Patch 3!

[anweRU]

Here are a few observations 8 turns into a GB H/M campaign:

- The Artificial Intelligence is declaring war in a Non-Intelligent manner, in fresh games as well as old ones. As GB, I was surprised when Holland declared war on me at the end of Turn 7. I thought it was becasue I had Flanders. I reloaded the autosave, and re-tried. This time, Holland declared war on Courland instead. Huh? Apparently, we're back to the non-sensical wars of METW2.

- As GB (Hard/Medium), I'm somewhat behind where I was at the same turn. I can't blitz this time. I am not recruiting as many units so I can invest in my economy. I'm also constrained by the increased resistance, which is tying down my armies. Also, I couldn't unload Flanders to UP, like I did pre-patch, so I'm stuck with it. Hence, I have not been able to launch an attack on India.

- The Ottomans actually captured Moldovia back from the Poles, yeah! They lost Bosnia and Serbia to Austria, boo. But Bosnia's capital is under siege, I don't know by whom. I'll find out in a couple of turns (rebels or Ottomans). I don't see as many Turkish naval stacks - I think the Ottoman AI is finally recruiting land units, instead of useless ships.

- The AI is capturing regions, but losing them promptly due to the increased resistance & rebellions. Russia destroyed the Crimean Khanate by turn 3, but the Crimean Khanate re-emerged by turn 7! Sweden lost Karelia to rebels.

- The massive native stacks have not yet made an appearance. The Iriquois and Cherokee declared war on the 13 colonies on turn 1, but have not been able to capture anything yet. I just started to send military techs over to the 13, so I hope they'll be able to hold the line.

[Skott]

Another thing I have noticed. Every time I take a region that puts me next to a region controlled by a another faction that I wasnt next door to before, or not at war with, that faction now turns around and declares war on me real quick. Not sure if this is now a common thing to expect or just particular to my current GB campaign. I need to test it more to find out. Past TW games had this happen alot and ETW didnt do this until the latest patch. If this is going to be the common occurance then this will make it hard to stay out of wars. Good or bad depending on how one looks at it I guess.

[Fisherking]

Declarations of War now seem to be where they were in M2TW.

If they are indifferent to you then they will likely go to war.

Some my like this at the upper difficulty levels, but I was doing a post patch game set on easy to see how it goes.

There are some positive things to note in the game mechanics but I will leave that for later.

Right now the belligerence and aggressively of the other factions is over the top.

[AussieGiant]

It certainly takes me a moment to get passed the: "It's too easy and the AI isn't agressive enough."

To now:

"The AI is too aggressive and is not not behaving sensibly."

I mean for god sake, without outlining anyone's specific requirements set on the topic how is CA meant to magically "know" just what is too hard or too easy for everyone?

Maybe the difficulty settings are relevant now.

Anyway:

I certainly noticed a surprise which fits in with what Skott said. In my Prussian H/M Prestige campaign, UP and I traded for decades and were friendly, although they never took the offer to ally, which was interesting. Keep in mind I have never been allied with anyone in the entire campaign (year 1760) on Hard campaign settings.

So I finally took Hannover and gained a common boarder with them...bang they declared war on me and parked a nice well compiled army with a 5 star general just on my side of the boarder in Hannover... bastards

I'm on Hard...so it's been hard.

What can I say...maybe everyone needs to readjust their own skills to the definitions of what the words Easy, Normal, Hard and Very Hard mean.

[antisocialmunky]

The sense of things I've gotten is that Easy and Normal are both too hard and the AI seems to try and declare war ever X amount of turns on a neighboring faction that it doesn't like likes the least... which makes no sense.

Compare this to Civ 4 where diplomacy with AI is quite fun, rational, memorable, and easily 40% of the game.

[Discoman]

It certainly takes me a moment to get passed the: "It's too easy and the AI isn't agressive enough."

To now:

"The AI is too aggressive and is not not behaving sensibly."

I mean for god sake, without outlining anyone's specific requirements set on the topic how is CA meant to magically "know" just what is too hard or too easy for everyone?

Maybe the difficulty settings are relevant now.

Well it's annoying that intelligent diplomacy is advertised and is no longer present. I was playing as Sweden and had Persia and the Maratha Confed. declare war even though I was in very good standing with both nations. In the end it didn't matter because I ended up killing off both nations.

Also, if really weak nations are going to attack a superpower, they should really do it as an alliance rather than just one country. I mean the AI should know who's the enemies of their enemies and say, "Hmm if we both declare war at the same time we'd really stand a greater chance then doing it individually 20 years apart"

In example Mysore declares war on me, not after I take over northern India, not after Marathas declare, but only when they're the only faction left in India and they only have two places do they decide to declare war.

I guess the only reasonable way to fix what I'm talking about would be to make the "Enemy of my Enemy is my friend" attribute override the "Territorial Expansion" attribute.

[AussieGiant]

Well it's annoying that intelligent diplomacy is advertised and is no longer present. I was playing as Sweden and had Persia and the Maratha Confed. declare war even though I was in very good standing with both nations. In the end it didn't matter because I ended up killing off both nations.

Also, if really weak nations are going to attack a superpower, they should really do it as an alliance rather than just one country. I mean the AI should know who's the enemies of their enemies and say, "Hmm if we both declare war at the same time we'd really stand a greater chance then doing it individually 20 years apart"

In example Mysore declares war on me, not after I take over northern India, not after Marathas declare, but only when they're the only faction left in India and they only have two places do they decide to declare war.

I guess the only reasonable way to fix what I'm talking about would be to make the "Enemy of my Enemy is my friend" attribute override the "Territorial Expansion" attribute.

All good points Discoman. It does seem they have made a bit of a slap dash change at the moment, and there needs to be some fine tuning going forward in the next series of patches.

[Eusebius86]

Well it's annoying that intelligent diplomacy is advertised and is no longer present. I was playing as Sweden and had Persia and the Maratha Confed. declare war even though I was in very good standing with both nations. In the end it didn't matter because I ended up killing off both nations.

Also, if really weak nations are going to attack a superpower, they should really do it as an alliance rather than just one country. I mean the AI should know who's the enemies of their enemies and say, "Hmm if we both declare war at the same time we'd really stand a greater chance then doing it individually 20 years apart"

In example Mysore declares war on me, not after I take over northern India, not after Marathas declare, but only when they're the only faction left in India and they only have two places do they decide to declare war.

I guess the only reasonable way to fix what I'm talking about would be to make the "Enemy of my Enemy is my friend" attribute override the "Territorial Expansion" attribute.

I don't mind an agressive and expanionistic AI, but not on all difficulty levels. I just played a campaign on Easy as Austria, and every single one of my neighbors, save bavaria, declared war on me by turn 10. GB and UP even broke our alliances, after giving them gifts. The AI shouldn't be so quick to declare war and break alliances. Also, when the AI declares war, it is doing so in a stupid way. I reduced Poland to one poor territory, and forced them to make peace. They declared war 8 turns later, but only sent a 2 unit stack after me, when I had a 10 unit one right next door...

[MikeV]

without outlining anyone's specific requirements set on the topic how is CA meant to magically "know" just what is too hard or too easy for everyone?

Maybe the difficulty settings are relevant now.

...

maybe everyone needs to readjust their own skills to the definitions of what the words Easy, Normal, Hard and Very Hard mean.

I'd settle for them documenting what they mean: what parameter values change with each setting, what criteria the AI algorithms use, etc.
Like the preferences file parameters.

That way, we'd all know exactly how the settings affect the app.

Some folks enjoy spending weeks or months trying to reverse engineer these things. I'd rather just read the design documentation. Then again, I'm a geek.

[AussieGiant]

You're just taking all the fun out of trying to find out MikeV

Certainly some basic explanation of what is different between each level of difficulty would help. But even then you are giving away various ways of beating the AI.

That would be bad for all those who say this game is too easy.

[MikeV]

You're just taking all the fun out of trying to find out MikeV

Certainly some basic explanation of what is different between each level of difficulty would help. But even then you are giving away various ways of beating the AI.

That would be bad for all those who say this game is too easy.

Well, to paraphrase a recent infamous US President: it depends on what your meaning of "fun" is

For me, it's the opportunity to explore various "what if" alternatives. It's not unusual for me to use the same campaign to make one set of decisions, then back up 10 or 20 turns and try another (I tend to keep a lot of save files, which also helps cope with the various & sundry CTD problems). But, that's just my approach.

Initially, I had hoped that E:TW would provide an interesting simulation of early Industrial Age warfare. Bugs aside, it turns out to be just a game: lots of eye candy, and a rather flaccid AI at both the campaign and tactical levels. Oh, well.