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.