Although I am with Bob in seeing the battles as the core of the game I voted for better campaing AI. As someone mentioned, if the campaign AI was a bit better I wouldn't be fighting battles against hordes of peasants.

That whole post about

Why does the AI:

  • send priests to my territories when his are on the verge of heresy
  • send spies to my territories when his are virtually inopen rebellion
  • keep moving insignificant armies back and forwards on the raod to nowhere
  • send useless armies to invade. Either too small or ineffective troops.
  • invade when clearly outnumbered
  • not accept ceasefires when they have been consistently beaten and are now facing complete disaster
  • bother to attack over bridges
  • move from a tactically useful position (high ground / bridge) for no apparent reason when threatened


Things that are broke or don't really work:

Merchants get my goat. The AI obviously has the bandwidth to train every single one of his, I don't since I am playing total WAR, not total market.
Princesses - more micro management. I just kill all foreign ones I can see as they slow the game down during the AI turn (all that standing around and bowing...)
Diplomats - in that they rarely seem to achieve a coherent result
Diplomacy - when was the last time you saw an "ally" come to your aid?
Assassins - his work, yours don't. Just make them much, much, much more expensive but get hem to work

To be fair though I think a lot of the later are the result of the "community" requesting some of these features. The whole Campaign side of the game has got overblown and the elements now don't interact properly anymore in my view. Forget anbout half the campaign distractions and concentrate on getting it right so that we cna enjoy the battles. Less borked strategy and more sorted tactics.