The game is just TOO easy!!!!

[JAG]

Alright I am not blowing my own trumpet, but...

I understand I am a very experienced Total War player, I have played every single title from its first day of release and got pretty good online in the old Shogun days, but the game should not be this easy!

Back in the days of Shogun when the game was on the hardest difficulty, you damn well knew it, things were heavily stacked against you - now however it is just too easy.

I play the game on the hardest difficulty - very hard, for both the campaign and battles. Yet I have rarely lost a battle and the campaign is a complete doddle. For instance, I just started a Prussian short campaign a few hours ago and by the summer of 1713, I had completed all my goals - 14 territories in the centre of Europe, and 15 total - and France, united Provences, Austria, Poland, Spain and Denmark were all devastated. This was all with 2 army stacks and at one point being at war with every nation in Europe - over a 13 year, 25 turn period. Crazy.

The difference now I see is twofold - firstly there are so few attempts by the AI to actually take your cities with thier stacks that you can effectively leave cities completely defenceless, while the stupid AI goes around destroying your easily repairable towns and farms - which at the start of the game are NO WAY near as important as the cities themselves. Secondly, it is SO easy to get peace from nations you declare war on. Many times I literally declared war with my armies in striking distance, took over the couple cities I needed and then got a peace deal out of the nation that I just beat, which was extremely favorable to me - anything from 2000 to 5000 cash in hand. So the AI nation loses all thier cash as well as their important cities, while you can effectively gain a huge upper hand strategically for free - as the peace money can replace all your losses in your armies.

It is, quite franlkly, ridiculous. It is ruining the game for me, what can I do - play crap on purpose? Give the AI a chance, be as stupid as them? A brilliant, masterpiece of a work, completely undone by idiotic AI.

So anyone else getting this? I guess if you havent played a total war game before, it takes time to adjust to how to have success in battles and most importantly on the campaign map - but I am sure there are vets out there having the same damn problems I am, with this crazy, rubbish and infuriating AI.

[vladiator]

I don't know if I agree. I play on H/H, and although it has not been overly-complicated, it has not been a breeze either. Granted I haven't played that much yet, and you probably have much more experience in playing these games, so they are easier for you.

I definitely find battles quite challenging. I MTW2, I could beat 10, or even more, units of enemies with 3-4 units of my cavalry. These days I make sure that I have at least as many units as my enemy before going into a battle..

[Suraknar]

Yes you are blowing your Trumpet... ;)

But it is ok, I think the AI goes after the farms because these are economical buildings, same as the AI in previous TW games tried to blockade your ports first.

Also I noticed the AI does diversions, it will often send a small stack after the farms if you intercept then a bigger stack waits behind and goes after your city.

I personally like this way, it is not about blitzing town after town. But rather slowly bleeding you to death before the coup de grace.

Makes it a bit like chess, calculated moves, campaigning. I like it.

And I agree it is not like STW, where when they came for you you knew it was for your Castle/Town...all or nothing deal, and powerful factions would just come full stack after full stack sometimes from multiple directions.

ETW's game play is more subtle..it represents the Diplomatic Dance that nations played with one another, until Napoleon came about...but that is why most did not like him either...

And to do that the AI needs to be complex...it is easy to make the AI blitz...it is harder to make it calculate in a more subtle way.

[ArtillerySmoke]

It sounds like you're just very good @ Total War.

There's only so much the AI is going to be able to do to you when you are as competent a player as you are.

Players like yourself, and those of us on the org who can eat and breathe a title for ages, are the minority. Looking around the web, most people are getting their rears handed to them by the AI so far.

Myself - I played a good dozen custom battles last night, on all different difficulties. 3000-5000+ men battles. I see the AI as a vast improvement over past titles, but I also see myself as much better in this time period than I was in antiquity and medieval. It just makes more sense to me...I like gunpowder, what can I say.

I'm sure when the mods get rolling you'll run into many a challenge.

[ratbarf]

How about a sublte blitz? I would love that kind of thing. I also played Shogun and all other titles since '99 and it only took me a year to be able to absolutly thrash that game on Hardest. Oh well, it was too easy to realy turtle anyways unless you where playing Takeda or Oda anyways.

Anyways, one thing from the Original Shogun that I would love to see implemented somehow in Empire is the ability to turn on your enemy in the middle of a battle. Create a peace treaty, get them to go to war with you against a common enemy. Then just when you are about to defeat the enemy forces they turn on you and catch your stacks way out of position screwing your for quite a few turns as they then blitz your castles as you try and rebuild your main army. I did to the Imagawa several times and (Best of all) had it done to me by the Oda. (was playin as Takeda the best freaking faction eva!)

Thats the kind of thing I want to see from the Empire AI. If the Dutch Belgians had turned on Wellington at Waterloo while they were in amongst his formation, that would have won the battle and secured the French for at least a year. Too bad I know it won't happen though. (that also happened in Multi player Age of Empires, my supposed ally built a crapload of Bombard towers next to my buildings in my main settlement then turned off his ally setting while mine was still set to non aggression. To be frank I went into the next room and clocked my brother for his treachery.)

[Callahan9119]

I have NEVER been so challenged by the battle AI, since 2001 or whenever I bought my first total war game. I play with medium unit size, I read that it makes the AI much better, I have no complaints compared to previous game.

Video problems and my other GPU sitting there useless because of a memory leak in SLI is another story

[DisruptorX]

Problem, as always, is the dreaded Passive AI. If there were full stacks of enemy units coming at you every other turn during the early game, it would indeed be challenging.

Its really the same problem thats always been there. The AI hates sending full armies to assault territories.

[USMCNJ]

I would have to agree with JAG. I just started my first campaign as Prussia and by 1713 i control all of Germany. I'm playing on H/H, i didn't play the RTI or read the manual, just wanted to try it out.
and the two biggest exploits that is see (just like JAG mentioned)
1) The AI doesn't go for your cities and doesn't defend it's own
2) The AI will always take your peace offer.

Maybe it's just the Prussian campaign, but there is no way i should be essentially done with the campaign after ~8 hours on the first try.

[quadalpha]

I think the AI takes the peace offer because it knows it's beaten after you win a few set piece battles.

[Beskar]

1) The AI doesn't go for your cities and doesn't defend it's own
2) The AI will always take your peace offer.

I wish I had this problems, however, it's always been the opposite.

The AI never takes my peace request unless I give them something like 100,000 with it to them.

In my game, AI goes straight for my cities, even my own protectorates stab me in the back the moment they can, especially Courtland taking Riga. Even small nations such as Venice attacked me with a full stack within 2nd turn of the game as Austria.

In the game, there are no clear advantage unless you are lucky enough to be -
a) very high on research
b) outnumber the enemy
c) managed to get into a good defending position
d) confuse the AI system in cities.

All of this is on medium/medium setting, even.

[Fisherking]

Some are having difficulties and some are not. I know that I have seen previous titles behave differently at times.

More to the matter at hand. There must be some underlying cause if there is a problem.

Is it what I have supposed or is it something else?

Lets try to look at what may be the problem rather than its symptoms.

What do you think?

[seireikhaan]

Hmm...

I've had a bit of both deals. Playing as the Dutch, I had little trouble rounding the caribbean and Canada, swiping territories with ease from the Spaniards and French. Ironically, after taking most of French Canada, the Huron backstabbed me as I was trying to ferry troops over to Newfoundland, and seized Montreal with a near full stack. Now, granted, it wasn't terribly difficult to get my army back, defend Quebec, and take the offensive to retake Montreal, but that's more due to having more troops and more advanced capabilities(about 1730's or so).

In europe, I had a slightly bizarre expierience...

France built a neat little starfort near our border, but left it empty. When war broke out again, I thought, "hey, why not, I'll seize it!" So I marched right in with a full stack and took it. The Frnech promptly sallied from nearby Paris with about a 4/5 stack, and bashed themselves against the defences. I utterly crushed the army, though I did take some moderately significant losses. The French army, however, was GONE... and Paris was right there... and only citizens to aid the defense(granted, there was a TON of them)

I have had some slight monetary issues, it should be noted. I do not have naval superiority, and the AI has taken proper advantage, raiding my trade routes with enthusiasm.

[Dogfish]

I agree. The AI was touted as being a major improvement, and maybe CA has something up their sleeve with some future patches, but in it's current state the AI is lackluster, and that's being kind. Especially considering how much time it takes to go through the AI turns (a few minutes minimum on my machine). It's got to be calculating something.

Reminds me alot of the Brittania campaign of Kingdoms, when I first started I expected England to start coming after my Scottish territories, but no... the AI just sat there, being completely passive.

I was playing through the RtI campaign and reading forums, I saw several posts detailing how the RtI campaign's AI was nothing compared to the GC... so I thought, ok, cool, maybe they gimped the AI in RtI since it's somewhat of a tutorial campaign, at least it will be a challenge when I move over to the meaty GC. But then I started it, and it wasn't. I could leave all of England with no defenses, and I fear that none of it would ever be threatened by an AI faction. This is all on VH/VH (Except for RtI, which was just VH, there being only one slider and such).

Combine that with several bugs and other assorted issues (I was really hyped about the naval battles, but they are arcadey and have some big issues with regard to pathfinding and control of groups), and I'm putting aside my copy until some of these things are addressed, by mod or by patch.

I mean, some of these issues are so blatant it makes me question whether the testers played any campaigns for any amount of time. I still really like the game, and a month or two from now will probably be playing it as much as I have in the past week, but in it's current state I just don't think it's ready. Maybe they should've delayed it again... I just really hope CA is open to making major adjustments via patches, and not just fixes and tweaks.

OT naval rant: Can you not set the speed of a group of ships? and why when you move a group is it like each individual ship getting a move order to that location, and not just the lead ship, with the others always following it? And no formation maneuvers, like turn abouts? And I've said it before, but I don't think I'm going to be able to come to accept that you can sail upwind. The land battle equivalent would be hills and trees not having any effect on gameplay.

[Dayve]

The AI isn't too easy for me... I do win every battle but i lose 90% of my army in doing so. Still trying to figure out a tactic that works effectively.

[crpcarrot]

lol i love it when people say the game is so easy and then go on to explain how they are exploiting it to make it so easy.

[Hollerbach]

lol i love it when people say the game is so easy and then go on to explain how they are exploiting it to make it so easy.

What do you mean by 'exploiting'? As the OP suggests, it is frustrating to have to intentionally play dumb in order to get a challenge (which is what was required in RTW/M2TW), actually doing that is not really a challenge is it? It is not like there is some great glitch that can be exploited in an unrealistic way.

I agree that a diverse game where you need to use trade, diplomacy, research AND war is ideal, but if the game CAN be beaten using war alone, then the other features become meaningless. This was the case with say the Pope and merchants in M2TW. I at first used merchants and made lots of priests go and convert the heathen so I'd have high piety priests to control the vatican. Pretty quickly though it was clear that this was completely unneccesary as steamrolling the map was so simple to do.

To me (and I think many others) the fun of a game is in trying to simply beat it by whatever means neccessary. It should be sufficiently challenging such that even a veteran cannot beat it easily at the first try. Take CivIV for example, it took weeks for the community to collectively compose a playing style that could beat the hardest level, and for many players doing so was never possible, no matter how hard they tried.

With the TW series (from RTW on) you could either play to win, and do so easily and boringly using very few of the features, or you could 'role play', i.e. intentionally play sub-optimally to 'give the AI a chance'. The problem with that approach is that when the going gets tough you can also bend your own rules a bit and stay on top, there is never the seat of your pants thrills of *really* having your back against the wall.

I still don't have ETW (and probably won't for a year or so for various reasons unrelated to the quality of the game) but if ETW doesn't prove to be an interesting challenge maybe I won't bother getting it (or wait till it is a bargain bin game that will run on my future computer with ease!).

To summarise, I love the idea of all the complex features in ETW like trade, genuine diplomacy, research etc, but I want to HAVE to use them to succeed, rather than them being ignorable micro-management and flavour unneccesary to the path of victory.

[sassbarman]

What do you mean by 'exploiting'? As the OP suggests, it is frustrating to have to intentionally play dumb in order to get a challenge (which is what was required in RTW/M2TW), actually doing that is not really a challenge is it? It is not like there is some great glitch that can be exploited in an unrealistic way.

I agree that a diverse game where you need to use trade, diplomacy, research AND war is ideal, but if the game CAN be beaten using war alone, then the other features become meaningless. This was the case with say the Pope and merchants in M2TW. I at first used merchants and made lots of priests go and convert the heathen so I'd have high piety priests to control the vatican. Pretty quickly though it was clear that this was completely unneccesary as steamrolling the map was so simple to do.

To me (and I think many others) the fun of a game is in trying to simply beat it by whatever means neccessary. It should be sufficiently challenging such that even a veteran cannot beat it easily at the first try. Take CivIV for example, it took weeks for the community to collectively compose a playing style that could beat the hardest level, and for many players doing so was never possible, no matter how hard they tried.

With the TW series (from RTW on) you could either play to win, and do so easily and boringly using very few of the features, or you could 'role play', i.e. intentionally play sub-optimally to 'give the AI a chance'. The problem with that approach is that when the going gets tough you can also bend your own rules a bit and stay on top, there is never the seat of your pants thrills of *really* having your back against the wall.

I still don't have ETW (and probably won't for a year or so for various reasons unrelated to the quality of the game) but if ETW doesn't prove to be an interesting challenge maybe I won't bother getting it (or wait till it is a bargain bin game that will run on my future computer with ease!).

To summarise, I love the idea of all the complex features in ETW like trade, genuine diplomacy, research etc, but I want to HAVE to use them to succeed, rather than them being ignorable micro-management and flavour unneccesary to the path of victory.

BANG ON!! very well said!