dante alighieri
Warlord
I'm in the last stretch of my latest game, so it may be the first BtS game i actually finish before I'm beaten. (Being a casual noble level player I kind of suck).
I learned my lesson fighting Boudica in my last game. The AI will throw impressive stacks of troops at you. So as the ethiopians I made sure my border cities had plenty of the most modern troops I had at the time. Bismark still surprised me. Thats good, the AI actually sent enough troops to really scare me. But he seemed to always attack this same city for some reason. (it wasn't even built by me, it was a barb city I captured on a floodplain.) Thats the only thing I can fault the AI with. In order to save that city I had to pull troops from other cities to fortify it until I could sue for peace. A human player would have noted that other nearby cities were now lightly defended and gone after them. He had the troops to do it to, but he keep throwing wave after wave at this one city. (and killing a lot of the defenders. I had to keep pumping more of them in there from my core cities). His vassal, Stalin did that to.
I had three wars like that with him and he always went for this city. It didn't have anything that important in it. Losing it wouldn't have hurt my empire that much, but I hate losing cities. I don't know why he wanted it so badly. Especially when each time he was on the brink of breaking my defenses I asked for peace and he gave it. If he had kept on for one more turn he might have taken it.
I guess its not possible to get the AI to recognize that it has the upper hand in situations like that, which is too bad. I'm glad to have not lost the city, but a bit of abstract thinking would have won the war for that old Colonel Sanders lookalike.
On the topicc of the stacks though, does the AI do nothing but build units? I couldn't have fielded such a large army at that point in the game without not building any infrastrcucture. These stacks (the same in every BtS game I've played) were humongous. I didn't count 'em but I'm estimating they were 20 deep with trebuchets, melee units and ranged. A good mix, but man! I'mguessing his cities didn't have anything but brarracks in them.
I learned my lesson fighting Boudica in my last game. The AI will throw impressive stacks of troops at you. So as the ethiopians I made sure my border cities had plenty of the most modern troops I had at the time. Bismark still surprised me. Thats good, the AI actually sent enough troops to really scare me. But he seemed to always attack this same city for some reason. (it wasn't even built by me, it was a barb city I captured on a floodplain.) Thats the only thing I can fault the AI with. In order to save that city I had to pull troops from other cities to fortify it until I could sue for peace. A human player would have noted that other nearby cities were now lightly defended and gone after them. He had the troops to do it to, but he keep throwing wave after wave at this one city. (and killing a lot of the defenders. I had to keep pumping more of them in there from my core cities). His vassal, Stalin did that to.
I had three wars like that with him and he always went for this city. It didn't have anything that important in it. Losing it wouldn't have hurt my empire that much, but I hate losing cities. I don't know why he wanted it so badly. Especially when each time he was on the brink of breaking my defenses I asked for peace and he gave it. If he had kept on for one more turn he might have taken it.
I guess its not possible to get the AI to recognize that it has the upper hand in situations like that, which is too bad. I'm glad to have not lost the city, but a bit of abstract thinking would have won the war for that old Colonel Sanders lookalike.
On the topicc of the stacks though, does the AI do nothing but build units? I couldn't have fielded such a large army at that point in the game without not building any infrastrcucture. These stacks (the same in every BtS game I've played) were humongous. I didn't count 'em but I'm estimating they were 20 deep with trebuchets, melee units and ranged. A good mix, but man! I'mguessing his cities didn't have anything but brarracks in them.
