Is Kingdoms more Challenging?

[Shadow]

I am playing VH/VH and i find that the AI in Kingdoms more challenging then the ones in MTW2 or is it just me?

[nameless]

Americas for one is challenging. As the Spainish I find it out fighting the Aztecs, especially in siege battles where they just run over you like water on rock.

[joe4iz]

I think some aspects of the game have improved. The AI, for bad or worse is less passive.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

I like it, especially the archers hurt now so you can't just walk up your army to the enemy under missile fire you have to have a plan.

[Daithi MacGuillaCathair]

i dont think so, i played as the irish on VH and in no time had invaded england and taken most of the south coast, i only stopped to give them time to build up more armys to fight.

Gave the french a hammering with my Apaches, didnt loose one battle to them despite them having two stacks of european troops to one stack of my basic indigenous troops plus one of reinforcements, i never even used my reinforcemtns, granted i was at a ford, but still you think their over whelming fire power could have driven me back.

i havent found any real change in the level of AI

[Cadwallon]

I've found the American campaign (VH/VH) as the Apachean in particular very challenging. I actually lose battles that are relatively equal!

Even the Britannia campaign as the Welsh - the English are making major inroads after my initial onslaught. I've also looked at the Teutonic campaign - and after about 20 turn I'm stuffed financially, with the Lithuanians and Novgorodians breathing down my neck with now way for me to train new soldiers!

So yes - I think they are more challenging than the grand campaign.

[Bob the Insane]

I think some of the faction's in the different campaigns are in very challenging positions...

[Husar]

As the Teutonic Order I managed to drive back the Lithuanians only to face several full stacks from Novgorod who managed to take several settlements. Especially their boyar sons are deadly accurate now, the even kill men on walls with ease.

[TheImp]

I find Norway very challenging on VH/VH in Britannia campaign. Didn't figure out how to get money while the king's purse decreases drastically. Still working on it

[Daithi MacGuillaCathair]

are we talking about the same game

[Bob the Insane]

are we talking about the same game

Absolutely, and I think the different experinces come from the fact that you are correct in stating that there is little change apparant AI. However some of the factions in each campaign are more challenging than others is all...

In particular Norway in the Britannia campaign and the Teutonic Order in the Teutonic Campaign seem to have particular financial challenges...

[antisocialmunky]

The AI may still do the suicide charge but it will use a missile advantage against you pretty good. Its pretty stupid but its campaign map stack assembler better I think.

[Delwack]

Before I continue, I must first note that I play all my games on M/VH for maximum fairness. I have not noticed any significant improvement to the battlefield AI. I believe there are some small adjustments that do make a difference, but nothing that will really tip the scales in the AI's favor unless the battle is very close.

However, the campaign AI seems to be a lot more troop-happy than before. It will maintain larger armies regardless of it's economic situations, which I feel is often fustrating. I realize the AI did this in M2TW, but it seems to absolutely abuse it now, as you will often see about full-stack army for each city and castle the AI controls. After defeating the AI's front line forces, you'll often think they can't POSSIBLY have more troops, only to see a full stack defending each of their cities.

Campaigns tend to be polar, and either very easy or very hard.

In my experience, the hardest campaigns were:

By far, the hardest is:
Brittania/Norway - you are constantly, constantly strapped for money in the early game. You'll probably have to play a bit unconventinally to make up for it.

Some moderately hard factions are:
Teutonic/Lithuania - the tuetonic order starts in a strong position (lots of powerful units and has relatively hard-to-take castles), and with you pratically landlocked and with militia-like troops, you have to move fast and catch the order out in the open.

Teutonic/Tuetonic Knights - the main problem here is your economic position. Careful alliances will help to secure some of your borders temporarily, but the powerful order troops are a money sinkhouse, and unless you move quickly to capture profitible settlements, the order will be faced with many problems. The castle-centric economy means you can't grow large cities as economic powerhouses, which cuts down on the number of troops you can field in total. However, your troops are of superior quality, and that makes this campaign easy to steamroll once you get out of the initial economic sinkhole.

Any faction in the America's scenario - The AI really seems to abuse troop recruiment. I don't think it is actually possible (for a human player in the same position) to recruit the number of conquistadors (both mounted and dismounted) that I had to kill given the number of spanish-controlled settlements in my last apache game (only 5). The native american factions all seem to have nearly limitless supplies of troops, a good estimate of their power is usually a stack and a half per city owned.

The easiest Scenario is by far in my opinion is:
The crusades, especailly as KoJ, Antioch, or Egpyt - the more or less perm. alliance with the faction of your religion leaves one boarder permenantly secure, and allows all-out aggresive expansion against the opposite-religion faction in the area. The turks have to fight a two-front war with byz and antoich, and byz's spread out starting position makes logistics (and especially reinforcing troops) a small micromanaging nightmare. The crusade area overall is by far the richest and most well-developed of all the regions at the start of the game, and no matter who you play as, you start on firm economic ground.

[diotavelli]

The native american factions all seem to have nearly limitless supplies of troops, a good estimate of their power is usually a stack and a half per city owned.

But isn't that what the sources tell us was the case with the native American factions? The conquistadors were faced with a seemingly endless number of enemy troops but managed to win through a combination of luck, good management, superior technology and, perhaps most of all, European diseases.

If the native factions didn't have a "nearly limitless supplies of troops", the game would be completely unrealistic.

[Delwack]

Oh I agree the idea is indeed to make it seem like limitless numbers; it's just a matter of scale. When I play as the native americans, I have what feels like a limitless supply of troops, however when I as the apache move to conquer any other native americans, they usually have 2.5 to 3 times as many men, for the same size empires. I suppose the fact human players can win battles against fellow native americans 3:1 or better needs to be compensated somehow, but while my supply may seem "limitless", their supply is 3 times more so. The spanish, like I mentioned above, also seem to have many more troops than their empire size would suggest, making the campaign a very large abuser of troop over-recruitment. Perhaps the computer recruits every unit it can every turn, in which case for the native americans I can see them outnumbering me since I tend to ignore the lowest level of units when I unlock better ones unless I need fillers or cannot yet mass-produce higher level units, but the spanish conquistadors only respawn 1 per 5 turns per settlement (at the low levels, faster at high levels, but it does take some time to first unlock and then build up those higher levels), and the spanish conquistador army seems about 3 times larger than my own (at least) when I played the faction, for the few territories it controls. Some of it is probably compensation for the fact that computers cannot complete missions (and earn conquistadors that way), and perhaps the computer receives extra "fleets" from spain that the player does not normaly receive. Having counted the number of fleets recieved while playing as the spanish, extra troops could very well be inserted in the form of extra fleets.

The idea here was to present a challenge through sheer attrition against the human player from both european and native american factions alike. I would say that it was successful in making the campaign significant more difficult, as you will find your field armies in constant need of reinforcement, resupply, and support. A large number of very big battles will break out very quickly upon a declaration of war, especially when settlements are packed cloesly together. In the america's campaign you can never count on having broken through the "front line" by defeating first 4+ full stacks that invaded your territory.

[diotavelli]

Delwack, I guess I think of it likes this:

When fighting on their home turf, factions should have huge numbers of troops; when they invade other territories, they should quickly find themselves outnumbered.

The Spanish had to dedicate a substantial proportion of available forces just to maintaining their gains: thus their garrisons and 'stand-by stacks' should be numerous and large. The number of troops they had to go on the offensive was even more limited than their total strength might otherwise suggest. The game reflects this.

The native factions had comparatively huge populations but the majority of these existed on a near-subsistence level. They could raise large forces to respond to short term emergencies but their economies could not support large standing armies for lengthy periods: thus they have numerous and large stacks in their own territory but sending enormous forces on the offensive should be a significant development for them. The game reflects this too.

Personally, I think Kingdoms is the best release CA have made in the history of the series. The depth and breadth of variation between the different scenarios and factions means that you really don't end up playing the same game every time you start a campaign. The AI is imperfect but I spent £20 on Kingdoms, not £200, so that doesn't surprise me much.

[Delwack]

I agree with everything you say Diotavelli, it does make the game much more varied and interesting, it's just:

When fighting on their home turf, factions should have huge numbers of troops; when they invade other territories, they should quickly find themselves outnumbered.

I wish I had that kind of luxury, as I am often leaving my home cities practically undefended in order to push enough forces foward to defeat the massive number of enemy troops. I suppose it helps that I already know I'm going to overall win, but getting attacked from another direction can get annoying pretty fast when your nearly undefended cities get hit. Perhaps I am just too used to exploiting the campaign AI's weakness and luring their armies out of position to take their cities and turn their field armies rebel.

The america campaign battles are great though. I found it somewhat rare to have multiple full stack or nearly full stack armies engage multiple full stack or nearly full stack armies in any other campaign (excepting perhaps the mongols and Timurids in the original). Note that it is quite common in the american campaign, and not letting the computer enter the battlefield with your reinforcements puts you at a serious disadvantage!

My personal favorite campaign is actually Tuetonic as the order, I just love the faction units.

Just so I'm perfectly clear: I love kingdoms, and think that all of the campaigns are great and add tons of great content. I believe it's more difficult due to inherent nature and setup of the campaign than to any real improvements in the AI, but I wasn't really expecting any; and that doesn't take away my enjoyment of kingdoms one bit. I'm just trying to pinpoint what I believe makes kingdoms more difficult.

[diotavelli]

I wish I had that kind of luxury, as I am often leaving my home cities practically undefended in order to push enough forces foward to defeat the massive number of enemy troops.

This may be a case of making 2+2=5 but I'm figuring that the answer may lie in your previous comment:

Perhaps the computer recruits every unit it can every turn, in which case for the native americans I can see them outnumbering me since I tend to ignore the lowest level of units when I unlock better ones unless I need fillers or cannot yet mass-produce higher level units

I play the Americas differently from the way I used to operate in the grand campaign. In the latter, every florin counted and I avoided having any garrison that wasn't free militia unless absolutely necessary. In the other Kingdoms campaigns, the same applies pretty much. But Americas is different.

The cost of maintaining a huge garrison of low grade troops (even mercenaries, if you're playing as New Spain) is amazingly low. So most of my settlements tend to have at least eight units in them and generally more than 10. That slows down even the largest enemy stack.

I think it's a case of an opportunity to try something different. As you imply, you can leave your territory vulnerable and still be confident of winning but, in this case at least, you don't have to.

[Delwack]

I think one of my problems with leaving troops "at home" is I always feel I could be putting them to better use by conquering my enemy's territory even faster, being able to take on more of their soldiers at once, and pushing in futher and faster than I could if I left them on garrison, so I have a nasty tendancy to move all these "cheap, poor units" out to my front lines, once against leaving my cities as poorly defended as they were before. I never seem to have enough troops on my front, ever. Then again toward the end-game of most america campaigns, I am sieging multiple cities with multiple stacks at once, so I suppose I only have myself to blame.

I do get financially strapped as new spain during mid-campaign, I like to abuse large armies of mercs as cannon fodder. When I played as the apache however, I found in many cases I could have nearly limitless armies and not even bat an eye at unit upkeep. (30 per unit? oh yeah, train more units!) I tend to be more of a blitz-style player, which makes me very offensive minded on the campaign map. I should probably be a little more defensive minded since if a faction that doesn't share buildings with me takes over the city, all my buildings get razed to the ground, which turns a good production center into a now-useless city.

[CannonBall]

Just got Kingdoms and playing Crusades Byz M/M. Cash was not a problem even early on, the AI was a little bit more aggresive, the battle AI still the same stupid moves - predictable. Right now turn 50 and Mongols showed up South of Bagdad, Turks are getting slammed from Antioch, Byz, and Mongols and on their way out. Taken almost all Turk terrritories, except Bag, Tak, and 3 more I can't see yet. Planning on war w/ Antioch and they have full stacks everywhere w/ those cannons sepulcher units. I think Antioch is probably going to be the most challenging. I've got 7 full stacks surrounding their territories waiting for hammer to fall, may have to start assault early as Antioch is countering my stacks w/ units from inside their territory. Like the mongonels except too inaccurate, stupid things explode right on my own units.

When Venice showed up in Constantinople, that was a pain, but they walked around for 8 turns before I got tired waiting for them to do something and attacked them. That took out 1/2 each of my 2 stacks.

[johnmcd]

Is there anyone who is used to trouncing the AI at VH VH around to comment on the AI?

[Daithi MacGuillaCathair]

I always play on VH/VH, there is little challange otherwise.
and the AI still makes some very bad moves. i never really feel under pressure, i was play as BYZ and the turks had three full stacks near my territory to my two half stcks one infantry and one cavalry. i assaulted there neaest city with my infantry and took out one of there best stacks with my half cavalry one one, in the process desimating my army, i then retreated my cavalry one to repair it and new i would leve my infantry whch ad assaulted and captured the city vunerable, but the turks never reacted, they just moved there forces around sometimes splitting them up . then i came back with my reinforced cavalry stack and took out thre smaller armys which had just broken up from a larger one.
they have one stalk in the vacinit and i panted my forces on a hill and am waiting there attack. cant see any real challange coming fro them any time son, unless they are sneaking loads of forces by sea to constantenople

[antisocialmunky]

Delwack, I guess I think of it likes this:

When fighting on their home turf, factions should have huge numbers of troops; when they invade other territories, they should quickly find themselves outnumbered.

The Spanish had to dedicate a substantial proportion of available forces just to maintaining their gains: thus their garrisons and 'stand-by stacks' should be numerous and large. The number of troops they had to go on the offensive was even more limited than their total strength might otherwise suggest. The game reflects this.

The native factions had comparatively huge populations but the majority of these existed on a near-subsistence level. They could raise large forces to respond to short term emergencies but their economies could not support large standing armies for lengthy periods: thus they have numerous and large stacks in their own territory but sending enormous forces on the offensive should be a significant development for them. The game reflects this too.

Personally, I think Kingdoms is the best release CA have made in the history of the series. The depth and breadth of variation between the different scenarios and factions means that you really don't end up playing the same game every time you start a campaign. The AI is imperfect but I spent £20 on Kingdoms, not £200, so that doesn't surprise me much.

I've experienced the hordes in my Crusades campaign. Since I always limit my taxing to normal as an additional challenge, it just made it harder. I played Jerusalem and was quickly in a war with the Egyptians. I was actually impressed by the stacks that came my way. They were full stacks of decent troops. Infact they managed to tech to higher troop tiers before I did. It was again quite impressive. And the war was desperate. For every stack I sent, I managed to defeat two before retreating. I ended up having to strip most of my garrisons to assemble three stacks to slowly pound them to dust. It was quite fun and a challenge.

Though the wandering around bug still plagues horde AIs. The Mongols danced around infront of Baghdad and Takrit for the longest time and the Venetians wandered around Nicea after I kicked them out of Constantinople.

[ReiseReise]

I haven't played all that much, but I have noticed 2 things, at least in Crusades and Americas
1) Units are balanced differently so that most units have higher stats, eg town militia are 7/9. (This "rebalancing" was taken to the extreme in Rome Total Realism mod where most units stats were 20+). I am not sure what the exact effect is but it certainly there must be one. Also cavalry numbers per unit are reduced by 1/4, which by itself makes little difference in their charge but cripples them in melee, which was obviously the goal. This also means foot archers now have an even larger firepower advantage over horse archers, putting 100% more arrows in the air instead of 50%. [Edit to clarify: as in 60 foot vs 30 horse instead of 60 foot vs 40 horse]

2) In Americas I noticed that the Spanish had 4 full stacks on about turn 3, and playing as them I only had 2! I checked out the campaign scripts and sure enough, every AI faction gets bonus armies, and loads of cash to pay upkeep for them. Same for other campaigns as well.

[DVX BELLORVM]

In my very limited experience playing the Kingdoms (as England, M/VH), I can say that the Kingdoms is a bit more challenging than the vanilla. Not because the AI got smarter, or has a better troops, but because your starting position (as England) is very poor.

When I realized that I start with more than 20 provinces, I thought it's gonna be a walk in the park and I'll win the game in about 2 hours . By the time I have 20 provinces in vanilla, I usually field 5-6 strong armies, with the economy to support twice that number.
I changed my mind when I saw the state of my provinces: totally undeveloped, economicaly and military, no roads, no ports, no nothing. A third of them on a brink of rebellion.

As a result, I lost 2 provinces in Ireland in first 5 turns . I don't think I ever lost 2 provinces in a single game in 5 years of playing TW.

After 15 turns I managed to consolidate my empire, organize a defense of my remaining Irish provinces, and am about to crush the Welsh. But the Scot border is still undefended and if they invade I'm in trouble again.

I have a feeling that, instead of improving and taking care of all those provinces, I should have sold (or give away) most of them, leaving only a few good ones to develop. After turtling for a few turns I would go and conquer everybody, like in vanilla

[Cheetah]

Playing as the Apache H/H. The AI factions have (much) larger armies with better/balanced army compositions than in the grand campaign. However, both the strategic and tactical AI makes the same old (exploitable) mistakes like attaking a bridge or river crossing time after time, or charging uphill (even when defending), etc.
Campaigns are better designed though, and it seems to me that the devs did their best to make the game more challenging.

[Rumpole]

If you look at the campaign script file for Britannia, you will see exactly what you are up against.

Each AI faction gets extra money each turn (4200 on Hard)

Each AI faction gets 10K for a last stand when they are down to 4 provinces. This looks like a one-time event.

Each AI faction gets 10K whenever their treasury falls below -5K, which is every turn late in the game.

All AI factions, including your allies, attack you when you are within 5 regions of victory.

Assume there are 2 other factions left. Each gets 14,200 extra every turn. At a typical upkeep of 140 per unit, this translates into about 10 extra stacks of troops that are not supported by the normal economy.

Fortunately, the AI is really stupid about defending its cities. Usually, when I wipe out a faction, it has over 100 units scattered around the map.

[Riadach]

I played the Irish once and found however often I assasinated English generals, a new one would appear in the same stack on the next turn. Is this a bug or is it scripted?