AI Armies

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Hi all,

with what AI-factions are you more or less content regarding how historically "plausible", or generally credible, the armies that they field are? I made the following experiences:

Arche Seleukeia / Ptolemaioi: Generally good. Mostly consist of 5 to 10 units of phalangites, some Psiloi, some Thorakitai / Thureophoroi. Their armies are generally balanced without spamming of Sphendonetai or else.

Western hellenic factions: OK, but suffer from Psiloi spamming, due to the fact that they are seemingly much poorer and have less developed MICs than their eastern colleagues.

Celts: OK, but they suffer from the problem of either making all Gairoas / Lugoae armies or All-Gaesatae armies, no cavalry.

Lusotannan: OK, their armies are of a reasonable mixture of lighter and medium / heavy typical iberian troops.

Sweboz: Generally good, a balanced and reasonable mix of their unit roaster, fielding much from their tribal allies like Cheruskii-warbands; armies raised in the east of their presumable empire consist mostly of baltic Kirslininkas / Lankininkas, what I find to be quite reasonable.

Getai: OK, but field mostly celtic levies and Komatai-only-hordes, at least in my campaigns.

Hayasdan: OK, but a bit too strong emphasis on foot archers in my opinion, melee infantry OK with one or two Soosemarartig (sp?) in their armies.

Pontos: They field lots of missile units and celtic levies due to their access to Galatia.

Nomads: Field very much foot archers in my campaign instead of mounted ones.

Carthago: As to what I know, they do quite good, although I'm no expert on the Carthies and have to admit that I can't really tell them apart. They seem to use a diverse and reasonable mix though.

SPQR: Now that's a real desaster. They never field legions. They field armies consisting of 12 units Rorarii and a few italian allies, or they field an army of Gairoas or Lugoae spiced up with a few italian allies, or they field armies with about 6 Camillian Triarii plus a few italian allies / Gairoas / Lugoae. They are army-wise really the worst AI-faction.

Saba / Baktria: Their seem OK, but I didn't faced them really yet and do not have any idea what they should look like.

Please feel free to agree or disagree and post your experiences. I'm really interested if it's basically the same on your screen. Note that I'm aware of the EB-team's efforts to make the AI-armies as accurate as possible, and appreciate their work very much, although I make a little criticism here.

[mlp071]

I had same army compositions with "vanilla" scripts. It is not EB's fault though.

AI( ) tends to mass recruit units in the way "most amount for the buck" approach.And thats dependent of money that AI gets and some other things

Thats why Redmeth and I worked on scripts that give AI more money and better army compositions.Now i am facing mostly balanced armies , example Sauromatae Noble HA and heavy cavalry

If you are not happy with present ones , you can try that.

[Ignopotens]

I think the reason Rome's Armies seem so out of character is because they documented their Army compositions a lot more specifically than most, although I do agree I've seen some pretty strange groupings

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Remember that if an army is coming out of a type4 or type3 government province, that it should not be considered the same as one coming out of a type1 or 2 province. They are allies and loosely controlled regions that are fairly autonomous. They are allied to the major power, and may fight alongside their soldiers, but they aren't the core lands of the power itself.

[Conqueror]

I haven't had the opportunity to fight with all that many factions yet, but here's my observations:
- KH is pretty good, they put great emphasis on heavy infantry. I would like to see them use more of the hoplitai types and less thorakitai types though. They also bring along a good number of foot skirmishers, barely any cavalry and practically no long range missile units. Note that in my campaing the KH have eliminated Epirotes and Maks and are very rich.
- Karthadastim also love their heavy infantry, especially the elites They also tend to use lots of numidian (foot) skirmishers and it's not unusual to see 1-2 units of elephants in a full army. They have too little cavalry, only the generals and maybe a single unit of medium/heavy, they never seem to use skirmisher cav (I'm fighting them in North Africa, BTW),
- Pontos went for a mix of everything that was available to them (and quite a mix that was).
- Sauromatae use lots of foot archers in addition to their horse archers. They also bring along some sucky infantry to throw their lives away on my pikes.
- Pahlava are rich despite never expanding south, and there is nothing they love more than making an army of mostly cataphracts of many different types, with a minority of light horse archers and some infantry/foot archers.
- Ptolemaioi didn't live long in my campaign but I recall that they liked to recruit lots of galatikoi kleruchoi (?)
- Saba went for a mix of infantry, skirmishers and missiles, sometimes supporting them with a good number of cavalry.

[KARTLOS]

the sarmatae have had good stacks in my campaign - alot of horse archers

[jhhowell]

I only found Lusotannan and Sweboz satisfactory, though I haven't seen much east of the Aegean yet.

Carthage was sometimes decent, sometimes not. They fielded near-100% militia stacks on the islands (probably couldn't recruit much else there), but their last army in Africa and their Iberian army were both pretty sensible. Could have used more cavalry and missile units, but it's hard to argue with an army consisting mostly of outstanding infantry (though one could argue that the units derived from Rome's Polybian units shouldn't be fighting Camillan Romans - short of introducing Punic reforms there's no way around that, though).

Celts - their armies are utter nonsense. I've posted before about the Lugoae/Iosatae armies, 50/50 split. Most towns can't build any other units in my game. As long as they keep fighting each other the slinger spam won't be a direct problem, at least.

Epirus - also slinger-spam nonsense. And many of the units who aren't slingers are archers.

KH - levy hoplite hordes, though they do spit out the occasional quality unit for variety.

Makedon - hard to tell, what troops they have are constantly ground down by KH. They could be OK if they ever had the time and money to recover, which I don't expect to see in my current game.

What I've seen of Ptolemaioi thus far hasn't been very sensible. One stack was 100% heavy infantry, mostly intact units. No cavalry or missile units at all, so they were easily demolished by a force of mercs and a partial legion, heavily reinforced with extra missile units and cavalry. Mmm, peltasts and numidian cavalry vs. phalanxes, tasty! Their next stack looked Macedonian - in the sense of being 17 badly mauled high experience remnant units. Doesn't much matter what the units are if they're that badly understrength.

[KARTLOS]

What I've seen of Ptolemaioi thus far hasn't been very sensible. One stack was 100% heavy infantry, mostly intact units. No cavalry or missile units at all, so they were easily demolished by a force of mercs and a partial legion, heavily reinforced with extra missile units and cavalry. Mmm, peltasts and numidian cavalry vs. phalanxes, tasty! Their next stack looked Macedonian - in the sense of being 17 badly mauled high experience remnant units. Doesn't much matter what the units are if they're that badly understrength.

ptolemaioi have been somewhat ok for me, their armies at least included some decent troops - elite phalanxes and the galatian heavy inf. however like you i found they incpuded no missile or cavalry, which meant i was able to cope with them fairly easily. in my save they are perhaps lacking in family members. they besieged two of my cities with reasonably large armies, yet neither had a general, they would have had half a chance if they had done as in both instance they outnumbered me and the odds were heavily in their favour.

[The Errant]

The money script and merc file make a ton of difference on the unit composition. From facing mostly merc armies I'm finally facing a good mix of factional troops with some mercs thrown in to bolster the line. In my last game I've got the money script without the merc tweaks. These are the results:

The Seleukids use their core provinces to make decent factional armies with some levies thrown in. The Ptoly line is almost exclusively heavy infantry and pikemen. In the south facing Ethiopia you can see more diverse stacks with Machimoi light cavalry even.

Koinon stacks are the most plausible. A good mix of hoplites of various types. Typically no cavalry.

Macedon is a real power in my game and their troops consist mostly of Pezhatairoi and Thorakitai. Lots of mercs too with their economy.

Pontics make balanced armies of locals and Galatian troops. They too sometimes go merc heavy. On the good side I've seen them field Chalkaspidai once their barracks get sufficiently upgraded. Along with Galatian Kuarathoroi and even scythed chariots.

Carthie armies are 50/50. Sometimes you see balanced stacks of decent infantry and even elephants. Although little in the way of cavalry. On the other hand there are plenty of stacks with nothing but Punic Citizen Militia.

Lusotana stacks are balanced with a good mix of Iberian troop types. I've never seen them field Diodataskeli though.

Roman stacks suck. Typically no cavalry but lots of rorarii and leves. With the occasional triarii in the mix. And lots of Italian allies. And Lugolae if they move north of the Alps.

Gallic stacks are even worse. Lugolae and Iosatae. Nothing else, except mercs.

Sweboz stacks look OK. Haven't faced any yet, so no idea what their power is.

Getai definately spam Komatai and what's worse. They never do anything with their huge stacks.

The steppe factions use too many foot archers IMO. But that could just be their crappy economy talking.

Baktrian stacks are a good mix of locals but tend to be on the light side.

Saba has the advantage of having virtually no reagional troops except for Pantadapoi and merc heavy infantry of the local kind. When they get their economy going they make decent stacks although some are too heavy with slingers and skirmishers.

[Swordmaster]

Perhaps it's due to the money/merc mod I have, but I've seen some quite good AI armies. In my latest Roman campaign, Pontos fielded lots and lots of chalkaspidae. Epeiros fielded lots and lots of chaonion agema. Baktria fielded lots and lots of baktrion agema. Ptolies were dead already when I arrived on the scene, but they still had a decent mix of phalanxes and celts. War with Hayasdan is looming, so we'll see what they've got.

[Pius Curus]

Hi folks,
I have one question. How is the best play of EB. There is written in the FAQ gameplay answers - Very hard/Medium. It means: Very hard (battles)/ Medium (strategy map) or is my meaning wrog?
Thank you for advice!

[Ludens]

Hi folks,
I have one question. How is the best play of EB. There is written in the FAQ gameplay answers - Very hard/Medium. It means: Very hard (battles)/ Medium (strategy map) or is my meaning wrog?
Thank you for advice!

It means Very Hard campaign, medium battles. VH battles gives A.I. troops a huge bonus to combat stats without making them act more cleverly. At M battles are balanced.

[Tellos Athenaios]

^^ Though, you'd better not autocalc: the game will use the campaign difficulty to determin battle outcome here. (And VH is harsh with EB.)

Btw, Ludens, congrats!

--------------------

From time to time the Arverni do really good, but then they attack me! (Playing as Casse I had moved into mainland Europe, you see.) At least they did so with a mixed army of some Gaesatae + Some slingers + Some light cavalry + General (heavy cavalry) + Massaliotai Hoplitai (yay, the Gauls use local tribsemen!) + Nothern & Southern Swordsmen + Akontistai. Obviously, they got beaten badly - they walked right into my hidden army near the road to Bagacos...

(Still don't believe that ambush, IIRC there were about 10 - 20 trees total the rest was just field. Never mind, weirder thing have happened with RTW. )

[Reno Melitensis]

As SPQR I almost had a battle with every nation in the med. sea. I agree with most that the Hellenon field good balanced armies, so have the gauls, both factions. The Aidui and Averni have always fielded a good balanced army, even if occasionally I would be faced with large numbers of slingers, but as said it rarely occur. The Macedons and Kardastim are the worst in having a large number of mercs, even if at times the punic armies are a bit realistic, there always contain one or two merc units.

And as far as Epirus goes, well unlike the senate I wasnt happy with the capture of Taras, so I invaded their homeland. The faction leader decided to go to war against Macedon. So he drained the region from all merc units, an all mercenary army with a very few faction units. I remember that their where two heavy Illyrian infantry and a few Akontistai, Toxotai and slingers. Well thanks to Antigonas the Epirotic army was defeated so it was a piece of cake to wipe them out. If you did't know I hate them the most.

Cheers.

[Ludens]

Btw, Ludens, congrats!

[Tellos Athenaios]

The Macedons and Kardastim are the worst in having a large number of mercs, even if at times the punic armies are a bit realistic, there always contain one or two merc units.

My pet theory is that all merc armies are the direct result of 1) Merc heavy regions plus 2) Cavalry FM bodyguards. Couple a popular observation that the AI nearly always tends to mass recruit mercs when a general just got beaten bad and scapered, with the fact that Generals on horseback get escape the danger more easily...

EDIT: Especially with Hellenic factions it does allow for some very historical army make up though. Just ignore the RTW definition of mercenaries, think of them as "levee en masse", though that name is arguably historical inaccurate. But you get the point, anyway.

[mlp071]

Hehe, being able to recruit 25 (twentyfive) mercenary units at once just in Bythinia(Nikaia) , surely doesn't help.

I am sure that EB team will clean up that in next version though.

[Pius Curus]

To Ludens and others!

Could I ask you, pls? When I play now Hard/Hard I could say I lost the battle only several times. But when I dont want to fight the battle by my self and I solve the battle automaticly per CPU, than I total lost the battle or I had big looses.
And I am afraid of that, if I would play on Very hard(strategy map)/Medium (battles), than the automatical solution of battles per CPU, will be more hard and for my armies devastating. I though that it could be better play on Medium(I will have smaller looses, but how it will be with the aggressiveness of enemy)/Hard, that was my decidion after playing Hard/Hard. What do you mean? Is my meaning wrong?

[Tellos Athenaios]

VH campaign, no autocalc therefore, and M battles. However, if you're playing as one of the minor factions in AS deathzone, then you may wish to play H or M campaign - if only to autocalc a bit more, and M battles. FM's greatly influence the autcome of autocalc, and greatly more if said FM's did happen to have a tower of command starts floating at their side...

[sgsandor]

I love mercs and i dont think there is anything wrong with having alot of them. Just as long as there arent 100s of cheapo peltast i dont care if i get beat....which happens....often....

[Pius Curus]

@Tellos Athenaios

Thank you very much for your reply. Can I ask you, if I will play on Medium(strategy map), how will play the CPU than, will I have enough battles and attack from my opponents and how great will be than their armies? I am afraid, that it will be than boring - small armies and small count attack of neighbours! Do you or anyone have experience of playng Medium/Medium?

[Swordmaster]

It's extremely easy with "big" factions such as the Romans. Not recommended unless you're totally new to the game, or perhaps for harder factions.