How does the AI in M2:TW compare to R:TW?

[QuintusSertorius]

Well, the diplomacy is far superior than RTW: thanks to the "appreciation" scale (dunno the actual ingame name XD) factions can be allied for virtually forever even if they share borders...
I remember in a campaing in a M2TW mod, i was playing HRE and even though my standings with the poles and hungarians were awful since the beginning, they became my best allies. The magyars attacked me, and after I crushed their invading army as I was approaching Buda, I offered peace, alliance and (this time) military access, they accepted and never attacked me again.
Also seems that factions are reluctant to attack if your "fame" is far superior than theirs...

That sounds promising. Like perhaps they've fixed that particular issue.

About the army composition issues; check this out.

I'm not entirely sure that addresses it; the thread talks about free-upkeep units as garrisons and control over what can be recruited where (possibly). Within what's available we could still see the AI spamming useless armies.

"You will grow tired blunting your weapons on a poorly-led horde of mindless corpse-men; and once you have reduced them to so much sausage filler, the sweet taste of success will turn to ashes in your mouth" ™


The AI in TW games hasn't been good since shogun first came out, imo at least. Though I expect the single-player campaign in EB2 to be something amazing, I will try to get most of my fun out of multiplayer battles (there should be a big enough of a community to support that on a regular basis).

Hmmm, to be honest multiplayer doesn't appeal. I'm only in this for the single player campaign, battles alone don't really do anything for me. They need that context of the campaign (and strategic maneuvering) to make them interesting.

We can take it as a fact that the AI in M2TW is better than in RTW. It's been a while since I last played it, so I can't give you examples off the top of my head, but I've played it enough to be certain of it. Also, an important point is that there are more possibilities to deal with the shortcomings of AI. One example is the feature to limit recruitment of certain units, which will do a great deal to prevent pure elite armies, but perhaps the most important is that the AI itself is actually moddable. Never done it myself, so I have no idea to what extent, though.

Again, that gives me a little hope, even if no one is really sure yet it works, that it can be modded opens some possibilities.

Edit: I'm aware that the elite army is not the most pressing matter, but there some factions are quite prone to that (played some years in a Romani campaign over the weekend and fighting elite african pikemen and other assorted elite infantry becomes tedious; same goes for the notorious grey death's argyraspides stacks).

I don't play on Very Hard campaign difficulty, so perhaps that's why the army of skirmishers is a more frequent occurence and thus a concern to me than the army of elites.