Mamluks, Genoa, and Bafra declared a coalition war against me as Byzantium. Mamluks is the war leader and I can take land from them but no one else. Why? I want my cores back from Genoa.
I have about 300 hours in game and one thing I’ve noticed is that Stackwipes are extremely common. Two levie armies can go toe to toe, one with 8k and one 10k, and the 8k gets completely wiped while the 10k loses 1k. Battles that should be slogs that result in pyrrhic victories are stomps in favor of the side that just barely outclasses the other.
Combine that with how long it takes for levies to regenerate, and how suicidal the AI is, results in some pretty crazy war outcomes, like major regional powers regularly having zero military forces that they can call on. The AI rarely capitalizes on this (in my Byzantium run I had 750 levies to my name for 3 years since my 20k peasants were angry and no one bothered to attack me), but it makes things insanely easy for the player. Pretty much every country will have some period of time where they have zero army to their name.
I feel battles should usually result in fewer casualties, with a chance for losses during battle to be temporary (wounded or fled the battle), along with a mechanic where you can raise emergency levies at incredible stability cost if you have less than 25% levies or something.
Anyone who has played this game for more than a few hours has probably come to realize just how bad the AI is at waging war in this game. There's constant posts about it on this sub and the general consensus is that you shouldn't even ally anyone because they will actively sabotage your warscore.
I think the problem is with how intricate this game is and how many mechanics there are, and getting the AI to function properly in such an environment is extremely difficult. We all know that the AI loves to send tiny stacks into enemy territory one by one, but one thing I've noticed that people tend not to talk about is that the AI is especially suicidal when it comes to supply lines and environmental attrition.
For instance in my Brandenburg run I just had Denmark call me into a war against Sweden, Scania, Norway, and Novgorod. Denmark had 8k soldiers, I had 5k, and each of the opponents had less than 2k so it should have been an easy dub. Denmark and I occupied all of Sweden up to Stockholm until Winter hit and I disbanded my levies to avoid Scandinavian Winter attrition. We had ~50% war score so I assumed the war was won. Denmark then proceeded to march its 8k army into uncolonized northern Scandinavia in the middle of winter, occupied a few Swedish colonies, sat around until they had less than 5k soldiers left, then marched into Novgorod and sieged while starving for a few months until they were so weak that Novgorod stackwiped them with their 2k stack. Denmark started the war with 8k and lost the war due to freezing and starving their army to death.
It's great that we have all of these cool mechanics like supply and environmental attrition, but if it's so complicated that the AI can't actually understand how to use these mechanics, it almost feels like a mistake to have them at all. Which begs the question, is there hope that the AI will ever be able to function in this game, or is it too complicated and no matter how much work the devs put into making the game better, we will always be stuck with lobotomized AI?
First off, I run grapple, firestar, power cell, low profile, RE45, charge rifle, and battery backup at all times.
I begin the match by running DMR, immediately grappling up to a high ground power position and standing still while 1-2 tapping the entire enemy team. I continue this until they start to do coordinated pushes against me, which sometimes never happens. If they do, I switch to CAR and camp the same high ground power position while holding slightly less still and hipfiring anyone who comes near.
I usually get my titan first, which will always be Legion, at which point I will hide on the edge of the map in long range mode scouring the rooftops and open areas for pilots stupid enough to use the game's movement mechanics. Once they call in titans I hide behind my teammates and shoot enemy titans and pilots in long range mode.
I continue this until I win, in which case I flame the enemy team, or I lose in which case I flame my teammates and the enemy team.
My 35 galleys just got wiped by Venice's 20 heavy ships in 8 days... in the Mediterranean. And apparently they just buffed them last update?
So if galleys are just 150 ducat cash sinks that die to heavies without fighting back at all in the terrain that they are meant to be best in, then why put them in the game at all? They need to be at least twice as good as they are now if they aren't just going to remove them from the game.