The Daily Update at the Com

[Marquis of Roland]

Oh god, more crazy Russian guys with bombs? It's bad enough they have those grenade launching bastards, you gotta love the range on those

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Pavlov grenadiers, by the look of them.


*edit to add*
I hope the Dutch get a infantry and/or cavalry unit. They were IMHO rather hard done by when it came to making faction specific units.

[Slaists]

A nice picture but... no word about a huge breakthrough in regards to CAI or BAI...

[FactionHeir]

Throwing kids some candy huh?

By the looks of it, just your standard grenadiers with a different hat.

[TB666]

But it's a cool looking hat tho.

[mmk]

Very nice! Like the grenadier caps!

[Servius]

Last night I hit my first campaign-killing CTD bug. I almost made it to 1799, by far the furthest I've been able to get in a campaign. Before the most recent patch, I'd encounter one of the CTD bugs much ealier in the campaign. After the patch, I encountered them much less frequently, and I was always able to get around them by simply restarting. The CTD that got me last night happens at the end of the AI turns, and there's nothing I can do to get around it. I know a few of the Daily Updates early after the most recent patch said they had identified a few other causes and had fixed them, plus better utilization of multi-core processors should prevent other CTDs too. I have high hopes that I'll actually be able to finish a campaign perhaps after the upcoming patch :-)

Oh, and the grenadier's hat looks cool.

[TinCow]

A nice picture but... no word about a huge breakthrough in regards to CAI or BAI...

The AI coders are almost certainly not the same people who create units and graphics. The addition of new units shouldn't have any impact on that aspect of the patches.

[al Roumi]

The AI coders are almost certainly not the same people who create units and graphics. The addition of new units shouldn't have any impact on that aspect of the patches.

We don't seem to hear much from those who are working on the CAI and BAI though... New bits are nice, but there's a fair ammount to fix... back in the pressure-cooker now please boys.

[Slaists]

The AI coders are almost certainly not the same people who create units and graphics. The addition of new units shouldn't have any impact on that aspect of the patches.

I understand that aspect of the CA teamwork. Unfortunately, the updates mostly relate to unit design (which is nice) with utter silence from the AI department. Hey, I even have not heard CA acknowledge that the AI IS moronic. :)

Tell me if I am imagining things, but some time before ETW was released, didn't CA hint that the stupidity of the AI in the previous titles was due to the fact that in the previous platforms strategic map diplomatic and military decisions were made separately from military and tactical map decisions. The new engine was supposed to blend them together producing a more sensible overall AI decision making process.

Hmm... the current (game) evidence, for some reason, indicates otherwise.

[TinCow]

Tell me if I am imagining things, but some time before ETW was released, didn't CA hint that the stupidity of the AI in the previous titles was due to the fact that in the previous platforms strategic map diplomatic and military decisions were made separately from military and tactical map decisions. The new engine was supposed to blend them together producing a more sensible overall AI decision making process.

Hmm... the current (game) evidence, for some reason, indicates otherwise.

You're not imagining things, that's exactly what they've said. I do think the ETW CAI is a significant improvement over the RTW/M2TW CAIs. Yeah, it may still declare war randomly, but at least when it does it attacks you and the CAI is perfectly willing to accept a fair peace deal in many situations, even if it will never propose one itself. It still needs a lot of improvement to achieve the level it should be at, but it's still better than it used to be.

I feel the same about the BAI. In RTW, it was possible to defeat a full enemy stack while taking less than a dozen casualties. In ETW, victory is still easy if you know how to play, but casualties are much higher, especially in serious battles, and the AI can regularly win battles if it has numbers on its side. After only a few months of ETW, I've already lost far more battles than I have ever lost in both RTW and M2TW combined. Again, major improvement is still needed on the BAI, but I do feel like it's improper to say that CA hasn't made any improvement at all

[Marquis of Roland]

I've had problems getting peace treaties when the cause of war was a campaign objective region. For example, with Prussia, after taking Rhineland and Flanders (owned by Westphalia at the time), the French, who were very friendly with me, declared war. I wiped out their stacks in France and besieged Paris. I made a peace proposal, but it was rejected. I tried again, this time with a few tech thrown in, still rejected. My last offer, 100k in cash, Flanders region (the reason why they went to war in the first place), and the techs I threw in earlier. Still, rejected emphatically. Oh well, captured Paris and didn't bother to stick around, the following revolution bought me about 10 turns of peace and quiet.