Well the AI's reached an all time low

[gambit]

I was just starting a new scotland campaign on vh/vh. I use stainless steel 4.1 and I was assaulting York. The enemy was holding out on the square so I decided to start it off with some hit an runs with my general...first off he's inside the village and I tell him to go further down the road a bit so the charge goes off well. He decided it'd be easier to try and walk 10 yards by turned around and running outside the village....Me 0 - AI 1... I finally get him in prime position for destroying enemy irish kerns, and give him the order to charge. Sadly he can't pull his soliders together enough to get the lances out and they charge into the enemy sword first...Me 0 - AI 2. I'm not that angry since it's only irish kerns, so I let them duke it out a little bit. My general decides it's not enough to fight irish kerns and by himself, as an indivual, he charges past the kerns and archers that joined the melee and runs into a group of galgollaich's....Me 0 - AI 3... So I get him out of the mess and try a few more charges... It ends up as Me 0 - AI 5... I decide a different tactic and try surrounding the village (Cavalry from each direction except infantry from main roads) I try to get my infantry to run up the road... unlike my general they decide to run backwards and then just stop moving altogether :hmmm: Me 0 - AI 6... I get them all in position (kind of) and archers start shooting at them so I try and run them back down the road...same issues Me 0 - AI 7... I get all this fixed up and some enemy archers decide to charge at my cavalry so I guess that's a point for me, Me 1 - AI 7. I charge my cavalry towards the archers and they think they should run through some trees on the right and ram into a building...Me 1 - AI 8. Finally get all my troops in position and I do a full out charge on the square. First problem is my infantry decide to send in 5 men for the inital charge and the rest just stand back and wait... Me 1 - AI 9. General fails to charge again and I can't even begin to explain what my light cavalry was trying to do (I'm still not sure) I lost the battle of 2 to 1 odds with a high score of Me 1 - AI 12.

[Samir]

dont use cavalry for street fighting.

sorry, but you deserve the loss of your army. infantry and archers as well as heavy siege equipment is the way to go in a siege.

[N3rull]

Deserved or undeserved, it's clear and everybody knows it - AI in M2TW on all levels (from soldier behaviour to strategical diplomacy and sending one boat to blockade a port with your own Great Armada positioned inside) is simply the biggest, fattest, arse-nibbling merkin-grabbing loon-faced idiot nun-fondling joke in the history of gaming industry.

And it's not your SS mod's case, vanilla has it all over.

Samir, the funny thing is that AI uses its cavalry well in siege battles, maybe except when longbowmen plant stakes at the entrance.
The game should make a sensible point to why cavalry doesn't work in street fights - not by bugging every move you want them to make.

[gambit]

You're right about the cavalry but siege equipment wouldn't help either, it was a village with no walls.

[TheOnion]

You're right about the cavalry but siege equipment wouldn't help either, it was a village with no walls.

Siege equipment would still be useful in lowering their moral, flattening the village and a lucky strike could take out a lot of them.

[gambit]

I never though of that, good ideas tho

[roy34543]

Everyone thinks the AI in every game is bad .
Except games that are extremely and supremely challenging, even if the AI is crappy if your facing 50 enemies with 40 times the power you have in a ranged thing going in a speed of light then you dont wonder if they dont even know when your jumping.

[N3rull]

I actually ignore artillery of all sorts. The worst thing about it is that it reduces my army's movement by 30%. On the battlefield they may be useful, like all things, but watching my army roll them for years and then watch the artillery roll for minutes on the battlefield... ehh... bore.
I only make a ballista/bombard when I need a siege resolved in the first turn, before Pope starts spitting his "be friendly" whining. It's a good tactic - make three armies, equip each with a ballista, walk over the enemy lands to his settlements and assault them all at one time. Ballista is capable of blowing a gate, the AI stupidity and your own might will do the rest.
Other than that, artillery buildings above the basic one are last on my wishlist for any settlement.

[skulkrinbait]

My experience of certain aspects of the AI in MTW2 is that it is an improvement over the AI in MTW1, but I'm not experience enough to say this is the case all the time!

One example is the disposition of forces the enemy AI brings to the battle. In MTW1 I would often encounter armies that had more than 50% of their units made up of siege equipment, and that in open battle with no castles in sight.

In MTW2 it's still a problem but not quite so severe an issue.

What I don't understand is why the people who wrote MTW don't apply a few simple rules to the AI when it comes to building armies.

For example, they should have a short list of prime units for each faction and those should be concentrated on by the AI, so 75% or so of their armies would consist of these prime units.

You'd then have just the odd unit of siege equipment taken along when the AI was targetting a castle/city etc.

Admittedly the AI for actual battles is much more complex, but I don't see what's so hard about the AI that decides the composition of armies.

[gambit]

indeed, I'm sick of fighting italian factions that only send italian spear militia, crossbow units and catapults at me.