New difficulty setting

[The Storyteller]

Here's something I would like to see in future Total War games: A "dirty tricks" setting.

After the initial game is released, there will certainly be a lot of exploits that are discovered. Rather than fix all of these (some might just be too difficult to fix... sometimes, changing one unit's stats may raise other balance problems, changing rate of population growth may result in other problems etc.), there should be a new difficulty setting in the patch called the "dirty tricks" setting.

In this setting, one of the factions will make full use of every exploit, every bug, every loophole the game has to offer. Armenia, for instance, might build absolutely nothing but horse archers. On the campaign map, this faction will shamelessly use things like multiple enslavement. It will let its cities rebel and then take them back as a means of population control, or even gift them to you and then march back in and slaughter everyone. The "dirty tricks" faction will sell its map information and gain a huge amount of gold.

All the other dirty tricks that we humans use to rush will be incorporated as much as possible, using feedback from forums. If we complain that the AI is standing there like a moron letting its infantry get shot down by archers, then the "dirty tricks" faction should be allowed to gain heroic victories when fighting with other AI factions all the time on auto resolve, because the system assumes that its dirty tricks would utterly destroy the lesser factions.

Most of the time, it's hard to get a really challenging AI onto the battle map. So the only way to even it out is to have an AI that really lets loose on the campaign map, so that by the time they get to the battlefield, they have so many resources and so many evil troops (all HA armies, for instance) that it becomes a challenge to beat, even if its battlefield tactics are not great.

After all, the AI will never be able to beat us. So how about making it join us?

[Oaty]

Nah all the comp has to do is make good calculations. Like the city of Antioch, it will never get sacked if you have a reenforcement army that can reach the river crossing to the south in 1 turn, All I was doing there was waiting for mercanaries and reenforcements so I could actually take on the comp in a fair battle but the comp comes after me and get's mutilated. Also the comp needs at least needs 1 campaigning army. 1 that does'nt turn back untik it has taken a city or defeated a large army but only if it is depleted. And when the comps laying siege to look if an army is a threat, 1 town watch can pull an army off a siege. Now I do'nt exploit this but sometimes you are moving troops around and the comp gets distracted and makes a worthless move on a few hastati or something else.

Of course the comp could gather a 20 unit army in hiding and then go on raiding parties and sack cities, then leave and have a diplomat give the city back so there is'nt a rebellion in your favour.

Also when the comp assaults a city it needs to be able to exploit multiple breaches instead of trying to bumrush 1 gap.

[GFX707]

All HA armies are easy to beat. Just use normal archers.

[Shottie]

Wait, if the computer uses ALL of the bugs, wouldnt they then not be considered bugs? OR It would just show people how bad the game really is because there are just so many bugs to be exploited. Yeah, just another opinion in the matter. haha