Basically, turn 34, 34 provinces, with Oslo, Bern and Zagreb under siege. The lost battles are me auto solving my 3 militias vs. rebels till I take them out...
This is on vh/vh settings!
Now, I've reinstalled mtw(the original), and, if you imagine I'm some tactical genius, I must tell you I had serious issues in winning battles over there. Heck, even rome had a better ai(though those phalanx, were so realistic that the german phalanx beat a roman legion if faced head on, which is quite ridiculous).
But, if in rome, was already much "point and charge", here is... only "point and charge"! And even that would be bareable, but... even in sieges and places where I had no cavalry(btw., I'm no genius in the campaign map part either... my "elite" units are the merc spearmen and ok, 3-4 teutonic knights... can't tech up too much in 34 turns, can you... plus is pointless when you advance so fast).
Now, imagine the following scenario: ai sieges venice as venice(full stack, 20 troops this time - God knows how he managed to create a full stack, but whatever...). Me, 3 spear militias, 2 mailed knights, 1 pessie archer, 1 pisant for cannon fodder. He builds ram, ladder, siege tower.
Assault starts... Ladder, ram, tower come towards me; I get out the pisants to delay the ram, ladders reach the wall, tower is close to the wall(needless to say that, inbetween the 17 italian spear militia, the ai chose his 3 pessie archer units to manipulate the siege eq., but that'd be already ok given what I saw afterwards...).
Ladders reach the wall, ram stops, tower stops! Everyone(and I mean litterlaly everyone, 20 units, go and bunch up to that one bloodly ladder! Even my 3 spear militias being able to repel them given the conditions! The ladders are on the left hand, from your besieged perspective, right near the gate.
I decide to test if the ai is really that stupid so I pull out my 2 cav. units out, but not by the side gate, but through the front gate. Now, out of that blob of 20 units, none attacked me while I walked by them(walk, not run)! So, I graciously position my 2 mailed knights behind them, and charge!(take out 3-4 units that start fleeing, I chase them, then rince and repeat till I win the siege with 0 soldiers left on his side)![]()
Same thing, budapest; again, full stack of byzantium this time vs my 6 this time, spear militia and 1 general to chase them.
This time the ai brings in a ballista(zhe horror). They build their siege eq, then next turn the ai sits there and tears down the walls with the ballista(makes you wonder why they made the siege eq in the 1st place, plus had to wait 10 mins till he did his voodoo...).
Naturally, the 1st to run through the holes into my shildoms is... their king, who bravely dies. Needles to say I take out my general through the main gate(I mean, really, why would you pick on the enemy general when you have a bunch of spearmen... it's too easy, so the ai keeps trying to get in via the holes in the walls... weaklings use the gate!) and start chasing routers as they came... Obviously, I win the siege, 30 soldiers left out of his HAs, who obviously rushed 1st through the holes... who needs arrows when you can charge with your 3 defence sky...(whatever... the 1st ha byzantium gets that noone bar the ai builds).
In each and every field battle, if you put a cav. as carrot way in front of your lines, the ai rushes in all his missle troops too much in front, only to be charged at the leisure of the said cav.!![]()
If, in a balanced battle, you put your troops in the most horrid position which no sane person would charge(and I usually carry a decent # of missle troops), the ai gracefully climbs up the #hitiest mountains you can find 1 by 1 only to be shot to death by the archers that now have an uber range...![]()
I can install whatever mods(and I have to admit there are some great ones that I found over here) to upgrade the ai on the campaign map, on diplomacy, to fix the ton of bugs that this game has, etc. However... there's none that make the dang machine to act with at least a minimum of common sense on the tactical map(and there won't be any, as that can't be modded)!
Pretty graphics are ok, I suppose; but noone played this serie for pretty graphics! Nor for that bloody campaign map! The thing that made the succes of this serie was exactly the tactical battles! Rest... there are a ton of turn based games 10 times better then this one!
How hard could've been to just copy the ai from mtw1?! Which wasn't brilliant either, but at least acted with a minimal dose of common sense!![]()
Rome had worse ai then mtw. Anyone remembers pre 1.1, how they sat there like idiots while you peppered them with arrows much like in mtw2 pre patch? Or how you took out one cavalry and ran around your city with all his stupid phalanxes hoplessly running after you while all your archers peppered them from atop the city walls along with the towers till you ran out of time? Or how he kept reforming and reforming(much like in mtw2) his battle line while you kept encircling him with your ha, instead of stopping right there and shoot back at you?
And now, in this one, you virtually flank and fall behind him with your cav. while he looks at you!
My cav. -----> His line ----> My line
He doesn't even have the common sense to turn 1-2 units to face your cav.! You just walk around his line while he looks at you!![]()
All in all... is it me playing too much, or this game is a disaster tactical wise?
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