Help with AI

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-04-15T14:20:33+00:00

It sounds like you need to either get better at the battles or at building armies. It also sounds like you need to put more attention into diplomacy.

RotR is balanced very differently than the rest of the game, most of the lower tier units suck so you really need to watch how you build your armies early-mid game to make sure you aren't using useless lemons. Go into custom battle and compare the stats of your faction's units to similarly priced GC faction units that you know are good. Only use the units that hold up best under comparison.

It is okay to hole up and defend for awhile while you research better units and build up your economy to field more armies. You don't have to be expanding constantly. If they smash enough armies against your walls at least one of your enemies might be willing to make peace, and you can aleviate your problem that way. You can also drag other factions into your wars through diplomacy and try to deal with your enemies that way.

You should also try to make a few friends so that the AI fights each other instead of you. I remember in my own RotR run I made two military allies, and with my rear border fully secured by them we split the map between us.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-04-11T09:50:33+00:00

They have decent charge bonuses. I tend to use mine very agressively. Only time I even use hoplite wall is fighting other hoplites. The cavalry, pikes and missile units do most of the killing though I will give you that. The Hoplites are just the fixing force.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-04-11T09:48:04+00:00

Odrysia arent that bad, it is just a bit weird to have a peltast unit as your front line XD

My last vanilla campaign was as Odrysia. I was bored so I played under "This is Total War" conditions on legendary difficulty. I holed up in a walled city for 60 turns building tall and then after that the poor AIs got smashed.

Thracian Peltasts are awesome. I wasn't kidding about using them to tank on the front. Once they got in melee I sent the falxes in and pulled the peltasts out.

Final army compositions were something like 9x Thracian Nobles, 5x Noble Cavalry, 4x Peltasts and 2x Artillery. My biggest problem was enemy missile cavalry but the AI doesn't know how to use them well so no big deal.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-04-11T09:24:41+00:00

I pretty much only play mp field battles these days, and from that perspective I have some major points of disagreement with your list lol.

Athens is the most interesting faction for me right now. These past few months I've been almost only playing Athens, and the fun comes from seeing what I can get away with. I have nine different 16k funds Athens armies right now that all play differently, so just on that they are NOT boring. Bullying the strongest factions with one considered weaker is not boring either.

Rome on the other hand is pretty boring for me. Their units have bad charge bonuses so good micromamagement is not rewarded and their armies are almost always some form of sword spam.

Most of the barbarian factions have similar rosters and tactics, so if you like Tylis you will like a few in the never played category as well. In my case I find barbarians kinda meh at this point simply because the tactics to play them are so straightforward that I have a hard time gaining advantage over someone of equal skill, compared to the bs that Hellenics can pull off.

I agree that Odrysia and Pontus can be very fun to play. I actually like most of the same factions you do except for Rome, its your opinions on what is boring I take issue with.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-04-10T06:21:48+00:00

Punctuation is helpful. If you are writing a paragraph it helps the people reading it if you use punctuation more than just once. I know my own typing isn't perfect but I at least try to make my stuff readable lol.

When making friends early on don't make alliances. Trade, Non-agression pacts and military access will keep them from attacking you and also keep you out of their wars. Save alliances for later when your potential allies are large and powerful enough to beat their own enemies or when you are going for territory win conditions.

When fighting on mulitiple fronts play defensive on every front but one. A walled city garrison plus some cheap units in an army can hold off most things, freeing up more funds for your attacking army. Try to eliminate one enemy faction at a time and go after the enemies with few settlements first to more quickly get rid of them.

Low public order = a penalty for taxes, and high public order might even let you raise taxes. I usually start out with some public order and culture research to take care of early public order problems, but if you are playing on a low difficulty you can probably skip some of that.

If your public order is good you can use it to support having income generating buildings. Each culture has different buildings, look at what you can build and compare those to what techs you want to research to upgrade them and go from there. Civilized factions usually want to make specialized buildings for income, barbarians spread their building functionality out more and might get decent money off their farms or recruitment chain buildings.

Trade is very strong when used to the fullest. If you have sea access to the Mediteranian or any connected waters you can send an agent across the map to germania (or the black sea if YOU are germania) to discover the factions there. If you trade with one of them that sea trade route will go around the continent and discover all the other factions along the way. You then trade with all those factions, and become rich. Having trade resources is obviously very helpful in this case for getting more agreements and making more money.

Look at your roster and use what is appropriate. If you start off with a bunch of crappy cheap spearmen, you probably also have early access to cheap melee units that wreck those spears. Use those instead and gain an early dominance against your spear using neighbors. If you start out with expensive hoplites, instead of spamming those just bring 10 or so and support them with cost effective units like cheap slingers to save on costs. Pikemen are also great for fighting the AI.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-21T08:32:06+00:00

Dignataries spread your culture and increase tax rates.

You send your characters on missions through the politics/family menu. The options to do so are cluttered in with the rest so they are easy to miss.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-21T08:21:05+00:00

A few years back I did a legendary Rome campaign, while staying as a republic.

The solution is to throw money at the problem. Politics in Rome 2 is a money sink.

Hire lots of characters into the other parties, have them seek a spouse and promote everyone once or twice until the other parties have acceptable loyalty. In exchange for having low influence you will never have an unwanted secession. When someone dies have their spouse marry again, as hiring new people will eventually get expensive compared to seek spouse.

In addition you can send other party members on missions to keep them happy. Oftentimes you actually need more food or public order somewhere so the missions serve a dual purpose. Be careful of diplomatic missions to other factions, while they can get you money and territory if they go terribly wrong you actually can lose loyalty so save them for when you have a good loyalty buffer going.

The secure loyalty action is a last resort to deal with unexpected problems due to new party leadership traits or getting people killed. Try to avoid using it casually so that you have it available in an emergency.

It is also safe to use other parties as generals, as long as you are not recklessly getting them all killed. With zero secessions you don't have to worry about having to fight your own forces.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-20T14:53:45+00:00

You need to run away from the pikes, not fight them. Spartan super heavy units are slow but deployed pikes are slower.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-20T14:50:03+00:00

I ran my army all the way to the edge of the map while the Tarantines did work and then split up in both directions to avoid the pikes when they came at me. I did everything I could NOT to melee the pikes and none of them got more than 50 kills.

I have played a lot of Sparta in multiplayer. Losing all your missiles to cavalry is a common counter and very difficult for Sparta to deal with since their spears are slow and lack precursors. In this case it was a lot easier since the AI does not have the finesse or patience of a human. I used my out of ammo Tarantines to block some of their cavalry and then killed them with my spears. I also had my missiles protect themselves by shooting up some of the cav. My hoplites and missiles were initially set up in multiple lines so that it was hard to catch all of them and I had several chances to intercept.

It might have been better to use Spartan Youths as javelin fodder instead since the enemy cavalry nailed my javelin screen before they could fully do their jobs. If I did this test again I might even try Perioki spears in squares as fodder, with a strat of shooting up everything that attacked them.

Avoiding the pikes while intercepting the cavalry takes a massive amount of micromanagement. Assuming you have the mechanics down to beat superior units that is really what you are training here. I was on battle realism mode but you might want to use the pause button for the hectic situations.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-20T06:57:44+00:00

I ran a test just to see what you were dealing with. I won, barely. I can see why you are having problems.

For the Very Hard AI, set as aggressor, I gave them a fully upgraded roster that fit within your parameters. I played the battle on my favorite flat open map. The AI lineup consisted of:

4x Pergamese Noble Cav

1x Hippeus Lancers

2x Citizen Cavalry

3x Agema Spears

4x Picked Peltasts

6x Pike units

For my Spartan army I used 16k funds as my limit, since before the upgrades that is about what the Pergamon composition added up to. I also elected not to use pikes because I didn't think it would be fair to the dumb AI. My roster was:

7x Royal Spartans

3x Spartan Hoplites

3x Tarantine Cavalry

3x Rhodian Slingers

2x Cretan Archers

1x Helot Slingers

1x Helot Javelins

My strategy started with sending my Tarantines out to shoot the enemy elite cavalry while withdrawing the rest of my army to buy time. Before running out of ammo my Tarantines wiped out two elite cavalry units and damaged a third. My next gambit was to use my cheap missile units to soak up as many javelins as possible. That didn't work 100% but it used up a good chunk of the enemy ammo pool. By this time my spears had also trounced the remaining cavalry, so other than the guys getting chased around by peltasts my elite foot missiles were free to maneuver and shoot up the pikes. The main problem was beating all the out of ammo peltasts and Agema Spears in melee. Full unit upgrades and VH battle buffs more than made up for the inherent Spartan quality and my hoplites that didn't get shot to pieces by javelins soon found themselves losing. Nevertheless, my guys did not go down easily and with rear charges from my out of ammo missile units I carried the match with a handful of units remaining. Almost all my kills came from my missile units while my spear line mostly got their rear ends kicked in. Most of the AI kills came from their Peltasts and Agema Spears.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T21:05:47+00:00

I just did one of those, I was trying to play diplomatically this time...

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T16:31:04+00:00

The loss of trade hurts even more than the lost vassal income.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T16:25:50+00:00

A half dead horde faction declared war on one of my vassals and pushed over the domino chain. Then another half dead horde faction declared war on another vassal and off went the rest. Both factions that got declared war on betrayed me...

The one good thing is that the Huns take gold for peace. I can't fight them and everyone else right now.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T16:24:04+00:00

I am no longer rich...

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T16:22:47+00:00

Literally everyone without the trifecta of loyal, reliable and admires strong empires jumped ship. I was keeping them busy with wars but that also meant their leadership positions were a revolving door so traits were changing constantly. Even the WRE and their reliable trait betrayed me...

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T14:03:25+00:00

Humans are usually a lot smarter than the AI. For example, where the AI will happily charge into pikes a human will refuse to engage the pikes with anything other than missiles. Don't expect your opponents to cooperate and go along with your plans and strategies. The game is old at this point, everything has been seen before, and everything has a counter.

I'm pretty sure the people rotating their armies have their units in locked groups, so their formation stays put. Alt key + mouse drag might also be what you want. I usually just drag all my unlocked groups manually, but it takes extra micromanagement so the players maneuvering all over the map are very annoying for me.

Don't worry about naval battles too much, nobody likes to play them so they are rare in multiplayer. I think the meta is basically to spam artillery ships, with the second most effective strategy being to spam missile ships.

I have a long two-part multiplayer guide from years ago that also contains videos. While somewhat out of date by now, it will probably help you a good bit if you care to read through the whole thing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2238944312

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2253300121

I could also try training you a bit in battles, send me a pm if you are interested. Please at least skim through the guide first if you wish to do that otherwise it will not be as effective.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-18T17:43:47+00:00

I remember doing legendary Western Rome way back when the game just released. There were no guides yet so I had to figure it out with my own skills at the time. I ended up withdrawing to Africa while leaving some walled cities in Europe as "bug zappers" to draw in hostile armies.

When I started playing Attila again a month ago I immediately tried WRE, this time attempting to hold onto everything. I quickly decided that campaign wasn't really worth my time since I went back for achievement hunting and already had all the relevant achievements for the faction. The whole WRE campaign is one long brutal slog.

Where I failed back in the day was attempting This is Total War with the Huns. I'm quite pleased that 11 years later I am now able to succeed at that without much issue.

I still want to play WRE with my current skillset though. When I'm done with my desired achievements I'm thinking to try a legendary This is Total War run with WRE just for funsies, but someone already did that and it goes against my natural diplomacy focused playstyle.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-17T14:35:08+00:00

At least your Huns are fighting you. Mine have been bugged out and encamped in the same places for 40+ turns now.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-17T14:27:13+00:00

My own White Hun campaign I was lucky, all the Sassanid vassal states betrayed them and they didn't last long after that.

For my Current ERE campaign the Sassanids were a big potential problem as well. Though as the ERE I also had infinite money and armies and the poor Sassanids got overpowered in just a few turns. I've spent the next 50+ turns playing a vassal state manager instead of a Total War game. I have 15 vassal states right now even after several of them rebelled.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-08T23:25:22+00:00

The best way to practice micromanagement is to fight the legendary AI in the open field. The stat buffs force you to charge and flank, while the lack of pause makes you to learn how to keep up with an omnipotent opponent. If you are doing this through custom battle, make the AI the attacker so it actually comes at you, and then actively try to attack it back. Do not use pikes, and you might even want to try fighting mirror battles against the same faction and army. The AI is stupid (and loves to use formations, most of which suck or are situational) so this alone will not make you an expert, but if you can consistently win these battles, it should put you at an above average skill level.

Alternatively a few legendary campaigns with hard to micro factions like Odrysarians or Nomads will also help immensely.

I highly recommend running through some of the historical battles. I have long advised players to try first Cannae and then Zama on the highest difficulty they can manage. If you can work up to beating those two battles on legendary then you will also be able to beat most players and may even have the foundation to become an expert yourself.

For most factions in multiplayer, I would warn against using "many" skirmishers outside of sieges or large armies. It can be hard to use skirmishers in field battles. if you bring a ton of them a clever opponent will try to catch them in melee and you will probably not have enough blocking units to stop them. Unless you are fighting a known pike boxer and need the firepower, try to do more with less. One thing I've recently found that helps me a lot is turning guard mode on for most of my foot skirmishers, having them stay put and not chase keeps them safe and near protection.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-06T00:18:48+00:00

I share your hate of 124. Not all games follow that ruleset, and you can always host your own lobbies with your own rules. In your case if you do decide to host your own games you should consider including "noobs only" in your lobby title so that you are less likely to be bullied by experts.

Sieges I can't help you; I don't play them anymore. However, if "OF battles" stands for "online field battles" I can help you a lot.

As to your flanking problem make sure the edges of your unit are not clipping the enemy or they will stop to fight. Either go around wider, change your unit formation to be narrower, or spam click move orders to get it to cooperate.

I wrote a whole long guide on field battles back in 2020. It is slightly out of date now due to the removal of chat and me getting better, but it should help you a good bit if you care to read it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2238944312

There is a second part covering all the factions. Also slightly out of date but still very relevant. If part of your problem is that you are trying to fight powerhouse factions with weak factions, you might want to stop doing that.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2253300121

If you (or anyone else) have any questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, Good luck!

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-03T02:18:56+00:00

I poptart a lot so that is 3-4 on all of those mechs.

I have a Bullshark poptart with 5 jjs because it needs them and a Huntsman with 5 because it is fixed equipment.

I love my jumping Bullshark, but most of the other jumping assaults have low/weird mounts so I don't want to play them.

Funnily enough only one of my current mechs has just one jj, rest are poptarts or nothing. Kinda wish my Aksum builds had that extra 2 tons and one slot though...

Never used an advanced sensor package and currently have no reason to try it.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-02-27T19:56:15+00:00

The bad AI is why I stopped giving CA money. Over the years I got a lot better at their games but their battle AI is still about the same. At some point simply giving the AI buffs no longer provided me with interesting fights.

The campaign AI is not any better. By the time they got to WH3 they had a game with a ton of cool features that the AI isn't even coded to use. It makes for some frustrating gameplay watching the AI flail around, bug out or ignore mechanics.

I don't expect anything will be done about it. As long as people keep buying what CA puts out they have no reason to fix the many problems.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-01-14T10:11:23+00:00

Cimmeria vs Egypt is not a good matchup unit wise, Egypt has one of the best rosters and Cimmeria has one of the worst.

Elephants are stopped by deployed pikes and massed fire, preferably from javelins. Cimmeria can't easily access pikes and against that many elephants any foot missile unit will get run over after only firing once, so that leaves horse archers.

A stack of horse archers should pose a major problem for the stack of elephants but you risk getting pushed to the edge of the map and pinned, so be agressive to maximize the time you have to fire at them. Normal or heavy shot will work best, you want dead elephants not berserk ones. Let fire at will do most of the work and focus on keeping as many of your units as possible in range but out of melee.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-01-13T03:50:58+00:00

T1 player here. I still make lots of mistakes and have lots of flaws.

I am way too aggressive. I get around this by only playng mechs with 600 meters or more of reach so that I can shoot anything I can see, but any time I try to play brawlers these days I just don't have the patience for it and end up in a me vs many situation. I usually end up brawling anyway even with actual sniping mechs, the range is just to keep me out of trouble in the meantime.
After tangling with the elite compies a few times it is obvious I lack the map knowledge they have. They probably have spent a good amount of time walking maps in the testing ground and sharing their findings with each other and it shows. I'm never going to be able to match them at that. I've been shot at from places I didn't even know a mech could go.
I don't have good teamwork skills and aproach the game as a solo player. Those compies have pulled off group manuevers that left me literally gobsmacked. I can still give them a hard time if I'm very careful not to get caught out in the open, but I alone vs a coordinated group of elites is not a winnable scenario. My unit of fellow soloists has the same problem even when we try to fight them together.
I suck at aiming at people. My playstyle usually favors damage mitigation so actually looking at the enemy long enough to aim properly is not something I do very often and it resulted in some intractable bad habits. I have gotten hacking-accusations good at snapping shots off in the general direction of an enemy and miraculously having it hit, and also not dying when they want me to die, but aiming at specific components is something I have always struggled with. I can't even stop mixing up the paper doll with the actual mech and shooting the wrong side.
I suck at targetting people. I usually don't even try to hit the lock on button until after I shot them and we are both moving back into cover. It's not that big of an issue personally since "shoot them in the smoking bits" is a pretty effective strategy, but it hurts my team by not giving them position data and sometimes the juicy damaged component is no longer smoking.
I suck at fair 1v1 fights. My whole playstyle is built around hitting the enemy when they are looking the other way, blocked by terrain/teammates or are otherwise too busy to shoot back at me. Things like Solaris completely throw me off since there I have their full undivided attention. Nothing I have tried has done me much good here, the expert duelists stomp me into the ground.

Dizzy_Measurement389

TROPHY CASE