Ridiculous AI

[Silhouette]

Playing as the Greek City-States. I fought a war with Macedon for 48 years. More than 300,000 Greeks died, and only about 120,000 Macedonians died. This is partially due to the fact that I started auto-calculating battles after about the 20th year. My stacks consisted mostly of Spartan Hoplite variants, Athenian Marines, Kretan Archers and Thureophoroi. The Macedonians literally killed five of my men for every one of theirs in the auto-calcs.

When I finally became exhausted of the war, Athens' population was reduced to 1200 people, from the
75,000 before the war, and every Achaean city suffered similar results. I offered peace to the Macedonians, completely preposterous conditions considering I had just routed three armies consisting of 11,000 troops outside of Thebes. I offered...
My last city in Africa, the entire Bosporan kingdom of three cities, Larissa (the city around which where most of the war took place), who'se city's name I can't recall, as well as a hefty sum of 400,000 drachma that I had saved up for such an occasion. They surprisingly accepted, probably because my diplomat had a 8* rating.

Next turn guess what happens? They send 4 stacks at me from Larissa and sack Thebes.

My question is this:

Is the AI supposed to betray immediately? Typically the tougher AI's at least give a few turns courtesy before stabbing you in the back. This seems nearly impossible. I'm playing on H/H and am a pretty decent player. Is there at least a force diplomacy mod or something for this? I'm reduced now to Crete, Rhodes, Athens and Sparta, from my original 10 cities before the war.

I'd also like to add that while i'm ticked off that i'm losing this seemingly endless war with macedon, it is quite fun nonetheless.


Use the edit button instead of double posting. /apple

[Ostrogoth]

AI is really badass here. I am playing macedon and I even managed to capture sparta but after 2 turns huge spartan army appeard and after 1 turn another full army with elite forces and retrained in large foundry , and they only had one village (very poor town) from witch they could'nt reqruit such a great army, they retake sparta and almost all greece. I am now trying to stop them at thebe but it is under siege and I cant breake it

[Silhouette]

I think i'm going to go down to medium Campaign difficulty but keep it at Very Hard Battle difficulty. It's just way way too unrealistic on Hard. :/ Try getting some siege gear against spartans the tight formations make nice targets and they have almost no cavalry ^.^

[Brusilov]

I'd also like to add that while i'm ticked off that i'm losing this seemingly endless war with macedon, it is quite fun nonetheless.

One of the problems of 0-turn recruitment is that it does generate a number of full stack armies.

I would guess as the game runs on then factions may be richer and then can afford more stacks (if they've built up the economy and have trade). The other thing that may not help is that factions tend to survive for a lot longer in RSII than RS1.

I've heard that part of the background script will generate some large garrison forces if you're treatening a factions capital - a nice little shock for the player.

The RTW diplomacy is known to be fundamentally flawed (well that's tru of most TW games). If an AI faction controls a region next to yours they are almost guarantted ot go to war with you.

I think 'behind the scenes' there are some faction characteristics that will mean one faction is inherantly an enemy of another one and they are destined to slug it out until only one remains.

I know some people use a 'force diplomacy' mod to get alliances etc.

The problem with auto resolving battles is that the results are always going to be worse for you than if you fought the battles manually. My understanding of autoresolving is that a single unit is sent in at a time and they fight it out (I don't know if that is true). However, when my armies move I have the heavy infantry at the start of the stack, followed by either the archers or the cavalry. Something like this (it's a RS1.5 army):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I think there were warnings that the hardest faction to play was going to be the Free Greeks - they are spread out all over the place.

Anyway, it's good to hear that you are enjoying the challenge.

What difficulty settings are you using?

AI is really badass here. I am playing macedon and I even managed to capture sparta but after 2 turns huge spartan army appeard and after 1 turn another full army with elite forces and retrained in large foundry , and they only had one village (very poor town) from witch they could'nt reqruit such a great army, they retake sparta and almost all greece. I am now trying to stop them at thebe but it is under siege and I cant breake it

Buried in my reply is mention of the background script generating armies if the AI's capital is threatened.

Nothing like a challenge, eh?

I think there warnings that RSII was different to RS1....

[Silhouette]

I was playing on H/VH before. I'll definitely give the army composition order idea a whirl, thanks for bringing that to my attention. Are you aware of where to find this force diplomacy mod? I typically enjoy having it just for those honorless AI hounds that don't understand what a ceasefire entails. It certainly is much more challenging and immersive than any other mod i've played, and i'm not the most easily entertained person either haha. It's pretty mind blowing how above and beyond RSII is. Thanks for your continued existence (From yesterday with the install issue.)

[Brusilov]

I was playing on H/VH before. I'll definitely give the army composition order idea a whirl, thanks for bringing that to my attention. Are you aware of where to find this force diplomacy mod? I typically enjoy having it just for those honorless AI hounds that don't understand what a ceasefire entails

Yes, I think VH (Battle)? is insane. At that setting all units fight as if they are the Spartans at Thermopylae....

The hardest game setting is H(campaign) and VH (battle). There is an inherant bug in RTW in that VH (campaign) is easier that H (campaign) - something to do with the AI getting less money. I somehow think that is balanced out by the RSII background script that is doing things to the economy (if a faction is going broke they will be 'boosted' and if doing to well they will find money gone from the treasury... ).

No, I've never used a forced diplomacy mod. I think they are just open to abuse (players think that something should happen so they make it so). I just suffer the AI and expect to go to war!

I'd suggest posting a thread in the forum about Forced Diplomacy - there may be something out there.

[Silhouette]

Alright thanks, i suppose i'll bump it down to M/H, although the battles aren't the issues for me when I actually choose to fight them, it's the unending stacks, lol!

[Ostrogoth]

Buried in my reply is mention of the background script generating armies if the AI's capital is threatened.

Nothing like a challenge, eh?

I think there warnings that RSII was different to RS1....

Ah that armies were generated by script? I always wanted something like that, but I didin't expected two armies. You know capturing sparta is not easy, even capturing outnumbered my two full army. Free greeks were rather weaker than sparta. Sparta is really pain in ass. Small evil faction, I so hate it. But this gived me much more experience than 5 years of total war gaming.

[Rex Basiliscus]

Ah that armies were generated by script? I always wanted something like that, but I didin't expected two armies. You know capturing sparta is not easy, even capturing outnumbered my two full army. Free greeks were rather weaker than sparta. Sparta is really pain in ass. Small evil faction, I so hate it. But this gived me much more experience than 5 years of total war gaming.

If you want a tip... since they have no walls, attack them while they have only one city and their army is out of Sparta. If you win you destroy Sparta, with no script armies spawning next turn AND you gain Spartan units I think that will make them dear to you hehe

[TTRouble]

I haven;t played the Greek factions much in RS2- mainly Macedon and the Selecuids but the Greeks have a fabulous, possibly the best selection of units available of any faction. In the Macedon campaign, the Greeks are hyper aggressive right from the get go and can be a serious handful to deal with.

My Greek armies in the Greek mainland esp against Macedon, would have a core no of phalanx units usually 4, and then you want to have various heavy infantry (hoplites and esp the thorkatai are just great) backed by long range archers and slingers - they may be cheap but boy are they deadly. Your cavalry on the mainland is weaker but recruit a mix of horse archers and heavy cavalry from Athens and if you can ship over the heavy cataphract type cavalry from Asia Minor. My other tip would be to build the level 2 armourers asap!

TTrouble

PS... try out the Selecuids and see what the Parthian's are like!

[Ostrogoth]

If you want a tip... since they have no walls, attack them while they have only one city and their army is out of Sparta. If you win you destroy Sparta, with no script armies spawning next turn AND you gain Spartan units I think that will make them dear to you hehe

I would have destroyed sparta at the begining if not free greeks. They in second turn sieged my three towns and I had long war with them
P.S I am playng as Macedon

[Brusilov]

The multiple stacks are a feature of RS......

In RS1 I liked to play 1-turn recruitment. I hate multiple stack battles as I don't like to have the AI control my armies on the battlefield (especially if they are a nicely balanced army - if they are all heavy infantry I don't care). With multiple multiple stack battles you can't fight the AI with only one stack (well, you can for a while)...

[Rex Basiliscus]

My last city in Africa, the entire Bosporan kingdom of three cities, Larissa (the city around which where most of the war took place), who'se city's name I can't recall, as well as a hefty sum of 400,000 drachma that I had saved up for such an occasion. They surprisingly accepted, probably because my diplomat had a 8* rating.

...Is there at least a force diplomacy mod or something for this? I'm reduced now to Crete, Rhodes, Athens and Sparta, from my original 10 cities before the war.

1) They wouldn't resist if you offered them one city and maybe a few thousand denarii, so from that perspective, you actually did yourself a huge blow to your economy and military recruitment options...

Another thing... where did you get 400 000 denarii? The script is set to keep your wealth around 200k. So unless you forgot to activate the script, you probably used add_money cheat... Which at the end of the turn did you no good anyway...

2) The Force diplomacy mod is already in RSII... all you have to do is press the "?" and "show me how" once the advisor pops out.

[Silhouette]

I didn't activate the script and I never use cheats. I probably didn't notice a script prompt at the beginning since I was rather distracted at the time. Does it present itself at the beginning of every new campaign?
I actually offered an only slightly lower deal to the Macedonians a turn before and they rejected it. 350,000 denarii and some cities and they turned it down. I'm assuming the script has a lot to do with this.
Thank you for bringing the FD issue to my attention, i've actually never used one so I didn't know how they work.

[Rex Basiliscus]

Whenever you start or load a campaign the advisor should pop out... you must press on the advisor to activate the script (if it doesn't go away/activate by itself). Np...

[jukeness]

Um reading this, is it bad that I started a Roman campaign on VH/M.

[Brusilov]

Um reading this, is it bad that I started a Roman campaign on VH/M.

It's not too late!

You do have the advantage of playing one of the stronger factions. Just watch out for the rebellions - they are plastic underpants time (I believe).

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

Those rebels are always a pain in the ***. Just when you think you've built Italy into a nice little fortress, a city rebels and attacks you with 2 full stacks in your back -_-

RSII is so much fun!

[The Noble Lord]

Is the AI supposed to betray immediately? Typically the tougher AI's at least give a few turns courtesy before stabbing you in the back. This seems nearly impossible. I'm playing on H/H and am a pretty decent player. Is there at least a force diplomacy mod or something for this? I'm reduced now to Crete, Rhodes, Athens and Sparta, from my original 10 cities before the war.

I am glad the AI is the way it is. We asked for the tough AI and we got it.

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

True, no fun in creating the Roman empire when you are fighting gauls

...

VANILLA gauls
Now, those guys were weak. I'm glad the Belgae and Averni put up more of a fight.