Lusteds New Experimental AI

**uk_john** · December 23, 2007, 05:12 PM

Lusted - have just had a siege battle for Dublin between my attacking English and defending Irish Rebels and I have to say the AI was absolutely bloody marvellous! The rebels didn't have much in the way of archers, so my 2 rams dealt with the city's wooden walls. I attacked through the gate with my cavalry and in a pincer movement used my heavy infantry through the wall break. The Irish fought sensibly at the gate, sensibly withdrew to the narrow main street to the square and while I attacked with my infantry and cavalry in front and from the right, I also attacked with archers and crossbow from a distance.

The rebels withdrew weakened archers and intelligently kept reserves in the square. At just the right moment, when their troops were wavering and mine were lessening in numbers it sent one unit of Kerns forward to add strength to the line! Eventually I only had my heavy infantry against them, along with my archers and crossbow units! My heavy infantry were on the verge of collapse so I sent my crossbowmen in, as they were out of ammo. I got my two units of archers to shoot fire, to preserve ammo. I could tell the fight could go either way!

Eventually, I had to pull my crossbowmen back and told them to retire from the battle. This left my archers. The two heavy infantry units of the rebels moved forward and my archers fell back. I split my units taking one off far to to the right. this is where the rebels made their mistake, they carried on chasing us beyond the fort! Both units went after the archers in front of them shooting at them. They ignored my archers on the right that were not firing at them.... The firing archers led them away (of their own accord) to the far right hand corner of the battle field. They would fire, pick off a couple rebels and continue to move, all the while being chased. when at a far enough distance, I moved my first unit of archers back into the town, where the General, an archer, was all alone in the town square! I sent my archers to attack with swords and took the town square.

I checked on my other unit and it was directly on the red line shooting at the rebels, who now low in number were dithering about attacking or running back to town!

I won the town, at a large cost, but the way the rebels held the line, and the way they kept units in reserve and sent them forward at just the right moment earned them a lot of respect. It was this intelligent defending that got me to occupy rather than loot the town!

Can't say enough how good the AI is now. In battles it's almost eerie how realistic the AI is now - and the same goes for the campaign and the diplomacy!

Happy Holidays to you and all your fans!

**delra** · December 29, 2007, 12:54 AM

This is really excellent. The more I play the more I like it. At last AI is behaving the way it should behave. :-)

There's one more thing you could investigate while doing all this brand new stuff.

It's damn hard to get AI agree on military access now.

Here starts a story ->

I'm Hungary, I'm allied with Templars for over 30 turns, I'm at war with their enemies, I aided them multiple times, I even fought battles to defend Tortosa as reinforcements to their peasant army inside. But they still don't trust me enough...

I don't know if it's even moddable, but if it is, maybe it's worth looking into... :-)