Total War Megathread V.2: "All of Christendom Will be Awed by this Megathread!"
3,277 replies, posted
Does anyone else usually always auto resolve when the odd's are completely in your favor?
Sometimes I do the battles when I know I'll probably lose if I auto resolve.
Is TW:Shogun and FOTS worth it? If I were to get just one , which one is better? I'm waiting for them to go on steam sale again, but it looks like that's unlikely.
[editline]1st January 2013[/editline]
FUCK YEAH IT'S ON SALE
[QUOTE=Zarjk;39054882]Does anyone else usually always auto resolve when the odd's are completely in your favor?
Sometimes I do the battles when I know I'll probably lose if I auto resolve.[/QUOTE]
It depends on the battle. If its a siege then I'll usually play it out, because I can often lose fewer men than the computer will calculate.
I hate sieges because I'm terrible at attacking.
FOTS
[QUOTE=Zarjk;39055017]I hate sieges because I'm terrible at attacking.[/QUOTE]
For sieges just bombard the living jesus out of them with archers and artillery. No point in making some all-out infantry attack against a heavily-defended base filled with elite samurai units.
I always liked how underwhelming Japanese castles are.
From the outside "oh wow, it's this huge stone building".
But once you look from the top down, it's just a hill with a tiny wooden wall around the top and a origami house in the middle.
[QUOTE=PollytheParrot;39055172]For sieges just bombard the living jesus out of them with archers and artillery. No point in making some all-out infantry attack against a heavily-defended base filled with elite samurai units.[/QUOTE]
Empire.
Not really possible because it's really not to lose your cannons without sending something to flank while your try to rape the walls.
I usually lose up to 500 men each one of those battles.
[QUOTE=Zarjk;39055393]Empire.
Not really possible because it's really not to lose your cannons without sending something to flank while your try to rape the walls.
I usually lose up to 500 men each one of those battles.[/QUOTE]
This is why I field 2 cannons and 4-5 howitzers. Use the cannons massive range to neutralize a fort's gun batteries which in turn give the howitzers the safety they need to start raining quicklime down upon the defenders. After that just march in infantry and watch them massacre the defenders who are now in a constant state of routing back in forth to the fort's flag.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;39055347]I always liked how underwhelming Japanese castles are.
From the outside "oh wow, it's this huge stone building".
But once you look from the top down, it's just a hill with a tiny wooden wall around the top and a origami house in the middle.[/QUOTE]
One of the reasons I can't get into Shogun compared to the older games.
[QUOTE=-nesto-;39055531]This is why I field 2 cannons and 4-5 howitzers. Use the cannons massive range to neutralize a fort's gun batteries which in turn give the howitzers the safety they need to start raining quicklime down upon the defenders. After that just march in infantry and watch them massacre the defenders who are now in a constant state of routing back in forth to the fort's flag.[/QUOTE]
Meh.
In Darthmod it's usually not a problem if you field all militia.
There's 20 slots for troops typically, and in Darthmod you get 300 militia.
That's 6000 men in one army. Three times the size of a normal army.
I hate that in auto-battles in shogun 2, when it's a siege battle, no matter what happens, the fort will be damaged, which means that you'll have to spend a turn repairing it before recruiting new soldiers, and the people will be angrier with you at first too. That's why I usually fight it manually instead of auto-battle.
I'm getting kind of tired of playing Napoleon (+ darthmod) as Prussia. Having 10k french troops with 10k reinforcing attack Berlin every 5 turns (about how long it takes for my 3 full stacks to replenish from the last battle) gets boring real fast. The battles take upwards of 45 minutes each and by the end I'm only using reinforced troops (that just come from a random corner of the map) and none of my line infantry has any ammo. I always end up winning the battle by charging my huge glob (like 6 or 7 units) of various types of cavalry into their lines.
[QUOTE=Zarjk;39056068]Meh.
In Darthmod it's usually not a problem if you field all militia.
There's 20 slots for troops typically, and in Darthmod you get 300 militia.
That's 6000 men in one army. Three times the size of a normal army.[/QUOTE]
That must be hell on the computer in the much larger battles. Four stacks together is 24,000 men, good lord.
As for auto-complete, i just can't trust it most of the time. Once I had some citadel, Barad-Dur in the LOTR mod, besieged with some eight thousand men. After a failed sally, the defenders were down to maybe a thousand, mostly light orc archers and some raiders. I didn't feel like bothering with the annoying layout of Teutonic castles, so I just auto-completed for what I assumed would be a simple victory. Instead, Boromir and Faramir died, as did 3/4 of the army. The next turn, the remnants were smashed by a doomstack from nowhere and all my holdings east of Osgiliath fell in quick succession.
Anyone with a 7xxx series ATI card having any troubles with Shogun 2? I uninstalled the game a while back due to the sound loop crash I kept getting. Since then they've released one patch and the 12.11 beta drivers.
[QUOTE=BurnEmDown;39069035]I hate that in auto-battles in shogun 2, when it's a siege battle, no matter what happens, the fort will be damaged, which means that you'll have to spend a turn repairing it before recruiting new soldiers, and the people will be angrier with you at first too. That's why I usually fight it manually instead of auto-battle.[/QUOTE]
still if my 5000 army attacks a castle protected by samurai retainers I am not doing it manually
Does the AI cheat in normal mode in Shogun 2 and Medieval or just harder modes?
[QUOTE=cis.joshb;39086331]Does the AI cheat in normal mode in Shogun 2 and Medieval or just harder modes?[/QUOTE]
The AI always cheats in Medieval.
[QUOTE=DaysBefore;39087149]The AI always cheats in Medieval.[/QUOTE]
Nah the AI in Med doesn't cheat, they just spam the shit out cheaply fielded units. Shogun 2 AI does infact cheat however by turning regular Yari units into Samurai units in the field(only when hidden in FoW) without even having the required buildings to recruit said Samurai unit. Also difficulty does factor into the AI's "cheapness". I think it goes something like
Easy - Regular # of recruitment slots
Normal - +1
Hard - +2
Very Hard - +3
[QUOTE=-nesto-;39087430]Nah the AI in Med doesn't cheat, they just spam the shit out cheaply fielded units. Shogun 2 AI does infact cheat however by turning regular Yari units into Samurai units in the field(only when hidden in FoW) without even having the required buildings to recruit said Samurai unit. Also difficulty does factor into the AI's "cheapness". I think it goes something like
Easy - Regular # of recruitment slots
Normal - +1
Hard - +2
Very Hard - +3[/QUOTE]
wait really? who the fuck thought it's a good idea?
The guys who can't be bothered to make clever AI.
[QUOTE=Freakie;39091154]The guys who can't be bothered to make clever AI.[/QUOTE]
It's murderously hard to write a good AI that will be a challenge to the best players whilst following all player limitations. Hell, look at Civ where the AI is a massive cheating bastard on Diety (bonus to production, research, happiness, starts with an extra settler and units and several other things) and yet some players can still beat it 9/10 times. You'd then also have to write simpler AIs that work within the rules for more average players, ending up with you having to write maybe 3-4 different AIs just for the world map, and then write different battle difficulty AIs. It's far easier for a company to just create a cookie cutter AI that has minor changes between the difficulties, but uses cheats (extra gold, happiness + troop recruitment slots in Shogun 2s case), so that's what they do.
I'd still love to see a non-cheating but brutally hard AI, though.
[QUOTE=Terminutter;39091293]I'd still love to see a non-cheating but brutally hard AI, though.[/QUOTE]
You could play multi-player?
[QUOTE=TrafficMan;39091309]You could play multi-player?[/QUOTE]
'course you can, and I'm nowhere near a good enough player to beat the AI!
It's just from a technical point of view that it'd be really interesting to see an AI that good.
[QUOTE=Terminutter;39091293]It's murderously hard to write a good AI that will be a challenge to the best players whilst following all player limitations. Hell, look at Civ where the AI is a massive cheating bastard on Diety (bonus to production, research, happiness, starts with an extra settler and units and several other things) and yet some players can still beat it 9/10 times. You'd then also have to write simpler AIs that work within the rules for more average players, ending up with you having to write maybe 3-4 different AIs just for the world map, and then write different battle difficulty AIs. It's far easier for a company to just create a cookie cutter AI that has minor changes between the difficulties, but uses cheats (extra gold, happiness + troop recruitment slots in Shogun 2s case), so that's what they do.
I'd still love to see a non-cheating but brutally hard AI, though.[/QUOTE]
I think Age of Empires II's development had almost a year's focus on the AI, if I remember correctly. Kinda a shame so few other games have the same level of attention.
[QUOTE=DaysBefore;39082654]That must be hell on the computer in the much larger battles. Four stacks together is 24,000 men, good lord.
As for auto-complete, i just can't trust it most of the time. Once I had some citadel, Barad-Dur in the LOTR mod, besieged with some eight thousand men. After a failed sally, the defenders were down to maybe a thousand, mostly light orc archers and some raiders. I didn't feel like bothering with the annoying layout of Teutonic castles, so I just auto-completed for what I assumed would be a simple victory. Instead, Boromir and Faramir died, as did 3/4 of the army. The next turn, the remnants were smashed by a doomstack from nowhere and all my holdings east of Osgiliath fell in quick succession.[/QUOTE]
Auto resolve heavily favors the evil factions
[QUOTE=Indyclone77;39091884]Auto resolve heavily favors the evil factions[/QUOTE]
That's because the evil factions have much, much larger units.
[QUOTE=Terminutter;39091293]It's murderously hard to write a good AI that will be a challenge to the best players whilst following all player limitations. Hell, look at Civ where the AI is a massive cheating bastard on Diety (bonus to production, research, happiness, starts with an extra settler and units and several other things) and yet some players can still beat it 9/10 times. You'd then also have to write simpler AIs that work within the rules for more average players, ending up with you having to write maybe 3-4 different AIs just for the world map, and then write different battle difficulty AIs. It's far easier for a company to just create a cookie cutter AI that has minor changes between the difficulties, but uses cheats (extra gold, happiness + troop recruitment slots in Shogun 2s case), so that's what they do.
I'd still love to see a non-cheating but brutally hard AI, though.[/QUOTE]
Galactic Civilizations II.
AI on hardest difficulty doesn't cheat. It just plays really well and minmaxes like a mofo.
[QUOTE=Indyclone77;39091884]Auto resolve heavily favors the evil factions[/QUOTE]
Yeah that's what it says if you start a campaign as one of the Orc factions
"Don't auto-resolve because basically it makes you win no matter what"
