AI experience so far.

[Garnier]

I got the game yesterday, and I am quite dissapointed with the battle AI. First of all, most battles have been castle assaults, as the AI is not good at bringing an army to fight in the open. Mostly their armies walk away... or something.

But I have yet to lose a battle(this is on very hard battle difficulty). I've fought probably 15 battles(most of them very small) that werent in cities, and the AI didnt really do anything. In one of them I was fighting the french, they had 300 cavalry and I had a bunch of archers and crossbowmen. The cavalry just sat there till my archers were almost out of ammo, then they ran away leaving most of their men dead on the field.

Also I was defending antioch against the egyptians once. They besieged it with half as many men as I had inside, and theirs were mostly horse archers. Their infantry that stormed the walls were all killed, and their horse archers stood outside the walls shooting at us but without much luck. I sent a unit of spearmen outside the gate, where they waiting in schiltron formation, and the horse archers charged one unit at a time until they got massacred. Here is a screenshot:

I consider this AI to be really bad. The Egyptians in that battle killed almost nothing and were mostly wiped out. I have not lost a battle yet, nor have I been flanked or outsmarted by the AI in ANY way. Whats wrong with this game?

[TheImp]

What was the difficulty setting?

[Garnier]

hard campaign, Very hard battles

[Lusted]

But I have yet to lose a battle(this is on very hard battle difficulty). I've fought probably 15 battles(most of them very small) that werent in cities, and the AI didnt really do anything. In one of them I was fighting the french, they had 300 cavalry and I had a bunch of archers and crossbowmen. The cavalry just sat there till my archers were almost out of ammo, then they ran away leaving most of their men dead on the field.

that's the passive ai bug, its known about and will be fixed in the first patch.

[troymclure]

Had mixed experiences with the AI on my H/H spain game so far. Mostly positive though, seen an army get "caught" in a corner in one game, computer marched to the cornor of a map and kinda raid parade drills was very strange.
Saw one very cool thing on the strategic map though. I was defending a bridge, correction i was parking my main general on a bridge to prevent a portuguses crossing, portugues started off by sending one stack of about 400 men to park next to me, i wasn't worried and mostly just wanted him tied up, so i didn't attack,two turns later there is another stack of 400, i didn't attack at this time because i wanted the advantage defending the bridge would get me.
Anyways, long story short, the AI didn't end up attacking me till he had bought up 4 stacks of 400, had me completelly surrounded and outnumbered two to one. Fun battle :P.
Thought that was pretty nice, in RTW the AI would have attacked with them one at a time.

[todorp]

What is the CPU and graphics on your PC? I have found that the AI significantly improves with a better hardware, which is common sense. The AI can do more calculations and come with better decisions. E.g. I on my Athon XP 2500+ the AI is worse than on my E6400, not to mention the frame rates.

Do a little test. Start the Windows Tack Manager, click performance tab, then start the battle. Now and then pause the battle and Alt+Tab to the Windows Tack Manager to see the CPU usage. If you are close to 100% then the AI is taking short cuts to keep the game going.

[redriver]

...I was fighting the french, they had 300 cavalry and I had a bunch of archers and crossbowmen. The cavalry just sat there till my archers were almost out of ammo, then they ran away leaving most of their men dead on the field...

what happened to their first comments regardin' improved AI earlier on? that AI will try to hide in the woods when fired upon by missile units?
even in RTW AI will always engage archers if they have cavalry.. the retreat part is ok though. they lost too many men before engagin' so they left the battlefield. RTW has that too which is a sound tactic IMO...

anyway, this is a serious issue with the passive AI and the buttleneck siege battles. somethin' that should be easily discovered by the QA and fixed as well...
nice graphics though, eh?

wait.. I don't have a smashin' video card so me have to settle for Quake 2 graphics lol

[osb0t]

What is the CPU and graphics on your PC? I have found that the AI significantly improves with a better hardware, which is common sense. The AI can do more calculations and come with better decisions. E.g. I on my Athon XP 2500+ the AI is worse than on my E6400, not to mention the frame rates.

Do a little test. Start the Windows Tack Manager, click performance tab, then start the battle. Now and then pause the battle and Alt+Tab to the Windows Tack Manager to see the CPU usage. If you are close to 100% then the AI is taking short cuts to keep the game going.

I haven't noticed the kind of AI issues the OP mentioned. I run an athlon 64 3800 and the AI has been much much better than STW/MTW or RTW.

I have developed some very "sloppy" tendancies when sieging from those past games and the AI in this game will punish you for it. If for example you do not directly screen archers/siege weapons the AI in my experience will send a unit or two of cavalry out and launch a spoiling raid against your siege engines.

The AI is also very adept at outmanuevering you on the battlefield when it has hard hitting mobile elements.

If you are fighting a catholic nation that has several units of heavy knights, you will have a difficult time controlling the edges of the battle. They will flank mercilessly, even better than that is this, if you have significant cavalry yourself they will hold theirs in reserve and wait for you to commit yours. Once they do the AI apparently sets a very high priority to isolating your cavalry and charging it from 2 or 3 directions at once.

On the other hand, the non-catholic nations seem to have some issues with using their lighter cavalry properly. Russia with its hybrid missle/melee cavalry is a joke. It doesnt really know how to use those units effectively it would appear.

The ONE ai issue I have run into so far is regarding sieges. I have discovered that if you send one unit out of your castle/town the AI sends all of its cavalry at that unit. At the same time it basically will "reset" the rest of its forces. The infantry/archers/siege weapons will start to move around in a big jumbled mess. This makes it very easy to defend cities with a unit or two of militia and several archer units.

I will also comment that playing on H/H the AI does seem to lightly defend its castles. Towns have been by and large heavily defended, castles for whatever reason seem to get token garrisons. I wonder if the AI is over-estimating the defensive worth of the castle itself, the standard seems to be about 400 men to defend the castle, with ~800 defending cities.

[Lord of the Isles]

I will also comment that playing on H/H the AI does seem to lightly defend its castles. Towns have been by and large heavily defended, castles for whatever reason seem to get token garrisons. I wonder if the AI is over-estimating the defensive worth of the castle itself, the standard seems to be about 400 men to defend the castle, with ~800 defending cities.

Noticed the same. It's a shame since attacking Castles, especially the big ones, could produce some fun battles if the AI was garrisoning them well.

I wonder if this is a result of the AI choosing garrison sizes for reasons of quelling civil unrest rather than for defensive reasons? That would explain the larger ones in towns: they are needed to keep unrest down.