Inspired by TinCow, I've tried playing on our PBM with the BI.exe - in a passive way, doing nothing.

First off, it's incredibly easy to do. To install our mod, I had already copied my RTW folder which included BI. So all I need to do to play our mod with the BI.exe was to make a shortcut to the BI.exe which is in my copied RTW folder and add -mod to the command line. e.g. in the properties:

"C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\RomeTW-BI.exe" -show_err -mod:

That's it. Absolutely trivial. There's more detail here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showp...36&postcount=1

Not trivial for DDW who does not have BI, unfortunately. But if Mount Suribachi has it, I would recommend he play with the BI exe. There will be no compatibility problems.

Secondly, I ran through 10 turns of Roman inactivity with the BI.exe and the RTW.exe. Many of the same major events happened in both run throughs. I won't spoil them here, although I may make an in-character report of what the seers prophecy.

To be honest, I did not notice a major difference in AI behaviour in terms of naval landings or use of ships. But the AI did seem to hold its land armies together more - it concentrated its men more effectively and made significantly more conquests of our settlements through land war. Hence my recommendation that, where Consuls have BI, they use the exe to run this PBM.

An addendum: in both run throughs something wierd happened with one of our enemies. I don't want to spoil it but it has important out of character implications for how we play in the face of buggy AI behaviour. In both run throughs, a massive AI army (or two) stayed outside one of most pitifully defended settlements doing absolutely nothing for about 7 turns. Ironically, it was only in the RTW run through that it finally attacked the settlement and took it easily.

So I suggest the following to DDW and Mount Suribachi: - if you find a large enemy army inexplicably camps outside of our settlement for several turns, get our garrison to attack it even though it is suicide. This will simulate the enemy army sieging the town and allow the AI faction to make progress. It's not fun to have a major AI faction just stalling (possibly indefinitely with the BI exe).