AI and battles, too easy?

**Foxtiger** · 06-05-2005, 21:19

First post, finally, been playing TW since STW hit the shelves.

While playing with carthago, the ptoleimatic empire declared war on me. Well, peacfull as i am i reluctantly marched my armies across the desert to engage in some frentic hand-to-hand struggles.

Now, i thought fighting against the great ptoleimatic empire would be hard, they were at the time the strongest military faction, but in the battles they kept sending one unit at a time against my wall of sacred legions and and poeinis, in many battles i ended up killing up to and over 2000 an loosing only a few hunderd, no fun, no challenge. I'm playing RTR (5.something, the newest) on H/H and big units, what should i do to make the battles more challenging?

**caesar44** · 06-05-2005, 21:24

play as the armenians

**Foxtiger** · 06-05-2005, 21:37

The problem is not the difficulty of the battle itself, but that the AI sends about one unit at a time, and if more not in anything resembling a battle line.

**Mongoose** · 06-05-2005, 22:39

There is only one way to really fix this; buy another game

EDIT:

With darth mod/SPQR (mods) it is not retarded, just really stupid...i would download those.

**professorspatula** · 06-06-2005, 04:26

Sadly you can't do a lot to make the AI put up more of an intelligent fight, except maybe handicap yourself by poking yourself repeatedly in the eye with cocktail sticks until they bleed, and then get someone to chop off your preferred mouse clicking fingers. Eyes watering, and blindness setting in, as well as no fingers to click those all important mouse buttons to order your troops about, and the AI will suddenly become a seriously tough opponent!

To be honest, you'd really need to be a hardcore RTW player to go through that torture, so it's probably best ignoring that advice. You could limit yourself to the General's viewpoint for other ways to make the game a miserable but tougher experience, or never pause the battle. That'll make things slightly trickier for you, although the AI will still probably line up to die in retarded fashion.

**Mongoose** · 06-06-2005, 04:30

Have you tried turning your screen off? having it on is cheating

so is not getting your commander killed at the start of the battle.

**sapi** · 06-06-2005, 07:51

yes, they work well. In fact, having a mouse connected is cheating too - play with only a keyboard!

**vale** · 06-06-2005, 07:56

professorspatula I think that don't do much and the AI still loss over. They will just line up and approach your troops and when they fight the AI have no chance again a human player, I guess CA really have to make them more intelligent. Anyway you could mod the AI units mental strat in order for them to fight longer :)

**Jambo** · 06-06-2005, 10:24

agreed on all accounts. Playing as a faction that doesn't have phalanx units can help increase the difficulty a little. This is mainly because the AI has absolutely no idea how to counter human controlled phalanxes, particularly when in siege battles. For that reason, I get the most enjoyment from playing as or against the barbarians factions.

There is a little program called something like 'Make RTW Harder' at the twcenter that some clever patron developed which can be used to increase various attributes of the AI factions. In otherwords it's possible to increase morale, attack, defence, armour, etc of only the AI factions' units.

Other than that, wait till the expansion and keep your fingers crossed.

**PseRamesses** · 06-06-2005, 10:56

One wonder how hard it would have been to script the units to behave more intelligent when tons of resources and cash has been poured into the TW-games over the years. IMHO the battefeild AI has degenerated from STW and MTW which is quite surprising, don´t you think? This fact and the statement from AV or CA that "the hard-core TW-players (us) are NOT our main target group with this game"?????

I´m completely stunned. Ok, I understand that us hard-core gamers maybee in the thousands worldwide and the average gamer (target group) are in hundreds of thousands so they simply make more cash targeting against a more mainstream group of customers.

The TW-concept has the potential to become the uber-ruler of all combat games, like CIV dominated the scene during the 90´s. So why not make TW as advanced and realistic as possible with easier levels for the non-hard-core player? This is why I´ve always stated that AV/ CA should concentrate on the games AI, the platform for a truly epic game and let the community make the actual games/ mods.

In MTW a 10 star general was a menace to meet in the field so a while back I changed all the starting generals to 10 stars but no true change was noticable except that his troops didn´t rout as much which was very dissapointing. I still hope that they correct this for the BI-expansion.

**Foxtiger** · 06-06-2005, 11:18

Thaks for the replys

I though that to make the game more realistic i would start acting like the generals of any given battle; as a lover of beauty i would have a couple of girls dancing around me (combining two things i love...) i think that it would definately make concentraring on the game harder, or maybe have my uncle drop by and just sit there next to me and have stupid remarks, although some of the retinue members would be a bit harder, well maybe a little sister can be a pet monkey?