Discussion of Battle AI

[repman]

I heard complaints about the battle mechanics in 3.2, so i open a discussion and a public poll about the future DLV Battle AI:

Voting makes only sense if you have tested the different possibilities in field and siege battles with DLV !!
And please report your battle experiences !

Vote !
1. Actual DLV 3.2: uses Darth battle AI, except for projectiles and not all parameters in the export_descr_unit.txt are adapted as : mass settings,...

2. DLV future uses fullblown Darth battle AI as in the submod of oldguardian
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=108937

3. Switch to Real Combat with Grandviz BattleAI 1.1

4. Mixed and adapted as in DLV 3.1 or DLV 3.2 beta: because of time constraints of testing i can not develop this very deeply so.....

5. Go back to vanilla Battle AI

Complaints regarding 3.2:
Concerning Darth Mod
After two campaign battles I've set aside this mod because of horrendous battle AI. They are dumber than a rich white man taking a back alley with 2grand in his wallet. Here’s the setup Danes vs Slaves on H/VH battle
First the spear militia got rocked in the first battle by my general with the general losing 3 men and the militia 150 - this is mainly due to the fact that 85% of the militia never raised their weapons to attack - they just stood tall as can be waiting to get bushwhacked. The fact that they want to charge through to the flanks is a cool idea, but it's very unrealistic. If you have an entire unit in front of you then nobody is going to try to suicide through to some archers in the rear. I won both battles because of this. They stopped attacking my spearman and instead walked briskly through them after the archers. Obviously my spearman slaughtered them as they passed since they again didn’t raise their weapons. That is until the enemy all got through my spearmen and for some reason when I told my spearmen to chase them down (the enemy was walking remember) they would run until just behind them and wouldn’t engage. I’d have to manually run them into the enemy spearmen formation and then click attack over and over until they were destroyed. Half the fun is the actual campaign and half is the battles. And 50% of the game is now, at least to me, unplayable. Just one man's opinion.
I have played Darth's 14b and read somewhere that you said you were implementing certain aspects of it. His plays better from the experiences I've had with it. During the battles I haven't seen the AI act as dumb (ignoring minor problems). I'm wondering if you cut out more than the projectiles like it says from the 3.2 description because I'm not sure why on the same difficulty and battles the AI behaves so dumb on DLV.

Is anyone having trouble with battle mechanics, units doing strange things, pathfinding, old vanilla like seige problems and spears not killing calvary? Something seemed to have changed drastically from 3.1 to 3.2 regarding unit battle. Is there something in 3.2 that wasnt in 3.1? I like the addition of new auxilliaries and factions, and everything else but the battle mechnics are increasingly frustrating compaired to 3.1.

repman

[tvalentine]

i agree with everyone else about the AI being really bad. I had the same problem with spearmen not raising their weapons. Considering i cant vote, i vote for either the vanilla or the real combat mod.

[Windtalker]

fighting battle as Teutons (defenders) against Moors (attackers), difficulty set to H/H:

I stood a classic formation (spearmen, behind missiles, left and right flanked by cavalry) at the top of the hill. there were 3 armies of Moors coming into battle. the strongest one attacked directly on my position in order: missiles, cavalry (making a big mess, believe me), then foot units. it was quite obvious and a bit stupid, wasn't it? but remarkable is that the two other groups just approached my position and stopped - they were standing at the foot of the hill. eventually they've engaged my forces after my troops managed to push out the core Moorish army and have started to smash them with a missile units.

generally the enemy is trying to flank you, they seem to be looking for some extraordinary ways to beat you but I can't resist the feeling the battles are easier then at DLV 3.1 or 3.0.

[bandicoot]

VH/VH (england)

I have noticed some pretty dumb behaviour on the part of both AI infantry and archer units both when faced with mercenary crossbowman and Welsh bowmen.

Facing two units of crossbowman and Welsh archers each the AI Infantry would charge/retreat, charge/retreat, charge/retreat almost but never quite engaging my missile troops. A great thing as far as I was concerned as I was able to decimate 3 units of spearmen to the point where they routed. I checked the AI morale and it never got down to the wavering part until the very last charge before they routed so it didn't make sense that they would end their charge before engaging.

Facing similar forces, the AI used peasant and Welsh archers and charged them into the open battleground well ahead of their non-missile infantry. Having shorter range than my missile troops they were once again pincushioned until my cavalry could sweep in and mop them up.

I don't know if this is my imagination or not, but I have noticed the AI for enemy missile troops appears to act differently from skirmish mode for my missile troops. Enemy missile troops appear to skirmish normally and avoid hand-to-hand until absolutely necessary while my archers have behaved erratically - sometimes retreating to a safe distance and sometimes meeting the oncoming charge of the enemy head on. Not sure why this is but it is very frustrating (and yes, I checked the skirmish button and the archers were set to skirmish not engage in hand-to-hand combat).

[pajomife]

I don't like darth over power cavalry in his own mod,but i ad some file to DLV and seams be OK, so add the files you want, and they permit,to make the AI as you pleased.

[Katzbalger]

My experiences with 3.2 and Darth are pretty bad. IMO Darth AI promises alot, but delivers less. At least with DLV, I have not tried Darth mod itself in M2TW.

Like bandicoot explained, Darth AI skimirsh mode is somehow broken. Many times they just retreat and stop retreat and stop..making missile troops practically useless with AI. However, I like the way heavy cavalry can cut through formations and not to get stuck with every peasant. But it also make light cavalry overpowered, though.

In short: overall Battle AI(maybe try the realcombat?) and overly passive Mongols campaign AI should be fixed in the first place with next version of DLV.

[Alatar98]

I dont realy like the current AI, the calvery and spear men power ratio is off and it annoys me to see units charge deep into enemeny formations only to get them selves slaughtered.

I dont want the angle of arrow fire changed though, changeing it makes them useless on walls

[Exidus Maximus]

i play Darth Mod, the latest one, and i have to honestly say that is SUCKS. i have pics where 1 unit of even decent cavalry wiped out 3 full units of spearmen with no problems.... WITHOUT CHARGING AT ALL! they just engaged in melee and BAM, they slaughtered my men.

RC seems to be pretty cool...

DM is just plain bad imho... go back to what u had in 3.0 and 3.1 it seemed to work quit will... or go the RC rout. DM is just too buggy and unbalanced for the time being.

[Caspand]

I cant vote in this pool so i'll post my thoughts.

I agree that the Battle mecanics is alot worse in 3.2 then it was in 3.1.

First off is the problem with cavalry is so overpowered. I had 4 units of mercenary spearmen getting slaughtered in close melee combat by 2 units of jinitetes, thats seems way to extreme for my taste for light cavalry to be so powerfull in melee.

Heavy cavalry can charge down spearmen in formation and defence stance with very low casultaties or none. only thing that seems to work for spears vs cavalry is schistrom formation.

I've had 4 instances where spearmen units charged across half the map after a horse unit they could not catch. and units not stopping their charge even when they got stuck in a big pile of units fighting, resulting in them getting slaughtered without killing a single enermy.

All in all i liked the mecanics in 3.1 alot better, but thats just my taste.

Caspand.

[Aloicias]

I hate to be a nay sayer but I liked Special DLV as in 3.1 or 3.2 beta. I dont know I cant figure out how to vote it tells me Im not allowed, I think its because Im brown, lol. I really liked the old system, that you either made or decided to put in. I would like to make it clear that I think everything but Darth is absolutely great in this mod. There are things I liked about Darth such as the flanking, thats pretty cool, but not at the cost of allot of other problems with the battle mechanics.

[Player8]

It's great to see this addressed so quickly and with the input of so many people already. After experimenting a little with Darth14b and scouring the forums a bit I'd have to say that his AI is just not ready at this stage to be incorporated into DLV. I didn't pick up DLV 3.1 or 3.2 Beta, nor do I have time to find out more about them right now unfortunately. I am curious what the difference is between 3.2 and 3.2 Beta AI. Does anyone think that the Beta AI was alright? - I typically have faith in Grand Viz and Real Combat has been a decent choice before. Skimming the other posts here it seems that people were ok with the 3.1 AI. We all want that magic fix that makes the AI better than decent. I don't think this is possible at this time with Darth's project having cool ideas that aren't working that well. I'd love to see more opinions on using the 3.1 AI with a few updates, 3.2Beta or Viz and Point Blank's work.

[Tokus*Maximus]

I also have faith in Real Combat. Hardened knights in armour should able to overwhelm stacks of spearmen like hot knives through butter. It just makes more sense. Expensive to train and maintain profession killers should be lethal. T*M

[Christop]

I also have faith in Grand Viz and Real Combat. Get's my vote! -- T*M

same

[Lumberjack]

I've been using darth's ai, with RC + my own tweaks (numerous balance tweaks in EDU, mounts, and hit-rate) and I'm finally satisfied.

I havent noticed these issues of stupid AI in darthmod. I have noticed more cavalry flanking, and responsive AI in combat (specifically with various other tweaks, for example if I charge with a unit of infantry already in melee the AI will immediately counter charge)

Cavalry being over powered and such has nothing to do with AI.

I havent tried Grand Vis' battle AI, or the 3.2 default ai to be honest.

I think a few tweaks to Darths battle ai might do the trick. Adjusting the skirmish parameters, missile unit's max charge distance are just two of the changes that could be made that are immediately apparent.

What are the differences between the different AI versions? After all, theyre all the same commands, just different variables for distance thresholds, unit priorities, delays, ect. It would be nice to see what each author focuses on in each aspect.

[DARTH VADER]

Well...this is what I expected and I am correct. This is why I cancelled my open source thread and any information I gave to the community in modding the game. Because it is true that I use unstraightforward techniques far to difficult to firstly understand and then to implement.
The outcome in my mod DarthMod1.4B + my update=magic fix 3 is all for you there to test and witness what I have created really.

There were some issues that were reported such as overpowered cavalry + projectile units not strong against them which were quickly fixed in less than a week. No bugs, no CTDs....just a full game and my modifications are intented for it and only bcs I control it myself.

It is very difficult to implement it correctly because it simply must be copy/pasted to function exactly as it is. Every file corresponds....even the projectiles.

If there is no copy/paste, the adaptation must be dynamic which means not copy/paste certain file but to know which parameters to change in relativity to the mod own files. This is very complex and needs a lot of attention.

That does not mean that a modder cannot implement it to a percent, but I am verified now how much complex it is and how "the magic" files I do know to mod and for example model.db file is ignored by repman and also others constitute a full AI enhancement and not partial or placebo.

@repman:

I have no time to see what is done in order to really help you adapting. Therefore I do hope you manage to fix or else just pick another. I have no problem.

[Lumberjack]

Ive used darthmod with the tweaked modelsdb, and with a standard one, and I really cant tell the difference. Unit radius seems the same, they pack just as tightly, I cant percieve any difference in combat, only thing that stands out is the fact that you have to remove the handtorch model so theres no floating torches.

Am I missing something? I really with you wouldnt be so mysterious about it.



A lot of DM cant just be copy/pasted, almost every missile unit has a new projectile for instance, but I've played identical custom battles with a clean darthmod install, and my ported install and it had the same DM distinctiveness, I honestly couldnt tell what, if anything, I was missing (with regards to the AI)

[DARTH VADER]

@Pinko

Can you attach the model.db (standard) which has not the animation vector parameters I use? I know that you should CTD if you use other model.db and my DarthMod. I do not care if you test to other mods so do not attach then. Only if you have tested in DarthMod 1.4B +magic fix 3.

[repman]

@darth
old guardian has done a total conversion for DLV (i think 100% ?)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=108937

repman

[oldguardian]

@darth
old guardian has done a total conversion for DLV (i think 100% ?)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=108937

repman

Yes I implement a full version of Battlemodels and EDU, fully manually merged for DLV. Other Battle AI files are not difficult to merge because is not faction specific.

Also i try vanilla DM and DLV+MY DM and the battles are identically, like or not.

IHMO like Darthmod Battle because is DIFFICULT. i know that is not perfect and change the concept of battles in game.

Everytime i say that the good of DarthMod is the difficult to win for Experencied player like me. I don't want to change the game because busy of win every battle. Repman script economy or other is not sufficent for player who play Total War Series from Shogun

At the same time like DLV because do campaign DIFFICULT.

For me the solution is DLV and Darthmod in future version.
I will implement Darthmod in Dlv even Medieval II exist.....
Naturally When point black release final version of Real Combat i test it.

[Leonnidas]

@darth
old guardian has done a total conversion for DLV (i think 100% ?)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=108937

repman

I use it and it's great, battles are realistic, cav isn't overpowered and missile units do their job nicelly, until now haven't experienced any bug.