Why on earth is there no real fighting

I've heard how people can complain about certain aspects of the game like the ai or bugs, but seriously, all of those things can be compensated for. All the game needs to do is make the campaign a little bit more lengthier and action oriented. I mean all that happens is one major battle that decides the victor and then the losing side gets crushed. Like if you manage to defeat a major army, you can quickly run right into a city and trash(exterminate) it the following turn (or just sneak behind the army and then lay siege and make that army fight you using the main army and reinforcements and then you can take the city right away). Then just use the facilities to retrain your units and your army will be 75%-100% of its original strentgh. Then fight the other enemy large army and that faction is just about toast. Or it could be the other way around and you lose your main army and then you will just lose everything except the lands in italy or wherever. The main point of all this is how the human player spent so long building up his cities, managing them, and then training an army just so the game could be beat in a few turns of fighting. I remember reading about how italy was invaded many times and there was a lot of fighting and fort usage and stuff, but where is that in the game?? I mean fighting with forts is almost useless, there aren't frequent skirmishes(like its almost always one big battle against a huge army, either that or you are messing around with the ai and picking off the smaller armies which is cheap), and there are no "alliances against the greater opponent". The game just seems to end when you take all the cities of an opponent and then you are almost invincible because you are twice as powerful as any faction and no one is there to stop you. The game is totally decided when you manage to have 10 cities because the ai rarely ever has that many cities. Whats the use of playing if all you do is become scared of bleeding the enemy too much that they die and there is no challenge left???

Yup, its a problem I saw too. Someone (not me) should fix that.

[ Whats the use of playing if all you do is become scared of bleeding the enemy too much that they die and there is no challenge left???[/QUOTE]

You've tried it on vh/vh settings?

You've done the same using one of the mods to the game?

My own opinion is that while some aspects of R:TW are disappointing (especially compared to m:tw), I'll still end up buying anything CA wants to put out in this series, eh? Any game that uses up this many hours of my life must be doing something right. :dizzy2:

Considering that the modders have just barely got to work on the game, there's still a while to go befor I cash out.

I think what you're getting at is the difference between the timescale of building/developing/recruiting vs. the timescale of invading/conquering/battling. I agree that they're completely out of sync in that way, but like you I have no idea of a solution; it's a very old problem.

I've labored away at the campaign map to strengthen all the starting positions and populations (including rebels.) Almost all faction cities are now at "large town" level with appropriate govt. building. I have selected upgrades to decent infantry barracks in key cities (with large populations) for most factions so that the AI should have a chance of building some representative armies. I added palisade walls to almost all villages that lacked them--at least ones in areas that frequently come under assault in the first 10 years.

My hope is that this will advance the build queue enough to skip the first 10 years of "development" where the player is able to rush the unprepared AI as it denudes its cities of population. If this doesn't work, then I give up.

its a really fun game, and i play it on vh/vh. I think the game developers just didn't want to go too far with the features and made it a little more simpler so it would be more attractive to new gamers. At first glance RTW looks like such a cool game and this is really all you need for 90% of the people out there to buy it. I've never played MTW but i did play STW and I've noticed how MTW seems a bit generic(as in "this is just another game") and "different"(as in "too confusing") from an outside perspective. And MTW was such a hit that it wouldn't be smart to ruin a good thing by introducing new features in RTW that might curb sales away. When I was just a newb at this game, I was so addicted to it that every once in a while in my day that I couldn't play it, I remembered how cool the game was. But now that Ive become an expert, its a little bit boring. I just hope they end up designing the expansion with more strategy in mind.

I think some of this stems from the lopsided battle results (which unfortunately points back to the battle AI, speed, and chain-routing). It wouldn't be so bad if the "one major battle" left the victor with only 50% of his/her troops. But when you can destroy an equal stack and lose only 5-10% of yours, it doesn't give the AI any breathing room.

Realistic battlefield attrition needs to be accounted for to solve this. If more troops are lost per battle, resupply logistics becomes a bigger factor to the game. This would drain your cities of population, cost you money, slow down the rush, and give the AI a chance to recover.

So drone, you're bascially saying there's no real fighting on the strategic map because there's no real fighting on the tactical map, which I have to agree with.

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Originally Posted by Pode

So drone, you're bascially saying there's no real fighting on the strategic map because there's no real fighting on the tactical map, which I have to agree with.

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With Medieval, you had to take pauses to replace casualties. You would begin to get worried about whether your stacks could handle another assualt, and you couldn't just bee-line your way through the enemy territories.

As a trial, start a campaign on easy or medium, and auto-resolve every battle (it hurts just to write that...). Since I never auto-resolve, I'm not sure what difficulty level would be better for this test, but you'd want something that you can win, but lose a fair amount of troops with. From a campaign standpoint, this should give you a much more difficult game. Since the combat losses aren't as lopsided, it should take you more turns to defeat a faction. This should be a quick test, all you need to do is manage cities and stacks. For all I know, this is how the campaign map was tested by CA/Activision.

If we can get to the point where the player attrition is higher on the combat map, it will make the game a lot more interesting. Right now, the economics of the game are skewed, because every unit you create is worth ~5 units (or more) of the AIs. The player gets an advantage with population, tax income, building levels, recruiting costs, etc. because of this. Couple this with the general advantage a human has over any game AI, and the game becomes too easy.

drone,

That assessment is on the mark. In MTW when you expanded you had to be careful to consolidate...or go for a targeted kill. The AI could often perform a strategic withdrawal, then hit you the next turn with its 7 star general, and 3 to 5 stacks.

There were times when these armies were so strong that I went in with about 1/3 arbalesters and a strong spear holding force. The idea was to wear down their first best stack, even if I lost to the later hordes. I might only beat the 1st stack, and be too mangled to fight the next several, so I would withdraw, then attack again with a replenished stack. The key here was attrition. Yes, I was outsmarting the AI but my losses were high enough that I was being slowed. And in some of the battles I could suffer a resounding defeat that would force me onto the defensive.

With RTW when you take a region, the AI can rarely counter attack with anything substantial. With your invasion army nearly unscathed (or replenished in a single turn) you can take out the next region rapidly without much fear of successful counterattack. The AI can never catch its breath because it loses so badly in battle.

Someone posted an interesting idea about the AI armies getting wiped out: they said that they would choose to end the battle when the option presented, rather than continue and wipe out the routers. Allowing the routers off the field will preserve more of the AI force. Do you think that would help?

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Originally Posted by Old Celt

Someone posted an interesting idea about the AI armies getting wiped out: they said that they would choose to end the battle when the option presented, rather than continue and wipe out the routers. Allowing the routers off the field will preserve more of the AI force. Do you think that would help?

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Quite possibly. I've been considering resorting to that (although not for the amazingly annoying rebels.) At present I usually take AI settlements when they counter attack when I siege, because I make sure that nobody leaves the field alive. The AI rarely has a sufficient force for the counterattack (and would be better served waiting.) Since I rarely suffer more than meager casualties...the settlement and AI armies are little more than speed bumps.

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Originally Posted by drone

I think some of this stems from the lopsided battle results (which unfortunately points back to the battle AI, speed, and chain-routing). It wouldn't be so bad if the "one major battle" left the victor with only 50% of his/her troops. But when you can destroy an equal stack and lose only 5-10% of yours, it doesn't give the AI any breathing room.

Realistic battlefield attrition needs to be accounted for to solve this. If more troops are lost per battle, resupply logistics becomes a bigger factor to the game. This would drain your cities of population, cost you money, slow down the rush, and give the AI a chance to recover.

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You know…. Browsing through the scripted files, I came across something that mentioned about food factor no longer being applied to armies. For one, I think the obvious reason for omitting this from the game was logistical nightmare of having forces outside your territories of control. Feeding a force and having it supplied occupied 90% of a general’s concerns. And many battles fought in Italy during the second Punic war were over these matters; Hannibal wanted to secure a supply line by taking over seaports and towns for grain storage. Consequently, after suffering defeat after defeat, prudent Roman generals were willing to use the homeland advantage by waging skirmish war against small foraging parties. So pursued the war of attrition for a decade of burning of crops and decimating of populations. This is total war, and it involves more than just fighting battles. But such realistic scenario would drop its marketing value for the masses. Instead, much of this realism I think was watered down or abstracted.

I remember when Lord of the Realm first came out fifteen years ago, your force was dwindled down when in enemy territories and you had to divide a part of your force for foraging. And it was gracefully abstracted to the point where you were not overwhelmed, but it did put another dimension to the challenge of waging a full-scale war with your neighbor. The latest version of said game is now much watered down and far from its predecessors in genre and depth. I think this is becoming a trend for most strategy gamers these days.

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Originally Posted by BeeSting

You know…. Browsing through the scripted files, I came across something that mentioned about food factor no longer being applied to armies. For one, I think the obvious reason for omitting this from the game was logistical nightmare of having forces outside your territories of control. Feeding a force and having it supplied occupied 90% of a general’s concerns. And many battles fought in Italy during the second Punic war were over these matters; Hannibal wanted to secure a supply line by taking over seaports and towns for grain storage. Consequently, after suffering defeat after defeat, prudent Roman generals were willing to use the homeland advantage by waging skirmish war against small foraging parties. So pursued the war of attrition for a decade of burning of crops and decimating of populations. This is total war, and it involves more than just fighting battles. But such realistic scenario would drop its marketing value for the masses. Instead, much of this realism I think was watered down or abstracted.

I remember when Lord of the Realm first came out fifteen years ago, your force was dwindled down when in enemy territories and you had to divide a part of your force for foraging. And it was gracefully abstracted to the point where you were not overwhelmed, but it did put another dimension to the challenge of waging a full-scale war with your neighbor. The latest version of said game is now much watered down and far from its predecessors in genre and depth. I think this is becoming a trend for most strategy gamers these days.

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Well met, and well saidt. ~:cheers:

In MTW, it was very easy to replace troops, that's why it was easy to take 2-3 provinces per turn. That is why it was a tediously repetitive game. The campaigns are all the same and the enemies all look the same and all act the same way. All you really do is go through North Africa. When you come out of the other end, you have already won.

It's the player vs. the whole collective ai very quickly, like it was a giant super-faction. :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by Old Celt

Someone posted an interesting idea about the AI armies getting wiped out: they said that they would choose to end the battle when the option presented, rather than continue and wipe out the routers. Allowing the routers off the field will preserve more of the AI force. Do you think that would help?

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I have been doing exactly this in my last few games and it does help somewhat; the AI does have more of it's forces intact but this means more little battles to fight - and there are already enough of those, no?

I have started attacking AI forces with similar stacks. So if the Ai has only a captain and and six units I send only a captain and six units etc. Also I often autoresolve alot of these battles (most infact). This helps some more, but still the game will always be too easy even with the imposition of our own limiting 'house rules'.

Anyone know of any good threads on 'house rules' or 'Anti-cheese' for R:TW, btw?

The real limitation we had in MTW was the whole Province system... It was impossible to fight multiple battles with the same army on the same turn.

Now though we can have an army steamroll into enemy territory fighting battles all the way as long as they have movement points remaining. In MTW when the AI army withdrew from a battle we also had to wait for a whole new turn before we could force another battle.

In RTW, when the enemy withdraws you can simply chase them down again, force another battle and their army will be lost as they have already used up their retreat and will have nowhere to flee to.

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Originally Posted by The_Emperor

The real limitation we had in MTW was the whole Province system... It was impossible to fight multiple battles with the same army on the same turn.

Now though we can have an army steamroll into enemy territory fighting battles all the way as long as they have movement points remaining. In MTW when the AI army withdrew from a battle we also had to wait for a whole new turn before we could force another battle.

In RTW, when the enemy withdraws you can simply chase them down again, force another battle and their army will be lost as they have already used up their retreat and will have nowhere to flee to.

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I strongly disagree! ~:) On the contrary, MTW is far, far easier with the province system.

1) Drive your main army into the heart of the enemy province. They will retreat, oh yes!
2) AI attacks your army in one turn with everything they have.
3) AI is destroyed ( you can't lose as long as you have some reinforcement).
4) March into the open lands with whatever reinforcement units you got.
5) AI hides insides the castle (if they have remnants), but they are done.
6) You get chunks of lands in one single battle. Faction eliminated. Kaput. Build a fort, put a spy, a religious agent, an emissary and lower tax if necessary.
7) Repeat on the next faction.

Now isn't that repetitive, boring and especially easy? Where's the depth there? Why bother with the princesses and marriages which were nothing but superficial additions when you can take chunks of lands.

All my MTW were the same thanks to that North Africa tactic and the One-turn faction killer battles. Those were the best tactics as well.

:charge:

Up to a point, Quietus. As has already been said, where MTW (and even more, STW) was challenging was that the AI would frequently concede a province. If you occupy it, you would then have to defend your existing border plus the new province (salient). This meant it was important to have sufficient numbers in order to wage an offensive without getting over-extended. I found this most acutely in STW - because the AI "cheated" more and hit your weakest province - where I found it hard to attack without a numerical edge. You would sometimes even get a situation of trading places - you attack, take the province and the AI "retreats" into the province you have attacked from, taking it from you.

Now, I am sure you understand all this when you mention North Africa, because in MTW the key thing about North Africa as a path for conquest was that you could attack and occupy provinces without widening your front and hence without numbers. But playing as HRE in MTW or Oda in STW was challenging because the borders were so enormous.

Personally, I think the old province system made it easier for the strategic AI. Less options - a la Chess - made it easier to program a tough opponent. The open campaign map of RTW feels less gamey and more realistic, but I think it does make life harder for the AI (and so easier for the player).

I agree the MTW campaign was often still rather broken - take out one faction and you were hard to beat - but I have participated in some PBMs where you could get a tough mid-game against another AI faction that had swallowed up a lot of territory. And let's not talk about the Hojo horde...

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Originally Posted by Quietus

I strongly disagree! ~:) On the contrary, MTW is far, far easier with the province system.

1) Drive your main army into the heart of the enemy province. They will retreat, oh yes!
2) AI attacks your army in one turn with everything they have.
3) AI is destroyed ( you can't lose as long as you have some reinforcement).
4) March into the open lands with whatever reinforcement units you got.
5) AI hides insides the castle (if they have remnants), but they are done.
6) You get chunks of lands in one single battle. Faction eliminated. Kaput. Build a fort, put a spy, a religious agent, an emissary and lower tax if necessary.
7) Repeat on the next faction.

Now isn't that repetitive, boring and especially easy? Where's the depth there? Why bother with the princesses and marriages which were nothing but superficial additions when you can take chunks of lands.

All my MTW were the same thanks to that North Africa tactic and the One-turn faction killer battles. Those were the best tactics as well.

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You must be talking about a Weaker faction like Aragon, or The Danes then, because I have rarely ever experienced a time when a single battle killed off a faction that wasn't already crippled beyond help.

As for the "North Africa" tactic, that is too easy because of the fact that you are fighting on the map edge with the sea to the other side... You only have to worry about getting attacked from the army in front of you or a naval invasion.

I have rearely seen the AI commit all of its forces in a single battle in MTW. (on expert by the way) Most of the time even if you win it will take you forever to retrain your depleted units back up to full strength. (certainly earlier on)

Sometimes I have seen it do something very unexpected, such as sinking some ships and then sending around six stacks across the ocean towards one of my lightly defended backwater provinces, rather than doing a straigtforward counterattack on my front line.

Quietus,

Unlike RTW, those counterattacks in MTW *could* actually win at times on expert. The battlefield AI was a lot stronger in MTW. When the AI saw it had a large advantage it generally used it. It wasn't particularly subtle, but it did tend to overwhelm the player at times.

Trading space for time, and to stretch out the resources of the attacker is a textbook way to beat an invader.

While I respect everyone's opinion here, I can't believe some of what I'm reading on this thread. The idea of increasing battlefield attrition for the victor would admittedly add more challenge to the game, but it would do so in a very unsatisfying way. Do any of you remember the days of the old RTS model (think AoE) in which battles had no consequence whatsoever? Even if you won a skirmish, your remaining troops would be so weak that they could never achieve any permanent gains for you; enemy fortifications would easily stop them. Every game degenerated into a guerilla warfare campaign in which the only way to achieve anything was to attack the enemy's economy. Do any of you really want to return to that exercise in frustration?

Authentic warfare in the ancient world (which RTW imperfectly, yet much more closely, models) was never like that. As you all know, the victor would escape with much of his army intact, while the loser's army would frequently be destroyed (5-10% casualties for the victor would not be unrealistic). In this way, battles were decisive and had a real effect on the geopolitical scene.

The way to make a game like this more challenging, as I see it, would involve the following key elements:

1. Make the battlefield AI as good as it could possibly be; never worry about making it too hard. AI armies of comparable strength need to have a real shot at defeating the player's army; AI armies that are considerably bigger should be very difficult to defeat. If the decisive battle always goes the player's way, of course the game will be seen as far too easy.

2. Make the strategic AI as good as it could possibly be. The AI needs to recognize the importance of having powerful armies, defending key areas and assets on the map, and sound economic and diplomatic policies.

3. If the AI receives "cheap" bonuses, let the most significant of them be in the economic area, not the combat area. The reason the game gets so easy in the end is that once the player's empire gets large, it can raise armies far larger and more powerful than the smaller AI factions. What if it were possible for even a small AI faction to build and maintain an army powerful enough to challenge the player's armies? That way, the decisive battles would continue all the way through the game. It's not too unrealistic either, as in the ancient world, even small nations could provide a formidable defense against larger foreign powers, having home-field advantage (think Vietnam or Japan against the Mongols).

As a programmer myself, I realize that good AI for a game like this is tough to write. Nevertheless, it's probably the most key element of the game, and it seems to me that more research time should be devoted to it.

One thing the province system in MTW did force the AI to do however was combine it's stacks. I am at a point early in my RTW game as Germania where the time is right to attack the Britons. They have a small stack in Samarobriva, and three small armies within 2 turns march of the town. I have one attacking army. In MTW all these Britons would be in the same army fighting me - as it is now they may or may not bring one or more to the party.

Simplistic I know, but it does illustrate the point.

The way the campaign map is implemented now gives the AI too much scope to create small armies, and puts you in a situation where you can't help but outnumber them.

Cheers,

Rob

Kommodus - I think one reason decisive battles stand out in history may be because they were rather rare. I suspect it was more common for losses not to be wildly different between 2 sides.

I think part of your solution (2) - better strategic AI - would be the AI evading battle more and sticking to more STW/MTW epic confrontations. At present, the AI seems able to retreat from battle once but then is caught. This seems a gamey aspect of the turn-based IGO-UGO set up. Better to let them withdraw to a city or bigger army, perhaps with some attrition, than allow them to be cornered. However, I recall the AI in Heroes of Might and Magic III was pretty good at avoiding being caught by more powerful player stacks so the problem may be solvable even in a turn-based setting.

I also think introducing some genuine campaign attrition - due to disease, desertion etc - would be warranted. RTW even reduced this - no attrition for besiegers

It would also be good to make it harder to replace losses - something like WesWs homelands concepts (one house rule I like that simulates this is not to recruit core troops in cities with a culture penalty). Again RTW weakened this - you can now get all units in a stack back to full strength in one turn and, IIRC, the replacements even are of equal experience to the fallen.

Would all this be less fun for the player? Well, I must confess I fought 150+ battles in my Julii campaign and they were usually unbalanced battles I would have won anyway. Reducing the tedium of these little contests would be a plus for me. (I confess I do have the option of autoresolve and this would actually go a long way to removing my objections, but I am weak ...)

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

(I confess I do have the option of autoresolve and this would actually go a long way to removing my objections, but I am weak ...)

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Not so much weak - you just like to fight. Which is what the game is all about after all. A pity (and ironic) that a basic way of getting the campaign game to generate armies that are a challenge to fight on the tactical map, is to not fight on the tactical map...

Cheers,

Rob

Kommodus,

While I agree to some extent about lopsided victories, there are a lot of other unrealistic things that RTW can't simulate. So at some point you have to decide what you are going to do to make it playable. We can raise unlimited numbers of elite. They never grow old and have to be replaced. We can raise unlimited cav. We don't have to feed our forces at home, or abroad (paying upkeep cost is another matter entirely.) Supply logistics is non-existent.

Pyrrhic victories were not uncommon (Pyrrhus had 2 in a row.) Decisive battles led to the destruction of the enemy (and are remembered.) Less decisive battles could have substantial losses on both sides. And even in a decisive loss it was not unusual for substantial portions of the army to escape (even Trebia.) I was looking at a list of casualties from Hellenistic warfare: loser casualties for Marathon ~21%, Delium ~10%, Gaugamela ~20%, Pydna ~45%

As it is now it is very one sided...human always wins. That does an even worse job of simulating reality.

RJV is on the mark about the strat map of MTW forcing the AI to combine stacks. CA can't seem to code RTW to get the AI to adequately combine armies. Captain led armies are the norm. It is really odd when you can see 3 or 4 AI armies all within striking range of the same settlement...and a captain led full stack is besieging your army while a smaller stack with 3 family members is nearby.

MTW did have problems with the AI sending many of its heirs off together with their king at times. RTW does this somewhat as well. How difficult can it be to write code to make this less frequent?

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

Kommodus - I think one reason decisive battles stand out in history may be because they were rather rare. I suspect it was more common for losses not to be wildly different between 2 sides.

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I'm sure this is probably right. However, would it really be desirable to include these indecisive clashes in the game, as they would have little effect on the outcome? While some battles will of course turn out that way, they don't generally add much to the gaming experience. You might as well just assume that such skirmishes are going on all the time in the background, but that they simply don't warrant the player's attention. I would say stick to the exciting stuff and leave the tedium out.

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

I think part of your solution (2) - better strategic AI - would be the AI evading battle more and sticking to more STW/MTW epic confrontations. At present, the AI seems able to retreat from battle once but then is caught. This seems a gamey aspect of the turn-based IGO-UGO set up.

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This is a good point. The AI should be able to avoid battle unless cornered.

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

I also think introducing some genuine campaign attrition - due to disease, desertion etc - would be warranted. RTW even reduced this - no attrition for besiegers

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This might add realism and challenge, but I think the irritation level that would result would outweight the potential benefits. I'd rather not have my units slowly shrinking until I'm left with a bunch of depleted units when I haven't even fought a battle, and be forced to go back and retrain them (a task I find tedious and boring). Once again, this goes back to the "focus on the exciting stuff and leave the tedium to the auto-management" principle.

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

It would also be good to make it harder to replace losses - something like WesWs homelands concepts (one house rule I like that simulates this is not to recruit core troops in cities with a culture penalty).

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Yes, this is a good concept worth implementing, especially since it would make things harder on the player in the late-game, when you are fighting far from home. If you want to recruit troops away from home, you simply have to rely on the indigenous ways of fighting, like Hannibal did - it takes a long time to change a culture.

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

Would all this be less fun for the player? Well, I must confess I fought 150+ battles in my Julii campaign and they were usually unbalanced battles I would have won anyway.

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It saddens me to hear this. I wish this were the type of game in which you'd fight maybe 1/5 that number of battles in a typical campaign, but each one would be an interesting, exciting clash in which the AI usually outnumbered you and almost always had a shot at winning. I hope that future games in this genre move in that direction.

I guess the way I would like to see campaigns happen is this. You spend a number of turns preparing for war with your neighbor, while he prepares as well. When war breaks out, each power has a large army (maybe two or three at most). The armies clash, and the winning side is able to occupy several cities while the losing side holds on as best it can while it raises another army. Once this is complete, another big battle takes place, in which the previous loser either turns the tide or loses even more lands. Thus, a large empire might be defeated in three or four battles, while a small nation might be crushed after only one defeat.

Small, lopsided skirmishes add nothing to this game. They should have been minimized from the beginning. But then, all this is just my opinion.

Certain unit types should be made more likely to desert without pay, like mercenary units. Yet a player should be able to counter this by perhaps having such character traits as being able to hold an army composed of many nationalities together; or an ancillary character could be added to a leader for logistical purposes lessening the affect of attrition to an army. So realism does not need to be sacrificed, it could be abstracted to save a lot of details. And this is no news to gamers yet many have failed to incorporate them by either lack of creativity or simply sacrificing too much of one aspect for the sake of other.

A game does not need to be reduced to small skirmish actions to portray realism. But if need be it should be made like a chess game, challenging a player’s intelligence.

VH battle difficultly is bugged, it's easier than medium so play VH/M for the toughest campaign. Also one of the major issues that makes the game so easy is the ability to retrain your units as soon as you've conquered a new city. Yeah, I just assulted and pillaged your city, now join my army and help me fight your friends! I don't think so.

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Originally Posted by QwertyMIDX

VH battle difficultly is bugged, it's easier than medium so play VH/M for the toughest campaign. Also one of the major issues that makes the game so easy is the ability to retrain your units as soon as you've conquered a new city. Yeah, I just assulted and pillaged your city, now join my army and help me fight your friends! I don't think so.

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Imagine then, how hard it would be for the AI and how much easier it would be for you to defeat its army.

The conditions presented in this game, both in the battlefield map and the campaign map, are too sophisticated for the AI to fully exploit.

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

If you occupy it, you would then have to defend your existing border plus the new province (salient).

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That's why you put your army in the middle of their territories to bait them into attacking. Without the armies, you simply stroll in!

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

I am sure you understand all this when you mention North Africa, because in MTW the key thing about North Africa as a path for conquest was that you could attack and occupy provinces without widening your front and hence without numbers.

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Originally Posted by The_Emperor

As for the "North Africa" tactic, that is too easy because of the fact that you are fighting on the map edge with the sea to the other side... You only have to worry about getting attacked from the army in front of you or a naval invasion.

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The "North Africa" is the best strategy not just because it is the easiest, but it is also the most logical.

1) Trade - The richest provinces are in Byzantine, Egyptian and Spanish territories. The Almohad and the Turks are not bad either. You must have to control the mediterranean for those lucrative trades.
2) Happiness - Place the faction leader in Spain or Constantinople and with control of the mediterranean and the north seas, then you don't have to worry about mass rebellions.
3) Easiest Path- This was the easiest path as was mentioned before.

Without the first two, I won't go through NA. I've never played HRE because they don't have interesting units, but I've played the English and the Danes. I still went through NA. Even if I play HRE today, I will still invade Spain!

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Originally Posted by The_Emperor

You must be talking about a Weaker faction like Aragon, or The Danes then, because I have rarely ever experienced a time when a single battle killed off a faction that wasn't already crippled beyond help.

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No, all factions. Take province where it borders all the other enemy armies, they will attack the next turn. If the AI has other holdings far the place, of course they will survive if they have heirs, but the very least, they are crippled.

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Sometimes I have seen it do something very unexpected, such as sinking some ships and then sending around six stacks across the ocean towards one of my lightly defended backwater provinces, rather than doing a straigtforward counterattack on my front line.

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I always aimed for complete dominance of the seas (and I've did it in all my campaigns). My personal rule is 2 ships per lane (in case there is a storm). If there is a neutral ship there that is not physical threat to my armies, then I just add ships (at least one more than the enemy).

With the North Africa Strategy, the Italians are harmless. When I attack the french or the Germans, I simply sink all their ships at the same time (always two more ships than the enemy), then I attack their lands. But only when I'm ready for invasion the very next turn.

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Originally Posted by Red Harvest

Unlike RTW, those counterattacks in MTW *could* actually win at times on expert. The battlefield AI was a lot stronger in MTW. When the AI saw it had a large advantage it generally used it. It wasn't particularly subtle, but it did tend to overwhelm the player at times.

Trading space for time, and to stretch out the resources of the attacker is a textbook way to beat an invader.

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If you have at least medium units with a full stack, you are really invincible. If you place your army in the middlelof their provinces, they will attack at the same time. This is as opposed to pushing them back all the time, until all their stacks are in few provinces.

Of course I don't let the enemy grow enough to make humungous numbers of stacks. I attack as fast as possible. I just make sure I already know what the AI's options when I attack, as well as my own capabilities: Can I build enough reinforcements? Can I build Spies, religious agents and emissaries for every province I take? Do I have control of the seas?

I'm also a builder, so all the provinces are building non-stop. The rush tactic is there only because there are no other options but wars.

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