Failed or annoying features

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Failed or annoying features

1. Raiding

The AI declares war. Leaves all its cities undefended and start on a tour around the countryside. "Yes lads, you need a bit of fresh air, some beautiful maidens and some looting." This feature actually weakens the AI. Every war I see a stack leaving the city that it is supposed to defend to do some raiding. I mostly ignore those raiding parties until they come too close to a city of mine.

This raiding is a little the same as the stone forts in Kingdoms. There you could lure the AI in attacking a fort and it would never leave again after taking it. In ETW the AI is addicted to doing raiding and has it number one to ten on its priority list.

2. Garrisoning buildings.

A city of mine was attacked. My defending army had no cannons and there was no fort. Very soon 50percent of the attacking forces was hiding inside buildings. Since I play without the timer, I had to attack them to end the battle. They are attacking me, should have to destroy me not the other way round
Since the buildings are not strong enough to withstand cannon fire, once you have cannons, buildings are a deathtrap. Even after the patch the soldiers are leaving the building way too late and are destroyed while leaving.

[Dead Guy]

Garrisoning buildings is extremely overrated by the AI. It's a death trap in several ways.
If attacked, the AI always garrisons several buildings, which leads to the following

1. Half it's army is garrisoned in buildings, but since their army is in mortar range, it will respond to coming under artillery fire by assaulting your line. However, it does so without all the garrisoned troops, effectively letting you face half their army and then mopping up the remains.

2. Light infantry, riflemen or indeed anything with a range of more than 70 can comfortably spend all their ammunition killing about half or more of a garrisoned unit, somewhat dependant on the type of building, without taking a single casualty. Those buildings where half of the unit will be on the roof are particularly voulnerable to this.

3. As is commonly mentioned, if you have enough cannon firing at a single building, the concentrated fire can destroy it before the troops can get out.

On the other point, I frequently see potent stacks going around raiding for years when they could easily take the region they're raiding instead. The stupid, it does burn indeed.

[al Roumi]

I'm not convinced I would call the AI's use of features such as either garrisoning or raiding as failed, based on my experience. Annoying is harder to qualify as it's entirely subjective: losing a province to an AI force that for once didn't just raid was (at the time) unexpected and annoying for me!

The point regarding the AI garrisoning troops that would perhaps be better used in their battle line is a good one. Unless defending the streets of a town, the AI shouldn't garrison a building that won't form par tof it's battle line (eg as an anchor or hard-point).

As to the destruction of garrisoned buildings and the evacuation of the troops,
1. I think you should be able to destroy the buildings with all troops inside if you can bring enough fire power to bear in a short space of time
2. the point at which a garrison evacuates a building under fire is surely similar to the decision to form square or line, based on the proximity of cavalry.

Ultimately, both of these AI decision are ones that the player seeks to exploit in order to destroy the unit(s) in question. At what point does one draw the line between the AI making "good" and rational decisions and exploiting cheats like reacting to the player switching to cannister shot?

[Dayve]

One good way of helping out the AI when it's garissoning buildings would be to actually give artillery an ammo count, instead of infinite ammo. Artillery didn't have infinite ammo in these days, i don't know much about the time but i remember reading about Napoleon in Egypt sending his soldiers on to a beach to lure the enemy artillery into firing at them so they could pick the cannon balls up from the sand and use them in their own cannons, because their own had run out of ammunition.

[Tora]

1. Raiding

The AI declares war. Leaves all its cities undefended and start on a tour around the countryside. "Yes lads, you need a bit of fresh air, some beautiful maidens and some looting." This feature actually weakens the AI. Every war I see a stack leaving the city that it is supposed to defend to do some raiding. I mostly ignore those raiding parties until they come too close to a city of mine.

A pet hate of mine too (after CTDs and illogical diplomacy).

After taking Georgia and Dagestan as the Marathas, Russia declared war, despite being 41 on the Chumometer, and proceeded to ponce round the aforementioned regions, torching a farm here and an ashram there. Meanwhile 6 units of Silladar Lancers crossed the Steppes unchallenged and took Ingria which was guarded by a couple of units of yokels and 3 priests. No attempt was made by the AI to retake it until it was too late although the allotments of Dagestan continued to take a terrible beating,
rather like being in someones bedroom with his wife, drinking his beer, while he's pulling up your flowers.

Also, during this episode I discovered that cavalry units can occupy buildings. (Is this right? Ed)