Question about units, campaign difficulty, etc...

**satthukaraoke** · August 12, 2007, 03:29 AM

Hello everyone, my first post here. I have a few questions and I need some advice too. I'm not clear in the way of the mods yet so I'm not sure what I have installed. The only mod I have installed is the "Land to Conquer 3.1" by Lusted.

- Missile Unit at the wall: I think you can guess what I'm going to ask since I searched and people talked about it. Here is the thing, my Archers actually still doing fine on the wall no matter where they are and how they are position. My Crossbow (as some thread here suggested) only a few unit in the group fire at the wall (probably have something to do with LOS or firing Arch or something). However I figured out a way to position my Crossbow so they can still rain hell on the enemy (usually 90% of the units still fire).

Now the problem is when I reach gun powder units. I just reached this technology and having so much fun with it ... just not on the wall. Only a few of them fire no matter how I position them

. I suspect the combat AI in my game is still in the vanilla version, so any suggestion to make use of musket on my wall (tip, hint, trick, mods anything goes).

- AI Strategy: do you know anyway to have the AI actually upgrading their settlement? They have no problem with building up their city but seems they refuse to upgrade it to the next level. As a result most of the time they only throw cheap units at me, which is kinda boring. Even with the Land To Conquer mod which I think cheats the AI with huge sums of money boost, but the only thing they do with it is chunking out several gigantic armies and still upgrading at snail space. I mean I reached gun powder event and I'll be lucky (maybe 1 out of 30 battles) to find a milita Pike or a dismounted Knight (tier 3 or higher unit) in the other army, otherwise they're all Spear Milita, Peasant Archer/Crossbow (even from powerful countries).

So is there anyway to have a game where I can have knights in flashy armour charge at each others? Also, I'm playing on medium difficulty, the reason I don't switch to hard because I had this exact same problem with RTW and I bumped up the difficulty back then. However I found that it just means the AI will seige my cities just about every single turn even when their force is only a fraction of mine and it didn't help them to manage their settlement any better, so in short it got a lot more annoying, not more difficult. Is there a mod that fix this? I don't care if the mod cheat or improve the AI or anything as long as it's competent and have elite units to fight me.

Well, sorry it kinda long for a first post but I'm really exited after trying out my first mod. The original game irritated me a lot in a lot of way but I never played mod before. The the LTC mod does make some improvements (most noticeable is the diplomacy is a lot more stable now) so I think may be there are other jewels to look for.

**Ged** · August 12, 2007, 03:33 AM

I can't help with the first one, but the second one is pretty common in Deus Lo Vult which I'm playing. I think the AI is just scripted to do that, maybe based on difficulty settings.

**Saibot** · August 12, 2007, 07:57 AM

The reason your crossbowmen won't shoot is probably because the mod can't let crossbowmen shoot up high in the air since crossbows were meant to shoot at the enemy in a straight line. Not to unleash a rain of bolts on the enemy. So if you want to shoot up the enemy's walls you'll have to get archers, longbowmen for example.

**Empress Meg** · August 12, 2007, 08:48 AM

I'm going to move this for you into the mod's sub-forum where you might get more percise information there as this is a more general discussion area about unmodded M2TW. Best of luck with your campaign!

Devoirs The Empress

**Lusted** · August 12, 2007, 09:26 AM

- Missile Unit at the wall: I think you can guess what I'm going to ask since I searched and people talked about it. Here is the thing, my Archers actually still doing fine on the wall no matter where they are and how they are position. My Crossbow (as some thread here suggested) only a few unit in the group fire at the wall (probably have something to do with LOS or firing Arch or something). However I figured out a way to position my Crossbow so they can still rain hell on the enemy (usually 90% of the units still fire). Now the problem is when I reach gun powder units. I just reached this technology and having so much fun with it ... just not on the wall. Only a few of them fire no matter how I position them . I suspect the combat AI in my game is still in the vanilla version, so any suggestion to make use of musket on my wall (tip, hint, trick, mods anything goes).

Simple answer is angle, the angle on gunpowder weapons prevents them from really being used effectively on walls as they have a small min angle. Plus their small max angle means that most will not fire.

**satthukaraoke** · August 12, 2007, 11:14 AM

As I said, I figured out a way to let my Crossbow to rain death on the wall, just not gun powder.

About campaign AI, is there a mod that let the enemy build stronger unit, Ultimate AI ?

**Lusted** · August 12, 2007, 02:15 PM

No mods like that cannot effect things like the ai recruitment, it's probably the low replenishment rates for units that is hurting the ai.

**jegui** · August 12, 2007, 05:15 PM

Originally Posted by satthukaraoke

AI Strategy: do you know anyway to have the AI actually upgrading their settlement? They have no problem with building up their city but seems they refuse to upgrade it to the next level. As a result most of the time they only throw cheap units at me, which is kinda boring. Even with the Land To Conquer mod which I think cheats the AI with huge sums of money boost, but the only thing they do with it is chunking out several gigantic armies and still upgrading at snail space. I mean I reached gun powder event and I'll be lucky (maybe 1 out of 30 battles) to find a milita Pike or a dismounted Knight (tier 3 or higher unit) in the other army, otherwise they're all Spear Milita, Peasant Archer/Crossbow (even from powerful countries).

I don't agree on this one... I'm currently playing England and I'm at war with HRE which are throwing at me army after army of tier 3 DK units together with handgunners and musketmen... I'm 160 turns into the game though! u just need to let the AI build up before wiping them up

**satthukaraoke** · August 12, 2007, 08:25 PM

Originally Posted by jegui

I don't agree on this one... I'm currently playing England and I'm at war with HRE which are throwing at me army after army of tier 3 DK units together with handgunners and musketmen... I'm 160 turns into the game though! u just need to let the AI build up before wiping them up

May I ask which difficulty you're playing and what mod? I just restarted a new game with the Ultimate AI mod and push the difficulty to hard. So far it seems this does help the way they manage the settlement, they have more advance cities and even have citidel before me, but alas their recruitment is not any better. And as I was afraid they suffered (or I suffer) the same thing that I was in RTW, they constantly seige my city even when their army is about 1/10 my garrison.

As for leaving them along, I always do, except for a couple of rebel settlements that I took in the beginning I pretty much always play passive until the gun powder event. Plus I like playing seige battle

**jegui** · August 13, 2007, 04:15 AM

Originally Posted by satthukaraoke

May I ask which difficulty you're playing and what mod? I just restarted a new game with the Ultimate AI mod and push the difficulty to hard. So far it seems this does help the way they manage the settlement, they have more advance cities and even have citidel before me, but alas their recruitment is not any better. And as I was afraid they suffered (or I suffer) the same thing that I was in RTW, they constantly seige my city even when their army is about 1/10 my garrison.

As for leaving them along, I always do, except for a couple of rebel settlements that I took in the beginning I pretty much always play passive until the gun powder event. Plus I like playing seige battle

I'm playing LTC 3.1 on VH/VH but I'm in turn 200 or so... there are still some low spec stacks around but I have been fighting AI stacks with higher level units in many occasions... the only thing that I don't like is the fact it sometimes builds armies with loads of siege units or low and high spec units all mixed

I believe that this could be fine tuned by removing low spec units and siege units from the pools later in the campaign

**Garnier** · August 13, 2007, 07:46 AM

I made the siege buildings each make one type of siege unit, for the first tier you get ballistas, then catapults only, then trebs only. This way, later on, they only have trebs as far as siege weapons are concerned. I think the good in this change outways the bad, so I leave it.

**satthukaraoke** · August 13, 2007, 05:29 PM

Originally Posted by Garnier

I made the siege buildings each make one type of siege unit, for the first tier you get ballistas, then catapults only, then trebs only. This way, later on, they only have trebs as far as siege weapons are concerned. I think the good in this change outways the bad, so I leave it.

It's a neat idea, instead of just reducing the recruitment pool the unit can get obsoleted out all together. The AI has an economy boost so it's not like it's going to affect them, and the player ... well, I don't think the high maintain cost is matter either. By the GunPowder event I usually have around half a million Florins sitting around.

**jegui** · August 13, 2007, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by Garnier

I made the siege buildings each make one type of siege unit, for the first tier you get ballistas, then catapults only, then trebs only. This way, later on, they only have trebs as far as siege weapons are concerned. I think the good in this change outways the bad, so I leave it.

So when are you going to release your add on for LTC 3.1 Garnier? I'm eagerly awaiting to play more robust AI armies