Are the Romans too Powerful?

[Noir]

Originally posted by Ludens
My own contribution to this discussion was to point out that the R:TW A.I. never uses ambushes on the battlemap.

There was an ambush morale (or attack?) bonus (or was it penalty for the victims, or both? - need to check) for units previously in hiding attacking other units in the older engine (legendary for working in the infamous STW fog). This bonus together with many others seems to have been taken out - i have no clue if this is the cause for the AI not finding ambushes worthwhile anymore, but it might as well be related.

Other bonuses including penalties for cavalry in woods and accuracy penalties for archers and volley density relative to sight obstructions and formation shape were also removed. These are only a few examples to my understanding. All these simplifications might possibly account for simpler behaviour for the AI to a lesser or higher degree.

If the AI used in RTW was the same as that for MTW, even in principle - the simplifications in the engine might have confused it and made it look goofy IMO.

Originally posted by Ludens
If it's units are hidden, it's just because they happened to be between the trees. Also, if the player's units hide, the A.I. forgets about them. I recently saw the A.I. chase one of my skirmisher units through the forest. I ordered my unit to halt, and they went into hiding. The A.I. broke of pursuit, and ordered it's units to return to the collunm. For all intents and purposes, it acted as if it had forgotten about my skirmishers.

I really didn't know about that, i must say - thanks for the information.

Originally posted by Ludens
Another example is the use of height advantage. In M:TW and S:TW the A.I. would move to gain as much height advantages as possible. If you moved to negate this, it would reposition itself to maximize height advantage again. This could lead to an elaborate dance with the player in which both tried to turn the terrain to their advantage. The R:TW A.I. also likes to take the hills, but if you move around it to gain the higher ground, it does nothing to prevent that. It merely swivels to face you. If the hill it positioned it's army on is very small, you can sometimes make it swivel it's army of the hill.

I disagree on this one. The MTW AI is indeed better to use the high ground however he does fall in the "change facing trap" and also allows advance to the player to a certain extent if you move from a smoother slope to meet him.

In many cases (also very recently actually) i got it to completely give up his edge camping strong position by advancing fully from the flank. The AI redeployed to a far off position and in the process lost the high ground and i got the chance to attack him. It was in an Almohad campaign in my home mini-mod for MedMod IV. The same behaviour i have noticed in other mods and in vanilla MTW/VI.

I remember that similar things could happen in STW WE.

Many Thanks

Noir