I'm happy with the AI

[Claudio]

your post is a beautiful and well written expression of everything I think is gimped about this game

heres a different angle
they stupidly declared a war they were ill prepared for because of the CAIs border war diplomacy model - they didnt ally with each ohter before declaring war

having declared war they passively sit in their city - rather than some sort of combined alliance attack

The resulting milk run was due to AI predictable flank with cav manouver, General-seeking artillary, and generally gimped battle AI cause its units to flounder around like jellyfish

Then they sued for peace... and you accepted !! why? they were kaput .. do you want to have to replay this in a few turns when they senselessly declare war again.

Its not exactly the description of a challenging battle

I guess its ok if your satisfied playing out a game of unchallenging repetitive battles with the game end already a forgone conclusion

but that would bore me to tears

It was 1702, and Westphalia don't begin with a barracks capable of recruiting line infantry, so their army was composed of militia, pikemen, provincial cavalry and armed citizenry. They outnumbered me 2-1, but my troops were superior and in an excellent defensive position. Secondly, the battle AI is crap, I won't deny that at all, so even without the defensive position I would probably have won.

I accepted peace because I didn't want to own Westphalia, and with the alliance they will not attack me again. Westphalia would put me uncomfortably close to Prussia, and they can churn out stacks and stacks of line infantry that is far superior to mine.

After knocking out Westphalia, Wurttemburg took Alsace-Lorraine. I laid siege to it the next turn, and they sallied. I was able to set up spikes and those silly looking ramps that are supposed to be trenches or something since I was defending, but I started in a bad position. From the walls of Alsace-Lorraine, the land is a hill, so my soldiers had to be set up at a height disadvantage, and my artillery had nowhere to shoot from and didn't fire a shot through the entire battle.

Again Wurttemburg were using pikemen and militia, but they put up more of a fight than Westphalia, routing the center of my line and breaking through to attack my general and cavalry who were being held back. I managed to pull it together and win, but it was very close. I didn't offer Wurttemburg any peace deals, I knocked them out of the game so I could make an alliance and trade rights with Bavaria.

When Austria declared a war of succession against me, Westphalia and Bavaria joined on MY SIDE, and when Prussia declared war on me, Poland, already at war with them, offered me an alliance and even some technology, improved grenades.

I've done nothing but complain about the AI since the day this game was released, so when, as rare as it is, I see the AI acting somewhat competent, I ought to praise it, just as I bad-mouth it when it doesn't behave itself, don't you think? This post was in no way about the battle AI. I've already said in this post that it is abysmal on the battlefield and I just thought I should reiterate that incase you missed it the first time. I am speaking only of the campaign AI. One can impose house rules to make the battle AI more challenging, such as using no more than 11 units in a stack, which I frequently adhere to. I have also seen other fine examples of competent AI in 1.5. As Austria, when Poland allied with me against Prussia, and Russia allied with me against the Ottomans, and we all had a big old pillow fight. Also when I played as the Ottomans, Georgia attacked Armenia, I destroyed their armies, besieged their city and demanded money and protectorate status, to which they agreed.