Tactical Tips

[Saul Tyre]

@ Wambat: It was in answer to a specific question you raised "......I should like to know myself" so it will be "never having units delayed or not show up at all..........." I would suggest it also applies to "units refusing to enter etc etc..." because as far as I can remember I have not encountered that problem either, unless with the battle menu glitch situ which you explained earlier. AFAIK it is impossible to control more than 20 units on the battlefield at any one time, which ofc I assume you would know anyway. I have read somewhere though, on TWC or similar, about 40 unit control which was a specially modded, conditions specific thingy, but I cannot remember where or what mods.

[Wambat]

@ Saul Tyre: So I take it that since making this change in your setting you have not experienced a battle in which potential reinforcements failed to show up to the battle. This is highly suggestive, though not conclusive. I cannot say that it makes sense from a design standpoint, but much does not in programming, at least from the outside. I cannot see how your conclusion could be proved, but it could certainly be disproved if once you do have reinforcements fail to appear; so I do hope you will report if this happens.

Still, it does not strictly speak to the question. My curiosity was in how the game decides when reinforcements that should not otherwise explicably be excluded from the battle, nevertheless are prevented from participating, as it where, by chance. You may have identified a possible toggle for this chance function, but this does not explain how the chance function works. It may simply operate a random percentage chance that is not influenced by player actions; in which case my curiosity will likely never be satisfied. It would be satisfying to learn that something like the skill of the general, or the movement points of reinforcement units, might have some influence. If anybody has evidence that any such influences exist, I should like to hear about it.

[CountMRVHS]

I assumed that reinforcements were limited by your PC's ability to display them on the battlefield - so switching the "Unlimited Men on Battlefield" to "On" would allow you to go ahead and have all those reinforcements, whether or not your PC could handle it effectively.

[Saul Tyre]

I assumed that reinforcements were limited by your PC's ability to display them on the battlefield - so switching the "Unlimited Men on Battlefield" to "On" would allow you to go ahead and have all those reinforcements, whether or not your PC could handle it effectively.

Yes this is true afaik, I have done this in every campaign/mod since I discovered it a couple of years back when dvk901 of RS fame wrote about it on a thread in the forum. As far as I can remember it has always worked for me....but ofc I can't prove it

[Wambat]

Admittedly, I have not had this occur recently. My memory of past events was that there were occasions when reinforcements would not show up at the start of battle, a notice would drop down at the left side indicating that reinforcements had been "delayed". Sometimes they would show up latter, and sometimes not. It could not be the case that the game decided to delay the reinforcements because it was too many units for the game to handle because there would, in that case, not be instances of the reinforcements sometimes arriving after a delay. I also remember that this delay in reinforcements would happen even when the total number of units in the main attack group and the reinforcement group did not exceed 20 units.


Is this "Unlimited Men on Battlefield" automatically set to "on" for this mod. I have not touched the settings myself.

[webba84]

the mod doesn't have a default preferences.txt, so IIRC it's set from your vanilla preferences. Might want to check and make sure it's on (just discovered mine was not).

[Wambat]

My preferences show "UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD:FALSE", which does little to assuage my confusion. I fought battles in my Dwarven campaign with 3 full stacks (2 ai, 1 mine) with no delays in reinforcements. It occurs to me that, before playing DoM, I had pretty much always played with huge unit sizes; maybe that is the difference.

[Saul Tyre]

As far as I can remember UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD: TRUE was originally advised/instructed for usage on multi-player so that several players could be on the battlefield at once, by overiding restrictions made by the PC, afaik it then translated to single player for the purposes we are now discussing

[Wambat]

I am going to start consolidating the contributions to the Tactical and Strategic threads into the initial post for easier reference (with credit, of course). I may change wording or format from the posts of contributors in the process; please, anyone, post if you feel I have done so inappropriately, or have misinterpreted a contribution.

[Wambat]

Just consolidated tactical tips into the first post. Let me know what you think of the format, and any suggestions for improvement. And, of course, keep those tips coming in.

Tulkas experienced a siege in which the AI stack was able to produce a ram in zero turns. I recall this happening for my units in my Dwarven campaign. I am curious if anyone knows the mechanics behind this, and whether or not it is a bug/intended.

[CountMRVHS]

Were reinforcements involved on the besieger's side? The only odd thing I've seen (in vanilla as well as mods) is that armies that show up to reinforce during a siege will always be given a token piece of siege equipment, even if they shouldn't have been able to.

[Wambat]

I need some tips about the use of hiding units on the battlefield, and some details about the effects of war-cry and berserk. Also, the actual effects of attributes like "expert at hiding in woods"; does this help on the strategic map for ambushes, or only on the battlemap?

[gasas]

War-cry improve attack value but I don't know about how much. I guess something about +1/+2

[webba84]

I believe it's actually something closer to +10. Extremely effective when used correctly.

[Tulkasthevaliant]

No reinforcements were involved. Maybe like one section of the wall was destroyed and they could attack because of it? I forget. I was quite confused at the time, though.

[Saul Tyre]

I believe it's actually something closer to +10. Extremely effective when used correctly.

I read somewhere it's dependent on their unit fear factor eg Warband +4 Naked Fanatics +6 Berserkers +8 iirc, allowing about 10 seconds after war-cry is when best to attack apparently.

[Wambat]

I cannot find any sources on the war-cry which seem authoritative, and my own play testing is not giving me any conclusive results.

[CountMRVHS]

Have you checked the Complete EDU Guide? It's by Aradan, I think. It goes through unit attributes line by line.

[Wambat]

Have you checked the Complete EDU Guide? It's by Aradan, I think. It goes through unit attributes line by line.

Any chance you could post a link to that guide? I have no idea where it is and a search is not helping.

[webba84]

Should be this one