Hello, this is sort of a half-discussion and half-vent thread
I love tww1 and tww2 but honestly it has the most annoying AI artificial bonuses i have ever seen.
I have been playing TWW 2 at Hard difficulty and without any gameplay related mods (just camera stuff and appearances)
The AI in TWW 2 campaigns is often doing some really annoying in my games like:
1. Some factions (like kroq'gar) spawn with ridiculous starting armies...
I was playing the (hard) High queen khalida and early on i defeated the hostile vampires and went south to see can i challenge kroq'gar with my several skeleton armies (around turn 23).
However the first army i saw kroq owns has 3 feral carnos, 2 ancient stegadons, a number of bastilladons and regular stegadons, few cold ones and the rest are saurok warriors with shields?!
It feels so outrageously lame to have an AI start the game with such a ridiculous army that probably costs him 0 upkeep to boot.
I can not do anything to him for the next 70+ turns and all i can hope is bribe him while hoping he does not declare war on me for no reason (as the ai often does).
2. The "faction strength" in diplomacy is a complete lie or bugged.
In a similar game as Tomb Kings i attacked Queek (red skaven) since i was rated as strength rank 5 and he was rated as strength rank 53 (FIFTY THREE) and had only 2 cities.
I started attacking his city with all 3 of my armies when in the very next turn he comes up behind me with THREE armies full of medium to high tier skaven units.
Even one of those armies would be deadly versus my poor undead, but somehow on just two cities he maintains upkeep for 3 powerful armies AND it does not reflect at all in the power rank in diplomacy?!...
3. The AI seems to either have respawning armies that cost 0 gold, or has a 99% upkeep reduction.
Often i see single-city AI factions that maintain 3 to 6 medium to high tier armies for 50+ turns while having less than 3000 gold total income (including the background income which is 2500).
I can accept that AI has SOME discounts but giving them flat out 99% upkeep reduction (or whatever discount it is) is just gameplay breaking, lame and irritating to fight against.
I know that the AI in tww2 is so awful it needs a lot of artificial help and bonuses to make it actually do anything.
And i do know there are a ton of mods that can change anything in tww2's gameplay.
But it feels REALLY pathetic and lame that by default the game's AI has bonuses that feel extremely un-fun and annoying to go up against.