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.

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.

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...

[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.

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...

Good example, that why the strategic AI is poor. Lot of cheap units - no match for a human army.

[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.

[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.

Uhhhhhhhh....We really need that AI upgrade.