Improving AI settlement assaults..

[Turbo]

I am still noticing that the AI still struggles to take the walls via ladder and towers. Its improved in 1.2 but the AI still clusters around the wall and uses only one ladder. I doubt there is anything that can be done about this but maybe there are some workarounds?

Here are my thoughts:

- Is there a way to greatly reduce the defenders advantage on the walls? If the AI does manage to finally get on the wall, I would like to see them have a fighting chance.

- What value would be good to great reduce the chance of a ram catching fire? Rams are at .4 right now. If we can't fix the walls, then lets make the ram extremely difficult to catch fire so the AI at least has a chance of getting into the city.

- Lastly, I see a lot of heavy cavalry armies trying to assault with a small number of infantry. Is there anything that can be done to make the AI not assault or at least starve out the defenders? I suspect this is hardcoded..

I'm not advocating any LTC changes btw, these are just some ideas i would be interested in experimenting with.

[Lusted]

- Is there a way to greatly reduce the defenders advantage on the walls? If the AI does manage to finally get on the wall, I would like to see them have a fighting chance.

No.

- What value would be good to great reduce the chance of a ram catching fire? Rams are at .4 right now. If we can't fix the walls, then lets make the ram extremely difficult to catch fire so the AI at least has a chance of getting into the city.

Ai already has bonuses on rams not catching fire.

- Lastly, I see a lot of heavy cavalry armies trying to assault with a small number of infantry. Is there anything that can be done to make the AI not assault or at least starve out the defenders? I suspect this is hardcoded..

Nothing can be done about that.

[Garnier]

In my addon, firearrows are removed, so siege equipment doesn't catch fire. This helps the AI a lot, in other words, they will always make it to the walls. In theory it helps the player just as much, but practically, I normally make 6-8 siege engines before attacking, so if a few of them burn it wasn't a problem, but for the AI to lose their one ram meant the end of the battle.

[Dave Scarface]

Nice, I think Ill try your addon, I cant stand it when the AI spams fire arrows in battle all the time, its so unrealistic looking...

[DrJambo]

- Is there a way to greatly reduce the defenders advantage on the walls? If the AI does manage to finally get on the wall, I would like to see them have a fighting chance.

No.

There might be. Look in config_ai_battle and the following code entry:

            	<!-- bias towards defenders -->
            	<defender-bias>1.0</defender-bias>

[Lusted]

But that bias seems to give no bonus though if it's at 1.0, though could be interesting to see what happens if it gets reduced.