Whats your experience with Napoleon Darthmod battle AI, or with other Darthmods for Total War games A.I.?

[StefanStojkovski]

I played Empire with Darthmod on hard/hard and as soon as i saw the new units, new visuals, less buggy and other stuff i didn't quite pay much attention to the A.I., i was content with the A.I. not having chance against my less powerful armies. But as i played on it became annoyingly stupid to beat the crap out of my enemy even without losing a single unit on hard, when fighting with armies as powerful as mine. So, i wanted to move on to Napoleon(i want to beat them all, at least with one faction, before getting Rome). I installed it and installed Darthmod immediately. While it again, includes many new troops, good visuals and sound, i wasn't impressed by the A.I. at all. I played some battles to test it.

The enemy was always the defending side, so i attacked, but after deployment they would start moving armies, from one place to another. When my armies arrived their infantry was not in line, but still moving and out of formation. Mine would open fire and theirs would still move a bit forwards a bit left, then stop, and then move again, until they end up in front of my stacks with my firing, but their not. Cavalry seemed a bit smarter, cause instead of charging in my line they would flank them, and attacked my skirmishers, of coarse ineffectively cause i intercepted them with my cavalry.
The ending result was a big brawl, every infantry unit engaged in melee.
Not implying that they never fired, but even when they did they never made a firm line of infantry, and when firing they would still fire then rearrange, so that my troops will fire twice while theirs only once. Also when playing battles in your campaign the maps are more flat and opened, while when playing single battles most of them are not that flat, with many obstacles, and since Darthmod made the units 3 times bigger, the maps seemed too small, and the A.I. couldn't navigate, and again engage in melee even without firing a single volley. I later found out how to change them, instead of 3x the original size to 2x original size, but that didn't change much with the A.I.

So i then deleted Darthmod and wanted to try out the original A.I. Well to me it seemed that it handles infantry more effectively but almost always sent their cavalry to the slaughter. They would more often and more effectively form lines, or at least will set their units firing at mine, instead of just moving. But, before doing that, they would send their cavalry right at my infantry instead of flanking, so i would just stop my advancing infantry and they would open fire on their cavalry routing them before they reach my units, or worse would start running along my line's firing range. That ended with their cavalry not killing a single man. Sometimes they would leave their cavalry with their artillery, but then again they wouldn't make good use of situations, and still engage directly in the front. But since infantry comprised most of the armies, i was better content with the original then Darthmods A.I., so i started a campaign without Darthmod.

So after giving you my exhausting description of my experience, i require some of yours!
What do you think about Darthmods for any game, Shogun 2 , Fall of the Samurai, any Total War game. Does darthmod make the A.I. better, worse, or?

[Steph]

I didn't really tried it much, but I daresay anyone who claims he "made a new AI" is a liar, since we have no way to make one. Every modder is actually using CA's AI, tweaking some parameters to make it respond better (hopefully), but that's not the same as making an AI.

It doesn't mean that you cannot improve the gameplay experience, but it's not a new AI... Not even a better AI.

Moreover, this is probably not a very objective thing to define. People will be happy to see a lot of melee, others things it's better to see more shooting... So it's hard to decide in an AI is "better"
What does it mean? That you have more casualties when you fight against a unit with an "AI mod on" than when you play with "AI mod off"?

[Bran Mac Born]

Stephan I would recommend you try Darth Mod with these settings. Fixes the problems you encountered. Play Hard campaign and very hard battle settings. I also fixed the problems with Darth Mod empire too.http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-DMN-Mod-Edits