How does the AI in M2:TW compare to R:TW?

[Ichon]

Campaign AI is improved in vanilla and many mods take that a good step further. The main issues are AI going bankrupt and requiring huge money scripts to be competitive and AI tends to leave many cities on coasts with a single garrison unit making surprise invasions very easy to do which some mods address by garrison spawn scripts. Also the sea invasion AI is not very good and the AI tends to waste many of its naval ships in strange places- IE, depending on the mod AI often deploys its entire navy in a small area of water unreachable to anywhere else like Red Sea, Persian Gulf etc.

Battle AI is a little better than RTW but still exhibits many of the same flaws. There are some good attempts to make it better and to a degree they are successful but a veteran human player should still be able to defeat the AI on 1 to 1 odds every single time. The biggest problems with BAI is that AI does not get the idea to use infantry and cavalry together and charges ahead with all its fast units when on offensive or holds them in place and doesn't move when on defensive so missiles or charge to the rear easily wipe out their army.

Since most generals in MTW2 and mods are mounted that means within 1-3 minutes of battle start the AI commander is dead and another 1-3 minutes battle is over unless its a siege or there is a 2nd reinforcing army. EB2 having more commanders as infantry should help this issue as well they could try different things such as give AI generals high defense but low charge and melee so the AI doesn't charge so quick and when it makes mistakes it doesn't always kill its commander right in the start of the battle.