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

[Ichon]

And Pray where did I say so explicitly ?

The real culprit here is the animations issue, where the unit animations play an equally imp role as its stats, which leads to units with slower stats to severely under perform. Additionally clumping is still an issue. But the AI chooses its units purely on the basis of stats leading to unit mis-matches that were detrimental to the AI.

And unit balancing as anyone will tell you is an integral part of the BAI.

What I had said that due to the new animation system unit balancing is now infinitely more complex as compared to the RTW engine- and Cohesion, mass, formation are integral to balancing- its just that animations are currently the biggest offender.

And what about clumping?? your unit with looser cohesion and mass is more likely to have just a couple of men fighting while the remainder sit around admiring their navels.

Clumping is an issue but it really only severly impacts during sieges but sieges can be 50% or more of the battles so it is a problem but I haven't seen any good solutions. Certain things are limited due to the engine CA built.

As for looser formation and less mass having only a few men fighting- on offense with several units involved that can happen as parts of the formation get tangled up but if on guard mode and the denser formation with greater mass approaches and attacks it will push the lesser mass formation back and eventually most of the formation comes into play. It does take quite alot of balancingto try and get unit to reflect stats and historical function though but my only point with you is that such balancing is not really part of BAI. You can test 1 vs 1 for a long time and then in some battles still get a different result because of clumping but unless EB team comes up with a novel solution there isn't much you can mod to change that part of the engine so that clumping is never an issue. Just reduce severity of its impact.

I'm surprised that no one has emphasized the fact that given a long enough map distance every AI army eventually morphs into a giant ball of out of formation units. The only really interesting battles are when you deploy in a line in the middle of the deployment screen and move towards the AI and a few rare cases where the BAI works right. Barring very few case, most battles devolve into you sitting there in a nice formed up line and the AI army twice as large with their formation turning into a giant clump as they close....

Some of the better BAI have addressed that a bit but the more aggressive the AI is the more that tends to happen- however the more aggressive AI is usually the one that does the most damage even in clumped formation. The AI does try and straighten its lines out before making contact in most of the modded BAI's I've seen lately but doesn't always succeed. If you could force the AI to move in neat formations that would actually make it easier for the human player to divide and conquer though wouldn't it? I find trying to mess with that giant mass of approaching units is difficult with anything besides ranged units until you commit your forward line. If the AI kept its units nice and separate you can more easily line of charges or draw just 1 unit out etc.

[Blxz]

The Campaign AI is slightly moddable for sure. Broken Crescent has made an AI that will rarely break alliances unless it has bad relations and sees a great opportunity. They also expand very readily into rebel provinces. This had the result in one of my Rum sultanate games where we had world peace with a web of alliances ensuring that there was no war on the whole map for about 40 turns. Then when the mongols invaded and broke the peace, almost every single nation turned their fullstacks on them and beat them back to world peace again.

Obviously bad for gameplay coz it meant I had to fight the entire world when I attacked any nation but I like the idea behind it and hopefully it can be balanced and used for EB so that at least some diplomacy can be attempted.

[antisocialmunky]

I just let them hit me. This is mostly coming from TATW and SS experience so enemy armies are much bigger than yours. I have two lines of units and the AI routs the first one but has absolutely no stamina left over. Then they get charged in the back and mass rout. The main issue is that it will be detrimental to the EBII experience if the AI completely throws realistic formations out of the window.

I will say that the TATW AI will flank and that 20 battle trolls plowing through your lines is not a good experience. Still can be salvaged as the free peoples of Middle Earth has better quality units.

[WinsingtonIII]

20 battle trolls plowing through your lines is not a good experience.

Well, that's not a factor of the AI, it's just a factor of their ridiculous stats. That is one of the nice things about trolls though, it doesn't matter how stupidly the AI uses them, they will always cause significant damage, which is really nice if you want a challenge.

[Fluvius Camillus]

I remember a battle in my Hungarian campaign where I fought a Danish army of mainly dismounted feudal knights.

It was just standing there waiting for me to attack, I ripped it to shreds using the full ammunition of my crossbowmen. They just stood there till the last man dropped dead with a bolt in its head.

Maybe this is fixed in Kingdoms? Still, it doesnt tell much good about the M2TW AI.

~Fluvius

[Paltmull]

I remember a battle in my Hungarian campaign where I fought a Danish army of mainly dismounted feudal knights.

It was just standing there waiting for me to attack, I ripped it to shreds using the full ammunition of my crossbowmen. They just stood there till the last man dropped dead with a bolt in its head.

Maybe this is fixed in Kingdoms? Still, it doesnt tell much good about the M2TW AI.

~Fluvius

That can be modded. Take a look at this demo of XAI for example (It's an old version though. The latest one is 4.0). I haven't tried it myself, but it does seem quite amazing.

[Fluvius Camillus]

That can be modded. Take a look at this demo of XAI for example (It's an old version though. The latest one is 4.0). I haven't tried it myself, but it does seem quite amazing.

Looks promising, this can bring up some exciting battles!

In my AS game my royal army faced off with a Makedonian Royal fullstack full of elites.
They started by throwing their Basileus in the pikes of my Argyraspides followed by his hetairoi. He died soon and the elites were easily outflanked and routed. Thus ended a promising battle which really disappointed me in the end.

If I see this I can imagine him using that cavalry instead to battle my cavalry, or trying to flank me.

~Fluvius

[Ichon]

Looks promising, this can bring up some exciting battles!

If I see this I can imagine him using that cavalry instead to battle my cavalry, or trying to flank me.

~Fluvius

XAI and some other working along similar principles have been succesful in getting the cavalry to flank and even avoid stakes that some archers in MTW2 can place but so far none have been able to get cavalry to function as screen vs other cavalry or stop the AI from throwing all its cavalry ahead of its infantry without support if it has an advantage in cavalry numbers. The AI will hold cavalry in reserve if your own army has equal or greater amounts of cavalry but if not... throws away its cavalry and usually its general as well then its an easy battle to flank and finish off the remaining infantry. The only time battles are really tough is when AI has way more cavalry than your own army and even if it loses 1/2 of it stupidly the other half does some damage.

The problem seems to be to make the AI cautious enough to hold back its cavalry in the face of having superior numbers also means it sits there when attacked at range by missiles and does not react very well. I think some versions will chase the unit targeting them with missiles but then that is almost as bad as it is quite easy to draw out single unit or even one I tried that all cavalry within a certain radius would converge on the missile unit firing on any cavalry so it was a simple matter to line up horse archers or whatever on a hill and run 1 HA down to fire on the AI cavalry and then a whole string from one flank of the AI army chased that single cavalry back and forth on the bottom of the hill until all were dead.

Making sure AI armies are relatively well composed and that using replenish rates that players have a problem creating 100% heavy cavalry armies is key to more often good interesting battles than just improving BAI alone. If the AI percieves the forces as equal is when it seems to act most intelligently under all the BAIs and when paired with one of the better BAIs that has been developed can lead at least to some interesting battles on VH where AI gets a slight morale advantage that can sometimes make a difference. Usually it still fails somewhere but to exploit that failing takes more work and thought by the player.