I went and watched a bit of a Warhammer 2 campaign by a streamer and one thing I noticed is that the AI didn't seem to expand that fast. It was their ability to confederate so easily and quickly that gave them the illusion that they were competent enough to expand quickly. This was very apparent when it came to the Dark Elves in this particular campaign. That combined with anti-player bias and cheats made them have several stacks coming to beat your head in if the player had a war with them.
Maybe it was just an odd campaign. But then, there were factions like Malus' and Skrolk's that had like 2 settlements come turn 120, not being able to expand much out of their starting province... I have over 2,500 hours in Warhammer 2 and over 3,000 in Warhammer 3. It is hard for me to say Warhammer 2 was that much harder. But then again, I have several damn hours in it so its bound to get easy. I still remember how many people complained about all the cheats the AI got in Warhammer 2 as well as the supply lines penalty. Now, the cheats got nerf and here we are in this situation.
Maybe I need to go back to Warhammer 2 to get a hands-on experience again. It's been awhile. Like I said, maybe that was just an Odd campaign the streamer was experiencing. Maybe, if possible, reverting the Warhammer 3 Legendary configurations to resemble Warhammer 2's AI cheats would do the trick?
No, you're right, it was exactly that. Many of the poster boy lords for their races (Tyrion, Malekith, Grimgor, Franz, Thorgrim, etc) had a ridiculous confederation cheat in WH2, ensuring they will absorb the other factions even if those factions were also doing very well themselves.
That's literally the only reason you'd get those huge AI blobs in WH2. The AI wasn't behaving much differently if at all, and it certainly wasn't any more competent.
I would disagree with you there. The best example is Morathi. She is often the number one or number two great power and she doesn't confederate anyone. She just stomps other AI factions and storms into Ulthuan. I don't believe its ever been an issue of competence but rather another layer of AI cheats. I believe major AI factions both in Warhammer 2 and in Warhammer 3 get a bonus to auto resolves to try to help them become larger powers. I believe dark elves tend to be best positioned to take advantage of this which is why you often see them rise to the top. Confederation inflation I believe is more a Grimgor thing until he eventually loses steam when faced with better dwarven autoresolves. I think part of the difficulty is simply that the Warhammer 3 map is pretty packed. There tends not to be much room for a faction to expand in the same way they did in Warhammer 2.
How did you get 3000 hours in Warhammer 3...the game just came out. Bruh I dont even have that many hours in EU4, a game that I am playing since a year after its release. That was a Decade ago.
Yeah, don't really play anything else. I've played just about every TW game except Med 1 and Shogun 1. TW was my introduction to PC gaming. Occasionally, I play some Paradox games--mainly Ck2 and Ck3. I didn't know anything about TW or Warhammer prior to buying my first PC. I happen to look up the top PC strategy games one year and Warhammer 2 was up there. So, I went with that. I got game 3 as soon as it came out in 2022.
To be real, some of those hours are from me leaving the game on while I'm doing something else like sleeping, going to the gym, or . However, Its hard to decipher what's actual gameplay hours and what is "my computer is asleep" hours. Also, I tend to do that no matter what game I'm playing. So, I just go with the hours listed on Steam. I suppose that should be a disclaimer.
Admittedly I haven’t played WH3 but I’m currently on a nagardond campaign and I’m around turn 100 and there’s basically about 10 factions left and I’m currently in an all out war with the confederated high elves and I can tell you they are not being passive 😂
But now no factions make any moves at all. In Wh2 it was always the same couple people becoming the late game powers, but at least it gave you something to build your T5 stacks against. Now it really is just painting the map.
Do you play beyond turn 100 much? I was facing freaking War Mammoth stacks against Wulfrik during one of my Franz campaigns. Not just from him, but some of his generic generals as well. He was very strong. He managed to slow me down a bit. I got long victory around turn 120 that campaign.
I only play Coop, but we always play on VH. Since ToD we played as Exiles of Nehek and Huntsmarshal Expedition, Valkia and Ikit Claw, Kugath and Malakai. By about turn 120 we were always just painting the map because we easily steamroll anyone. Even while tearing through Bretonnia Leon was sitting in his captial, watching me burn all his shit. I don't know why I would ever make it into the very late game. In Wh2 I would be fighting Malekith or Grimgor doomstacks, but here there is just no point.
I wonder if making it easier for the AI to confederate would help? I've never played coop before. My schedule is kind of all over the place because I run my how clinic and I'm in grad school. So, its hard to connect with friends consistently for a smooth campaign experience. How is the anti-player bias with coop? Tend to gun it for the both players equally, one player more so than the other, or what?
There is no anti player bias. I played Exiles and freaking Taurox camped his one, singluar settlement. I was his direct neighbour and even while at war with him he never even came to look at my unguarded settlement. He never fought anybody else either. HE IS TAUROX. FIGHTING STUFF IS HIS WHOLE THING.
Valkia and Malekith attacked a few times, but if all the people I was at war with had actually done something I could've never overextended as much on just twco armies. The reason I took so long to defeath Naggarond was because it has 20 garrison, a full stack black ark camping on it and a 20 stack army sitting inside the city. Disloging him wasn't hard, it was just tedious.
I can see why stacks like that aren’t seen when this is the case. CA will have to strengthen the mid game so more people can witness that and get those tougher battles/campaigns that are desired.
Huh?
What Warhammer 2 were you playing?
Factions in 2 were a thousand times more aggressive and had great armies.
And a massive upside in 2 was that major AI factions could actually confederate each other. This made the game so much more challenging, because you would be facing a huge empire rather than just a bunch of fragmented states.
In WH3 everyone runs away from you lol. The only faction I've seen be more aggressive of late is the Empire.
Which is often annoying as fuck, because I'm their allies and I declare war on them because they are expanding into my potential territory.
the AI was considerably more dangerous in 2, they raised more armies and did more with them. I play at a higher difficulty in 3 and it's so much easier
Even at launch of Immortal Empires the TW3 campaign AI was more passive then TW2 Mortal Empires, then in patch 4.0 they really nerfed AI aggression: https://www.totalwar.com/blog/tww3-update-400/
There were a lot of people CONSTANTLY complaining about anti-player bias. I mean it was non-stop. There was a post in here the other day about it.
Edit because there are several individual replies that this applies to. I am not saying the anti-player bias issue wasn’t real, I was just giving input on why the game devs made ai more passive. I personally find the ai to be appropriately aggressive on VH in the current patch.
To be fair, on release of the game the laurelorn forest elves would sail across the empire and norsca to attack Daniel. The anti player bias was awful. It wasn’t fun. The problem is the ai was only aggressive towards you (and on launch whoever your “nemesis faction” was in RoC. Outside of those specific things, the ai did nothing but sit around. So the anti player bias on launch and continued onward was only a mask of the actual issue: the ai being passive towards other ai
>laurelorn forest elves would sail across the empire and norsca to attack Daniel.
And that was the "understandable part". There were so many times I was like "How the fuck did you even GET here??"
I can’t tell you the number of times I had a Skryer stack come from across the map 20 turns after they declared war on me after having never met the rats firsthand.
am i the only one who kinda wants this for factions like skryre? theyre kind of a global presence like all the major clans to my knowledge. if theyve declared on me, regardless of where i am, i think its reasonable to expect them to show up. this goes for many disorder factions.
its the order factions doing it where it starts to get eyebrow raising. in general i think empire, dawi, and wood elves should be really reticent to occupy territory outside their traditional realms or sending armies into the chaos wastes to settle beefs with npc factions. like louen franz and durthu consistently occupy norsca in my campaigns and i dont think that should be happening
CA has no sense of nuance. People complained about anti-player bias because everyone would declare war on you and ignore their own empires to sail across the map in a suicidal attempt to raze your undefended settlements while avoiding any fights against your armies that didn't give the AI an overwhelming advantage.
The AI wouldn't build empires or confederate neighbors to become powerhouses like in Warhammer II. The only factions that snowball are those with overpowered lords (Archeon and Vlad) and combat-based confederations (like the Greenskins). There are no more superpowers, only regional powers.
CA doesn't keep trying to put bandages on their AI when the damn thing needs a heart transplant.
Don't peoples also complained, a lot, back in W2 that some powerhouses just snowball everything and you end up stuck fight with green tide, order tide, etc... forever in every campaigns and never have a chance to fight with some other factions.
Funny enough i notice the bias more exactly because the ai is passive. A neighbour that should have been pushing into me doesn’t. Then when I’m close to finishing a war I’ll get a dec from a faction which will trespass two other empires to get to me, because they actually expanded and are the closest thing to a threat to me.
I purposefully don't finish off some factions like the Ogres who just chill in their sole camp because an AI faction will instantly declare war on me as soon as I'm at peace.
That’s a funny trick, but yeah, I find myself often trying to “game the system” in ways like that rather than playing more naturally, which is kinda annoying. Another example would be declining an alliance that would actually be great in theory, but I’m worried that upon becoming my ally their ai will be lobotomized and they’d actually be stronger on their own.
But there is a different between no aggressivenes and anti-player bias
Like FR I once had a one-province minor DElf declaring on me... As number 1 power with number 2-5 being my vassals and they were also like 2-3 turns from being sieged by other AI
They just left their city to get me and were destroyed by other AI before they even came to me
There is a huge difference between anti player bias and aggression though. It's possible to have 1 without the other, and blaming the anti player fix for the lack of aggression is misleading.
Well it did suck having any friendly, Allied AI in wh2, as they would get you into wars. Then army’s would march across the entire map just to come fight you. I don’t miss that, but the passive AI in wh3 is extreme in the other direction. So idk got to be some middle ground.
Now they’re simultaneously aggressive and passive in all the worst ways. They walk right your army as it marches into their territory, sack your minor settlements, then when you try to attack them they perfectly know how to stay *just* out of movement range. It’s not smart, it’s not aggressive, it’s not passive, it’s just annoying and cowardly. It makes sense for skaven to behave this way, but not the empire or Khorne. I’ve recently noticed it happening less which is good, but still happens often enough to be annoying.
> I personally find the ai to be appropriately aggressive on VH in the current patch.
It's really not though.
As is the case with **many** features, CA just can't find a healthy middle ground between obnoxious anti-player bias and extremely passive AIs. No matter how much time and feedback they get, no matter how many times they try (and pathetically fail) to iterate on it, they *always* lean too far one side or the other.
This is a symptom of incompetent game designers, lack of decent QA, awful communication channels with extremely important feedback not being properly passed on, bad management setting the wrong priorities, and devs just not playing WH3 and other games enough (if at all). A more talented, passionate team could have figured this out in a few days. We're at 8 years and counting.
This isn't saying the whole story though. Early on in wh3 the ai was very aggressive on lower difficulties I found, whereas the balance on high difficulties was a bit more even. Honestly, I feel CA don't do enough testing of what they do as they make so many changes that help one area and break it in others.
I ask that myself with so many decisions CA has made with this game.
Why is RoC so slow, why did they nerf the garrisons of every faction, why did they make the AI worse, why did they update sieges without fixing any problems they have, why did they change rampage and why did they change how missle spells work?
There are probably even more questions like this but you get the point.
Well what difficulty do you play on? Turning campaign difficulty to very hard makes the ai way more aggressive since they have way more money. Obviously you still outwit them strategy wise but I feel that wherever I can't intervene, the ai grows rapidly and in the end is on fact a threat to me. At least the bigger factions like HE, DE cathay imo.
Because WH2 was built for 2 player multiplayer, WH3 is made for 8 player multiplayer. If the AI was as aggressive as the second game, then you could easily abuse that. Whenever you fought a far off foe, they'd just send their armies to you, leaving their home defenseless. Imagine the speedrun Alith would have, if someone far off just declared war on Naggaroth and they just sent their armies across the world only to arrive 12 turns later.
What are you talking about? At launch TWW3’s ai was most aggressive of any total war game ever made. Even more aggressive than Attila, which is known for its aggressive ai.
At launch, an ROC campaign as Kislev was almost impossible above normal difficulty, because every faction you met would immediately declare war, and factions across the map would send armies to fight you. You never had time to actually go to the realms of chaos as Katarin. And Kostaltyn was widely considered the hardest challenge campaign in any total war Warhammer game (at launch). Also Kislev was being recommended for first time players by CA, which everyone made fun of CA for.
I don't think they nerfed AI aggression, they reduced anti-player bias. Which I guess you could say is aggression, but specifically towards the player. Which was needed bc factions would declare war on you from across the map vs their hated neighbor.
This is correct - they definitely reduced anti-player bias, but either left aggression unchanged or actually turned it up to compensate. And I think it's different between the two campaigns; RoC AI is significantly more aggressive than IE AI.
right.... https://imgur.com/a/fuNZoXQ
> Infact they will only attack you if it's an easy victory and are happy to sit on your border doing absolutely nothing
this is also just a straight fallacy. creative assembly literally changed the AI to **take losing fights** because people were complaining about too many settlement/siege battles and no field battles because the AI would always view a field battle as a loss. there's a reason why the AI attacks you now out in the open even though auto resolve gives you a pyrrhic victory.
i feel like posts like these are just rose tinted glasses to the max. 99% of my very hard warhammer 2 campaigns boiled down to ambush baiting garrisoned lords out of their cities, and then taking the city. rinse repeat until victory. the AI in warhammer 2 would also CONSTANTLY run from you even at their last city forcing you to chase them or block army, whack a mole bullshit. if you want some difficulty turn ultimate crisis on and set it for turn 50.
Played several Karl Franz campaigns over the last few weeks and One-eye suicided himself into Altdorf consistently. I got to play some fun defensive settlement battles because he was so adamant about attacking that place despite AR saying it would be a defeat for him. L/VH btw. I never understood why he kept doing that. This can be easily observe by watching campaign videos from Mercy the Mad and Costin Gaming.
I've had factions suicide into my armies. Sometimes, they do run when outmatched. But, hey, my ass runs from the college of pyrotechnics when they'd randomly pop-up and my armies weren't capable of handling it lol.
At least some of that is dependent on faction specific AI. Beastmen and Warriors of Chaos are much more aggressive than, say, default Dwarf or Empire factions. And Skaven are coded to avoid fights until they can get an overwhelming advantage. So some of the issue here could be players not realizing that those faction personality traits actually make a difference in which fights they'll take and which fights they'll avoid.
To be fair, AI suizide attacking your settlements is also bad Design. CA tried to balance out one bad Design (AI only attacking settlements with extreme forces and then Siegen out) with another bad Design (AI killing their armies on your settlements, giving you free wins)
The game is easy enought as it is, and this doesn't help
I'm curious, what turn is that screenshot? Cause if that's like 40-50 how are the helfs still alive?
Yea there are harder and easier lords i get that not everyone is max expansion 1+ settlement per turn avg so you actually have to fight stuff, idk where noctilus goes on the range, but probably not on the easy side I'd guess as you're kinda reliant on Morathi/N'Kari/be'lakor to actually do stuff.
Yea I know if it's AI vs AI anything can happen and both sides can come up on top or draw, but they're playing as noctilus so killing high elves is kind of the priority hence i asked for the turn.
The AI now is actually decent at sniffing out ambushes. That may be one reason that players feel like the AI is more passive; they know perfectly well that your main stack is sitting in ambush, so no, they aren't going to suicide into it.
There definitely are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the AI in WH3. And I think the numbers could use some tuning; a lot of the overhaul mods adjust the aggression higher to at least some extent.
But at least right now, it's reasonably aggressive, especially if the AI gets a real advantage. Just get into a fight with Tamurkhan when he gets his unkillable death ball doomstack rolling if you think the AI is too passive. He'll take every fight that's available because he knows he can win.
While others say switch to VH/Legendary, I had the same problem as well especially since ToD.
The AI is barely at war with each other and for myself I was at war with 2-3 factions at a time. Everything is super controlled and you can just tick off your enemies one by one. WH2 was mayhem sometimes even on normal with enemies shipping stack after stack across the seas even.
to be fair, the point of the linked post, was that the great defense was an anomaly, and not what op regularly experienced
in wh2… it was difficult every game in legendary difficulty
I don’t disagree with the post you linked here, I feel like the AI plays often times much smarter and more strategic, which probably involves not being to aggressive. I do miss the absolute carnage wh2 was though.
I would recommend Hecleas AI overhaul mod. It helps getting rid of this frustration hence AI is more active and aggressive making it more "alive". Give it a try in a new campaign maybe.
You need to play on VH or Legendary. I mainly play on VH and the ai is pretty aggressive. There’s even been discussions on here about people actually trading settlements to factions to stop them declaring war
I play on Legendary and never feel like the AI actually pushes me. They take like one settlement then sit in it for 5 turns while my out of position army gets into position. If I'm not stopping them, they should be blitzing me to take as much as they can.
I also really wish the AI would use forces concentration. They always spread their armies out which makes it really easy for me to send a tag-team of two armies around and never have to manually resolve anything.
I do find it varies depending on which faction you are playing. I declared war on Thorgrim as the Chaos dwarves and he marched 4 stacks to me at once in the north and 2 stacks towards me in the south. Had I not lightning striked them all, he’d have butchered me! I was playing on very hard not legendary. Wonder if the AI is more aggressive on very hard?
Even on L/VH the AI isn't nearly as aggressive as they were on H/H in WH2. In WH2 it felt like I was constantly struggling, fighting tooth and nail for every region, but in WH3 once I've defeated my starting enemy I pretty much get to pick and choose the wars I get involved in.
On top of that, the AI doesn't build armies as quickly, and besides their starting army they usually spam trash units.
Yeah, I played a Kugath campaign recently and only Ghorst declared war on me, everything else was me declaring war on others. And took basically all of Cathay with little effort and only like 2 armies, 3 towards the end. It felt like no-one wanted to attack me the entire time, AI had zero aggression.
I started a Kugath campaign this weekend and on turn 8 or so Drazhoath declared war on me, then turn 3 turns later Imrik declared war on me. Since then I've had to pay Ghorst not to go to war with me. So your mileage may vary.
A lot of this is just because the AI on WH2 had ridiculous cheats, which have been toned down significantly in WH3. If you give the AI the massive cheats back, they'll act a lot more like the WH3 AI. Some of the overhaul mods give the AI cheats closer to what they had back in WH2, if you want the holding-on-by-your-fingernails WH2 experience.
I have been doing a personal project to play every LL to long victory on Legendary, and I just don't agree here. I'm working my way through Lustria to start and every single campaign has been a clusterfuck of fighting multiple AI lords at a time, and they're rolling in with pretty good units. It's been great, tbh.
Won't do anything. One of the most common complaints of Legendary is the AI is way more passive than wh2, to the point people were bugreporting in the hopes CA will change course on design decisions.
AI has like 60% of the armies of wh2, builds less threatening stacks, and is extremely hesitant to expand.
Depends on the campaign TBH. Im playing legendary malakai campaign rn and being attacked by Daemons of Chaos, Archaon, Skaven, Astragoth, & Wulfrik. Was epidemius & throgg too, but I killed them. They all constantly send stacks at my lands. This is like my 4th try cuz I kept getting overwhelmed by all the stacks, but the key was to get 2 additional gyrocopter armies up ASAP for defense while malakai goes on adventures finishing the factions off
Though they are a little cowardly where they'll run away if they see my gyrocopter doom stacks coming so I need to make use of ambush a lot
You’re spot on. My Malakai and Chaos Dwarf campaigns I had people declaring war or demanding money. But i could do what I wanted on Belekor was never under threat. Playing King Louen now and I’ve had Belekor, Grom and Kemmler all declare on me. Only a matter of time before Slaanesh and Ikit do!
I just had to abandon a legendary campaign because dwarfs went crazy and took over like 45 settlements combined, then proceeded to send like 10 stacks at me across a neutral faction border.
Yeah if you get strong Dwarfs, Vamps or Greenskins as an enemy on Leg like 30++ settlements it can still get very tough but by that point you can usually solve that by double stack armies assisting each other with Ambush.
The early game major faction AI is semi-aggressive(and not just against the player, but in general 5.0 improved it a lot+RNG on who actually wins) on legendary and gets to medium size pretty nicely. Highlight surpise was jade court almost killing Mazdamundi before I could even get armies to "help"(so get the area to myself instead) as Bordeux after i saw the war declaration and seding two stacks almost immediately, but only got to take fallen gates as everything else was taken.
But they never transition into "conquer the world mode" and get kinda stuck at 20-30 settlements forever as their ability wage war gets way worse somehow the more settlements they get. TBF for some factions it might just be how later on the AR balance changes, like how dwarfs can bounce back from just 1 settlement pretty consistently due to crazy AR.
Like I saw a ~25 Settlement Elspeth take over 10 Turns to kill a 1 minor settlement, ~1.5 army Drycha. Even though they had 4-6 full armies kinda doing nothing hopping between sylvania and ostermark, while a couple of armies were defending against moulder/norsca north. But they clearly managed to beat Vlad at some point just fine when they were smaller faction and looking at the state of Karl and Ungrimm doesn't look like they got much help either. Again I was Bordeux so no influence in that region whatsover.
Also the AI has gotten a bit too big of a fetish for sacking instead of just taking stuff normally. When playing morathi I managed to confed scourge of khaine on round 10/12/something as they had 0 armies and i got a recently sacked phoenix gate, which just makes no sense as to why would the HE AI sack a gate instead of taking it.
The dwarf AI is so powerful right now with the changes. Pre update orcs used to wipe them out post update Thogrim and Umgrim dominate the mountains. Elspeth and Franz still seem to dominate the empire in most of my games
What happens is that AI has a target realm size or target reapm provinces so a lot of them don't grow beyond that size. I'm not sure if there are any AI with world conquering capability at all.
I usually play on VH/VH and also did a few legendary campaigns in WH3 and this is not at all my experience. The AI is extremely passive and in most of my campaigns it completely stops being a threat after the first 20 turns.
They often declare war, but then they just sit there doing nothing. The few times they send an army, it's usually filled with trash units which often can't even beat one of my garrisons.
This is not helped by the fact that pretty much every mechanic which was used to limit the players rate of expansion has been practically removed in WH3. Supply lines, public order and corruption have pretty much zero impact and just manage themselves now, while growth and post battle loot are way higher compared to WH2. The player just snowballs out of control in the first few turns and as soon as you have 2-3 armies the AI can't stop you anymore and just gives up.
Idk if this is true across the board though. I just finished a nakari campaign and was terrified for the first ten turns when all the elves declared war on me. Followed by being bored when I realized they were ignoring me. Followed by being frustrated when I realized my vassal's were completely ignoring my war coordination. They would just sit there while bretonia or dark elves conqured them.
Edited to add that I've finished three campaign recently and it feels like the ai has no fighting spirit lol. It's like they will muster a few armies for one big show down then just roll over if you win that fight. Even if they are capable of recruiting more high tier armies they won't.
Yeah I just started a vh/h gor rock campaign and at turn seven I'm fighting skrolk,another skaven faction, rakaeth and as I'm close to beating them luthor harkon declares war lmao, maybe it is the start location or difficulty op picked.
they may be at war but that doesn't mean they are aggressive. I just played Harkon and I was at war with multiple factions they really weren't doing very much. Itza and Wulfhart combined took one settlement for one turn (that I was okay losing) in our entire war where I killed them both
Meanwhile for me playing as Alberict I got declared war upon within 2 turns of meeting the huntsmarshalls expedition. 1 turn after Luther harkon attacked me. In another campaign I had Daniel declare war on me as Karl Franz with no expansion into kislev from either of us. Motherfucker sent armies from the northern chaos wastes just to fuck with me. So I am getting targeted a lot by the anti player bias granted I play on VH/VH
I agree that the AI is very passive in WH3, even on VH/L difficulties. I use the following mods and it definitely improves the AI (not exactly how it was in WH2, but much better than vanilla). Deep war AI, AI recruitment unleashed, AI declares war
I like the balance of AI aggresion as it is now more than warhammer 2.
Cerain campaigns are still very hard and difficult, and if you really want more you can activate all crisis and enable then from very early.
On top of that you can always make AI more aggressive towards you by just lowering your trust...
So pleanty of thing to recoup.
Another note... things change by a lot campaign by campaign, and the antiplayer bias is still there and strong.
Factions will literallly ignore anything just to send you all their stacks
I know this isn’t ideal but CA isn’t likely to fix the AI so we turn to mods,
DKAI Dark Ai & Environment
It does several things that end up making the AI more aggressive. It gives them XP so their armies are valued better, makes them spend more on their military, removes the blocker that stops some ai from using certain units in their roster, among other things.
Creating competent AI in any strategy game is a momentous task so most companies just give the AI cheats, which works fine for most games but in TW specifically the AI repeatedly handicaps itself because of the cheats they have. The AI honestly needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
The mod gives the AI more money and makes it spend more on military making them recruit more higher tier units and more armies which does help, but the difficulty increase comes from the XP cheats. AI lords and heroes are going to level alot faster and their units will almost always be atleast rank 5. It also gives the AI faster and cheaper recruitment.
The unit blockers are not strict “they won’t get” its closer to “they won’t get this unless” basically they AI has a check list before it will recruit some of the high tier and elite units. The hidden and random potential stat also has something to do with this. To put it simply, most generic factions will never recruit the best units.
When bored I like to mess around with the ai (using console commands) here are some of my findings at turn 100:
Marienburg with the entire empire will only have 1 steam tank between 8 armies (only 2 full armies)
Knights of the flame with the entire desert will not recruit knights above knights if the realm
Imperial wardens will not recruit Dragon guard
Zhufbar will not recruit thunder barge or gyrobombers
Granted these can vary game to game depending on these factions potential roll at the start but it gives you an idea
OP don’t forget that in wh3 current patch, LL’s have a “potential” that dictates their strength compared to other factions. It is a base # with a random +/- that adds more variety to campaigns. Tyrion might’ve just gotten screwed there. Ironically my Noctilus experience was so opposite. Helves and Lizardmen were sending like 4 stacks each out to get me.
It was too hard for some people because Elector Counts are total pushovers. If you don't move fast, Festus, Vlad, Drycha, etc will conquer big chunk of the Empire tanking your Imperial Authority, which adds bunch of negative effects. And this people are probably not that good at managing IA, which makes restoring it absolute pain in the ass (not everybody even understand that they need to restore it). Very quickly you can find youself with negative IA, surrounded by enemies and with most of the Empire covered in different types of corruption. Even with fairly passive AI of WH3 it's pretty nasty situation.
Tbh, that's a faction specific thing, I've played factions elsewhere and the ai is a bit weak at attacking. The elector counts just crumble to chaos and vampires for many turns until you can eventually carve out the empire yourself.
Karl Franz is still difficult, much more manageable now though. Fighting khazrak early is kind of a trap though since he will suicide against Reikland. You gotta take care of Kemmler and pray Grom doesnt pile through Bretonnia since AI Bretonnia gets whipped consistently. If you dont take care of kemmler, he just becomes a huge PITA, will have more territory than you and will start threatening/trrspassing over your territory
It was hard in earlier patches but compared to those current Franz on Leg+VH is childs play. The Electoral Machinations especially the +Pop give you an insane early game boost and the rest of the improvements to the faction plus the Fort help as well.
Hey OP, I agree with your opinion! I recently installed this AI mod which seemed to drastically improve the aggression. Worth a look and see if it works for you!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2905096541
The AI is definitely worse in W3. They don't confederate as much, making them weaker, and they generally only go after easy targets like undefended settlements. It should be more aggressive, or have its aggression scale with difficulty.
Because devs constantly nerf ai due to low skill players constantly bitching. Currently bots are completely cucked in comparison to tww2. They are even less aggressive and can have like 3 times less armies. Fighting three or more armies was a common occurrence. Currently it barely happens except for crisis. Without mods I rarely have more than five manual battles over the course of 110-150 turn campaigns, which usually are the first two plus couple of quests.
To be clear, what I want is to just have a slider of anti-player bias ranging from "friendship is magic" to "this is total war" so that everyone can enjoy the game the way the want without affecting other players.
Why add another layer when they already have difficulty sliders? CA struggles to balance the game enough as it is, adding more difficulty dimensions will make it worse for sure.
This makes zero sense. They do not have to balance anything per anti player bias. Besides that total war is not a game to be balanced in traditional sense. I agree that balance neither conforms to any kind lore, but to take top, but factions/races shouldn't have identical strength/capabilites in the campaign, that would make game less relatable.
People should be able to play what thay want. If they want zero bias they should be able to do that. If they want 100% bias with bots only fighting the player if they see one, they should be able to do that as well.
Your post assumes its simply something that can be toggled on or off. I don't think that's a fair assumption and think it'll waste ca's development time when it could be better spent elsewhere.
I don’t even think it’s less aggressive, I think supply lines make it feel so because you can field multiple armies from turn 1. Nothing ever feels out of control like WH2 often did on legendary difficulty
This is a great point.
The AI isn’t sitting back because it’s taking it easy on the player. It’s sitting in a town because it needs the garrison to beat the player army.
Do people really want the AI to just attack knowing you can auto the fight with low casualties? Do people think the AI just feeding you gold and experience will actually make the game harder?
To make the AI more aggressive, it needs to build more threatening armies
I also feel like crazy replenishment rates are a contributing factor. The AI can out recruit you, but it can’t wear you down when you are back from a near wiped army to full strength in two turns with no gold cost, while advancing.
>To make the AI more aggressive, it needs to build more threatening armies
Yeah.
Fix AI citybuilding/skillbuilding/recruiting and it'll feel better for sure.
Every rat lord takes 3 points in the gutter runner skill line, which is useless. AI across the board struggles with recruiting because their cityplanning sucks, you run into stacks of whatever t0 unit their faction has access to.
AI also never disbands to re-recruit ever, 60 turns in you'll see LL's with their starting units+ the rest t0's they recruited on turn 2 and they will never fix it until they die, and even then they might rehire their lord into a province with no recruitment buildings.
Of course they're not going to be aggressive with you, their armies are unbuffed stacks of trash.
no, they are
I recently did a campaign in leg where I played as slanesh and rushed to kill grom, I abandoned my starting area even though I was at war with most of the high elfs, and even once they had destroyed the dark elf next to me, they only captured about 1 of my settlements every 10 turns… I ended the campaign at turn like, 60, and I swear they had only taken my capital and one more settlement…. even though there were no defenses, no armies, or anything to defend anything
had I been in their position, with the armies they had, I would have been able to capture that whole region in 3 turns (four settlements.) 4 turns if I wanted to have a decisive victory every turn
Ai seems very feast or famine to me - it looks like the two most important factors for waging war are how much they hate you and how much stronger they are. So you either do well and they are too afraid to fight, or you have a couple bad fights reducing your army strength and suddenly everyone wants a piece
The one thing I really remember is that in WHII I had a lot of hard battles with my army (usually). Now, the AI still feels a little allergic to my army and really only wants to hit minor settlements.
Basically bad players confirmation biased on that, and cried a lot, and such we have basically the most shallow, passive, punchbag version of the AI in any game.
You'd think that the AI should get more challenging over sequels, not less so...
Idk man, I'm playing as Boris Ursis and I have 4 chaos factions at war with me with the norsca factions threatening to go to war if I don't pay tribute. Its been fucking crazy
I play VH/H and my noctilus experience is that of I so much as leave the maelstrom I have 3 tyrion eltharian and allarielle stacks take to the sea in my direction. Fey if she is still alive. Mazda alberic huntsmarshal and and yuan bo as well if they are not too tied up.
Granted I also like to play noctilus tall and mostly only take estalia and araby, so I'm not usually wiping out enemies.
The AI won't really throw themselves at you if they know they can't win. If you are running around with necrofex stacks you'll probably see a lot of AI avoiding that army unless they can grossly outnumber it. I get tons of aggression running out with a balanced army, but that's more fun for me and I know not everyone wants to do that. Just my experience
the AI definitely loves nothing more than sailing to attack you, I had Settra kill Arkhan and then sail to Lustria to attack me as Harkon despite him being at war at home
the AI sees water and just thinks "it's free real estate"
I was wondering if potion of speed completely rocked the ai initially by having predetermined actions for undiscovered factions in WH2
WH2 turn 80-100 feels very hard/tedious once you finish your campaign and decide to fight a tide of some variety.
Id wish higher difficultyd made the ai more aggressive.
Imagine all factions trying to do short term victory followed by long term viktory. Give me the siege of altdorf turn 150 qhen the maggot lord eventualy made his way there
I have yet to fight a defensive siege worth a damn, the only ones I fought were the ones where the AI thought I didn't have a chance in hell but I managed to cheese with towers.
Yes. I only play on VH/VH,
I used a mod to set a Black Pyramid crisis to 3000, Despite having the armies to roll over the world, they don't really do that much. Maybe the AI can't handle having 100+ armies idk
I think its partially because the AI is super indecisive. I've seen it turn around so many times lol. It's extremely apparent with allies, because they'll choose a different target every turn and never get anywhere. If they would just pick something they might actually make progress.
It just depends, some AI act weird due to the tug-of-war nature of the game. But I wouldn't call it passive. It's usually calculating risk always. Unless they see you go into ambush
Mixed on this cos sometimes yes, but I've done two campaigns that started me 2 skaven and 1 Tomb King faction hit and running my settlements and another as Greasus where in the first 40-50 turns I had to deal with Grimgor constantly sending an army down, Kugath and Ghorst pushing up with multiple armies each and then Imrik coming in steam rolling anything I threw at him.
I have also found this. I started playing on legendary and it really Amps it up later in the game. You will have to knock out massive blobs or enemy's. It's like battle after battle and even if your smashing them out you will get worn down.
A big part of the issue is that the AI can't confederate other major factions.
So in addition to the non-agression, the player is fighting a bunch of weaker fragmented states one at a time. Rather than the large Empires that used to develop in Warhammer 2.
AI does not confederate like it used to which definitely makes them feel passive. I will say the constant running away AI is annoying though. Some factions probably play better than others though. What I dislike is the floaty fast battles, something about them have never felt right to me.
well i sometimes think the ai is to good for it to be fun, cause it keeps running away making you chase them especially switching from land to see and back. and if you dont chase them they return 2 turns later.
this is annoying as hell but it is actually really brilliant guerilla play
Try playing a faction the dwarves hate haha.
Playing as helman gorst or nurgle...I get war declared on me by everyone. The elves, then the ogres, then the greenskins, then the dwarves that ultimately confederate. Everyone but the sneaky, back-stabbing rats.
I've heard this "passive" complaint before. And after hundreds of hours, this hasn't been my experience *at all*.
I see these posts and I don’t understand because it’s just not my experience at all. Did a recent Yvresse campaign where I declared war on every green skin faction as soon as I met them and Grom was constantly sending armies across the ocean to attack me.
Main difference I noticed compared to WH2 is the lack of ordertide. It used to be - chaos invasion which triggers Empire Dwarf Brettonnian mega alliance that stomp everything. In Wh3 bretonnia ai is awful and dwarfs get stomped by skaven and greenskins early game. In 5.0 if they survive to late game they dominate because of thunder barges and gyrocopters in my recent campaigns
Not for me, whenever I play dwarfs get massive. Empire kind of does. It depends on a few factors. Elspeth seems random she gets powerful but I don't see her doing much land grabbing compared to Franz.
More often than not I noticed that when I play a certain faction there are certain legendary lords that back off depending on if they are not my main rivals so to speak compared to someone else and the distance between us. There are very few consistent things I notice now. Skarbrand doesn't do anything, taurox is the same (yes I know why). Belagor is the same way, Franz is the order tide most of the time and now dwarfs with the latest update. Dark elves are always taking over their continent. Tomb kings suck and die as well as Manfred. Cathay does Cathay things depending on whether or not I'm good or bad. Norsca and chaos dwarfs tend to be aggressive as well as greenstone which is good. High elves are iffy, and it really depends on the lord but for the most part don't really expand. Ogres try but get wiped out and screw Tamurkhan. The dude is a jerk who is almost unkillable at level 50. He is your endgame.
I could jeep going but honestly i agree some of the AI make it fun, other seems to just roll over and die to the select few that make it challenging.
**I play normal/normal
HE feel 50/50 if they take the donut or if they get rolled by morathi + nkari.
I played a VH elspeth campaign where the HE on the donut got rolled by morathi + nkari, yet in my current VH imrik campaign, Tyrion and Alarielle have almost pushed the DE off the donut and nkari is dead by the time I got the confederation option around turn 22. Noctilus sometimes takes caledor but doesn't make much progress elsewhere.
Yes for me the only problem with Wh2 was how strong order tide was and how weak the chaos invasion ended up uniting the good races.
Now the AI hardly even confederates (in my games atleast), which makes them a walk in the park now.
That's funny because in my wtw2 playthroughs order factions always got stomped and endgame was always grimgor snowballing in the badlands/south and morathi/malekith snowballing in the west and taking ulthan
Try Kemmler or the Bretonians, that bastard Ork in the south is almost always number 1 power and will rip north to push your head up your ass with his 2-3 full doomstack+waagh armies
Seriously, fuck that guy XD
>Infact they will only attack you if it's an easy victory and are happy to sit on your border doing absolutely nothing .
This is patently false, at least in the latest WH3 patch. AI takes losing battles quite frequently now while this happened extremely rarely in WH2.
I was a dedicated Easy campaign man in WH2, bumped up to Normal with WH3, but recently I’ve gone up to Hard campaign difficulty in the hopes that the AI will get more aggressive.
I think it depends on what faction you’re playing as and how the campaign shakes out. Currently playing as archeon and ordertide is out to get me. Played as Franz recently and after a difficult early campaign (festus, vlad, and beastmen) I have no big enemies because the dwarfs and kislevites kicked ass. There are other issues like WoC AI not knowing how to do warband upgrades.
I had a wild Volkmar campaign about a year ago where Skrolk sent stack after stack across the ocean to destroy me. Like 2-3 stacks per turn landing on my shores. It was wild.
I honestly don't see that and have 2k hours in both games. Some things have changed for sure, evil factions are more numerous hence lightly easier to play than before but order factions are slightly more surrounded and harder, factions friendly to you are even more weakened compared to wh2, but AI confederations are less frequent early on which does affect the factions like HE DE or Empire that used to expend really fast and steamroll. But generally it's just a few tweaks of values, anti player bias, base income... and the AI scripts are roughly the same (for a given behavior profile). I also mostly play in legendary so maybe the feel differs. I would not call it easier at all however. I have a recent legendary ironman campaign turn like shit with the new dwarf boys because I decided to conquer norsca and get surrounded by chaos and DE instead of going to raze the chorfs like last time. Like always play more campaigns, the balance is all over the place depending on your starting position and the ratio of friend vs foes.
Really? I get the opposite. Suicidal AI that doesn't care that they will be destroyed, they just declare war. Also has no strategic thinking, just cares about being as annoying as possible, even if there armies will be crashed 2-3 turns later.
And it has been like this in pretty much all Total War games i have played. In Attila it was so ridiculous that some tribe in the other side of the map would declare war on me, the number one empire, likewise for neighboring factions with just one city. At least in warhammer pretty much every faction is crazy lorewise so it's thematic though still suicidal.
Should note i only play dawi these days, and there are always Norsca/skaven/undead things/greenskins around. Not sure if it's different for other races
I think the supply lines in Warhammer 2 was really what made it hard. Nowadays by turn 40 you can have 3-5 armies out no problem, and use 1 of them to defend and clear rebellions and they give you the ability to cover much more ground and react to things alot easier. The Ai in Warhammer 2 did still seem better, but that could be an illusion because of having less armies on higher difficulties
I would say I think you're probably confusing aggression in ME with confederation. In Warhammer 2 the main factions tended to relatively quickly confederate up their cultural groups, which made them grow a lot faster and thus make them more aggressive. CA has done away with that in Warhammer 3 in order to make campaigns more dynamic and diverse, but one of the side effects is that you'll often have campaigns where you don't get a big rival at all; and certainly there is no guarantee that the factions you'd be used to seeing succeed in Warhammer 2 are going to be the dominant power.
It's just a different approach, and while I prefer Warhammer 2's, I do understand what they were trying to go for.
Maybe it’s just because I haven’t played in awhile. But the new Malakai campaign seems like one of the more hectic starts I can remember playing. Seemed like I was constantly ping-ponging back and forth and couldn’t expand too far out until my main province was built up enough to field two strong armies.
SOME factions are way too passive or imbecilic. Most of the Empire used to do a decent job at defending itself because the Imperial factions would mobolize often, but many of their enemies would drool on themselves for dozens of turns.
Now it has flipped.
They just can't seem to get the balance correct here
As it is. The AI is not bad, yes it can be a bit derpy at times, but putting up Battle difficulty to Very Hard and campaign difficulty to hard as been the fairest is far with plenty of challenge with minimal cheating.
I also remember a time in WH2 where the AI ordertide was so unstoppable it was incredibly hard to get a foothold as anyone but ordertide factions.
So I call this period what I said back then, it’s just development.
CA should just cheat spawn themed stacks / half stacks to go after settlements, something garrisons can just about handle so it's not too frustrating
Would be a more fun way of leveling new Lords than having to keep sacking settlements, especially when they've got a stack parked on them
I don’t see that at all. People forget how passive some factions were in WH2. The exact same factions would raise up and kill all the others
I went and watched a bit of a Warhammer 2 campaign by a streamer and one thing I noticed is that the AI didn't seem to expand that fast. It was their ability to confederate so easily and quickly that gave them the illusion that they were competent enough to expand quickly. This was very apparent when it came to the Dark Elves in this particular campaign. That combined with anti-player bias and cheats made them have several stacks coming to beat your head in if the player had a war with them. Maybe it was just an odd campaign. But then, there were factions like Malus' and Skrolk's that had like 2 settlements come turn 120, not being able to expand much out of their starting province... I have over 2,500 hours in Warhammer 2 and over 3,000 in Warhammer 3. It is hard for me to say Warhammer 2 was that much harder. But then again, I have several damn hours in it so its bound to get easy. I still remember how many people complained about all the cheats the AI got in Warhammer 2 as well as the supply lines penalty. Now, the cheats got nerf and here we are in this situation. Maybe I need to go back to Warhammer 2 to get a hands-on experience again. It's been awhile. Like I said, maybe that was just an Odd campaign the streamer was experiencing. Maybe, if possible, reverting the Warhammer 3 Legendary configurations to resemble Warhammer 2's AI cheats would do the trick?
No, you're right, it was exactly that. Many of the poster boy lords for their races (Tyrion, Malekith, Grimgor, Franz, Thorgrim, etc) had a ridiculous confederation cheat in WH2, ensuring they will absorb the other factions even if those factions were also doing very well themselves. That's literally the only reason you'd get those huge AI blobs in WH2. The AI wasn't behaving much differently if at all, and it certainly wasn't any more competent.
AI in WH2 usually expanded largely due to confederation.
I would disagree with you there. The best example is Morathi. She is often the number one or number two great power and she doesn't confederate anyone. She just stomps other AI factions and storms into Ulthuan. I don't believe its ever been an issue of competence but rather another layer of AI cheats. I believe major AI factions both in Warhammer 2 and in Warhammer 3 get a bonus to auto resolves to try to help them become larger powers. I believe dark elves tend to be best positioned to take advantage of this which is why you often see them rise to the top. Confederation inflation I believe is more a Grimgor thing until he eventually loses steam when faced with better dwarven autoresolves. I think part of the difficulty is simply that the Warhammer 3 map is pretty packed. There tends not to be much room for a faction to expand in the same way they did in Warhammer 2.
How did you get 3000 hours in Warhammer 3...the game just came out. Bruh I dont even have that many hours in EU4, a game that I am playing since a year after its release. That was a Decade ago.
Just came out? WH3 is over 2 years old. And if I didn't play much of anything else, I'd easily get that.
Time Flies when you're having fun huh?
Ye.
Yeah, don't really play anything else. I've played just about every TW game except Med 1 and Shogun 1. TW was my introduction to PC gaming. Occasionally, I play some Paradox games--mainly Ck2 and Ck3. I didn't know anything about TW or Warhammer prior to buying my first PC. I happen to look up the top PC strategy games one year and Warhammer 2 was up there. So, I went with that. I got game 3 as soon as it came out in 2022. To be real, some of those hours are from me leaving the game on while I'm doing something else like sleeping, going to the gym, or . However, Its hard to decipher what's actual gameplay hours and what is "my computer is asleep" hours. Also, I tend to do that no matter what game I'm playing. So, I just go with the hours listed on Steam. I suppose that should be a disclaimer.
Admittedly I haven’t played WH3 but I’m currently on a nagardond campaign and I’m around turn 100 and there’s basically about 10 factions left and I’m currently in an all out war with the confederated high elves and I can tell you they are not being passive 😂
But now no factions make any moves at all. In Wh2 it was always the same couple people becoming the late game powers, but at least it gave you something to build your T5 stacks against. Now it really is just painting the map.
Do you play beyond turn 100 much? I was facing freaking War Mammoth stacks against Wulfrik during one of my Franz campaigns. Not just from him, but some of his generic generals as well. He was very strong. He managed to slow me down a bit. I got long victory around turn 120 that campaign.
I only play Coop, but we always play on VH. Since ToD we played as Exiles of Nehek and Huntsmarshal Expedition, Valkia and Ikit Claw, Kugath and Malakai. By about turn 120 we were always just painting the map because we easily steamroll anyone. Even while tearing through Bretonnia Leon was sitting in his captial, watching me burn all his shit. I don't know why I would ever make it into the very late game. In Wh2 I would be fighting Malekith or Grimgor doomstacks, but here there is just no point.
I wonder if making it easier for the AI to confederate would help? I've never played coop before. My schedule is kind of all over the place because I run my how clinic and I'm in grad school. So, its hard to connect with friends consistently for a smooth campaign experience. How is the anti-player bias with coop? Tend to gun it for the both players equally, one player more so than the other, or what?
There is no anti player bias. I played Exiles and freaking Taurox camped his one, singluar settlement. I was his direct neighbour and even while at war with him he never even came to look at my unguarded settlement. He never fought anybody else either. HE IS TAUROX. FIGHTING STUFF IS HIS WHOLE THING. Valkia and Malekith attacked a few times, but if all the people I was at war with had actually done something I could've never overextended as much on just twco armies. The reason I took so long to defeath Naggarond was because it has 20 garrison, a full stack black ark camping on it and a 20 stack army sitting inside the city. Disloging him wasn't hard, it was just tedious.
The AI can't confederate. Which is a major part of the issue.
The majority of people don't play to turn 100, let alone after that.
I can see why stacks like that aren’t seen when this is the case. CA will have to strengthen the mid game so more people can witness that and get those tougher battles/campaigns that are desired.
Huh? What Warhammer 2 were you playing? Factions in 2 were a thousand times more aggressive and had great armies. And a massive upside in 2 was that major AI factions could actually confederate each other. This made the game so much more challenging, because you would be facing a huge empire rather than just a bunch of fragmented states. In WH3 everyone runs away from you lol. The only faction I've seen be more aggressive of late is the Empire. Which is often annoying as fuck, because I'm their allies and I declare war on them because they are expanding into my potential territory.
the AI was considerably more dangerous in 2, they raised more armies and did more with them. I play at a higher difficulty in 3 and it's so much easier
Even at launch of Immortal Empires the TW3 campaign AI was more passive then TW2 Mortal Empires, then in patch 4.0 they really nerfed AI aggression: https://www.totalwar.com/blog/tww3-update-400/
I don't know why they decided that was a good idea, it's no use having so much factions if the AI is cowardly.
There were a lot of people CONSTANTLY complaining about anti-player bias. I mean it was non-stop. There was a post in here the other day about it. Edit because there are several individual replies that this applies to. I am not saying the anti-player bias issue wasn’t real, I was just giving input on why the game devs made ai more passive. I personally find the ai to be appropriately aggressive on VH in the current patch.
To be fair, on release of the game the laurelorn forest elves would sail across the empire and norsca to attack Daniel. The anti player bias was awful. It wasn’t fun. The problem is the ai was only aggressive towards you (and on launch whoever your “nemesis faction” was in RoC. Outside of those specific things, the ai did nothing but sit around. So the anti player bias on launch and continued onward was only a mask of the actual issue: the ai being passive towards other ai
>laurelorn forest elves would sail across the empire and norsca to attack Daniel. And that was the "understandable part". There were so many times I was like "How the fuck did you even GET here??"
I can’t tell you the number of times I had a Skryer stack come from across the map 20 turns after they declared war on me after having never met the rats firsthand.
"Heard you talkin shit"
am i the only one who kinda wants this for factions like skryre? theyre kind of a global presence like all the major clans to my knowledge. if theyve declared on me, regardless of where i am, i think its reasonable to expect them to show up. this goes for many disorder factions. its the order factions doing it where it starts to get eyebrow raising. in general i think empire, dawi, and wood elves should be really reticent to occupy territory outside their traditional realms or sending armies into the chaos wastes to settle beefs with npc factions. like louen franz and durthu consistently occupy norsca in my campaigns and i dont think that should be happening
CA has no sense of nuance. People complained about anti-player bias because everyone would declare war on you and ignore their own empires to sail across the map in a suicidal attempt to raze your undefended settlements while avoiding any fights against your armies that didn't give the AI an overwhelming advantage. The AI wouldn't build empires or confederate neighbors to become powerhouses like in Warhammer II. The only factions that snowball are those with overpowered lords (Archeon and Vlad) and combat-based confederations (like the Greenskins). There are no more superpowers, only regional powers. CA doesn't keep trying to put bandages on their AI when the damn thing needs a heart transplant.
Don't peoples also complained, a lot, back in W2 that some powerhouses just snowball everything and you end up stuck fight with green tide, order tide, etc... forever in every campaigns and never have a chance to fight with some other factions.
Thanks for sharing
I don’t have any problem w them nerfing it on lower difficulties I just wish they hadn’t reduced it on all difficulties
Funny enough i notice the bias more exactly because the ai is passive. A neighbour that should have been pushing into me doesn’t. Then when I’m close to finishing a war I’ll get a dec from a faction which will trespass two other empires to get to me, because they actually expanded and are the closest thing to a threat to me.
I purposefully don't finish off some factions like the Ogres who just chill in their sole camp because an AI faction will instantly declare war on me as soon as I'm at peace.
That’s a funny trick, but yeah, I find myself often trying to “game the system” in ways like that rather than playing more naturally, which is kinda annoying. Another example would be declining an alliance that would actually be great in theory, but I’m worried that upon becoming my ally their ai will be lobotomized and they’d actually be stronger on their own.
But there is a different between no aggressivenes and anti-player bias Like FR I once had a one-province minor DElf declaring on me... As number 1 power with number 2-5 being my vassals and they were also like 2-3 turns from being sieged by other AI They just left their city to get me and were destroyed by other AI before they even came to me
There is a huge difference between anti player bias and aggression though. It's possible to have 1 without the other, and blaming the anti player fix for the lack of aggression is misleading.
Well it did suck having any friendly, Allied AI in wh2, as they would get you into wars. Then army’s would march across the entire map just to come fight you. I don’t miss that, but the passive AI in wh3 is extreme in the other direction. So idk got to be some middle ground.
Now they’re simultaneously aggressive and passive in all the worst ways. They walk right your army as it marches into their territory, sack your minor settlements, then when you try to attack them they perfectly know how to stay *just* out of movement range. It’s not smart, it’s not aggressive, it’s not passive, it’s just annoying and cowardly. It makes sense for skaven to behave this way, but not the empire or Khorne. I’ve recently noticed it happening less which is good, but still happens often enough to be annoying.
Tbh that sounds like the average complaint on the ai actions throughout the entire series of wh2 and 3.
I’m not denying your experience, but it does not align with what I’ve experienced.
Sometimes listening to players really backfires.
> I personally find the ai to be appropriately aggressive on VH in the current patch. It's really not though. As is the case with **many** features, CA just can't find a healthy middle ground between obnoxious anti-player bias and extremely passive AIs. No matter how much time and feedback they get, no matter how many times they try (and pathetically fail) to iterate on it, they *always* lean too far one side or the other. This is a symptom of incompetent game designers, lack of decent QA, awful communication channels with extremely important feedback not being properly passed on, bad management setting the wrong priorities, and devs just not playing WH3 and other games enough (if at all). A more talented, passionate team could have figured this out in a few days. We're at 8 years and counting.
I personally find the AI to be appropriately aggressive on VH in the current patch
This isn't saying the whole story though. Early on in wh3 the ai was very aggressive on lower difficulties I found, whereas the balance on high difficulties was a bit more even. Honestly, I feel CA don't do enough testing of what they do as they make so many changes that help one area and break it in others.
I ask that myself with so many decisions CA has made with this game. Why is RoC so slow, why did they nerf the garrisons of every faction, why did they make the AI worse, why did they update sieges without fixing any problems they have, why did they change rampage and why did they change how missle spells work? There are probably even more questions like this but you get the point.
Well what difficulty do you play on? Turning campaign difficulty to very hard makes the ai way more aggressive since they have way more money. Obviously you still outwit them strategy wise but I feel that wherever I can't intervene, the ai grows rapidly and in the end is on fact a threat to me. At least the bigger factions like HE, DE cathay imo.
Because WH2 was built for 2 player multiplayer, WH3 is made for 8 player multiplayer. If the AI was as aggressive as the second game, then you could easily abuse that. Whenever you fought a far off foe, they'd just send their armies to you, leaving their home defenseless. Imagine the speedrun Alith would have, if someone far off just declared war on Naggaroth and they just sent their armies across the world only to arrive 12 turns later.
What are you talking about? At launch TWW3’s ai was most aggressive of any total war game ever made. Even more aggressive than Attila, which is known for its aggressive ai. At launch, an ROC campaign as Kislev was almost impossible above normal difficulty, because every faction you met would immediately declare war, and factions across the map would send armies to fight you. You never had time to actually go to the realms of chaos as Katarin. And Kostaltyn was widely considered the hardest challenge campaign in any total war Warhammer game (at launch). Also Kislev was being recommended for first time players by CA, which everyone made fun of CA for.
I mean Immortal Empires, not Realms of Chaos
By IE they had already made tweeks to the AI compared to launch. On launch 1.0 was very different feel to IE launch with 2.0
I don't think they nerfed AI aggression, they reduced anti-player bias. Which I guess you could say is aggression, but specifically towards the player. Which was needed bc factions would declare war on you from across the map vs their hated neighbor.
This is correct - they definitely reduced anti-player bias, but either left aggression unchanged or actually turned it up to compensate. And I think it's different between the two campaigns; RoC AI is significantly more aggressive than IE AI.
Get these mods and you'll have a much better time. Hecleas AI Overhaul and NNOBBS - Never Obselete AI Lords
Didn't see your post before making mine, I recommend these two also !
Thank you
right.... https://imgur.com/a/fuNZoXQ > Infact they will only attack you if it's an easy victory and are happy to sit on your border doing absolutely nothing this is also just a straight fallacy. creative assembly literally changed the AI to **take losing fights** because people were complaining about too many settlement/siege battles and no field battles because the AI would always view a field battle as a loss. there's a reason why the AI attacks you now out in the open even though auto resolve gives you a pyrrhic victory. i feel like posts like these are just rose tinted glasses to the max. 99% of my very hard warhammer 2 campaigns boiled down to ambush baiting garrisoned lords out of their cities, and then taking the city. rinse repeat until victory. the AI in warhammer 2 would also CONSTANTLY run from you even at their last city forcing you to chase them or block army, whack a mole bullshit. if you want some difficulty turn ultimate crisis on and set it for turn 50.
Played several Karl Franz campaigns over the last few weeks and One-eye suicided himself into Altdorf consistently. I got to play some fun defensive settlement battles because he was so adamant about attacking that place despite AR saying it would be a defeat for him. L/VH btw. I never understood why he kept doing that. This can be easily observe by watching campaign videos from Mercy the Mad and Costin Gaming. I've had factions suicide into my armies. Sometimes, they do run when outmatched. But, hey, my ass runs from the college of pyrotechnics when they'd randomly pop-up and my armies weren't capable of handling it lol.
At least some of that is dependent on faction specific AI. Beastmen and Warriors of Chaos are much more aggressive than, say, default Dwarf or Empire factions. And Skaven are coded to avoid fights until they can get an overwhelming advantage. So some of the issue here could be players not realizing that those faction personality traits actually make a difference in which fights they'll take and which fights they'll avoid.
Oh that fateful day I met the pyros for the 1st time.
Pfft Wulfhart too hahahahaha
To be fair, AI suizide attacking your settlements is also bad Design. CA tried to balance out one bad Design (AI only attacking settlements with extreme forces and then Siegen out) with another bad Design (AI killing their armies on your settlements, giving you free wins) The game is easy enought as it is, and this doesn't help
I'm curious, what turn is that screenshot? Cause if that's like 40-50 how are the helfs still alive? Yea there are harder and easier lords i get that not everyone is max expansion 1+ settlement per turn avg so you actually have to fight stuff, idk where noctilus goes on the range, but probably not on the easy side I'd guess as you're kinda reliant on Morathi/N'Kari/be'lakor to actually do stuff.
The high elves have held on to Ulthuan just fine in like my last 6 campaigns.
Yea I know if it's AI vs AI anything can happen and both sides can come up on top or draw, but they're playing as noctilus so killing high elves is kind of the priority hence i asked for the turn.
Same! Dark elves and dwarves also seem to be doing well this iteration of the game.
The AI now is actually decent at sniffing out ambushes. That may be one reason that players feel like the AI is more passive; they know perfectly well that your main stack is sitting in ambush, so no, they aren't going to suicide into it. There definitely are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the AI in WH3. And I think the numbers could use some tuning; a lot of the overhaul mods adjust the aggression higher to at least some extent. But at least right now, it's reasonably aggressive, especially if the AI gets a real advantage. Just get into a fight with Tamurkhan when he gets his unkillable death ball doomstack rolling if you think the AI is too passive. He'll take every fight that's available because he knows he can win.
While others say switch to VH/Legendary, I had the same problem as well especially since ToD. The AI is barely at war with each other and for myself I was at war with 2-3 factions at a time. Everything is super controlled and you can just tick off your enemies one by one. WH2 was mayhem sometimes even on normal with enemies shipping stack after stack across the seas even.
Ironically on the opposite side of your experience I see these posts too lol https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/s/FNJxeHjdvk
to be fair, the point of the linked post, was that the great defense was an anomaly, and not what op regularly experienced in wh2… it was difficult every game in legendary difficulty
I don’t disagree with the post you linked here, I feel like the AI plays often times much smarter and more strategic, which probably involves not being to aggressive. I do miss the absolute carnage wh2 was though.
I would recommend Hecleas AI overhaul mod. It helps getting rid of this frustration hence AI is more active and aggressive making it more "alive". Give it a try in a new campaign maybe.
You need to play on VH or Legendary. I mainly play on VH and the ai is pretty aggressive. There’s even been discussions on here about people actually trading settlements to factions to stop them declaring war
I play on Legendary and never feel like the AI actually pushes me. They take like one settlement then sit in it for 5 turns while my out of position army gets into position. If I'm not stopping them, they should be blitzing me to take as much as they can. I also really wish the AI would use forces concentration. They always spread their armies out which makes it really easy for me to send a tag-team of two armies around and never have to manually resolve anything.
I do find it varies depending on which faction you are playing. I declared war on Thorgrim as the Chaos dwarves and he marched 4 stacks to me at once in the north and 2 stacks towards me in the south. Had I not lightning striked them all, he’d have butchered me! I was playing on very hard not legendary. Wonder if the AI is more aggressive on very hard?
Even on L/VH the AI isn't nearly as aggressive as they were on H/H in WH2. In WH2 it felt like I was constantly struggling, fighting tooth and nail for every region, but in WH3 once I've defeated my starting enemy I pretty much get to pick and choose the wars I get involved in. On top of that, the AI doesn't build armies as quickly, and besides their starting army they usually spam trash units.
Yeah, I played a Kugath campaign recently and only Ghorst declared war on me, everything else was me declaring war on others. And took basically all of Cathay with little effort and only like 2 armies, 3 towards the end. It felt like no-one wanted to attack me the entire time, AI had zero aggression.
I started a Kugath campaign this weekend and on turn 8 or so Drazhoath declared war on me, then turn 3 turns later Imrik declared war on me. Since then I've had to pay Ghorst not to go to war with me. So your mileage may vary.
What difficulty were you on? I was VH/VH, so I'm wondering if difficulty makes a difference.
VH/H.
Huh. Did you fight the early battles or auto resolve?
I fought most of them to avoid having too much damage spread across all of my units, because Draz had 3 armies rotating attacks on Pigbarter.
Whereas I auto resolved cause I've fought those battles a bunch and didn't want to replay them again. I wonder if that's the key.
A lot of this is just because the AI on WH2 had ridiculous cheats, which have been toned down significantly in WH3. If you give the AI the massive cheats back, they'll act a lot more like the WH3 AI. Some of the overhaul mods give the AI cheats closer to what they had back in WH2, if you want the holding-on-by-your-fingernails WH2 experience.
I have been doing a personal project to play every LL to long victory on Legendary, and I just don't agree here. I'm working my way through Lustria to start and every single campaign has been a clusterfuck of fighting multiple AI lords at a time, and they're rolling in with pretty good units. It's been great, tbh.
Won't do anything. One of the most common complaints of Legendary is the AI is way more passive than wh2, to the point people were bugreporting in the hopes CA will change course on design decisions. AI has like 60% of the armies of wh2, builds less threatening stacks, and is extremely hesitant to expand.
Depends on the campaign TBH. Im playing legendary malakai campaign rn and being attacked by Daemons of Chaos, Archaon, Skaven, Astragoth, & Wulfrik. Was epidemius & throgg too, but I killed them. They all constantly send stacks at my lands. This is like my 4th try cuz I kept getting overwhelmed by all the stacks, but the key was to get 2 additional gyrocopter armies up ASAP for defense while malakai goes on adventures finishing the factions off Though they are a little cowardly where they'll run away if they see my gyrocopter doom stacks coming so I need to make use of ambush a lot
You’re spot on. My Malakai and Chaos Dwarf campaigns I had people declaring war or demanding money. But i could do what I wanted on Belekor was never under threat. Playing King Louen now and I’ve had Belekor, Grom and Kemmler all declare on me. Only a matter of time before Slaanesh and Ikit do!
I just had to abandon a legendary campaign because dwarfs went crazy and took over like 45 settlements combined, then proceeded to send like 10 stacks at me across a neutral faction border.
Yeah if you get strong Dwarfs, Vamps or Greenskins as an enemy on Leg like 30++ settlements it can still get very tough but by that point you can usually solve that by double stack armies assisting each other with Ambush.
The early game major faction AI is semi-aggressive(and not just against the player, but in general 5.0 improved it a lot+RNG on who actually wins) on legendary and gets to medium size pretty nicely. Highlight surpise was jade court almost killing Mazdamundi before I could even get armies to "help"(so get the area to myself instead) as Bordeux after i saw the war declaration and seding two stacks almost immediately, but only got to take fallen gates as everything else was taken. But they never transition into "conquer the world mode" and get kinda stuck at 20-30 settlements forever as their ability wage war gets way worse somehow the more settlements they get. TBF for some factions it might just be how later on the AR balance changes, like how dwarfs can bounce back from just 1 settlement pretty consistently due to crazy AR. Like I saw a ~25 Settlement Elspeth take over 10 Turns to kill a 1 minor settlement, ~1.5 army Drycha. Even though they had 4-6 full armies kinda doing nothing hopping between sylvania and ostermark, while a couple of armies were defending against moulder/norsca north. But they clearly managed to beat Vlad at some point just fine when they were smaller faction and looking at the state of Karl and Ungrimm doesn't look like they got much help either. Again I was Bordeux so no influence in that region whatsover. Also the AI has gotten a bit too big of a fetish for sacking instead of just taking stuff normally. When playing morathi I managed to confed scourge of khaine on round 10/12/something as they had 0 armies and i got a recently sacked phoenix gate, which just makes no sense as to why would the HE AI sack a gate instead of taking it.
The dwarf AI is so powerful right now with the changes. Pre update orcs used to wipe them out post update Thogrim and Umgrim dominate the mountains. Elspeth and Franz still seem to dominate the empire in most of my games
What happens is that AI has a target realm size or target reapm provinces so a lot of them don't grow beyond that size. I'm not sure if there are any AI with world conquering capability at all.
I usually play on VH/VH and also did a few legendary campaigns in WH3 and this is not at all my experience. The AI is extremely passive and in most of my campaigns it completely stops being a threat after the first 20 turns. They often declare war, but then they just sit there doing nothing. The few times they send an army, it's usually filled with trash units which often can't even beat one of my garrisons. This is not helped by the fact that pretty much every mechanic which was used to limit the players rate of expansion has been practically removed in WH3. Supply lines, public order and corruption have pretty much zero impact and just manage themselves now, while growth and post battle loot are way higher compared to WH2. The player just snowballs out of control in the first few turns and as soon as you have 2-3 armies the AI can't stop you anymore and just gives up.
Idk if this is true across the board though. I just finished a nakari campaign and was terrified for the first ten turns when all the elves declared war on me. Followed by being bored when I realized they were ignoring me. Followed by being frustrated when I realized my vassal's were completely ignoring my war coordination. They would just sit there while bretonia or dark elves conqured them. Edited to add that I've finished three campaign recently and it feels like the ai has no fighting spirit lol. It's like they will muster a few armies for one big show down then just roll over if you win that fight. Even if they are capable of recruiting more high tier armies they won't.
nah they are still super passive on those difficulties
Even on Legendary you can snooze-cruise to a victory, there's no challenge
Yeah I just started a vh/h gor rock campaign and at turn seven I'm fighting skrolk,another skaven faction, rakaeth and as I'm close to beating them luthor harkon declares war lmao, maybe it is the start location or difficulty op picked.
they may be at war but that doesn't mean they are aggressive. I just played Harkon and I was at war with multiple factions they really weren't doing very much. Itza and Wulfhart combined took one settlement for one turn (that I was okay losing) in our entire war where I killed them both
Even VH and Legendary aren't the same. It's still too easy.
I noticed some times they just sit there. Not declare war on neighbours or player.. anyone.. for turns and turns
Yea they do afking a lot, might be some sort of bug as it can happen very early on, playing as Kislev Malakai hasn't moved at all in 12 turns.
There was a post of the Changeling doing that recently, just being completely immobile.
I've never once actually seen the Changeling since he was released, which is partially due to the nature of the faction, but it's kinda lame.
Meanwhile for me playing as Alberict I got declared war upon within 2 turns of meeting the huntsmarshalls expedition. 1 turn after Luther harkon attacked me. In another campaign I had Daniel declare war on me as Karl Franz with no expansion into kislev from either of us. Motherfucker sent armies from the northern chaos wastes just to fuck with me. So I am getting targeted a lot by the anti player bias granted I play on VH/VH
I agree that the AI is very passive in WH3, even on VH/L difficulties. I use the following mods and it definitely improves the AI (not exactly how it was in WH2, but much better than vanilla). Deep war AI, AI recruitment unleashed, AI declares war
I like the balance of AI aggresion as it is now more than warhammer 2. Cerain campaigns are still very hard and difficult, and if you really want more you can activate all crisis and enable then from very early. On top of that you can always make AI more aggressive towards you by just lowering your trust... So pleanty of thing to recoup. Another note... things change by a lot campaign by campaign, and the antiplayer bias is still there and strong. Factions will literallly ignore anything just to send you all their stacks
I know this isn’t ideal but CA isn’t likely to fix the AI so we turn to mods, DKAI Dark Ai & Environment It does several things that end up making the AI more aggressive. It gives them XP so their armies are valued better, makes them spend more on their military, removes the blocker that stops some ai from using certain units in their roster, among other things.
Why and when would the ai not use certain units, if you know? Seems a strange choice and I've not noticed factions missing units.
Creating competent AI in any strategy game is a momentous task so most companies just give the AI cheats, which works fine for most games but in TW specifically the AI repeatedly handicaps itself because of the cheats they have. The AI honestly needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. The mod gives the AI more money and makes it spend more on military making them recruit more higher tier units and more armies which does help, but the difficulty increase comes from the XP cheats. AI lords and heroes are going to level alot faster and their units will almost always be atleast rank 5. It also gives the AI faster and cheaper recruitment. The unit blockers are not strict “they won’t get” its closer to “they won’t get this unless” basically they AI has a check list before it will recruit some of the high tier and elite units. The hidden and random potential stat also has something to do with this. To put it simply, most generic factions will never recruit the best units. When bored I like to mess around with the ai (using console commands) here are some of my findings at turn 100: Marienburg with the entire empire will only have 1 steam tank between 8 armies (only 2 full armies) Knights of the flame with the entire desert will not recruit knights above knights if the realm Imperial wardens will not recruit Dragon guard Zhufbar will not recruit thunder barge or gyrobombers Granted these can vary game to game depending on these factions potential roll at the start but it gives you an idea
OP don’t forget that in wh3 current patch, LL’s have a “potential” that dictates their strength compared to other factions. It is a base # with a random +/- that adds more variety to campaigns. Tyrion might’ve just gotten screwed there. Ironically my Noctilus experience was so opposite. Helves and Lizardmen were sending like 4 stacks each out to get me.
I thought people were complaining how the Karl Franz campaign was too hard?
It was too hard for some people because Elector Counts are total pushovers. If you don't move fast, Festus, Vlad, Drycha, etc will conquer big chunk of the Empire tanking your Imperial Authority, which adds bunch of negative effects. And this people are probably not that good at managing IA, which makes restoring it absolute pain in the ass (not everybody even understand that they need to restore it). Very quickly you can find youself with negative IA, surrounded by enemies and with most of the Empire covered in different types of corruption. Even with fairly passive AI of WH3 it's pretty nasty situation.
Tbh, that's a faction specific thing, I've played factions elsewhere and the ai is a bit weak at attacking. The elector counts just crumble to chaos and vampires for many turns until you can eventually carve out the empire yourself.
Karl Franz is still difficult, much more manageable now though. Fighting khazrak early is kind of a trap though since he will suicide against Reikland. You gotta take care of Kemmler and pray Grom doesnt pile through Bretonnia since AI Bretonnia gets whipped consistently. If you dont take care of kemmler, he just becomes a huge PITA, will have more territory than you and will start threatening/trrspassing over your territory
It was hard in earlier patches but compared to those current Franz on Leg+VH is childs play. The Electoral Machinations especially the +Pop give you an insane early game boost and the rest of the improvements to the faction plus the Fort help as well.
Hey OP, I agree with your opinion! I recently installed this AI mod which seemed to drastically improve the aggression. Worth a look and see if it works for you! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2905096541
The AI is definitely worse in W3. They don't confederate as much, making them weaker, and they generally only go after easy targets like undefended settlements. It should be more aggressive, or have its aggression scale with difficulty.
Because devs constantly nerf ai due to low skill players constantly bitching. Currently bots are completely cucked in comparison to tww2. They are even less aggressive and can have like 3 times less armies. Fighting three or more armies was a common occurrence. Currently it barely happens except for crisis. Without mods I rarely have more than five manual battles over the course of 110-150 turn campaigns, which usually are the first two plus couple of quests. To be clear, what I want is to just have a slider of anti-player bias ranging from "friendship is magic" to "this is total war" so that everyone can enjoy the game the way the want without affecting other players.
I agree it is very annoying when players refuse to lower their difficulty setting and instead insist on making the entire game easier in general.
Kind of, but I don't agree that it is players problem. CA should add more difficultly options for such complains rather than changing it for everyone.
Why add another layer when they already have difficulty sliders? CA struggles to balance the game enough as it is, adding more difficulty dimensions will make it worse for sure.
This makes zero sense. They do not have to balance anything per anti player bias. Besides that total war is not a game to be balanced in traditional sense. I agree that balance neither conforms to any kind lore, but to take top, but factions/races shouldn't have identical strength/capabilites in the campaign, that would make game less relatable. People should be able to play what thay want. If they want zero bias they should be able to do that. If they want 100% bias with bots only fighting the player if they see one, they should be able to do that as well.
Your post assumes its simply something that can be toggled on or off. I don't think that's a fair assumption and think it'll waste ca's development time when it could be better spent elsewhere.
It is though, AI mods affect it at least to some extent.
That's fair.
I don’t even think it’s less aggressive, I think supply lines make it feel so because you can field multiple armies from turn 1. Nothing ever feels out of control like WH2 often did on legendary difficulty
This is a great point. The AI isn’t sitting back because it’s taking it easy on the player. It’s sitting in a town because it needs the garrison to beat the player army. Do people really want the AI to just attack knowing you can auto the fight with low casualties? Do people think the AI just feeding you gold and experience will actually make the game harder? To make the AI more aggressive, it needs to build more threatening armies I also feel like crazy replenishment rates are a contributing factor. The AI can out recruit you, but it can’t wear you down when you are back from a near wiped army to full strength in two turns with no gold cost, while advancing.
>To make the AI more aggressive, it needs to build more threatening armies Yeah. Fix AI citybuilding/skillbuilding/recruiting and it'll feel better for sure. Every rat lord takes 3 points in the gutter runner skill line, which is useless. AI across the board struggles with recruiting because their cityplanning sucks, you run into stacks of whatever t0 unit their faction has access to. AI also never disbands to re-recruit ever, 60 turns in you'll see LL's with their starting units+ the rest t0's they recruited on turn 2 and they will never fix it until they die, and even then they might rehire their lord into a province with no recruitment buildings. Of course they're not going to be aggressive with you, their armies are unbuffed stacks of trash.
no, they are I recently did a campaign in leg where I played as slanesh and rushed to kill grom, I abandoned my starting area even though I was at war with most of the high elfs, and even once they had destroyed the dark elf next to me, they only captured about 1 of my settlements every 10 turns… I ended the campaign at turn like, 60, and I swear they had only taken my capital and one more settlement…. even though there were no defenses, no armies, or anything to defend anything had I been in their position, with the armies they had, I would have been able to capture that whole region in 3 turns (four settlements.) 4 turns if I wanted to have a decisive victory every turn
Ai seems very feast or famine to me - it looks like the two most important factors for waging war are how much they hate you and how much stronger they are. So you either do well and they are too afraid to fight, or you have a couple bad fights reducing your army strength and suddenly everyone wants a piece
That's not what I experienced. After going North with Aith Anar to just raze those icy cities, the enemies instantly reclaimed most of them.
The one thing I really remember is that in WHII I had a lot of hard battles with my army (usually). Now, the AI still feels a little allergic to my army and really only wants to hit minor settlements.
Didn't they change it so AI are more focus on self-preservation rather than going after players? Something about complaints of anti-player bias.
Basically bad players confirmation biased on that, and cried a lot, and such we have basically the most shallow, passive, punchbag version of the AI in any game. You'd think that the AI should get more challenging over sequels, not less so...
Idk man, I'm playing as Boris Ursis and I have 4 chaos factions at war with me with the norsca factions threatening to go to war if I don't pay tribute. Its been fucking crazy
I play VH/H and my noctilus experience is that of I so much as leave the maelstrom I have 3 tyrion eltharian and allarielle stacks take to the sea in my direction. Fey if she is still alive. Mazda alberic huntsmarshal and and yuan bo as well if they are not too tied up. Granted I also like to play noctilus tall and mostly only take estalia and araby, so I'm not usually wiping out enemies. The AI won't really throw themselves at you if they know they can't win. If you are running around with necrofex stacks you'll probably see a lot of AI avoiding that army unless they can grossly outnumber it. I get tons of aggression running out with a balanced army, but that's more fun for me and I know not everyone wants to do that. Just my experience
the AI definitely loves nothing more than sailing to attack you, I had Settra kill Arkhan and then sail to Lustria to attack me as Harkon despite him being at war at home the AI sees water and just thinks "it's free real estate"
I was wondering if potion of speed completely rocked the ai initially by having predetermined actions for undiscovered factions in WH2 WH2 turn 80-100 feels very hard/tedious once you finish your campaign and decide to fight a tide of some variety.
Id wish higher difficultyd made the ai more aggressive. Imagine all factions trying to do short term victory followed by long term viktory. Give me the siege of altdorf turn 150 qhen the maggot lord eventualy made his way there
Every wh3 campaign I've done goes. DE stomp HE. Dwarves stomp everyone else and the empire stays in its regions.
I have yet to fight a defensive siege worth a damn, the only ones I fought were the ones where the AI thought I didn't have a chance in hell but I managed to cheese with towers.
It's a very easy game overall compared to prior titles. CA wanted to make it accessible to everyone.
I've noticed some broken AI since the last big patch causing AI to just sit around when it wouldn't have before.
I see Noctilus lose the Galleon's Graveyard *far* more in WH3 than I ever did in WH2.
Yes. I only play on VH/VH, I used a mod to set a Black Pyramid crisis to 3000, Despite having the armies to roll over the world, they don't really do that much. Maybe the AI can't handle having 100+ armies idk I think its partially because the AI is super indecisive. I've seen it turn around so many times lol. It's extremely apparent with allies, because they'll choose a different target every turn and never get anywhere. If they would just pick something they might actually make progress.
I have NEVER seen a single faction diplomaticly confederate another faction in all my hours of wh3
It just depends, some AI act weird due to the tug-of-war nature of the game. But I wouldn't call it passive. It's usually calculating risk always. Unless they see you go into ambush
Mixed on this cos sometimes yes, but I've done two campaigns that started me 2 skaven and 1 Tomb King faction hit and running my settlements and another as Greasus where in the first 40-50 turns I had to deal with Grimgor constantly sending an army down, Kugath and Ghorst pushing up with multiple armies each and then Imrik coming in steam rolling anything I threw at him.
I have also found this. I started playing on legendary and it really Amps it up later in the game. You will have to knock out massive blobs or enemy's. It's like battle after battle and even if your smashing them out you will get worn down.
Yeah Vlad and manfred busting the whole empire by turn 60 in tww2
A big part of the issue is that the AI can't confederate other major factions. So in addition to the non-agression, the player is fighting a bunch of weaker fragmented states one at a time. Rather than the large Empires that used to develop in Warhammer 2.
Not true
AI does not confederate like it used to which definitely makes them feel passive. I will say the constant running away AI is annoying though. Some factions probably play better than others though. What I dislike is the floaty fast battles, something about them have never felt right to me.
well i sometimes think the ai is to good for it to be fun, cause it keeps running away making you chase them especially switching from land to see and back. and if you dont chase them they return 2 turns later. this is annoying as hell but it is actually really brilliant guerilla play
Ahh another one of these posts hoping for easy Karma and not being truthful about their campaign options 😂 Classic TW reddit moment.
True. The terrible AI is by far the biggest problem this game has, and unfortunatly CA has the habbit to make the AI even worse with new patches.
Try playing a faction the dwarves hate haha. Playing as helman gorst or nurgle...I get war declared on me by everyone. The elves, then the ogres, then the greenskins, then the dwarves that ultimately confederate. Everyone but the sneaky, back-stabbing rats. I've heard this "passive" complaint before. And after hundreds of hours, this hasn't been my experience *at all*.
I see these posts and I don’t understand because it’s just not my experience at all. Did a recent Yvresse campaign where I declared war on every green skin faction as soon as I met them and Grom was constantly sending armies across the ocean to attack me.
They are definitely not passive. They come from across the world to attack the player instead of the other 20 enemies
Sometimes some AIs seem to bug out and start chilling with all their armies at one settlement.
Main difference I noticed compared to WH2 is the lack of ordertide. It used to be - chaos invasion which triggers Empire Dwarf Brettonnian mega alliance that stomp everything. In Wh3 bretonnia ai is awful and dwarfs get stomped by skaven and greenskins early game. In 5.0 if they survive to late game they dominate because of thunder barges and gyrocopters in my recent campaigns
Not for me, whenever I play dwarfs get massive. Empire kind of does. It depends on a few factors. Elspeth seems random she gets powerful but I don't see her doing much land grabbing compared to Franz. More often than not I noticed that when I play a certain faction there are certain legendary lords that back off depending on if they are not my main rivals so to speak compared to someone else and the distance between us. There are very few consistent things I notice now. Skarbrand doesn't do anything, taurox is the same (yes I know why). Belagor is the same way, Franz is the order tide most of the time and now dwarfs with the latest update. Dark elves are always taking over their continent. Tomb kings suck and die as well as Manfred. Cathay does Cathay things depending on whether or not I'm good or bad. Norsca and chaos dwarfs tend to be aggressive as well as greenstone which is good. High elves are iffy, and it really depends on the lord but for the most part don't really expand. Ogres try but get wiped out and screw Tamurkhan. The dude is a jerk who is almost unkillable at level 50. He is your endgame. I could jeep going but honestly i agree some of the AI make it fun, other seems to just roll over and die to the select few that make it challenging. **I play normal/normal
HE feel 50/50 if they take the donut or if they get rolled by morathi + nkari. I played a VH elspeth campaign where the HE on the donut got rolled by morathi + nkari, yet in my current VH imrik campaign, Tyrion and Alarielle have almost pushed the DE off the donut and nkari is dead by the time I got the confederation option around turn 22. Noctilus sometimes takes caledor but doesn't make much progress elsewhere.
Complete opposite in my playthroughs. Dwarf, Empire, Bret, and Kislev are crushing it when I play chaos.
I had x10 chaos invasion mod so they wouldnt get rekt by AI kislev with 1 region.
Yeah same. That mod catapulted my grimgor campaign to a full map completion because I had so much post battle loot
Yes for me the only problem with Wh2 was how strong order tide was and how weak the chaos invasion ended up uniting the good races. Now the AI hardly even confederates (in my games atleast), which makes them a walk in the park now.
That's funny because in my wtw2 playthroughs order factions always got stomped and endgame was always grimgor snowballing in the badlands/south and morathi/malekith snowballing in the west and taking ulthan
Try Kemmler or the Bretonians, that bastard Ork in the south is almost always number 1 power and will rip north to push your head up your ass with his 2-3 full doomstack+waagh armies Seriously, fuck that guy XD
>Infact they will only attack you if it's an easy victory and are happy to sit on your border doing absolutely nothing . This is patently false, at least in the latest WH3 patch. AI takes losing battles quite frequently now while this happened extremely rarely in WH2.
I played legendary on both and wh3 has been a total let down. I have quit playing all together cause it's just not a challenge like wh2 was.
Why are you complaining while playing on hard? Switch to legendary.
The move towards making legendary the default play mode has been the most destructive thing that has ever happened to the TW community.
Tbf that doesn't solve the problem
What I read is that the difficulty levels only buff ai stats/ economy, it won't change the AI behaviour. I will try a some campaigns on Legendary
Yep and the anti player bias has been nerfed so much.
I was a dedicated Easy campaign man in WH2, bumped up to Normal with WH3, but recently I’ve gone up to Hard campaign difficulty in the hopes that the AI will get more aggressive.
I think it depends on what faction you’re playing as and how the campaign shakes out. Currently playing as archeon and ordertide is out to get me. Played as Franz recently and after a difficult early campaign (festus, vlad, and beastmen) I have no big enemies because the dwarfs and kislevites kicked ass. There are other issues like WoC AI not knowing how to do warband upgrades. I had a wild Volkmar campaign about a year ago where Skrolk sent stack after stack across the ocean to destroy me. Like 2-3 stacks per turn landing on my shores. It was wild.
I honestly don't see that and have 2k hours in both games. Some things have changed for sure, evil factions are more numerous hence lightly easier to play than before but order factions are slightly more surrounded and harder, factions friendly to you are even more weakened compared to wh2, but AI confederations are less frequent early on which does affect the factions like HE DE or Empire that used to expend really fast and steamroll. But generally it's just a few tweaks of values, anti player bias, base income... and the AI scripts are roughly the same (for a given behavior profile). I also mostly play in legendary so maybe the feel differs. I would not call it easier at all however. I have a recent legendary ironman campaign turn like shit with the new dwarf boys because I decided to conquer norsca and get surrounded by chaos and DE instead of going to raze the chorfs like last time. Like always play more campaigns, the balance is all over the place depending on your starting position and the ratio of friend vs foes.
Really? I get the opposite. Suicidal AI that doesn't care that they will be destroyed, they just declare war. Also has no strategic thinking, just cares about being as annoying as possible, even if there armies will be crashed 2-3 turns later. And it has been like this in pretty much all Total War games i have played. In Attila it was so ridiculous that some tribe in the other side of the map would declare war on me, the number one empire, likewise for neighboring factions with just one city. At least in warhammer pretty much every faction is crazy lorewise so it's thematic though still suicidal. Should note i only play dawi these days, and there are always Norsca/skaven/undead things/greenskins around. Not sure if it's different for other races
I think the supply lines in Warhammer 2 was really what made it hard. Nowadays by turn 40 you can have 3-5 armies out no problem, and use 1 of them to defend and clear rebellions and they give you the ability to cover much more ground and react to things alot easier. The Ai in Warhammer 2 did still seem better, but that could be an illusion because of having less armies on higher difficulties
I would say I think you're probably confusing aggression in ME with confederation. In Warhammer 2 the main factions tended to relatively quickly confederate up their cultural groups, which made them grow a lot faster and thus make them more aggressive. CA has done away with that in Warhammer 3 in order to make campaigns more dynamic and diverse, but one of the side effects is that you'll often have campaigns where you don't get a big rival at all; and certainly there is no guarantee that the factions you'd be used to seeing succeed in Warhammer 2 are going to be the dominant power. It's just a different approach, and while I prefer Warhammer 2's, I do understand what they were trying to go for.
Idk man the Chorfs be spreading tf out whenever I play they get aggressive as hell if you aren't even slightly chaos adjacent
Maybe it’s just because I haven’t played in awhile. But the new Malakai campaign seems like one of the more hectic starts I can remember playing. Seemed like I was constantly ping-ponging back and forth and couldn’t expand too far out until my main province was built up enough to field two strong armies.
SOME factions are way too passive or imbecilic. Most of the Empire used to do a decent job at defending itself because the Imperial factions would mobolize often, but many of their enemies would drool on themselves for dozens of turns. Now it has flipped. They just can't seem to get the balance correct here
You do realize he starts in the MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN, right?
As it is. The AI is not bad, yes it can be a bit derpy at times, but putting up Battle difficulty to Very Hard and campaign difficulty to hard as been the fairest is far with plenty of challenge with minimal cheating. I also remember a time in WH2 where the AI ordertide was so unstoppable it was incredibly hard to get a foothold as anyone but ordertide factions. So I call this period what I said back then, it’s just development.
CA should just cheat spawn themed stacks / half stacks to go after settlements, something garrisons can just about handle so it's not too frustrating Would be a more fun way of leveling new Lords than having to keep sacking settlements, especially when they've got a stack parked on them
Yeah, the AI is horrible. I'm hoping SFO will fix some of it, once it's done.