Unit stats not adding up to performance in battle?

Right now I'm playing the Egypt campaign and I've noticed that Egyptian units always seem to be incredibly beefed up, and their performance against my troops frankly doesn't seem to make much sense. I use mostly Fusiliers of Line, who have accuracy of 40 (assuming they have no experience - mine always have at least 1), melee attack of 6, and defense of 8. And yet if I pit one of these against a unit of Bedouins (35 accuracy, melee attack of 1, defense 5, and a measly 10 reloading skill) they always seem to lose one-on-one. It doesn't matter if it's ranged or melee, my guys always lose despite their vastly superior stats. I have to rely on superior numbers and tactics every time. I'm fine with doing that, but it's just irritating that better troops perform so crappily and get their asses handed to them by inferior units. Am I doing something wrong here, or has anybody else had similar issues?

What battle difficulty level do you have the game set to?

It's on very hard. I figured that could be it, but I find it odd that the difficulty would actually nerf your unit's abilities. I always figured it just made the enemy more aggressive and tactical. Boosting crap units and sapping good units is just unrealistic.

Originally Posted by admdelta

It's on very hard... Boosting crap units and sapping good units is just unrealistic.

Unrealistic, perhaps but it's pretty much how the game works. At the easy levels, it gives your units bonuses and on the harder levels it gives them to the computer's units.

It's a lot easier to program that than it is to program variable levels of intelligence into a game "AI".

Weird. So I should just disregard unit stats then when playing very hard? :S

What setting would you recommend to keep the stats accurate?

If you play on the normal setting then it doesn't apply any bonuses, so WYSIWYG as far as the stats are concerned...however, you might find that the battles are a little too easy if you're used to playing on VH.

meme_engine is right (unfortunately!) ,increasing game difficulty only increase the AI bonuses because It was easier for developers than enhancing game's AI. So only 2 options remain for gamers like you ;

keep playing with very hard battle difficulty ,because otherwise the battles would become boringly easy :p

Or alternatively

Fight battles against human opponent using drop-in-battle feature. Drop-in-Battle is one of the best features introduced in recent releases and I think people should try it more as it adds a lot to game's experience

IF you want a good challenge that is not over the top you should simply play BAI on Hard. This as I can tell gives you no penalties; but gives the AI just enough bonus to make them fight harder before they route. What I feel I am doing is simply making up for the fact that the AI will mostly ALWAYS frontal assualt. So... moral is the only issue that concerns them and on normal many times they will route before they even meet your line. With the hard BAI you can at least have the AI stick up to the point of melee.

Cheers!

Yeah, I decided to take the battle difficulty down a notch and started playing it on hard instead. It doesn't seem easier (I usually won on very hard anyway), though I have noticed a lot more of my men are surviving now!

And I think I will try the drop-in feature, thanks!

I'm just nervous I've become too complacent with the DAF AI so I might just get obliterated every time. Haha.

It doesn't seem easier (I usually won on very hard anyway), though I have noticed a lot more of my men are surviving now!

Yeah, that is a big difference. On VH BAI i found myself realizing that even an elite army stack attacking militia concentrated stack was going to get heavy losses. Unless I feel I need the difficulty I won't play VH. I can find ways to make the game challenging in other more meaningful ways.

Cheers!