussian intransigence.)

[Papewaio]

Yeah there is a little bit too much Holy Grail Black Knight attitude in the diplomacy section. I do wonder if it considers how many treaties one breaks or how aggressive you are.

It is Total War so maybe like WWII Allies they only accept Total Surrender. I say save the game and see how of your provinces you have to give away before they say yes. If they want all their provinces back plus an equivalent amount lost and still not accept then it is being very unreasonable (at least by Game Theory Tit for Tat). Tit for Tat means you hit me once, I hit you back once. So in a peace deal getting 2x what you lost is overkill but about the upper limit for revenge.

[Lemur]

Well, in this instance I was offering them their former capitol, a major Indian city and a minor Indian city. And 50k gold. Meanwhile, my military/economic rating was tops, and theirs was bottom. So to refuse a peace offering made zero sense.

Sure looks now as though once you're at war with someone, it's for keeps. No more brushfires or territorial skirmishing.

Oh, and I tried a theory: I wiped out all provinces that bordered with Prussia, just to make sure they weren't following the logic of, "We share a border and are not allies. WAR!" They still wouldn't take any level of generous terms.

I'd like to see this ironed out. Seems the perma-wars among the AI nations are still at it as well. I mean, sure, it's called "Total War," but that's no excuse for every single skirmish becoming a state of permanent hostilities.

[Durallan]

I'd have to say that its probably quite fair that they want to keep trying to kill you, considering you took their capital, In a multiplayer campaign game if another player took another players capital city I would think the player would want it back and try and make it as hard as possible for the other province to win. However having said that I still do have suicidal minor nations without anyway to resolve the issue, courland declared war on me along with poland, but I managed to get poland accept a peace treaty by having a large force sieging their capital, managed to do the same with austria, but once I took austria's capital (after reloading the game) they wouldn't accept a peace treaty and still won't. However I haven't had any conflict with courland and even after giving them some fine prussian china they still didn't want to accept a peace treaty and yet they haven't attacked me once. So its just an unnecessary conflict,

France however accepted a peace treaty after they took one of my protectorates by force (it was a long way from me so I couldn't rescue them, but hey, I got free money for several turns) so I would say that countries are more willing to accept peace treaties if you haven't wounded their ego. The only thing i can think of doing is taking another austrian province and then sieging their final province and then seeing what terms they will accept.

Strangely enough I actually can't get anyone to ally with me, I have about 6 protectorates, but no major nation seems to want to enter into an alliance with me, even though they have cancelled alliances with my enemies.

Oh and the United provinces has had france controlling Rotterdam for aruond 10 years now and they still haven't tried to kick the french out, although when austria took one of my ports and I kicked them out, I tried building a ship but it wouldn't let me until austria stop blockading my port, so this means that if your country only has one port and its blockaded, you will never be able to build a ship to break the blockade O.o

[Ordani]

... how do you make peace in this game? I had Prussia DOW on me, and I took their capitol, offering it back in exchange for peace. No dice. Then I offered them their former capitol, 50k florins, and two juicy Indian provinces. "We have never been so insulted ..."


Some factions get stuck never wanting to make peace, regardless of benefit. You could offer them your entire empire and they probably would not take it. It's probably the same sort of problem that makes some factions fall asleep and never do anything, the AI is not properly evaluating changing conditions. Possibly hardcoded that way on purpose to prevent too many rapidly shifting alliances, but who even knows. If a faction doesn't accept peace the first few times they ask, they probably never will, not even for all their lands back on the eve of their demise.