What is the diffrence between running EB on vanillia rome, BI, or Alex?

[Catmand0]

Enlighten me.

[Darth Feather]

I read somewhere on BI, you have special abilities for your unit's like shield wall, and they can swim.

On ALEX the AI is supposed to be smarter.

It has been some time since I played EB, so I might be wrong.

[rickinator9]

Enlighten me.

You need a different exe to play it on BI. Someone made a submod for BI on these forums.

[jirisys]

Try it yourself!

~Jirisys ()

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I play on BI. The AI does far more naval invasions on BI, so you feel less secure leaving your coastal cities almost unguarded.

I don't use any of the BI features like shieldwall or night battles though - night battles look silly IMO and aren't very historical.

I don't use the ALEX engine since I don't like the instant retraining of defeated AI armies that happens when they retreat into a city, it makes me feel that the battle I just won was meaningless.

[cahtush]

The descr_sm_factions has a "prefers naval invasions" option, but it's turned off for all.
Does that have the same effect as the BI exe on that regard?

[Catmand0]

Try it yourself!

~Jirisys ()

Stupid question do I need to first install BI and Alex to use this?

[Pezlu]

I don't use the trivial script myself, so I cannot answer that question. You surely need to install at least BI if you want to use BI, and at least Alex if you want to use Alex; I think nothing else is necessary, but the script might need both in any case.

As far as I know the main differences between the exes are:
- in BI you should see more naval invasions; also, there are some advanced features which can be modded in (swimming, new formations like shield wall, night battles, hording etc.) but they are not enabled in EB. You can add them yourself, but there should be a mod somewhere in the forum that does everything for you. If you only change the exe, you won't see these features.
- in Alex, AI should be smarter both on strategy map and battle map (including naval invasions), there is the night battle feature (but you still need to mod the game to add it, or use a pre-packaged mod), and AI will retrain units in cities without just merging them. Alex lacks all other "special features" of BI, like formations and hording. Also, in Alex some engine limits are raised, meaning you can mod in a few more units, for example.

Personally, I'm using Alex, and I actually see a greatly improved battle AI and a moderately improved campaign AI, but I've not seen any true naval invasions. I'm sure the AI uses some ships, since I've witnessed some strange movements when using toggle_fow to have a look to the map out of curiosity, like greek armies appearing and disappearing from Krete (which is still in eleutheroi hands, in my game). That wouldn't make sense without them using ships. BUT, I've not seen them use ships directly, and some of my provinces would be an easy prey if the AI really did naval invasions. So, maybe they use it, but still not much.

[jirisys]

Stupid question do I need to first install BI and Alex to use this?

Just the 1.2 fixes, if you want to play on BI, install BI, if you want to play on Alexander, install Alexander.

The problem with the Alex battle AI is that they will flank you like crazy, but they will split their forces into two groups, so you can just move your center and envelop them. Also, the AI's idea of flanking is more annoying than dangerous.

~Jirisys ()

[Catmand0]

So which would you suggest BI, or Alex?