Critical question.....

So hi first of all....and : what is the best exe to play EB ?

1)RTW 1.5 no bonuses

2)BI better AI, Shield Wall etc etc

3)ALX good AI, better naval, at last no runaway troops from piked phalanxes,
no shield wall and etc though
What is your opinion?

It's actually BI that provides working naval invasions, although this does lead to another kind of AI stupidity: the launching on pointless naval invasions on your territory by somewhat-nearby factions. When playing as the KH in EB0.8, the Romans would regularly land a small stack near Corinth, apparently for no other reason than because they could. It should be noted that at this point they hadn't even taken Taras yet.

I have not observed any other differences between R:TW and BI.exe. The strategic A.I. may be a bit more aggressive in BI, and better at managing stacks, but I am not 100% about those. I haven't tried Alex yet, but I understand that the A.I. can now retrain depleted units, which presumably results in the A.I. have large stacks of veteran units.

well you are right for the naval until know...but what about the main game battles an Faction AI

I definitely say ALX.exe is the better of the three. Certainly better than RTW. Things you can notice are that the AI actually retrains their units. Their missile troops actually aim at things that they can kill rather than judge on distance like in the regular RTW.exe.

I've noticed diplomacy is better in ALX.exe. They also combine the smaller stacks. They never try to attack you with those 2-3 unit stacks. It's always something big. Factions are also not aggressive as hell for no reason. I've seen the AI use navies to transport troops sometimes, but not very often though.

They also like to flank your troops on the battle map, a lot. They also like to go around the back of your formation with their cavalry. They usually try to not hit the center of my line but rather the sides.

I'm supporting ALX.exe as well:book2:

Agree re: ALX as well. Its the best way to play...

Which is the best exe to play EB in performance terms?
Most important: which one will give me the fastest AI turns?

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Originally Posted by pcaravel

Which is the best exe to play EB in performance terms?
Most important: which one will give me the fastest AI turns?

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I don't know about Alex.exe, but I haven't seen any deterioration in performance moving from TW to BI. The main determinant of the speed is the EB script, which I don't believe is affected by which .exe you use at all.

There shouldn't be deterioration, there should be improvement. The developers have probably made better coding to make turns pass by faster.

I have heard people using ALX.exe with less loading times, though I haven't tested this out for myself. It probably isn't really substantial.