after going back to rome, i see how bad M2 AI is

[econ21]

but anyway, i had phyrrus in the south of italy, so i trained a few units and marched on rome with a nice army. i fought a roman army that had 4 more units than I...and was promptly spanked

i was pissed and happy at the same time. since i had M2 i rarely on hard difficulty lost a battle, even againsts 2X odds...yet in a "fair" fight in rtw i was spanked

Bizzarre. I've never heard anyone say RTW has better battlefield AI than M2TW until now. I've found it much more competitive (on VH, never bothered trying below that). For example, in our HRE PBM, we've currently killed or captured 10000 enemies for the loss of 1/3 of that of our own. That 3:1 kill ratio does not seem excessive (true, we've never lost but for a braindead AI, it is taking down a fair number of our men). I don't know what kill ratio we got in our RTR PE PBM, but I suspect it was considerably higher.

I wonder if you are just falling victim to RTRs Romans? Look at the stats - the Principes are rather uber, while the rival hoplite types lack bite in my experience. Plus RTR has sky high morale, especially the Romans, so you can be in trouble against a larger high quality army.

The strategic AI in M2TW seems much better. I've observed it keep multiple armies together for mutual support and keep out of reach of stronger armies - ie it actually maneouvres. It is also much more aggressive and capable of snatching poorly defended settlements if you don't pay attention. RTWs strategic AI was so passive and slothful, it was hard to prod it into action even when it was in a superior position.