Originally Posted by
Bramborough
At least since Patch 3, the AI is capable of being fairly sneaky with this capability, appearing to actually coordinate agent actions with their armies.
Yesterday, I landed two Roman stacks in Sparta. I figured with two 16-unit stacks working in tandem, they'd be able to beat anything that Sparta threw at them. A Spartan champion-type (hero?), however, moved against stack #1 and sabotaged...not only removing its movement points but also rendering it incapable of reinforcing. THEN, a full 20-unit Spartan army, reinforced by another large army (something around 15 units or so), hit my now-unsupported stack #2. The balance-of-power bar was way to the left, maybe 15-20%ish. It's certainly possible to win outnumbered, especially as this is just Normal difficulty...but I figured being outnumbered that severely by Spartan phalanxes was certain defeat. So I retreated....which then left Stack #1 without support.
The two Spartan stacks now fell on these guys, who were unable to retreat, so had to fight the battle. I was pleasantly shocked to somehow win the thing, in a "close victory". Yeah yeah, the battle AI wasn't very smart on the attack, but pretty epic nevertheless just from the sheer numbers - of decent-quality troops - coming against the legionaries. Win or not, this legion was severely mauled and unable to replenish, so I was willing to concede the strategic victory to the Spartans and get these guys out, started moving my legions back to the coast. Next turn, however, the Spartan champ rolled in and they pulled the exact same tactic AGAIN, once more isolating my now-depleted legion against their two stacks. Of course, they had lost quite heavily in the previous battle as well, but they had a turn's worth of replenishment in friendly territory, so now the odds were even longer. Result: heroic victory. Not sure how/why...the legionaries just didn't break.
Bottom line, I was pretty impressed with the way the Spartans coordinated their agent/army actions. The fact that they did it two turns in a row seems to indicate that it was not a mere coincidence. And their tactic resulted in the two most interesting, adrenalin-pumping battles I've yet experienced in R2...and among the best I've encountered in any TW game.
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