Far too easy?

[Shahed]

I usually do the following:

1. Don't DoW anyone unless they DoW you first or unless they are a clear and imminent danger. (i.e 4 stacks camping all around your capital causing 1000 florins devastation)

2. Concentrate on building a perfect military, perfect economy, capable of meeting any task you require.

3. Agree to all ceasfires on fair terms (usually they are unfair even if you are much more powerful).

4. Donate all cash in excess of 20000, every turn. Usually I pick one faction and make them rich then the next. Í've produced a Frankenstein out of Sicily this way. But it is much better because at least then you see cool Norman Knights etc, otherwise you'd be seeing 15 catapults and 5 peasants.

etc....

[Bucky_Rogers]

I agree with Soylent and Russia that this game is way too easy. I'm HRE on VH/H and it has been pretty much a joke. It is easy to win an open field battle when outnumbered by 2:1.

Aside from that, the AI, and the game in general, is terribly broken with more bad bugs than I could possible ever remember or keep track of... many of them can be found in the bug thread here, but I won't go into that further since we can't fix it.

I have not gotten the patch yet because I have read here that it apparantly failed miserably to fix the biggest problems, and I even see some posters saying that it caused more problems.

Can someone tell me what is EU III, and what is BI? A couple of the posters listed these with the implication that they are more challenging war games...(?) ANd any news on when we might see some good mods for this which may be more difficult?

Lastly, two of the posters, EGR and Verisoft, mentioned some modifications to make it more challenging. Can someone direct the rest of us to an explanation of how to do this kind of thing? I would like to know how to make these adjusments, because I am tired of fighting against unupgraded peasants, town militia and spear militia when I have long since gotten advanced caste units to fight with. Obviously we can't ptobably change the kind of units they have, but at least they could have more of them, or more upgrades.

I have stayed excommunicated, and stayed in favor with the pope, which I found easy to do even with the HRE. This has had no significant effect on game difficulty.

As for braggary and uberism, any mention of it has no place here imo. I don't know if that is what Soylent's agenda was, but it is certainly not my agenda. The fact is, the game is too easy for any TW vet, or for anyone who has any knowledge of ancient battle strats (I am not much of a TW Vet, and it is still too easy). Any game which can be won without much chance of losing (or any chance of losing at all from my experience so far), is too easy - hence my asking for help to make it more interesting.

Any help is appreciated,

Buck

[Shahed]

EU III = Europa Universalis 3
BI = Barbarian Invasion

You should try Hearts of Iron 2: Doomsday.
It is made by Paradoxx, the developer of the Europa Universalis series.

[EGr]

Lastly, two of the posters, EGR and Verisoft, mentioned some modifications to make it more challenging. Can someone direct the rest of us to an explanation of how to do this kind of thing? I would like to know how to make these adjusments, because I am tired of fighting against unupgraded peasants, town militia and spear militia when I have long since gotten advanced caste units to fight with. Obviously we can't ptobably change the kind of units they have, but at least they could have more of them, or more upgrades.

The game gives the AI a certain small amount of money every turn called the King's Purse, and you can increase it by simply editing this file-

C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign\descr_strat.txt

Open that file in Wordpad or Notepad and search through it until you get to this point

; >>>> start of factions section <<<<

Each faction has a section here that is pretty easy to spot. They all start with "faction factionname" and a couple of variables. Under that you will see a line called "denari_kings_purse". The number after that is the amount the faction gets every turn. Try different amounts until you get the AI to the right level of production you want.

[Soylent Green]

Loads of good & interesting points made here.

To a few i feel the need to go back to what i originally said. There shouldn't be a need to handicap yourself or overpower the computer for a challenging game. When you click that VH/VH button, you should hear the intake of your own breath as you prepare for a monstrosity of a battle. Aka. Civilization games.

Does anyone remember TA, where the computer player used to build top level units in a level one vehicle factory? Challenge.

I sort of see your point with the catholic bit, but i would have thought that being excommunicated would make the game MORE challenging. Given that i was at war with 7 factions at the same time, and inquisitors almost wiped out my entire family tree (pre 1.1).

For everyone slating the difficulty on RTW, i'm not sure what game you were playing, but as the Carthaginians i remember being bottled up several times by Roman armies 5000 strong. And then having to fight one of those sieges where you literally have 8 men left across 8 units, and you gasp for air.

I definitely accept the superiority of the English, afterall, we did build one of the greatest world empires, so naturally we should come across as superior in the game. Maybe i'll trying playing as Scotland or a one province starter. Which faction in everyone's opinion has the hardest difficulty?

I think part of my problem is coming from RTW:Alexander, i keep seeing the time limit ticking down and feel a burning desire to exterminate my way to the ends of the earth. Granted, but i think every medieval monarch would have welcome the chance to do this. Limiting yourself is probably ahistorical ;)

Plus, i do understand the 'letting them build up' bit, but for what? The battle AI still sucks as much as it did, it just makes it twice as painful watching them vaporise their own beautiful elite army.

IMHO, if you're playing this game to move diplomats and merchants around the map, the flawed diplomacy, and unbalanced odds for these units on VH/VH will just screw you. Plus, what's the point, it's Total War, the entire game is focused on war and conquest.

Playing any of the TW series as a passive, defensive country, is like playing Ultima Online as a tailor. Anyone sympathise?

I'm eagerly awaiting some of these mods people are mentioning, though i've never felt the need before. Just for you vets though - remember the days of Shogun, where you'd destroyed all but the last faction, and then found they controlled half the map? Or the days of MTW, where you had one more territory to go, and then your entire empire when into civil war, and you smashed the computer screen, poured petrol on your case, and sent the whole lot burning to oblivion?

I'm not claiming to be uber l337, i'm not trying to sell my amazing skills to you. But for gods sake, i AM an RTS and TBS veteran, i've been playing this stuff since i was 8, and when i click very hard, i expect to have my balls boiled by a razor sharp AI. And don't tell me it's not possible, because we have AI controlling some of the world's most advanced weapons systems.

Just look at civilization IV! And before anyone says "go play it". I don't like it.
Which is why i'm here :)

[PureFodder]

The English are definately one of the easier factions, especially before the patch when you knew that once you'd secured Britain and Ireland the computer would never cross the big blue void to come attack your settlements there. Plus the English units are fairly tough.

Try a faction like the Moors. No horse archers, no heavy infantry till you've got a citadel and the top level barracks and fairly bad cavalry till you get a huge city. Knowing that your troops will get demolished in a fair fight makes for some exciting battles. Also try taking Western Europe without using any diplomats. Defending settlements against 4 full atacked crudade armies at the same time especially when you lack powerful cavalry and infantry creates some very hair raising moments.

[Grimmy]

Everyone keeps saying they should make a better AI, but just exactly how is that done?

AI reactions have to be coded, dont they? Or am I mistaken in that? Dont they have to basically be a series of "if - then" or whatever? If that's the case, how much "predictive" "well, if the player does this, check that that this this those these, them, that over there, etc etc etc" can a set of coders be expected to produce without making them so variable that the AI is frozen in a constant variable check?

I honestly think some folk just will not be happy unless they can play full campaigns against other humans. Then they will complain because the other humans arent smart enough, tough enough, whatever. Then if they start getting beat, it will be the humans cheating.

I know that wouldnt be the case for all of the multiplayers but we'd hear that just about as often as we hear "they should make the stooopid AI smarter".

Some day it might be fun to go back through the forums and see how many of the people whining about pointless battles now were whining about "RTW: Siege War" back then or bitching about the "simple risk map". I remember long and endless discussions on the various forums where the loudest of the players hated the RTW AI because it was all about sieging cities and you never met an unexpected fight in the field. Now that seems to be reversed, agian, again.

There's always chess, I guess, for those that just can wrap their heads around the fact that there are limits to games designs in a digital format.

[Soylent Green]

Everyone keeps saying they should make a better AI, but just exactly how is that done?

AI reactions have to be coded, dont they? Or am I mistaken in that? Dont they have to basically be a series of "if - then" or whatever? If that's the case, how much "predictive" "well, if the player does this, check that that this this those these, them, that over there, etc etc etc" can a set of coders be expected to produce without making them so variable that the AI is frozen in a constant variable check?

I honestly think some folk just will not be happy unless they can play full campaigns against other humans. Then they will complain because the other humans arent smart enough, tough enough, whatever. Then if they start getting beat, it will be the humans cheating.

I know that wouldnt be the case for all of the multiplayers but we'd hear that just about as often as we hear "they should make the stooopid AI smarter".

Some day it might be fun to go back through the forums and see how many of the people whining about pointless battles now were whining about "RTW: Siege War" back then or bitching about the "simple risk map". I remember long and endless discussions on the various forums where the loudest of the players hated the RTW AI because it was all about sieging cities and you never met an unexpected fight in the field. Now that seems to be reversed, agian, again.

There's always chess, I guess, for those that just can wrap their heads around the fact that there are limits to games designs in a digital format.

So basically you're saying there's never been and never could be, a challenging AI, ever. I disagree.

[Carl]

So basically you're saying there's never been and never could be, a challenging AI, ever. I disagree.

I'm sorry to say it, but he's right.

Their is actually a mod for DoW that give the games AI a boost, the problem however that this mod team are begining to encounter is that they are limited in how much better they can make the AI because of the performance hit. They've had a few releases now that they've had to hotfix because of lag issues even on high end DUAL CORE systems.

The TW Games are FAR nmore feature packed than DoW and thus doubtless require a very complex AI coding just to get the current level of difficulty. You COULD code a truly challanging AI, but without a system with several multi-core processers in it you could never run it as the performance hit on even a high end home PC would leave the game unplayable.

Why do you think AI desginers have relied for so long on giving the PC more money/recources/whatever and better units when compared to the player in the same situation. It's because it cuts down the AI processer lag.