RTW demo conclusions: a full summary

[Spino]

Hmm, Spino, from what you're saying I gather you've been playing mods.
Remember that the AI's for the demo are pretty much hard-coded; the carthaginians may appear stupid in many aspects simply because they don't rely on a fully-fledged AI; even the romans probably don't have one, although they do have some scripted actions they will follow no matter what, which should make up for the lack of the full AI (at least in part).

How many and which of the things you mentioned apply to the original demo ?
IIRC, it was pretty clearly stated and agreed upon that in the demo the AI is simply following a script, nothing fancy or subtle. Since carthaginians are meant to be played by the human, they probably rely on a very infantile AI, and don't make the best of choices...

Yes Blodrast, the demo battles are scripted... to a point. But I'm not talking about the default demo battles. I've played tons of custom battles with varying forces (Julii vs. Gaul, Senate vs. Julii, Gaul vs. Carthage, Carthage vs. The Senate & Gaul, etc., etc.) on numerous maps (using the mods you can fight on all kinds of different maps, not just the Tutorial and Trebia battlefields) and the AI doesn't exhibit any kind of scripted behavior that I can detect. If the Tutorial and Trebia scripts were still in effect the armies would be following the same marching patterns and whatnot that they do in the demo's default battles but they don't. I've even seen the attacking AI split its forces to take on my smaller Carthaginian army and the similarly sized one controlled by my Gaulish ally! Once the battle begins the first thing you notice is the AI carrying out its attack or defense strategy based upon your position and the available terrain. Based upon my experiences I believe the AI was acting unfettered by any pre-generated scripts. Hell, I've even noticed the AI on defense making the same mistakes it did in previous Total War games by constantly shuffling its units back and forth up to the last minute, even when you haven't changed your axis of attack!

But I sincerely hope you are right and the AI was crippled for the demo's sake but it wasn't then veteran Total War gamers are going to be in for a rude shock. It is my observation that the tactical AI actually seems worse than it was in the last patched version of MTW:VI. This is NOT a good thing.

The only thing that will persuade me to believe otherwise is a developer posting in this thread explaining how the demo's AI differs from that found on the retail release version (which, by the way, is on the verge of going gold).

[Colovion]

sticky this please?

Chreshian Aarcherss has a point...