ReallyBadAI Battle System +Hardcore + Settlements v5.7 >Oct 17< ###quality taken to next level###

[chrono672]

Yea, seems scripting is only way to protect AI BGs. Things i want to ask is that only sally-out battles are fully overwritten via scripts? Is the field battles AI are same as your previous version?

The AI is overall quite good in field battles i must say, when the AI is on the defending team, it protect his BGs quite good, i took a hard time defeating them. However, when the AI is on the attacking team, the BGs always be the first unit to charge player's line, and the main problem is that he doesn't retreat back therefore being killed, actually the BGs can't retreat because it has too few units and die very fast. The AI seems to treat the BGs as oridinary heavy cavalry which is tasked to break the line. So is this hardcoded that the AI cannot seperate BG and HA? My suggestion is that script the BGs to only backup infantry just like in defending battle instead charging the line.

[Gorrrrrn]

Fought a sally-out battle today - I was besieging Toulouse very early on with a half-stack Aragon army.
I was expecting the AI to sit back form up, and use missile troops as skirmishers and follow up with infantry and cavalry.

Er no, this time I just about got my men lined up before the AI sent its 3 cavalry and GB unt smashing into them.
I got destroyed.

won't make that mistake again

[Juggernaut]

Are the five AI sets decided automatically? I see the adviser popping up in the beginning of battle, but clicking just makes him disappear.

[soulson]

Hi germanicu5. Few observations. Whenever the AI sieges and I have less numbers I choose to defend the palace square instead of the walls. What I am noticing when I do this is the AI seems to get stuck. They often freeze even though they are inside my walls. Sometimes they freeze just before the palace square. Also, I sometimes here them yelling "move out". Have you experienced this? Should I try re-installing bai? Thanks.

[Germanicu5]

@Roz

Thx, it's still not perfect, but works pretty decent as it seems.

@Juggernaut

These five sets are randomly swapped in the background every 20 mins (as far as I remember what gracul did, normally it was 5).

Advisor launches scripts automatically and hides, there's no need to click anything.

@soulson

AI is generally slow with siege stage progression and pathfinding if you withdraw directly to the square, it's hard to find a good solution. This sounds a bit extreme though, I've tested it specifically for such scenarios before, so the AI behaviour should be decent. Does that happen with any particular settlement size\army configuration?

Regards

P.S. Please do not download v3.11 AI or switcher (switcher is implemented in vanilla 6.3).

[soulson]

Thanks for the quick reply. I see it with castles. The stone upgrade directly after wooden castles.

[Gorrrrrn]

G5 - may seem a silly question but

These five sets are randomly swapped in the background every 20 mins (as far as I remember what gracul did, normally it was 5).

could this happen in the middle of a battle?
if so could it cause problems?

[Germanicu5]

I'll just plaster it all over forums: not running the game as administrator will cause serious issues, like fatal graphics errors or random campaign and battle CTDs, particularly on Win 7 and Vista.

How-to on fixing this:

Right-click SS icon, choose Properties, choose Shortcut tab, click Advanced, tick "Run as administrator", then click "ok" enough times to close all open windows.

@soulson

Thx for info, I'll check it out.

@Roz

Nope, it doesn't cause problems - the game caches files before each battle and reads settings from memory afterwards.

Regards

[Gorrrrrn]

cheers for info

have amended the administrator property for the game.
-------------
whilst I'm here:

crossbowmen in open field battle - had 2 units of archers firing at 1 of crossbowmen.
crossbowmen fired so rarely that the unit was destroyed and only caused 2 losses to a unit of levy archers.
they had advanced to engage and were well within range but stood there like dummies and got killed.
--
siege battles - playing on huge size found units climbing ladders and siege towers got stuck when the first ones engaged with defenders.
the rest just stood and watched.
needed constant reminders to finish climbing ladders and towers and fight.
(attacking Thorn castle - basic wooden walls.)
-------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE to avoid double posting

Just fought a defensive siege battle - defending Paris with just the King, 2 spear militia, 2 levy archers and 2 x-bow militia vs a full-stack English army with 2 GB, 1 hobilar
and an even mix of fyrd and spear militia, levy and archer militia. English used 1 ram, tower, ladder in the assault. early era. no modding of BAI files, large unit size.

The attack was a disaster.

The ran did its work and the tower and ladders safely made it to the walls for units to engage.
the three units involved appear to have been the only ones to engage in melee in the entire battle.
I lost 1 levy archer unit to the spears who emerged from the tower. 1 x-bow unit survived a half-hearted attack from the ladder spear unit, which got totally confused,
with some men fighting my spearmen behind the gate and the rest either stuck on ladders or standing around outside.
the ram unit got defeated and withdrew.

The rest of the English army spent an hour re-arranging itself outside the walls, whilst being shot at by my missile troops and the towers.
The english suffered 60% casualties - they would have suffered more if my x-bowmen hadn't run out of ammunition after half an hour or so.

My general had 4 chivalry - so its not a dread problem.

Don't know which BAI was operational - but whichever it was, it didn't press the attack
(none of the english archers fired a shot.)

One determined charge by half the spears and a GB would have blasted through the 2 spear militia units defending the gate.

[Germanicu5]

I read the feedback a while ago, I'm concentrating on finishing small TATW mod atm, so the reply is a bit late.

Pathfinding is close to unfixable (without altering whole settlements), there's no way it'll work falwlessly with walls that aren't big enough to allow placement of a single unit on one section.

As for Paris siege - that sounds very odd even for AI's "capabilities", I'm not sure it's fixable, as there are always some troop configurations that might cause this (although this particular one looks pretty standard). Unfortunatley I'm not sure I can replicate this behaviour (such issues are very unlikely to appear in a custom battle).

Regards

[Gorrrrrn]

G5 - problem doesn't even happen every time with wooden walls - had another battle where my attackers attacked properly.

[krolyn]

Hi G5,

I've been playing several campaigns and I keep finding that current morale settings highly unrealsitic!!!

First, units with high morale almost always fight until the last men. This is highly unrealistic! Not even highly trained units will keep fighting while outnumbered and being massacred.

Seconbd, current morale settings give superior units an extra (and decisive) advantage: apart from their better specs, they fight for much longer.
Just as an example, once I had one Toxotai and one Gasmouloi (total of ~140 men) defending a wall against 20 "Janissary Heavy Inf" (from Seljuk) and I lost all men while the Janissary lost half!! I loose 140 men defending a wall against 10?!?!? I don't think in real life the Janissary would have stand a chance.... To tell you the truth I think that they would have fled when confronted with 140 defenders.

Although I understand that some units must have higher morale (due to their training) I think that, right now, their morale is too high.
I don't know all things that affect morale in battle but I would suggest homogenizing all units morale (reduce the diference between low and high class units) or increasing the morale penalties when outnumbered, flanked, general dies, etc...

As you know I don't know much on MedievalII scripting but I guess changing units morale and morale penalties shouldn't be that difficult. If you want, I can make some tests with different morale settings and let you know.



PS - Are you planning to make BAI compatible with SS 6.3?

[Germanicu5]

Morale settings aren't strictly my business, it's done via EDU modding and it's also influenced by a general. I rather enjoy when AI doesn't withdraw too easily.

As for the case with superior units vs weak ones - there are always some cases in which it might work unrealistically a bit, but I'd rather see that than AI routing on contact (which happens in custom battles for weak unit).

I'm not rushing with AI, because ~newest one is included with 6.3 and I'm planning to introduce some changes before posting a SS version.

Regards

[Lucan]

I have a very strange bug. The AI works fine in custom and quick battles, but for some reason it refuses to activate in campaign.

I am using STEAM if that means anything. Help?

[Germanicu5]

Scripted AI is pasted into campaign script, you won't see any notifications.

Regards

[Gorrrrrn]

I think I've worked out the problem with the middle eastern fortress pathfinding -
there are updated files but I accidentally stuck them in the wrong folder

hopefully that should sort out that problem.

[soulson]

Just fought an interesting battle at Toledo. AI had me way out numbered but failed to fully engage. They spent a lot of time setting up in front of the second gate and I was able to pick them off. The rest of their army stayed on the outer walls. As they Ram broke through the first gate a few units entered while the majority flanked to the far side. Issue being they stayed on the outer walls and didn't engage. Time ran out. Other battles that included a double gate castle was Thorn and it was awesome. General stayed back and it was a dog fight. Only issue there was a unit of heavy cav didn't engage until it was to late but still one of the best battles.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/6664/0010qc.jpg

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/1263/0012i.jpg

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/6325/0015ss.jpg

[Germanicu5]

@Roz

Nice to hear that, I'm a bit torn apart between modding settlements, creating CAI, being ill and having my apartment torn apart atm. Hopefully I'll be looking into settlements again soon.

@soulson

I suspect that's a consequence of introducing some changes that normally prevent AI from running like headless chicken in settlements sometimes. If you increase <max-engage-dist> for settlements in config_ai_battle.xml, it shouldn't happen again (try with missile > 100 first, if that doesn't help, do that the "all above 200" way).

Regards

[soulson]

ty sir.

[bica1974]

Hi,
After posting this in another thread and noone cares, i'll try it here. I've a couble of questions. After some searching I'd found nothing that satisfied me in the relevant threads. Mostly found posts are a way to old, refer to an older RR/RC version or just no proper information was given. Hope someone can do the job. Thanks in advance.

So here we go:

Does the mention of the latest version of the Germanicus Battle AI in the August 13. update notes of RR/RC mean that:

- newest available version of Germanicus Really Bad AI is included in this final RR/RC version ?

and if so:

- whats up with the AI-Switcher ? is it already active or must it installed seperatly, and, if install is needed, version 3.1 for rr/rc ?
- then there is no need to downlowad seperatly any Really BAD AI version from here ?

if not:

- can I install the latest Bad AI version (guess Oct 30 for RR/RC) over this final RR/RC (August 13) version without any harm and the Switcher as well ?


Thanks again in advance for some clear answers. Hopefully.