The AI thread

[Haxorsist]

I'm playing H/H and the AI behaved weirdly in one battle. I deployed in a very long line, but I forgot I had a unit of pikemen which was placed near the middle of the line when I ended deployment. The AI outnumbered me, but what it decided to was concentrate its attention on my unit of pikemen. Fair enough, but they decided to send most of its units into melee against my pike wall which they were obviously unable to break. My units quickly lined up in a square around the enemy and they were killed off pretty quickly from the fire from all directions.

[Bob the Insane]

I have been trying out some test battles in the custom land battles...

In all cases I used the Britsih for both side, unit size large.

First for 1v1 I had a unit of line infantry. I would just let the enemy appraoch and start the fight. They would fire unit they lost around a third of their unit, attach bayent and charge. I would pause as soon as i saw the enemy attach bayents and hit the command for my own men and them once the action started again have the charge.

On Normal victory was 50-50, it could go either way.

On Hard the AI always won, but only just with large casulties on both sides.

On Expert the AI would slaughter my men in both the firefight and the melee every time, 2 to 1 casulties usually.

I repeated the above with melee only units and the result was the same.

This would imply significant stat bonus on Expert and a slight Bonus on Hard...

I then try battles. On the Anatolia map, Early period, Medium funds, Dry, etc...

Again British v British using the present armies with one alteration, I removed the artillery on both sides. Once the battles started I left my troops in their default formation, I grouped them and the only movement was to rotate my line to match the AI's once they had formed up but before the fight started.

Normal, the AI approached in reasonable formation, formed up outside gun range in line with cavalry on the winging (identical to my formation) moved into range. Once the shooting started it moved two units of light infantry off the line, moving one to each wing where they deployed stakes and then moved to attack (firearms) the ends of my lines. Meanwhile it moved it's cavalry to the ends of my lines and then charged them in where they met my cavalry. For the duration of the fight the AI did a good job of maintaining the line and the battle could really have gone either way. It appears to move it's general near to the battles but never actually into battle.

Hard, the approach was identical to the above until the shooting started. The it got a little odd, the AI concentrated it's units in the center (overlapping a bit). The cavalry did the same as above. The infantry does a lot of reforming to face individual units in my line making the AI's line rather ragged.

Expert, interestingly it's tactics and movement was idential to the Normal battles. A little sharper maybe. It's control of it general was sharper too, keeping him back until the fight had started. The battle itself was a little onesided as the 1v1 tests above would imply. It lasted a fair time and some AI units did run away but I simply took way more casualties than the AI and my cavalry was over run on both wings.

Obviously there are loads more varaibles on the maps and i didn;t use artillery which is a huge part of battles in thie era. But so far if you looking for a "fair" battlefield I would say pick Normal. Hard is good for battles where the play must do something to win, but I have some suspicious about the AI's tactics on Hard. If Normal and Expert moved almost identically on the field, why would the AI's movement on Hard be a little odd?

[quadalpha]

Frog: as far as I know, only experience affects reload rate.

[zarkis]

In my opinion the campaign AI is a step backward from MTW2. Strangely small nations and the natives in America are sending big stacks at you, while big nations tend to follow the peacemeal approach. I played Maratha on VH/VH and crushed the great Moghul empire without serious resistance. The only tense time I had when Mysore stabbed me in the back. The AI often counterattackes your forces with insufficent strength, so you can win easily by just using autoresolve. Also it never evades battles it can't win. And so far I haven't seen any sea invasions.

Here are some pics taken by other players, that tell you more about the AI then thousand words..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

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