BI vs vanila: the showoff

[theoldbelgian]

wat is actually the major thing if you update from vanilla to EB?
I know about the problems with suplies into the lands and about the naval invasions

[The Celtic Viking]

Err, I'm a little confused. Do you mean the difference between vanilla R:TW and EB, or the difference between EB on RTW and BI?

[Intranetusa]

RTW Vanilla = 4/10
RTW + EB = 8.5/10
RTW + BI + EB = 9/10
RTW + Alex + EB = 9.5/10

[desert]

Relatively.

[Cute Wolf]

RTW vanilla : Almost too easy campaign, especially if u play with romans... but present a real challange if u re barbarians (only 3 lvl cities? and foolishly weak naked fanatics? bah!), parthia (what infantry backbone can you expect with stupid eastern infantry and hillmen?), and numidia (what the... desert infantry, numidian legionaire, and numidian cavalry are good if they got the carthie's poeni infantry as backbone!)

RTW - BI : Playing as WRE is real challange, since you'll got a lot of barbarian hordes pouring into your land of collapsing empire... with all of delibration, every time I play as WRE, I must shrink my territory only in italy (same as julii in RTW)... before manage to get strong economic support and launch full - scale reconquista campaign.... others are too easy, especially with those horde factions...

RTW - EB : Nice everything... almost... except too long loading time... and no horde factions (try the all horde mod for EB, but just create more chaos...)

[gamegeek2]

RTW + EB = 8.5/10

WHAT??? I PLAY RTW EB AND IT AWESOME!!!

[Recoil]

cute wolf, how come you have to lose so much of your land on BI as romans? eventually it becomes too easy for me, all hangs on the first few turns

[theoldbelgian]

I was actually talking about the difference with playing eb on vannila an on bi
the question wasn't clear because at the moment I posted this I came back from my birhtday-party and I wasn't sober anymore, sorry for that

[Smeel]

Well, we all learned a lesson.

"Don't drink and post questions in EB forums"

on a serious note, I think using BI.exe is superior to vanilla, and since the bi special formations are too bugged to work, i chose the better AI of Alex. Use Alex.

PS: Congratulations theoldbelgian :)

[pirates_say_arrgg]

So, who's in favor for using Alex. EB?

What does it actually make better.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

With Alex EB, I played two campaigns. As Getai I noticed that the enemy tried to overrun my skirmishers instead of just standing still and getting hit by them, and in another campaign they actually tried to surround my phalanx rather than getting away with a massive frontal assault. So I would say Alex EB is definetely worth it.

[Cute Wolf]

Recoil says:
cute wolf, how come you have to lose so much of your land on BI as romans? eventually it becomes too easy for me, all hangs on the first few turns

@Recoil
If I play the WRE, I must abandon my british holdings (sold them to celts), abandon my germanic holdings (sold them to franks), and some regions unfortunely revolt... if not (I will get a big economic hell... what can you do with - 2#### denarii) I will eventually die starving... I already try to manage AS THE WALKTROUGH IN WRE WALKTHROUGH IN THIS FORUM, but the Huns, vandals, Sarmatians, goths.... all play pranks on my cities, and eventually I must admit defeat... except on M/M. sometimes it works... if the sarmatians and huns (or vandals or goths, play pranks to each others first...)

--------


afterwards, I still think EB is the best... a lot of free historical lectures... the stupid ai is secondary... I actually wait for better EB II

[Intranetusa]

WHAT??? I PLAY RTW EB AND IT AWESOME!!!

Anything over a 5 is pure awesomeness

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

With the ALEX executable, the AI retrains its troops if they are understrength (and recruitable in the town the unit is stationed in.)

With the RTW and BI executables, the AI does not do any retraining, just builds new units.

Personally I don't like the AI retraining because it encourages the AI to spam armies and deplete its populations too fast.

So I use the BI executable.

The advantage of BI over RTW is much more naval invasions - the RTW exe hardly does any.

[Gais]

Actually the AI retrains in BI as well. What I've heard is that it won't do it consciously, in that it will at times - not always - retrain an understrength unit that somehow ends up in a town where it can be retrained. Perhaps the difference is that in Alex it retrains units consciously.

[Maion Maroneios]

With the RTW and BI executables, the AI does not do any retraining, just builds new units.

They do, you just haven't noticed. I play with BI executable and have experienced quite a few cases where the AI does retrain it's depleted troops.

The advantage of BI over RTW is much more naval invasions - the RTW exe hardly does any.

RTW has naval invasions, they're just not very frequent. I've experienced full stacks being shipped over with plain RTW in the past, though it's true that in BI they are much, much more frequent.

Maion

[I of the Storm]

Actually the AI retrains in BI as well. What I've heard is that it won't do it consciously, in that it will at times - not always - retrain an understrength unit that somehow ends up in a town where it can be retrained. Perhaps the difference is that in Alex it retrains units consciously.

Never ever use the word 'consciously' in context with AIs again!

[Cute Wolf]

Retraining units doesn't give much diffrences, except the ai had a lot of silver chevron units... survived...... I use ALEX and the ai does the retrain, but they stand no chance to maintain their elites.... Thanks to the great job of light cavalrymen when they rout...

The best thing ALEX offer than RTW / BI is: ai march in good stack... no more easy battle, picking off ai soldiers that run one or two unit alone... at least they will walk in 8 or 9 units...

[Olaf Blackeyes]

Hey Bi is pretty good too. Heck even the AI can give u an epic experince sometimes. Hell i think i already posted this but once playing as the Huns i had an epic Super battle experience were i took like 1000 troops and i had to defend against an entire Horde faction. In an epic six HOUR set of battles i destroyed the horde faction.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I switched from RTW to BI a few months ago, and it is definitely a huge improvement. Before I gave up on AI sending naval invasions because they were so few and sporadic, now with BI its always becomes a constant threat by 220 B.C. Also, AI is a lot smarter. Things I have also noticed:

When using CityMod since there are less buildings to build due to the restriction of the majority of cities to only go up to "city" level, in the long run it makes for a quicker AI mobilization of "good" stacks since in the long run they don't spend as much on construction due to there being less buildings available to build.

AI Battle Formations mod also helps the AI greatly because I usually need to adapt to them and not the other way around, making the battle more challenging, (esp. with BI its a vast improvement over reg. RTW).

Also, phalanx mod makes battles against Greeks twice as challenging. Especially the elite hoplites, they can literally become an immovable wall due to their tighter formation when before I could just have my troops run right into their ranks and have them all spread out pretty easily.

I use all three of these minimods (except phalanx mod for the time being because it has not been updated for 1.2), and along with BI, its probably the closest thing to a "good" AI as you can probably get, except maybe using them with the Alex. AI.

[Celtic_Punk]

Celts in BI are hard. put it on H/M or VH/M and youll know the meaning of pain.

You gotta expand along the baltic. but your holdings can easily be overrun. (your only salvation is the fact that you are relatively safe on the isles.)

the only campaign i can think of that is truely harder is the Ui Neil clan in Arthurian Total War.

[Apgad]

The best thing ALEX offer than RTW / BI is: ai march in good stack... no more easy battle, picking off ai soldiers that run one or two unit alone... at least they will walk in 8 or 9 units...

A formation mod will make all the difference here. I agree with Mike - BI with something like Darth mod makes for some very challenging battles. Formations are completely save-game compatible, so try a few and see what gives you the best gameplay experience.