Far too easy?

[Soylent Green]

Ok, so bugs and patches aside. Some of which make it harder and some easier.

Does anyone else think this game is far too easy? I've been playing since Shogun, pretty much hardcore, completing every campaign on every side in every game. You know the story.

But seriously, after the logistical nightmare that was the western Roman empire campaign on RTW:BI, where you had to micromanage every city just to get a positive income. This game is pathetically easy.

On my first game, VH/VH with England, i completed the campaign within 120 turns. Ok, so this probably could be done far quicker had i mastered the new religious and mercantile aspects of the game, as well as stopped bothering with alliances and all that, since the computer breaks them when you're fighting less than two factions.

But seriously, i like finishing off everyone, i have 40 turns remaining (to complete the original 50 or so provinces mission), and i have conquered the entire world, all that remains is a couple of Timurid provinces (the only significant challenge encountered, simply because all their units are 3 gold chevrons and artillery elephants appear to be made of titanium), and a few Inca? provinces further up.

Yeah, by the time you can attack the Incas, they're pretty wimpy in comparison. 3 silver chevron fully upgraded hospitallers seem to smear the floor with their best units.

Everyone used to hate that thing in MTW1 where the provinces kept respawning, but at least it kept you on your toes. Right now i can wipe out an entire faction in about three turns with about 6 well placed armies.

Timurids are the only real challenge faced thus far. The mongols were irritating due to their ability to spawn units from nowhere when facing annihilation. Dropships maybe? Yus.

I have to say, beautiful though it is, it looks like they've chucked out an unfinished product this time.

And why do besieging AIs line all their units up outside your front gate? I've actually had to leave the room and wait for the timer to run out because they just sit there. Retarded. I've had to leave most of the battles to the auto calculator because i just can't be bothered with their tactics. It's the same everytime, they move their missile troops FAR too far forward, get wiped out by my overpowered cavalry, and then the rest of their army converges in a mass in the middle. I could fight these battles with my eyes closed.

Okay, question/rant over. Flame away my friends. Flame away. :)

[sapi]

*ignites match

But seriously, if you don't like the game that's not our problem ;)

Unfortunately, the campaign AI is very weak, and i think the only way to get a challenge is not to strike quickly and give them time to build up.

Personally, i'd like faction reemergances and civil wars and all that stuff back from mtw1, but it appears that it's not going to happen.

We can only hope the game improves with time...

[Scotsmanforlife]

I'm playing as the HRE currently and am having a blast. I'm taking the game slowly so as to enjoy it much longer. It wasn't my goal to master this game within a few days of it coming out, what's the point of that? At the moment i'm surrounded by enemies and am enjoying being attacked on all sides. There are always going to be problems with games, no matter what the game. People aren't perfect and their is no such thing as a perfect game. I take it in stride and hope that in the future the bugs will be worked out. I think CA put's out amazing games, compared to a lot of bad games that i've had the misfortune of playing. Maybe i'm in the minority here but i'll continue to be a CA fan as long as they keep putting out products. :2thumbsup:

[Ars Moriendi]

Does anyone else think this game is far too easy?
[...]
This game is pathetically easy.
[...]
On my first game, VH/VH with England, i completed the campaign within 120 turns.
[...]
I could fight these battles with my eyes closed.



Dude, you're so 1337 it hurts !!!11!!!1

Will you teach me how you do it, master ? :clown: :beam: :clown:



Flame away my friends. Flame away. :)


There you have it :) :beam:

[The Teacher]

fight the battles from the generals eye view, camera angle that is, tell me what happens..

[Soylent Green]

Okay, i wasn't trying to 'prove' anything. God knows being 'good' at computer games isn't anything to be proud of these days anyway, (if you want to pretend you have a social life).

I'm one of those people that believes you shouldn't have to handicap yourself to play a challenging game. When it says very hard, it should be.. very hard. No? Anyway, i never reload battles, i always play through with the first result.

Plus, i never said i didn't like the game, perhaps just a little too quick to the shelves? A weak AI is a major fault in any game, i don't care what people say. I don't buy a game like MTW2 for the multiplayer value, because that erases the all important campaign aspect of it.

Not trying to be 'l337', as you put it, ironically or not. Just disappointed that they've gone backwards, if anything, on many aspects that made RTW, particularly BI, and the Alexander expansion, incredibly challenging. Because that's what i play strategy games for, a challenge, provided by the game, not myself. I could limit myself to one unit of peasants on VH/VH if i wanted to cream over the glory of my victory. But i'd rather the game provided that. No?

I merely wanted to ask whether anyone else was finding the game a breeze? Even though in 10 turns i lost 3 kings and countless generals to inquisitors. Even though none of my units charge properly. Even though none of my units upgrade properly. Even though cannon towers still fire ballistas. Even though, even though.

[katank]

Dude, that's just masochistic.

@OP, yep. The game is too easy for TW vets. Blitzing will net you tons of territories fast and soon you are invincible (have sufficient depth to absorb any offensive aimed at you and plenty of production to replace any losses and go on the offensive yourself)

[Barry Fitzgerald]

The biggest problem with the campaign AI is that it reads like a book!

And a faction will pretty much war itself to destrucion and doesn't know when to call it a day. Esp noticable playing as the HRE...watch as everyone attacks..many factions attack you despite it not being a good idea...in the ist place...

not sure if CA thought it would be fun..but ahem well....it is pretty easy to know what is going to happen next..bit like a cheesy horror movie....and the audience shouts.."he's behind you!!" lol

I too hope CA sit down and take note of these problems..and sort them out..and maybe if we make enough noise..bring back the popular MTW gameplay treats...titles....civil wars..etc etc...cannot be that hard to do...

[Ars Moriendi]

Okay, i wasn't trying to 'prove' anything.

I know. It's your invitation to fire away and the (way too many) times I've heard this kind of "i'm uber" talk got me snapping.



Not trying to be 'l337', as you put it, ironically or not.

I was (trying to be) ironic. But don't take it personally, it was mostly the 13yr old "too-good-for-you" kid stereotype I was aiming at.



Just disappointed that they've gone backwards, if anything, on many aspects that made RTW, particularly BI, and the Alexander expansion, incredibly challenging. Because that's what i play strategy games for, a challenge, provided by the game, not myself. I could limit myself to one unit of peasants on VH/VH if i wanted to cream over the glory of my victory. But i'd rather the game provided that. No?

I merely wanted to ask whether anyone else was finding the game a breeze? Even though in 10 turns i lost 3 kings and countless generals to inquisitors. Even though none of my units charge properly. Even though none of my units upgrade properly. Even though cannon towers still fire ballistas. Even though, even though.

I understand, and agree that the game could use a better AI and higher diff. settings for the hardcore players. Still, you have to keep in mind that you're definitely atypical. Most M2TW players out there never heard of STW and MTW, probably only played RTW shortly and are nowhere near your expertise level. The publisher has to aim for the "typical" player, whatever that may be.
Me, for my part, I'm happy with the difficulty level it presents now, I just wish the AI stopped making those stupid, unexplainable mistakes that just break the "make-believe".

Keep your hopes up and don't shelf the game just yet, there's mods in the making for the likes of you.

---------------------

PS: I'd like to see a demonstration of you playing blindfolded, should be fun to watch. You have videos ???
(yes, it's my lame attempt at irony, again...)

[Soylent Green]

That's more the kind of response i was asking for.

Agreed on both fronts. The AI is totally suicidal. I had a 100 turn alliance with Russia and Hungary, and they both broke it when i erased France, despite the fact both were at war with them.

Also, on another break from previous games, the AI will not accept bribes or protectorates even apparently when they have 1 unit of 40 men left in a city with 1000 population.

I spent most of the game excommunicated. Mainly because on a personal level i disagree with catholicism, and partly because i couldn't be bothered to crusade, i'd rather just eat through the catholic nations on my way to the middle east. Thus, apparently i was fair game to all the catholic nations of the world, where's the action?

[Scotsmanforlife]

I'll agree that BI and Alexander were much more challenging. But this game just came out, give CA a chance to improve it before condeming it. Before anyone says it, i agree that CA should have made it very challenging from the start. Nonetheless i'm still enjoying myself and will wait for future patches and hope they improve the game. :inquisitive:

[Soylent Green]

I understand, and agree that the game could use a better AI and higher diff. settings for the hardcore players. Still, you have to keep in mind that you're definitely atypical. Most M2TW players out there never heard of STW and MTW, probably only played RTW shortly and are nowhere near your expertise level. The publisher has to aim for the "typical" player, whatever that may be.
Me, for my part, I'm happy with the difficulty level it presents now, I just wish the AI stopped making those stupid, unexplainable mistakes that just break the "make-believe".

Keep your hopes up and don't shelf the game just yet, there's mods in the making for the likes of you.

---------------------

PS: I'd like to see a demonstration of you playing blindfolded, should be fun to watch. You have videos ???
(yes, it's my lame attempt at irony, again...)

Fair play with that reply man. But you know Civilisation IV, everything above Prince difficulty for me was a subject of much consternation. It was something you aspired to beat, you had to be the ultimate player. I always remember my friend beating the max difficulty back in the days of Civ. I, and how incredible it was.

With a series, you have to expect that the majority of players are probably going to be coming from the last episode back, since the loyal ones are more likely to be coming back with an incredible series like the TW series.

When i buy a game, i EXPECT, not hope, a challenge, and something i haven't experienced before, as part of paying through the nose. For example, Baldur's Gate, with its 350 gaming hours, or Elder Scrolls 4, which was so long i couldn't even finish it in several sittings. RTW kept me coming back, particularly with BI, because it was so intensely challenging.

When i sit down to a session of MTW2, i know what to expect now, even after one campaign. I know it's going to be a matter of slogging out the campaign, autocalculating 8000 battles, and victory. Not a tenuous battle of wills that could go either way.

I had ONE exciting battle, against the aforementioned Timurids, where they actually broke through my first citadel walls (they brought a grand bombard on the fifth assualt), and then my second, until i fought them off on the third. Despite a 6:1 army ratio (them:me). ONE.

Tbh. If you remember the MTW:VI expansion, every battle counted in keeping them out of your lands. When you were skilfully maneouvring your fyrds behind their elite warbands in order to actually pull off a victory. Or half of your losses were just to weaken them enough to take them down!

[Ars Moriendi]

RTW kept me coming back, particularly with BI, because it was so intensely challenging.

Strange to hear you say that, I thought RTW was much easier and its AI weaker than M2TW. I never even bought the game, I just borrowed it, played for a week or so, got bored to tears, unistalled it and never tried it again. M2TW, after 2 campaigns, still gets me wanting for more, MTW style, despite the bugs and all.
It's different styles of play between us, I reckon.


When i sit down to a session of MTW2, i know what to expect now, even after one campaign. I know it's going to be a matter of slogging out the campaign, autocalculating 8000 battles, and victory. Not a tenuous battle of wills that could go either way.

Yes, it can be that way. Maybe we just played too much of the CA's Total War games (I know I did). If only there was a viable alternative...
Also, much of the boredom and jading in playing the current TW game comes from the increased tedium of moving agents and armies and the countless irrelevant battles. It's the price we had to pay for the new strategic freedom allowed by the departure from the risk-style map (the new kind of map also seriously hampers the AI's reasoning abilities, it seems).


Tbh. If you remember the MTW:VI expansion, every battle counted in keeping them out of your lands. When you were skilfully maneouvring your fyrds behind their elite warbands in order to actually pull off a victory. Or half of your losses were just to weaken them enough to take them down!

I haven't played VI either. By all accounts I missed a lot. I did, however, played MTW to death, some mods too, so I have a pretty good idea what you're talking about.

[RussianWinter]

The problem is that I know victory is coming, its just a matter of how soon I can get it and If I'm willing to wait around for the ride. Short of playing the turks during the mongol invasion, getting wiped out will just not happen.

I have absolutely zero faith the AI will be beefed up. Not in a patch, not in an expansion. It isn't going to happen, if it were fixable it would have been done by now.

That said, I'm having fun while it lasts. I've got my money's worth and killed quite a few nights, its just sad to think what *could* have been.

[EGr]

I found the AI too easy so I gave every faction massive king's purses. Now they all have ridiculous amounts of armies.

[Veresov]

If you want a better challenge, add a money script for the AI, and improve the AI's starting position in terms of buildings. I have several starting strat files for each of the factions I like to play. I ensure that the AI starts 2 Tech levels ahead of me and its starting units are more advanced.

[Reapz]

Soylent, like you I have played TW since Shogun and like you I wish the AI was a little stronger in campaign. But I still find the game very enjoyable and I think it might refresh your interest to try other factions. England is an easy win.

Try Russia - I have had several fun campaigns with that faction. You will win no doubt but have a different set of challenges along the way. In my quest to add novelty in my last one I did with Russia, I took to the sea, invaded Britain and tried to recreate the path of expansion you take playing as England with Russian units. The AI never took the original Russian provinces except Riga but it was not my power center and I built everything around London and Antwerp.

The game engine has a lot of potential and when the modding community gets to grips with it and comes up with something akin to RTR I think you will have something closer to what you're looking for.

(Until then EU III comes out January)

[Zenicetus]

I spent most of the game excommunicated. Mainly because on a personal level i disagree with catholicism, and partly because i couldn't be bothered to crusade, i'd rather just eat through the catholic nations on my way to the middle east. Thus, apparently i was fair game to all the catholic nations of the world, where's the action?

I agree the game should have one or two higher levels of difficulty. Or a more rational AI.... one that would always build proper army stacks and make less suicidal decisions on the strategy map, which would make the current difficulty levels fine.

However, if you play a Catholic faction and ignore the whole papal relations thing, then you're bypassing part of the game's difficulty. It's a different game if you play by those rules. You can't just steamroller across fellow Catholic factions.

Playing as Spain (and playing as a legit Catholic faction), I couldn't attack Portugal to expand my territory without getting in trouble with the Pope. I had to play a sneakier game of inciting unrest with spies, sabotaging their buildings, and pruning out their family members with assassins, until they flipped to rebels. When I managed to provoke France into a war, I got a mission from the Pope to cease hostilities for 5 turns. That forced a change of plan, and it led to me taking Scotland, of all things, while I waited out the Papal edict and could finish off France. So this is a built-in brake to blitzing the map, at least as the Catholics. Now it is possible to bribe the Pope to a point where you can get away with a lot, but with a little self-control as a handicapping factor, this does add interest and challenge to the game.

And by the way, I'm at odds with Catholicism (all religion, actually) on a personal level too, but it doesn't stop me from having fun with that aspect of the game. It's no different from me playing a green-skinned space lizard in GalCiv2... I'm not one of those on a personal level, either.

You're also making it easy by auto-calc'ing so many battles, especially sieges as the attacker. As far as I can tell, an auto siege doesn't factor in losses from defending tower missiles. I lose far more troops in a manual siege. I could probably conquer the map twice as fast, if I auto-calc'ed all sieges.

I do agree with your larger point about how it should be harder, but it does seem like you've bypassed at least some of the game's built-in difficulty.

[PaulTa]

I know that the AI has it's quirks (I can't stand it when I get a full stack in a citadel besieged by a family member and a unit of spear militia), but compared to RTW? Man, the only way I could continue to slug through RTW was to constantly tell myself that I was getting oriented with the campaign map and such.... it was like studying for school.

I guess that in some cases, the different factions are just like MTW. You have difficulty ratings for different factions. Russia, for instance, starts out with crappy infantry until you get a fortress, and the first fortress you're likely to get is if you snatch Thorn off of the Poles, which will then throw you in a war with the Hungarians as well. Since both of them are marching around with polish nobles, DFK, and heavy cavalry, you have to try and beat them with el cheapo armies supplimented with khazaks.

Or, the obvious case, HRE. You will always end up in a war with venice. It's hardcoded, don't even try to avoid it. Next will be the sicilians, and soon after the milanese. Depending on who allied with who, you might have the french in on it, the poles, the hungarians after vienna, and the danes want hamburg. Fighting a multiple front war with a crappy economy that barely produces a profit and low tech buildings and troops because of said crappy economy is really challenging.

If you play as the english though, you're asking for an easy campaign. The same thing would have been said in MTW.

[katank]

Playing a different faction with house rules can make it a bit more challenging. Ever tried faction relocation? That could be fun too. Russians in Lisbon! Or maybe sail your Turkish armies to England. That kind of stuff can turn out interesting.

[PaulTa]

Katank is right. House rules make the game much more interesting.

For example, as Spain I don't attack the portuguese until they initiate the conflict. This gives them time to tech up. I, as a rule, try and shoot for rebels before other factions, so the other factions have some time to get themselves together and rollin'.

[coalde]

Well I think the real question is whether a game designed to run on common PCs (today) should ever be any challenge to anyone, on a strategic level, especially in a complex game (i.e. not chess, backgammon, etc.)?

[katank]

AI is not at that level yet. Certainly not for a game as complex as TW series. Current AI technology does not enable them to pull off as ruthless and complex a rush as human players can muster. AI will likely remain highly susceptible to various blitzes.

All we can do is to avoid blitzing and letting them build up a bit as well as tie our hands with house rules to get a more interesting game.

[Shahed]

Ok, so bugs and patches aside. Some of which make it harder and some easier.

Does anyone else think this game is far too easy? I've been playing since Shogun, pretty much hardcore, completing every campaign on every side in every game. You know the story.

But seriously, after the logistical nightmare that was the western Roman empire campaign on RTW:BI, where you had to micromanage every city just to get a positive income. This game is pathetically easy.

On my first game, VH/VH with England, i completed the campaign within 120 turns. Ok, so this probably could be done far quicker had i mastered the new religious and mercantile aspects of the game, as well as stopped bothering with alliances and all that, since the computer breaks them when you're fighting less than two factions.

But seriously, i like finishing off everyone, i have 40 turns remaining (to complete the original 50 or so provinces mission), and i have conquered the entire world, all that remains is a couple of Timurid provinces (the only significant challenge encountered, simply because all their units are 3 gold chevrons and artillery elephants appear to be made of titanium), and a few Inca? provinces further up.

Yeah, by the time you can attack the Incas, they're pretty wimpy in comparison. 3 silver chevron fully upgraded hospitallers seem to smear the floor with their best units.

Everyone used to hate that thing in MTW1 where the provinces kept respawning, but at least it kept you on your toes. Right now i can wipe out an entire faction in about three turns with about 6 well placed armies.

Timurids are the only real challenge faced thus far. The mongols were irritating due to their ability to spawn units from nowhere when facing annihilation. Dropships maybe? Yus.

I have to say, beautiful though it is, it looks like they've chucked out an unfinished product this time.

And why do besieging AIs line all their units up outside your front gate? I've actually had to leave the room and wait for the timer to run out because they just sit there. Retarded. I've had to leave most of the battles to the auto calculator because i just can't be bothered with their tactics. It's the same everytime, they move their missile troops FAR too far forward, get wiped out by my overpowered cavalry, and then the rest of their army converges in a mass in the middle. I could fight these battles with my eyes closed.

Okay, question/rant over. Flame away my friends. Flame away. :)

LOL ! That was a great rant !!! LMAO !!!!

I started up an HRE campaign in VH/VH and by turn 30 it was pretty much decided who the next superpower will be, but wait....I just put on automanage everything save a few cities for troop production, and blitzed through everything. Only when I met the Byzantines I had a minor setback by losing half a stack and then they lost a whole stack, so balance wise it was a non issue. It did slow me.

Then I started a Turk camapaign and in 40 turns, everything from Tbilisi -> Tunis -> Constantinople was green.

Then I started an English campaign and quit after 15 turns because it was absolutely absurd how easy it was. Scots got the WTFPWNEDBBQ'ed rush, Frenchies had no clue what happened to Paris. It was way too easy.

I have to say the disappointment in mailed knights could'nt have been more. Mailed knights should be sent back to baking cookies or something. Not that such a pastime is in itself pathetic but it is simply not directly suited to combat, something which the mailed knights don't seem to be suited to either, routinely loosing to peasants.

Of course this is absolutely not the way I like to play. This was play testing. Normally I would'nt even attack another faction unless I had to.

It seems, from my play testing that zerg rushing, blitzkrieg-ing breaks the game for most factions.

It's very easy if you do this. It's still quite easy but the AI makes a better show of itself if you allow it to build. That's what I do and I get to meet much better opponents. Thankfully my playstyle is much the builder/roleplayer/perfect army combo etc type. So I take my time.

The AI can be decent but usually it's not much of a challenge. I do LOVE some of the moves I've seen, particularly the feigned retreats, skirmishing. Mongol armies can be pretty decent, (I did a fast forward) but ofc this mainly because you face 3-4 all at once on the screen. I did enjoy very much my limited play testing with the Mongols and Timurids. They could be MUCH better but it's decent. The AI did a few decent moves in one battle, swarming everywhere with horse archers. It was one all cavalry army against 3 mostly cavalry armies. I had a close defeat. but it was GREAT fun.

It has some good basics but needs a lot of work to be challenging without cheats and numbers.

[Musashi]

Katank is right. House rules make the game much more interesting.

For example, as Spain I don't attack the portuguese until they initiate the conflict. This gives them time to tech up. I, as a rule, try and shoot for rebels before other factions, so the other factions have some time to get themselves together and rollin'.
I play every game with the rule that I don't attack anyone who doesn't attack me first. And I accept basically all ceasefires. And I won't engage in a reprisal until their reputation is trashed from attacking me. If I'm a catholic faction I won't retaliate until they get excommunicated.

Game's much more fun this way. I've become a master of the machiavellian in the process.

[Shahed]

I usually do the following:

1. Don't DoW anyone unless they DoW you first or unless they are a clear and imminent danger. (i.e 4 stacks camping all around your capital causing 1000 florins devastation)

2. Concentrate on building a perfect military, perfect economy, capable of meeting any task you require.

3. Agree to all ceasfires on fair terms (usually they are unfair even if you are much more powerful).

4. Donate all cash in excess of 20000, every turn. Usually I pick one faction and make them rich then the next. Í've produced a Frankenstein out of Sicily this way. But it is much better because at least then you see cool Norman Knights etc, otherwise you'd be seeing 15 catapults and 5 peasants.

etc....

[Bucky_Rogers]

I agree with Soylent and Russia that this game is way too easy. I'm HRE on VH/H and it has been pretty much a joke. It is easy to win an open field battle when outnumbered by 2:1.

Aside from that, the AI, and the game in general, is terribly broken with more bad bugs than I could possible ever remember or keep track of... many of them can be found in the bug thread here, but I won't go into that further since we can't fix it.

I have not gotten the patch yet because I have read here that it apparantly failed miserably to fix the biggest problems, and I even see some posters saying that it caused more problems.

Can someone tell me what is EU III, and what is BI? A couple of the posters listed these with the implication that they are more challenging war games...(?) ANd any news on when we might see some good mods for this which may be more difficult?

Lastly, two of the posters, EGR and Verisoft, mentioned some modifications to make it more challenging. Can someone direct the rest of us to an explanation of how to do this kind of thing? I would like to know how to make these adjusments, because I am tired of fighting against unupgraded peasants, town militia and spear militia when I have long since gotten advanced caste units to fight with. Obviously we can't ptobably change the kind of units they have, but at least they could have more of them, or more upgrades.

I have stayed excommunicated, and stayed in favor with the pope, which I found easy to do even with the HRE. This has had no significant effect on game difficulty.

As for braggary and uberism, any mention of it has no place here imo. I don't know if that is what Soylent's agenda was, but it is certainly not my agenda. The fact is, the game is too easy for any TW vet, or for anyone who has any knowledge of ancient battle strats (I am not much of a TW Vet, and it is still too easy). Any game which can be won without much chance of losing (or any chance of losing at all from my experience so far), is too easy - hence my asking for help to make it more interesting.

Any help is appreciated,

Buck

[Shahed]

EU III = Europa Universalis 3
BI = Barbarian Invasion

You should try Hearts of Iron 2: Doomsday.
It is made by Paradoxx, the developer of the Europa Universalis series.

[EGr]

Lastly, two of the posters, EGR and Verisoft, mentioned some modifications to make it more challenging. Can someone direct the rest of us to an explanation of how to do this kind of thing? I would like to know how to make these adjusments, because I am tired of fighting against unupgraded peasants, town militia and spear militia when I have long since gotten advanced caste units to fight with. Obviously we can't ptobably change the kind of units they have, but at least they could have more of them, or more upgrades.


The game gives the AI a certain small amount of money every turn called the King's Purse, and you can increase it by simply editing this file-

C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign\descr_strat.txt

Open that file in Wordpad or Notepad and search through it until you get to this point


; >>>> start of factions section <<<<

Each faction has a section here that is pretty easy to spot. They all start with "faction factionname" and a couple of variables. Under that you will see a line called "denari_kings_purse". The number after that is the amount the faction gets every turn. Try different amounts until you get the AI to the right level of production you want.

[Soylent Green]

Loads of good & interesting points made here.

To a few i feel the need to go back to what i originally said. There shouldn't be a need to handicap yourself or overpower the computer for a challenging game. When you click that VH/VH button, you should hear the intake of your own breath as you prepare for a monstrosity of a battle. Aka. Civilization games.

Does anyone remember TA, where the computer player used to build top level units in a level one vehicle factory? Challenge.

I sort of see your point with the catholic bit, but i would have thought that being excommunicated would make the game MORE challenging. Given that i was at war with 7 factions at the same time, and inquisitors almost wiped out my entire family tree (pre 1.1).

For everyone slating the difficulty on RTW, i'm not sure what game you were playing, but as the Carthaginians i remember being bottled up several times by Roman armies 5000 strong. And then having to fight one of those sieges where you literally have 8 men left across 8 units, and you gasp for air.

I definitely accept the superiority of the English, afterall, we did build one of the greatest world empires, so naturally we should come across as superior in the game. Maybe i'll trying playing as Scotland or a one province starter. Which faction in everyone's opinion has the hardest difficulty?

I think part of my problem is coming from RTW:Alexander, i keep seeing the time limit ticking down and feel a burning desire to exterminate my way to the ends of the earth. Granted, but i think every medieval monarch would have welcome the chance to do this. Limiting yourself is probably ahistorical ;)

Plus, i do understand the 'letting them build up' bit, but for what? The battle AI still sucks as much as it did, it just makes it twice as painful watching them vaporise their own beautiful elite army.

IMHO, if you're playing this game to move diplomats and merchants around the map, the flawed diplomacy, and unbalanced odds for these units on VH/VH will just screw you. Plus, what's the point, it's Total War, the entire game is focused on war and conquest.

Playing any of the TW series as a passive, defensive country, is like playing Ultima Online as a tailor. Anyone sympathise?

I'm eagerly awaiting some of these mods people are mentioning, though i've never felt the need before. Just for you vets though - remember the days of Shogun, where you'd destroyed all but the last faction, and then found they controlled half the map? Or the days of MTW, where you had one more territory to go, and then your entire empire when into civil war, and you smashed the computer screen, poured petrol on your case, and sent the whole lot burning to oblivion?

I'm not claiming to be uber l337, i'm not trying to sell my amazing skills to you. But for gods sake, i AM an RTS and TBS veteran, i've been playing this stuff since i was 8, and when i click very hard, i expect to have my balls boiled by a razor sharp AI. And don't tell me it's not possible, because we have AI controlling some of the world's most advanced weapons systems.

Just look at civilization IV! And before anyone says "go play it". I don't like it.
Which is why i'm here :)

[PureFodder]

The English are definately one of the easier factions, especially before the patch when you knew that once you'd secured Britain and Ireland the computer would never cross the big blue void to come attack your settlements there. Plus the English units are fairly tough.

Try a faction like the Moors. No horse archers, no heavy infantry till you've got a citadel and the top level barracks and fairly bad cavalry till you get a huge city. Knowing that your troops will get demolished in a fair fight makes for some exciting battles. Also try taking Western Europe without using any diplomats. Defending settlements against 4 full atacked crudade armies at the same time especially when you lack powerful cavalry and infantry creates some very hair raising moments.

[Grimmy]

Everyone keeps saying they should make a better AI, but just exactly how is that done?

AI reactions have to be coded, dont they? Or am I mistaken in that? Dont they have to basically be a series of "if - then" or whatever? If that's the case, how much "predictive" "well, if the player does this, check that that this this those these, them, that over there, etc etc etc" can a set of coders be expected to produce without making them so variable that the AI is frozen in a constant variable check?

I honestly think some folk just will not be happy unless they can play full campaigns against other humans. Then they will complain because the other humans arent smart enough, tough enough, whatever. Then if they start getting beat, it will be the humans cheating.

I know that wouldnt be the case for all of the multiplayers but we'd hear that just about as often as we hear "they should make the stooopid AI smarter".

Some day it might be fun to go back through the forums and see how many of the people whining about pointless battles now were whining about "RTW: Siege War" back then or bitching about the "simple risk map". I remember long and endless discussions on the various forums where the loudest of the players hated the RTW AI because it was all about sieging cities and you never met an unexpected fight in the field. Now that seems to be reversed, agian, again.

There's always chess, I guess, for those that just can wrap their heads around the fact that there are limits to games designs in a digital format.

[Soylent Green]

Everyone keeps saying they should make a better AI, but just exactly how is that done?

AI reactions have to be coded, dont they? Or am I mistaken in that? Dont they have to basically be a series of "if - then" or whatever? If that's the case, how much "predictive" "well, if the player does this, check that that this this those these, them, that over there, etc etc etc" can a set of coders be expected to produce without making them so variable that the AI is frozen in a constant variable check?

I honestly think some folk just will not be happy unless they can play full campaigns against other humans. Then they will complain because the other humans arent smart enough, tough enough, whatever. Then if they start getting beat, it will be the humans cheating.

I know that wouldnt be the case for all of the multiplayers but we'd hear that just about as often as we hear "they should make the stooopid AI smarter".

Some day it might be fun to go back through the forums and see how many of the people whining about pointless battles now were whining about "RTW: Siege War" back then or bitching about the "simple risk map". I remember long and endless discussions on the various forums where the loudest of the players hated the RTW AI because it was all about sieging cities and you never met an unexpected fight in the field. Now that seems to be reversed, agian, again.

There's always chess, I guess, for those that just can wrap their heads around the fact that there are limits to games designs in a digital format.

So basically you're saying there's never been and never could be, a challenging AI, ever. I disagree.

[Carl]

So basically you're saying there's never been and never could be, a challenging AI, ever. I disagree.

I'm sorry to say it, but he's right.

Their is actually a mod for DoW that give the games AI a boost, the problem however that this mod team are begining to encounter is that they are limited in how much better they can make the AI because of the performance hit. They've had a few releases now that they've had to hotfix because of lag issues even on high end DUAL CORE systems.

The TW Games are FAR nmore feature packed than DoW and thus doubtless require a very complex AI coding just to get the current level of difficulty. You COULD code a truly challanging AI, but without a system with several multi-core processers in it you could never run it as the performance hit on even a high end home PC would leave the game unplayable.

Why do you think AI desginers have relied for so long on giving the PC more money/recources/whatever and better units when compared to the player in the same situation. It's because it cuts down the AI processer lag.

[katank]

Also, the rules for TW series are many and it's extremely complex. The AI community still hasn't solved Go yet. Its rules are significantly simpler. The question is a matter of computational power.

This is not to mention all the devious ways that humans can come up with exploits and so on to best the AI. Certain gambits will almost certainly throw off the AI as the game tree will be too big/complex to search.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

I bet you if CA had spent as much time on the AI or gameplay..this forum would be singing praises day in and day out..

Sadly they didnt. Lack of cpu power isnt the issue..if MTW 1 could have decent AI...why not this?

I wasn't planning on having turkey this xmas, but ahem well I have a half turkey instead! lol

On a serious point....I think the TW community as a whole is somewhat let down with this latest version....much as I want to love the game...I cannot...though it does have some great moments...sometimes...

A flawed gem...polish it CA..redeem yourselves...

[Reapz]

Solyent

Just for you vets though - remember the days of Shogun, where you'd destroyed all but the last faction, and then found they controlled half the map? Or the days of MTW, where you had one more territory to go, and then your entire empire when into civil war, and you smashed the computer screen, poured petrol on your case, and sent the whole lot burning to oblivion?
I remember well that phenomenon in Shogun. The genesis of it was that the AI could build without any economic constraints so there was no point in trying to destroy their infrastructure to impoverish them. I remember the first time I used the :matteosartori command to see what kind of army the last AI faction was fielding and seeing five to ten full stacks in most of their provinces. It was insane. It roused a lot of debate at the time. Although it was "hard" to beat AI it wasn't playing the same game the human player was. Personally I didn't find that much fun. That type of AI advantage persisted until RTW. I enjoy the fact that in M2TW the AI doesn't get that kind of crazy economic edge on vh and just field many more units than me. Other than those few factions that actually came in hordes it isn't exactly historically accurate.

So while I would like to see the AI harder to beat I definitely don't want to see it get to build five times as many troops as me. And I don't hold up the earlier TW series games' AI as something to aspire towards. I think that the style of the M2 AI is a step forwards, if not the strength of it. I would be all for a smarter AI that had the same economic rules broadly speaking as human players so that blockades, razing cities etc. actually hurt them. I think there is a lot of scope to make the AI stronger in other ways like unit selection, picking battles more sensibly etc.

[Malachus]

I have been playing TW games since MTW, and that was after I tried STW at a friend's house. And yes, I will agree that M2 is too easy at times, especially when you're rushing the AI with armies, forcing them to churn out what's available to them ATM. I was playing as Spain and within 10-15 turns had already driven the Moors out of the Iberian peninsula.

But I felt the same way with RTW. Playing as the Julii on VH/VH, I would face armies from Gaul that outnumbered me 4:1, and I still crushed them. Playing as the (supposedly difficult) Seleucids, I just bribed all my enemies and conquered the entire western part of the map. That game was definitely as easy as M2.

And MTW AI wasn't that much of a challenge, either. Sure, it was definitely cool (and challenging) that there were re-emerging factions and civil wars, but even those could be easily averted by a clever player. And battles were never difficult unless the enemy general had tons of stars (Jedi Byzantine generals, anyone?) giving all his troops a large valor boost.

So, IMO, total war games have always been plagued by an easy AI.

In M2, it's important to note that cities and castles don't produce the same units, and that once you build a stone wall in a city, it can't be converted to a castle ever again. From what I see, the AI usually has tons of cities and relatively few castles, so the majority of the troops they can send at you once they've built that stone wall is militia. Whether or not the AI converts cities to castles or vice versa is another question.

Anyway, there are lots of mods in production that are aimed at improving the AI and realism of the game. If you've played Europa Barbarorum for RTW, you would realize that so long as the modders are dedicated and working hard, there is still much hope left for this game.

[katank]

AI having too many cities? Really? I find that they usually don't have enough cities. A huge proportion of rebel settlements are castles and the AI doesn't convert them, leaving them without sufficient cash to build units out of the castles they have already.

[Julius_Nepos]

I personally find the 1.1 AI to be anything but "too easy." As always I'm handicapped by being a superior field commander but not all that good at waging a campaign on the map itself. I've found playing on hard/hard that the AI is so utterly aggressive that the only real way to survive is to blitz blitz and blitz everyone so they don't have a chance to overwhelm my positions. I don't really like that style of gameplay but I'm finding I have no choice but to engage in it.

The fact that the AI is suicidal, will attack at every opportunity and will do nothing to preserve itself or "win" the campaign in its own right just makes things harder. In my latest failure of a Hungarian campaign I survived by blitzing the Byzantines early but at the end I was under siege by 5 elite armies at every corner of my domains with no hope of holding the line. Sure it's nice to know Milan, Denmark, Turkey, Russia and Venice were able to discover my weaknesses and attack appropriately (in fact I didn't even share a border with Denmark!) But in the end it was just another loss for me based upon my desire to play a laid back campaign of internal development and the AI's insane lust for battles.

In many ways my style of gameplay is just no longer in line with what Total War is all about. I'm seriously considering going to Civ IV, or Europa Universalis or something that would focus more on things other than 2-4 battles a turn. I have very mixed feelings about the AI but "far too easy" isn't a sentiment I share. Yes I can crush AI armies on the battlefield even with the odds clearly against me, but I have yet to figure out how to blitz all opponents, field 5 full stacks (all upgraded) while upgrading my cities and defending all settlements with 20 units of chivalric knights while still pulling down 50,000 florins a turn. It seems to me that some people can do this, but I have yet to determine the secret.

In any event, the game is plenty hard for me, I just wish it was hard in a good way. Cheers!

[Malachus]

Exactly what some people here have argued... the AI needs time to build up, and once it does, things get a heck of a lot more difficult.

Perhaps in a future mod, the AI can be given a script where their buildings take less time to construct than the player's? I think EB may have accomplished something of the sort with at least one of the government type buildings, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Zenicetus]

I personally find the 1.1 AI to be anything but "too easy." As always I'm handicapped by being a superior field commander but not all that good at waging a campaign on the map itself. I've found playing on hard/hard that the AI is so utterly aggressive that the only real way to survive is to blitz blitz and blitz everyone so they don't have a chance to overwhelm my positions. I don't really like that style of gameplay but I'm finding I have no choice but to engage in it.

The fact that the AI is suicidal, will attack at every opportunity and will do nothing to preserve itself or "win" the campaign in its own right just makes things harder. In my latest failure of a Hungarian campaign I survived by blitzing the Byzantines early but at the end I was under siege by 5 elite armies at every corner of my domains with no hope of holding the line.

Try playing on medium campaign difficulty instead of hard. Medium normalizes relations every turn towards neutral. H and VH normalize to worse relations every turn, unless you do something like constant bribery to stop it. I've found that a medium campaign difficulty makes the diplomacy more predictable for my style of play, with fewer crazy moves by the AI just because our relations have bottomed out, due to a constantly sinking relations meter.

Also, try a starting position like Spain, England, or the Moors (although the Moors have poor units to start with), where you're not surrounded on all sides. That makes it easier to expand at your own pace, and turtle for a while between expansion pushes.

[Mooks]

Hahahaha. I read the reviews thread and not anything else. Everything on there said it was pretty good, so I asked for the game, if only I kept on reading!

Personally I hate giving the AI unfair advantages. I want them to have the same financial challenges as I do, and same tech trees. I never liked to go vh/vh in RTW for the fact that it made blockading,ravaging, and diplomacy absolutely pointless. I want the AI to be sharp; able to blockade all my ports and invade from my weak points, basically follow Sun Tzu's art of war. Instead you get the computer having massive armies of pure infantry or calvary no leaders (The leaders being in armies of 2-3 units)

[Soylent Green]

Okay, i've found my answer. Thankyou to all that suggested playing a different faction, England really was the easiest.

I've started a new game as Sicily VH/VH, and whilst not a tactician's dream. It's a fair bit harder. The suicidal AI really comes into full force here, on turn 10 the byzantines, the moors, HRE and venice all declared war on me at the same time, moving in to siege 4 of my cities. None of them are open to ceasefire, despite the fact my faction is number one in land and power.

Just had an immense siege where my unranked general and two units of peasants held off 1000 Byzantine archers and spearmen, routed them and wiped them out! I was holding my breath as my general rampaged around outside the walls, charging archers and crushing them. Likewise i had another battle where i ended up with just 3 men left, my general himself and two archers!

It's back to deciding between buildings and units again, since i'm only getting about 500 florins a turn.

It's flawed, but this is more like what i was expecting.

[Grimmy]

So basically you're saying there's never been and never could be, a challenging AI, ever. I disagree.

Not at all what I am saying. I am saying that what is defined as "challenging" will differ, slightly to hugely, from person to person and no programmer, set of programmers, will ever be able to produce an AI in a game system that will provide a consistant challenge to those humans that are very good at recognizing and exploiting patterns.

Aint gonna happen, ever. No matter how good AI gets, there'll always be humans that can recognize the patterns and counter them.

This is made manifest by your "blitz" campaigns. That wins, that works so thats what you do and you always win becuase you've found a weakness in the pattern and countered it.

Try playing this game as a kingdom or empire would be expected to behave and you may find it a very pleasant surprise.

but come out the gate in a steamroll offensive that pushes the AI back on its heels and never lets up, and yeah, boring fast.

So, question. Is it that the AI is stupid and badly written? or are you lacking in the ability to adapt to what the AI can excell at and match it on it's own ground?

It is not possible for an AI to be written that can predict and competently counter every possible combination of events and decisions a human player can make.

[Soylent Green]

This is made manifest by your "blitz" campaigns. That wins, that works so thats what you do and you always win becuase you've found a weakness in the pattern and countered it.

Try playing this game as a kingdom or empire would be expected to behave and you may find it a very pleasant surprise.

but come out the gate in a steamroll offensive that pushes the AI back on its heels and never lets up, and yeah, boring fast.



Not really man, because that's what the AI forces you to do. Unless you spend the entire game fighting defensive battles. In RTS i'm a turtler by nature. But MTW2 forces you to take the offensive.

The computer declares war on you, and won't ceasefire, forcing you to extermine their cities, and when you defeat them, the next nearest AI declares war on you, and the process continues!

[Julius_Nepos]

Well I'm just glad to know I'm not getting a false impression of the AI here. I noticed Human/AI relations falling during my Hard campaign but I honestly thought that would happen even in Easy, didn't know it was difficulty specific. Frankly I don't see how a defensive campaign on Hard/Very Hard could possibly succeed (Unless your say, England).

I do have two pertinent questions though. I find the AI in some cases will attack me immediately if I take a rebel province it wants. I.E. the Byzantines will drop everything and send all their stacks to Sofia if I take it, neglecting rebel territory like Durazzo, Smyrna and Rhodes. The Sicilians will send all their military power to Cagliari if I take it before they do as well. They forgo Tunis, or the aforementioned Durazzo and send all stacks to Sardinia first. Is this a feature? Secondly, I find the AI likes to arrange Vassalage agreements only to attack one or two turns later. This is not strictly historically accurate and I also don't understand why the devs wouldn't give the AI sense enough to know that you don't attack your own vassal right away, is this also a feature? Anyway, merry Christmas!

[KukriKhan]

Very interesting thread. :bow:

In 2004's Deep Fritz vs. Kasporov chess match, Fritz = four 2.8 GHz Xeon processors. In this year's match vs. Kramnik, Fritz was purportedly given 'much more' processing power.

If it takes 4+ super-duper processors to figure out the best next move for a single chess player... and we're asking a program/game to figure out the best next move for multiple players/factions with the processing power of our typical home computers, and to do it in less than 60 seconds (compared to our human taking 5-30 minutes to think)... we shouldn't be extremely surprised that some of those moves are gonna seem like blunders to us human players - one's we wouldn't have made.

I think the TW-series is more nuanced (or tries to be) than smash-and-bash, first-one-with-the-most-provinces-WINS! race-type playing style. But I grant the point that on VH/VH settings, the AI almost forces that.

Hence I conclude that the optimal setting for a full, deep, using-every-asset available (not just military) game, where the AI is fully engaged, is: Medium.

[Zenicetus]

Not really man, because that's what the AI forces you to do. Unless you spend the entire game fighting defensive battles. In RTS i'm a turtler by nature. But MTW2 forces you to take the offensive.

The computer declares war on you, and won't ceasefire, forcing you to extermine their cities, and when you defeat them, the next nearest AI declares war on you, and the process continues!

It doesn't have to go that way. First, you're playing on VH campaign setting, which normalizes your diplomatic relations with all factions every turn towards terrible (or is it abysmal, I forget), unless you gift cash or do something else to stop it. At medium difficulty, relations are normalized to neutral. At easy difficulty they get better every turn. If you want to turtle, either don't play at VH, or else get ready to spend lots of money bribing people to like you.

Also, note that being the most powerful faction is also a negative diplomacy modifier, which might be one reason you're having trouble getting ceasefires Another reason might be available cash. Factions are more likely to offer or accept ceasefires in the early stage of a war, when they still have cash reserves and they're not fighting for their lives.

Turtling of a sort, is possible in this game, but it's easier on medium difficulty. It also requires strong garrisons and standing armies at your borders (good fences make good neighbors, etc.). Playing as Spain, I can tell that France really has a jones for the Iberian peninsula, but a couple of strong armies sitting on our mutual borderhas kept them at bay. They send a few probes now and then, I beat them back. Often they'll just retreat if I move my stack near them. Then they focus on someone else for a while. That's as close as this game gets to turtling, which is appropriate I think, for a series titled "Total War."

[Zenicetus]

The Sicilians will send all their military power to Cagliari if I take it before they do as well. They forgo Tunis, or the aforementioned Durazzo and send all stacks to Sardinia first. Is this a feature?

That happened to me recently. Right after I took Cagliari, Sicily showed up and sieged it (we hadn't been at war, relations were neutral). I sent a relief force, destroyed their army, and they asked for a ceasefire three turns later. I accepted, with a small cash gift. They haven't bothered me recently, although they may be back. This is on medium difficulty.

There may be a trigger to attack as a defensive reaction if a strong faction shows up on their border. After the patch, it seems that factions ignore the sea as a separator.

[Kobal2fr]

@Kukhri : not to forget moves that won't make sense to you immediately (and sometimes never will because you countered them), but are very valid from another point of view. What may seem like a non-sensical attack with 3 units on a well-defended city still cripples you economically (no trade, no tax, no building), and might well draw some of your free strength towards it. Cue naval invasion from the attacker's ally.

And I couldn't agree more : M/VH is the way to go for a challenging yet pleasant game. VH/VH is asking for pain, pain and frustration.

[Grimmy]

Personally, since I'm a, more or less, "average" level player, I really do appreciate the difficulty level ballances. At medium campaign I get the freedom to build and play as I feel an empire/kingdom would act/react with enough pressure from the AI to keep me interested and involved.

Those that want to be at war all the time with everyone and have that kind of intense match can get it on VH campaign settings.

What mostly motivates my seemingly contentious "fanboy"ish posts is that what many are getting loud about complaining now have much appearance of being honest attempts to address what the "serious" player community was loud about in RTW.

There seems to be a real "sea-saw" effect in play. If we're not careful, we could motivate the developers to decide that we're all just a bunch of flakes that are impossible to please so why the hell keep trying?


There's a large community of casual players out there that buy this game and play without whining and bitching about everything all the time regardless, and if its changed, bitch about it being the way they said they wanted it changed.

Cav charges, amphib invasions and more better attack animations come to mind in that.

I'd hate to see the constant nit picking and disdain cause this community to be discounted as a source of inspiration for further development concepts.

[Spark]

I'm sorry to say it, but he's right.

Their is actually a mod for DoW that give the games AI a boost, the problem however that this mod team are begining to encounter is that they are limited in how much better they can make the AI because of the performance hit. They've had a few releases now that they've had to hotfix because of lag issues even on high end DUAL CORE systems.

The TW Games are FAR nmore feature packed than DoW and thus doubtless require a very complex AI coding just to get the current level of difficulty. You COULD code a truly challanging AI, but without a system with several multi-core processers in it you could never run it as the performance hit on even a high end home PC would leave the game unplayable.

Why do you think AI desginers have relied for so long on giving the PC more money/recources/whatever and better units when compared to the player in the same situation. It's because it cuts down the AI processer lag.

Don't know if you've ever played Civ 3, but the campaign (or strategy map) AI in that game makes a joke out of the M2TW AI. I'd believe it wasn't possible if I hadn't seen it somewhere else, but it is clearly possible to make AI much more challenging than the current one. So complaints about the shitty AI are very valid.

[Soylent Green]

Don't know if you've ever played Civ 3, but the campaign (or strategy map) AI in that game makes a joke out of the M2TW AI. I'd believe it wasn't possible if I hadn't seen it somewhere else, but it is clearly possible to make AI much more challenging than the current one. So complaints about the shitty AI are very valid.

Agreed. Although part of that was down to the AI beginning with additional workers and settlers. And getting certain bonuses along the way. But i don't see why this couldn't be done with MTW2, it's certainly more valid than the player having to edit the game to achieve the same.

And with AI scripting, did anyone ever script missions for TA? I don't have a clue about programming, but i scripted complex unit behaviour for some missions, making them particularly challenging. It didn't affect system performance in the slightest. Now granted, TA was set piece maps and a different kettle of fish, but the principle is there.

Would you rather have 'huge' unit size or a challenging campaign? If performance is the issue, i know that aesthetic elements of the game could be glossed over to make room for a more powerful AI. There's so many claims that blitzing is 'taking advantage' of the AI's inadequacies, well, not only do we have very little choice, but being at war with multiple factions simultaneously provides the great challenge this game has to offer.

Total War people. Not total faff around making concessions to the AI.

[Kobal2fr]

@SoylentGreen : there's an old French saying that translates roughly as : "You can't please everybody and your father". Meaning, whatever you do, someone is bound to not like it. Case in point : earlier TotalWar titles gave the AI free cash, every turn. Hence no matter what you did, the AI would field stack after stack after stack, even when you just destroyed their whole army the turn before. Very, very hard to beat without blitzing.

We, the players, complained that it was unfair, and that it tremendously reduced the point of economic/agent/non military warfare against the AI, since what worked against you didn't work against them. CA changed this and made the AI not cheat anymore, merely banding up and being much more aggressive at higher dif levels. Then you complain the game is too easy if you blitz ;)

And scripting is all very well, but it's static. I remember being scared right out of my shorts when playing the haunted house level in Vampire : Bloodlines for the first time. I kid you not, I had a bruised knee for a month afterwards, I hit it against my desk so hard. The second time around, I still jumped at times, but the scare was gone. Now, I routinely race through the level without being scared in the least. That's because everything in there is scripted, appears and pops up at the same precise moment every time. I certainly wouldn't want that in TW. Replay value zero, when part of TW's appeal is to play a faction, then another, and have a different campaign each time.

[Zenicetus]

Don't know if you've ever played Civ 3, but the campaign (or strategy map) AI in that game makes a joke out of the M2TW AI. I'd believe it wasn't possible if I hadn't seen it somewhere else, but it is clearly possible to make AI much more challenging than the current one. So complaints about the shitty AI are very valid.

Complaints are valid, but they should take into account the differences between those games. CA has to spend programmer hours and testing on both a strategic map AI, and a realtime tactical AI for the battlefield. Civ has one AI engine for the strategy map, period. That's the whole game.

Games have to sell for roughly the same price, with similar production budgets and lead times. So, is it fair to use products like Civ or GalCiv4 as a comparison, where 100% of the developer's programmer hours and testing can be spent on the strategy map?

That doesn't mean I'm happy with the strategic AI. There's plenty of room for improvement, and given CA's recent history I think we'll see at least a few more patches to improve things. But I'm not expecting it to match or beat a pure, 100% strategy game like Civ4, or GalcCiv2. That's just not realistic (IMO).

[Ar7]

Complaints are valid, but they should take into account the differences between those games. CA has to spend programmer hours and testing on both a strategic map AI, and a realtime tactical AI for the battlefield. Civ has one AI engine for the strategy map, period. That's the whole game.

Games have to sell for roughly the same price, with similar production budgets and lead times. So, is it fair to use products like Civ or GalCiv4 as a comparison, where 100% of the developer's programmer hours and testing can be spent on the strategy map?


Well the tactical AI isn't something to be proud of either. So CA left everything unfinished.

[Spino]

AI issues aside I believe the biggest factor behind the game's lack of challenge is the much lauded provincial 'castle or city' system. Regarding the strategic game in previous TW games most of us complained about the AI's inability to build balanced armies, consolidate its stacks and not engage in suicidal multi-front wars. In MTW2 those issues have been addressed to a certain degree but now that the castle/city feature has been implemented it's as if we're back to square one.

Over the course of a few campaigns in versions 1.0 and 1.1 it's been my experience that army stacks produced by city provinces are pretty much a pushover in battle. I'm currently playing a campaign as the Danes and now that the early game 'rebel province rush' has subsided I'm finally going toe to toe with AI faction armies. Scotland has been giving England a hard time and now has eyes on the European mainland. In the past five turns they've sent no less than three full stacks to besiege my forces in Bruges. I am currently holding Bruges with a full, well balanced stack consisting of a couple of Royal Bodyguard units, several Mercenary Spearmen & Mercenary X-Bow units, Dismounted Huscarls, Norse Raiders and a few heavy and light cavalry units. Each time I leave Bruges or sally forth during a siege to engage these stacks I brutally massacre them. Why? Passive AI bug? No. Clever tactical deployment on my part? No. I'm mauling these stacks because every single one of them consists mainly of Town Militia, Crossbow militia and perhaps one or two cavalry units, for the most part crap units. Admittedly the last Scot stack I faced sported some Militia Pikemen in full plate but the lack of decent support units (i.e. axe, sword or heavy cav) meant they were simply dead men walking. Were it not for the castle/city build I would probably be having a much harder time of it. Sure, city provinces make a faction wealthier but at what cost? If an AI faction only has city provinces in the area you know you're going to have a much easier time of it. Take out an AI faction's last castle province and it's only a matter of time before it's knocked out of the game.

The provincial castle/city system does provide an added challenge to players but it also seriously handicaps the AI's ability to field effective, well balanced armies. Should CA have better programmed the strategic AI so that it's more effective at dealing with the castle/city system? Sure, but an effective AI that can effectively combine units from different castle and city provinces to create balanced stacks in the same fashion that a human player does sounds like a really, really tall order.

I'm inclined to say that modders should, if possible, dispense with the castle/city system altogether and instead leave only the castle tech path in place and add in the necessary City-only buildings for full economic & cultural development.

[Yun Dog]

I must admit I like the castle/city system - I think it would be a pity to have to mod it out - its always been one of the battles to try and code the AI to composed mixed stacks/armies and not just field masses of archers or seige weapons like it used to do in MTW. Pity the AI couldnt be tweaked a bit more to combine armies more effectively.

The CIv3/4 AI - yeh its hard - but why is it hard - it just gives the AI gifts - you have to learn to be an A grade exploiter of the AI weakness to even stay competitive - not my idea of fun - got bored with Civs for this reason - every game was the same - if I wasnt using template X for victory then you were losing - so really playing over prince difficulty wasnt really playing anymore - just exploiting IMO.

For my 5c - Ive had some enjoyable campaigns despite whatever limitations the AI must operate under.

My M/M camp as france - I turtled so well the game ended before I took the necessary provinces - maybe that was the AIs tactic to slow me enough by attacking me that I couldnt take the necessary land. ( hey I choose to see the posistives) - still had some epic battles against the germans and the danes - and good stacks of hard hitting troops - I lost battles and citys - cant complain - kept up relations with the pope - lost a general to inquision - didnt let it continue by increasing piety.

My H/VH short camp as the egyptians was also fun - fighting the crusaders - losing antioch to a combined polish/ventian army of 3000 hard core troops - rebels incited by the moors kicked me out of coroba and marakesh - it took almost every man I had to take one of those citys back and execute everyone in the city.Desperately had to find and wipe out the last Moorish city before I was indundated by the mongols who had arrived on the steps.

The Ai does the best it can - mods can tweak the game eg EB .. to make it a little tighter for the human via cash income and unit strengths etc, in EB the AI is improved this way - fielding better stacks of troops and making some better moves on the campain/empire front - if they can do it for RTW then they can make M2TW a hell of a game

[Barry Fitzgerald]

I really don't mind the caste/city system, in fact at ist I didnt dig it a lot, but now I can see it adds to the strategic element of things..a bit.

I think you will find the AI in the civ games doesnt get gifted...and is on the whole pretty impressive..on a diplomatic and strategic level...it makes mistakes..which is expected..and often desired too.

THe AI in MTW2 simply cannot be compared at any level to it. On the map, factions declare war, without the means to support it..or it being a good idea for them...they also many times fail to exploit obvious chances to take settlements too. They leave most of their home cities poorly defended...meaning even half a stack or less can take it with ease. Factions just delare war for no reason either...frequently..even if you do not spy or do anything to provoke them.

Weak as it is on the map...in battle/seiges it gets worse. I have frequently seen the AI leave one army at one end of a city..outside the walls...while it attacks with the other one..and gets wiped out..then slowly moves the 2nd army in to attack....a bit silly really, and a good way to help the human player wipe them out.

On a normal field..sometimes it does ok...and makes reasonable attack..but not very often..most players here...even not great one..can whip the AI and then some more, with a much smaller army...in fact the only battles I have lost have been when hugely outnumbered..even then what was left of the AI's army wasnt worth talking about.

AI is deeply flawed......it does the same thing every time..hence you can read it like a book...and beat it easily...

[katank]

I think the castle/city thing should stay. I actually tend to be of the opinion that the AI has too few cities to sustain a good economy. If they learn to specialize, that'd be great.

Same as Barry, I rarely lose to the AI and often give it a whipping. Even when I lose, it's a pyrrhic victory for them. In a memorable battle, a lone general + 2 units of Turkomens and 1 unit of Siphais gets attacked by a full stack of Byz troops (including some 4 units of Byz cav, 2 units of Vardarotai, 2 units of Skythion, 3 units of treb archers, and assorted infantry). Even though I knew I was going to lose, I managed to wipe out their entire cav wing and mauled 2 units of treb archers. This kind of thing simply should not happen. Instead of charging, they sat around while I had the high ground and shot them up, then killing several units while charging down.

[econ21]

It's surprising for me to read this thread, having played two English campaigns on VH/VH - one pre-patch and one post-patch -for a reasonable period of time. (Up to 1260 on the post patch one). I am finding the level of challenge excellent. The pre-patch game was ultimately broken because on the attack, the AI would just line up in front of my longbows (passive AI) but I have not seen that post-patch (they get shot to death on the defence, but not the offence, but that's fine, IMO).

I am not sure what I am doing "wrong" that makes my game so much more challenging than the OPs, but I suspect it is not rushing. I don't declare war on anyone unless attacked or I have a mission to do it. When at war, I try to take cities but don't try to "knock out" factions if the Pope tells me to back off (I back off).

In addition, I have avoided sacking cities unless desperate. I recently relented and that made the game massively easier - the money from sacking you get is amazing.

A third thing was crusading: I am trying to establish a crusader kingdom around Antioch and that is challenging in a fun way, given the religious unrest and the hostility of the Turks and Egyptians.

For me, no TW game since STW has been as challenging (in a fun way) as M2TW as England on VH/VH. (Well, ok, HRE in MTW was harder.)