The game is just TOO easy!!!!

[The historian]

Maybe so i have a more non blitzkrieg advance rate true the AI has rarely defeated me(only the native Americans managed it toe to toe other than that maybe while outnumbered some 2-3 to one)
It does not go for the cities and that's important if you have few cities even more so while i find the scorched earth tactic adequate if you have something like 5 plus provinces as the AI can't take you out but if I'm Prussia and the AI Austria it could send 2 stacks and take Berlin without having to burn the countryside and I'd be dead the AI lacks the killer blow tactic so to say:D

[Dogfish]

3. Limit yourself to a specific number of trade resources and let the computer have some instead of monopolizing the worlds trade lanes. Just a thought.

Rushing the trade spots was the first thing I did in the last campaign I played, started and stopped on Saturday. I had all but one of the trade spots in Brazil and both coasts of Africa. Rushed my initial sloops and brigs to those spots and held them until the Indiamen were built 2 turns later. UP and Marathas beat me to Indonesia.

And then once I had those spots, nobody every challenged me for them, not even pirates. Single Indiamen sitting there without any escort in the theater.... nothing to see here, move along Blackbeard, thank you. +16000 per turn. Millions of elephants died per turn for all the ivory I was shipping out of Africa. I could've built a life-size replica of the moon outta the stuff.

[Dogfish]

Maybe so i have a more non blitzkrieg advance rate true the AI has rarely defeated me(only the native Americans managed it toe to toe other than that maybe while outnumbered some 2-3 to one)
It does not go for the cities and that's important if you have few cities even more so while i find the scorched earth tactic adequate if you have something like 5 plus provinces as the AI can't take you out but if I'm Prussia and the AI Austria it could send 2 stacks and take Berlin without having to burn the countryside and I'd be dead the AI lacks the killer blow tactic so to say:D

I've been thinking that it might've been good for them to have individual provinces for all the farms, towns, etc, and allow those to be taken, instead of having them as they are now. France would be 6 or 8 or however many provinces instead of one big one. Production could be linked back to the nearest city of the owning province; no land link, severe production penalty (or none at all).

[Ardri]

Rushing the trade spots was the first thing I did in the last campaign I played, started and stopped on Saturday. I had all but one of the trade spots in Brazil and both coasts of Africa. Rushed my initial sloops and brigs to those spots and held them until the Indiamen were built 2 turns later. UP and Marathas beat me to Indonesia.

And then once I had those spots, nobody every challenged me for them, not even pirates. Single Indiamen sitting there without any escort in the theater.... nothing to see here, move along Blackbeard, thank you. +16000 per turn. Millions of elephants died per turn for all the ivory I was shipping out of Africa. I could've built a life-size replica of the moon outta the stuff.

With UP it isn't uncommon to bring in 25-30k a turn from trade which pretty much means you dominate the global economy, especially given that UP is tightly alllied with GB and anyone who tries to go to war with you ends up getting whiped on the high seas by the Royal Navy.

[Kulgan]

I completeley agree with the original poster. I am too a shogun veteran and find the understanding of the game's new mechanics 10 times as hard as just getting stacks of troops and beating the crap out of anything you see.

I started my first campaign with Holland, took the small german states giving me 3 schools quickly and now am in position to take on any great power. Except maybe Prussia ( Prussia very early conquered austria and some german states ) but I feel very confident I can take them as well. Not breaking a sweat.

And I'm only up to the point of having invented the basic ring bayonet, dragoons ( which I don't use ) and the first movable cannon. And then some non combat inventions as well offcourse.

Now I'll be getting horse artillery, skirmishers, grenadiers, heavy cavalry... which will hopefully make the battles a lot more fun. 1500 line infantry vs 1500 line infantry isn't fun.

I guess that without some serious AI patching, the only way to keep the game fun to me is playing 'weak' on purpose. Which is no real problem but I would prefer things to be different.



Thank you for reading

[Husar]

Well, I keep thinking you got the wrong game mate, have a look at StarCraft or some of those 5min-per-round RTS games, those are usually pretty hard, I mean at least I got beaten by the StarCraft AI on eh, medium or hard a many years ago. Surely though, there are people who beat even that easily.

Being really good in games obviously has a disadvantage at this point and quite frankly, now I know who to avoid in multiplayer.

I really appreciate though, that you(JAG) get along with DevDave nowadays.

For me the game has been very unnerving so far. Since it still hasn't arrived until right now.

[Lord of the Isles]

As for 3., maybe a max of 1 trade ship per trade zone? Anyway, I have another suggestion:

4. No replenishment of troops in the field.

To get home theatre troops (e.g. regular line, cavalry etc) replenished (brought up to full strength after a battle) you either need to take the units back to your home theatre and fill up in a province there, or bring new units from home.

To get foreign theatre troops replenished (e.g. Sepoys, East India Co, VoC for Dutch, etc) you need to visit a province in their native theatre or bring out new units from there.

To get Militia and other cheap troops replenished, any province of yours or bring new units from anywhere.


Why? Because at first I was quite pleased that even if the Battle AI wasn't all that wonderful, the battles at least are tougher for the human because you tend to have bigger casualties even when you (inevitably) win. That will slow down blitzing and make a sterner challenge. But then I realized the new replenishment system makes all that moot, since 2 turns after a battle your army can be back to 100% strength and ready to bulldoze through the opposition again.

Rule 4. puts tedious micromanagement back into the game but I still recommend it. In practice, it means you need to bring a large reserve to a campaign, with the extra drain in your economy that entails.


I'm sure they are going to be kept busy with game-breaking problems for a while, but eventually CA could change the system themselves to make replenishment work better. Make it take a number of turns proportional to the approximate distance between the 'home' of the troops and where they currently are. Say, 3 turns for 'same theatre' replenishment increasing in stages up to say 8 turns for 'other side of the world' replenishments. Ideally the actual distance could be taken into account, so that Flanders -> Holland takes min time and London -> Egypt takes ages, but I'd accept the simpler system if the latter was too tough to code.

[Meneldil]

I kind of agree.

To be honest, personally I hardly play aggressive as I am much to busy building every improvement in my towns and keeping my little serfs happy.
But as soon as I've read some game or faction guide on 'How to conquer the world in 15 turns' I find it very hard not to follow on the advice, knowing its much more effective to spam units than spend the money on city walls.
Somewhat diminishes my game enjoyment :(

I am not sure what the best solution would be. Most probably the modders will come up with something clever.

Susanna/Calapine

Well, that's my main grief with TW games. The fact you win the game by conquering the world (and that said conquest is pretty easy when you get the gist of the game).

I much prefer Europa Universalis, in which you can't simply annihilate a faction by winning a few battles, and rule Europe after ten years. I wish CA would have made ETW more similar to that.

[satyr9]

I'm a mediocre at best TW player. However, I have played far more civ than TW in my life (although not much of either lately) and I fully admit that I can't speak to VH/VH not being a challenge to very good players, but there is absolutely no chance that multiple people in this thread crush civ on the hardest difficulty levels regularly. Go check a civ board and guys who are absolute addicts about those games will lose on deity (is impossible new? I haven't downloaded any expansions for civ IV, 'cause I haven't played in a while). The AI is still terrible at warring, but the bonuses are extreme. I don't have exact numbers but each AI will start out with an enormous tech/army lead at the beginning and be able to outproduce at least 3:1 from the get go. Your growth curve simply can never catch up and all the advanced tactics in the world can't make up the difference. You simply won't be able to win by domination or anything else before someone launches a spaceship. If you mess with the map settings and game speeds you can find ways to win on any difficulty level, but there are map settings and difficulty levels combinations that I guarantee absolutely nobody can beat without cheating in civ. I'm sure people have gotten better since I last looked in on that community and new tactics have come around, but I'll be shocked if more than a half dozen people are beating any kind of standard civ map regularly on the hardest difficulty with more than a very specialized civilization or two.

None of that is to say that civ is a better game. They emphasize very different parts of the game (titles kinda say it all) and depending on how you like your world domination one or the other will suit you, but when people complain about the difficulty on vh/vh and say they destroy civ series games as well, I have a hard time believing either claim (although admittedly the stock difficulty m/m vs. noble civ is crazy easy in comparison 'cause their AI is terrible at war).

In general though for people who like these games enough to be really really good, I'm sorry but AIs will never be able to compete with you. Yes, you can give them huge imbalances to counteract their total inability to strategize, but if you want to play against a smart aggressive opponent, your only option (for the forseeable future) will be multiplayer.

Anyway, this was probably a little long and rude to a few players for a first post in a forum, but I've lurked here on and off since RTW and just started MTW2 again before I got ETW and some of these claims made me finally sign up. lol

[Fisherking]

Well welcome satyr9!

Happy something brought you out of hiding.

[JAG]

Civ is much harder than TW, always has been, I can't beat the top levels of Civ 4 or Gal civ 2 - yes I know they are made by different people, that doesnt matter - which is precisely why I get so frustrated by being able to EASILY thrash the AI in TW on the hardest difficulty settings. It drives me crazy.

And Husar, me and Dave have always had a 'special' relationship! :D

[Cheetah]

Hi JAG. Autoresolve all your battles.

[Spino]

Hi JAG. Autoresolve all your battles.

Uh, wouldn't that defeat the whole point to playing Total War games?!? The main reason I became attracted to TW games in the first place was the ability to build an empire AND fight my own battles in a pseudo-realistic fashion. Think about it, without the tactical battles the TW games are nothing more than superficial and simplistic empire building games that sport medicore AI. If you want a turn based strategy game that deals solely with the nitty gritty of running & building an empire there are far deeper and more challenging games available on the market.

[Spino]

GalCiv 2 is a good way ti go, in that the higher difficulties actually made the AI smarter rather than just adding additional resources to a moron.

It also has the various choices of what you want included in each game.

I don't want an AI that's necessarily more aggressive, just one that will surprise you on occasion with sneakiness rather than just spamming elite stacks. Stuff like cutting you off from your allies, building up it's own coalition and isolating you diplomatically before invading, that kind of thing.

Well most people who cry for a better AI opponent simply want one that 1) behaves sensibly and 2) behaves more like a human than a jacked up ENIAC on overdrive. Understandably 1) is far easier to achieve than 2) but the fact that some developers can do both leaves us wondering why the rest don't make a bigger effort to do so as well.

The lackluster AI in E:TW and other strategy games only illustrates the massive differences in design approach between most developers and Stardock. When Brad Wardell & company set down to design the Galactic Civilizations series they deliberately set out to create an extremely effective AI opponent for the single player game. A strong AI was considered one of their top priorities and they applied an extraordinary amount of intellect and resources in order to achieve their goal. As many people have mentioned, this effort SHOWS. The fact that Brad Wardell cut his teeth as an AI programmer didn't hurt either...

The folks at Stardock knew that if they provided a challenging AI that did not need to resort to cheating in order to make a good show of it would go over well with gamers and they were right!

[Husar]

Well, for one I never really read guides, I can't remember ever checking the guides section here.
I play the games a bit like role playing games, I build my own empire and also usually start by teching up.
Though for some strange reason I tried blitzing in EU3 of sorts because later on once some super nation becomes Emperor I can't really conquer anything anymore being a small german state.
In Total War games I never really felt the urge to rush things, after a while i think the AI can also become quite challenging, most of the problems may be related to the AI being weak at the beginning of a campaign. I absolutely loathe cheating AIs though as well as artificial stats padding to provide more of a challenge, that only leaves clever tactics for the AI to win and that is about the only point where an AI cannot compete with a human player, except maybe in chess.
The AI sending lots of full stacks after me would completely wipe away any immersion that I'm looking for in these games.
So I guess, dear JAG, you may have to wait for CA to release the promised MP campaign option to get a real challenge out of the game, sometimes being good is worse.

[Dogfish]

When Brad Wardell & company set down to design the Galactic Civilizations series they deliberately set out to create an extremely effective AI opponent for the single player game. A strong AI was considered one of their top priorities and they applied an extraordinary amount of intellect and resources in order to achieve their goal. As many people have mentioned, this effort SHOWS. The fact that Brad Wardell cut his teeth as an AI programmer didn't hurt either...

The folks at Stardock knew that if they provided a challenging AI that did not need to resort to cheating in order to make a good show of it would go over well with gamers and they were right!

I read that and can't help but think back to reading an interview where somebody at CA was bragging about how they spent a couple of years getting the water to look right.



Yes, CA, the screenshots are very pretty. Now please make a decent AI and the game will be in the upper echelon as it was expected and hoped to be.

[satyr9]

Well welcome satyr9!

Happy something brought you out of hiding.

Thanks Fisherking.

And for JAG, while the highest difficulty levels of civ are very hard, I really dislike the way it functions. I could beat up to emperor level (which really isn't even that high) playing a little carefully on most typical settings, but the harder levels don't really change anything about how the AI plays. It only gives them larger advantages like tech speed and unit maintenance. I like a challenge, but at some point it starts to feel so false. I think that I can beat the game a couple difficulty levels higher, but it would take me 100 hours of gameplay to pull it off because of the need to really work through so many decisions and plans. That dynamic could be easily re-created in TW games if they wanted to. The AI cities would just need to have cheaper unit costs and building costs and that would pretty much cover it. At some point they will end up with such large armies that no matter how poor their strategy/tactics are you'll have to be perfect to successfully attack anywhere. The problem is what everyone really wants is an AI that actually plays better at higher levels. That being said the AI is more aggressive when it perceives itself as stronger than the human. Pretty sure that was true in MTW2 and it wouldn't suprise me if that held for ETW as well. That means that those of us not expert in the game get a much rougher ride and a more interesting AI because it tries to exploit our weakness, where for the elite players, the AI is afraid and won't push any advantage because it believes itself to be at an overall disadvantage. Obviously without playing ETW it's pure conjecture for me to say that's how it works here, but that's how I've observed AIs to work in previous versions of this game. So the problem is that the stronger players actually end up playing a weaker AI because in general the game AIs don't handle coming from behind type strategy nearly as well as they can deal with exploiting an advantage.

This leads to where I usually get frustrated with all these style of games. If you are playing a winning campaign, at some point in the middle of it, that will become quite clear that you have a winning game and the rest is just playing it through. Handling your early growth curve and negotiating the initial hostilities is so important. Once you've done that correctly, except for the very few times when your progression as a player perfectly matches the difficulty level you're playing, the game is over in all but name. Hopefully soon, someone will invent an overall smarter AI that can continue to throw you curveballs, and the mongol/timurid invasions in MTW2 were a good idea for that as well, but they certainly aren't the perfect answer to that problem.

The most frustrating part for the hardcore base of any game franchise is that new releases are basically betas for you to bug test. The best game developers actually pay close attention and include the best advice/mods in later patches, but as far as I know they are all perfectly happy throwing their game out into the world knowing there are problems and letting their player base work through exactly what they are and give them good ways to fix them (or in the case of games with good modding communities, they just let you fix them yourselves). With most games I usually greet a new release as an opportunity to run through the previous version a couple times and by the time I'm bored again, the patches/mods will have ironed out the largest problems.