ROME: TOTAL WAR

I've been working on a Let's Play for Rome: Total War the past couple of months and find myself having a decent time. Though the AI's decision making process on medium sometimes leaves me scratching my head. For one thing the AI tends to leave a lot of their cities rather under protected. So much so that I was able to swoop in and claim all of Egypt's cities along the Nile River in a couple of turns. The AI had merely left a couple of units in each of those cities. They did a similar thing at several other points within their territory as well which allowed me to claim about half of it in under five years.

On the other hand, the AI also seems to hesitate when it comes to attacking the player on this setting as well. One of the stronger military powers left outside of my Roman allies at this point are the armies of Thrace and most of their armies are simply standing around on their cities on their southern border with my kingdom. For some reason they are unwilling to devote themselves to sending one or more of their armies on the offensive. At the same time they've left on their port cities on the Black Sea wide open to invasion.

Though I do find myself pondering if I should begin waging war on the other Roman factions at this point. After all, I'm in a good position to cripple one of the families and the other has spent the bulk of it's time laying claim to worthless cities in France and Germany.

My experiences aside I was wondering if anyone else has played this game and run into similar issues with the AI on lower difficulty settings.

Yeah, I've only had to deal with a couple of large armies so far in my capmaign. One of them I bribed, one I managed to basically crush by tricking it into getting to close to my wall defenses, and two or three I managed to crush in the field with large numbers of cavalry.

author=Shinan
Which I guess is the opposite problem of what it used to be when the AI would just have a bunch of one-unit armies running around the map

I haven't seen the AI moving around too many super small armies with only one or two units in them. Instead the standard size in the field tends to be closer to ten units. Instead the AI tends to leave a lot of cities with only one or two units inside of them which leaves the AI highly vulnerable to attacks. This is why I've been able to readily reduce the Egyptian empire from 12 cities to 6 in a matter of turns. In fact, the five biggest factions if you exclude me are the Julii with 14 cities, the Scipii with 7 cities, Parthia with 6 cities, Brittania with 6 cities, and Egypt with 6 cities.

In fact, I currently control 36 cities. So I have almost as much territory as the next five biggest nations combined. And if your wondering why the Scipii are so small. It's because I captured Syracuse and Carthage before the AI could do it. in effect I heavily stymied their growth since they didn't know where to go next with those cities under my control. I suppose the Julii should be a bit thankful for that. After all, they managed to beat me to Patavium because I was distracted by wars with the Greek Cities, Carthage, and Macedonian to focus on capturing the place. As a result the Julii were able to grow large enough to be considered a notable power. Albeit the bulk of the territory they hold is comprised of rather small towns.

Though it does look like the Scipii are planning to invade Iberia at this point.