The AI has too many ridiculous campaign bonuses

[Clamchop]

Im on n/n and all I have done was focus on my economy. I SHOULD be around the time that my investments should kick in and give me huge cash flow but I look at my enemies around me and the faction ranking list and they have x2 the economy I have AND a huge army to back it up. No way could the AI be investing in both economy and an army at the same time and still be ahead. I like a challenge but this is just unrealistic, unbalanced, and broken.

[Vespasian92]

Difficulty sliders are there for a reason

You can always lower the difficulty. Lowering campaign difficulty reduces the AI money script (which is necessary to avoid the AI spamming units and bankrupting itself).

[Resurrection]

Difficulty sliders are there for a reason

You can always lower the difficulty. Lowering campaign difficulty reduces the AI money script (which is necessary to avoid the AI spamming units and bankrupting itself).

There is nothing in CS related to selected difficulty of either campaign or battles.

[Shocked]

What's n/n?. The AI is given bonuses due to the lack of intelligent AI, this isn't the fault of the mod creators but CA. Without cash bonuses and army bonuses the AI would be far too easy to beat. I find that on VH/VH the game is still easy (even with all of the enemies bonuses).

It's all in the strategy, e.g only having armies on your war front/s and having 1-3 units garrisoned in all the other towns/cities covered by the free upkeep, at the start of every game I take extra unused units from safe settlements and send them to the front lines with any unused generals. Also upgrading all the economic buildings helps while you fight off your enemies and gradually capture more settlements. As long as you win every important battle in the early game you shouldn't have too much trouble.

[Clamchop]

What's n/n?.

Normal/Normal difficulty.

[tjd123]

I play on VH/VH and I have no problem holding the number 1 spot for economy. It's just a rocky start at the beginning.

[Xenoneb]

Also what faction? Most factions have better economy with a moved capital.

[The Useless Member]

I've never seemed to have that problem.

[Swad]

Im on n/n and all I have done was focus on my economy. I SHOULD be around the time that my investments should kick in and give me huge cash flow but I look at my enemies around me and the faction ranking list and they have x2 the economy I have AND a huge army to back it up. No way could the AI be investing in both economy and an army at the same time and still be ahead. I like a challenge but this is just unrealistic, unbalanced, and broken.

Focusing on the economy might not always work, especially for economic buildings. In most cases, those buildings will not recoup the costs of the building themselves through the trade bonus until halfway through those 550 turns. Sometimes they won't even recoup it at all. For the vanilla version of TATW, your best bet for a strong economy for some of the factions would be through sheer expansion, particularly of the conquering of mining provinces and trading ports.

Most rebel settlements are going to be tiny, and as such don't generate all that much wealth throughout most of the game. Most economic buildings are a waste of money when settlements are small. Rather, spend that money encouraging growth to get the population up as fast as possible.

[MichaelKendrick]

Download Baron Samedi's submod collection. At the start of every campaign you can tweak the game to your liking using the submods and, most importantly for you perhaps, you can limit the AI's cashflow bonuses and remove the garrison script.

[Mikail Mengsk]

Moneyscript is a , but it's necessary for the dumb economic AI

[Resurrection]

Moneyscript is a , but it's necessary for the dumb economic AI

I disagree. AI is unable to properly manage itself with the money-scripts and it has been proven many times. Naturally in the economy like the one developed for 3.1 it needs money because the normal economic habits of the AI no longer apply here.

Also the extra generals causes the supply of them to exceed the reasonable amount of units splitting AI forces into tiny bands easily crushed by player.

Garrison scripts in turn makes AI sally all the time losing pathetically against far inferior forces (paper-wise) making taking those settlements far easier and quicker (1 turn job) instead of 10 turns long siege with the risk of reinforcements arrival...


What is actually necessary for AI to pose a challenge is to tackle the easy exploits of the player: making stack of bodyguards, emptying your land bringing all troops to the front etc. How to do that is not that easy but it is doable like making it so that governors were needed for settlements to grow (opposite is the current case), more troops needed to maintain order (pathetic populations makes it so no unit is needed actually or just one unit). Making it harder to manage your realm is the key to make player actually care for his realm and would give AI some breathing room. Also new-ly occupied lands could take more time to get under control slowing advancement. These are just few ideas and none of it requires boosting AI as it is pretty good in handling the vanilla mechanics already present (unlike artificial scripted ones).

[LoSboccacc]

the problem is that the AI is developed for a very different kind of map, campaign distances, city tipes and such.

then you have middle earth specific thing that simply can't map to game, like rohan which is a rag tag militia of people that happen to have a lot of horses at hand, while in game you can only balance things with maintenance, training rates and recruitment buildings.

[IHV]

I have played this game a lot, roughly 600 hours and the best experience i have so far is with Baron Samedi submod, using no garriosn script and limit AI Stack spamming submods only. Difficulty is Hard/medium, and i really enjoy the campaigns so far. I started using Baron Samedi submod since his 4.0 release and before that i modified some files myself which always was a .That doesnt mean i cant play this on vanilla VH/VH, its easy as some said. Just rush straight from the begining, conquer tons of regions, smash atleast 1 of your opponent at start and the game is easy. Im just looking for different experience.No need to stress yourself while playing this great game.

[Mikail Mengsk]

I disagree. AI is unable to properly manage itself with the money-scripts and it has been proven many times. Naturally in the economy like the one developed for 3.1 it needs money because the normal economic habits of the AI no longer apply here.

Also the extra generals causes the supply of them to exceed the reasonable amount of units splitting AI forces into tiny bands easily crushed by player.

Garrison scripts in turn makes AI sally all the time losing pathetically against far inferior forces (paper-wise) making taking those settlements far easier and quicker (1 turn job) instead of 10 turns long siege with the risk of reinforcements arrival...


What is actually necessary for AI to pose a challenge is to tackle the easy exploits of the player: making stack of bodyguards, emptying your land bringing all troops to the front etc. How to do that is not that easy but it is doable like making it so that governors were needed for settlements to grow (opposite is the current case), more troops needed to maintain order (pathetic populations makes it so no unit is needed actually or just one unit). Making it harder to manage your realm is the key to make player actually care for his realm and would give AI some breathing room. Also new-ly occupied lands could take more time to get under control slowing advancement. These are just few ideas and none of it requires boosting AI as it is pretty good in handling the vanilla mechanics already present (unlike artificial scripted ones).

Without moneyscript the AI wouldn't be able to recruit decent armies, BECAUSE it kinda sucks at managing. With moneyscript at least it can pose a military challenge, altough the system is heavily "bugged" because of AI's limits, i agree. But moneyscript had been implemented for a reason.

Also, i don't see how emptying inner and secure cities of troops could be "exploiting". It's perfectly reasonable. Also, cities with ridicolous population SHOULD require very few garrison units. Those "limits" you are suggesting would be totally unrealistic and frustrate the player.

[7UKMatt]

The money bonuses to the AI seem like a pain in the arse during the early game - it's frustrating to be always ranked last for economy and struggle to maintain an army, while the AI coasts along.

However, as the game progresses, it becomes obvious that these bonuses are essential, just to balance the utter stupidity of the AI. The AI is useless when it comes to managing an economy, and it will always train more troops than it can afford to maintain. The AI will also deploy its troops poorly a lot of the time. Without the bonuses, the AI would present no challenge at all. You'd easily crush your main rivals, every campaign, by about turn 50.

I'd prefer a cleverer campaign AI than all these bonuses - but it's probably impossible to mod...

[Dutch-Balrog]

TATW already has a modded AI, its already way smarter then the vanilla AI. But its still not possible to give them a human brain..

[7UKMatt]

TATW already has a modded AI, its already way smarter then the vanilla AI. But its still not possible to give them a human brain..

It wouldn't need a human brain. The AI used in Civilization 4, for example, doesn't seem as dopey as M2TW's AI in my opinion. That's not a fault with TATW, of course, but the limitations of game itself, I suspect. Then again, I didn't realise the campaign AI was even moddable, so what do I know?

[Dutch-Balrog]

It wouldn't need a human brain. The AI used in Civilization 4, for example, doesn't seem as dopey as M2TW's AI in my opinion. That's not a fault with TATW, of course, but the limitations of game itself, I suspect. Then again, I didn't realise the campaign AI was even moddable, so what do I know?

I never player Civilization 4, so all i know is that M2TW is way older.

[7UKMatt]

I never player Civilization 4, so all i know is that M2TW is way older.

I can't remember but, according to wikipedia, Civ4 came out in 2005, while M2TW came out in 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_IV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_II:_Total_War

Actually it's pretty impressive, considering how old both games are now, how great they both look, and they still hold up well compared to much newer games.