AI army composition any better in 1.2?

[GFX707]

I am currently playing 1.2, but I am playing a campaign I started in....probably 1.0.

The Danes are coming at me with armies composed of 75% hand gunners, which gets very tedious, although, don't get me wrong, I love kicking the crap out of them, but it's just too easy.

I also have a screenshot from an earlier game where the AI besieged one of my small castles with about 16 units of artillery and nothing else.

Anyone noticed any positive changes since 1.2?

[romanwarmachine]

AI still tends to use alot of balistas and catapults in my games and not much cav which renders pikes as a useless addition to an army.

I think has to probably do with unit upkeep but thats just a feeling haven't actually looked to close

[icek]

sometimes ai can suprise having army of many dismounted knights and cavalry like sicily in my camp, but mostly ai give such power to command for captain and they barely can do anything serious againts you.

[Ars Moriendi]

If you play slow and give the AI enough time to sort out its finances, it will field some good units eventually, growing up from militia phase...

Here's some screenshots from a vanilla 1.2 campaign, about turn 150 IIRC.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I'm sorry but don't have any pictures of the french armies, I remember fighting lots of top cavalry (lancers and chiv knights) plus serious heavy infantry and missiles - they were one of the last factions to die in the campaign I took these screenshots, and had time to build some pretty impressive and quite well balanced stacks.

[ataribaby]

For me, AI army composition would be the most glaringly obvious thing to sort out in making the most out of game.

When I face an enemy army, the most challenging battles are against the well balanced, varied ones. It seems daft to me that you have to wait until the Mongols and Timurids arrive to get that kind of well-balanced, opposing army stack.

For the most part of the game you face stacks of mainly catapults, or stacks of mainly spear militia, or stacks of mainly mailed knights. Army compostion seems to depend on what tech level the nearst enemy settlement has reached: if they've built a siege works then they'll field armies of 15 trebuchets; if it's a fledgling fortress you'll get 15 DFKs; a castle will pump out cavalry only armies until the first barracks is built, and so on.

Then suddenly the challenge ramps up to 100 and you're facing the hordes. Trouble is, like waiting for a bus, ten varied stacks of elite soldiers suddenly appear at once on the same spot. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium.

[I'm not saying that the horde concept is a bad one. There's something humbling about facing up to the concept of a war of attrition. The first time you get genuinely whooped by the AI will probably be a horde battle. You may win the war in the end but the battles are meat grinders that cost you a lot of good soldiers. Facing the hordes in RTW:BI was the first time I felt I might lose the campaign. With wave after wave of horde stacks to fend off, turtling is no longer an option!]

Like most, when I field an army, ideally I like to have a good variety of units. There's nothing more satisfying than to use a combined arms strategy effectively. I have a few criteria before fielding a basic combined arms stack: it should include some infantry, some missile troops and some cavalry; and I usually have a rough ratio in mind, e.g. for a Western power 4:2:1.

In the campaign I'll set about building the right improvements across my settlements to achieve these basic, varied stacks so that I can mobilise an effective invasion force or a territorial defensive army in a few turns. What I don't do is spam the same unit over and over just to form a full stack.

Why can't the AI have this kind of basic strategy?

[GFX707]

I notice the Mongols always seem to field reasonably balanced armies.

When I leave a city on auto build units (or whatever you call it) it always churns out complete crap, like archers in 1410....maybe that's because the unit allowance for the better stuff is depleted, though.

Anyone know if those unit building limits apply to the AI? You know, the ones that say I can only build 2 bagharas (sp?) per turn but 5 desert archers per turn?

[supadodo]

From my Turkish campaign, the AI does seem to send lots of relatively balanced armies. No screens though but Hungary likes to give me stacks of knights(d n m), plus some militia,crossbowmen and siege eq for support. The Venetians on the other hand love spamming pavise crossbowmen and italian spear militia making it an absolute nightmare. I have rarely seen any full seige eq stacks.

[Daveybaby]

I notice the Mongols always seem to field reasonably balanced armies.

Is that just the (hard-coded) stacks they initally spawn with, or does it also include any new armies they produce once theyve 'settled'?

w.r.t. 'standard' AI factions, I agree that it seems to be primarily economic reasons behind the poor army composition. However, there are also some very dubious decisions behind deciding what to build in the first place. When would you ever want more than 2-4 artillery pieces in a stack?

[ataribaby]

Is that just the (hard-coded) stacks they initally spawn with, or does it also include any new armies they produce once theyve 'settled'?

For me it's the originally-spawned Mongol stacks that have great composition: armoured spearmen, dual-purpose heavy infantry/footarchers, regular archers, heavy and light HAs, heavy cavalry and quality generals. You need to be creative when facing a stack like that.

I haven't as yet played a game where the Mongols have captured a settlement, but I'd give odds of 50-1 that they revert to churning out whatever units are available once they have somewhere, rather than maintaining a varied balance in their armies.

w.r.t. 'standard' AI factions, I agree that it seems to be primarily economic reasons behind the poor army composition.

They don't seem to take upkeep costs into account... e.g. once they've got a stack of DFKs they quickly go bust from the upkeep and have to wait for you to clobber that stack before they can afford to recruit or build anything else.

However, there are also some very dubious decisions behind deciding what to build in the first place. When would you ever want more than 2-4 artillery pieces in a stack?

Exactly. You'd think there'd be a cap on recruiting artillery in one settlement. And maybe the AI might have some idea of a ratio of different unit types to form a stack, like I mentioned earlier.

Why can't the AI think along the lines of: "Ok, we've got three catapults. That should be enough of those. Lets have four spear units next and then we'll need a few militia crossbows, so we'll need to build the city watch before we recruit anything else. Meanwhile, the neighbouring fortress will give us a couple of units of heavy swordsmen and a couple of units of heavy cavalry. They'll be with us in a few turns escorted by Prince Bob the Nob, and then we'll have our balanced stack."

Crusading armies are the next best example I can think of for decent composition. They seem to get their balance naturally from fortuitous circumstances. You'll have the backbone, the initial stack of 7 militia units plus general. Then once the stack is officially designated a crusade stack the AI will take advantage of the cheap religious mercs like Crusader Sergeants, Crusader Knights and Religious Fanatics. Because the recruitment pools for these are quite balanced, the crusading stack doesn't end up with the over-abundance of one or another.

p.s. Thanks for the guide to guilds Daveybaby. It's been invaluable.

[GFX707]

The AI don't need a city watch, apparently. I have come across countless huge cities manned by a bodyguard unit and nothing else....no revolts.

[Zenicetus]

Why can't the AI think along the lines of: "Ok, we've got three catapults. That should be enough of those. Lets have four spear units next and then we'll need a few militia crossbows, so we'll need to build the city watch before we recruit anything else. Meanwhile, the neighbouring fortress will give us a couple of units of heavy swordsmen and a couple of units of heavy cavalry. They'll be with us in a few turns escorted by Prince Bob the Nob, and then we'll have our balanced stack."

Unit combination from different settlements is definitely part of the problem. The AI isn't very good at planning past the current turn. If it can't put together a well-formed stack from different settlements in a single turn, due to distance or economics, it just goes with what it has. And that's why we get all those half stacks, or all-catapult armies because the army came from a "catapult town".

It's a little better at forming armies when it's on the defensive, as you drive depleted stacks into recombining, or drive them back into settlements. But that's more by chance than anything else.

If the limitation is that the AI can't think past the current turn, then maybe the next game should be changed to more of a centralized recruitment pool concept, instead of on a per-settlement basis. The AI would still have to plan past the current turn for the overall strategic use of the armies, but streamlining the actual creation of the armies might help, if it could be done in a way that still feels somewhat realistic.

[rebelscum]

Originally Posted by ataribaby
Why can't the AI think along the lines of: "Ok, we've got three catapults. That should be enough of those. Lets have four spear units next and then we'll need a few militia crossbows, so we'll need to build the city watch before we recruit anything else. Meanwhile, the neighbouring fortress will give us a couple of units of heavy swordsmen and a couple of units of heavy cavalry. They'll be with us in a few turns escorted by Prince Bob the Nob, and then we'll have our balanced stack."

Oh if things were that simple. It might also be nice if the AI decided that discretion was the better part of valour and decided not to try to seige your fortresses with 2 unit stacks.

[DensterNY]

I've noticed no real difference so far since upgrading to 1.2.

Unfortunately, Total War has been a work in progress since Rome so for myself to make things interesting (at least in Vanilla) I've given tons of trait bonuses, extra cash, city and castle upgrades to the AI to make them competitive. I pretty much try and emulate the experience I have facing the Mongols who are the only real competition.

However, my tactics have only helped at least by giving me enemy armies that aren't entirely composed of militia units but they're still not balanced just more powerful units. As someone else said the AI needs to think of its empire as a whole... missile units from one city, heavy infantry from another but that's asking for a whole lot unfortunately.

[Cheetah]

As the previous posters pointed out the AI usually just builds whatever it can in a given settlement often resulting very one sided armies.

Also, even where it could be possible the AI builds very few cavalry making it even more easier for the human player.

The only good stacks you are likely to encounter are the Mongol original stacks. These are not just very well balanced but consist of highly experienced soldiers led by experienced generals (this later is also missing for most AI armies).

Alas, once the mongols settle down they seem to revert to the "old AI" tactics of producing whatever they can. I have met a mongol army consisting of more than a dozen town militia and one or two light lancer.

The AI often hires mercenaries too, which is not much of a help, at least in europe as mercenary stacks are also rather one sided, consisting mostly of spears and shooters. The easiet way to help the AI would be to create well balanced mercenary pools, with spears, shooters, heavy and light cavalry (one would think that at least in eastern europe one should be able to find plenty of light cav mercenaries, like hussars but no).

[ToothyTurtle]

Playing on M/M and the spanish declared war.
They sent a single balanced army against me then they have reverted to sendung armies of town Militia to siege Caen. I try to send in my longbows for hand to hand combat to get bonus valour.
Yet the Potugese were sending quite mixed armies until I sacked there only Castle!
I'd definatly say that the French seem to have balanced armies at the moment but I haven't started that offensive yet, it's just what my spies told me.