Weird Kingdom additions (that I hope won't be in Empire TW...)

[vicjun]

There are probably thousands of threads about these things, but I don't want my post to drown in a 500 page thread, so I'm starting a new one. Not trying to engage into a discussion here, just stating what i think is strange about Kingdoms (and Medieval 2 in general):


-Units not attacking the right enemy; this is something I just started noticing after installing Kingdoms. My units don't necesarily attack the enemy unit I want them to. They just attack the closest enemy. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of "May charge without orders" (which I've never seen in action, and not all units have it, but they all behave like this), or just plain bad AI, or maybe a consequence of the units being "eager". It's really annoying though. Especially when trying to run down routing units, my light cavalry has a fanatical deathwish embodied into attacking an enemy spear wall instead... Never saw this in vanilla Medieval 2, and it's something I'd like explained.


-Cavalry dispersing into all directions (and I mean without Stainless Steel) when attacking, or just hard braking as soon as they hit a unit. Worrying part is this was in the Empire total war demo. How hard can it be to program proper cavalry AI after 5 games? Maybe it is hard, I don't know. Makes some charges useless though. Can turn the tide of a battle.

- Generally poor skirmish mode AI, although this has been a problem since Rome at least. This is my opinion though; archer units etc should retreat sooner, not wait until the last second when theyre being charged by knights in plate armour... I very rarely use this option, a group of archers surrounded by a diamond formation of spearmen can defeat an enemy 3 times stronger without breaking a sweat. There is no better way of getting a 1-3000 kill ratio.

- Which leads me to the very easy to trick enemy AI in battles. I've used the same formation since Rome, and it defeats anything from English to Mongols. Playing "very hard" campaigns now, I only wish the battles were a little more challenging. Does playing battles on "very hard" give the enemy a moral advantage and so on? Or does it just "improve the AI"? Hopefully this might change with Empire total war, with a bigger focus on ranged units.

- Still very annoying that enemy armies can just run off a battlefield without losing any troops if they feel like it. This has changed a bit in Kingdoms though.

- The thing I like most about Kingdoms is being able to direct allied AI. Apparently they're going to remove this in Empire, which is a strange decision.

- Getting priests to become cardinals is still nearly impossible.


I think that's about it, but I might add some things later.