Empire Total War

[jomni]

personally never had the AI just stare at me before - reload and start again?

+1. Never.

Dunno.  Past few battles, they just sit in their area and do nothing (maybe because they are defending with inferior forces).

[Nefaro]

Lol.  So no mods actually fix this behavior.

DarthMod definitely improves the AI behavior in numerous ways, along with slowing down the ridiculous infantry speeds. 

One bad thing about ETW, and to a lesser extent NTW, is that line infantry just tend to fire a volley and charge by default.  Part of the problem is that the units move so fast in vanilla; their firearm engagement range is so short and the melee charge range so big that they'll often end up just moving through it so fast that they end up charging into melee without bothering to line up and volley.  ::)   

DarthMod reduces this problem by slowing down the movement speeds and increasing musket ranges.  So the Unit AI's "Stop and Fire" zone is larger.

This is just one example of screwy behavior and issues.  Another is having artillery constantly sniping your General's unit, even if it's behind your troops.  This is a larger problem in NTW, IIRC.  The Line of Sight system just blows donkey dicks and this resultant behavior is another huge annoyance.  You end up having to hide your General behind a hill, because nothing else will block an LOS (and even that can be suspect).  Maybe not as much of a problem in ETW.. I can't recall.

[W8taminute]

Off topic:

That comment about the Line of Sight System being wonky brought a chuckle to me.  I haven't used that line in a long time but it is still equally powerful today as it was long ago.

On topic:

I've played a couple of vanilla campaigns on Normal/Normal and have not noticed the ai freezing up like a deer in the headlights.  In fact quite the opposite.  In the early game he is aggressive but if you can sue for peace he stays quite.  Until the mid game when everybody starts to backstab you like others have mentioned.  Then it feels like the 'bad boy' system in Hoi 1. 

[Sir Slash]

Yes, Gus it's the American Revolution Mod. It's still listed in the Total War Center mods for ETW but the comments on the forum speak of it's demise. It was a 2010 mod but it's unfortunate because it made the game much better. Darth's mod was another good one. And they both would crash on occasion. Usually when trying to load the battle screen. I just finished a campaign using TAR mod as Russia on the hard difficulity level and the campaign AI behavior wasn't too screwy and aggressive enough to suit me. The battle AI was predictable but a challenge against an evenly matched foe. I enjoyed the game thoroughly.

[Nefaro]

Off topic:

That comment about the Line of Sight System being wonky brought a chuckle to me.  I haven't used that line in a long time but it is still equally powerful today as it was long ago.

On topic:

I've played a couple of vanilla campaigns on Normal/Normal and have not noticed the ai freezing up like a deer in the headlights.  In fact quite the opposite.  In the early game he is aggressive but if you can sue for peace he stays quite.  Until the mid game when everybody starts to backstab you like others have mentioned.  Then it feels like the 'bad boy' system in Hoi 1.

That was another issue.  The Diplomacy was crap too.  Didn't matter how well someone liked you, or if you had been allied with them.  They would just declare war on you whenever they felt like it.  No matter how buddy-buddy you were with them, if you were in their vicinity, they would DOW in short order.  I don't think diplomacy in TW really worked until Shogun 2.   In the previous ones, it was just a means to establish trade agreements for a time.