Have you spotted any Pike & Shot armies?

**R'as al Ghul** · 02-13-2007, 14:47

Well, I haven't.
In my past campaigns the AI has only build gunpowder artillery and perhaps the odd Handgunner but none of the Musketeers or Arquebusiers. I've also not seen a single Pike unit apart from my own.
Has anybody seen any and when are they to be expected?
Some factions field almost the same armies on turn 150 as on turn 20.

R'as

**Drunkin General** · 02-13-2007, 15:18

I've seen the Russian AI field cossack musketeers but they are much easiar to get. One of the problems i've noticed is that the AI can't afford to upgrade its large cities to huge cities. In my last russian campaign I came across a whole load of large cities with 30k pops all belonging to various impoverished AI's.

**R'as al Ghul** · 02-13-2007, 15:26

Originally Posted by Drunkin General

One of the problems i've noticed is that the AI can't afford to upgrade its large cities to huge cities. In my last russian campaign I came across a whole load of large cities with 30k pops all belonging to various impoverished AI's.

Yes, okay that's a problem. The AI still needs to learn how to keep the ecomomy up.
But when you capture cities from Milan around turn 140 and they have Royal Barracks but don't produce any units from them it's a different problem, right?

**pike master** · 02-13-2007, 15:50

the ai will hire mercenaries which is a first as far as i know for tw games

**Drunkin General** · 02-13-2007, 16:04

Originally Posted by mad cat mech

the ai will hire mercenaries which is a first as far as i know for tw games

The AI hired mercs in RTW but not in MTW or STW. Tbh aside from crusades/jihads this is more of a hinderance to the AI since it can't distinguish between good buys & bad buys & it also can't disband

**Von Nanega** · 02-13-2007, 18:07

I have seen the AI hire mercs many times! I checked on merc availability one turn. In the next turn I decided to hire them and they where gone. I sent my my spy for a second look at a French army, and they had them!

**Drunkin General** · 02-13-2007, 16:02

Well army composition has always been a prob in TW games & I think its at its worst in this game due to a number of factors. I think one of the reasons that we aren't seeing a lot of musketeers is because stat wise they probably don't appear like a good unit choice when they could probably produce lets say a unit of dismounted broken lances or genoese xbow. One of the ways you could look at this problem is switching to autobuild units in one of your campaigns & see if the auto build goes for musketeers over the much stronger(stat wise) units. Now that I think about it, i'm pretty sure that the auto build unit could be the problem here(or a blessing if you don't have musketeers). This would also explain why when ever I bump into the russians in a late game they always have loads of cossack musketeers since statwise they are the best unit available to the russkies from a city. This might also affect militia pike who have pretty weak stats.