Battle AI

[tonedog]

how is everyone finding the battles? i think they tend to end pretty quickly so maybe the morale could be tweaked!

had any tried darths battle mod or any others with kingdoms?

[Shaun]

Well, I generally think battle speed is vastly improved over that of RTW, and slightly improved over that of M2TW. However, battle AI is very poor - in sieges they just stand there whilst I shoot the **** out of them with cannons ... yep, that's right, in cities where there is a path that goes straight from the gates to the city centre I can win without even engaging the enemy, providing I bring enough balisks. They don't attempt to charge my vulnerable cannon crews, nor do they even attempt to give me a fight, but rather they just sit there, almost glued to the stop, as if they do not posses the mental ability to do any other action other than to turn around as to face me head on. They sit there, glued to the stop whilst I pulverise them with my cannons and musketeers. At least if they could only build archers then I would at least take some causulties from their arrow fire. (although they would be terribly vulnerable to getting charged down from my cavalry.)

[Tiberiu_R]

Well i dought anyone could try at the moment Darth Mod with the kingdoms expansion bcs they use different versions (Darth uses 1.2 and kingdoms 1.4)
About the battle AI.
Generally speaking, the battles in kingdoms are improved vs med 2.
But still they don't have the feel that Darth Mod offers. Certainly there are visible changes made for Kingdoms but there are enough bugs. The Heavy Cav charge still doesn't go all the way through. They act like they hit an invisible wall sometimes. They should have tweaked the formations a bit in order to make the cav charge right trough. I mean C'mon...How could a foot soldier stop a horse +men in full speed???
Also i do like the cohesion offered by Darth Mod. It's the best around.
Now i don't want to criticize CA for Kingdoms because they did a good job for Kingdoms, but they could have made it even better!
At the core it's still the medieval 2 engine with it's bugs.
I did noticed one thing that delighted me! The battles use more of those special effects when it comes to fighting.You can see units doing the special moves. Similar to the intro movie battles. I like it allot.
Also the reinforcement control thing is welcomed, but you do not fully control the reinforcements like the trailers suggested.
CA could have tweaked the battle a bit. It's obvious that the units were balanced(and overall it' a good job for CA). But battles are too short too enjoy. And again it's a matter of each player's style.

[tonedog]

i see that darth has given up modding. are the any moves afoot fo update darth's battle mod or are there any other mods in the making?

[Tiberiu_R]

i see that darth has given up modding. are the any moves afoot fo update darth's battle mod or are there any other mods in the making?

The last Darth Mod will be released soon. In a couple of days or so.
This will be the last Darth Mod.

[tonedog]

so has anyone managed to convert any of the battle AI mods such as darth's to kingdoms then?

[bobfish]

Siege AI is just moronic, playing the Crusades campaign as Byzan, and Venice attacks my capital with three full stacks to my one stack defending. They make a ram and two siege towers and proceed to attack from two directions. They spend half the battle attacking a wall segment with two ballista before running out of ammo, then use the siege towers on two heavily defended walls and the ram on the gate.

Walls were held and they sent 2000 men/horses through the gate one after the other to all die/rout on my heavy infantry until the timer was up.

He lost 70% of his forces and wasted half an hour of my life because he didnt have the equipment to siege a fully upgraded city.

[John of Gaunt]

I've only played on H/VH and VH/VH, and the AI is worthless.

I've found the battle AI to have gotten worst in Kingdoms. The dev's seem to have 'solved' the passive issue by making the AI always attack in a direct line in all circumstances, regardless of terrain, numbers, unit types...

Soon as the battle starts they just march right at you, its ridiclous.

Seige AI is bugged to hell. If the AI has two armies, 1st in the castle and a 2nd one outside, they just march their 2nd army through your beseiging army (not attacking, just march through) to try to get to the city gates. If they get there, the gates don't open, so they just get massacred at their own city gates. Troops inside the city seem completely passive in most circumstances.

I don't see how reviews give this game 80-90%. Its not even a game, theres little point playing it if your oppoent cannot offer even the most basic resistance.

Campaign AI is just as bad.

Very disapointing.

[LordsofDefence]

I do agree with the above posts. As the attacker, I can leave my men in position because 9 times out of 10 the AI will order all its troops to advance on me.

Siege AI is the same as ever. Today the Mongols assaulted my city - two full stacks. One to the North with two ladders, two siege towers and a ram - which I beat off until only the cavalry remained, twitching and reforming on their start lines - and the stack to the South (which comprised 100% cavalry) just sat there.

I defeated all their infantry, they had no way of getting inside the city yet they would not leave the field (I play with the battle timer off) so I was left with two choices - quit the battle (which said that I would lose) and unfairly lose the city or CTL+ALT+DEL. I chose the latter!

[PrimerX]

I've only played on H/VH and VH/VH, and the AI is worthless.

I've found the battle AI to have gotten worst in Kingdoms.

Blah!

CA Sales Chairman: Guys, a new expansion will bring in some cash..get to work!

CA concerned programmer: Sir, an overwhelming percentage of the player base has been complaining since early RTW days about campaign, combat and diplomatic AI. Perhaps we should work on that first?

CA Sales Chairman: Screw that! More features, more skins, more voices, more flashing stuff! They will buy it!!!

[John of Gaunt]

Blah!
They will buy it!!!

Sadly its true...

The games have so much promise, i keep hoping it'll be good, i keep buying them...but AI always sucks, and given that its single player, thats a pretty major problem...

[blekaut]

Yeah the AI isn't exactly brilliant. Just before I attacked a village. I got to the center where all the enemy troops gathered. I put my two stacks of archers at the very begining of the center. They enemy had no missile units left so only I was shooting. Every time I killed a couple of them they ran towards me and about 2 meters away from the archers they turned and went back to the center. They kept doing that until I killed every last one of them. There was no melee battle eventhough the enemy didnt have any missile units. That's just not right.

[Slaists]

I agree with the points about the poor battle AI. Especially the point about passive AI having been "solved" by making the "defending" AI attack regardless of terrain and army composition is really disappointing. There are a few cases though when the AI seems to defend an advantageous position, but that's like 2 out of 100 battles. I am not sure what triggers this "proper" behavior. In all other cases, the attacker (me) can just take up a defensive position and wait for the AI to advance, which it does (and, in most cases - piecemeal-wise).

[Zendjir]

The games have so much promise, i keep hoping it'll be good, i keep buying them...but AI always sucks, and given that its single player, thats a pretty major problem...

Same here. But I have decided NOT to buy this expansion because of the continuing AI problems in the TW games since RTW. As I read more and more info about how horrid the AI is in this latest product I'm feeling that I have made the right decision.

[blekaut]

Same here. But I have decided NOT to buy this expansion because of the continuing AI problems in the TW games since RTW. As I read more and more info about how horrid the AI is in this latest product I'm feeling that I have made the right decision.

As I said it's not the best AI but I don't think it's worth passing the expansion just because of it

[tonedog]

i thinks kingdoms is a decent enough expansion. the campaign AI seems to be better but i reckons that just because the maps are more specific and there are less factions so less chance of the AI screwin up.

the battle AI could defo do with some work though. the impressionim gettin is that nobody's workin to hard to mod kingdoms which is a shame

[John of Gaunt]

i thinks kingdoms is a decent enough expansion. the campaign AI seems to be better but i reckons that just because the maps are more specific and there are less factions so less chance of the AI screwin up.

They should go back to the M1:TW map...the AI could just about cope then

[Gorrrrrn]

When I played the Brittania campaign I found the battle AI poor, siege AI simply daft at times.

However, in my Egyptian campaign I've had some really good open field battles against the Templars - often one of my stacks against 2 of theirs. Got slaughtered on a couple of occasions due being overrun by heavy cavalry and I didn't have any spears () Attacking castles is no fun due to the AI not bothering with proper garrisons so I auto-resolve them.

(little gripe - egyptian desert cavalry have lost their skirmish ability - now they go round in pretty circles. I'd much better have skirmishing ability - now I have to micro-manage them when I have plenty of other units to keep an eye on.)

[ginge51]

So if it's this bad i have 2 very simple questions for you all.

1.Why do we buy this game if it's so bugged and knackered?
2.Are all these problems easyly fixed by the community and i mean all the problems?

[blekaut]

So if it's this bad i have 2 very simple questions for you all.

1.Why do we buy this game if it's so bugged and knackered?
2.Are all these problems easyly fixed by the community and i mean all the problems?

1. Cause it still pwns
2. No. If it was so easy CA would have fixed it already