What Total War do you think is the best and why?

[Hound of Ulster]

I've been meaning to respond to this one for a while now...

I might try it, but there are serious problems with RTW that Europa Barbarorum can't fix. For instance:

1. the strategic AI doesn't know how to play on the campaign map. on higher difficulty settings it does
2. there is a bias in the strategic AI that makes it underestimate the strength of a player's army causing the AI to attack when it shouldn't. This does not occur on higher difficulty settings or in the mods
3. there is no way to stop the over effectiveness of blobbing units in battle.
4. the battle AI doesn't protect the flanks of its army.generals with better traits will flank YOU, which leaves them vunerable to you flanking them
5. the battle AI frontally charges superior enemy units with inferior units.What's a better way to waist your enemy's missiles than charging with your most useless unit
6. the battle AI doesn't know its men have shields.massed infantry are always more vunerable to archer fire, and only the Romans had the Testudo, and not until late in the timeframe covered in RTW
7. the battle AI won't move a unit that's under fire out of range.That's a serious problem only on sieges with cavalry. The A.I will try to reform its line or charge, depending on the traits of the general commanding the army
8. the battle AI doesn't coordinate multiple armies. Yes it can on the higher difficulty settings and it tries to combine forces that are widely seperated
9. the battle AI runs its units to exhaustion. No it doesn't. If anything the AI is too cautious
10. the battle AI throws pila after a unit is engaged in melee. no it doesn't archers and skirmishers will often either join the melee or retire
11. the battle AI doesn't use the secondary weapon.yes it does, especially with the Romans
12. the phalanx has the butt spike bug which kills cavalry hitting it from behind.not in later versions of RTW, and this is not a bug, its realistic because not even the Samaritians had stirrups. This lack of control makes charging cavalry vunerable to being de-horsed when making contact with the enemy, and have you seen the butt-spike of a kontos spear used by most armies at the time?
13. the differential between walk and run speed is incorrect unless EB made new animation skeletons.fixed in most later RTW versions and the mods
14. the calculation for the effect of armor and shield protection is screwed up.Have you fought a battle between peasants and elite Roman legions? The Romans cut through the lower quality infantry like butter, but will suffer one or two losses on the initial charge
15. the AI doesn't protect its artillery from melee attack (this is a problem in MTW as well).artilllery is slow, unmanuverable and extremely vunerable to cavalry charges. The AI's problem in vanilla RTW is that it places the artillery too close to the front line and not behind the line on higher ground
16. the combat model is not robust leading to too high unpredictability of combat results.

wha?

What you are basically arguing for is an AI that is a combanation of Hannibal, Atilla, and Scipio Africanus on steriods using units built like T-72 tanks. Which would make the game unplayable by everybody except you.

[Puzz3D]

What you are basically arguing for is an AI that is a combanation of Hannibal, Atilla, and Scipio Africanus on steriods using units built like T-72 tanks. Which would make the game unplayable by everybody except you.

I'm asking for nothing more than an AI that's as good as the one created for Shogun. Of course, it would be nice to have some refinements of that AI, but that's not what happened in this series.

[TosaInu]

What you are basically arguing for is an AI that is a combanation of Hannibal, Atilla, and Scipio Africanus ..

Hello Hound of Ulster,

Sorry for tearing your message out of context, but that would actually be nice.

Very nice indeed, if some factions/generals showed some of the great skills those ancient generals had. Afaik, generals have command stars and that influences how tough his units are, RTW and or M2TW also have things like night attacker and such (?), but I don't recall having seen an AI army on the battlefield pulling off something nasty and unseen in other AI armies.

[The Wandering Scholar]

[Tony Furze]

My head goes with MTW, but my heart is 100% with Shogun.

[The Wandering Scholar]

I would like to point out that what I said was not offensive in any way and I would like TosaInu to put my post back where it belongs. Or am I not allowed to question authority?

[Puzz3D]

From the Europa Barbarorum FAQ:


Q: Which is the recommend difficult setting for Europa Barbarorum?

A: Europa Barbarorum is best played on Very Hard / Medium. The AI is aggressive (in particular the slave faction) but don’t get stat bonuses on the battlefield. If you want a real challenge try VH/VH but be aware enemy units on the battlefield are getting massive bonuses (afaik: +7 attack, +7 defence, and a huge morale boost), you could have your fullstack army is hacked to pieces by 5 units levies...


Q: Do you have improved the AI in any way?

A: No, the AI is completely hardcoded, and cannot be altered.

[The Wandering Scholar]

EB is hardest on VH/H,

[Puzz3D]

EB is hardest on VH/H,

Well try telling that to Hound of Ulster. The AI is going to play the same way as it does in XGM which I've played extensively. In fact, the BI AI which XGM uses is better than the RTW AI that EB uses.

[Puzz3D]

I've been meaning to respond to this one for a while...

Well I'll respond to this point by point, but I will try EB tonight on the highest difficulty setting.

1. the strategic AI doesn't know how to play on the campaign map. on higher difficulty settings it does.

I play on normal difficulty because I don't want the AI using cheats which alters one's perception of just how good the AI is. It's my understanding that the AI is as smart as it ever gets on normal difficulty. This is certainly the case in STW and MTW, but maybe RTW is different, although, I don't recall any such claim by CA.

2. there is a bias in the strategic AI that makes it underestimate the strength of a player's army causing the AI to attack when it shouldn't. This does not occur on higher difficulty settings or in the mods.

Ok. This will be true if the strategic AI does not factor in the combat bonus given to the tactical AI on the higher difficulty settings. It very likely doesn't factor that in because the strategic AI and the tactical AI are separate.

4. the battle AI doesn't protect the flanks of its army. generals with better traits will flank YOU, which leaves them vunerable to you flanking them.

The best I ever saw the RTW tactical AI play was in a battle using the SPQR mod where the AI held units in reserve, and used them to counterflank the units I sent in to flank the main battleline. There was fog so this came as a surprise to me since I didn't see the reserve units. I was using RTW 1.2 at the time. Generally, the AI just comes straight at you, but it does try to hit one side of your line. It does send units out to flank your line, but this move is not very well coordinated with timing of the frontal attack except in mods that slow down the combat resolution time.

Just the same, the AI doesn't really think defensively in terms of protecting its own flanks. It doesn't with the older STW/MTW tactical AI either unless an enemy unit gets within the proximity range, but the problem was more apparent in RTW due to the presence of the phalanx which is highly effective frontally but very weak on the sides and back and slow to change facing. In either STW or MTW you cannot race around a spear unit with a cavalry unit and hit the spear from the flank or rear because the spear unit can pivot fast enough to always face the cavalry unit. In RTW this is not the case. How can this have been screwed up like this unless CA just isn't paying enough attention to the tactical considerations? They treated movement speed as though it were an arbitrary variable that didn't affect tactical possibilities when in fact it does. If EB slowed down the cavalry then this won't be a problem for a lone phalanx unit, but vulnerability on the ends of the battle line is still an issue for the following reason.

In RTW 1.2 the AI would break up its phalanx line and send individual units to hit the flanks of enemy units in the opposing battleline which completely exposed the flanks of its individual phalanx units. This was corrected in later versions of RTW by making the units stay in line, but it leaves the tactical AI more vulnerable to flank attacks on its line because its reluctant to break a unit out from the end of the battleline even if the enemy's battle line is too far away to engage. In my opinion this needs additional fine tuning to work well tactically or better yet a new defensive mode for the tactical AI. You don't see the problem when the AI's army is stronger than yours because it attacks, but you see it when the AI's army is weaker. At least in STW the AI would withdraw from the battlefield if it was outclassed which is the smart thing to do. In RTW that would be even smarter because, unless the AI is defending a city, there's no important location that is being defended. I'll try EB and see if it plays differently, but even the creators of EB said that they didn't change the tactical AI. Of course, they can't change the tactical AI because its hard coded.

5. the battle AI frontally charges superior enemy units with inferior units. What's a better way to waist your enemy's missiles than charging with your most useless unit.

Come on. I'm not going to shoot its most useless unit just because the AI marches it out. Also, those weak units won't get to your line because when they get close the AI changes its mind and marches its unit back to its own lines. Then you can shoot it in the back, and the AI doesn't even make the unit run back while your are shooting it. In STW, the AI tries to make an indirect attack when its unit is weaker than the enemy unit. This is much smarter than charging frontally into the stronger unit.

6. the battle AI doesn't know its men have shields. massed infantry are always more vunerable to archer fire, and only the Romans had the Testudo, and not until late in the timeframe covered in RTW.

I'm talking about the ability to move a horse archer up on the right most unit of the AI's battle line and shoot into the right side of the unit. The unit has a shield, but the AI just lets the unit stand there. The men in the unit don't try to protect themselves with their shield which is right there on their left arm. I've never seen the AI play this dumb in STW over thousands of battes. Of course, STW doesn't have shields. This is an excellent example of how CA introduces features to their games, but doesn't make the feature known to the AI.

7. the battle AI won't move a unit that's under fire out of range. That's a serious problem only on sieges with cavalry. The A.I will try to reform its line or charge, depending on the traits of the general commanding the army.

How about move the unit back or into some trees like the STW AI does? I've never seen the RTW AI do this.

8. the battle AI doesn't coordinate multiple armies. Yes it can on the higher difficulty settings and it tries to combine forces that are widely seperated.

Yes on the strategic map, but I was referring to the tactical map where the AI will attack with one army instead of waiting for the second army to get into position. Multiple armies on the battlefield is very rare in STW. It happens more often in MTW, and quite often the AI won't charge until both armies are ready to charge simultaneously.

9. the battle AI runs its units to exhaustion. No it doesn't. If anything the AI is too cautious.

On many occasions I've observed the AI running its units in RTW when it should be walking. It clearly doesn't understand that running will cause fatigue. It doesn't understand this in STW either, but at least there the AI doesn't run its units until it decides to charge. I think that CA made the AI unit more inclined to run in RTW because they were obsessed with speeding up the battles in order to capture more of the RTS market. It's considerations like these that adversely impacted the tactical gameplay, and its why CA continues to refuse to impliment the best tactical gameplay they are capable of designing in their newer games.

10. the battle AI throws pila after a unit is engaged in melee. no it doesn't archers and skirmishers will often either join the melee or retire.

Yes they do throw the pila after engaging in melee. It's a known bug introduced in the final v1.5/v1.6 version of RTW/BI.

11. the battle AI doesn't use the secondary weapon. yes it does, especially with the Romans.

Ok. I'll test this tonight because the last time I tested the cataphract they did not use their axe and continued to fight with their lance after the charge.

12. the phalanx has the butt spike bug which kills cavalry hitting it from behind. not in later versions of RTW, and this is not a bug, its realistic because not even the Samaritians had stirrups. This lack of control makes charging cavalry vunerable to being de-horsed when making contact with the enemy, and have you seen the butt-spike of a kontos spear used by most armies at the time?

Yes it's another problem introduced by the patch that fixed the non-reversal of cavalry charge on the phalanx. It appears that the cavalry charge is not only reversed by the sarissa frontally, but is also reversed by the puny butt spike as well. Keep in mind also that the men at the back of the phalanx don't even have their sarissa lowered. The effect is so severe that you are better off walking cavalry into the back of a phalanx than charging into it.

13. the differential between walk and run speed is incorrect unless EB made new animation skeletons. fixed in most later RTW versions and the mods.

It wasn't fixed in the final version of RTW/BI, and you can't fix it with the terrain speed modifier because that slows down both walking and running speed. The difference between the walk and run speeds is still wrong by any kind of historical analysis you want to do. When we asked CA about this they said the game wasn't supposed to be a history lesson. Well that's inconsistent when their marketing department expounds upon how Total War games are based on history and how realistic it is. When pressed further on this they said the game has an historical flavor. Well. the later games fail on that account as well because STW is almost universally regarded as having the best historical atmosphere of all the Total war games not to mention the most realistic weather system as well.

14. the calculation for the effect of armor and shield protection is screwed up. Have you fought a battle between peasants and elite Roman legions? The Romans cut through the lower quality infantry like butter, but will suffer one or two losses on the initial charge.

Maybe CBR will comment because he ran the quantitative tests on armor. I've worked with him enough on testing to know that he's very precise, and I'm not going to repeat the tests because RTW has too many problems for me to waste my time testing the game. Besides, there is no more chance of patching RTW, and this problem is hard coded so mods can't fix it.

15. the AI doesn't protect its artillery from melee attack (this is a problem in MTW as well).artilllery is slow, unmanuverable and extremely vunerable to cavalry charges. The AI's problem in vanilla RTW is that it places the artillery too close to the front line and not behind the line on higher ground.

Every time the AI decides to move its army it leaves the slower moving artillery unprotected. That's when you can jump on it with cavalry.