How good is the AI?

[L 0 C K E T]

Both in the campaign and battle

[Multihog]

Publicado originalmente por Welsh Dragon:

I personally find the vanilla battle and campaign AI decent. Perhaps not as good as an experienced player, but I find it fun and challenging on my preferred difficulty settings (Hard/Hard,) especially when not playing the superpowers like Rome.

All the Best,

Welsh Dragon.

The campaign AI is inadequate even by Total War standards. Why? Because the AI is unable to become a relevant superpower in the late game to curb the player's doomstack steamrolling. Rome 2 campaigns effectively end once the player has grabbed 3-4 provinces. Even playing on Legendary doesn't help much. The AI is just too passive and doesn't press its advantage enough. A strong empire should become stronger and stronger until it's consumed every other faction. The late game should only have a handful of factions left at most.

In contrast, Shogun 2's AI *is* able to build powerful empires. In the late game, there are often only a few factions left, all of which are serious threats. Realm Divide further ensures that the campaign remains challenging. Rome 2, on the other hand, still usually has many weakling factions on the map and no superpowers to speak of. This results in mind-numbing tedium if you choose to play campaigns beyond the early-early/mid game. It quickly devolves into you just clicking on province after province and autoresolve steamrolling everything. The only enemy you have is public order and party loyalty.

I recently played a game as Iceni where I decided that I *will* finish one campaign. In the mid-game, though, fatigue quickly started to kick in as I noticed that none of my decisions matter anymore because I was able to obliterate everything in my way—on Very Hard, no less. Sure, all Total War games suffer from the Doomstack & Useless AI Syndrome to some degree, but holy sh!t it's bad in Rome 2.

[Alwyn]

Publicado originalmente por Multihog:

The campaign AI is inadequate even by Total War standards. Why? Because the AI is unable to become a relevant superpower in the late game to curb the player's doomstack steamrolling. Rome 2 campaigns effectively end once the player has grabbed 3-4 provinces. Even playing on Legendary doesn't help much. The AI is just too passive and doesn't press its advantage enough. A strong empire should become stronger and stronger until it's consumed every other faction. The late game should only have a handful of factions left at most.

Yes, in Shogun II the ability of AI factions to expand and build rival empires is impressive and this makes the mid to late game challenging.

I wonder which patch you're on. I'm playing the Ancestral patch and seeing more aggressive behaviour on the campaign map than in previous patches. Have you played a Carthage campaign, before and after Ancestral? Before Ancestral, Rome made no serious attempt to attack Carthage, while Syracuse established a small foothold, taking a couple of regions and not expanding further. After Ancestral, I played a Carthage campaign in which Rome sent legions to take a couple of regions in Africa and continued to expand. People used to say that AI factions didn't recruit their better units, but here Rome was using post-Marian units - including First Cohorts - while I was still using hoplites and peltasts. Something unfamiliar was happening, I was losing a campaign!

You're right, it would be better if AI empires became "stronger and stronger" (at least, more often than now). In Rome II, I often see AI empires rise and fall, not continue to grow. For me, the issue with the campaign AI now is that AI factions tend to be better at taking provinces than defending them. If the AI was a bit better at recruiting more armies and defending territory as well as expanding, and if this led to larger AI empires in the mid to late game (as you said, like in Shogun II), that would be a fantastic challenge.

Even so, I like the increased AI aggression. For example, playing as Carthage, I'm having a civil war in which the break-away Carthaginian faction sent three armies to attack, one towards each of the major cities I still hold (Carthago, Rome and Alexandria). In case anyone is interested, I'm writing an After Action Report on this campaign, the latest update on the civil war is here: https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?766513-New-Town-(Carthage-AAR)-updated-August-3-2019&p=15818800&viewfull=1#post15818800

[Multihog]

Publicado originalmente por Alwyn:

Publicado originalmente por Multihog:

The campaign AI is inadequate even by Total War standards. Why? Because the AI is unable to become a relevant superpower in the late game to curb the player's doomstack steamrolling. Rome 2 campaigns effectively end once the player has grabbed 3-4 provinces. Even playing on Legendary doesn't help much. The AI is just too passive and doesn't press its advantage enough. A strong empire should become stronger and stronger until it's consumed every other faction. The late game should only have a handful of factions left at most.

Yes, in Shogun II the ability of AI factions to expand and build rival empires is impressive and this makes the mid to late game challenging.

I wonder which patch you're on. I'm playing the Ancestral patch and seeing more aggressive behaviour on the campaign map. Have you played a Carthage campaign, before and after Ancestral? Before Ancestral, Rome made no serious attempt to attack Carthage, while Syracuse established a small foothold, taking a couple of regions and not expanding further. After Ancestral, I played a Carthage campaign in which Rome sent legions to take a couple of regions in Africa and continued to expand. People used to say that AI factions didn't recruit their better units, but here Rome was using post-Marian units - including First Cohorts - while I was still using hoplites and peltasts. Something unfamiliar was happening, I was losing a campaign!

You're right, it would be better if AI empires became "stronger and stronger" (at least, more often than now). In Rome II, I often see AI empires rise and fall, not continue to grow. Even so, I like the increased AI aggression. For example, playing as Carthage, I'm having a civil war in which the break-away Carthaginian faction sent an army towards of the major cities I still hold (Carthago, Rome and Alexandria), taking five regions in their advance. For me, the issue with the campaign AI now is that AI factions tend to be better at taking provinces than defending them. If the AI was a bit better at recruiting more armies and defending territory as well as expanding, and if this led to larger AI empires in the mid to late game (as you said, like in Shogun II), that would be a fantastic challenge.

I play the most recent version of the game without any mods.

Yeah, in Rome 2, I don't get that "wow, this is a faction I don't want to piss off!" feeling that I often get in Shogun 2. It's more like "eh, I could crush them like all the rest". In Shogun 2, in the mid-late game, it's often something like 30/70, with you holding 30% of the island and a couple of strong AI factions holding the rest, and you know you're in for a war of epic proportions. In Rome 2, the diplomacy menu is still usually full of pathetic weakling factions with 1-3 provinces that you crush single-handedly. They should be promptly consumed by the stronger factions which in turn should become stronger and stronger.

Regarding recruitment, yeah, that seems fine. The AI was recruiting relatively up to date units in my campaign; it just wasn't bold enough with them to actually become strong.

Even in Rome 2, the AI does eventually expand and become strong, but it does it at such a glacial speed that the player can outpace them with no effort at all. It takes something like 500 turns whereas in Shogun 2 it can happen in around 100. No one plays to turn 500. There are AI time lapse videos on YouTube about Rome 2 that confirm what I said.

Rome 2 is fun in the early game, but it sadly falls flat in the mid game. It's such a shame because I like Rome 2's gameplay as long as it lasts. It just doesn't last long enough. It's exacerbated by the fact that the victory conditions are seriously too big. You need like 80 settlements or something for a military victory and an absurd number of units, etc. The campaign has effectively been won WAY before you attain those goals, so it's just boring clickety clicking without any mind. They could set the military victory goal to 10 provinces, and it would legit be better.

[LSD]

Publicado originalmente por ToonTotalWar:

Publicado originalmente por LSD:

"free democratic country"
Did you vote for Boris the Bullshtmuncher?
Muncher = illegal?
What about Munchen?
So Munchen = ok, Munchér = verboten.

Nope, I did not vote for Boris and that has nothing to do with "freedom of speech!! I don't live in North Korea either.

Back on topic as this conversation is turning into bullcrap!

Free democratic country...didn't vote for your "elected" representative (don't worry, none of us did).
Do you see how those two things don't match up?

North Koreans probably say the same thing. "I live in a free and democratic country and i am happy!"

[L 0 C K E T]

Came here to ask about the AI

Gets an interesting show instead

*grabs popcorn*

[MANWHATADONGA]

Publicado originalmente por L O C K E T:

Came here to ask about the AI

Gets an interesting show instead

*grabs popcorn*

The Ai ranges from complete dumb to tactical greatness.Its in the eye of the player.

[Multihog]

Publicado originalmente por MANWHATADONGA:

Publicado originalmente por L O C K E T:

Came here to ask about the AI

Gets an interesting show instead

*grabs popcorn*

The Ai ranges from complete dumb to tactical greatness.Its in the eye of the player.

It's really not. The AI frequently makes *objectively* bad decisions such as leaving its settlements completely undefended even though it has a stack of units nearby. Not even a mentally handicapped person would consider that "tactical greatness". Sometimes bad is just bad, and there's nothing more to it.

The battle AI in Rome 2 is actually decent most of the time in my experience, but sadly the campaign AI is not.