Aside for the odd colonial debacle has any one come close to loosing a major war in the game? I have been playing as Austria and have kerb stomped Russia, Piedmont, the Ottomans and France. Am in the process of slapping Spain about. Even against Russia and the Ottomans simultaneously I wasn't presented with serious problems. (Now keeping a sufficient coal supply to fuel my ambitions! Thats the challenge).
Has anyone fought the AI in a major powers war and lost or really been pushed?
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theknightirish
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loki100
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Austria has an advantage in the game of a massive reserve pool which really helps.
Playing as Italy - even post unification - I lost a war with Germany, in that the best I could manage was a stalemate. I also had a very bad phase in my first Ottoman war till I had worn down their regular army and forced the AI to rely on militia.
Putting the AI on the 'hard' setting helps (forget the actual name) as that seriously lowers the malus for being over command from the 25% on normal down to 17% (again I'm probably wrong at the exact numbers).
I think there are two basic problems. First, unlike other AGE games, its less likely you'll have ticked the give the 'AI more time' option (after all the last thing PoN needs is to be slowed down), equally I doubt if the AI is as well scripted as it is in the usual AGE campaign game. By that I mean that Athena is given a set of hints as to how to conduct a campaign to keep her focussed on the job in hand, since wars in PoN are less predictable, I suspect that it is guided by a more generic script and thus less effective. Finally, of course, it is an AI so if you know how to put together stacks, optimise your armies and the tricks of AGE warfare then you have a huge advantage. Its clear that Athena has some strange tastes in stack and army building - I've seen large numbers of basically colonial units filling out armies operating in Europe and so on (this, again, is easier to handle in terms of AI scripts in the shorter AGEOD games).
Since you cannot win very much off a war (unlike say in Victoria II), I just take the view that the real challenge isn't actually winning a war, its the long sweep of the game ... and the eternal struggle for coal.
As an aside, if you put the AI on hard, it also seems to do a much better job at managing its economies.
Playing as Italy - even post unification - I lost a war with Germany, in that the best I could manage was a stalemate. I also had a very bad phase in my first Ottoman war till I had worn down their regular army and forced the AI to rely on militia.
Putting the AI on the 'hard' setting helps (forget the actual name) as that seriously lowers the malus for being over command from the 25% on normal down to 17% (again I'm probably wrong at the exact numbers).
I think there are two basic problems. First, unlike other AGE games, its less likely you'll have ticked the give the 'AI more time' option (after all the last thing PoN needs is to be slowed down), equally I doubt if the AI is as well scripted as it is in the usual AGE campaign game. By that I mean that Athena is given a set of hints as to how to conduct a campaign to keep her focussed on the job in hand, since wars in PoN are less predictable, I suspect that it is guided by a more generic script and thus less effective. Finally, of course, it is an AI so if you know how to put together stacks, optimise your armies and the tricks of AGE warfare then you have a huge advantage. Its clear that Athena has some strange tastes in stack and army building - I've seen large numbers of basically colonial units filling out armies operating in Europe and so on (this, again, is easier to handle in terms of AI scripts in the shorter AGEOD games).
Since you cannot win very much off a war (unlike say in Victoria II), I just take the view that the real challenge isn't actually winning a war, its the long sweep of the game ... and the eternal struggle for coal.
As an aside, if you put the AI on hard, it also seems to do a much better job at managing its economies.
AJE The Hero, The Traitor and The Barbarian
PoN Manufacturing Italy; A clear bright sun
RoP The Mightiest Empires Fall
WIA Burning down the Houses; Wars in America; The Tea Wars
PoN Manufacturing Italy; A clear bright sun
RoP The Mightiest Empires Fall
WIA Burning down the Houses; Wars in America; The Tea Wars
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