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Thread: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

  1. #21
    neep's Avatar Tiro
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    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquis View Post
    In sieges the AI is worse than in normal battles. It only defends part of the wall and you can easily move your army to a badly defended part. Cities with stone walls are very easy to capture with siege towers. Move your siege tower to an undefended part and your soldiers can go in. Sometimes the soldiers on the walls don't even get back in time to fight in the centre.
    When you get in the settlement and the AI has got a lot of men left, then it often sends a few units to attack you. I kill those easily by attacking with missile troops or cavalry from behind. A few massalian cavalry units can kill an elite infantry unit in seconds. It should keep all its units in the centre.
    Agreed, it could be better but I'm not convinced that setting up a Last Stand in the central plaza is the best strategy.
    My defence strategy is to hold the AI at the walls -

    • Wooden walls tend to have a few choke points where the rams break through
      • Cluster my infantry, spearmen, triarii around the choke points and have archers or even artillary pepper the enemy as they try to hack their way through.
      • Any cavalry I have would also try to pick off any enemy missile cavalry that are wandering around

    • Stone walls allow for my archers to inflict a lot of damage before the AI units even get to the walls
      • infantry units are in place to meet the ladders or seige towers

    • A secondary defensive position would be in a street that allows a few infantry units to hold off a much larger force at a choke point


    So the strategy is to find as many steps to grind the enemy down before they get anywhere close to the central plaza

    Trying to defend the central plaza is All or Nothing, it allows the entire enemy force to attack your defenders at once from too many different directions.

    The AI seems to adopt 50/50 strategy with some forces at the walls and some in the central plaza - not bad, but perhaps not the best stategy (from my perspective).
    Not clear how it could be coded up to be 'smarter' since it's very situational - the layout of the city, the composition of the army it's facing, and it's own resources available.
    Clearly, the simplest choice is to give the AI more units so it's harder to hack through them al to gain the victory. That's not a criticism of the dev team, just a simpe solution for a tough problem.

  2. #22

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Indeed I have - but that's been a whole part of the testing and querying department (which the role I took - particularly for the, main, Roman campaign that I know most about). It was not then my place to insist on change. Two of the things I would like to do, however, that could possibly be tested are lowering or perhaps even removing the charge bonus and reducing the size of the units a little (on the hope that no one chooses 'Small' I would like to see 'Large' cavalry units at '50' and not '60' as this would better represent the Scale Factor (1:12 is probably best), but also reduce their effect somewhat.
    Do you agree somewhat with Lindybeige? :

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAmf4RTBoYk

    I like how battles flow when cavalry are refigured as "glass cannons" -- high attack (no charge bonus), low defense skill, low morale. It's also more foolproof for the AI's usage.

    I was shocked to find that you and DVK play on "Large". Even on "Huge", the line of battle is still not proportionally long enough, so cavalry have exaggerated tactical mobility. I wonder if it would be better if they were only slightly faster than infantry. (of course players would go berserk)

    Does the game follow a 1:12 scale, even roughly? That's exciting!
    Last edited by MacBlain; May 15, 2014 at 01:57 PM.

  3. #23

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    I have thought about cavalry and I agree with Lindybeige. Stationary cavalry should get killed very quickly (except cataphracts). Unamoured cavalry simply is very vulnerable. Infantry can easily hit the horse. Cavalry should have about half of their current defence and their attack should be higher, because they can hit harder. The charge bonus can remain the same. This would make them more balanced and realistic.

  4. #24
    High Fist's Avatar Vicarius
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    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by MacBlain
    Do you agree somewhat with Lindybeige?
    Love Lindy.

    I'd agree with Aliquis, I think. Would be challenging.
    The only self-discipline you need is to finish your sandwiches

  5. #25

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    The big thing about the AI is it will move to guard breaches (usually with like one unit until you actually get into the walls), but it is very bad about defending stone walls.

    In particular, it won't move units on top of the stone walls, even if you go and put ladders in some undefended part of the walls. (M2TW AI does not fall for this, but you can still get them in a sticky situation, mmm fun times shooting guys on walls.)


    With wood walls though, it's frequently easy to get a unit in, such that the AI can't attack them in melee without exposing their backs to someone shooting over the low walls. Poor AI will always fall for it (frequently blobs ALL but 2 units at anyone inside the walls) allowing you to quickly cut down all their elite garrison script soldiers (if indeed you even let them, catching an uberstack in a settlement is very nice)


    The First Assault Unit are always heros, it seems in some cases, as many of them die to "friendly fire" as to the Romans stabbing them or whatever

    In the open field, I really avoid attacking AI full stacks, it seems the AI can do well if you are taking ~18 units to fight 20+ of theirs. When you have more functional units than the AI then yeah, it's hard for it to avoid being caught and killed in a rather humiliating manner.
    Last edited by Alavaria; May 15, 2014 at 05:58 PM.

  6. #26

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Does any of you have a export_descr_unit file where you adjusted the cavalry stats so that they don't have as much staying power once their charge wears out? I can do it myself, but it's a lot of work. I actually added AP ability to all archer units so that their arrows do little more damage vs heavy infantry. I feel it is more realistic that way. Otherwise I end up firing volley after volley causing little casualties. I'm not so sure about heavy horse archers though. Maybe it was a mistake giving them AP ability since it probably applies to their melee skills as well. Primary attribute for horse archers is an arrow not their melee skill right?
    Maybe I should give AP ability to all spear throwing units as well. That might make more realistic. Or would it break the balance? LOL

    On a side note, why do Romans have strong cavalry? Cavalry is supposed to be their weak point. Yet, my cavalry units seem to easily dispatch Macedonian cavalry units.

  7. #27

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by Alavaria View Post
    I love your assumption I constantly lose settlements. Because no, not often are they lost to rebellion. It's just less bothersome to sort it out afterwards, though then again organizing a stack of peltasts to garrison isn't really high effort.

    I suppose that one way to do it is not make use of the tools available, goodness knows I suppose the roman way is to stick to what you have or something. Rather funny since I'm sure under the player they would not actually need to advance past the hoplite style armies in RTWland, since hoplites function pretty well. They'd probably end up with pikes since those are pretty great in RTWland..
    Cmon now don't get defensive. i hear you but im just saying the Romans rolled out their Infantry heavy armies over most the Republic era with small Cav as compliment and some auxilaries. I stick to that as loading up on cav or missle weapons seems like a copout or even a cheat to me personaly. So i keep my army the same and adjust it's tactics not it's composition. For me it's more fun and emersive. The point is the Roman army is supposed to be flexible enough to handle all situations so i do my best to deal with being out horsed or out gunned by the missle and horse factions. And still prevail.

    To me thats the fun of it.

  8. #28

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by CatoTheYounger View Post
    I stick to that as loading up on cav or missle weapons seems like a copout or even a cheat to me personaly. So i keep my army the same and adjust it's tactics not it's composition.
    Hilariously, it was pretty powerful IRL. So they did what you describe as being non-roman. They added heavy cavalry and archers etc when they got them. I think we even have some sort of cataphract auxilia, and syrian archer auxilia or something.
    Quote Originally Posted by CatoTheYounger View Post
    Cmon now don't get defensive.
    Uh huh.

    You said the siege engines are unrealistic and make it slower.

    I point out the Romans used these thing because they were so useful (look at the description of the ballista units), and that in-game it is faster. In reality too, Phillip and others use them because it's worthwhile taking the effort to organize your siege train etc.

    So you say that, oh, well they must be rebelling... so that's the disadvantage

    And I note that, no, that doesn't happen with good preparation.

    And I'm defensive?
    Quote Originally Posted by CatoTheYounger View Post
    The point is the Roman army is supposed to be flexible enough to handle all situations so i do my best to deal with being out horsed or out gunned by the missle and horse factions. And still prevail.

    To me thats the fun of it.
    If you were going to say "I want to" then say so from the start. I, too, enjoy slamming stacks of nothing like Syracuse Levy Thureophoroi at stuff and winning. But the idea of someone saying "whatever, we can do it so why bother innovating" is hilarious in the sense of "who would actually do this".

    Yeah, defeating the entire world basically just using hastatii, very amusing actually. Very amusing in some sort of sadistic "I'll help Rome win, but in the end there's no actual Romans left because they all died fighting as hastatii"

    The point is the Roman army learned and adapted after being out horsed or out arrowed. By "copping out"/"cheating" and hiring/levying/getting allies to provide them more horses and more arrows...


    They were apparently originally out-sworded by guys, and thus decided to cop out and just start having everyone use swords. Hilarious.
    Last edited by Alavaria; May 16, 2014 at 02:13 AM.

  9. #29

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by ooji View Post
    On a side note, why do Romans have strong cavalry? Cavalry is supposed to be their weak point. Yet, my cavalry units seem to easily dispatch Macedonian cavalry units.
    If you're successfully charging them, that would do it, pretty much. From light to heavy to superheavy cavalry, most of them have really high charge values.

    Even if their melee values are different, the charge values are so high, their effectiveness on the charge is fairly similar between your "light" Roman equites and the "superheavy" cataphract.

    Now fighting straight up, yep, the equites will lose, but if you've charged and killed a ton of cataphracts, the hand-to-hand is between 120 equites to 50 cataphracts, you can win pretty easily, due to having more soldiers (a bunch of backstabs, or just having more attacks letting you interrupt/stun the cataphracts more). Which is fair, really, having more numbers is a pretty big advantage.


    But really, equities shouldn't be murdering cataphracts, even charging them. I think the spear would just break on the armor or whatever. But with current stats, their flimsy thrust while charging on their light horse pretty close to being skewered with a (relative to spear) massive two-handed xyston from a guy and horse covered in heavy armor.

  10. #30

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    hard to quote multiple people but i'm replying to alot of comments that i saw from this thread:

    1. secondary attacks on horsemen is almost always better than primary in melee, its just AI never uses them.

    2. i don't think anyone will argue against you saying cavalry is op. they are very op for the player, the ai cant use them properly. while its probably reasonable to reduce the overall charge bonus a bit, but the charge is the whole point of the cavalry mechanic otherwise they will just be a faster moving version of infantry...

    At least as the romans, you can edit the EDU and drastically increase the cost of cavalry, most roman cavalry save mercs are faction specific, i generally bump their training cost to x10 and upkeep to x2 or something.
    cavalry can probably use a reduction in their defense skill. it doesnt make sense for them to have taht much anyway, they don't really parry or block very well from horse back... this will make them die faster in melee.

    -charging with light cav will probably still do decent dmg to cataphracts in real life, they aren't using gothic plate armor.. they are using scale mail, a charging spear attack will probably go thru it.

    -spartan promachoi are massively underpowered, but further when u test 1v1, its because they have 100 men and vs a 120men barb infantry u get slightly surrounded, in a real battle you would arrange your line to avoid this even for smaller groups. albeit they are still massively underwpoered for their price.

    -archers are powerful enough when hitting things from behind. the main problem is the of course the targeting bug. if i could target thier light cav with my archers effectively they would be useful from the front too. making them AP would just allow them to destroy cataphracts and such which deosnt make much sense, the shield value is counted twice against ranged weapons in RTW thats why their frontal attacks do 0 dmg. you can fix this by reducing shield values across the board, but making them AP is probably a bad idea.

    -on roman infantry vs. barb infantry. yes barb infantry are most cost effective when you look purely on melee stats, but roman infantry do have several advantages:
    1. armor piercing pilas do such a massive amount of damage when thrown from the side or flank. they are the only heavy infantry with armor piericing pila (except for a couple galleci ones). the barb infantry javelins are massively inferior.
    2. roman infantry have much better moral than barb infantry. even the lowest tier legion have more moral than belgae champions.
    3. roman infantry have lower dmg/men per group but generally higher defense. higher durability is usually more useful for your infantry line as this gives you more time to manuever ranged/cavs to deliver the real damage.
    4. roman infantry has better stamina and doesn't get tired as quickly - this usually doesnt matter as much here since everyone gets exhausted pretty quickly given the length of the battles.
    5. did i mention pilas own
    6. sometimes you just want to stack as much power in one army stack as possible so that you don't lose the battle rather than to have multiple reinforcing stacks under terrible AI control. you'd rather have a more expensive, loss cost effective army but thats stronger and wins every battle. since winning the battle is the most important thing anyway with the capturing routers/recovery losses on winning side mechanic.
    7. in the end they may still not be as cost effeicient as certain barb factions, but so what. romans have such a powerful economy to support it that power per stack rather than low cost is of bigger importance esp if you are playing battles on h/h. romans also have no weakness at all in the late game, with both strong cavalry and archers ontop of their infantry.
    Last edited by meerkatology; May 16, 2014 at 04:13 AM.

  11. #31

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by meerkatology View Post
    -charging with light cav will probably still do decent dmg to cataphracts in real life, they aren't using gothic plate armor.. they are using scale mail, a charging spear attack will probably go thru it.
    It's just generally noted by some historical accounts that the Roman equites (in the past anyway) had a tendency to break their spears when attacking. Actually, breaking spears when charging stuff isn't that unexpected. The two-handed xyston and so on were much more durable.

    Some of the energy of hitting a hard thing (could be a shield in other cases) can be used up in breaking a spear, which means it is less effective at damaging the thing it was hitting. Now in RTWland, this doesn't happen, so whatever you charge with ends up being hilariously effective be it a crappy spear or a xyston which was developed to charge with.

    I don't know if you can have deadly charges with knives from horseback, but I think RTW allows this. Charging heavy infantry with your knife from your horse.


    That said, anyone standing still and being hit in the back with -something- from a charging horse is pretty likely to get wrecked...
    Last edited by Alavaria; May 16, 2014 at 07:21 AM.

  12. #32

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    You are getting heated and hostile Alavaria. Cool down buddy. Just a game.

    Im simply telling you what i find more apealing. The Romans usualy faced foes who had cav superioriity during the Republic era and still usualy won. Thats all. I like to see with the same army how i fare against a Parthian horse heavy army or those Arverni power charges vs playing a hoplite or even Phelangelite heavy army. All with me keeping a more traditional Roman army. Tactics to me should be adapted not changing your army to match what your oponent has. Archers are a no go for the Romans early on as it would be too easy and historicly inacurate. Not once during the 16 year war with Carthage were Archers mentioned that i can recall and Carthage usualy used slingers. So it's fun to see how you have to adjust to face your foes with all of you have typical style armies of your own nation.

    I also agree about the type of siege weapons they used but i don't recall the Romans hauling them around with them thats why i build them during a siege. A better idea is if you can build ballista or any tech of siege equipment and do it at the siege site. You can't in this game so i build what i can build but never haul siege equipment around the globe. personal choice.

    Plus the AI is at a disadvantage anyhow why make it easier for yourself by making non Roman style armies for the Romans with equal horse and missle power to even eatern nations? Take away the only advantage they have and thats takes the color out of the game for me. We sure know they can't match the Roman infantry!
    Last edited by CatoTheYounger; May 16, 2014 at 07:47 AM.

  13. #33

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by Alavaria View Post
    It's just generally noted by some historical accounts that the Roman equites (in the past anyway) had a tendency to break their spears when attacking. Actually, breaking spears when charging stuff isn't that unexpected. The two-handed xyston and so on were much more durable.

    Some of the energy of hitting a hard thing (could be a shield in other cases) can be used up in breaking a spear, which means it is less effective at damaging the thing it was hitting. Now in RTWland, this doesn't happen, so whatever you charge with ends up being hilariously effective be it a crappy spear or a xyston which was developed to charge with.

    I don't know if you can have deadly charges with knives from horseback, but I think RTW allows this. Charging heavy infantry with your knife from your horse.


    That said, anyone standing still and being hit in the back with -something- from a charging horse is pretty likely to get wrecked...
    well the game engine simply doesnt allow the whole breaking spear thing after one charge. and while yes the spear will likely break, but at same time it can still cause severe damage even if it breaks in the process

    on a side note, in real life a cavalry charge would never actaully hit the infantry in the "back", people would hear them coming and turn around before they get "speared in their back", they just wont be in the right formation to best repel it.

    and yes the "knife charge" is a bit ridiculous, i guess they are just counting the damage from the torso of the horse lol, which a blunt attack and in the RTW world, AP

  14. #34

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    -archers are powerful enough when hitting things from behind. the main problem is the of course the targeting bug. if i could target thier light cav with my archers effectively they would be useful from the front too. making them AP would just allow them to destroy cataphracts and such which deosnt make much sense, the shield value is counted twice against ranged weapons in RTW thats why their frontal attacks do 0 dmg. you can fix this by reducing shield values across the board, but making them AP is probably a bad idea.
    Well, without AP ability, I see my composite bow archers firing volley after volley on enemy cataphracts and the cataphracts aren't even scratched. I don't think that's very realistic. No matter how well you're armored, you can have soft spots either on you or your horse. Plus arrows have decent penetration power too. Remember what happened in Agincourt? Fully armored French knights slaughtered by English longbows. Now, I'm not sure about bow strengths of Roman era but I do know that Eastern cultures had strong composite bows, much more potent than their Western counterparts.

  15. #35

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by ooji View Post
    Well, without AP ability, I see my composite bow archers firing volley after volley on enemy cataphracts and the cataphracts aren't even scratched. I don't think that's very realistic. No matter how well you're armored, you can have soft spots either on you or your horse. Plus arrows have decent penetration power too. Remember what happened in Agincourt? Fully armored French knights slaughtered by English longbows. Now, I'm not sure about bow strengths of Roman era but I do know that Eastern cultures had strong composite bows, much more potent than their Western counterparts.
    long bow were more powerful than composite bows, while composite bows are smaller and usable on horseback, while being more powerful than your regular european bow, thats why they were weapon of choice for most eastern factions that used horse archers.

    crossbows are also very powerful, not sure how they compare with long bows, i think they are even more powerful than longbows, just very slow reload.
    what kind of armor were the french knights wearing? the earlier medievel era knights wore chain mail which was pretty much the same as most guys in the roman era. later on they had plate , i highly doubt that any bow would be able to pierce plate armor from a distance and still cause significant damage.

  16. #36

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Im not sure what else the AI can be expected to do realy. They gaurd every breach and react to you but can do little about units peppering them from behind with missle fire. I usualy play Romans so i have limited missle fire but even then the pilum can shred them to bits if you hold fire and save them until they are turned. At least if they defended the plaza first and formost it would be an ugly scrum.

    Field battles however im good holdiong my lines with Rome and have taken on 3 armies with one and decimated them. The exception is if they are cav heavy then it is touch and go trying to create a perimeter and not let them get behind you. I had a stack annihlated getting overconfident and trying to take on 3 armies only take get flanked and overwhelmed. The damn galleci of all factions. The battle AI in the field is decent except for thier poor Generals. I search and destroy them the moment i have a free hand.

  17. #37

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by ooji View Post
    Well, without AP ability, I see my composite bow archers firing volley after volley on enemy cataphracts and the cataphracts aren't even scratched. I don't think that's very realistic. No matter how well you're armored, you can have soft spots either on you or your horse. Plus arrows have decent penetration power too. Remember what happened in Agincourt? Fully armored French knights slaughtered by English longbows. Now, I'm not sure about bow strengths of Roman era but I do know that Eastern cultures had strong composite bows, much more potent than their Western counterparts.
    Actually this is indeed the common misconception! The Ancient Parthian army was pretty much composed of just two parts: Cataphracts (man and horse fully covered); and Horse Archers (light, fast and unarmoured); neither had shields. The reasons are equally simple - the nobles were protected by their armour (from the bowfire of the peasants); whilst the HA were protected from the cataphracts by their speed and maneoverability. The classic ancient tactic to deal with cataphracts (clearly practiced by the Later Roman Army) were to skirmish with Light Cavalry and get Light Infantry (both javelin armed) in close to hamstring the horses and, indeed, exploit any armour vulnerabilities at close range.

    The fact is that ancient (mostly Western) bows were simply not that powerful, nor were the arrows very heavy nor penetrating (one of the reasons that mail, with its greater coverage, was still preferred over 'advances' like segmentata/early plate in the East it seems - and by centurions). They were made of simple woods. Yes, the Eastern composite bows were marginally better, but were mainly used because they were also shorter and thus more able to be used from horseback. The most powerful composite bows did not really appear until the Mongols.

    The English/Welsh yew longbow was the ultimate Western development and enabled by the wood's properties and years and years of training. The armour piercing bodkin arrow then developed that could now be fired was analagous to the tungsten tipped depleted uranium long rod penetrators of modern tank fire. Our much earlier ancients had no such ability.

    In short - it should be entirely reasonable that, at longer ranges, a unit of cataphracts should suffer only one or two (2-5%) casualties from HA bowfire.

    Read the detail of Xenophons retreat from the Parthians and good descriptions of Carrhae - it's not arrows that cause the real casualties - but they force the infantry to stop and hunker down and protect themselves. Staying still in the desert leads to death. Parthian bowfire is simply to harass and tire out - before the cataphracts can exploit any weaknesses. It's only when the enemy army is broken that the slaughter can take place. That's true of most ancient battles.

    Players can replicate this quite nicely most of the time - by ensuring their light cavalry remain intact and are available to hunt the enemy down afterwards. That tends to lead to 90+% enemy casualties to ~10% self.
    "RTW/RS VH campaign difficulty is bugged out (CA bug that never got fixed) and thus easier than Hard so play on that instead" - apple

    RSII 2.5/2.6 Tester and pesky irritant to the Team. Mucho praise for long suffering dvk'.

  18. #38
    High Fist's Avatar Vicarius
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    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    @meerkatology If you've got an edited Roman EDU would you mind uploading it? Wouldn't mind playing with that myself - would mind having to actually edit it.
    The only self-discipline you need is to finish your sandwiches

  19. #39

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    I have a EDU where the Romans can recruit almost every units in the game (2.1 wise, I am

    updating it to 2.6 right now )

  20. #40

    Default Re: Poor balance and terrible battle AI

    Quote Originally Posted by High Fist View Post
    @meerkatology If you've got an edited Roman EDU would you mind uploading it? Wouldn't mind playing with that myself - would mind having to actually edit it.
    http://depositfiles.com/files/sdl58kj98

    im currently using this one for rome one turn on H/M

    changes i made are:
    10x roman cavalry training cost
    3x roman units training cost
    nerfed roman cavalry charge bonus only (i'm using the higher lethality EDU, but changed the roman cavalry charge lethality back to the charge lethality of regular EDU)

    can't do the same for shared regional units for romans, but i play with house rules of realistic army composition so won't be abusing them anyway.

    reason i change infantry training cost also i feel that training cost to upkeep is a bit skewed, i want to make it more important to win fights efficiently and lose as little units as possible.

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