Broken AI?

[draconder-dragon]

Lately I have been playing the EB 1.1 modification once more and it has been fun. I am playing as the Casse on Medium/Medium difficulty and have been invading the Aedui with ease. The reason for this ease is because of how the AI appears to not respond in the battlefield. Normally I can forgive it happening once or twice but throughout my entire campaign the AI has been rubbish.

My latest battle is just a perfect example. My Casse forces of roughly 18 units were against the AI's Aedui of 1 unit with 21 units coming as reinforcements. Straight away the enemy runs only one unit against my army while his forces split into four parts. A unit of slingers walked all the way to the corner of the map and just stood there. Three other units just sat just in front of my army and did not move. And the rest walked all the way around my army and just stood there, even with my own units throwing javelins at them.

The vanilla RTW is not this broken so I assume it is the mod. I love this mod, I enjoy the attention to detail and the historical background but the broken AI like this throughout the game reminds me why I stopped playing in the first place. Is this normal for the game?

[Aemilius Paulus]

Not really. From my experience, the EB AI is generally smarter than the vanilla RTW AI. Not only this, but even at Medium difficulty it gets more advantages, such as extra money and command/management/influence boosts for its family members. If you want even smarter AI, you could download the Darth mod which makes the AI very tactically proficient (though not on the main map to my knowledge, just the battle map)

[Fondor_Yards]

Reinforcement AI controlled armies have done that for as long as I can remember.

[Megas Methuselah]

Yeah, the AI have no idea about how to properly utilize reinforcements. It happened in vanilla, too.

[Lysimachos]

Yeah, the AI have no idea about how to properly utilize reinforcements. It happened in vanilla, too.

This is a thing the later .exes really improve. I don't know about BI, but with Alex the AI is able to form a single battle line of main army and reinforcements (at least when defending). And i'm not talking about "putting the units on the same spot", i'm talking about a battle line!

[konny]

This is a thing the later .exes really improve. I don't know about BI, but with Alex the AI is able to form a single battle line of main army and reinforcements (at least when defending). And i'm not talking about "putting the units on the same spot", i'm talking about a battle line!

It also does it when attacking with the ALX.exe. I recently had a battle against 1 1/2 Ptolemaian stacks and after some time of manouvering I was no longer able to say which of the enemy units belonged to the reinforcements and which to the main army. It is also a matter of the formation file: Formations must be set up for more than 20 units, otherwise the AI has no idea how to set up a formation of more than a stack.

[Senshi]

I had the experience with Rome-TW.exe that reinforcements tend to run immediatly directly towards my troops, while the "main force" at least tried to apply some tactics and manoeuvered.
The reinforcements, no matter what kind of troops, just charged at full speed, arriving already exhauseted and quickly routing again....

In BI.exe (which I played for a loooooong time) Vanilla as well in EB reinforcements act as, well, an "independent" army, they do not really interact with the main force, but they themselves act sensefully.

In Alex.exe, reinforcements are mergend into the main force or used as a flanking force, whatever applies best.

I don't think EB has made or CAN make much changes to the battlefield AI, as it's mainly hardcoded and only can be influenced slightly by modificated formation files...