Wow. 1.6

[Orb]

As Julii, VH/M using the BI 1.6 exe and possibly night battles (I could have messed up here - but it's not really relevant), I've just seen the Greek cities and Spain both invade me at sea. (Iberia attacked Segesta, Greek cities attack Ariminium and got pwned by the Senate army).

The Scipii have naval attacked Corinth and Sparta, interestingly.

I have a feeling that 1.6 does quite a bit to improve things.

has anyone seen similar things on 1.5?

[sunsmountain]

What I've noticed in patch 1.5 (no BI) is that the AI uses strict cohesive army formations when marching on the battlefield towards me. As soon as it's in range it loses this cohesion, but in 1.0/1.1 and 1.2 iirc the AI just straight went for it.
In 1.1, if i moved my army off center, the sometimes walking but usually running AI army would already lose its formation before we even met. In 1.5 that no longer happens.

In my understanding of Rome:TW's AI, a lot of room was left for perfection, since the system they use is quite complex. It consists of:

- a unit level AI, which regulates individual unit behaviour and should prevent them from doing something stupid, while looking for something smart
- an army level AI, which should dictate overall strategy/tactics (but doesn't).

Typically, a certain situation on the battlefield is recognized and translated into numbers. Depending on the numbers, an individual unit is set into a particular state, for example, marching towards, running away, or using its special. Since they didn't manage to complete writing the army level AI, state trashing occured in quite a few situations because unit level AI could roam free and unchecked.

What you are seeing now, in 1.5, 1.6 and onwards, is CA actually further understanding and tweaking the engine such that this doesn't happen. Hearing more and more good news like this bodes well for MTW2. In my mind this engine still holds the possibility of defeating the Hannibals, Alexanders and Caesars amongst us. I agree that this was far from the case when RTW was released. But hey, you live and learn (and CA does, too).

[Orb]

Yep, this does look good, but I'm still pessimistic about M2TW

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

whether my poor computer will be able to run it

[econ21]

Yes, 1.6 is much better at keeping units together on the strategic map. (The BI.exe does even better with the campaign AI, but the Roman Imperial campaign does not work well with it).

If you want a real challenge as Julii, I strongly recommend you try them in the following mod of Rome Total Realism Platinum:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...hlight=snakeiv

Even just on VH/M, it is possibly the hardest RTW campaign I've started (not finished it yet), after Bouis's insane Roma mod. The economy is really tight.

[Orb]

Yep, I'll have to try RTR someday. Presently my most enjoyable was a Hayasdan VH/M campaign on EB, also my hardest.

[LestaT]

I've heard (probably read somewhere) that the civil war triggered might not happen (or CTD) if playing RTW using BI.exe . Can someone confirm this or have manage to have the roman civil war while using BI.exe or Alex.exe ?

I'm suddenly got so bored of playing mods that makes me start of vanilla Julii campaign had already had the reforms..

Now waiting to see if the civil war can be triggered (using BI.exe)

[professorspatula]

I think I read somewhere that you can manually script the game to start the civil war with BI, but it's buggy and often doesn't work, or something. I'm sure someone will be working on a possible solution if they haven't already figured it all out. In the meantime, for an extra challenge for the vanilla RTW, try playing with the monitor switched off. On average, the difficulty level increases 10 fold and it's compatible with most other mods, except the extreme 'Smash PC and Monitor with a Hammer for Ultimate Difficulty Mod'. There's no going back with that one.