I've always been happy with the numerical handicaps an advantages the AI can receive. At least it presents a futher challenge to playing the game. (Beating the odds against you). Probably a reason I don't care for simulation computer wargames. The AI has to be too precise and too exact. With open ended tactical like games as Combat Mission and Steel Panthers I can give the AI the handicaps an advantages I want that will provide a fun and challenging game. Though the AI for both of them on offense leaves a lot to be desired. Combat mission AI doesn't know when it's winning and at the near end of the battle moves out of objectives or entrenched positions to take back one measly flag. The AI in SPWAW appears too passive for me where I will pour everything to the wind and fire every shot, it is more conservative and only fires a few shots and not enough counter shots for my liking. But, then again I play like a Patton and full bull to the wind to hell with the losses.
War is hell men will die, but, I must get there first.
I'm a premadona haha
I've never expected a perfect AI. What I have expected were enough options and the ability to improve what the AI has to use almost to the unlimited point. (I'd prefer unlimited). Spartan has a very good example of this in v1.013 AND allows the player to also play with the AI's performance in the manner it researches, builds and attacks/defends and even it's diplomatic stances. This too is something I'd like to see more games open up to the community the ability to tweak the AI even inside the game. The KOHAN series is another game that opens up the AI abilites to the players to create. I actually created an AI in it that even I am afraid to face sometimes.
I think that more heads are always better than one or two when it comes to the AI and allowing the community more options to tinker with the AI's will just improve the game in the long term.
In a nutshell all I'm asking for is more options for the individual player to tweak the abilities of the AI over hard-coded AI difficulties and settings. Of course a game like RTW which didn't even program in at least basic rules of warfare tactics for the time period was a lost cause improving the stats or life of the units. They didn't even program it for cordinated attacks. It goes to battle like a street fight in the bronx everyone for himself and forget the flanks...what flanks? lol The only thing I could do to salvage RTW was to just completely remove morale. Then it just became a game of population limits. Both sides lost huge amounts of men in all the battles (that was good, but, I couldn't play on huge settings any longer lol). But, that challenge is still there if I want to play it, making population growth more important than anything else and trying not to lose as many men as possible during each battle. The other thing I did was gimp Spain, Thrace, Armenia, Nubia and yes even Britiania to be much much weaker than all the other factions (thus not playable by me or yeah I could play them, but, I would lose horribly lol) This opened up the game for Carthage to finally grow and even move into Spain and even make naval assaults on Rome early in the game. It also allowed Gaul and Germania to become stronger. In the east as much as I tried in fairness to create a stronger Selucid AI empire, I couldn't just shut down Egypt and Parthia completely. Maybe 1 out of 10 games the Selucids will break out and become a power, but, most times it's Egypt and Parthia
Many other things of RTW make the AI just look horrible. As I would play Rome with FOW off to watch how my modding worked out I noticed far too many times backwards and forwards movements of way too many units not doing anything for 30 years (full stacks) and there were provinces wide open for them to attack or take that they were at war with or even neutral provinces open from rebellion.
I'd rather see an AI programmed for an objective and follow that programming to a tee "unless" and this is a big unless it has a very good lead and knows (it should know an can calculate victory conditions and when the game ends at least. geesh) the end of the game is near and it will have the victory. There is no need abandoning entrenched or a winning posture to banzhai attack the player just because the player got one damn objective at the near end of the game. This fuzzy logic or whatever it's called just appears to befuddle the AI nowadays especially on large maps. Back in the day with games like "EMPIRE" or "WARLORDS" when you saw the AI coming by gawd it was COMING! lol Even so, even the old titles by SSI like Gettysburg, or Antietam or Sons of Liberty or War of the Lance those AI's were and still are better than most AI's today. I have much more challenging battles playing SSI's Gettysburg vs HPS's Gettysburg as an example. And to this day "War of the Lance" AI is one of the best I've ever played against in "fair and equal settings". Matrixgames really needs to bribe Dave Landrey back into the business.
He also worked on "Battles of Napoleon" another great old game with a decent ai.