AI Battle Formation Mods

[Lysander13]

Ave fellow EB fans,

The following download is a zip file that contains several folders with installers within. This download will provide the EB Player with the opportunity to play EB using alternative Battle AI Formations and/or Player Formations. The EB Player will have the option to install either Darth Formations 16.2, Sinuhet’s 7.0 AI Battle Formations, and/or Marcus Camillus Player Formations with new formation buttons for the Roman UI. Provided with MC’s Player Formations will be his readme.txt file, which if one is inclined, can be referred to as a guide if need be. As it illustrates the proper unit mixture for sharp looking Republican and Imperial Legion Formations at it relates to this add-on. All the while, maintaining the ability to draw upon various non-roman formations as well. I’ve also taken the liberty of including an EB Archive installer. In which all modified files affected by the various add-ons included in this download, will be in their original form. So if at any point, the EB Player is so inclined, he or she can revert back to their original installation, simply by running the installer and pointing it towards the root directory of their EB installation.

These add-ons are intended for EB v1.1 installed on RTW 1.5. However, can be used and installed in the same fashion with no conflicts, if you happen to run EB with the BI executable ( 1.6 ) or ALEX.exe. These add-ons are also compatible with most unofficial fan made mods floating around the EB forums. As long as the unofficial mod that is to be used in conjunction with one of these add-ons doesn’t have it’s own formations or happen to be a mod-foldered mini mod. Then all should be good to go. The various add-ons and edited files provided here, merely reflect my “tastes” in gameplay and in the editing process. In that respect, perhaps they will suit others as well.

Credits:

Darth Vader: For permitting me the opportunity to share a modified version of his Darth Formations 16.2 code with my fellow EB Players.

Sinuhet: For permitting me the opportunity to share a modified version of his 7.0 AI Battle Formations code with my fellow EB Players.

Marcus Camillus: For graciously giving me leave to include his player formations mod in this download.

Snake_IV: For his formation buttons for the Roman UI.

Last, but certainly not least…….

The entire Europa Barbarorum team for their hardwork and dedication to providing us their fans, with a truly rich and unique gaming experience centered in the Classical World we all love and they have managed to bring to life in details to numerous to name.



Installation Instructions:
1) Unpack download in a place of your choosing.
2) Choose add-on and go into it’s respective folder.
3) Run installer located in folder and point towards the root directory of your EB installation.
For example I call my installation Europa Barbarorum. So were I to point the
Installer to my root directory….it would look like this…….
C:\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Europa Barbarorum…
yours may be something like this….
C:\Program Files\Activision or The Creative Assembly\Rome-Total War 1.5…
4) Once target line is acquired, finish running the installer. It will take care of the rest.

Final Note: If installing Darth Formations along with MC’s Player Formations. MC’s Player Formations must be installed second in the installation procedure. The order is of no consequence if installing MC’s Player Formations with Sinuhet’s.


Vale,
Lysander13

Download Link:
Filefront

[svramj]

nice one...hmmm

[Leão magno]

Tryed the file front link but:

Your download key for the requested file is invalid. Download keys are only valid for 48 hours. Once your download is complete, the key is no longer valid. Keys are also only valid for the original server.

Additionally this error may be caused because the file was not found on the server.

If you need help starting your download, please contact FileFront support.

So I could not download

[Lysander13]

Just tried the link.......it's working just fine. Not sure what happened when you attempted to use the link. Perhaps it was a momentary glitch on filefront's end of somekind when you tried it?..Anyhow, just tried it and it's working fine so feel free to try again.

[Leão magno]

still failing, but that time just because of servers lack... thanks Lisander 13! I will keep trying till I get it!

[svramj]

the link works fine for me....

[Leão magno]

It is working, may have been a momentaneous problem with the server or my connection, but I have already downloaded and installed it

[HistoryProf]

Lysander, I'm using Sinuhet’s AI Battle Formations 7.0 on EB's latest (v2) with the BI.exe and it seems to be working fine.

My main irritant (and maybe I should've addressed this in the other thread, apologies)was the Romans besieging my settlements turn after turn, with a less than 50% probable success rate. For example: I'll have a well balanced force of 2,000 inside Massila, led by an experienced commander and they'll beseige my fortification with 1,000 infantry led by a captain with a 35% success rate. Now, when I started playing (MTW was my first exposure to these games) it seemed that if I was beseiged by an inferior force, all I had to do was challenge them, and they'd break camp, so I wouldn't have to suffer watching them run in circles while my slingers killed enough of them and they made for the red line...

Now, admittedly I haven't had a chance to run through these scenarios yet to see if Sinhuet's work would address this time-consuming and game-play diminishing quirk, but I was wondering if this issue has been addressed in other threads/mods, and what you thought about my dilemna.

Again, thanks for your selfless work!

[Watchman]

I think that's just the campaign AI. It's a moron with a lot of monomanical fixations (which tend to start with "sticking it to the player"), and there's AFAIK very little that can be done about it.

[HistoryProf]

Bonjour Mssr. Watchman, thanks for your input. So there's no setting in any of the files that can be adjusted forcing the AI to respect a base minimum success rate for besieging then? That's too bad. That would be a great tweak (are you listening CA?). If you think of someone I could ask for sure, please let me know?

[Lysander13]

Originally Posted by Watchman

I think that's just the campaign AI. It's a moron with a lot of monomanical fixations (which tend to start with "sticking it to the player"), and there's AFAIK very little that can be done about it.

Yep...that about sums it up. It's got nothing to do with the Battle AI. Battle AI's have their own set of problems but this isn't one of them....

[Juba1]

hello,
sorry but i have to ask :
i have EB working on Bi and City modv2.1, can i add this mod on the top ?

[Lysander13]

Yes you can...Just be sure to follow the instructions.

[konny]

Feedback:

I had started with Darth's, but did not find it an improvement to the AI behavior. The AI seemed to be even more chaotic or headless as before. As far as I interpret the entries in his forum, this is more or less intended: the AI is trieing to encircle its foe. That does it no good especialy for factions that have half of their armies composed of phalanx, like Makedonia or the Seleucids. At least the AI seems to need a superiority in cavalry, what is only true for very few factions.



I had then switched to Sinuhet's. That seems to be much better working for the AI in EB. I have so far only fought battles in which the AI was defending with Sinuhet file, but these were quite impressive:

- The AI has maintained a line for most of the time and presented to me for example more than 1,000 medium and elite Phalangists in one line - and that was realy a hard nut to break.

- It had tried to outflank me only after the initial clash of the main lines - and that is realy dangerous when you don't have sufficient reserves.

- It had offered me real skirmishing by running foreward his jawellin units, threw javellins and running them back only after that - not much different than I do it, so we had a 'little battle' between the lines. There was so far no incident of non-missle units running foreward when under fire.

There was so far only one realy stupid thing: that were archers that did not fire a single shot through out the entire battle. In an another battle I had witnessed two of his Akontistai units that did not fire even so I was in range. May be some of the 'fire_at_will' settings need adjustements.

[Leão magno]

I tried the Sinhuets but did not see those improvements, think I shall try it again then

[Lysander13]

Appreciate the feedback konny. There are other things that can be done to enhance the compatibility and performance of both Darth and Sinuhet's AI with EB. It would include the editing of a few other files...one of which unfortunately would be the EDU. In fact, optimal performance could possibly just come with making a few changes to the EDU none of which would be to the battle statistics mind you. It would be more an issue of perhaps making some changes to unit formations in terms of unit width and depth. This would need to be done and tested carefully to be certain desired results are being achieved. Perhaps if there was interest in something like this i could make it part of the upload down the road after toying around with it and carefully testing it for desired results. We'll see....

[konny]

Yes, please do so. Anything that will improve the battle AI is a hughe step foreward in gameplay.


In addition to the feedback above: I had now one occasion in which the AI tried to chase off my archers with phalanx even so he had enough missle units by itself and even cavalry. That meens that my theory that this behaviour comes from the lack of cavalry in the AI armies isn't true.

I see, that this is hardcoded but might be prohibitable with the formation file: I have had this everytime with Darth's mod but only once in six or seven times with Sinuhet's. The difference between both files seems to be that Darth doesn't use the default commands (they are all ";") but Sinuhet does. So, those might help to stop some of stupid things that the armchair generals of CA have programmed in.

I will drawn myself into the myteries of edditing the battle formation file ASAP.


I had now one battle in which the AI was the attacker, but circumstances were more less irregular because I had about 15 units arranged in a long line and the AI had just three phalanxes. I can't imagine any tactics to win a battle like that in case of the AI: either you keep your three phalanxis together and will be encircled all together from the flanks, or you spilt them and attack left, right and center (that's what the AI did) and have every one encircled for itself.

[Leão magno]

Originally Posted by konny

Yes, please do so. Anything that will improve the battle AI is a hughe step foreward in gameplay.

I endosse the request, please, do so!

[Lysander13]

Well since it appears the next release is not far off....EB 1.0!! Can you believe it??..It's almost here!!..and what a grand day that shall be!!
One would perhaps do well to wait til after this release to do any serious type of mini-modding sort of speak. Especially anything concerning The Battle AI as it's relative to other files that impact it's "effectiveness"; since it appears there will be several changes made to the next EDU and this sort of thing would require alot of testing, since one would be tinkering with a few files and not just the descr_formations_ai.txt file. This is assuming that as of the next release the Battle AI isn't being completely overhauled that is. Since i've read in several threads in the past that the EB team has plans of their own in this area and haven't gotten around to giving this part of the mod the scrutiny that the rest of the mod has received. I understand from toying around with this stuff myself that there are limitations to the results that can be achieved in this area and perhaps not as obviously apparent as some of the other well developed areas of the mod. For example like the magnificent EB script. That said improvements can be made relatively speaking. I for one would be extremely curious to know what plans the EB team has for this area of the mod in the future. To their credit, the EB team that is...this mod is one of the few that just about everything in it was made strictly by the EB team. From units..to animations...you name it. I have always been curious with all due respect as to why perhaps just one exception couldn't be made in this particular area and use either Darth's or Sinuhet's AI as the flagship AI sort of speak while tweaking the other files that are relative to the AI's performance to in a manner of speaking custom fit the AI Battle System to EB for optimal performance. I wonder this of course without knowing what they have planned in the future for this area of the mod. Perhaps it's a historical issue and the EB team doesn't approve of the way armies are depicted at the start of battle with Darth or Sinuhet's AI?...I don't presume to know but i would say this is an area where a little latitude should be extended for reasons of gameplay if that is the case perhaps?...Anyway...a little long winded here....I cannot express how much i'm looking forward to EB 1.0!!

[Leão magno]

Endossed, but do not take a minute long to star tweking the Sihuet battle mod for EB 1.0