VH combat AI...

Battle AI on VH is brave. Very brave. Brave to the point of being utterly stupid. Offensive battle? It charges with a frontal assault. Defensive battle? It still charges with a frontal assault. Badly outnumbered in a defensive battle? It still charges with a frontal assault. And I'm not talking about charging with a bunch of Teutonic knights. No, it charges with lowly spears and militia units.

WTH? At least Medium AI takes into consideration the terrain, the numbers and the makeup of the enemy's army and who is the actual attacker in battle. VH AI just rushes in like an axebitten berserker and dies in a very unglorious manner.

The bottomline is: Medium battle difficulty provides a better challenge (i.e. is less stupid) than the VH one.

The VH AI is like that because all the AI knows is that its units are vastly superior to yours (they get a HUGE attack bonus). So they figure they can kill you, what with the vastly superior stats, and charge you.

I play Medium battles anyways. The AI is the same as far as I can tell, but higher levels just get big bonuses to stats.

As someone who normally plays with VH difficulty in battles (H in campaign) I am very interested in this.

Is there any advantage to VH? Is H for battles a good level?

I was under the impression that the AI did not simply get attack bonuses for VH? I mean, Morale and fatigue effects are supposed to be stronger for both sides on the higer difficulty levels...

Which i think it's stupid. Higher battle difficulty should mean better control, traps, attacks and counter attacks from the computer, not rising the states... As much, i agree with the moral and stamina rising, but the stats shouldn't change, that just sound stupid to me.

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Originally Posted by ixidor

Which i think it's stupid. Higher battle difficulty should mean better control, traps, attacks and counter attacks from the computer, not rising the states... As much, i agree with the moral and stamina rising, but the stats shouldn't change, that just sound stupid to me.

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From what I have seen in MTW2, AI gets no combat bonus on VH, unlike the RTW. VH AI *is* more difficult to rout though, but not by much.

As far as the actual battle tactics are concerned, Medium AI is far smarter than VH.

I've played the last couple of campaigns on VH, and didn't noticed that the AI is any more stupid than on M (it's not smarter either ~D).

From my experience, the AI will charge you head on only when you have the missile superiority, or when they have superior force. Since I have missile superiority almost all the time, most of my battles start with the AI charging.

Only the mongols knew how to defend a hilltop, and they did have more missiles then me.

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Originally Posted by Benandorf

The VH AI is like that because all the AI knows is that its units are vastly superior to yours (they get a HUGE attack bonus). So they figure they can kill you, what with the vastly superior stats, and charge you.

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They don't get any attack bonus. It's your morale that suffers from playing on VH. And the fatigue impact on morale is increased.

I find the above posters findings spot on. In RTW we complained about the AI standing there while we shot it to pieces well it doesn't now. Which is a good thing btw

I think there are no bonuses to either side on VH. On E/M/H, the players units get a slight morale and stamina bonus, but I think that is all.

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Originally Posted by Gaius Terentius Varro

I find the above posters findings spot on. In RTW we complained about the AI standing there while we shot it to pieces well it doesn't now. Which is a good thing btw

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Oh, it goes far beyond that. In a defensive battle VH AI will often abandon the favorable high ground position to come and engage me. And that's with a rough parity in missile troops. Medium AI in the same situation will stay put on its hill, engage in an archery duel from a favorable position and make me pay in blood for my victory.

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Originally Posted by Bob the Insane

As someone who normally plays with VH difficulty in battles (H in campaign) I am very interested in this.

Is there any advantage to VH? Is H for battles a good level?

I was under the impression that the AI did not simply get attack bonuses for VH? I mean, Morale and fatigue effects are supposed to be stronger for both sides on the higer difficulty levels...

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They may also get some morale bonuses and fatigue bonuses, but as far as I know, the only bonuses are to stats. The AI is no smarter (which is why you can beat an army with +9 attack and unbreakable morale), it just is more killy.

I'm almost positive that both sides have "basic" stats on medium, while the player gets some stat bonuses on Easy. So I have to disagree, CR.

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They may also get some morale bonuses and fatigue bonuses, but as far as I know, the only bonuses are to stats. The AI is no smarter (which is why you can beat an army with +9 attack and unbreakable morale), it just is more killy.

I'm almost positive that both sides have "basic" stats on medium, while the player gets some stat bonuses on Easy. So I have to disagree, CR.

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The ai does not get any boosts to it's attack stats on any difficulty level, and the increased effects of morale and fatique affect both.

Lusted, but can you confirm whether the AI is less "stupidly brave" on medium? The VH defending AI charging in most cases is quite stupid actually. The AI would not use perfectly defendable positions (hilltops, forests), but would charge outright letting the player attacker take up the best position available and wait... But I am not sure whether the Medium AI is any better since I have never played with it (except in Rome).

I personally would think that its better to just make the difficulty like in RTW and give the VH AI crazy attack/def/morale bonuses. Sure, it would become silly sometimes in RTW ie a cav unit charging straight through phalanxes head on, but it is alot harder to fight against and probably easier to code than trying to make the AI use better tactics.

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Originally Posted by rvg

Battle AI on VH is brave. Very brave. Brave to the point of being utterly stupid...

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This is precisely why my last campaign on VH was in RTW, when I was the Parthians.

I'm a horsearcher nut. On medium, at least the AI realized it was surrounded by cavalry with ranged weapons. It would sensibly try to get out of there if it wasn't on a hilltop looking down at me. Putting the tactical AI on VH made things ridiculously easy. The AI would put keep going forward no matter how hopeless things were. It was like bagging a charging bull. All you had to do was step to one side and shoot it as it barrelled past. I quit the campaign after wiping out so many Selucid phanlanxes in one battle, my whole stack had run out of arrows.

What about Hard difficulty (that's what I play on all the time....)? Is Hard closer to Medium, or Very Hard?

So it sounds like the optimal (ie, most difficult) combat map difficulty is, ironically, medium.

Is the optimal campagin map difficulty medium as well? (For better AI diplomacy) or hardest? (Does the AI get monetary boosts to help it out or use new strategies?)

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Originally Posted by Ulstan

So it sounds like the optimal (ie, most difficult) combat map difficulty is, ironically, medium.

Is the optimal campagin map difficulty medium as well? (For better AI diplomacy) or hardest? (Does the AI get monetary boosts to help it out or use new strategies?)

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Medium campaign difficulty is optimal if you want to use diplomacy as part of your strategy, and if you want to see the other factions acting reasonable instead of foaming at the mouth with hatred, and attacking before they're ready.

My understanding is that at Medium, there is a slow steady normalization of relations towards neutral as time progresses. So it's easier to repair bad relations, maintain allies, etc. On H and VH, relations gradually normalize towards worse with all factions unless you constantly do something to arrest it, like paying tribute or gifting provinces. That's what results in the "world is out to get you" feeling of VH campaign difficulty. Some people do like that, I guess, and it fits the Total War theme, but often the factions will attack before they've built up enough economy to support their armies. So you end up facing a lot of half-stacks. On Medium, you can turtle a little between conquests because everyone isn't constantly trying to attack, and allow the other factions to build up. The final battles for world domination are a bit more challenging.

Of course some of that is also determined by "hot" target provinces that each faction has, as their own campaign goal. If you're sitting on one of those, it can be hard to keep it through diplomacy alone. Other than the way relations normalize, I'm not sure what other bonuses the AI gets like money. I haven't noticed much difference there. And I'm almost positive the AI doesn't use any different strategies, other than being affected by the way relations normalize in different directions.

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Originally Posted by Ulstan

So it sounds like the optimal (ie, most difficult) combat map difficulty is, ironically, medium.

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I don't think so.

In my experience, the AI does behave more-less the same regardless of battle difficulty. Any one can test that: set a custom battle with two balanced armies (with slightly more missiles on AI side, because otherwise AI will alway rush to you if not totally outnumbered), and play it twice - once on M, once on VH. The behavior will be the same.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

...and the increased effects of morale and fatique affect both.

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I always thought that only player's troops morale is affected on higher settings, not AI's. That would render your units easier to rout than AI's, thus making things more challenging.

But what's the point if both yours and AI's morale is equally affected? That won't make battle any more difficult. Or maybe your morale is affected a bit more than the AI's? Can you please explain... ~D


I must add that I absolutely hated the way RTW increased battle difficulty, by raising AI attack stats. that's why I always played on M. I'm glad that this model wasn't implemented in M2TW (and hope it won't be in ETW).

It is like playing FPS, and in order to kill a soldier you have to shoot him in the head with the rocked launcher. Twice. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by DVX BELLORVM

I must add that I absolutely hated the way RTW increased battle difficulty, by raising AI attack stats. that's why I always played on M. I'm glad that this model wasn't implemented in M2TW (and hope it won't be in ETW).

It is like playing FPS, and in order to kill a soldier you have to shoot him in the head with the rocked launcher. Twice. :laugh4:

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well, that was the original, vanilla RTW. the latest version officially patched by CA screwed even that up: by mistake, they made VH an easier battle setting than Medium. i believe, this was never fixed.

i think, the AI bonuses were optimal in MTW I where AI would get sort a moderate increased "experience bonus" at higher difficulty settings. they tried to do that in RTW too, but went overboard with the +7 attack across the board AI bonus on VH (in the original RTW). +7 attack was a game breaker, destroying naturally expected rock-scissor-paper relationship between unit types.

in MTW II, I am actually not sure what is the effect of the battle settings. seems pretty much the same across the three states ranging from M to VH.

Increasing morale across the board on VH has the effect of making the AI's troops less likely to rout when you charge. Since the AI's advantage is brute force and yours is finesse it is a slight increase in actual battle difficulty. On medium or easy you can kill limitless numbers of militia troops with two units of heavy cavalry and good timing because they will rout before killing anything. On VH they might kill a few of the cavalry before routing.

All in all I wouldn't say it's much harder, you're just less likely to score immense heroic victories and you'll take a few more casualties overall.

:egypt:

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Originally Posted by Ramses II CP

Increasing morale across the board on VH has the effect of making the AI's troops less likely to rout when you charge. Since the AI's advantage is brute force and yours is finesse it is a slight increase in actual battle difficulty. On medium or easy you can kill limitless numbers of militia troops with two units of heavy cavalry and good timing because they will rout before killing anything. On VH they might kill a few of the cavalry before routing.

All in all I wouldn't say it's much harder, you're just less likely to score immense heroic victories and you'll take a few more casualties overall.

:egypt:

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iirc, it is increased EFFECTS of morale, not increased morale. It seems to imply that units from BOTH sides are easier to rout.

Also implies on Medium, AI troops are relatively less likely to rout given that morale has less effect. Hence the impression that Medium might actually be harder.

Hrm, you might be right. I can't figure out where I read that originally... Either way, IMHO, the effect is slight and unlikely to get you more victories, just bigger victories.