My continued experience with MI

[Maltz]

Ok now I have played a few more campaigns on expert, with different scenario. Totally I tried Mongol, Takeda & Oda (1530), Mori & Uesugi (1550) and Tokugawa (1580).

1) Alliance: make one as soon as possible (?). It seems to me that when an AI has to choose which ally to keep when his ally declare war to each other, the AI chooses the one who allied with them earlier.

2) Ally now will help attack a province! The province will go to the side who sent a larger army (?). I have averagely 3 or 4 battles in each campaign that was fought by the aid of AI ally. It is fun to see dumb vs. dumber

3) Ninja / Harvest / Bribe results all fixed - cannot save & load. Also, the AI movement of army is pretty much fixed, too. So one can really "predict" which juicy province will be relatively empty for a raid-and-wholesale. One good change in WE/MI is that the AI seems cannot act according to our moves anymore. So AI is less aggressive.

4) AI Takeda really likes horses. And, same as old STW they will come to you actively if they think you are weaker - so if we hide the entire small army in the forest, Takeda is doomed to vanish. AI Takeda is very easy to handle now.

5) The revolt rate in expert Mongol campaign is so high, especially in the later stages the revolts were getting bigger and bigger seems.

6) The archers outside the castle are far more effective than old STW. I had several experiences of destroy the entire defending army (who were arrow-less) wich 3 or more groups of archers.

7) The good new auto-combine feature really great since we can instantly upgrade some old units by dropping them onto the better-equipped new guys.

8) Who is the old man (maybe a daimyo) in the intro movie? He looks really weird. I personally think there are too many overlaps (both texts and images) in the intro movies of each time stage

[This message has been edited by Maltz (edited 10-01-2001).]

[jomni]

Not to mention AI also launches amphibious invasions (attacks provinces with ports).

[Maltz]

Quote Originally posted by jomni:
Not to mention AI also launches amphibious invasions (attacks provinces with ports).[/QUOTE]

Maybe I haven't played long enough; so far I haven't been attacked from a port. I usually demolish all uncessary ports to reduce the risk (of enemy ninja) and in every port I have at least 2 shinobi + watch tower.

[Kiwi]

They definitely use port attacks - and not just if they have an adjoining army. The AI is not very good at it though.
Another good feature is that the number of 'freindly fire kills' to arrows seems to have dropped considerably. Previously you could at times kill more of your own than the enemy?
Bribing a rebel army is great if you get a lot of shinobi behind the enemy lines and start a revolt you can but the resulting army without having to declare a war. Sneaky I know
I wish the AI would combine their units better after a battle. I was attacked by the AI once and they had about 450-500 total troops in about 25 different armies? Some only had two or three soldiers in the unit.
The different start times have definitely improved things with the number of options.
Generally I give the game a thumbs up - there are a few thinks that need to be fixed up but generally it is very good and could be improved considerably with a small patch. Just my two cents worth.