Original MTW vs Invasion...

[Del Arroyo]

Does the AI get any smarter in Viking Invasion? Cuz I've been playing the Early Campaign for a while now and so far it seems... a bit... passive. Like strategically, it never takes initiative, never goes to war, never takes advantage of a weak province. Tactically, it marches its horse archers back and forth in front of my lines, getting decimated while rarely opening fire.

Just wondering if VI was any better.

DA

[Joshwa]

That sounds kinda weak... What difficulty are you on?

[CountMRVHS]

Difficulty level does have something to do with this. For a long time I played on Hard because I didn't like the idea of the AI getting a +4 artificial morale bonus. Just recently I figured I'd give Expert a shot anyway and I swear I'm seeing differences on the campaign map too.

Although, even on Expert with VI, sometimes you will see the AI soaking up missile fire for no apparent reason. Just a few days ago I was playing the Welsh, attacking I think the Saxons, who were sitting in a forest to protect themselves from my archers. For no reason, a unit of Armored Spearmen comes OUT of the woods, and actually turns its back to my archers, thus negating the shield bonus. By the time I whittled that unit down to around 30 guys out of 100, they ran back into the woods. But that was the only unit to do something so silly in that battle, and the battle itself wasn't a cakewalk afterwards.

If you're asking because you're trying to decide whether to install VI or not, that's easy: Install It. It's been awhile since I played pre-VI so I can't honestly remember how the AI was back then, but I can tell you it certainly doesn't get any worse, so you've got absolutely nothing to lose and many fun additions to gain. New units for the original campaign, a sensible and very useful reinforcement system, the ability to quicksave just at the beginning of battles, and a whole new campaign set in the British Isles during the Viking invasions.

The *one* drawback to getting VI is that it comes with an annoying bug wherein your king and every other king will die at exactly 56 years of age. Fortunately, there is a patch that fixes this easily. So again, nothing to lose.

[Zarax]

Actually the bug was in vanilla MTW, VI fixes it.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

The VI AI attacks LOTS. Like when most of my full stack armies were in Italy or Prussia, Poland attacks Prussia with a diversion force, and Silesia with the main force.

[Del Arroyo]

Maybe I will install VI, sounds like the AI may be more agressive. I was a little skittish remembering how Shogun MI introduced changes which were, on the balance, worth it, but not all of which were necessarily positive.

As far as MTW, I started off with an expert Early campaign as the Polish, and quickly got bored with that, so I altered the campaign to start with only the province of Poland and only my Royal Knights and a unit of Horse Archers. I was prompted to post here when I had, in about 30 turns, expanded throughout Eastern Europe and conquered Hungary unchecked, and was the richest and most powerful kingdom. This seemed totally illogical. I had just completed a three-pronged attack on the Byzantines in which they allowed me to take their capital without even a siege.

My opinion changed a bit this morning, when I had to fight a couple of battles involving several units of royal Kataphractoi at a time, and the Novgorods honored their alliance and invaded. The Novgorods especially had a few wicked high-command high-honor generals that simply wouldn't die.

So while I'm not so bored any more, and I definitely note many improvements (mainly tactical) over Shogun, I can say that in Shogun I never would have been allowed to expand so easily leaving so my provinces unguarded as I did in the earlier stages of this campaign.

Other notes:

- I liked Shogun graphical interface better. Clear, practical, and artistic. Everything now is a greyish blur of dull colors.

- The tech tree seems over-complex. There seem to be a lot of distinctly-portrayed versions of essentially the same unit types. And a lot of buildings. I'm not arguing against historical accuracy, just saying there might be a way to clean the building/training options screen up a bit.

- On the tactical screen, it seems harder to click the units I want without giving up and just clicking on their icon in the control panel.

DA

[Zarax]

You're one of the few ones that thinks MTW got too many units...
I'm developing a MOD that partially helps with the issues you raised, basically it gives more specialized rosters to most factions while retaining the original game units.

If you're interested you can download it from http://microsoftuseuse.temp.powweb.com/hosted/ZxMod.exe

There's a thread on page 2 about it if you want to know more or give feedback.

[Eternal Champion]

Try starting in Late or High era instead of Early. They should provide more of a challenge for a seasoned player. If you do a search or look in the "How To" faction guides there is a lot of talk about early era rushes, it's almost a cheat against the AI.

[EatYerGreens]

Having blathered on repeatedly, in recent postings, about how I was determined to finish a v1.0 campaign before upshifting to VI, I had a gamesave develop a persistent PC-crashing fault. In a fit of pique, I deleted all the gamesaves (Almos:Early:Normal, with Egypt, Spain, Aragon and half of France taken over but multiple stacks of Turks grabbing Palestine off me at the point where the crash recurs) and went ahead with the install.

I like the new features I've seen to date. I'll not look at the Viking campaign for a long while yet. I went straight back to MTW and thought I'd try the Byz again - my last effort was lost when the HDD it was on died on me.

This time I thought I'd give Expert a go, just to see how long I lasted.

It must have been only turn 10 (fort=4, Town Watch=2, Bowyer=2 and just 2 units of +1Val Treb Archers produced) when those naffing Turks stride in with 17 units (about 1200 men) to my 420 (80 of those were merc cav, so it could have been even worse and the odd 20 was a 1-turn old Prince-kat'oi unit which I don't want to end up trapped in a castle, with his 8 stars).

Like a twit, I leave the Emperor and his equally number-starved force defending Anatolia, cos it's worth more money. AI *knows* that it needs to deprive me of Trebizond's archers. It simultaneously isolates a pathetic force in Georgia, blocking my way to Khazar and beyond. Going up the west coast of the Black Sea would now put me in conflict with the Poles, who bribed while I was busy racking up alliances.

The only thing which saved me from this dilemma was inability to conduct the Trebizond battle because my PC rebooted itself in the pre-battle review screen. There was a rebellion on Rhodes (1 unit vs 1 ; Cyprus did exactly the same thing the turn before) which was resolved first. Previous CTDs and reboots always seem to happen when I have anything more than one battle to fight in a single turn.

So, if anything, I now have a 'cheaty' advantage in that I know what the AI is about to do when I restore from the previous gamesave.

Apparently, rebellions are more likely in expert but in some respects this may prove to make the game easier in the long term. It means my generals can fight small-scale 'practice' battles on a regular basis and get from no-star to two or maybe 3-star just while sitting around on garrison duties. That's enough to give a valour bonus to forces under them, so they can later move from garrison to front-line provinces looking after defences whilst higgh-star generals look after the attacking.

[ChaosLord]

Not to stray off topic, but the 56 year bug was introduced by VI. It wasn't part of MTW. I remember this because this is the reason the Almohad PBEM split up into VI and MTW, there was a good number of people not wanting to do it in VI because of the short lifespan/knowing when the King would die. :P

[Martok]

Not to stray off topic, but the 56 year bug was introduced by VI. It wasn't part of MTW. I remember this because this is the reason the Almohad PBEM split up into VI and MTW, there was a good number of people not wanting to do it in VI because of the short lifespan/knowing when the King would die. :P

Exactly. The 56-year bug was the main reason CA came out with the 2.01 patch for VI in the first place; otherwise a patch would probably have never been released.

The only real complaint I've ever had with Viking Invasion is that it largely neutered the Almohad Caliphate. In the original Medieval, the Almos were uber-aggressive and usually wound up conquering most of western Europe--playing as the Spanish really *was* one of the hardest factions to play as back then.

With VI installed, however, the Almos rarely do anything except defend their territory. Talk about going from one extreme to the other! I wish they could've found a middle ground for the Almos. It's true the Caliphate is no fun when they're an unstoppable juggernaut, but neither is it enjoyable to be able to pick on a faction that rarely fights back.....

[Zarax]

Exactly. The 56-year bug was the main reason CA came out with the 2.01 patch for VI in the first place; otherwise a patch would probably have never been released.

The only real complaint I've ever had with Viking Invasion is that it largely neutered the Almohad Caliphate. In the original Medieval, the Almos were uber-aggressive and usually wound up conquering most of western Europe--playing as the Spanish really *was* one of the hardest factions to play as back then.

With VI installed, however, the Almos rarely do anything except defend their territory. Talk about going from one extreme to the other! I wish they could've found a middle ground for the Almos. It's true the Caliphate is no fun when they're an unstoppable juggernaut, but neither is it enjoyable to be able to pick on a faction that rarely fights back.....

That's an easy fix to make, just change the AI setup in the campaign file and you'll get the aggressive Almohads back.

[Shambles]

Ive noticed in both origional and VI.
that the Ai tends to stand in 1 place when i start Throwing bolders at them,

Sometimes Il be trowing bolders at 1 place.

Then the AI will moove more groups of troops Directly underneath where im throwing bolders.

They also tend to be a bit indecisive even on expert,
Some times charging before retreating and then trying again,
This is not as bad as it is in RTW. But never the less can Cause the game to Play poorly.

the 1st time the AI mooved Extra troops to where i was throwing bolders I was Happy that they did,

But when the did it a second and a third time, I Became dissapointed in the game play.

And after i completed the VI on expert using the welsh,

MTW was religated to a box :(
This is partly due to the weak ai.

And i beleve that shoguns ai is much better atleast for Custom battles Which I love to play.

However who knows,
if there were catapults in shogun.
Prehaps the same bug would plage it as well.

[CountMRVHS]

I think that pretty much any game is going to be "easy" once you figure out how to do the early rush. As soon as you realize that you can pump out tons of low-level units in the first few turns and shove your neighbors around with them, the game will suddenly become a cakewalk.

It seems like some people *want* to cut down on the lifespan of their games. I see so much of this in the Guides section: "In the first turn, take all your guys and attack so-and-so, and train spearmen in every province." That kind of approach is fun at first, but for me at least it loses its charm rather quickly.

That's why many people choose to turtle, or play defensively for the early part of the game. If you want more of a challenge, that's generally the best way to go about it: give the AI half a chance to build up. But don't just rush the AI and then complain that the game isn't a challenge. If it seems too easy, you have to use your imagination and try something different. Or, just put it back in the box I guess and find another game.

[Zarax]

That's why there are the mods...
Most of them rebalances the game in a way that makes the early rush a less convenient option.