How to make the AI fight battles in the open instead of hiding in cities

[moopheus]

Are there any tricks to incentivizing the a.i to fight field battles? There is often a consistent pattern I find where the a.i, even when it has a near full-stack, prefers to hole up in a city and let me raid its territory as I please. This is particularly true for the eleuthoroi. So if I want to fight, I have to besiege the city, wait until the last turn, and then they will sally and finally fight. This turns the game into siege whackamole, which is not particularly fun. Unfortunately the siege sallies don't give you time to get your army in proper formation, nor does the a.i seem interested in creating their own formation like they would on an even field battle.

[QuintusSertorius]

Don't use full stacks, nor multiple armies when you advance. Give them time to react, doing some devastating before closing on cities.

Also note the Rebels have a different (stunted) AI to the regular factions, so there's less that can be done with them.

[Sar1n]

There is a way to force decisive battles. Pick a major enemy settlement, besiege it with full stack, preferably from direction where your back is blocked by some obstacle, and wait. Enemy will amass troops around you until it feels it has enough troops to take you down, and then attack. This way, you get a decisive, challenging field battle instead of grinding down the enemy in sieges and small battles.

[moopheus]

Thanks guys much appreciated!

[Beckitz]

It would also be remiss not to mention the tactic of attacking a 1 or 2 unit enemy microstack that happens to be camped adjacent to an enemy settlement. You see this all the time in the M2TW engine, especially at times when the AI has a large garrison inside the settlement. If the AI reckons it has decent odds, it will fight the battle and call in the garrison of the settlement as reinforcements on the battle map. So if you can manage to destroy the reinforcing army, you can severely deplete or even wipe out the garrison of the settlement and then just march inside. There is some learning curve involved in figuring out what size of an attacking force to use, in order to prevent the AI from retreating. If they do, your attacking army will perforce be trapped next to the settlement. But, other strategic considerations being properly taken, this is usually not a serious danger.