14 DAY TRIAL // The leading designer working on Shogun 2: Total War, the upcoming strategy title from publisher SEGA and developer The Creative Assembly has said that the new Artificial Intelligence that his team has created for the game is now able to beat humans on the highest difficulty settings.
Mike Simpson, the man who leads the development team working on the Total War series at The Creative Assembly, has told Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, “There is so much AI grunt that I think we are now dialing that back, which is a better position to be in. I don’t expect to get any of that kind of criticism of the AI in Shogun.”
His statements do not clarify whether the higher difficulty settings for Shogun 2 will add bonuses to the various characteristics of enemy units or whether they will only make the A.I. behave better in the tactical battles.
Ever since the launch of the first Medieval 2: Total War, fans of the series have complained about the fact that as the complexity of the experience increased, with added units, more tactics, upgrade paths and technology advancement, the A.I. ability to keep up and challenge the player decreased.
The complaints were especially justified when it came to Empire: Total War, although the patches The Creative Assembly has delivered helped somewhat.
Shogun 2: Total War returns the series to its conflict between the Daimyo roots and with a smaller land area to worry about and more rock, paper, scissors mechanics between the units the Artificial Intelligence seems to be performing better.
Apart from simple graphics there are significant differences between the new Shogun and the first game in the Total War series.
There are hero level units introduced to the battlefield to simulate the importance of particular warriors and new agents will be available on the strategic layer to limit enemy fighting power.
Shogun 2: Total War has a launch date of March 15, 2011.