Might be time to go back to unit caps with AI

[Mithridates_Eupator]

As Menelo pointed out in the feedback thread, the AI isn't limited by money like the player. Thus the upkeep unit cap doesn't work for them. I'm facing this problem fighting the Celts. By turn 35 it's gotten to the point that they field 8 Botraos, 8 Catauiro Lancia, and 3 Longbow hunters every stack. Each faction I face (Nervii, Boii, Atrebates) has at least two of these. Playing as the Suebi I can't even ambush them anymore because I will lose: winning a 20-on-20 fight is impossible, or at least a Pyrrhic victory.

I'd like to see a system that guarantees that at least half (early game) to one-third (late) a barbarian army is levy quality troops. Is that possible?

[Ritterlichvon86]

For the first 0-50 turns, my Barbarian consistently spit out mostly tier 0 / levy troops on normal. What difficulty do you play on?

[KAM 2150]

Army caps were never for the AI as it is impossible to add, our caps restricted only player.

I am at turn 270 and barbs have all kind of units in their armies. Not to mention that this is oart of the late game challange.

[FlashHeart07]

Playing a Suebi campaign on Hard and Im beating everyone and everything. Its tough yes but not impossible and if you play the game correctly you can easily get a unit upkeep almost as low as the AI meaning you can field the same awesome armies as they can and you still got the upper hand in terms of tactics on the battlefield.
But since it is not even possible to add unit caps for the AI.

[KAM 2150]

Litharion introduced recruitment patterns per nations, so in my experience they field pretty balanced armies in terms of unit types, but it makes no sense for me if around 150 turn AI will still have 1/3 of levy units in his army. Everyone complains about late game being easy and boring, but fighting levies will not help with that.

Also when you pick difficulties like VH, you should expect those heavy armies to show. AI also does not have infinite money, check for example normal difficulty, AI will not be even able to fully fill all units slots if it is single region nations, saw it both for Getae and Nervii, they had a single region and both were able to field only 1.5 stack.

[Blasphemer.]

I do not understand why do you complain about elite enemy armies? It is perfect for a reasonable challange I think.

[Chris P. Bacon]

I do not understand why do you complain about elite enemy armies? It is perfect for a reasonable challange I think.

The only problem I have with elite armies if a small AI faction somehow has 2-3 of them. Nothing more annoying than fighting a fun and challenging battle, knowing you have beaten the best that faction had only to see another elite clone army waltz up. Thankfully, this doesn't happen in DeI in my experience

[Mithridates_Eupator]

Well, I'll check again tonight. Is there a console command to look at every faction's assets? I'd be interested to see if it's just my perception. BTW, I play on VH/N. I don't use dignitaries to reduce army upkeep. With 3/4 of the starting Suebi province, I can field two armies of [1 Sword Masters General, 1 Sword Masters, 2 Wodanaz Watha, 10 Spear Levy, 2 Juguntha, 2 Slingers, 2 Longbow Hunters] and still have around 700 income per turn. The thing is I need both these armies to defeat one enemy army without taking 50%+ casualties. Usually I destroy a stack, heal up, and get to their town just in time for another stack to show up.

[dfeal]

I do not understand why do you complain about elite enemy armies?

Apart from being ahistorical and unrealistic? =o)

[Grizwald714]

Plez don't put caps on AI units I like that they recruit elite armies. It makes the game so much more challenging then fighting a bunch of levy troops.

[Korvyr]

Why doe sit matter when a competent player (experienced, no offense intended) can take on armies 1v3 and such? Maybe you need more than 1 armies and duke it out like 20k v 20k?

[Mithridates_Eupator]

Why doe sit matter when a competent player (experienced, no offense intended) can take on armies 1v3 and such? Maybe you need more than 1 armies and duke it out like 20k v 20k?

It's not about winning. If I wanted to win 1 v 3 battles, I'd build my army with nothing but Sword Masters and Longbow Hunters, and maybe some cav. If it were about winning I wouldn't bother with the rest of the unit roster. But I want at least a modicum of historical accuracy when I play, so I try to make good use of the levy spearmen and club levy that the DEI team generously provide for us. The AI however has no such hangups about historical accuracy and doesn't produce a single levy unit after the starting armies.

[Korvyr]

That makes the game harder lol. In Vanilla all they would recruit is Levy Spearmen and you'd mow them down. That's no fun.

[Butan]

Locally you may experience "strange scenarios" especially in later stages, but really the new recruitment cost/upkeep system and the extremely well done overhauled AI recruitment patterns replaced the unit caps.

I dont think DeI will ever go back on this, what they can do is tinker/fix/plug some holes that you help us notice.

[KAM 2150]

Plus like I stated, army caps were ONLY for the player, never for the AI.

[crunchyfrog]

Anyone ever looked into scripting this be like MTW 2s almost perfect solution.

All units types have a pool, which has a max, elite units take longer to fill up the pool and have a smaller pool. Build better barracks to increase the max units of the pool and how fast units become available.

[KAM 2150]

Too much work for something that might not even work or crash the game all the time and cause tons of other bugs. Once Mitch will finish his project, there will be some changes in this aspect, but like Mitch himself stated, AI will not handle it and only player will play by the population limit.

[Mithridates_Eupator]

For the past couple of nights I have been keeping an eye on the AI unit composition, just to confirm my impressions. At turn 50, the universal Celtic and Germanic patterns (on VH) is something like this: 7 elite/regular swords (eg Sword Masters, Milnaht, Batroas), 7 elite/regular spears (Wodanaz Waithaz, Catuiros Lancia), 1-2 elite cavalry (Brihentin), 2 mercenary (usually berserkers, but whatever best melee is for that region), and 2-3 longbow hunters. A one settlement faction gets 1.5 stacks, two to three settlements get 2 stacks, and it so forth. THERE ARE NO LEVY TROOPS IN THE AI ARMY. Ever, with the exception of the starting armies (so about three to five units at most).

So here's my question: does Very Hard = all elite armies, and Normal = mixed armies? I'd like a challenge, but grinding my historically accurate levy armies against elites just isn't fun.

[FlashHeart07]

With the increased campaign difficulty the AI has a ton of money and will put that extra money to good use and recruit elite armies. There is nothing odd in that. If you didnt want to face elite armies you shouldnt have gone for a VH campaign.
And as stated by KAM, Mitch's population mod might change some of this in the future but until then I think you will just have to deal with the increased difficulty when choosing to play on VH.
Though I do believe that Dresden is going to make a submod that increases the diplomacy so one might be able to choose H for campaign difficulty to have the AIs bonus lower but use his submod to increase the diplomacy to VH.

[dfeal]

OK so the AI cannot cope with recruiting units with more than 1 turn. How does it cope with costs per unit? Initial purchase cost and upkeep? If a levy unit is, for example, only 100, then an elite Oathsworn should be say, 5000? Maybe 3000 for all those Chosen units too? And make the general units cheap so the AI will recruit an Oathsworn as a general without issues. Or Noble Horse or whatever. So greatly increase price of elite units and lower the price for all the general units.