What made Barbarian invasion tough?

[Darviathar]

I've been thinking about the times I really feared that I was going to LOSE a campaign recently, and just how much fun it was. To my recollection, this only occurred in the vanilla Barbarian Invasion expansion for RTW. I remember starting out as the ERE, thinking "Oh, I'll just defend the Danube crossing points and not have to worry". It would have been easy in the original RTW game, but in BI, the Huns easily forced their way across, took Sirmium, and literally had me huddling generals in Constantinople to avoid them being killed. Thessalonica was sacked and burned, and the Huns could have easily taken Athens had they wanted to. Not long after they passed through, the Goths and Sarmatians showed up, and I again had to huddle in my cities until I could start cranking out Roman units that were good enough to fight the hordes. Sadly, I've never felt this level of desperation as the Byzantines in any MTW2 game, including vanilla, the DLV mod, and of course SS. What made BI so tough? Was it the fact that the horde faction units had better stats? That they had better AI in sacking settlements and looking for a proper new homeland? Is the solution to making MTW2 harder to start some factions out as a horde, with as many troops as the Huns in BI started with? If we did that, would they understand that taking a remote province from the Cumans or Kwarz simply isn't a proper homeland? I'd really like to feel the desperation in MTW 2 that I felt playing both Roman factions in BI. Any one have suggestions?

[Faramir D'Andunie]

It has been a very long time since playing Barbarian invasion, but I think what made the campaign as either Roman state so hard (especially WRE) was that you had very few turns to prepare for what was endless Hordes banging your gates.

[gornison]

I think it about the other thing - Roman Empire in BI had so much other troubles - religious unrest, rebel generals, lack of money... this all made a hard start - and it was historical correct. I don't think this is possible to make in Medieval.

[Faramir D'Andunie]

True that.

I also remember WRE beeing in a desperate economy state. Without urgent measures in the first turns you were broke and had either to disband half your army or destroy a lot of advanced buildings in Italy.

[Barser]

Yeah it was the fall of the roman empire allright. It was freaking hard defending against the hordes. The huns and vandals was terryfieng when they set there eyes on your land.

[Fionn son of Cumhaill]

Those were the days...Thanks for reminding me about it,i think ill reinstall BI tomorrow and give the WRE another shot,oh yeah and + rep

[Firebat11]

I agree too. BI was hard with lots of factions, including goths, WRE, ERE etc.

Other factions like Franks were easy as they only had to take a few settlements.

I agree that M2TW is significantly easier then BI was. Ahhh... I miss those days.

[chaos]

If you played VH/VH in a vanilla MTW2 game, and played enough turns, pretty soon all adjacent factions would attack you, and your allies would backstab you. You were really in a TOTAL WAR game, maybe fighting 3-5 factions at the same time. I got my ass kicked in vanilla plently of times, and fought lots of battles to boot.

Well, what happened? The mods happened. Instead of the good old 2 years per turn, now we have 0.5 years per turn. Building times have increased to the point of total boredom. All the wusses wanted a campaign AI that wouldn't break alliances, so now that's what we got. Instead of Medieval Total War its more like Medieval Total Peace. The game has regressed to managing economies, supply lines, and recruitment times.

Darth had a good campaign AI that gave the player and AI factions lots of money. This resulted in a fast paced campaign with lots of battles, where you could forget about the micromanagement. Its out of date now and Darth has left. I play SS for all the great new units, factions, and map. However I am forced to spend too much time modding it in order to try to recapture that good old total war feeling.

[Darviathar]

If you played VH/VH in a vanilla MTW2 game, and played enough turns, pretty soon all adjacent factions would attack you, and your allies would backstab you. You were really in a TOTAL WAR game, maybe fighting 3-5 factions at the same time. I got my ass kicked in vanilla plently of times, and fought lots of battles to boot.

Well, what happened? The mods happened. Instead of the good old 2 years per turn, now we have 0.5 years per turn. Building times have increased to the point of total boredom. All the wusses wanted a campaign AI that wouldn't break alliances, so now that's what we got. Instead of Medieval Total War its more like Medieval Total Peace. The game has regressed to managing economies, supply lines, and recruitment times.

Darth had a good campaign AI that gave the player and AI factions lots of money. This resulted in a fast paced campaign with lots of battles, where you could forget about the micromanagement. Its out of date now and Darth has left. I play SS for all the great new units, factions, and map. However I am forced to spend too much time modding it in order to try to recapture that good old total war feeling.

I loaded up BI today and took a look at the starting Hun armies. 9 stacks, each with 14-17 units and 4 family members. The computer seems to have some *intelligence* in what to do with them, moving them around together, and scaring the bejesus out me every time they stray near Roman territory. I imagine we could give he Mongols 9 stacks with the equivalent of the Hun stacks, and they'd still wander around aimlessly, siege a city that they can easily take, then break the siege, wander away a few turns, etc. It just seems to me that the campaign AI got stupid. Vanilla MTW 2 *is* tougher. I started a vanilla game as the HRE a few weeks ago, just because I wanted to see the Timurids again, and was a bit surprised at how tough it was. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why we can't get the same kind of experience with mods. We all like bigger maps with more settlements, new buildings, and new units. But can the computer simply not figure out how to adjust his game to a map that features more territory? I'm really becoming a bit discouraged, and please take not that this is not meant to deride King Kong or anyone else that works hard on the mods I download and play for free. It is just the CA engine that badly needs some work.

I'm using the Darth combat system because of one of your previous posts, Chaos. I have in fact lost some battles when the computer has enveloped my flank and overrun my archers and siege equipment. Is the campaign AI he put out so obsolete that it cannot be adapted to SS?

[chaos]

Is the campaign AI he put out so obsolete that it cannot be adapted to SS?

Well, that cloud does have a sliver lining . XAI is carrying on with the great Darth tradition and is working on a customised campaign and battle AI specific for SS6.1 (see the attached link).

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=166079

[Darviathar]

Well, that cloud does have a sliver lining . XAI is carrying on with the great Darth tradition and is working on a customised campaign and battle AI specific for SS6.1 (see the attached link).

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=166079

I think these are the files I downloaded last week or so. I use the battle AI already. Is this campaign AI tougher/more intelligent than Lusted's?

[Banzai!]

I think its because the AI never DoWs me.

[Blakdust]

Yeah BI campaign was the only Iv ever finished even tho I never aim to finish them it was with the Roman western empire It was dam fun

[Delvecchio1975]

well, i DID get surprised yesterday. Building up my Byzantine empire was indeed getting a bit boring, because of the passive AI. I was even at war with the Fatimids, and took Benghazi, but they did not counterattack - not even when i went wandering around with my general by himself, in between a bunch of half full Fatimid stacks!
Anyway, all of a sudden, two full Teutonic stacks knock on the door in Bucharest, raize it to the ground (I managed to take out around half a stack), and then repeated that feat in my capital. I didn't know where to look for reinforcements first. I took out another half stack but they leveled constantinopel as well. Kievan Rus stepped in and occupied Bucharest (I was too scared to leave any other settlement undefended with those stacks rampaging through). The Teutons turned on Nicaea, where I could finally hold them at the gates.
Next few turns I reoccupied Constantinople (population from 37K to 10K) and bribed Bucharest off the Kievans.
That's the worst damage I have ever had in MTWII, worse than in vanilla, where at least you know who's coming around for tea, and when.

Freaking brilliant, can't wait to get home for more.

[Inhuman One]

For BI I modified all units to not cost upkeep, which made it easy to play as the romans, but made the game very difficult for the barbarian factions since they had little land.

In europe this game was brutal though, many little factions had to fight for their place since there just where a lot there.

The area that covers france and germany in medieval 2 had about 6-7 factions fighting over it from the start.

[Darviathar]

For BI I modified all units to not cost upkeep, which made it easy to play as the romans, but made the game very difficult for the barbarian factions since they had little land.

In europe this game was brutal though, many little factions had to fight for their place since there just where a lot there.

The area that covers france and germany in medieval 2 had about 6-7 factions fighting over it from the start.

I wonder how this would work in conjunction with the recruitment limitation mod that was recently added to the submod section. This would keep the player from going overboard with units, but giving the AI free reign to build massive armies might actually provide a stiff challenge.

[Smakkz]

IMO Barbarian Invasion as said before by many of you, was very tough on the west roman empire. Quite frankly, it was rather historical and linear in that sense that you had to be a pretty good strategist and tactician not to end up like the real romans.

That said, I do wholeheartedly agree with you that mtw2/SS is currently easy and the mongols/teutonic order are NOT the scare they are supposed to be.

In my latest game, i couldnt find a mongol diplomat, and maptrading showed me that they werent near the Cumans or the kwarpeople. I had only 1 unexplored territory left and that was a small patch in the baltic. The teutonic order are in Thessalonica and just jog around their border.

The only real opponent i had in the game was the scots. I actually lost more battles than i won against em, plus the scots AI actually threw everything he had against me during my first seaborn invasion. I was infact shocked with joy, the battles were fun since i was fighting last stands, i lost the cities I initially took. It felt like a real aggressive "human" reaction, and it was intelligent. Now the others...

Castles are only guarded with 1 general most of the time, rarely more than 3 units if he got any soldiers.

Also in my spanish game, everybody hates me. I got absymal relationship with everybody except the pope for obvious reasons. My reputation is deceitful. Still no one attacks me. Sure ok, i'm nr 1 on all the charts, but the AI should set in so that when you get on top, the AI tries to smack you down with everything they got.

Like CIV 3 and 4. Once you became the dominant power, diplomacy werent worth the effort because the AI had marked you for termination. That's when the game gets great because now you are fighting for your survival.


The way I see it: make the AI a helluva lot more aggressive against the player when he is rising the ranks. When you're the largest, the AI's should actually try and kill you off.

Just my rambling

[Darviathar]

IMO Barbarian Invasion as said before by many of you, was very tough on the west roman empire. Quite frankly, it was rather historical and linear in that sense that you had to be a pretty good strategist and tactician not to end up like the real romans.

That said, I do wholeheartedly agree with you that mtw2/SS is currently easy and the mongols/teutonic order are NOT the scare they are supposed to be.

In my latest game, i couldnt find a mongol diplomat, and maptrading showed me that they werent near the Cumans or the kwarpeople. I had only 1 unexplored territory left and that was a small patch in the baltic. The teutonic order are in Thessalonica and just jog around their border.

The only real opponent i had in the game was the scots. I actually lost more battles than i won against em, plus the scots AI actually threw everything he had against me during my first seaborn invasion. I was infact shocked with joy, the battles were fun since i was fighting last stands, i lost the cities I initially took. It felt like a real aggressive "human" reaction, and it was intelligent. Now the others...

Castles are only guarded with 1 general most of the time, rarely more than 3 units if he got any soldiers.

Also in my spanish game, everybody hates me. I got absymal relationship with everybody except the pope for obvious reasons. My reputation is deceitful. Still no one attacks me. Sure ok, i'm nr 1 on all the charts, but the AI should set in so that when you get on top, the AI tries to smack you down with everything they got.

Like CIV 3 and 4. Once you became the dominant power, diplomacy werent worth the effort because the AI had marked you for termination. That's when the game gets great because now you are fighting for your survival.


The way I see it: make the AI a helluva lot more aggressive against the player when he is rising the ranks. When you're the largest, the AI's should actually try and kill you off.

Just my rambling

Teutons...in Thessalonica? How did they get to Byzantine territory? Never seen anything like that before!

The "Mr. Friendly" AI is a real problem. If the #1 power in the game (invariably the player by turn 100) is left alone to fight a series of wars against one opponent at a time, the result is a foregone conclusion. The AI is going to have to learn to form alliances against the player to avoid this.

[MCDS2]

there was one thing i noticed after loading BI and RTW was that the AI could actually build forts, i seen a couple of AI forts around the map. As well as that the M2TW's AI wasn't nearly as good as RTW or BI, i think that was due to the change of team working on it. RTW and BI were made by the english team and M2TW was designed by the Oz team. SS is great but the AI still doesn't build forts or scare you like it did in BI.

[Gorrrrrn]

2 quick comments re forts :

1) playing SS6.1 have seen the AI build forts, but not very many.
2) problem with forts - if the AI does build them there's always the danger they'll stick an entire stack in there, which does nothing when you attack the settlement nearby.

and what made BI so easy -

when you were besieged you sallied forth, sent a unit of cavalry out near the besiegers, said unit then ran away round the walls whilst the towers destroyed all the enemy units that were following you. Or lines of attacking units that sat outside your walls whilst the towers and your archers shot them to pieces.

what was good about BI was there was no attempt to balance the factions, to learnt the game you played the easier factions and then worked your way up to the more difficult ones. Problem with SS is that if you make some factions much weaker than others, their fanbase complains that it's not fair (or the AI just walks over them.)