Ok, what is up with very hard?

[The Rach]

Like cheat city for the AI. Trying to do Lyoness and the Dwarves are on some crack. Literally have two settlements and they have 5 full army stack on turn 20, ya my ass thats fair. The pirates also conveniently declare war on me once I start fighting the dwarves and have 2 full stacks coming for the coast, 3rd partied, nice. Now this would all be cool if they weren't stacked with armies, like 1 full and 1 half I would understand but this is just ♥♥♥♥. How am i supposed to fight this, all I have is 2 armies, Lyoness and the guy I confederated after taking the coast line from strygos (I'm tired so sorry for forgetting the names lol) But if I go any over I will get massive debt. Yet the AI can happily spawn as many as they want and stack all three on one city so its impossible to defend unless I throw all my eggs into that basket, and then they bring the other 3 up.

I was hoping very hard would be a nice challenge and have the AI play smart so you can't cheese as easily but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this is just crap. Looks like its back to hard since this is broken

[Lady MacBeth]

Originally posted by The Rach:

Originally posted by Enelith:

Well, you asked for harder, and got what you asked for.
They never said in which way it would be harder.

Fair, but usually hard isn't just "Hey we gave the AI console commands, good luck" its moreso the AI is smarter and actually maximises its economy and tactical abilites smartly

In like almost every single strategy game in existence harder = more bonuses for the ai to offset its limitations versus a human. You want it to think like a human? Besides the millions it would cost, your turn times would go from 30 seconds to 5-10 minutes.

[Multihog]

Originally posted by The Rach:

Originally posted by Enelith:

Well, you asked for harder, and got what you asked for.
They never said in which way it would be harder.

Fair, but usually hard isn't just "Hey we gave the AI console commands, good luck" its moreso the AI is smarter and actually maximises its economy and tactical abilites smartly

Tell me one RTS where the AI is like that. I'll be waiting. AoE2 with the new AI? Probably, yes, but that's the only exception ever, and that AI has been in development for years.

It's hard to enough to make a functional RTS AI to begin with. They can't afford to dumb it down one bit as it's barely able to play the game as is. That's why RTS and other strategy games have the same AI regardless of difficulty level. There is no room for stripping any intelligence off the AI because it's hurting for it already.

[Empukris]

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

Well maybe that's needed since aside from Shogun 2 and Attila, Total War AI never really provided much of a challenge.

Mainly because there is nothing to prevent player from growing too large in warhammer like in any other total war. That's why it is feel easy once you hit 6-7 full provinces there is basically nothing to stop you if you are experienced total war player. In warhammer they compensate that by making the AI cheat so hard that it break the record. Well it only make the game harder in the first 50 turns.

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

Whenever I confederate a lord I usually find they take some key skills, some red skills for units they actually are recruiting, and they usually level a skill up all the way before moving onto another skill. They don't do "optimal" builds, but they do tend to favor reasonable builds most of the time. I consider that good enough for an AI. I wouldn't really want them to do the same optimal builds every single game even if it would make the game harder. You'd be complaining about something very different if every AI lord used Lightning Strike and stacked unit buffs.

You never see AI take 9 skills in red tree before? Or you never see AI that build their army only with artilleries, or with chariots. I mean come on, there are tons of screenshots on this, on reddit or even here. This is known issues. Lightning strike on AI will not be that problematic actually.

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

No they don't. In fact this can lead to issues where a settlement you plan to take get's razed before you get to it

They are, chaos army will ignore kislev and marched straight to your vampire territory if you are playing as VC. If they have two undefended city side by side, yours and other AI, they will always attack yours first, even if yours are slightly more defended. This is known issues as well. It has been that way since warhammer 2 released. This is not the case in game one. Chaos will raze anything to the ground. CA make the AI more aggressive towards the player in game 2. You never see AI send a few stacks all the way to your capital when they are located half across the world before? Did they have no enemy to be able to afford that? They have plenty and sometime they lost many territory because of it. Thats why some people said that the AI cant even defend their own territory.

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

Part of the problem is actually that the AI in other Total War games is kind of a joke, and partially because they don't cheat enough on higher difficulties to compete with the player. Shogun 2 is the odd exception. Interestingly before this game came out, Shogun 2 was considered the high point of the series.

3Kingdom is actually have surprising enjoyable AI. When I'm new to the game, the AI diplomacy surprised me more than once. It's feels so satisfying when I finally killed Cao Cao or Yuan Shao on my first playthrough. Shogun 2 is tough not because of the AI in my opinion. The game is overall more balance and they have nasty surprised mechanism when you conquered half Japan. Warhammer is filled with unit that basically will receive close to no damage if you dont have AP units or high MA. It's just hard to balance game like this. We never have total war game reach the size of warhammer before as well.

I enjoy the warhammer game, but I hope they do some improvement on game three. Anything will do other than another more cheat for the AI. if supply line debuff not enough, are they going to increase the recuitment cost as well on higher difficulty next on game 3? Just make some mechanism like realm divided or similar. it will actually provide better challenge in end game as well.