Rtw/bi

[caravel]

Mods don't significantly improve the battlefield AI, although maybe by fiddling with the starting formations they make it a bit better. I find sometimes the AI is dumb, but often is servicable. What mods like RTR and EB tend to do is slow down the battles and improve the realism. I suspect vanilla RTW makes the AI seem dumb because you can beat it so easily and quickly. With slower battles (from higher morale and lower kill rates), you still win but it feels more like a real contest.

I find the AI simply horrendous and can't make excuses for it. I still don't understand how the AI in TW games has become progressively worse. There is still no positive confirmation from CA regarding M2TW's standard of AI, all the talk is about graphics, so I doubt if we can expect the legendary AI we had all hoped for.

I'd never trust the AI with one of my generals, though.

The general in question wasn't AI controlled he simply took it upon himself to ignore my orders and charge the phalanx full on.

RTW does have balance issues with cavalry and infantry - especially 2HP generals and lamentable eastern infantry. I'm inclined to edit all generals' units to be 1HP.

Forgive my ignorance, but: 1HP and 2HP? (hit points???)

A horse archer army in the hands of the player can be devastating (as can be an all cav one in vanilla RTW).

I find that arrows do far to much damage on the whole. I won a particular battle just by sitting my horse archers in front of the enemy and leaving them there. I was concentrating on hunting enemy foot archers with my generals units and was surprised to see a few stragglers routing... battle over. My HA's had cleaned up. The AI sat there and took it. It either bumrushes or sits there. There is no tactical maneouvering, the crap flat terrain, complete with giant trees, combined with the moto cav doesn't help.

This is one of my biggest bug bears, but from 1.5 onwards, you can edit down the brigand and pirate spawn. Find the descr_strat.txt files (there's one each for RTW and BI, hidden deep away under data\world\maps\campaign\whatever) and set the spawn parameters to 100 (you could search the text file for "spawn" - but it is very early in the file so you could eyeball it).

I've never raised the battle difficulty - I like the historical balance - and never really felt the need. I fight on VH campaigns with less than full stacks and find it challenging enough.

Personally, I would forget it and download RTR Platinum Edition (Gold will not let you edit down the brigand spawn rate).

Done it, and once I've fixed my wife's PC I may even have a chance to play it. It looks absolutely superb.

If you want a challenge, I'd recommend SnakeIVs Roman factions mod for RTR PE - it brings back the Senate and I find Julii a struggle at the beginning (which is striking because Julii is about the easiest faction in vanilla RTW).

I find the senate missions odious, so I may have to avoid that one for now. I like the way RTR creates a single Roman faction with which you can do as you please.

But I think RTW factions differ from MTW in being of greatly different strength. In MTW, most factions have similar unit rosters (basic spears, cav, swords, archers etc). In RTW, there is a much wider dispersion in the power of different units. Romans, Macedonians, Parthians etc are always going to be powerful in the hands of the player. Numidians and Gauls are going to struggle etc.

I do feel that vanilla RTW represents the "barbarians" as a rabble and doesn't really do them justice.

(sorry for late reply)