Abysmal Sally A.I.

[Steward Denethor II]

One thing I noticed first when playing TaTW is that whenever the A.I. tried to sally out of a settlement they make such idiots of themselves that the victory is not satisfying. They always have their cavalry ride out as complete fools, far ahead of their infantry and if your force is cavalry you can pull far back and watch them get themselves killed. Its sad. I think this alone is one of the bigger problems in Medieval 2, and I haven't seen a mod fix this behavior. But I remember in Rome I the sally AI sometimes would keep its formation until the charge.

Has anyone fixed this? And how hard would it be? I'm not asking for an AI that is brilliant but one that doesn't throw away its cavalry and general without a good reason would be nice.

[alreadyded]

It is fixable but I doubt anyone besides myself (and obviously G5 who made the BAI script) is familiar enough with the very large and all encompassing script to make the necessary changes. I haven't noticed the problem myself, they form up right outside the walls before attacking for me. Unless you pepper them with arrows, then they will probably charge so they don't just sit there forming up while getting ranged to death. So are you shooting at them as they sally?

[Steward Denethor II]

No I pull back with my all cavalry army and the enemy ride forwards to slaughter.

I'm surprised that no one seems to have noticed, but then again, I have a habit of using armies of mostly (or entirely) bodyguards in the early game to take out some rebel settlements, though I don't accept adoptions anymore, so I can pull back my troops in the beginning of the battle.

Even G5 hasn't fixed the issue, and you said you could, which I suppose means you have not in the present. I would ask about modding AI but that's a question for another thread in another part of the forum.

[alreadyded]

I fixed a few issues like the ambush and village level assault BAI just sitting there instead of attacking, plus a lot of crashes caused by elephant mounts (ents, sauron, etc.), but I haven't noticed the problem you are having or had anyone report it. I plan to test it though, does it happen on all settlement levels and types?

As for fixing it, that may require finding and checking all the scripts (lots of big ones) that start with "if I_BattleIsSiegeBattle and I_BattlePlayerArmyIsAttacker" or just finding and checking however many sally scripts, I am not sure without testing it myself to see which script is firing when "the enemy ride towards the slaughter." It may also have something to do with your army consisting of so much cavalry, I will have to check on that as well. If you could test a battle with only a few cav and archers in your army to see if the BAI does anything different that would help me narrow it down.

Edit; there are 77 entries for I_BattleIsSallyOutBattle... not going to be too easy to find

[Jagmodo]

One thing I noticed first when playing TaTW is that whenever the A.I. tried to sally out of a settlement they make such idiots of themselves that the victory is not satisfying. They always have their cavalry ride out as complete fools, far ahead of their infantry and if your force is cavalry you can pull far back and watch them get themselves killed. Its sad. I think this alone is one of the bigger problems in Medieval 2, and I haven't seen a mod fix this behavior. But I remember in Rome I the sally AI sometimes would keep its formation until the charge.

Has anyone fixed this? And how hard would it be? I'm not asking for an AI that is brilliant but one that doesn't throw away its cavalry and general without a good reason would be nice.

While you are completely right and I don’t have a clue how to help you, I can’t pass not to make a (useless) remark that this behaviour is pretty much in accordance with the lore established by the movies.

Ruins crawling with fortified orcs? Let’s make a cavalry charge!
Huge towering war beasts, unlike anything we have ever seen? Yep, cavalry charge!

Sorry, I just couldn’t refrain myself…

[DrDragun]

Yeah the only competent one at siegecraft is Sauruman. He even had exact measurements for his ladder lengths to hook the top of the walls at Helm's Deep. How many generals would simply avoid the effort and send in their men with hookless ladders? Not Saruman, he had Grima sneaking around with a tape measure years in advance.