Hey
I am playing this game since release yet because of real life requirements I was capable of going only through 2 great campaigns – GNW as Sweden and WSS as Grand Alliance.
Here are some thoughts:
1)
AI – one has to be careful with AI settings. My experience is that extended time for AI is a must. Historical Attrition for players only prevent AI from starving its armies. Medium aggressiveness and medium bonus for Fog of War is better then setting AI for aggressive gameplays with high FOW bonus. Medium settings prevent AI from charging enemy.
With such a settings, AI, playing defensive game can give some challenge. When human player needs to be on offensive ( meaning Sweden / Grand Alliance) then there is a lot of fun in organising a prolonged offensive.
On operational level – AI can be demanding. Yet there are some things to be addressed:
-AI tends to divide the army in to many stacks without a leader.
-AI lacks the tendency to organise a bigger army and attack enemies field army.
-AI lacks the capability of creating a bigger army to organise offensive on a specified target and keep the offensive running
-AI lacks capability of organising a supply for bessigieng armies ( moving supply wagons with escort to supply points)
As the games go on AI armies are changing in to enormous number of leaderless stacks walking around.
So my point is that genneraly AI requires tunning in organising armies and performing prolonged offensive.
2)
Bugs and problems.
-decision issue – as all regoins are rich one is not sure where to use draft/requisition card
-some events don’t fire ( for me Prussian/Danish event did not fire)
-manpower – seems like Sweden had limtless number of people to serve in the army
History:
-GNW starts with Poland-Lithuania having huge professional army and being in war with Sweden. In history Commonwealth armies were in bad condtion ( not using flintlocks, ad being unpaid)
-Country was not in war and Livonian invasion was Saxon venture. So I gues there should be at least an option thah Poland starts as neutral and Sweden has a choice – wheter to invade Poland-Lithuania or go for Saxony though central Germany ( this could be an option as Charles XII was considering it but it should trigger Dutch/Hanoverian reaction and push Denmark closer back to war) To Limit the game Russian armies should be boosted
-bourbon side – Spanish army is to big and professional at the beginning. To balance the game French could be bit bigger
-infantry statics. – I just think it is unfair that polish/Hungarian/Spanish infantry has the same stats as English/dutch/Austrian/French. At the beginning of XVIII century not all infantries introduced fully flintlocks and modern firing systems. I think that poles/Hungarians/spain should start with infantry having stats used in the game for Russian strieltsy. And it should be slowly upgrading ( the could be an option requiring small number of money/EP upgrading few regiments at the time. Ideally such a change could be visualized by moving from “national” uniform ( for poles and Hungarians) in to more modern tricorn style ( as it happened in history)