AI and it's stupid garrison size

[Kontos]

Ok , lets just start by saying I love this game and eventhough there are obvious bug issues with battles, and merchants / diplomats don't seem to work right yet, I believe if your attitude is one that role plays the game a little (ie. plays in the spirt of the game NOT power gaming to a quick victory) MTW:II is a challenging and satisfying experience.
That said; what is the story with AI and the feeble garrison strenghts ?!
Heres the Story
I'm around turn 80 playing as Venice on VH/VH. I've had a hell of a time , getting my arse handed to me time and time again from the likes of Milan, Sicily and Hungry.
Still realing from a horror stretch where I lost all my 'outreimer' provinces to the Islamists bar one {Acre} and all my Adriatic coast provinces to the Hungarians, I managed to secure a peace with the Milanese and Sicilans due to the Pope EXing them and them needing to reduce their enemies pool.....
So I begin to build up my forces in my key cities Venice and Florence.
My spies in southern France notice now that Milan is under the hammer from the Danes, French and HRE. Three out of five towns go down in a couple of turns. So what does Milan do........
You guessed it , they build a mega stack in Milan which then abandons the city as it races off to save it's empire in southern France, leaving behind one little family member. So there I am staring at empty Milan wondering what I should do ........
We are not allies and they are currently EXed so I just waltz in after a quick auto battle on 10:1 and the most powerful city in Italy is mine.
Then as if out of jelous rage the Sicilians who control Bologne decide to attack a fully garrisoned Venice with their entire cities contense bar one unit. So what do I do, easy, while they are hammering on my HUGE Walls, I send in a medium size force from Florence and waltz into Bologne. The Sicilains are now left out in the open with no chance of taking down Venice and no chance of getting back into thier home either. To add insult to injury, an inquistitor also takes out their heir commanding the army.
I one turn my two biggest rivals are now on there knees all due to them abandoning there strongest cities without an appropriate garrison.

This is a shocking flaw and one that I hope can be easily modded.

The AI should keep a garrison strengh equal to the free garrison units provided by the wall technology, at least.
It makes sense, the bigger the city the better the garrison should be.

[Bizzzle]

Just wait a few hours and that 666 devil worshiper guy will close your thread cause it talks about how lame the AI is in this game at times. Same thing happened to me when I posted a AI topic. BAM deleted.

But I feal ya man this game is great but since it was made on the rome engine it brought all of romes problems with it including the vanilla retarded AI..

[John I Tzimisces]

Just wait a few hours and that 666 devil worshiper guy will close your thread cause it talks about how lame the AI is in this game at times. Same thing happened to me when I posted a AI topic. BAM deleted.

But I feal ya man this game is great but since it was made on the rome engine it brought all of romes problems with it including the vanilla retarded AI..

Thats nonsense.

However, its a bug, its not something modders can fix, its something we can hope will be addressed in the patch (AI prioritizing defense and army formation/composition). Words used such as "retarded" don't do much but to disparage the efforts of the developers and kinda tick me off.

[The Border Reiver]

Well then you'll love this.

Go to the descr_strat and change the rebel starting money to 5 million.

Start a new game and watch how the rebel cities build huge stacks inside and never move out forcing you to attack them. Also watch tem construct huge armies at a point on your border.

So the question is, "If the starting money allows for concentrated troop and garrison build up correctly, what apart from money would allow the AI to build and keep huge garrisons"?

[Kontos]

Well then you'll love this.

Go to the descr_strat and change the rebel starting money to 5 million.

Start a new game and watch how the rebel cities build huge stacks inside and never move out forcing you to attack them. Also watch tem construct huge armies at a point on your border.

So the question is, "If the starting money allows for concentrated troop and garrison build up correctly, what apart from money would allow the AI to build and keep huge garrisons"?

Does that also work with other Factions controlled by AI ?

[italiano]

You guessed it , they build a mega stack in Milan which then abandons the city as it races off to save it's empire in southern France, leaving behind one little family member. So there I am staring at empty Milan wondering what I should do ........

How is this stupid?

So what do I do, easy, while they are hammering on my HUGE Walls, I send in a medium size force from Florence and waltz into Bologne.

This was, simply because the AI is programmed to be expansionist beyond reason. If CA altered it so factions think about survival first and an empire second then we'd see a huge reduction in these pointless attacks.

[Kontos]

You guessed it , they build a mega stack in Milan which then abandons the city as it races off to save it's empire in southern France, leaving behind one little family member. So there I am staring at empty Milan wondering what I should do ........

How is this stupid?

Who said it was stupid ?
Of course it is a good option but not if the city is abandoned without adequate protection.

So what do I do, easy, while they are hammering on my HUGE Walls, I send in a medium size force from Florence and waltz into Bologne.

This was, simply because the AI is programmed to be expansionist beyond reason. If CA altered it so factions think about survival first and an empire second then we'd see a huge reduction in these pointless attacks.

Surley it could have minimums set for garrisons , based on the size of the city.

[HorseArcher]

I'm around turn 80 playing as Venice on VH/VH. I've had a hell of a time , getting my arse handed to me time and time again from the likes of Milan, Sicily and Hungry

It's Hungary, not Hungry. Big difference. There are a lot of hungry hungarians, but the country isn't named after them.

Hun-gary - comes from either the "hun" as the "huns" or or there is a possibility of the word meaning something else

"hungar"- honger - honouger - onoug - onug- onogur nomadic tribes, before the country etc.
Big debates about this between historians.

Please, at least, let's learn to spell if not everything, but at least the country names, (spelling naczi out)

Then as if out of jelous rage the Sicilians who control Bologne decide to attack a fully garrisoned Venice with their entire cities contense bar one unit. So what do I do, easy, while they are hammering on my HUGE Walls, I send in a medium size force from Florence and waltz into Bologne. The Sicilains are now left out in the open with no chance of taking down Venice and no chance of getting back into thier home either. To add insult to injury, an inquistitor also takes out their heir commanding the army.
I one turn my two biggest rivals are now on there knees all due to them abandoning there strongest cities without an appropriate garrison.

This is a shocking flaw and one that I hope can be easily modded.

I don't think this is that "shocking", rather like just something that some AI factions do. Not all of them and not all the time, but if the campaign AI has to be a littlebit diverse. I know, I beleive you, when you say that they should be a little more careful of leaving cities garrisoned, but I have also done this before, carelessly abandoning my town in favor of conquering, and I forgot that my town was in range of a giant opposing army.

[Scarlett Letterman]

Yeah too often my huge crusader armies arrives at a near empty Jerusalem, kinda takes the fun out of it.

[Soggius Chippius]

Please, at least, let's learn to spell if not everything, but at least the country names, (spelling naczi out)

You spelt nazi wrong, just so you know.
From Wikipedia
"The term Nazi is derived from the first two syllables, as pronounced in German, of the official name of the German Nazi Party, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The Nazis did not originally refer to themselves as "Nazis," and instead used the official term, Nationalsozialisten ("National Socialists"). In German, Nazi mirrors the term Sozi, a common and slightly derogatory term for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), the Nazis' main opponents before obtaining power."

(sorry. )

[nightwar]

If you worry so much about Grammer. why doesnt TW center have a spelling checker like allot of other forum's? 50% of us are NOT native English speaker's.

[Wurfspiess]

You spelt nazi wrong, just so you know.
From Wikipedia
"The term Nazi is derived from the first two syllables, as pronounced in German, of the official name of the German Nazi Party, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The Nazis did not originally refer to themselves as "Nazis," and instead used the official term, Nationalsozialisten ("National Socialists"). In German, Nazi mirrors the term Sozi, a common and slightly derogatory term for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), the Nazis' main opponents before obtaining power."

(sorry. )

No he didnt.
its spelled like Naczi but you type it Nazi

[italiano]

I meant what milan did was natural (defending its lands and it was at peace with you) but what sicily did was foolish (attack well defended area).

What would they attack with if they had to heavily garrison cities? The AI isn't smart enough to move troops to garrison where needed so you'd end up with heavily garrisoned cities but no large field armies. This problem can be solved with a garrison script, although some won't like the AI getting it (although it is realistic for a city under siege to raise militia).

[(insert clever name here)]

You know, what is wrong with the AI making some mistakes and leaving some room for the player to do something? Not everyone wants a visceral struggle where they have to fight tooth and nail for every scrap of land.

Besides the AI may not have had enough money to support a large garrison and a large field army at the same time. That is just the AI doing what it can with the resources it has. Would it makes sense to them to let the Danes hammer away at their empire and sit with a big garrison in Milan and hope they go away. IT would take additional time and oney they may not have had in order to build an adequate invasion force and still leave time and money to build up a garrison a few turns later.

How do you know they weren't going to build up a garrison? You just didn't give them time to do so. That's called good field intelligence at seeing when your enemy is weak and striking appropriately.

Now what the sicilians did does border on stupid, but again, who really wants a perfect AI?

[Reiver]

Besides the AI may not have had enough money to support a large garrison and a large field army at the same time.

I'm sorry but you're totally missing the point. CA have a new system where a certain number of garrison units have FREE upkeep. This is a good idea and a welcome addition but it seems, like with a lot of the new features, CA haven't successfully integrated it into the gameplay. The AI doesn't seem to use these free slots.
Also if it's strapped for cash maybe it should stop recruiting so many mercenaries. Whenever I look at the Sicillian or Milanese armies they're 50%, or more, made up of mercenary crossbowmen.

In defense of CA, one of the main complaints I had in RTW was the way in which the enemy camped out in their cities the whole time. So at least they've solved that

[Machinator]

Now what the sicilians did does border on stupid, but again, who really wants a perfect AI?

No one is asking for a 'perfect' AI. We just want one that does'nt play the game like a drugged monkey.

The AI pursues seemingly random goals, yet will behave stupidly with utter consistency - like sending a solo king to siege your full-stack capital. That stands out to me as a problem.

All we want is opponents that are *somewhat* challenging. As it stands you can steamroll them provided you consider your moves even for a moment. Sure, if you rush off into battle you will have problems, but if you play strategically you will encounter few problems. At least, that's my experience. It could be because I am England and the AI also does not like landing invasions. At all. Ever.

Asking for an AI capable of doing a naval invasion is'nt quite the same as asking for a 'perfect' AI, would'nt you say?

[Helepolis]

Asking for an AI capable of doing a naval invasion is'nt quite the same as asking for a 'perfect' AI, would'nt you say?

It really is sad, isn't it ? Too bad so many flaws of the RTW AI made it over to MTW:2. I kinda saw that coming when watching the interview of Shogun in the Eras edition. He said something like " And we are working on the AI , as we have been working on it through the whole time." Uh , oh .. that was a bit vague.

Battles itself seem a lot better to me though, now I often loose 25 and sometimes even up to 50 % of my army. These mongols and Timurids are some tough cookies !

Apart to the lack of size in AI garrisons I see another problem: Its too easy to conquer castles, and I am not even talking about cities. Walls and Towers are a JOKE! The Castle owning party spends thousand of florins on the defense and some primitive ballistas can punch through a wall of fully developed castle. And if you take catapults.... just measly catapults, you can even throw the defenders of the walls by the impact. It should be much much harder to take well defended settlements. Why do almost all siege weapons have a higher range then the tower defenses have ? It makes it too easy. Towers (and archers at low tech level) should have the same range as the attacker, so an artillery fight takes place. The attacker will have losses in its arty department and will have either bring so many pieces of arty that he lacks men OR he will be actually forced to used the good old ladder and take the castle by sword.


I realize that the AI would need some help if this was implemented. I had some epic battles defending my castles, but the overpowerful arty vs buildings kinda destroyed the attacking part for me. auto resolving is just faster then waiting for the arty to its job in the battle screen

If walls actually were more of an obstacle we might actually see some decisive battles when an army comes to rescue the defenders being sieged.

[DEMETRIOUS II]

I totally agree with the garrison weakness bug, it is a game braker for me. In my Spanish campaign I took all the cities by autoresolve as the AI only had one or two units dfending huge cities such as Antioch and Jerusalem. When I called for a crusade on Jerusalem I arrived outside the city walls to find a grand total of one unit (generals bidyguard) guarding the entire city of Jerusalem. So what I did is I laid siege to see if any Egyptians armies will come to the aid of the great city. Guess what happened? Turn after turn stacks with 1 - 2 units would march up to me and surround me but never attack. They didn't even consolidate into one big stack to attack me. AI just sits there watching me siege Jerusalem and waits. That is not good, game as it is is too easy. My style of play is slow, I like to let the AI build up before I go on the offensive, but in MTW II it seems like no matter how long you wait the AI will never fortify their cities. IT HAS TO BE FIXED!!

I've been playing the total war series since the original MTW and this is the worst that I have seen it. It is a beautifull game on the outside but once you start digging you'll discover where it's true ugliness lies. To the veterans of the total war series this is trully a dissapointing full game release. I hope they redeem themselves with a truly outstanding patch. I hope they don't create more problems than they solve.

Cheers!

[PorT_Lobo]

For me that is the main problem of M2TW! This game is about conquering settlements...... and AI don't defend their settlements!!! AI don't garrison it and we can conquer 90% of the cities and castles without fight!!!

[a_swiss_pikeman]

Your sentence doesn't make sense Warfspiess.