Difficulty reduced?

[Hadro]

First off,
love the new public order system etc.

just wondering though, was the AI handicap reduced? some factions seem to be recruiting lots of armies but not filling them with men. i dont know if they don't have as much money or something? what ever tthe case, the AI arent recruiting big armies anymore. Very frustrating. Can post a screen cap if wanted.

[Hadro]

playing as carthage on very hard btw

[Ano2]

Weird wish I could say the same for my enemies. I've seen the AI put out a stack and a half with only one province. What difficulty are you playing on and which factions are not building up? A screen cap would be great.

[Dresden]

I figured there would be a post like this There was mass complaining about the early AI expansion so I reduced their income bonus a bit. The goal was to stop them from having 2 full stacks in the first turns.

[Hadro]

So should i play on legendary now? would that put their income boost back?
Hard being a dev, i know the game is very difficult as a small faction (eg/ suebi) because the AI had those big armies. but as Carthage I am able to field 3 full stacks fairly early on (with deft trade and alliances) so i would like that extra challenge.
Oh well. It seems with the new corruption system that the end-game will be a little harder than usual. just wish the romani would build bigger armies!

[Dresden]

If you upload a save I can take a look at their finances and see if the Romans are struggling financially or just being idiots.

[Hadro]

Sorry I can't upload the save, it keeps saying invalid file. but here is a screenshot. Notice that Rome has 3 completely empty armies and none of them are recruiting? They are my ally, and i have given them money but still nothing.
Not sure if it is relevant, but they were completely destroyed and I liberated them. Could that play a part?

I have noticed in general that AI arent re-filling armies once they are destroyed but just recruit a new general and leave it empty.

I will keep trying to upload the file

[Hadro]

In the same photo, notice the ligurians have an empty army, and 2 suebi navies are empty as well. Same thing that i had destroyed their armies but they arent replenishing

[Dresden]

Interesting it might have to do with the liberating.

To upload the save, you have to zip it first. Or upload it to a third party site and link it here.

[Hadro]

auto_save.zip


Auto-save of my carthage campaign. end some turns and notice Rome and other factions just sit there.

I don't think it has anything to do with liberating because liguria, myassili, and suebi are doing the same thing

hope this uploads now!

[Litharion]

auto_save.zip
Auto-save of my carthage campaign. end some turns and notice Rome and other factions just sit there.
I don't think it has anything to do with liberating because liguria, myassili, and suebi are doing the same thing
hope this uploads now!

If you continue the save they will build up some better armies. A problem, is that they only have the auxiliary barracks constructed and I just took a quite glance at the table, they can not recruit Late Principes or Late Hastati during the polybian reform in those barracks. This means they will recruit Allied variants instead.

[Dresden]

Thanks for the upload I will check it out in the morning.

[Gomer_Pyle]

Is something wrong or is playing battle difficulty normal just too easy? I am on turn 150 as Rome in battles against Carthage and I lose 180 men and they lose 2400 men? Is the garrison soldiers that bad? And all my battles has been decisive giving me swords on the campaign map.

[Alu10]

Is something wrong or is playing battle difficulty normal just too easy? I am on turn 150 as Rome in battles against Carthage and I lose 180 men and they lose 2400 men? Is the garrison soldiers that bad? And all my battles has been decisive giving me swords on the campaign map.

garrison armies are weak on purpose. enemy armies should be strong though. but they are also not much of a problem, really sad. The AI should be forced to recruit high tier troops, all is see after 50 turns are moderate levy soldiers and some mercenaries that are not too bad but against my high tier full stack no army is able to defeat me.. they might need 2,5 stacks to do so. very sad

[Dresden]

Well, in your save Rome has plenty of cash so that is not the issue. I am not sure why they wouldn't be recruiting unless it is something odd with the liberation mechanic.

[TEUTknight]

this could be a different scenario, but in my Seleucid campaign (before Rome was burnt to the ground) the Romans sent strange armies to reclaim parts of Italy. What I mean by this is that with the exception of their general all their armies consisted of some sort of AOR barbarian axe unit. Also, again this was in my game but could be similar, they had no military buildings in Italy except for a mercenary camp in Rome. Sorry for lack of formatting but I am typing this on my phone.

[Cope]

I have to agree with a lot of what was said here.

I've got to conclude that it is not the aggression of the AI which is the main problem. The issue that the AI will amass lots of land off smaller or weaker factions but instead of getting stronger, they actually become more vulnerable. They are totally incapable, it appears, of defending themselves once they have acquired an Empire. You can literally just waltz through their Empire destroying garrison after garrison and the AI will do pretty much nothing in response. I'm not sure what is causing this, but in the game I played on 0.95c the AI was spamming lots and lots of armies. Now they are just building a few mini stacks.

[Dresden]

Well, I did nerf their income so that could be a contributing factor. Although, looking at that save Rome has 82k so I am not sure that is it.

I also reduced their recruitment slots by 1 on Normal, VH and Legendary so you will certainly see a slower build up of armies.

Edit: For the next update I will increase the AI buffs for VH and Legendary especially for income/unit upkeep.

[Chereye]

Just going to leave this here (0.95e 80 turns in):



This has been a very uneventful campaign thus far. The AI prefers to sit around doing nothing instead of looking for territories to expand such is the case with athens who managed to get those 4 settlements within 15 turns or so and has been at peace for over 65 turns now or iceni when last I checked its province all the starting factions where still there (meaning nothing at all has been happening at the brit isles for 80 turns now). If the campaign difficulty stays like this than I wont find any reason to play longer than 40-80 turns in as my current campaign depicts.

Maybe one way to curb early expansion instead of nerfing the AI aggresion is to limit the recruitment on the 1 settlement factions (that feature that is talked about)??

Also in my pontus playthrough I wasn't able to recruit any horse units even tho I had a lv 3 barracks which was my only upgrade path. bug?

[Cope]

I don't even think this is a D et I specific problem actually.

I saw this on the official TW forums.

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...ne-last-detail.

The issue, as it stands is that small factions are fine with maintaining 2 or 2.5 stacks (depending on difficulty) but the huge Empires, such as the Nervii in your screenshot just seem to have nothing. They literally have like 1 stack, and then a load of mini stacks - which are basically just generals with no units - and you can walk all over them. I don't know whether this was caused by patch 14 or not - linked thread seems to suggest yes - but at the moment the mid game is basically unplayable because its so boring.