Evilmen's corner - any tips of darkness?

[Maltz]

All right. This is like the notorious counter-part of the "Ironmen's rule", which is a nice inspiring, righteous thread. However, somehow I feel it is incomplete - yeah, there must have been many tips of darkness that were shamelessly hidden and applied every night.

You might call them AI exploits, bug exploits, cheats, or anything that gives you a boost that could only happens in the current version of RTW world. For those of us who don't mind being condamned and burned to death on the cross, why not we also start a collection of these tips of darkness?

Well I have been keeping a little record of them. So here you go! (I certainlly wish CA take a serious look at some of them, and change them in a future patch.)

[National Geography salesman offers new morgage deal!]

Sell your map is one thing, but sell your map for infinite amount of money is another. The AI always agree to pay you infinite turns of tribute, as long as you ask them. For example, when you sell your map for 5k and AI counters for 3k, you might want to ask a tribute of 2k for 99999999 turns. See what happens.

[Let's reduce the font size of our banner and hang it on the arrow tower]

Sally against an AI enemy that is superior of your strength, whether besieged or not is fine. Watch AI charge forward as soon as you send any unit out of the door, or sometimes you even don't have to! See everybody die in front of the arrow tower. Yeah! For a 35 min stone castle battle you can probably kill 1000+ just by the arrow tower alone. By the time AI start to retreat, rush your cavalry out and kill the infantry! Har har har...

[Shield too big? Shoot their back!]

When AI is defending the town center with non-missle units, you may spend a little more time to run your archers/slingers to the street facing their back. They die a lot faster this way. Be careful, no foot to step ONTO the city square or they will angrily charge you! Also be careful that you don't want to position other units diagonal to your slingers because they will also be stoned to death.

[Shoot their face!]

The AI lacks an algorithm to deal with arrow fires that comes farther than their tolerating distance. So you can slowly advance your archers, shoot them to very small unit sizes until they decide to charge you or retreat.

[Shoot the parade!]

The garrisons of a city is prone to arrow fire. One good thing is once you bring a onager to smash the arrow towers, you can position your archers wherever you want, and pin down all the AI units that parades into the range. In one battle a full-stack garrison was reduced to about 7 units when the arrows depleted. The streets were filled with corpses. Yeah!

[Stone castle with tons of garrison? I]

The AI sometimes positions small armies just outside of a castle. When you attack that army the garrison will come out as the reinforcement. If you defeat the reinforcement and win the field battle, then you can directly occupy the settlement in the same turn!

[Stone castle with tons of garrison? II]

Better not deploy your troop in the default position. The AI will concentrate everything there. Instead move them away to another spot and you will find the wall rather defenseless. There you can occupy the towers and take the gate, massacre strings of AI units that comes to challenge your horde.

[Encourage enemy general to commit suicide]

AI general loves to commit suicide, charging into your spears. But, sometimes they cherish their lives. We can encourage them to commit suicide by our light cavalry, walk close to them and let them chase you all the way into your ambush... har har har (this might be a valid tactics in the real world, but indeed AI generals are too dumb to take the bait all the time.)

[Lost and found]

Too rich because of that darn Rhode island, and your family members start to burn money to lit cigarette? Sure you have bribed every captain and diplomat you see, and build every blacksmith in towns you don't generate troops anyways. How about this: Bribe a town from your enemy, smash everything you can smash, then give it back as a gift.

[Choke points with choking old man]

Camp your diplomat on a bridge or any narrow passes to completely block off all enemy troops! *edited* --> For narrow mt. path you only need 1 man, but for bridges you need 2. The 2nd one is right beside the 1st, blocking his retreat route from the bridge. This way the first man cannot step aside...

[Drag your ally in the struggle!]

Start a battle with your ally's army beside you, so they will have to declare war to your opponent!

[Warm welcome]

When an enemy comes down a street trying to block you, put your men on both sides of the intersection, and swarm them once they entered it. What a warm welcome! (Well this is a valid tactics, but certainlly it is evil.)

***

If you get some evil tips, please share them! At least myself would like to try it out at home.

[Satyr]

Archers, even better is horse archers. Large quantities are impossible for the AI to deal with.

[Maltz]

I got another one. It might be a little hard to explain:

Everybody knows that if you occupy city towers on a stone wall, they can help you shoot down the garrisons marching on the street. What is less obvious is that sometimes arrow towers can also help you turn the tide on the wall, when you have crap infantry up there.

There are certain kinds of towers that have arrow holes "inward", and there are turns of the wall that those towers can actually shoot soldiers on the wall. You usually notice your men suffering from arrow fires when you rush them to occupy those towers. Exactly those spots.

When you see powerful units coming at you that normally you will die miserably, you can first occupy that critical tower, and park your men to the right spot, where the tower you just occupied can help you shoot down tons of garrison crowded before your men. You might need to plan this during the deployment stage, so you know where you will send your men up to grab that tower and defend in front of it.

[Oaty]

Archers, even better is horse archers. Large quantities are impossible for the AI to deal with.

Umm I had 9 hastati against 2 HA and 1 archer unit. I'll jsut say I won but will never do that again. If the A.I. has none or too few cavalry they are hurting and so is the human.

[zhuge]

A few small added thoughts. I really think Maltz has gotten most of them though.

On [Shield too big? Shoot their back!]:
Now comes in 2 flavors: moving and stationary
Have enemy troops chase bait while javelin throwers hit them from behind. Angle direction of bait away from javelin throwers so that chasing enemy units get the best "exposure". This way all those pila can be used up before any melee.

On [Shoot the parade!]:
Parade not forthcoming? Push a fast unit into the breach and parade will restart. Make sure you have enough time to retreat unit out of harm's way while still giving archers and javelin throwers enough parade "exposure" time. For best results: be patient (if you can afford the time) - the enemy will frequently stop a unit just in front of the breach and remain still till shot at once again (so make those stationary target shots count).

On [Encourage enemy general to commit suicide]:
Sometimes enemy generals are too tough. Soften him up first by running close to your archers and letting them shoot for fun. Have a spear unit near archer just in case enemy general changes targets (usually doesn't happen). Javelin throwers also do nicely but you'll have to micromanage your bait a bit more carefully when taking corners.
Once the AI is fixated on your bait he's usually fixed no matter what and once he's nailed onto the spears, even lighter troops have a fair chance of killing a general's unit.

On [Choke points with choking old man]:
Enemy choking old man in a threatening position near our troop stack without general? We can shove him in the direction we want by getting a troop to occupy the square he stands. Haven't seen the AI bribe towns yet in the early game so if you can end the shoving troop in a town he's safe as well.

[Jeanne d'arc]

[flanks??]

U need a phalanx unit for this to work and its best used vs an army with no archers.In a field battle place your phalanxes in the bottom right corner of the map, the AI will march its troops directly in front of the phalanx.It will not attempt to flank you cause it simply cant.Heroic victory for sure.

[Ziu]

If I don't have spies or diplomats available I sometimes send out equites or some some such light cav unit as a lookout.
Once one of my equite/scout units with no movement points left was attacked by a full stick. Ouch you might say... Nay, I merely ran the unit round and round the edges of the battle map with a 1500+ army vainly pursuing until the time ran out.
Victory!! And the enemy was forced to withdraw!!
This also bought me extra time to reinforce the city they were obviously sent to attack.

[Epistolary Richard]

Roman v Roman bribery is the worst, by the time you're in a position to march on Rome your coffers are normally swollen. The other factions send armies against you, but they're typically led by captains: buy them off. When you reach their cities: buy them off and then occupy them with the troops you just converted. When you finally reach the capital/faction leader/heir use their own troops to lay siege to them.

I spent about 50 years conquering Gaul, Spain, Germany, Britain and Dacia as the Julii with my legions, then two diplomats on their own conquered Greece, North Africa and Thrace in about ten years. Crazy.

You don't even need that many diplomats as you will bribe more on the way!

[-Abbey.keeper-]

CIA Intervention

Egypt getting too strong? crushing all that stand in their way? bullying the hapless Seleucids with their shirtless tanks? send a couple of diplomats and bribe all their armies to match the balance of power in the middle east.
ship bio weapons over and decimate their city population from greece for good measure!

[Maltz]

Quote from another player:

[Deadly spear-door!]
You can position your phalanx very close to the gate, so their spear sticks out of the wood. You can kill all of the ram pushers this way while they can't touch your wall at all!

***

I just explored more on the "infinite tribute" bad feature, and found some worse pattern of AI behavior. For example, if you can sell your map for roughly 3k-4k, ask for 2k tribute of 9999999 turns, right AI always agree. Then you immediately ask for an alliance - they will agree as well!

[Maltz]

CIA Intervention
ship bio weapons over and decimate their city population from greece for good measure!

That's indeed sounds like what CIA would do in secret.

Somethings to note for biowarfare:

(1) Naval admirals can never recover from plague unless their fleet is wiped out. So you always get the plague warning at the beginning of a turn. Infected admirals can only infect your other settlements by docking in the corresponding ports. However, you can use them to spread the love to ever corner by boarding your infected spy to visit friends or foes alike.

(2) Egyptian cities are fun to infect. Another good place is Rome. The Senate usually sends new family members/units into that stack, so there is a good chance they will catch that plague. In 6 turns that army will be reduced to half strength. How nice!

[Sin Qua Non]

Maginot Line, 200BC: Set up a fort line with 4+ onagers each. When the hapless AI needs to attack the forts to get to your soft, chewy heartland, you sally forth, fire the onagers until out of ammo, then end the sally and repeat ad infinitum (or more likely until the enemy lies in orderly piles). This evil little exploit works wonders in invasion-heavy traffic areas, and when you are ready to push the line forward, you will have plenty of gold chveron onagers to attack cities with!

So delightfully evil, that you will probaly do it for one game before swearing it off!

[Ellesthyan]

Maginot Line, 200BC: Set up a fort line with 4+ onagers each. When the hapless AI needs to attack the forts to get to your soft, chewy heartland, you sally forth, fire the onagers until out of ammo, then end the sally and repeat ad infinitum (or more likely until the enemy lies in orderly piles). This evil little exploit works wonders in invasion-heavy traffic areas, and when you are ready to push the line forward, you will have plenty of gold chveron onagers to attack cities with!

So delightfully evil, that you will probaly do it for one game before swearing it off!

Love that one

[Lord Ovaat]

Plague a bad thing? Untrue. In the later stages of the campaign, I relish the opportunity. You can usually pull your Gov out before he's infected--if you remove him immediately. Then create a string of dips in the infected city. Send each to your over-populated towns, removing your Govs first. You'll have green, smilie faces popping up everywhere. But do NOT send your plague infected dips or spies to the enemy. Let them live in squalor. This tactic is only slightly less immoral than allowing a rebellion and then exterminating. Now, if the plague could be started early in the game, when population is needed, then I'd send them to the enemy, instead. Maybe I'll try modding in an early plague in "Events"? Then.......

[solypsist]

[Choke points with choking old man]

Camp your diplomat on a bridge or any narrow passes to completely block off all enemy troops!


Armies push agents out of the way. So this doesn't work.

[zhuge]

[Choke points with choking old man]

Camp your diplomat on a bridge or any narrow passes to completely block off all enemy troops!

Armies push agents out of the way. So this doesn't work.

Hmm... wonder if the AI knows enough to do it. I know the pushing works with players controlling the army. However there are certain things which the player can do that the AI never or almost never does, ie attacking boats at ports/blockading ports, so it might be worth testing... unless of course you've already seen a turn where the AI has done the pushing.
Just my 2 cents.

[Paul Peru]

[Choke points with choking old man]

Camp your diplomat on a bridge or any narrow passes to completely block off all enemy troops!
Armies push agents out of the way. So this doesn't work.

You need 2 old geezers, 1 behind the other. The first one tries to retreat, but someone's standing there already. He gives up and remains where he is, blocking the enemy army.

On normal difficulty I've never had the enemy assault my forts, so I use
[I think there's a guy on a horse in there!!]
Put a depleted merc unit in a fort. Huge stacks of enemies turn around and go elsewhere.

[-Abbey.keeper-]

i've founded another one yesterday

I was playing pontus on M/M huge where i've conquered all the southern provinces of Italy. I stopped short of Rome as i didn't want to end the game that fast (214BC)

anyway, the Senate had been down to the last fraction leader (the heir must be hiding somewhere). Anyway the Senate keep generating new generals around the city, (3 at once, in fact) everytime i rubbed them and soon i realised....

hey! why don't i bribe them? with their previous office they could offer some nice attributes..
i did it at a grand price of 5000++ the first time round and now they are part of the big family! with the julii intact (except for venice) and offering me loads of wondering armies, Rome seems the best training school for potential adoption!

Similarly, i sent peasants against a nicely stocked rebel general a couple of times and he's a local hero! cost me around 2000++ to bribe him when his ragtag army couldn't take any more punishing and now he's happily leading my africaan korps.

[Fridge]

Mentioned many times elsewhere, but...

If you're playing a faction with access to phalanxes, and you're defending a town with wooden walls... At deployment, spot where the enemy rams are going to hit your walls, and line up (right click and drag) your phalanx as close as possible to the wall.

Your spears will stick through the wall and kill anyone trying to use the ram - though it won't stop them trying! You have to watch for the phalanx shuffle, and occassionally tanother unit will pick up the ram and try somewhere else, but basically, your town is utterly impregnable.

[Maltz]

Recently I have been playing some horse archer factions such as Scythia and Armania. Even in VH/VH level, with HA I can perform outrageous deeds and achieve those insane victory other people have mentioned.

You can use an all-cavalry army (mostly HA) to start a siege, especially to those settlements with a garrison stronger than your HA army, but with less HA (or cavalry as a whole). The AI will certainly sally, come out in a stream, and become your shooting practice one after one.

You can position your HA in a U shape surrounding the gate opening. You probably want to station a little far away from the gate so you have some more time to chase down the routers when necessary, and not worrying about the arrow towers.

The AI always try to flank you with some cavalry (incl. their general) from the side door. With some localized fire power & mass charge, you should be able to kill their general with reasonable loss.

You will hit a poiot where all enemy units were routing and the program ask you whether you want to continue playing or just claim the victory. You want to choose "claim the victory" and not continue playing, because the timer will never end even after it hit 0 minutes. Last night I had a sally battle that went to "-10" minutes until I followed one of the routers into the settlement and massacred them in there.

This HA sally bait is particularly useful against phalanx cultures and Romans, both with weak cavalry. You might experience difficulty facing other strong HA factions since a lot of their HA will also rush out at the same time... But as long as you try to concentrate your power on one point you should be fine. :)

[Epistolary Richard]

I had one of those: 6 British light chariots against a full stack Roman infantry army. It went fine until I realised I was having to shoot every single one of them because routers would just reform at the square and march back out again.

Finally, 1,300 Romans lay dead piled in front of the gates, 0 friendly casualties, their reinforcements marching up, no ammo and a 3 second lag from all the arrows on the ground, I decide I've done enough damage. Withdraw from battle. Back on campaign map: general gone back to nearest town with a unit of infantry, all elite light chariots disappeared!

[Maltz]

Yeah running out of ammo is quite a problem facing a large number. I always try to chase down the routers a bit, risking some friendly fire (horse archers stop shooting about 5 seconds after you tell them to stop), at least to thin their numbers to single digits. This way when they next show up, I can deal with them even without ammo. I also do more micromanagement to turn off most fires when a particular target's goes low. This way I can save some arrows.

Another problem is the soldiers do not chase routers who are running back to the gate well. They love to stop half way even if they have engaged in melee with them. I have to manually order them to "run through" the routers to catch more up.

[m4rt14n]

[National Geography salesman offers new morgage deal!]

Sell your map is one thing, but sell your map for infinite amount of money is another. The AI always agree to pay you infinite turns of tribute, as long as you ask them. For example, when you sell your map for 5k and AI counters for 3k, you might want to ask a tribute of 2k for 99999999 turns. See what happens.

I couldnt get this to work. Seems like my AI is smart enough to not do so. I tried reducing the amount of regular tribute that the AI offered at first and increasing the turn but they still wont accept..

PLease helpp.... I need infinite cash.... this game is soooo hard

[Maltz]

Hello: I noticed that the AI sometimes gets annoyed by reasonable conditions you ask in the same round of negotiation. For example, they first agree to give you 2000 for map, but after you annoy them a bit by asking something else and they refuse, they only give you 1800 for map.

It seems to me that there is a hidden factor of "friendship" that will rise and fall. When you raised the tribute money amount after the AI first named its limit, and they refused, that friendship number lowers a bit so you cannot ask for the same amount anymore.

If you ask for longer tribute immediately after they give you the condition, you can always get it.

[Razor1952]

If they want you to become their protectorate , accept!,. you will get full alliance , military etc and it doesn't cost a thing apart from perhaps giving away 1 city you have recently captured.

So what do you really get?.

-1 border secure so you can concentrate elsewhere
- ability to enmesh this faction in all your wars
-ability to do covert war on them

Eg. As Selucs gave back Sidon for 16k den and became their protectorate. I also gave them Crete to get them into the scene of action(cost me a small rebel bribe only). Then used their Navy to take on the Greeks/Thracians/Sycthians/Romans Navies, that alone saved me a packet. Meanwhile I'm training my spies and assassins at their expense sabotaging their buildings and assassinating their people. Once the Romans are deadmeat I'll send a stack of armies and simultaneously seige their 6 cities, the ultimate in backstabbing. Oh and I forgot still selling my map info to them for higher than usual prices every few turns.... Donald Trump eat your heart out.

[Bhruic]

A nice trick I just used... When attacking stone walls with onagers, see if you can spot enemies on the wall that don't have immediate access to a tower. Then, knock down the walls on either side of them. They are now nice and stuck. Note: Doesn't work well vs archer units.

Bh

[Pellinor]

Playing as a Roman, send a team consisting of a general and a diplomat, and maybe a bireme, into the area of operations of each of the other factions and subvert their offensives.

Use the diplomat to persuade the AI's troops to join you, and maybe get some mercs too. Once you have a small army, join in with your ally's attack on a city. The AI will lose troops in the assault, but if you play your cards right you will take very few. If you initiated the attack, you get the city.

You now have a new city to repay the bribe/recruitment costs, especially if you exterminate it. You can then use any income from the cities to fund more bribes, so you get a whole new theatre of war at minimal initial outlay. It is also much quicker and cheaper than building your own troops and shipping them out, and doesn't interfere with your normal unit production for your main thrust (ie with 2 cities you're normally limited to 2 units per turn; this way, you could get a dozen or more).

You have also stymied the expansion of the AI faction: if they don't have borders with their usual enemies, they tend to sit around doing nothing.

I've been trying to make my two extra theatres entirely self-financing (keeping rough track with pen & paper), apart from sending more generals over to exploit the successes, and it seems to be very profitable. Basically, I'm playing all three factions at once :-)

Pell.R.

[Razor1952]

Yes Pellinor as Julii I followed with a diplomat to Carthage, watched a few unsuccessful seiges and when it was obvious the next Scipii attack would succeed bought their army and took Carthage straightaway.... really a cheap exploit , if I was Scipii I would really be pi$$ed at the Julii, but they took it on the chin....

[Maltz]

Here are 4 levels of evil usage of forts:

[Defending Attackers]

Small evil: When you advance into a hostile territory, you can always make a fort when your movement runs out. The AI will attack weaker, unfortified stacks, but will let the fortified stack slip through. Note: You can't make a fort beside a building, nor an agent.

Medium evil: When you see an enemy stack on the field, you approach it and build a fort right beside it. Then you can attack it as a "sally". If your army is stronger than the AI, the AI will camp out waiting for your advance. However, since you now have some place to hide your vulnerable units & a little town center to retreat to, you have a better chance to succeed. If possible you can also lure them to your (tower's) firing range!

Large evil: The real evil comes if the AI is siginificantly stronger than you. They will rush towards your fort as soon as your men come out (then go in.). If you have much more missle units than the AI, you can enjoy a shooting festival. However, you don't want to do this if the AI have much more missle units than you. You will become their shooting practice. Nobody can escape their fire because the fort is small. They will kill you faster than your tower kills them.

Huge evil: When you see an enemy defending a bridge... build a fort just in front of it and sally forth. You will never have to attack a bridge anymore.

[Maltz]

[Sorry, changed my mind.]

Quoted from other sources and tested: Population growth out of control? Give - as a gift - this settlement to your enemy, then claim it back with the original garrison nearby. You can enslave or exterminate the residence to bring them back to happiness.

[Enslave & population boom]

Huge-scaled enslavement of multiple settlements in a region actually makes the entire region very happy - through the population boom it brings.

For far-away lands where distance to capital kills, enslavment is certainly a better option than extermination. For every enslaved settlement, you will have slaves as a resource. Through trading slaves you have population growth bonus, from 0.5% to 6.5% (the highest I have seen so far, might go even higher). The pop. growth bonus effect seems to be accumulative - the more slave trade there is in that area, the more population growth bonus you get.

Then you get a nice public order boost of "population boom". That will help you stablize the settlement a lot... probably because everybody is busy at night, and don't get enough sleep to discuss revolting during the day.

If you have too much population, then just give the settlement away (the previous evil tip) and claim it back to enslave again. The effect on population is then same to extermination. evil evil.