Infinite money?

**fedaykin** · February 01, 2009, 07:59 PM

Wondering if anyone has ever seen this:

I'm playing a campaign as England, and I've been excommunicated and at war with the Papal States for about 100 turns. Off and on I've been trying various things to get a ceasefire and reconciliation, but nothing works. It seems like no matter what I do I cannot improve my relations with the Papal States. I'm getting bored with my campaign at this point (I control 35 territories or so and am just rampaging across the map) so figured I'd try something crazy. So I take a diplomat to Rome and offer the Papal States every one of my territories as a gift (except my capital). They happily accept and we're on "Outstanding" terms - hooray! Outside my cities stand all my various armies, as expected, but then I noticed something strange: the Papal States had filled every last one of the cities with various artillery units. Most cities had ten or so ballistae, a few had a mix of mortars, catapults and trebs, and three or four had armies with a normal mix of troops. At this point I was laughing hysterically and decided to take all my cities back and then sack them, and I ended up making almost 350,000 florins. Is it normal for a faction to fill cities it is gifted with crappy artillery units? I've tried this two more times to see what happens and it's about the same (plus or minus a few cities having more normal armies). Any thoughts on why the game would do this?

**Surgeon** · February 01, 2009, 09:24 PM

The AI usually tries to hire the best stat-to-cost ratio units. Unfortunately since artillery have the highest attack values in regards to their cost, and the AI does not distinguish between unit types, it recruits them quite often. There are AI mods out there which make it smarter.

**Conquistatore** · February 02, 2009, 12:33 AM

As surgeon said the AI loves to recruit artillery because of the stats, even though the move much slower than non artillery armies. For a list of hosted mods for both MTW2 and Kingdoms, go here and navigate to the appropriate forum.

**Sulfurion Blackfyre** · February 02, 2009, 02:51 AM

and it also loves it, coz when you click the auto-resolve button against an army wich is half comprised of artillery, you either get HUGE losses and a victory, or SUPER HUGE losses and a defeat =D

**Pink Beard** · February 02, 2009, 03:15 AM

well actually the AI made a pretty smart decision!
It might be very bad against the player but these artilery stacks are protecting the AI from other AI's armies (seeing as the AI autoresolves against "himself").
Would it be an exploit if the human player masses bombards or the like and autoresolves against an elite army and wins?

**Owain Glyndŵr** · February 02, 2009, 05:57 PM

Originally Posted by Pink Beard

Would it be an exploit if the human player masses bombards or the like and autoresolves against an elite army and wins?

Autoresolving? I mass bombards and win sieges all the time! They're never smart enough to sally.

**fedaykin** · February 02, 2009, 06:29 PM

Originally Posted by Owain Glyndŵr

Autoresolving? I mass bombards and win sieges all the time! They're never smart enough to sally.

Yeah, the AI is pretty stupid. I should've noted that I did auto-resolve all my battles and in almost every case came out with a Clear Victory.

Thanks for all the info everyone

**axnsan** · February 02, 2009, 04:05 AM

well i actuallly played a custom battle, me with 20 ribaults and the ai with an autogenerated army - i won by setting all the ribaults on fire at will and puttin game speed at x6, while going to the toilet

**Conquistatore** · February 02, 2009, 03:27 PM

Originally Posted by axnsan

well i actuallly played a custom battle, me with 20 ribaults and the ai with an autogenerated army - i won by setting all the ribaults on fire at will and puttin game speed at x6, while going to the toilet

Haha. If you want to see something amusing, play as the Timurids in a custom battle and give yourself a full stack of fully upgraded and armoured elephant artillery.

Play that against a stack of peasants or militia or anything really and just watch as the enemy advances toward you and your elephants 'shoot the wave' as I call it. Cannon balls flying through the enemy ranks and men flying up behind them.. lol it is quite a funny sight. I guarantee the enemy will route before a single unit gets close to your elephants.

**Spartaaaa** · February 02, 2009, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by Conquistatore

Haha. If you want to see something amusing, play as the Timurids in a custom battle and give yourself a full stack of fully upgraded and armoured elephant artillery.

Play that against a stack of peasants or militia or anything really and just watch as the enemy advances toward you and your elephants 'shoot the wave' as I call it. Cannon balls flying through the enemy ranks and men flying up behind them.. lol it is quite a funny sight. I guarantee the enemy will route before a single unit gets close to your elephants.

If your playing a grand campain and want to see real carnage type
in vindaloo on the cheat box . youll get a very pleasant suprise

**Antwerpen** · February 02, 2009, 04:31 AM

Well in my recent teutonic campaign in Kingdoms as Denmark, I concentrated my attention on Reval and Narva and wars with Novgorod and when I saw that every of my Scandinavian cities is fully garrisoned and has 1-2 full stacks around them I was like "wut?". But when I checked them, I saw that they consisted only of catapults and trebuches.