Quote Originally Posted by nearchos View Post
I play in very hard and its the same.

The AI cant manage any aspect of the game, economy, bilding, recruitment etc and moreover the tactics in battle are awful, especialy during city attaks, ( all units ranged, meele, pike, cavalry), racing against the entrances were a couple of pikemen units can hold for ever...

In STW2 very hard, was very hard, but again there were one province factions with full stacks of prime units, but it was hard.
I believe one of the main differences between Shogun 2 and Rome 2 in terms of AI toughness was that harder AI in Shogun actually got bonuses in battle as well, like morale bonuses and such. I'm kind of glad that is not the case anymore. Now if only the AI in Rome 2 actually went and recruited some of those Oathsworn warriors once in a while...

Yesterday, I lost a battle against the AI which I thought was going to be an easy victory and it surprised me a little.. positively. I was outnumbered, as always but through mutliple enemy armies reinforcing and me assuming that a little block of houses in the center of the map would make one of my flanks unflankable, the AI actually managed to do what I would expect it to do when it has the advantage in numbers... it surrounded my army and killed it. They still lost most of their men but their armies were of considerably worse quality than mine.

The battle started out with me sending my cav around to go and pick off the enemy ballistas, so they don't murder my infantry, which they are very good at. Luckily for me the AI never guards those things, so two units of Equites or Aux Cav, can't remember, went and destroyed all enemy artillery, then harassed some slingers and came back to tell the tale/join my army in the defense of its position. All was going well, until a unit of Oathsworn, perhaps a general bodyguard, came running through this block of buildings I was using to protect on of my flanks and they smashed straight into the side of my veteran Legionaries who were already holding off 200 or 300 tribesmen and spear warriors.

At first I thought huh, well played.. didn't know that was possible and told my other flank to go and collapse on their army so it became trapped between both 'wings' but before that manouver was completed, the Oathsworn had managed to kill enough of the Legion vets to make them pack up and leave and at that point everything sort of fell apart.

It was a little exciting to see my army composition that would beat everything I have encountered up to that point get taken apart so quickly and relatively easily and I wasn't exactly letting it unfold. I thought I was actually playing rather well and I'm not the kind of person to zoom in and watch the action. I have replays for that.

But yeah, it was refreshing and kind of cool to see that this is actually possible.