My own experience has been that the AI has mixed success. They have used their cav a lot better on me in most of the engagements that I’ve played (usually they will try a quick charge…which generally results in slaughtered cav units when it hits my main line, but then they will fling out several regiments on either flank and try and circle around behind me…and I’ve been distracted enough that sometimes I miss one and it can wreak havoc in my rear areas if I’m not careful). Their line infantry has done a decent job as well, at least in most of my battles. I haven’t had a problem with the AI simply sitting there forming and reforming square…generally the AI tends to try and hit my center and one of the flanks with a serious attack while trying to sneak their cav around behind me. I’ve been hurt pretty badly in a few battles, though I also tend to win most engagements…but I wouldn’t rate them as easy (unless I’ve got a serious tech edge).
About the only things with the AI I’ve seen is when they try and charge through my lines and get hung up…or when they are behind a wall and stubbornly stay there even when I’m clearly maneuvering around behind them to hit them from all sides. They also don’t generally keep good order after the main battle is over and we are into the maneuver phase…at that point it seems the AI considers every regiment to be on it’s own and they seem to fight singly with no coordination between regiments.
I used the default “large” unit size. Occasionally the AI will stumble upon a stroke of genius like luring me into units hidden in forests, but so far the most regular strategy I’ve seen the battle computers use is: "run up to the nearest fortification, stop, cluster together uselessly and throw cavalry into the line infantry. I tend to use the integrated-line formation, so maybe it attempts to ‘flank’ my cannons straight into the rest of the firing line.
I auto-resolve most battles but the ones I do the computer seems fine (if predictable) cavalry to my flanks line infantry to the front. Usually a suicide stab at my cannon. The only times I’ve seen it be completely useless was in a siege situation. It put half its cannon outside the fort with little protection and sat there doing nothing while I took the walls and opened the gates (walls were fully upgraded city walls). Really why have a fort at all? After I was inside it started to fight back and there was a bit of a massacre at the gates but the AI really should have won that battle as it was my first major siege and I had no idea what I was doing.
England campaign is definitely playing the game on easy. It’s a snap to get your economy up and running, clamor for reform is never a danger, you can build up your armies in peace then take France and Spain out right away. I beat it on short campaign (didn’t get Veteran Achievement unlock so that’s another one that’s bugged) with no problems. I went through it again on long campaign (did get Veteran Achievement when I did that though A New Rome didn’t unlock when I got over 100 regions). Played the Ottoman Empire and whoa boy is it different. Money is impossible as all your countries are crap. All your trade lanes get pirated the moment you go to war with anyone with a navy. Clamor for Reform means your countries are constantly about to rebel. You start out already at war with Russia (leading to you taking a bunch more crap countries with no sea lanes). I’m definitely going to start over and see about starting a rebellion and changing the government as suggested in this thread. Also building a much bigger navy and keeping the trade lanes by Gibraltar open.
One thing I hope they change in a patch is the fact you have to hold out until the end of the era. I find myself meeting all my goals then just attacking people at random until time runs out. On the long campaign I actually conquered every single other nation and still had over 20 turns left. A little silly hitting ‘end turn’ when nobody else was on the map…It should be achieve your goals and hold on to your conquests for 5 turns or until the end of the time limit.
The details are great, like your men hopping over fences. Game is pretty stable, load times are surprisingly quick. Takes a while to save, though. Naval combat is fantastic. The timing, the movement, the ships circling each other in some nightmarish ballet. Those ships sure can take a lot of punishment, eh?
What I don’t like: Every minor territory dispute quickly escalates into World War 0.5. Playing as Prussia, nabbing West Prussia off the Polish quickly aligned most of Europe against me. Ditto taking Flanders from Spain.
Speaking of which, one incredibly annoying flaw from previous Total War games remains - the unwinnable battle. Playing as The United Provinces battling for Brussels, the French and Spanish attacked me. I wiped them out; they all rout, their general dead, the map cleared of enemies. And then…nothing. I scour the map with my cav to try and find any Frenchmen or Spaniards hiding behind trees and whatnot; nothing.
Put a time limit on your battles…there have a bit more flexibility now in how long you can set them for. I used to do all battles without limit until exactly what you described happened to me a couple of times (if you exit the battle you lose, which is really stupid). Now, when this happens I just set my guys into a defensive formation, put the time compression to max and go have a sandwich. My guess is that there is a single previously routed unit out there hiding in some terrain feature…I’ve actually seen it happen, and sometimes if it’s a single unit they don’t put a unit flag over them.
I’m finding the game much more stable now. Finally finished the American campaign (though for some reason it didn’t unlock the US as a faction, which sucked), playing as the Russians atm and kicking ass. Same as you, I hate the way nations will simply pile on your if you are aggressive at all…hell, even if you have war declared on you the small fry seem to come out of the wood work to try and take a bite. That’s actually working well for me as Russia though, since the small fry are the ones right on my borders, and I probably would have wanted to gobble em up anyway.
I dunno, I really like the escalation, makes it much harder to blitz your way across Europe, you have to take baby steps, attack protectorates so that their Mother Nations get in the fight but not the allies of the Mother Nation, not expand too much too fast else every one turns on you (you get a -10 relationship with all factions in the theatre for each conquest, which erases over time)… It’s kinda cool. Really different from Rome or Med 2 where you’d just roll over any neighbour without consequences (except maybe the Pope calling you a cheeky fellow)
The only problem is that once a big clusterfuck gets going (like a war of succession… boy did the first one take me by surprise…), it’s really troublesome to go back to Defcon 5 with everyone involved.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still lots of kinks to smoothe and patch away (like the aforementionned fact that infantry hunkered behind walls will let you wheel around without reacting, or the fact that horses facing a fence at anything but a perfect 90° angle will crash into it and come to a dead stop) but on the whole, I’d say it’s the best effort since they’ve abandonned the Risk style campaign map, both on the battlefield and the campaign map.
AI factions are transporting troops by sea finally. Income/costs have been changed for the harder, making my current campaign almost impossible to continue. I’m still getting CTD on selection of certain naval units, though that can be worked around.
Yeah…surprised the hell out of me the first time it happened. I generally just leave England and Ireland pretty much undefended except with a token force (on the odd chance there is a rebellion) and I was stunned when the French landed two full armies and took London from me…the RAT BASTARDS!! It definitely makes the game more interesting now.
I’m not sure if they changed the chance of a golden BB on your capital ships, but in the last 3 campaigns I’ve had first rate or second rate ships blow up with minor damage…which seriously sucks when it happens.
Does anyone know how to turn of the US as a faction btw? Can you unlock it for the Grand Campaign?? Can you unlock any other factions? I seem to have exactly the same nations I started off with.
So far, of the factions I’ve played I’ve found Poland the most challenging…and the Brits the easiest (by far…though I find them one of the most fun to play even though they are so easy). Once I figured out how to keep my empire from going up in flames due to internal rebellions both Prussia and Austria are pretty easy now as well (at least in the long campaign).
You “unlock” (it’s not quite unlocking) the US by completing the first three episodes of the RTI campaign. You can then select RTI in the start game menu and there’s a “United States” option beyond Episode III which puts you at 1783 with possession of Maine through Georgia and the full campaign map. The rest of the map is redraw to period boundaries, so the Prussians have more territories, the Spanish have lost their Italian possessions, the Mughals have pretty much collapsed, etc.
Other than that there’s no built in unlocking of minor factions. There are some mods floating around that let you play any faction, but from what I’ve read you can run into issues with some of them, specifically the minor American colony factions that get folded into their parent AI factions. I haven’t played with any mods and don’t know what’s involved in using them.
Well, I’ve completed the first three episodes of RTI but I don’t get that selection. Maybe I’ll play through again to see if I can get it.
I noticed something else interesting since the patch…America can become an independent state as early as 1705 now (at least if you are playing the Brits, the only faction I’ve played since the patch).
Haven’t tried any of the mods yet either. My guess is that they are going to do a lot in the expansions (I think Napoleonic Wars/War 1812 and maybe open up China and south east Asia as a playable area). I bet someone does a Civil War mod as well (unless they decide to do that as a second expansion).
Well, to be fair I’m playing on H/H. Easier settings may well ease the financial crunch. I was playing Brits with a self-imposed rule of never declaring war - only fight people who attacked me or one of my allies. So I started out a bit slow, picked off the pirate islands in the Caribbean, when suddenly Spain and the Marathans attack Portugal. So I charge off to the rescue, wipe out the Marathans, give Goa back to the Portuguese cuz I’m a nice guy, take Madrid and Gibraltar and then make peace with the Spanish because I don’t really want Lombardy. Then the Swedes attack my Hanoverian allies (they had already taken Denmark) and I wipe them out, the Danes attack from Norway (ungrateful bastards, after I had just eliminated their enemies), and before I can consolidate my rather awkward territories the King dies and Prussia disputes the succession and declares war, joined by their French allies. Which is an interesting twist on history.
The War of British Succession is just winding up, with both the French and Prussian empires in ruins. Redcoats control huge swathes of central Europe. The Royal Navy enjoys absolute naval supremacy, with 5 major squadrons of a dozen or so sail of the line in each.
Then the game is patched.
I go from +70k income to -50k. In the space of 10 turns I’m at war with all the minor German factions, the Mughals, Russia, the Thirteen Colonies, the Cherokees, and a couple others. Part of what was going on I think is that the AI factions were all caught with high troop maintenance issues as well, and so it was sort of a mad scramble to balance troop numbers with territory controlled. I’ve gone on a blitz and now have all of India, nearly all of NA, and significant incursions into Russian territory and my budget is just balanced after squashing a Spanish fleet that was blockading Amsterdam. I disbanded half my navy and most of my garrison troops.
I really doubt that the financial issues would be that bad if the map hadn’t developed so far with the original financial rules in place. I would expect that a new game would result in a lower pace of expansion necessitated by armies costing more and not wanting to spam militia to maintain social order in new territories.
I just wish they had fixed the naval selection CTD bug.
Money has been a constant struggle for me, no matter what I do or who I conquer. In previous TW games my money situation has had three distinct stages:
Dirt poor.
Getting there, but don’t go nuts.
Richer than God.
On Empire I never get past stage 2, maybe that’s the idea. Still, a jarring change from the other TW games.
Tutorial menu? Wow…well, that would explain why I never saw it. I’ll check it out when I get home tonight.
As for being brain dead and obvious…well, could be (it’s one of my favorite too BTW…grew up reading Sharpe and Hornblower novels). But yeah…it is the obvious choice. War of 1812 as well (which was part of the NW anyway), and perhaps a Civil War expansion (or maybe an entire new game using the same engine…I remember reading that the guys who write the TW games like to get 2 complete games and 4 expansions out of each engine, if they can). Unless they go back to Japan or maybe pre-Roman I’m not sure where else they can go from here. I don’t think the game engine will translate into modern warfare (I suppose it might work for WWI).
That’s been my experience with this one too…though I’ve never gotten quite as rich as I have in the previous games. In this one it’s all about keeping your army costs low, especially your garrison costs. I’ve found that strategic placement of forts helps maximize my money…your fort garrisons will defend farms and such if an enemy comes within their range (which is a nice feature). Also, you need to be very careful about your upgrades…I usually only upgrade stuff that will generate more income (and won’t generate negative popularity, especially with the masses).
I also usually only have one field army now and rely on defensive forces to hold other areas…and a single cav force for stopping raids (VERY important in this game…those little pin prick raids can suck your treasury dry).
Same goes with fleet units…I generally go for quality over quantity and disband anything unneeded or out dated (one of the first things I usually do is disband all the pike units, for instance, on my first turn).
My guess is you are expanding to fast both in the size of your military and in your conquests. It takes longer to assimilate new territories in this game and to make them money producers, so it makes the pace slower. Where I used to be able to blitz several territories a turn in the old TW games it now takes me around 3-4 turns to assimilate a territory, garrison it, stabilize the population and reform the units (I love how you can reinforce damaged units in this game). Trying to blitz any faster is usually a recipe for financial disaster.
One other thing…are you auto resolving your battles or playing them out? I’ve found that the computer generally takes a lot more damage auto resolving than I do playing it out…and that translates into much higher costs. Initially I recommend playing out battles…until you get to the point where you have some good solid income in your core territories. Once you have a secure core area and good trade…then it’s just like the old games where you have tons of money. At that point it will all be over but the screaming.
A key point to make fucktons of money is control of the trade spots (at least, it was before the patch, haven’t played post-patch yet). It is vitaly important to devote your entire starting economy to cranking out Indiamen, Fluyt or Gallions. There are a few pirate stacks to deal with, but the West Coast of Africa and Brazil are fairly safe. Put one indiaman on each trade spot ASAP, then keep on sending them until you’ve got 4-5 on each spot you control. Get as many trade partners as possible. Voilà, you’re rolling in the dough
Patch 1.3 came out yesterday, for anyone who still cares…
I must say … I’m probably not even going to reinstall. I still have a really sour taste in my mouth after two grand campaigns ended due to bugged territories that prevented me from ever finishing (*weeks *into each game). I don’t think I want to go there again. Maybe I’ll give it another shot around patch 1.9 in 2011. Or perhaps load it just for some quick battles. I certainly won’t invest any effort in a campaign though. While the patch notes mention some performance fixes, I simply don’t trust the developers by now. But hey, at least we get an option to pay them more for some re-skinned units! Too little too late for me.
Bytheway, hadn’t they promised MP campaigns? I don’t see that in the patch notes. I wonder how much extra that’ll cost when they add it.
But yeah…it is the obvious choice. War of 1812 as well (which was part of the NW anyway), and perhaps a Civil War expansion (or maybe an entire new game using the same engine…I remember reading that the guys who write the TW games like to get 2 complete games and 4 expansions out of each engine, if they can). Unless they go back to Japan or maybe pre-Roman I’m not sure where else they can go from here. I don’t think the game engine will translate into modern warfare (I suppose it might work for WWI).