So... why am I stomping all over the AI?

[soulmata]

Hello,

I had never seen this mod before until today. I recently started up RTW again and figured, hey, I have to try this.

For the record, I have R:TW Gold w/BI through Steam.

I downloaded and installed the mods from this forum in this order:

DM 8.0
DM 8.1
Darth Formations 16.2, copying the 1_DarthMod_8.2_Internal_Formations_16.2 data to where it should be.

The mod is installed and working, I have the new textures, newly balanced cities, etc.

I started a new campaign on Very Hard / Very Hard, playing the Scipii faction. I immediately began my campaign, attacking the Greeks followed by Carthage.

And something clearly is amiss. I don't remember even on vanilla ever crushing the AI this bad. In my battles with the Greeks, including up against an army twice my size, I had kill to death ratio of 10 to 1 at the end of the battles and was able to kill their faction leader and faction heir on a single turn.

I then thought, well, maybe the Greeks are more "defensive" and didn't make good use of some of their soldiers. So I went up against Carthage.

Just a few minutes ago I went up against Carthage in a fully loaded fight, I had around 2600 men they had around 3000. My army was Roman Generals, Hastatis and one Archers. The Carthage Army was composed of War Elephants, Missile Calvary, Spearmen, Light Infantry, Skirmishers and Light Calvary.

They outnumbered me and had the might of the elephants as an advantage, plus a huge number of spearmen.

At the end of the battle, I absolutely crushed them with a kill to death ratio of 16 to 1. I obliterated their entire army and lost only about 150 men myself.

I saw the AI do some incredibly stupid things, such as leaving their missile soldiers exposed on their right flank, and not protecting them when I brought my generals around to swoop in. On their left flank they had their light cav mixed with their spearmen, but the spearmen didn't do anything more than wave their spears around and march slowly toward me - giving me tons of time to bring up a single Hastati to distract the spearmen while my cav crushed, one by one, the light infantry and light calvary.

Meanwhile, the war elephants and the bulk of the spearmen very, very very slowly marched down the center of the map, then made a single weak strike into the heart of my hastatis. As soon as my archers opened fire, they slowed down, and when the hastatis joined in, they broke and ran soon after.

Some other huge mistakes made were the hoplites never entered a phalanx once, even when they were facing only calvary. Further, the AI made little or no attempt to protect their weaker flanks, particularly light infantry or missile soldiers. Lastly, the AI seemed extremely hesitant to use their heavy cav/war elephants at all - I finally was able to goad them into attacking with their war elephants by circling them with my cav. Too bad they routed a few seconds later and didn't even take down a single of my heavy cav.

So my question is this: Is this to be expected, and the supremely tough AI is down the road? Is there something I missed, or forgot to enable? It just seems, for a VH/VH campaign where I am outnumbered and using first-tier, non-upgraded primarily infantry troops up against an army that is much larger than me, a K/D ratio of 16 to 1 is way, way, wayyyy too easy.

I saw similar behavior when I took their cities - once I climbed onto the walls and took towers, groups of spearmen stood idly near gates while getting pelted by their own towers, doing nothing. When I brought hastatis inside the walls and flanked the spearmen with cav, the spearmen made no effort whatsoever to phalanx or even defend themselves against the cav. They waved their spears around like they were going to change formations, but never carried it otu.

Please tell me I've missed something?

[Ryou]

Um…….ur story sounds a bit incredible…….almost umbilivable….post some screenshots…….and I believe maybe its because, after playing medieval 2 total war (units have slower rout time, causing u to have to maneuver more and to actually really smash a nit for it to rout) resulted in training ur tactics and abilities as well and making this seem easy. The best solution is to play Rome Total war again to see if its just as easy. And another solution to make the game more enjoyable is to play as a weaker faction that get owned, example, carthage, Greece or the Seulicides……good luck, and welcome to the FORUM!!!!

[soulmata]

Edit.Noble Savage


What's wrong with you? I'm asking for help because I'm thinking the mod isn't working or I haven't installed it right.

I'm not hallucinating here. So I have been playing several battles in RTW vanilla and darth mod.

What I'm finding is that on VH/VH in RTW vanilla, my K/D ratio ranges anywhere from 1:1 to as much as 5:1 on large battles. Occasionally I'll even be below 1:1. When I return to darth mod, it shoots up to >10:1 to 1 in just about every battle because the AI is more or less worthless. They never guard their light infantry or archers, their heavy cav refuses to charge, etc.


As an example: The large carthage army that the Scipii can fight early on in their campaign. With darth mod, I floored them with about 1600 kills and 150 losses. On vanilla, it was the same number of kills but about 450 losses.

I can repeat this in several battles; my tactics don't generally change, and the AI is doing "things" but simply not very good.

[badapple]

VH/VH is not he hardest setting for RTW because of a bug in the original game design, H/VH is the hardest setting. You easily win most battles because you have a good general and usually the AI doesn't. Because of this you easily break and route the enemy formations. The solution to this is to slightly mod the game. Go into the export_descr_unit file. Under stat_mental you will see a number beside it. The higher the number the longer it will take a unit to break in battle making them fight to almost the last man. I increase all infantry units by 10 and all calvary units by 5. Don't do this to the faction you are playing if you want a real challenge. If you like tons of enemy stacks to fight then change stat_costs to 0 recruitment time for the ultimate challenge.

[Posantio of Umbria]

You might try the Roman provincial campaign if you're up for a challenge. It's one of the toughest roman campaigns I've played. On M/M difficulty! If you're really up for it, try H/H.

Before you do this though, I recommend you edit the descr_strat of this map so that you are not allied with any of the other roman factions. The Roman Campaign features unified Rome as the Julii but somehow the senate is still in. While this adds the tastefull senate offices, it serves no other purpose than to annoy you with harebrained missions and lots of nagging about conquering towns that have no immediate strategic benefits. The senate will request things like conquering Segesta or Aleria while Phyrus is rampaging in southern italy with gold-chevroned pikemen, superior cavalry, war elephants, heavy onagers and Chuck Norris Cretan Archers!
In addition, you will be unable to ever get alliances with any of the factions the roman factions are at war with in vanilla and will request attacks on factions you have just got trade rights with. Irritating to say the least.

To do this, go to the bottom of the descr_strat file and check out the diplomatic relations. relations marked with a "-" mean good, -600 means closely allied. If you remove the - from all relations between the Julii and other romans, including the senate you will remove the senate from the game and avoid much hassle and woe. turn one will drop some messages about SPQR, Brutii and Scipii being destroyed.

In addition to a difficult starting position (Phyrus the Great near tarentum, Gauls obstinately hostile) the map is HUGE and features a lot of additional regions and settlements... And almost any other faction (even the Barbarians) have more regions than the Romans who start with only 4 territories (the others seem to have at least double that amount!).
Have a try at that

[Steelforce77]

Hmm this doesnt relate to the story but in rome TW vanilla the AI didnt get any better as the difficulty setting increased instead the AI got a stat boost for its units. In darth mod is this changed so that VH actually makes a more strategic computer or just super soldiers?

[vimy]

Darth Mod ,apparently, changes tha ai to make it fight from a better formation, with longer range perspective and more aggressive attack. It also favours flanking and attacks with multiple lines of advance

in other words, the ai units move more as a group or as groups and attack with intensity.

this is as oposed to the vanilloa ai, which moved piece meal and was often decimated by your skirmishers before it even got to your line

however, it does not make them better commanders, in the end, you are still playing Rome Total War, just with better starting formations and better vision.