Pathetic battle AI

[HarunTaiwan]

Did their artillery do anything?

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No, nothing at all.

I saw the artillerymen now and then running about aimlessly from place to place but I never saw where the artillery pieces were. They must have been somewhere, but I was too busy fighting the battle.

[Ldvs]

Unfortunately,this has been discussed numerous times and the conclusions are unanimous: the AI is appallinggly bad.

[tibilicus]

Another annoying thing is when the army flees the battle before youve reached it and it masivly outnumbers you. How unrealistic is that.

[Conqueror]

By far the biggest weakness I've observed is that when the AI is on the defensive, it won't react to massed missile fire. You can just march close enough for your archers to reach them and bombard the AI army with arrows, ballistas, flaming onager shots, etc. And they'll just sit still and take it. Sometimes they'll decide to retreat or attack after losing ~50% of their men, but sometimes you can keep shooting untill you're out of ammo.

[tibilicus]

Ahhhhh yes get a nice set of pikemen park them close anoth then kill there whole army with arrows ! they wont even move !

[marcusbrutus]

The battle AI is pathetic but I have to confess I was utterly annaialated by it the other day...

Sending some excess troops home after taking an Egyptian city that had fallen to the rebels I was attacked by a large egyptian army with a 6 star general, almost completely made up of chariots and mounted troops. I had no general, 5 infantry, 4 missle units and 3 cav. Thinking that if I could get some high ground the AI would crumble as usual I decided to fight.

I lined my troops up: inf in front of missile and cav on either flank on a small hill and waited. The AI halted it's army just outside of missile range and then sent 2 units of missile forward and a unit of inf (which routed before it even reached my line). This missile exchange lasted a couple of minutes.

All at once the entire AI army began to sprint around my left flank (this was amazing coordination for the AI). They were to far away to engage with my slow troops so to prevent my army being flanked and overrun by the entire Eqyptian army I got the inf and missiles to run just enough to turn and form a line facing what would be the Egyptians new position. To gain some time while they did this I sent my cav against the Egyptians that had made it furthest around my flank. No sooner had the infantry begun to move than all the chariots were smashing through their disorganised ranks. Totally defeated.

Having the AI put me in a position where I had to react and then it taking advantage of it is perhaps the most surprising thing about the battle.

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No sooner had the infantry begun to move than all the chariots were smashing through their disorganised ranks. Totally defeated.

One of the few things the AI is good at (if you can call it good) is charging infantry with mobile troops. They are quite good at timing their run to the moment when your troops are in disarray I find (or maybe it's because my troops always seem to be in disarray for some reason, LOL).

Really though, these cavalry charges through infantry units, particulary the front of spear units, are a bit unrealistic.

[screwtype]

By far the biggest weakness I've observed is that when the AI is on the defensive, it won't react to massed missile fire.

Yes that is one of the big problems, but IMO an even bigger one is the way the AI will split itself up into separate units to chase after your own units, which makes it so easy to kill them off one by one. This behaviour is especially stupid when it's an infantry unit chasing a cav unit, which it has no hope whatever of catching.

CA should make it an iron AI rule that foot soldiers NEVER chase cav units unless or until there are no enemy foot soldiers remaining.