HInts for managing morale in battles on Hard...

[Bob the Insane]

I have just started playing witht the battlefield difficulty on Hard rather than Medium (because I believe Hard only gives the AI a bit of a morale boost but hopefully unlocks more tactical options for the AI) and I don't like the super AI units of Very Hard...

I have been having a few set backs in my new Greek campaign. I am setting up classic greek style battles against other Greek nations, a wall of pikes with cavalry on the wings. The AI is setting up in a similar manner, but when my line impacts their and my cavalry engage the enemy cavalry on the wings I get about 10 seconds of battle before getting a rolling route running through my whole battleline... Now there where a number of things against me here. We where attacking up hill (but in good order) and had come under missle fire approaching the enemy (but had suffered few casualties to it). I am not sure what triggered the rout (it was too quick to spot)...

Bizarrly enough I won the battle as what was left of my troops rallied at the bottom of the hill and the enemy was so scattered from chasing my routers that I could take them on piecemeal (luck!)...

Any hints for battles on Hard????

[Es Arkajae]

(because I believe Hard only gives the AI a bit of a morale boost but hopefully unlocks more tactical options for the AI)

Can anyone verify this?

I play on medium because I don't want my enemies to get an unfair stat advantage but if its just a morale advantage then that would be in fact an attraction, the AI breaks too easy as it is.

[Bob the Insane]

I got this impression from observation of testing roman peasant vs roman peasant battles.

On medium each side loses about the same number of man at about the same rate..

On Hard men appear to be lost at the same rate as in medium but your (the player's) men's morale level always seems to be worse than the enemies and 9 time out of 10 it is your guys who break first...

[HoreTore]

Don't fear the AI bonuses on Very Hard.

Yes, they get morale bonus, and I think they get an attack bonus too and you gets lower morale. But that only challenges your tactical ability. As the enemy are superior man to man, you'll have to even the odds by being a superior commander. It's really as simple as that, the harder it gets, the better the general you'll have to be. I've never played on anything below Very Hard in RTW, and I have no problem with it.

When you move from medium/easy to very hard tho, you'll probably get a shock when you try playing as you've always done, but just adapt to it and modify your tactics, and you'll have no problem at all.

[Colovion]

I've always played on Hard, but it isn't. Hard is like Medium, but you can at least pretend that the enemy will put up a fight and you get to feel good about winning on a "hard" difficulty setting. Don't be afraid, it's not challenging. I'll soon be changing to VH in hopes that it'll challenge me more than Hard. I remember in MTW when I first joined the boards seeing everyone complaining about the game being so easy and all of them played on VeryHard or Hard. I could barely win on Medium with any continuity... now that I have some actual tactics and strategy behind me it's really not as hard as I first throught it was.

[Es Arkajae]

No one here is 'afraid' of playing on hard:p, they/I believe that it just gives some silly unfair stat advantage to the other side rather than making them any smarter.

I put 'better morale' in the same basket as 'smarter', as it means the enemy will last longer, able to put his plans into action.

Now can anyone confirm that 'Hard' only gives a morale bonus?

I imagine Bob would like to have it confirmed too, otherwise I better stop hijacking his thread~:p

[_Aetius_]

I dont understand why the player has to incur morale penalties just for the AI to offer a decent fight, thats ridiculous all that means is the players has a massive disadvantage because unless the players armies are given time to gain experience to make up for the morale bonus they suffer for being on harder difficulties then the AI all always win or eventually grind you down, theres precious little the player can do when his men have crap morale.

[HoreTore]

I dont understand why the player has to incur morale penalties just for the AI to offer a decent fight, thats ridiculous all that means is the players has a massive disadvantage because unless the players armies are given time to gain experience to make up for the morale bonus they suffer for being on harder difficulties then the AI all always win or eventually grind you down, theres precious little the player can do when his men have crap morale.

Not true, simply not true. You'll just have to tactically outclass the AI on the field to make up for it. You can't simply march up to the enemy and have a big brawl, you'll have to be smarter than that

And the bonuses to the AI simply makes the AI more challenging to play against. Of course, the best solution would be to make him tactically smarter, but that takes a whole lot more resources and time, and the creators of the game doesn't seem to have that, so they took the easy solution and increased the troops, not the tactics of the AI.

[Bob the Insane]

I imagine Bob would like to have it confirmed too, otherwise I better stop hijacking his thread~:p

It would be great to have that confirmed (if such a thing was possible)...

I am settling into it now, in many ways it is good as you really need to start considering the morale of your men during the course of the battle and if you have low morlae troops you have to be real careful with their positioning...

One of my strengths in the game has been a the strategic level, basically making sure I could always bring more and better troops to any battle... So even if things where going against me I could still be pretty sure of a meatgrinder style victory, a victory was not based on whether I won or lost the battle but on how few men I lost while winning the battle. But now you can not just churn out low grade troops and expect them to perform, as the player it really feels like you are making a difference in the battles...

Still don't like the concept of the VH AI super troops though...

[_Aetius_]

Not true, simply not true. You'll just have to tactically outclass the AI on the field to make up for it. You can't simply march up to the enemy and have a big brawl, you'll have to be smarter than that

And the bonuses to the AI simply makes the AI more challenging to play against. Of course, the best solution would be to make him tactically smarter, but that takes a whole lot more resources and time, and the creators of the game doesn't seem to have that, so they took the easy solution and increased the troops, not the tactics of the AI.

My point was that in occasions in battles were the only real strategy is a full scale attack etc that 1 v 1 the AI will always have an unfair advantage, i think the harder difficulties should only improve the ability of the AI not the morale and ability of there troops.

How is it fair in a battle when you have equal sized armies the same kind of troops and obviously going to use the same or similar tactics that the AI has that advantage that it has worked nothing for?

[Fridge]

As far as I'm aware, hard difficulty gives all AI units a +3 attack bonus, V hard gives them +7. I think that's it - I don't recall reading anywhere about a morale bonus, and certainly no new tactical options for the comp!

[screwtype]

I have been having a few set backs in my new Greek campaign. I am setting up classic greek style battles against other Greek nations, a wall of pikes with cavalry on the wings. The AI is setting up in a similar manner, but when my line impacts their and my cavalry engage the enemy cavalry on the wings I get about 10 seconds of battle before getting a rolling route running through my whole battleline... Now there where a number of things against me here. We where attacking up hill (but in good order) and had come under missle fire approaching the enemy (but had suffered few casualties to it). I am not sure what triggered the rout (it was too quick to spot)...

As someone who has played TW games on nothing but VH for as long as I can remember, here's what I'd say you did wrong:

First, you cannot expect to win battles on the harder difficulty levels by just marching up for a slugfest - especially when you have a disadvantage like being on lower ground. If the two sides are roughly as strong as one another, then you have to use maneouvre.

What I would probably have done in this battle of yours was try to take out the enemy cav BEFORE engaging the enemy infantry. You can do that by hanging back waiting for his cav to attack, or by trying to provoke him by feints. The idea is to get the enemy cav far away enough from their supporting inf's pointy sticks in order to deal a decisive blow without getting your own cav caught on them.

Having done that, you THEN engage the enemy line from the front with your inf, while you take your cav to the enemy's rear. A few seconds after the two inf armies engage, whammo, you hit 'em in the rear with your cav and they rout.

The second mistake you probably made was to underestimate the effect of missile fire on your own units. I've always found with all the TW titles on VH that a sure fire way to get an inf unit to rout quickly is to have it exposed to enemy missile fire at the same time it is engaged in melee. They really hate that!

The idea is to either rout all his missile units with your cav first, or else to fall back and pepper his inf with your own missile units until THEY are the ones on the verge of breaking. And THEN you hit 'em with your inf.

Basically, on VH, you have to employ the German concept of schwerpunkt - concentration of force. Try and get an overwhelming advantage at some point on the enemy force, if you can get some of them to rout you will then have the advantage of numbers against the rest.

[alby]

i play on VH but even at most settings if things are evenly matched the A1 seems to get the upper hand

to me the generals dont appear to have much of an effect on your units and its experiance that matters

i suggest u train your archers exp as i suggest here
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=43322

also use spies more to see wot you are up against. i always keep ongars near my main army and find you can swap them for archers, attack the enemy with artillery (set on fire) as they never charge your positions; then retreat and repeat till they suitably weakened to go for an all out battle.

[Bob the Insane]

As someone who has played TW games on nothing but VH for as long as I can remember, here's what I'd say you did wrong:

Thanks for that, that is the sort of thing I started this thread for...

And that lesson is one have have learnt the hard way...