Eb on BI and on Alexander - strengths & weaknesses

[Dunadd]

I've played EB on both BI and Alexander.

Here's a list of strengths and weaknesses from what i've noticed so far (playing as Carthage and as the Dacians)

On BI:
Pluses
- Ferromancer's installer makes installation easy
- AI is more aggressive, making the game more interesting at the campaign level and more battles where the enemy outnumbers your forces, more of a challenge
- AI makes naval invasions from early on in the game (though often very small ones)
- You can use shield wall, swim etc

Minuses
-Battlefield AI is not as good as with Alexander, far easier to get enemy generals to kamikaze into middle of my army by using skirmishers as bait


On Alexander:
Pluses
-AI merges stacks before attacking
-AI almost always includes archers or slingers in its armies and does not kamikaze with generals in most battles
-AI more willing to negotiate ceasefires, trade rights etc unless you hold any of it's homeland provinces, when it won't
-AI bases decision on whether to invade by land on how strong your defences and garrison on its borders are (Ptolemaics attacked in my first game when i garrisoned Lepki too weakly; 2nd game when i garrisoned it strongly and watched them with spies and built up walls, they didnt)
- Battle AI generally a bit better (still not smart but less stupid)

Minuses
- Installation a bit more time consuming
- AI still often attacks with a force inferior in numbers and quality to the one they're attacking - once even two units against a full army
- Never seen an AI naval invasion playing from 272 BC to 245BC as Carthage (114 turns) - Romans never even invaded Sicily by land bridge, even though they have a far superior navy, they just use it for blockades, which does reduce my trade income but makes it quite dull and easy.
- AI's relative passivity makes playing against the Romans as Carthage especially dull and not at all historical (no counter invasions of Africa, Sicily or Spain) - (though this may be partly due to EB not representing Romans' massively superior manpower due to an attempt at avoiding 'Romano-centrism')

Overall i'm thinking i might wait for EBII, which will hopefully have better campaign AI and better battlefield AI since the AI in Medieval II is supposed to be moddable.

[Maksimus]

I have no comments but AI note for both, EB vanilla script is reason AI is getting limited in both cases, - - for sure we need to modify and test game so AI would get its full potential. Thats the reason I made a mod. Vanilla EB is designed for RTW.exe

[seienchin]

Unfortunatly the AI doesnt merge Stacks in Alexander either, only by sending them together in a city.
The retraining in Alexander is really important, but otherwise... The AI is passive, except for the seleucids... and the ai have even more crapy militia troops in their armies. :juggle2:
By the way in my current campain with Alex.exe the generals do not commit suicide by riding in the middle of my army, they are doing it by trying to outflank me... With one single generla unit.

[Raygereio]

About the AI in general - on both Bi.exe and alex.exe; the passiveness is simple random change in my experience. I've had a game on alex.exe in which pontus with pure tenacity managed to kick the Arche Seleukia out of anatolia and was busy conquering helas.
In my current game in alex.exe the pontus haven't done anything for the last 100 years. I've had similar experiences on BI.exe. You can't really judge the campaign level AI on that, all the three RTW .exe's have this problem.
I have noticed that the win conditions mod helps against the 'frozen solid' factions on BI.exe, I can not say yet if it does on alex.exe.

I've seen naval invasions on both BI and alex.exe (heck, even the rare one on romeTW.exe); I think it's tied to the aggressiveness of the faction - and that - as established above - is pretty much random. Again; it's not something you can really judge the AI on, both do it sometimes.

The strategic portions of the AI - that determines what to attack, with what force - here I will say alex.exe is the better. On BI.exe, I still got the one-man-stack besieging a city defended by a full-stack thing way to often for my taste. But on alex.exe the AI usually tries to attack with equal of larger forces.
Also I've noticed that alex.exe sometimes calls of an attack if you just signed a cease-fire, or if you're moving a way more powerfull stack then the AI's near his target. Not often, but sometimes.

The diplomacy AI is completly schizo on all three .exe's. As an example; the KH was reduced to just Rhodos in my recent Hayasdan campaign and as an size and force comparison: I had just finished all the western reforms. They demanded I became their protectorate. ... It's funny, I'll give it that. But it's silly and in the same way you can sometimes demand and get a cease-fire after a good, solid series of victories that leaves the AI faction's military broken for the next couple of decades and sometimes the AI stubornly refuses even though you have several full stacks to his single Pantodapoi.
No winners here, only loosers.

Tactical AI on the battlefield; well. Both BI and Alex are beter then romeTW.exe in this regard. And this could be my imagination; but I've noticed that the AI on BI.exe uses heavy infantry and skirmishers somewhat more effectivly, and the AI on alex.exe employs the combination of the infantry and cavalry better.
In the end I can't say one of the two is superior then the other because...wel, they both kinda suck. The AI can only win through superior numbers and quality, not cunning. As soon as a AI can surprise me with clever manouvering I will give it the Raygereio Stamp of Approval, until that time I can only say both are 'adequate'.

About the installation; well, that's subjective. I assume you're refering to Maksimus' EB-for-alex-mod about it being time consuming for alex.exe? I don't use that, so I can't comment on it, but I get EB to work on alex.exe in under a minute, it's just a matter of changing the shortcut you use to start the game, adding the immortal trait and optionally activating night battles, that isn't difficult.
Heck, Maksimus' post here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=94861) has the instructions for it (it's hidden behind a spoiler tag).

The only real advantage I can think of, why you'd choose one .exe over the other is that I've noticed improved loading times on alex.exe. And as someone with a 512 mb RAM, I'm really happy about that.

Edit:

I have no comments but AI note for both, EB vanilla script is reason AI is getting limited in both cases, - - for sure we need to modify and test game so AI would get its full potential. Thats the reason I made a mod. Vanilla EB is designed for RTW.exe
I'm confused here; EB is designed for romeTW.exe, true. But the background script works just fine on all three .exe's, it doesn't 'limit' the AI in way.

[Maksimus]

EB script has coin ++ to AI when he is in depth, and since unit cost and support per turn is very expensive Script does not give enough coin nor population AI would have (has) in vanilla RTW, so AI cant use its features properly if hes broke and doesnt have the population. Same with retraining; if there is no population or Coins, Alx.exe will build militia or wont retrain units = not *exe thing, but EB issue; if it has coin and population balance (like it does in mini mod i made) them AI will show its true face retraining elites and recruiting medium and better quality troops.

[Raygereio]

Hrm, I'll have to disagree with you Maksimus. The EB script allready replenishes population for the AI and the money asistance it gives is enough to help the AI, without it being outright cheating.
Sure, you'll get the full-militia-stack every now and then, but if you give the AI to much money, they'll only start fielding mercenary units.

[Maksimus]

Ok but I said my tests tho, here are results, i won and played EB main vanilla campaigns for 6 factions.

EB script doesnt replenishes population for the AI enough for him to recruit and retrain and still have population that will pay taxes (in Alx AI is smart in that way too). Note here that its made for RTW.exe which is pretty stupid and dont even know what to do with the money but to stack it up, ALX is something diff, you cant give too much it will exploit it and win.

Everyone can see that comparing his campaign faction status and see the prices of units and populations.
So for basic vanilla on RTW - Money asistance script gives is enough to help the AI not to go broke - but thats far away from AI needs, btw every script is cheating :juggle2: anyone can modify it

ALX.exe AI recruits best units regarding its AI set (for example Caesar in Macedon, they recruit heavy infantry) so it wont prefer merc's over good domestic units if it has population and coin unilke RTW where it just goes random or so its seems. :wall:

[Finn MacCumhail]

Hello everyone!

I have a dumb question. Is it possible to play EB on Alex.exe and on Vanilla RTW in the same time?

[Raygereio]

Hello everyone!

I have a dumb question. Is it possible to play EB on Alex.exe and on Vanilla RTW in the same time?
No question is dumb. Untill you ask it, that is. ;)
I'm not quite sure what you mean though; do you want to switch between .exe's in the same campaign?
If that's the case; then yes, switching between .exe's in and of itself is save game compatible. However modding the traitfiles and activating the night battles isn't; so if you start a campaign with the nescecary changes made to your EB install, then you can switch between .exe's with the same campaign as you choose.

[Finn MacCumhail]

Never mind, I just thought, that Alex is not addon, but independent game, and I wished to install Alex, and EB on it, and in the same time having Vanilla-based EB. But recently I discovered, that Alex is a mod. So, now I have another question.

Is it possible to install BI after I have already installed EB, and will it work?