MTW2 AI, opinions.

[kammm]

Well, after finishing a campaing with Venice i noticed lots of things about the AI.

1) Siege AI still suck, they just stand in tower range while being massacred by arrows and ballistas, not to mention when they try to assault the walls with only 1 tower, 1 ram, 1 ladder and get the tower and ram burned down to ashes.

2) Battle AI is far better than in RTW, i've noticed great improvements in the way the AI uses cavalary and missile troops/cavalary, but its only a real challange when you get a > 2:1 ratio in their favor.

3) The AI sometimes make really dumb things, like attacking a castle with inferior troops/much smaller army than the defenders, or just engaging in a field battle without any chance of winning.

All this in VH/VH of course.

Well, we really could use your help Darth Vader! Only you can use the force to make this AI better enough to become a real challenge, too bad you said you wont be moding the MTW2 AI, i really hope you change your mind.

I would like you guys to share your opinios, perhaps we can mail CA about this in hope they make some minor improvements in the AI so we can have a greater challenge.

Sorry for posting this on a RTW forum, but i cant think of a better place to do this.

[DARTH VADER]

Thank you for your words.

I have received a lot of PMs about this matter. I receive also a lot of posts in my forum such as yours.
Anyhow it is common sense that the game AI is the No1 Flaw as it was in RTW too. This is what motivated me then.
Now things are different.

1)I am dissapointed of CA
2)I am dissapointed of M2TW
3)I do not play the game unless the patch comes out
3)Life issues

Surely I will start modding it for myself in a joyful pace and not in an express needed to please a hungry community.

I plan to upload a framerate booster for M2TW but then nothing else in the near future.
The only thing which will motivate me is all of you fans who are mainly my only joy of the TW series as it seems.
Surely this will be enough sometime to upload my full mod.

[Dorian]

Kammm, I totally agree with your observations, which are valid for H/H too. But, Darth, we have to admit that the overall feeling from M2TW is an astonishing achievement in "time-travelling": I fought in mountainslopes far more realistic than everything I've met before, the vegetation is brilliantly matching the geo-coordinates, the cities and castles are incredibly detailed and... all the ingredients to feel you're in a medieval movie are there! I think this is the most provocative platform for modders to make history a virtual reality. I am in agony expecting the patch and modding tools to arrive, so that I recreate the Greek and Roman era I am so fond of. I certainly hope that in one year's time we will still exchange ideas over the then DartMod!!!

[cherryfunk]

Hey Darth, can you explain why you're unhappy with M2TW? Do you think that modding will be able to fix the problems, or are you doubtful?

[Narakir]

2)I am dissapointed of M2TW
3)I do not play the game unless the patch comes out

Same here.

The first days MTW 2 was new, cool but after having played few very hard battles it seemed that : the AI is better than RTW but still not as good as yours Darth. The battle gameplay is bad as hell, units stats... annimations bugged, unit cohesion horrible and frustrating. It's obvious the didn't exploited the engine possibilites more than they did in RTW regarding unit stats, masses and so... poor modders will have to do everything once again . The campaign gameplay and AI are horrible as it's a siege fest against armies of cheap militia and mercenaries.

Now I'm waiting for the patch, if they're able to fix the serious battle bugs and allow us to, at least, fix oursleve the rest I'll enjoy it. But until they don't allow us to create models and skins I will not play it more than 2-3 months. And then go for europa universalis 3 and Galactic civilizations 2 extension in february because these games would have a nice gamplay and AI and less repetitive units for exemple in GC2 extension you can configure your oppoments yourself.

[DARTH VADER]

@Dorian:
The graphic engine is unquestionable the best I have seen so far in a strategy game and the potential is there for future projects.
The gameplay is also unquestionably the worse I have seen from TW series (Even from RTW vanilla) and this will need extensive work for a modder to optimise. Sad but true.
Since my gameplay standards as an individual player are much higher from the median as it seems, this should not be a law but rather my narrow perspective of reviewing.

@cherryfunk:
As said many times....gameplay is amateur.

@Narakir:
Since I have seen some posts in the .com which are enormously criticising the game we are very polite here to write only this.
Old age players (28 years and up) have a much more demanding appetite for a strategy gaming since we have grown up with clever games with 1/20 of the graphics seen in nowadays to hi-end game platforms and yet much more addictive gameplay.
It is very dissapointing not to take control of the potential of these games and lose it in stress of delivering a poor but "selling" interactive visuality.
I am not too angry that the patch is not delivered yet since I believe this will strengthen the possibility to correct all the flaws so far. Better not to fall into the same trap of strict scheduling.
They lose sales though....

[Narakir]

28 years and up

Heh I doubt many people here are so "old" I'm just 20 , it's more a case of experience and wish of gaming. I played consoles until I was 9 when I discovered the old good civilization I aaaaah so good it was, even if I was unable to see beautiful combats as the gameplay was so rich to let you imagine what you want. The majority of modern games are able show you most things in a realy realistic way, but just lack of deep, only apparence count.. it looks it's quite the case in everything in our modern word but it's an other debate .

[happyho]

I agree with Darth on this, when M2 came out I was really impressed with the graphics but it didn't take long to have the steamroller effect kick in for me. Now I win without even trying, I'm almost always number 1 in every category, TOO EASY! At 32 I feel that battles are fun but I want a challenge from the AI and I prefer the development of cities and diplomacy aspect of games like this. So until bigger and better map, at least 1 major patch fix and moddability for me I'm leaving m2 for DM.