AI aggression/passivity

[DVX BELLORVM]

It's mostly the "charge 'em all in" stuff that annoys me about the AI -- not even allowing time for archers to do their thing. I know this has been generally the case ever since RTW, but was hoping M difficulty would cure that behavior across the board.

Think about what you said: the AI will rush to you if you attack it with your missiles. Wouldn't you do the same? Or would you hold your hilltop and wait, while your troops are being decimated by the enemy missiles? I don't think so...

The AI rushing to you when attacked by superior missile force is tactically logical move, and I do not see anything wrong about it. And it doesn't have anything to do with difficulty settings (fortunately!).

[CountMRVHS]

No, that's not what I said at all -- what I meant by "not allowing time for archers to do their thing" was that the AI won't let its OWN archers shoot; its cav and inf will charge through them and into your lines.

I'm talking about the phenomenon where the AI advances to your position, when you're attacking, before you so much as lift a bow in their general direction. If the AI was set up on a hill and I moved my forces forward and started shooting them up, then yeah, I'd hope they'd have the smarts to come down and chase off my archers and engage. But as soon as I click "Start battle", before I get off a single shot, they'll leave their defensive position. That's emphatically not a tactically logical move.

And when did I say I had missile superiority? The battles I'm thinking of were ones where I had maybe 3 units of archers. The AI always had similar missile strength or more.

[DVX BELLORVM]

No, that's not what I said at all -- what I meant by "not allowing time for archers to do their thing" was that the AI won't let its OWN archers shoot; its cav and inf will charge through them and into your lines.

Sorry, I misunderstood you...

I'm talking about the phenomenon where the AI advances to your position, when you're attacking, before you so much as lift a bow in their general direction.

The AI doesn't actually need to get shoot at, to decide not to engage in missile duel but rather to attack you before getting shoot to pieces. Even if it means to leave a good defensive position.

And when did I say I had missile superiority? The battles I'm thinking of were ones where I had maybe 3 units of archers. The AI always had similar missile strength or more.

I guess your concept of missile superiority differs to the one of AI

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

Playing H/VH
AI will hold position if it has missile superiority if it is the defender
AI will attack if it is stronger/has less missiles than me even nif it is the attacker
Sometimes there will be missile duel untill one side loses then engagement.
If AI has horse archers it will always flank with them and attack from behind.
Oh and the general waits 5 mins before doing the suicide charge

[ChaosLord]

Its sad, I rarely see the AI take a defensive position when attacked, even when vastly outnumbered or in a perfect spot. I've had entire AI armies rush down steep hills and onto the gentle slope I was on...while having numerical superiority and multiple seige engines. If it had waited and made me assault it, my losses would have been tremendous. It doesn't seem to make a difference M/H/VH on how it decides to attack.

Usually its response to any given situation is to rush. If it took defensive positions more(especially when ON DEFENSE) i'd suffer alot more losses of men. I might even lose more than one or two battles a campaign. But at this point, its too late to expect them to teach the AI new tricks. Even if another expansion or two follow Kingdoms, them prioritizing AI is pretty unlikely. But, there is always hope I guess.

[Ramses II CP]

I haven't noticed a difference between the difficulties. Playing the Ghazette Challenges it was striking that several times I sacked cities with small garrisons while full, powerful stacks sat perhaps 2-3 steps away on the campaign maps. I sacked Rome with the Pope in the city and a full stack of Papal forces one step away across a the bridge, where they sat through the 4 turns it took me to reinforce my original force.

In battle I've observed more or less the same as Gaius, except the enemy General often seems to be right at the front of an attack.

The AI is grossly incompetent compared to a human player. There is no rational justification for it's behavior except that it doesn't know what to do.

[Delwack]

From my own analysis of how the AI behaves, if the AI believes you to have missile superiority (now remember how you may define missile superior and how the AI defines missile superiority might be slightly different) or feels it's missile troops would be too vulnerable to a human player's calvary to be effective, it will abandon it's defensive position (no matter how advantageous, apparently the battle AI only takes into account a certain fixed and unchanging factor for a defensive position; it doesn't understand that an extremely steep mountainside with ledges to protect missile troops is much more defensible than a small rolling hill).

If the AI moves to attack, they will attempt to engage your missile troops and calvary by outflanking you before you can bring them to bear, however the computer tends to be fairly incompetent at this, and without having a numerically superior army often has trouble moving units to outflank and/or outrun you. It is also easy for a human to "read" the computer's strategy (or in a worse case scenario, learn how it operates after being defeated once or twice), and it becomes easy for the player to reposition their troops to give himself the maximum advantage. The computer isn't very good at assessing relative strengths of soldiers, and will thus often sends their "flanking" units to their doom against superior units. The player can also exploit this known AI behavior by assessing what will cause the AI to determine hate player has missile superiority, and then take up defensive positions deep inside his own side of the battlefield, even on the attack; causing the AI to needlessly tire itself out attempting to get to the player.

As to the campaign AI, certain factions seem to be set up to win and lose automatically, as it is rare that I see it play out any other way. Like the original M2TW, there is probably some variation, but it seems like Britain in Brittania and the Aztecs in America will almost always get toasted unless the player explicitly goes out of his way to prevent it. Perhaps it is conflicts between their starting positions, economic strength, and the AI behavior chosen for the faction, or else the difference in unit strengths in the auto battle calculations.

[Akbar]

...it was striking that several times I sacked cities with small garrisons while full, powerful stacks sat perhaps 2-3 steps away on the campaign maps.

Yes, in my Brittania campaign as the Norse, the Scots had 2 and a half stacks of elite troops next to their last city. As i approached with 2 full stacks of my own, they moved the bulk of their forces away to a fort in the opposite direction. Needless to say, I took the city, and eliminated the scottish faction. Quite bizarre.