So ...

[Puzz3D]

Yay. I love not being able to pause most of the time; it's great when the phone rings and I have to leave my battle running. And watching my army being massacred on the highest speed setting while I frantically punch ctrl+t over and over trying to get it to slow back down is great too! Serves me right for trying to speed past the opening phase where my army marches in a mostly straight line, doing not much, in a bid to actually play more of the interesting parts of the game.

Maybe it's because I'm more focused on the battles, but this isn't an issue for me. Why? Because I never speed up the battle except at the end if I have selected "continue the battle" and then decide I don't want to spend the time playing it out afterall. Why wouldn't I speed up the battle during the boring marching phase? Because it's not boring to me. I turn off banners, radar map, free camera and keep the camera as low to the ground as possible. When the battle starts I have to find the enemy unless he is the attacker and is going to come to me. I may send out scouting cavalry if I have it. For me it builds the suspense, and sometime the AI army shows up on my flank. Since I never pause the battle to issue orders, I can get caught out of position.

Nor A Happy Frog after finding that all the aggressive AI and so on appears to have been put in other people’s copies of the game. I feel like I am playing on ‘super easy’ level, not very hard.

Now, if I’d been started with much less than the crazy 15,000 denarii, and had been attacked – or reacted to even a bit while attacking! – then it would have been tougher. But I did have way too much cash, and I was totally ignored except when I forced the game to notice me.

The strategic AI is a bit passive, but overly aggressive wouldn't be good either. In my Julii campaign, I can see Germainia, with whom I am not at war, scanning one of my cities every turn. So they are planning an attack, but they don't attack because they are too weak. The problem might be that the player manages his money better than the AI which allows him to maintain bigger armies. Whenever AI factions fight each other that helps the human player as well. I remember that MTW had the problem where the AI tended to beat itself back into the stoneage. Reducing the player's money might help. You can do that in Rome Shell.

I also forgot to expand fully my rant on those confounded rebel armies. I hate them, always did and still do - pointless little messes of peasants even 2 decent units can run over easily, which do nothing more than force me to divert an army and then fight another boring battle. Half the time I just smack them to death with my general's bodyguard and nothing else. Which turns him into a super general. Making other battles easier.

Why not use auto-resolve to deal with rebels? Don't send your good general to fight them. It's beneath him and left to captains to deal with. The AI gets an advantage in auto-resolve, but, if the game is too easy, that would help make it a bit harder. I have 3 rebel armies in my provinces and they have been there quite a while, but I have been ignoring them. I don't feel that I have to smack down rebel armies as soon as they show up, and they make my income management less efficient which helps the AI compete economically.

Another thing I do which might make the game slightly harder is no retaining of units.

[Bob the Insane]

After reading frogbeastegg's last post I have to say you don't seem happy. Like I said before, it is better than RTW in all areas (it even has better graphical glitches... ), but in a lot of those areas it is only marginally better...

I will have to try a game as the Saxons to examine what you report, the starting funds seem excessive, more than the WRE if I recall rcorrectly...

As for the AI aggresssiveness on the strategic level. One thing I have icked up on is that the game is balanced to pretty much maintain the status quo and to let the hordes be ther driving force in the game which means that if you stablize your land quickly it will have a significant period of piece...

[RabidGibbon]

Originally posted by Frogbeastegg
I'm playing Saxons very hard/medium. I started out with the plainly crazy sum of 15,000 denarii, and from there's it's been a gentle ramble along, building up 2 small but decent armies, stomping the odd crappy rebel army, and capturing a couple of extra settlements. All effortlessly. The AI is still passive as a wet sponge - no one has attacked me at all. No one!

I'm surprised to hear that because my first campaign was a Saxon VH/M and I lost... badly. I started off like you describe expanding into rebel lands, but then noticed my next target was under siege already by the Romans and went for it anyway.

This started a series of on-off wars with the Romans, which finally ended with a WRE, Lombardi, Burgundi, Frankish alliance putting paid to my little empire.

Re: The battle AI - the problem (IMO) has been treated but not cured. During one siege (me attacking) some Roman units I expected to enter the city by a side gate and join the defence instead held back and attacked my reserves and archers after many of my units had entered in the city, resulting in a confused battle outside and inside.

On the other side of the coin two Hun armies were besieging a vandal city, they got a single siege tower against the walls when the attacking stack, with the equipment, ran out of infantry for the grinder. The reserve stck, round the other side of the city, sent a single infantry unit running round the side of the city, making for the tower. It never made it - being in range of my towers. So, it sent another infantry unit. And another. And another.

Re: The pause / Ctrl-T button glitches I haven't experienced again yet, but then I haven't put the Minimal-UI on either, and I seem to recall hearing the two are linked?

[Mongoose]

Frogbeasteggs post sounded just like regular RTW...I don't think i'll be buying BI unless the price drops.

Though i think i should add that VH/M is not the hardest setting, the difficulty bug was fixed in the Xpac AFAIK.

[Viking]

Though i think i should add that VH/M is not the hardest setting, the difficulty bug was fixed in the Xpac AFAIK.

If that`s the case, battles can actually be difficult. I remember once playing a Carthaginian campaign on VH/VH. There was two battles against the Scipii were we both had fullstack armies and around 1000 men. I lost both horribly. I replayed the first one more than 10 times, but it was simply impossible to win those battles because of the morale bonuses the AI got.