Zero players

[whitesoxfan]

Is it possible to have no human players and just let the AIs slug it out? How would you do that?

[Aradan]

You add " -ai" to the target line of your shortcut.

eg.

"C:\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Rome - Total War\RomeTW-BI.exe" -ai

[AqD]

But ... how can you stop it later?

[Aradan]

I think that if you press esc during your faction's turn, you can save, exit etc normally. Well, generally -ai camapigns are used by modders to debug campaigns, adjust balance, track mid-/late-game CTDs etc, so it's 1-run goes usually without breaks.

[makanyane]

I've never managed to save / restore command from -ai
which is pain for testing... would love to know if someone has a method...

if you're using bi.exe which supports hordes and dead_until_resurrected factions, if you have a couple of spare factions you can use a variety of
ER's year jump script
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=65109

you can set that for a set number of turns and then get control back to see exactly where all the factions have got to under ai control

[whitesoxfan]

I've unpacked Medieval 2, so the shortcut looks just is

medieval2.exe --io.file_first

Where do I add the -ai?

[makanyane]

ah, oops, we both answered for the wrong game, I think for M2TW you need to use either hotseat mode see
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?p=2236534

to get into that you need to launch from a .bat and config file not from a normal shortcut

and or use an amended script