Difference between difficulty settings?

[Scorpion]

Since no info was forthcoming, I decided that I must test it myself.

I achieved parity between Julii and Brutii peasants on Very Hard by giving the Julii +2 weapons and +2 armour. (Tested on Arcade to eliminate the morale and fatigue issues)

What is strange is that giving them +2 experience (which should give the same bonuses) makes them superior to the Brutii....

In any case, I´ll try modding +2 attack and +2 defence to my troops when playing very hard to negate the AI bonuses. As for the morale bonus, I´m going to have to hazard a guess that it´s in the +4 to +8 region...going with +4 for mine.

I´ll test out a game with Greece with these settings.

[vodkafire]

What about the campaign AI? In my current campaign map the other roman faction are incredibly lazy, conquering only 2-3 provinces by 240 while I have already conqurerd 14(by sea too) playing medium. Now, i'm short on money so i don't want any bonuses or penalties to me but i wan the AI, especially the other Romans, to play more aggressively. It's rediculous to see them be at war with 3 or 4 factions continuously for most of the game and just sit at chokepoints with huge armies, doing nothing but defending their borders and fattening their cities(all large by now). I've got the Gauls and the Greeks infiltrating my borders every turn while the other faction are supposed to have been conquering them.

[Scorpion]

Other people, mainly .Spartan from twcenter.net are tackling the strategic AI issue, and are doing a splendid job of it.

[Blodrast]

Other people, mainly .Spartan from twcenter.net are tackling the strategic AI issue, and are doing a splendid job of it.

are you referring to the faction role-models as they were listed in another thread, i.e. their attitudes in economy & development, military, and diplomacy (napoleon, caesar, genghis-khan, etc) ? or is there more to it than that ?

thank you

[motorhead]

don't have the original link anymore, but a CA dev posted this not too long ago with regards to general's effects on combat/morale in RTW:

10/5/2004 11:21
JeromeGrasdyke
CA
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Downstairs, with an eagle eye over the rest of the team.
Posts: 76 Re: CA: what do command stars do?
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It currently affects both morale and combat ability - we tried it for a while with just morale, but it ended up being not enough of a bonus. The combat calculations have changed so much from Rome to Medieval as to be unrecogniseable, so it's no longer easy to equate stars to experience.

As a rule of thumb it's one point of attack per command rank, up to a maximum of 10, and this can become negative for very bad generals. This combat bonus is applied to all troops under his command on the battlefield. Experience is one point of attack and one point of defense per chevron, plus a morale bonus as well.

The general's command also controls his radius-of-effect, which is set to 30 m + 5 m * command + 2 m * influence. This is used to award morale bonusses to nearby units (in addition to the combat bonus), and when testing which units are affected it tests the distance between the actual general's position and the centre-point of the unit being considered.

Hopefully that answers your question.

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With regards to the "make better AI, not bonuses", it's the same old song, different game. If AI programming is so easy, pray tell, why did it take nearly 7 years, and millions of dollars in research and hardware subsidies from IBM to create a master level chess program? Chess is so simple, tiny battle map (only 64 positions), 6 unit types, and just 32 soldiers. Can you believe for such an obviously easy to create AI program, they developed special hardware (chess chips)? Obviously, with the massive AI talent we have simmering on the boards, an expert level program for such an easy game would be knocked out in a few hours.

I've even seen one post where someone suggested that CA just buy a copy of UT2004's AI and use that, as if it were a portable brain and not a chunk of code designed to be a game bot.

just my $.02,
- Motorhead

[econ21]

Very interesting information, Scorpion - if very hard is the equivalent of +2 attack, +2 defence, hard must be roughly the equivalent of +1 to both. Neither would seem excessive from a game balance point of view especially if command stars give +1 attack per star. So far, I have found the AI generals to have far fewer stars than mind (it seems easier to build up stars in RTW than in MTW, partly because of retinue and partly because you get stars from frequent victories over small armies, that often don't even fight.)

Yet it is interesting how important the differences are when we look at Hoof's results. What this implies is that even +1 attack +1 defence is a big deal in RTW. Stats really matter in this game!

BTW: Scorpion I am interested in why you want to mod to offset the AI advantages rather than play on medium - have you observed the AI is "smarter" on higher difficulty levels?

[Scorpion]

motorhead,

I really fail to see how any of that relates to the discussion at hand.
I also fail to see the point of the whole tirade about the difficulty of developing an AI. It´s not what we´re discussing in the thread.


Simon Appleton,

in my own game I have modded away the command stars entirely (see my other thread). A radical move, I admit, but I did not want the generals providing pure attack bonuses to their troops - rather, I made the effects of the command-giving traits and retinue members to provide extra morale.

This was done for the reason you mentioned - didn¨t want the generals skewing the combat system any more than I wanted the difficulty level to do so.

As for the AI being smarter on very hard, the current opinion seems to be that the AI does indeed perform a little better on very hard, especially when on the offense (ie. when it initiates the attack). The effect is not enormous, but I´ll take every little thing I can get....

I tested the difficulty bonuses to the AI using peasants, who are obviously extremely sensitive to any changes like that. I should test it with more units, but currently I´m "on hold" when it comes to RTW as I wait for the patch and the mods to develop. No reason to rush in and play when it´s not as good as it can be!

[NimitsTexan]

are you referring to the faction role-models as they were listed in another thread, i.e. their attitudes in economy & development, military, and diplomacy (napoleon, caesar, genghis-khan, etc) ? or is there more to it than that ?

thank you

Anyone have a link to above discussion?

[Spino]

JeromeGrasdyke covered the basics behind the Battle difficulty settings in this thread over in the Dungeon...

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...9&page=3&pp=30

Can we edit the battle AI difficulty levels and their effects? If the answer is no, could you please tell us exactly what boni the AI gets on Hard and V.Hard?

Again, these values are hard-coded. The combat bonusses are easy; they apply to attack only, while on Easy the human player gets a +4 bonus, on Hard the AI is given +4, and on Very Hard +7. The morale bonusses are much more complex, as they work on a series of sliding scales, detailing which is beyond the scope of this document.

[dedmoroz]

well the fact is: on VERY HARD try putting 1 unit of YOURS Legionary cohort against 1 unit of Hestati and the result is (tested this 5 times): close defeat to Legeonary cohort.
Now i ask how lame all this could be?
I mean i am going to shelve my game till they fix those stupid dificulty levels. for now i better play games that reward you for your skill and give u a real challenge (ever tried Ninja Gaiden? on very hard? maybe Hurricane pack? :D )...