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[Brons]

Man, I lost my second siege battle, got my entire army destroyed and lost my Daimyo while I had almost two times the amount of units. I was still thinking about the Rome/Medieval 2/Empires AI and said to myself: "Lol AI, CHARGE".

Time to restart my campaign.

[Jackrabbit]

Yeah, the AI has some pretty serious problem with sieges. I consider this a handicap however, because it's so freaking good at field battles. I am seriously more willing to autoresolve evenly matched field battles than actually fight them myself. The AI is too scary. I've actually lost more field battles to the AI than won. If it wasn't for the save game function, I'd have committed seppuku about 50 times now.

I really like some of the balance changes they did. Archers for example. They are both ridiculously powerful and ridiculously weak at the same time. It's hard to put it in words, but when I see archers, I fear them yet not fear them. The fire arrow initial burst is so scary that you have to decide who you are going to sacrifice to take that initial hit. After that, their dps over time is low enough that an infantry charge should be able to break them.

But it's so tough as a human to figure out when that time to charge is. You charge too early and the archers will tear you to shreds. Charge too late and well... none of your units will be left alive.

It's great! They aren't overpowered either (try fielding an entire army of archers and see what happens) but the intricacies that come with the unit make it a true challenge to master.

Additionally, Samurai Archers can defend themselves pretty efficiently, making them a daunting task to take care of without the luxury of directing several units at them, or cavalry.

[King Cow]

Damn it guys you are going to make me buy this game after I swore I would not because of the lack of support for modders.

[Dohon]

While Shogun 2's AI is fabulous, it does have a drawback: It cheats on the campaign map. I don't mean money bonuses, but actually spawning new stacks out of thin air. And those stacks tend to have some experienced units in them too. This "spawning" happens on Normal difficulty and once on Hard, it really gets noticeable. I don't mind the AI getting some crutches, but this is ridiculous.

I'm not that upset though. If the AI gets a few small stacks on Normal (although it does suspend belief) extra in exchange for giving me an AI that actually plays half-way decent, I'll take that deal and run with it.

[Ampersand]

Are you sure it's not just the fact that advanced buildings can build experienced units, and advanced castles can build many units at a turn?

[dogstile]

I find it awesome. 4 weeks ago everyone was screaming that the AI would be crap. This is a massive surprise, wish I could buy it.

[Metalax]

Yes, I've tested this and the AI does spawn more units and more experienced units than are possible with the buildings it has available. It seems to do so if it is severely outmatched by nearby enemies. However it will only do this when out of sight, so you can prevent this by using agents to keep an entire area under observation. As long as all of a clans provinces are under observation, it has to hold to the same rules as the player for production/upkeep of units.

[umiman]

Yes, I've tested this and the AI does spawn more units and more experienced units than are possible with the buildings it has available. It seems to do so if it is severely outmatched by nearby enemies. However it will only do this when out of sight, so you can prevent this by using agents to keep an entire area under observation. As long as all of a clans provinces are under observation, it has to hold to the same rules as the player for production/upkeep of units.

This is not particularly difficult to do considering how many agents you would have in a normal game. Also, I'm pretty sure the AI campaign map spawning thing has been done in every single Total War game ever.

[Puzzlemaker]

I experienced it once.  It was after a clan was destroyed, and suddenly came back; I believe their capital rebelled and they re-took it.  I -THINK- that the stacks spawn due to rebellions.  I could be wrong, but my experience shows this to be true so far.

[Metalax]

That's a different mechanic at work. If a rebellion occurs in or near the home province of a destroyed clan, there is a chance that the rebellion stack will be from that clan, bringing them back into the game. It is also possible for the AI to experience normal rebellions of unaligned units.

The AI also spawns more units than it should be able to in some situations if out of sight of the player, which is what we were referring to.

[Lumbajak]

Also of note is that the AI will magick up new daimyo's and generals all the bloody time. At least they always spawn a new one when the last one dies.

The unending train of Generals sure is levelling up my Ninja pretty fast though.

[Neonivek]

Also of note is that the AI will magick up new daimyo's and generals all the bloody time. At least they always spawn a new one when the last one dies.

The unending train of Generals sure is levelling up my Ninja pretty fast though.

To admit the autolose because you don't have enough heirs was always something that was silly to me.

[Smitehappy]

Also of note is that the AI will magick up new daimyo's and generals all the bloody time. At least they always spawn a new one when the last one dies.

The unending train of Generals sure is levelling up my Ninja pretty fast though.

To admit the autolose because you don't have enough heirs was always something that was silly to me.

I always just assumed they tracked the next poor schmuck in the family line down, slapped some armor on him, and sent him on his way to his inevitable death at my walls

[Simmura McCrea]

Also of note is that the AI will magick up new daimyo's and generals all the bloody time. At least they always spawn a new one when the last one dies.

The unending train of Generals sure is levelling up my Ninja pretty fast though.

To admit the autolose because you don't have enough heirs was always something that was silly to me.

It could make some sense if the faction collapsed into some smaller ones as people fought for the throne, or if it just moved into a new dynasty, representing the old leader choosing an heir from outside of his family.

[umiman]

Oh man, I just have to share this. I don't doubt that anyone who has fought the Ashikaga Shogunate at Kyoto has experienced the same thing. If you don't want to spoil yourself on the biggest fight in the game, don't read.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Basically, I have a total of 20,000 men sieging Kyoto, which has a garrison of about 2000. Every single one of those 2000, excluding the generals, was a maxed level samurai unit and almost 80% of those were archers. My armies were mostly ashigaru. I thought, "pffft, just archers? This will be a cakewalk."

Then I saw the map. Oh my god did I see the map. I then understood why 80% of those were archers.

Kyoto Citadel is basically surrounded by this HUGE moat with three tiny tiny bridges on three sides. Each bridge could probably fit 3 men across. The moat was about 300 meters long and deep enough that men would have to slowly swim across. Swimming across would take about a minute. The citadel itself had these massive missile towers all over the freaking place. For all intents and purposes, they were arrow machinegun bunkers. And of course.... the archers. The 1600 max level samurai archers.

Now, I could have tried to be smart and do a super all-encompassing attack from every single side and all that but seriously? This was the final fight. This was the big time. The climax. The moment that everything boiled down to. I wasn't about to do something boring like a tactical, slow-paced strategem. No sir. If there was ever a time to do something amazing, this was it.

All my units. Frontal charge. Swim across the moat together, climb that freaking wall, and fight those samurai like the brave cannon fodder that you are!!!

It was glorious. The AI happily obliged my suicidal banzai charge and put every single archer at the front gates. The moat basically turned black with the bodies of my ashigaru. It felt like a 16th century version of D-day, Normandy. Even my generals swam across that moat getting torn to shreds by the nonstop arrow fire. The entire first wave of 4000 yari ashigaru basically melted. So did the second, which reached the walls but were still ripped apart by arrows. My daimyo made it though, and he literally camped under the main arrow bunker thing in "stand and fight" mode (basically, your general will make camp at that location and give all units around a huge radius a bonus to melee attack).

My computer was lagging so bad. Too many arrows. So many bodies. My 20,000-man army which I had accumulated over the course of 20 hours of gameplay was basically turned to dust trying to cross that moat. Eventually my warriors managed to surmount the walls despite most of my units being down to 20% strength or so, kill the enemy samurai, and conquered the castle. I lost over 10,000 men. Some of which I had from the very beginning of the game. My daimyo was the only surviving unit of his entire own army. It was still considered a heroic victory and I was laughing my arse off at the sheer awesomeness of what happened.

And then it crashed.

So I had to start again from the campaign screen where I chose to autoresolve instead and got a heroic victory with 3 deaths.

Edit: Holy crap. If you press insert, the camera will jump into the eyes of one of the men inside the currently selected unit fps mode. Too bad you can't manually control him but you get to see the amazing graphical detail.