Are the Romans too Powerful?

[Ludens]

Sorry, but i lost the flow of thought there - if it gives away (the position advantage) then how can he be showingconsideration for not tiring his units, since he does so (tiring hi units) in the process?

The point is that the A.I. lets you take the height advantage without responding (other than changing it's facing). If, like you suggest, the A.I. does this because it believes it gives it the highest combat modifiers, maintaining or regaining height advantage must mean a trade-off with another combat modifier. The only modifier I can think of is fatigue, but the A.I. shows very little concern for fatigue in other conditions. Ergo, I do not think the A.I. calculates optimal combat modifiers, but instead works with routines.

Not necessarily - when i play MTW & mods the AI seems fully conscious of his overall melee power of his and the opponents army, and if he has more melee infantry than the player he rushes, in a full scale attack and i noticed the same behaviour in RTW. If not, he plays more safe, skirmishing, deploying piece meal and trying out flank moves or just stays there until he is attacked.

He also seems to be doing the same at various times during a battle, ie re-assess and act accordingly.

True. However, as you said it still employs it's spear as cavalry-killers even though they are not suited for that after the 1.1 patch. Again, this suggests to me the A.I. works on routines rather than always calculating combat modifiers.

On the other hand, according to Puzz3D the A.I. of M:TW would never attack an enemy unit with a weaker one, so apparently there is some calculation of modifiers going on. This is not the case in R:TW, though.

In all probability the "men" in the older engine were consisting of a single "dot" concept wise. The combat caclulation it-self could have been very straight forward. In the newer engine, the men being 3-D and all, they should be consisting of a "hit-box" for calculation purposes. The calculation now should be way more complicated in that it has to include where the weapons are falling in order to make a "hit" before the actual calculation can take place (at least i would guess so).

Units in the older engine were very obedient in taking orders and also could do quite amazing courses of action that gave tactical options for the skilled player. One example is the way they spreaded in chasing down routers - you can clearly see that they were operating well in an individual basis.

Another example is that i have seen for example cavalry that charges a close opponent split in two, ending up attacking a second opponent too if you give the order to them to do so in the last moment. In a recent battle i was able to hold up two enemy "blobs" this way until help arrived with 1 single heavy cavalry unit. It shows that the AI was "instilled" in each sprite individually probably, as well as in the unit as a whole.

In RTW units move as one whole/blob and such tricks as well as effective router chasing do not happen (at least i didn't notice them). They also seem to be slightly deficient in the way they gang up on enemy soldiers.

Good points. However, I recall one of the developers stating that they did not implement overhand spears because they had trouble with the hit-boxes. Also, animation speeds also have an influence on combat outcome. Thirdly, I've seen the "general killed" animation start, and suddenly stop without the general dying, apparently because an enemy soldier in the general's vincinity was cut down. This does suggests that combat is calculated on an individual basis.

All in all - the extra complexity seems to have taken out forcibly some of the options engine abilities for tactical depth as there has to be a compromise between what can be achieved (system requirements), what looks believable (appearance - feeling of a battle) and tactical depth. That is tactical depth has to share consideration with two other parameters that "do not care" for it, in fact they contradict it in many cases.

In the end, the results look goofy to me even to this day. The animations of 3-D men, however advanced - still defy belief and are ridiculous, and if i may add of hollywood-like aesthetics that are cheap and populistic IMO. They would need uber computers to make them act really proper, and once one starts going down that route there is no end to the amount of detail you can include.

At the same time, the game suffers on the gameplay side because of this, in the battle-map (and in the campaign map IMO, but that's another story).

Very true, sadly.