Your biggest demo battle

[licker]

Just out of curiosity as to how out of whack the AI is or isn't I'm curious to hear from the all the demoers out there what the biggest battle they've seen is. Limit it to you vs. the AI or AI vs. AI (if you had a scout). Preface it with the game settings, Indie strength, number of AIs, Map, AI level (weak, normal, ...), turn, and anything else you feel is germane.

I posted this in the AI thread, but I'll repost it to start off the thread.

Playing as Pythem with indie at 6 or 7 (can't remember exactly), all Nations at normal or difficult, larger map. It was around turn 15 when I caught Marginons army that was ~60 units with 3 commanders (it was 5 commanders but I managed to assassinate 2 in the preceeding turns). I had an army of ~45 units, but an arch therug prophit with 3 slaves. Mostly HI with a few shortbows for longer range missles. I won with light casualties, mostly because I had assassinated his inquisitors and he had no priests to bless.

3 turns later I was seiging his capital and was attacked by an army ~35 units includeing 8 summer lions.

So add your own battle reports, or just say that for whatever settings you used you never saw anything worth reporting...

[MStavros]

Me {140 units} vs. Marignon {AI - 80 units}
I have won that battle of course. Once again..weak AI units. I had like 60 light and medium infantry as well, but combined with heavy infantry, knights, priests and mages.

[licker]

Originally posted by MStavros:
Me {140 units} vs. Marignon {AI - 80 units}
I have won that battle of course. Once again..weak AI units. I had like 60 light and medium infantry as well, but combined with heavy infantry, knights, priests and mages. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Can you please provied the context for that battle? What turn was it, what was Indie strength, how many AIs...

[MStavros]

Sure. Indy str was 5, 4 AIs @ impossible, and the battle occured on ~~turn 30

[Saber Cherry]

As Machaka, with all nations on Difficult, I got swarmed by both Jotunheim and Ctis. Ctis kept fielding armies of 150+ units, perhaps 50/50/50 undead, militia/LI, elite lizards/runners. This was by turn 15.

Jotun came at me with 80+ armies, half Jotuns and half wolf riders. In terms of expense and power, therefore, it was similar to a human army of 240 MI.

Oh, and live ermor was attacking with big armies as well. I couldn't understand why my massed priests weren't banishing them=) Eventually I figured that out.

I did manage to whip Abyssia, though - they only had a little 40-unit (10 Abyssian, 30 Humanbred) roving army.

My experience - the AI fields large, effective armies. But it is overly reliant on resource-cheap units. Maybe the AI gets too much gold for its level of resources? In that case, it should build more castles, not more light units.

P.S. I should also mention that the AI tactical deployment is far better than in Dom I. No more "1000 units stuck in a big square".

[ October 31, 2003, 17:22: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[HJ]

I didn't manage to play the battle because of the turn limitation, but AI Mictlan showed up with 280 men on my border on the Last turn. I was playing Ulm, 5 normal AIs, indies at 5, Desert eyey map. From what I've seen, Mictlan armies are not of the highest quality, but the report said that the army also consisted of eagle and jaguar warriors (the latter I haven't encountered so far, but they sound elite), so it wasn't just the huge numbers of rabble. But I doubt they will pose much of a problem to my flaming weapons berserking black templars once I get the full game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The biggest battle I actually fought was earlier in that same game against Tien Chi (around turn 35 or so). They had around 100 units, some 30 imperial bowmen and bowmen, 20 horsemen and heavy cavalry, and the rest was a mixed bag, some footmen, some imperial footmen, etc.. Unfortunatelly for them, I had a concentration of cca 40 templars again... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[MStavros]

Originally posted by HJ:
I didn't manage to play the battle because of the turn limitation, but AI Mictlan showed up with 280 men on my border on the Last turn. I was playing Ulm, 5 normal AIs, indies at 5, Desert eyey map. From what I've seen, Mictlan armies are not of the highest quality, but the report said that the army also consisted of eagle and jaguar warriors (the latter I haven't encountered so far, but they sound elite), so it wasn't just the huge numbers of rabble. But I doubt they will pose much of a problem to my flaming weapons berserking black templars once I get the full game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The biggest battle I actually fought was earlier in that same game against Tien Chi (around turn 35 or so). They had around 100 units, some 30 imperial bowmen and bowmen, 20 horsemen and heavy cavalry, and the rest was a mixed bag, some footmen, some imperial footmen, etc.. Unfortunatelly for them, I had a concentration of cca 40 templars again... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good example, that why the strategic AI is poor. Lot of cheap units - no match for a human army. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[SnallTrippin]

Over 240 units, I was just playing a long game, b4 i knew about demo time limit cause I died alot and was playing around b4...around turn 38. Mostly Souless/longdead type stuff...I think it was Emur or whatever but I can't remember.

EDIT- HAs anyone seen crap armies under higher AI conditions? Like imposs or whatever

[ November 04, 2003, 03:49: Message edited by: SnallTrippin ]

[Pocus]

On impossible, Ulm fielded 680 units against Mictlan. I saw the battle with astral window, and their army was made of woodmen and milicias, with a small group of national Ulmish units. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[Aristoteles]

Originally posted by Pocus:
On impossible, Ulm fielded 680 units against Mictlan. I saw the battle with astral window, and their army was made of woodmen and milicias, with a small group of national Ulmish units. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Uhhhhhhhh....We really need that AI upgrade.

[NTJedi]

One of the computer opponents mustered together 310 undead troops. It could have won my combined total of 200 troops... but for whatever reason it split the army and he only sent 125 at my empire. After stealing two territories he made a quick left turn at some other empire.

*** I think we would see better challenges if the developers gave the computer opponents different personalities. ***
Destroyer(Pillages lands which have been owned by opponents for long periods of time), Architect(focuses on improving lands), Arch-Mage(focuses on magic), Barbarian(mainly uses brute force), Insanity(unpredictable actions), etc... and so on.
Seems to be highly suggested for the current poll.

[HJ]

How about the bittermost defeat so far in the demo?
My Arcoscephalian pride and joy army got smashed by Marignon prophet and his starving band yesterday. I had around 90 units, companions, hoplites, hypaspists, heavy cavalry and a band of raptors, commanded by 5 mages who were all in the hall of fame and my prophetess. Marginon fielded 120 units, 99% of them his national ones, a few royal guards, pikeneers, swordsmen, man-at-arms, and about half of them were crossbowmen. The first spell his prophet casts is flaming arrows. Whoopsie... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Only about 20 units managed to get away, and none of my prized commanders, although they did pay dearly in hand-to-hand infantry due to mind burns. And this was only a turn after my Nataraja lost the other eye as well to the second arrow that ever hit him since the start of the game.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ November 04, 2003, 13:46: Message edited by: HJ ]

[SnallTrippin]

I have seen units of 100 or so of heavy infantry and cav from ulm, maybe you people just need to set higher AI standards...

[Pocus]

Originally posted by SnallTrippin:
I have seen units of 100 or so of heavy infantry and cav from ulm, maybe you people just need to set higher AI standards... <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">the start of my post is :

"On impossible, Ulm fielded 680 units against Mictlan."

find the difficulty level I always use in these words. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Keir Maxwell]

I have't had time to play much but in my first game I fought and lost against a Marignon army of ~600 with an army of ~80 Abysian humanbred HI supported by a Fire Drake and a couple of heroic dudes inculding an Anathement Dragon. We lost http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif but we did rout all their close fighters bar the summer lions - that left about 250 archers etc.

Guess who killed/routed the most of their guys? I reckon it was their archers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

In the same game I saw a couple of armies of 2-300 but they didn't attack me.

The setting were impossible AI's and indie strength 5 - which seems a good level.

cheers

Keir

[ November 06, 2003, 05:44: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[licker]

Yikes, just hit an Ulm army of over 500 with at least 100 Ulmish HI http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif Granted the rest was LI and short bows (there were maybe 20-30 x-bows), but those 100 HI were enough to wipe out my front lines of swamp gaurds and a handful of wights...

I might have won due to my superior mages, but a lucky couple volleys of x-bows killed off my two best marsh masters (read equiped http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif ), and then I started routing like crazy! I had zerked serpants trying to get to his rear, but there were too many LI in the way and they got bogged down and eventually killed, though they did a fair amount of damage to the rear of the LI mass.

This was around turn 30, and we had both moved in on the same undefended Abysia province. I was hopeing to get my prophit down with his serpent army (~25) before tackleing the Ulmish hoard. As it was he smacked my main army pretty good, and I had to hunker while I moved more mages down to replace my losses. I lost all my undead too, so I'm not sure if I'll risk him again. He lost ~300 units, but most were the chaff, I'm sure he'll build them up again quickly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Anyway, as others have noted, Ulm had a damn temple in every province I could see, so I was having trouble pushing my Miasma on him, even after I freed up the cash to start pumping temples everywhere I could get a cheepie priest.

[Pocus]

nice to hear that Ulm can field something else but milicias!

[licker]

Originally posted by Pocus:
nice to hear that Ulm can field something else but milicias! <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes it is! Though I did not check through his territory to see if he had any additional forts. Maybe he lucked into some sites that come with a fort and that's why I saw so many HI. He had ~15 provinces at that point, and in the 5 of his I saw there were temples, infact as soon as he grabbed that Abysia province he put up a temple in it.

There was no cavalry though, maybe he had it elsewhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Nerfix]

Not the quantity but the quality (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~ovaska45/batleofabysia.JPG)

PS: That shot is from a network game

PPS:Guess who won that battle?

[-Storm-]

Originally posted by Nerfix:
Not the quantity but the quality (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~ovaska45/batleofabysia.JPG)

PS: That shot is from a network game

PPS:Guess who won that battle? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Uh, it really depends on the situation.
Sometimes quality > quantity....sometimes quantity > quality....you know.
Especially in Dominions.

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by -Storm-:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Nerfix:
Not the quantity but the quality (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~ovaska45/batleofabysia.JPG)

PS: That shot is from a network game

PPS:Guess who won that battle? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Uh, it really depends on the situation.
Sometimes quality > quantity....sometimes quantity > quality....you know.
Especially in Dominions. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah.
That is a cosmic truth...

But it was the situation:
That battle was supposed to be somekind of a final clash between Ulm and me, but in the end, the Ulm retreated with 3/4th of their troops on fire.

But the Ethereal Heavy Infantrys did hold the gate for 5 rounds...

[ November 07, 2003, 21:15: Message edited by: Nerfix ]