I like how
Declinator is complaining he raped a 2 times bigger army of nobody with highly experienced next-to-top tier roman infantry.
The praetorians are really powerful especially for how early you get them but I certainly would not get that kind of results in Rome 1 with similar armies. And them being so overpowered is simply another fault if you want to excuse the AI which does make many ridiculous errors.
The AI does not seem to recruit elite units and likes those levy javelinmen + levy spearmen armies. (And those Praetorians were not "highly experienced" as they mostly just had some bronze chevrons.)
And why does it give me these kinds of odds (best of the three):
But then I easily get these kinds of results:
In Rome 1 I could sort of trust the auto-resolve. If it gave me that kind of odds I knew that it would be very difficult to win but in this one I'll have no idea (except through looking at the enemies unit list of course.)
And it's not just no-name factions as everything from Carthage, Athens, and Sparta to Seleucid falls just as easily and elite units seem extremely rare. When they do have units like Oathsworns they use them just as badly, i.e. lsend them one-by-one to my front lines and often just turning their back to me and going back.
This is against Sparta and notice how most of my losses are velites who I forgot didn't have skirmish on:
The Spartan Hoplites are nerfed a lot if I remember my Rome 1 correctly.
I also tried fighting with shitty mercenaries with a Legio that had no real bonuses to see how they would fare:
The Ai has a pretty similar army to mine and even had a couple of Hellenic Cataphracts which were very powerful based on stats but the AI choosing to ride them straight into my spearmen made them seem a bit weak. Those camels spearmen I had were much worse than even Equites (which are much more powerful in this one than in Rome 1.)
I guess I did lose many more men in this one and it's true that most losses occurred exactly where my praetorians would have been (in the front) as those spearmen were just not good at killing infantry. On the other hand the enemy did the same kind of mistakes in this one too. It absolutely cannot handle missile units effectively if you strike aggressively. Sometimes it even sends them out to melee when they haven't used even half their ammo. It also seems very confused about what to do with cavalry. Often it keeps them just out of reach of my missile units and then charges at the front of my men (often when already occupied by its own men and thereby weakening the charge even further.)
Sometimes the AI does sort of try to flank me inside settlements with some of its units but it seems like it may be more of a pathfinding thing than it trying to actually flank me.
