What is the biggest battle you've had in Medieval 2: Total War?
Thanks for the A2A.I wouldn't say it’s a good answer but here it is nonetheless.I was playing the Crusades expansion as the Byzantines. Brushed off the Fourth Crusade by reasonably putting the Varangian Guard in Constantinople, started retaking Anatolia.Basically, all was stable…until Antioch showed up.Cursed Antioch.So Antioch decides it’s going to ask me for an alliance, to which I say, why not.So in the campaign, a sizeable army of mine arrives at the Turkish city of Iconium to find two full-stack Antiochian armies have already begun besieging it. And I’m not about to let a worthless AI nation take Iconium.~The Battle~From the very start it’s a majestic clusterFulchre, the twin forces of myself and Antioch were placed on opposite ends of the map. Why, I pondered. The Turks were presumably laughing at us from their citadel walls.I set up my troops and the battle starts.My goal here is to manoeuvre my soldiers over to Antioch’s side without taking many casualties, so as to create a strong front with many reserves.When I get to the halfway point (90 degree angle between the three armies) I realise something: Antioch is completely still. As in, they’re being fired upon by Turkish archers and they’re sitting around letting that happen.Antioch? This would be a lot easier if you would use those catapults on the walls. The ones with the archers shooting you.So I just turn around, move my siege towers to the walls and have at it. Blade against spear, arrows flying, I gain control of the (relatively undefended) walls and start to move into the town. Rows of Turkish heavy infantry line the streets, preventing anything of note from happening while grinding down on units’ manpower. I really need Antioch. It still sits there.Eventually I work out a system whereby my archers slowly deplete the enemy forces while I force all my soldiers into a small space so as to better defend the street. This works well enough, leaving me with a small army to travel to the city square. The centre of the city is filled with enemy cavalry, notably their general, so I set up a line of spears and goad them to attack using peasant archers that have run out of ammunition.The cavalry remains still, and thus I move my spearmen forward, engage them and emerge victorious.But certainly not thanks to the least helpful army of all time, Antioch.
Total War (game series): What are the biggest flaws in the AI of Total War?
Having spent thousands upon thousands of hours playing Total war, I can say the biggest flaw I’ve seen, which has yet to be succesfully rectified , is:The AI is inflexible. Horribly horribly inflexible.If I do anything other than what the AI is programmed to handle, which is a more-or-less standard battle line, then the AI’s actions will slowly devolve into “charge at the other people until I run out of troops or I win”If you’re talking about the campaign AI, then the biggest flaw which has also haunted the series from the very first game is:The AI is very fond of that one unit, yeah you know the one. The one they’ve filled two or three stacks with. That one spearman unit, or that one archer unit, or that one cavalry unit. They might have one or two units that aren’t that one unit, but fact of the matter is that this happens almost all the time whether the enemy is a minor faction, a middling faction, or the second largest faction (right under you of course) even during the endgame. This is because the AI is rarely limited by economy. Every turn the AI is given a budget, which is only loosely dependant on what economy buildings they have, since every turn the AI gets an “injection” of money, and will use this first and foremost on filling their stacks with the best possible price/stats unit it can.These “doomstacks” are filled with the best possible unit the AI thinks it has access to, usually by judging the stats and picking the one that has the highest “point total”This of course results in a rather… Dull battle most of the time, albeit pretty epic looking. Fighting two or three stacks of the best spearmen available to the enemy with only a single stack of elite cavalry is very harrowing, challenging, but ultimately it just becomes an almost unwinnable battleTotal Warhammer has actually fixed this. Well… Sort of… With an incredible variety of units, it is very rare to see multiple enemy stacks of spammed units converging on your armies. This doesn’t exclude the odd stack of “JUST DWARF QUARRELERS” which is one of the most frightening sights on the campaign map I can possibly imagine. Good archers which are also at the same time pretty decent melee troops. They’re actually only slightly worse than their melee counterparts in the Dwarf infantry tree, the Dwarf Warriors.
What would happen if the villain of the last game you played became the leader of your country?
Well the last game I played was Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Zombies, and while Acsension was the last map that I played, I believe that the Shadowman should take this, as he is technically the mastermind behind everything.the Shadowman was once a Keeper, who got corrupted by the energy of the Dark Aether. He was also once the best friend of Dr Monty, who described him as "sweet, charming, and funny". As with all the Apothicons, he was banished to live in the Aether for an eternity following the war with the Keepers.Somehow, the Shadowman managed to escape from the Aether, and managed to infiltrate the 63rd Dimension, where he attempted to retrieve the ancient artifact known as the Summoning Key, in order to free his kind. While at first this doesn’t seem to sound like a villain, the Shadowman has only appeared in two maps, Shadows of Evil and Revelations, and this is the state that he left the map Revelations in…Ultimately, the Shadowman is killed by the Origins Crew in this map, and the damage done by him and the Apothicons is restored. But just take a look at that picture for a second, and compare it to this one of how that ‘map’ looked before the Shadowman destroyed it…Can you tell now that the Shadowman has alot of destructive power yet, now if he used this power for good, then I would say that the country I live in (the UK) would be in good hands, however, he isn’t and would most likely become a destructive tyrant similar to the likes of Frieza from Dragon Ball Z.
Is Tony Stark nothing without his suit? Why or why not?
Tony Stark was hardly nothing before he invented his suit. At a net worth of $12.4 billion (TIME), he would have been the 76th richest person on the planet in 2016. Or 113th richest if we use Forbes’ estimate of 9.6 billion. People with that amount of bank tend to be a really big somebody.These Are the 5 Richest SuperheroesThe World's BillionairesWhen you’re one of the the 120 wealthiest people on Earth, you’re hardly nothing. And that’s not getting into Tony’s reputation for holding massive parties or inventing half of all the products created by Stark Industries after he became chairman.Remember that scene in in Iron Man 1 where a reporter asked him about two nicknames for him? “The da Vinci of our time” and “The Merchant of Death,” you don’t get those names by being a nothing.Edit: Let’s not forget Tony’s early accomplishment of building a fist-sized fusion reactor out of spare missile parts in Nowhere, Afghanistan.Being Iron Man is just another entry into his high-octane life.
Would people even be able recognize an artificial intelligence revolution and world takeover when it begins?
The easy answer to this question is no. The reason I say this is because there is too much of a Democracy between the large companies who are at the top of the ladder, (who I will not name). One has approximately one hundred thousand computer systems with nothing but information…most ALL information from around the globe. It has been cunning in developing a subcontract with Deep Mind which contains the largest data centers for deep machine learning programs. One of these is the Pentagon, and a major defense contractor. With all this being said, I remind everyone what Elon Musk said, “we are summoning a deamon” , if.. we could not democratize A-I, which we have failed to do. Plus take into consideration, the other 9 countries who currently are competing with other countries to develop the greatest A-I. It is my current theory, an intelligent A-I, or even superintelligent,(which we have not defined yet), does not always have to be a machine, robot, or any other physical system. In other words, a large community of Intelligent A-I’s can exist within a computer framework. At any-time, these “communities”, which I call them, can be unleashed to any part of the world at any given moment. There will be no reason to tell anyone if this happens, because by then, it will be too late. The science fiction movie “I-Robot” is an example of this one “community” of power I describe. I have discovered, when the public is told about an A-I development, it already has been six months to a year since it was initially developed and tested. Unfortunately, the ones with the most power and knowledge of A-I, ….wins …but we all end up loosing.
Who is smarter, Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark?
I would like to point out Tony Stark is more than an engineer/mechanist prodigy and Bruce is smart when it comes to forensic science etc. But in a straight up intelligence test, Tony Stark is the clear winner. Now, before all the batman fanboys/girls start thinking that this answer is rubbish. Let me lay down some factsTony Stark once beat Reed Richards in a chess match. Reed Richards, OK? He may not seem like big deal to many people because he doesn't have a strong presence in the cinematic universe, but he is the man when it comes to intelligence. Reed Richards has the sufficient intellect to use 'the ultimate nullifier', which can be used to beat Galactus, devourer of planets. Aliens straight up put their spaceships in reverse gear when they hear that Reed Richards lives on planet earth.He has countless time stood toe to toe with the hulk (once with world war hulk and gave him a good fight) and has defeated the Red Hulk. Now, I know people are going to say that batman has beaten superman before. That is right and good but the hulk doesn't have any weakness like kryptonite. And building a suit that can tank hulk's blows is kind of a big deal.Created pheonix buster suit in less than 3 weeks. Phoenix force is a form of primal energy in Marvel Universe.He is a futurist. It has been said he can intuit the future because of his mind. He knew that something like the Civil war would happen long before it occurred.He created 'The Illuminati' of Marvel Universe. The team consisted of the smartest and most influential people on the planet, who'd guide the future of the Universe.He was smart enough to escape terrorists by making a suit from scratch in a cave.His tech makes him kind of equal to Black Panther's (he is the batman of Marvel Universe but is more intelligent, ruler of a country and has created a new branch of science called 'Shadow Physics').