One weakness of the AI can be easily fixed!

[+DOC+]

One of the weaknesses of the MTW campaign was the amount of peasant heavy AI armies one would see. This trend often continued right through the game and often resulted in the game getting progressively easier as the various periods arrived.

I believe the new building destruction rules introduced in VI expansion by ECS have gone someway to helping alleviate the return to Stone-age phenomenon. This being that buildings are now only damaged when the whole province including the castle is taken. This prevents the multiple degradation due to the AI poorly defending its valuable provinces; it can now react and take back besieged provinces without any loss to the building tech level.

However, there is another way to encourage the AI to build better armies. If you observe the AI build values for peasants in the prod file you'll notice that the values are very low. Nevertheless, the AI still seems to build a lot of peasants? The reason for this is their build requirement of "fort-only"... thus when the AI only has a fort in the province it can ONLY build peasants If the AI then chooses to build a unit it will only be able to build peasants regardless of how low the build values are set. This is compounded by the fact that the AI will often have provinces with only forts in them.

So, by changing the build requirement of peasants to "fort and town watch" for example, one can somewhat alleviate the AI's tendency to build a large number of peasants. In this instance they will also have the option to build urban militia and will tend to do so due to the build values. With VI some factions don't suffer from this quite so much as some of the new units also only require a fort to build, e.g. slav warriors.

Anyway, in essence what i am trying to say is that to improve the quality of AI armies, don't allow them the option of building peasants or other weak units alone. Instead, make sure the AI has a choice.

Many of you modders will undoubtedly know this already, but for the casual gamer, it might help them get a better challenge from the AI. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[pyhhricvictory]

I did that on the older version of the game, non VI, and even took them out entirely except for rebellions. The computer would build the next easiest unit to build so you would see either vast numbers of archers or lots of urban militia, not to much better IMHO. I had to move the build requirements for Feudal Seargants and Spearmen down to compensate for that.

[A_B]

One of the concepts in WesW's new MedMod being discussed is core territories for each faction, in which the really good units are produced. These core territories would not be able to produce the generic units (these would only be produced in the territoreis between different factions core territories. This should help insure factions always have a partial supply of good units.

There is a thread on this titled 'new catholic unit lineup'

It's WesS's mod, so whether - or how - it get implemented is up to him.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (+DOC+ @ May 19 2003,07:46)]One of the weaknesses of the MTW campaign was the amount of peasant heavy AI armies one would see. This trend often continued right through the game and often resulted in the game getting progressively easier as the various periods arrived.

I believe the new building destruction rules introduced in VI expansion by ECS have gone someway to helping alleviate the return to Stone-age phenomenon. This being that buildings are now only damaged when the whole province including the castle is taken. This prevents the multiple degradation due to the AI poorly defending its valuable provinces; it can now react and take back besieged provinces without any loss to the building tech level.

However, there is another way to encourage the AI to build better armies. If you observe the AI build values for peasants in the prod file you'll notice that the values are very low. Nevertheless, the AI still seems to build a lot of peasants? The reason for this is their build requirement of "fort-only"... thus when the AI only has a fort in the province it can ONLY build peasants If the AI then chooses to build a unit it will only be able to build peasants regardless of how low the build values are set. This is compounded by the fact that the AI will often have provinces with only forts in them.

So, by changing the build requirement of peasants to "fort and town watch" for example, one can somewhat alleviate the AI's tendency to build a large number of peasants. In this instance they will also have the option to build urban militia and will tend to do so due to the build values. With VI some factions don't suffer from this quite so much as some of the new units also only require a fort to build, e.g. slav warriors.

Anyway, in essence what i am trying to say is that to improve the quality of AI armies, don't allow them the option of building peasants or other weak units alone. Instead, make sure the AI has a choice.

Many of you modders will undoubtedly know this already, but for the casual gamer, it might help them get a better challenge from the AI. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Doc,

There is an easier way to handle the peasant problem without eliminating the peasants. The peasants produce cheap garrisons which helps the AI. In my games, the AI doesn't build peasant armies. My solution to it is two fold:

The first is in the unit profile AI build. The AI building priorities are too high A setting of 20 is still fairly high early on, the poverty striken value is 63(&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif, quite high. Set everything to(1). Don't go negative numbers btw, strange things happen..

Next, change the build file, and set the castle build to (500). The key to getting the AI to build better units is to help it build better buildings. Collumn 11, AI building influences for building combos is a tremendous tool. Put town_watch(500)in collumn 11 for the first level castle and the AI will immediate build a town watch after the castle is finished. Put spearmaker(500) in collumn 11 for the town_watch and the AI will immediately build a spearmaker after the town_watch. The AI build tons of peasants because it doesn't upgrade its buildings and economy properly. The AI needs other units to build, if peasants are the only units it can build, then it will build only peasants. If you force feed a basic build strategy the AI does a decent job of building other units.

BTW, the stone age problem is caused by the low build priority for the castle which was 100. The castle level 1 could not compete priority wise with the more advanced structures later in the game. The key was to raise it sky high to force the AI to build it. When I raised it to 500, I never had any problems with stone age. When you set the basic building high enough in build even the rebels build structures.