M2TW, does anyone like the original better

[caravel]

Hmmm... those are great write ups, but as far as tactics go, I'm not sure they're the sort of "open battle" tactics that I would call "tactics".

If I wanted to get all critical and pedantic ( ) I could call those examples AI exploits, taking advantage of the AI's inability to coordinate it's forces and fight a battle on multiple fronts.

[econ21]

Indeed, and Homer had a good write-up but that Ulysses was just exploiting the weak Trojan AI with that wooden horse thing...

To be pedantic right back at you: I'll wager more tact and cunning went into ancient and medieval sieges than field battles. The siege engineers of the time, from Archimedes onwards, were typically more cerebral than the field commanders. Medieval field battles, particularly, tended to be unimaginative affairs - form up three battle divisions and have at it, sort of thing. With siege assaults, trying to take the enemy by surprise and overwhelm a weak point was critical to avoiding a bloodbath.

More to the point - I've only played 3 battles, all sieges, in that PBM so far but they each gave me pause for thought. I could have just barrelled through a breach or even autoresolved, but to say there is no ability to use tact or cunning is just wrong.

[_Aetius_]

Indeed, and Homer had a good write-up but that Ulysses was just exploiting the weak Trojan AI with that wooden horse thing...

To be pedantic right back at you: I'll wager more tact and cunning went into ancient and medieval sieges than field battles. The siege engineers of the time, from Archimedes onwards, were typically more cerebral than the field commanders. Medieval field battles, particularly, tended to be unimaginative affairs - form up three battle divisions and have at it, sort of thing. With siege assaults, trying to take the enemy by surprise and overwhelm a weak point was critical to avoiding a bloodbath.

I agree with you here, there aren't as many examples as people would think of a battle where one commander won by a stroke of genius over the other, battles were probably as a standard nowhere near as imaginative as Cannae for example. More likely to have been more of a Zama, a long bloodfest, both sides hacking away at the other until one couldnt take it anymore, the inevitable rout claiming more lives than the battle itself.

Sieges were different, it often took ingenuity to seize a well defended city or fortress, a small piece of information, finding the tiniest of access holes the defenders knew nothing of, they could go on for months or even years as both sides tried to outwit the other. Some were decided by storming, but it was often only the last resort as a bloodbath would take place regardless who won.

[caravel]

Indeed, and Homer had a good write-up but that Ulysses was just exploiting the weak Trojan AI with that wooden horse thing...

Totally different. Troy didn't have automatic doors that open for friendly units and allow enemy units to slip in.

To be pedantic right back at you: I'll wager more tact and cunning went into ancient and medieval sieges than field battles. The siege engineers of the time, from Archimedes onwards, were typically more cerebral than the field commanders. Medieval field battles, particularly, tended to be unimaginative affairs - form up three battle divisions and have at it, sort of thing. With siege assaults, trying to take the enemy by surprise and overwhelm a weak point was critical to avoiding a bloodbath.

I wasn't contesting that point. When I said "field" tactics I was referring to tactics that don't involved the exploitation of the AI's inability to coordinate it's forces. Attacking on several fronts and winning because the AI simply ignored some of your men, and allowed them to breach the wall unchallenged are not great tactics to shout about. They're nothing new, they're not evidence of a great improvement in the battle engine either. They are simply a matter of deployment.

More to the point - I've only played 3 battles, all sieges, in that PBM so far but they each gave me pause for thought. I could have just barrelled through a breach or even autoresolved, but to say there is no ability to use tact or cunning is just wrong.

I wasn't saying that there was no ability to use tact or cunning. What I did say was that if I was going to be critical and pedantic I could have called all of your tactics AI exploits. In my opinion they are a bit of both. I feel sure that you fought those battles very well, but concentrated on the feints of the ladders, the back door and sneaking in the front door with the routers. The question is, if that were a multiplayer scenario do you believe you would still get away with it?

Edit: I wasn't being hostile, nor picking an argument either, if it came across like that, or if this post comes across as argumentative, then I apologise.

[Ignoramus]

To be honest, I agree with Cambyses.

To be fair, MTW2 has improved over Rome, yes. But I still find that the only battles I lose are either because of the shield bug(and thus Dismounted Men at Arms getting slaughtered by Peasants) or if I'm hopelessly outnumbered.

I've enjoyed the PBM that econ's in, and fought several battles too. However, none of my victories have been to my skill, rather the AI's lack of it. They allow me to single out their general all too often, which results in an instant rout.

In Rome, I, too, found it uninspiring. Campaigns were a walk-over, and battles were ridiculously biased in cavalry's favour.

[econ21]

Attacking on several fronts and winning because the AI simply ignored some of your men, and allowed them to breach the wall unchallenged are not great tactics to shout about.

Linking is not shouting.

They're nothing new, they're not evidence of a great improvement in the battle engine either.

Did I say they were?

I wasn't saying that there was no ability to use tact or cunning.

Indeed, but I was responding to the poster who said there was no such ability.

[caravel]

Linking is not shouting.

Misunderstanding?

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/...to+shout+about

Did I say they were?

I didn't say that you did, you've quoted selectively. I was making a side statement that the types of tactics you're using aren't as a direct result of improvements to the battle engine. My main statement was this:

Attacking on several fronts and winning because the AI simply ignored some of your men, and allowed them to breach the wall unchallenged are not great tactics to shout about. They're nothing new...

Indeed, but I was responding to the poster who said there was no such ability.

Basically I think this debate is going nowhere. Perhaps I was too quick to jump on your example and was over critical of it, in reality I cannot comment accurately on M2TW until I've played it, so any of my opinions are from an RTW perspective. Though so far, a lot of the user feedback I'm reading about M2TW is quite off putting. Still, it is an unknown quantity, at present, and like Rome will probably need to be patched a few times before it's decently playable.

[caravel]

I was playing a siege in RTW today and was back into the "head shaking disbelief" mode. Basically I was playing as Gaul and had a tiny garrison of two units, Mercenary Hoplites and Chosen Swordsmen for the record, besieged in the city just to the south of Rome (forgot it's name!). My total number of men was just under 300, the Brutii attacking have 2500 including ballistas. They began lined up (attacking on only one front despite the size of their force) in front of the front gates out of range, with their ballistas shooting repeatedly at the gatehouse... they went on by shooting repeatedly at the gatehouse until the gatehouse was stated to be "100% destroyed" (two crumpled looking towers though apart from that solid as a rock (bug!?) ), they did not shoot at the gate itself which would have actually served the purpose of allowing them easy entry. It was then that the Brutii force with it's 2 battering rams, 2 scaling ladder teams and a siege tower advanced towards the walls. Then they waited in directly front of the walls for their ballistas to start once again firing at a tower for no obvious reason?! All the time their men were getting shot up by this tower. Once it was destroyed they finally advanced the siege equipment to the walls and began to ram the gates. My men were defeated in the square eventually, but the point is that the AI was unbelievably inadequate.

Can anyone say if this has improved in M2TW?? I'm not saying that MTW sieges were anything special because they definitely weren't, but are M2TW sieges noticeably better, and does the scenario above still occur?

[Martok]

Bearing in mind that I don't really recall any specifics at this point (it's been a month or two since I played), my opinion of the AI in Medieval 2 is that while it's somewhat better at assaulting cities than in Rome, it's still not what I would define as truly competent.

There's less aimless milling about of troops and the computer is more decisive in its actions, but it doesn't utilize its artillery that well and sometimes employs units ill-suited to attacking fortifications. (I do remember defending one city where the emeny attempted to storm over the walls with some crossbowmen, even though they had a number of swordsmen and spearmen at their disposal. )

[Caerfanan]

(I do remember defending one city where the emeny attempted to storm over the walls with some crossbowmen, even though they had a number of swordsmen and spearmen at their disposal. )

Well, not the first time I read someone reporting a stupid "charge" with crossbowmen. Could it be that the decision comes from te high defense and armor levels? Making them "falsely" the ones most likely to survive long enough to wait for reinforcements without routing?




Are the crossbowmen a low intelligence and brash unit?

[econ21]

Can anyone say if this has improved in M2TW?? I'm not saying that MTW sieges were anything special because they definitely weren't, but are M2TW sieges noticeably better, and does the scenario above still occur?

M2TW sieges are noticeably better. I've often been wrongfooted by the AI and had to defend a settlement with a miserable garrison (this wrongfooting almost never happened to me in RTW and is evidence of the improved strategic AI & challenge of M2TW). Typically, I lose the siege defence. When the AI has artillery it tends to stay out of range of the towers and make multiple breaches in the walls, destroying towers with any left over ammo. Only when the artillery has expended its ammo does it storm the settlement. Quite frankly, I've learnt from the AI in terms of a methodical approach to storming a settlement.

I can't say whether the scenario you mentioned happens in M2TW or not, as my experience of siege defences is not extensive. But in the couple of dozen or so I've played, I've never experienced it. The AI does concentrate on one side of the settlement though - at least while it has only modest sized armies (I recall from BI that sieges by multiple stacks could sometimes lead to multiple sides of the settlement being attacked).

The big problem I noticed with the BI siege AI was that it always seemed to buy a small amount of siege equipment - a ram, two ladders and a tower. That is just not enough to take down a settlement guarded by anything but a token Roman force. The virtual inability of the AI to take stonewalled settlements is a big flaw in BI. In M2TW, it does not seem to be so constrained.

[Odin]

Hmmm... those are great write ups, but as far as tactics go, I'm not sure they're the sort of "open battle" tactics that I would call "tactics".

If I wanted to get all critical and pedantic ( ) I could call those examples AI exploits, taking advantage of the AI's inability to coordinate it's forces and fight a battle on multiple fronts.

I had a battle with an AI rouge army in wales last night, the AI was the weaker force. While I was getting my units in order and moving to locations I wanted, the AI placed 2 long bow units on a cliff with a spearmen support unit that guarded the only path leading to the commanders mailed nights and 2 more escort spearmen.

I was on very hard, and i took losses but i did win. I had to think tactically in order to win, do I bum rush the general and have his 2 spearmen charge down a slight slope at me? all the while taking fire from ranged units?

Do i take out the archer position? I took out the archer position with the only units i had fast enough to get to them without being chewed up in a hail of arrows. I sent 2 hobilars first and they got chewed up, next were mailed knights. sent 2 units of them and they got the job done, but with 50-60% losses.


Eliminating thier position on the cliff allowed my ranged units unfettered access to the generals position, and even then when the arrows were spent I had to go up a slight slope and rout them out, taking more losses.

So the AI used terrain and set up a decent defensive position, nothing I couldnt handle, but he wasnt running around make foolish charges then feint back which I have seen the AI do in MTWVI many many times.