ai line if sight

[chomskola]

i am interested in what the ai can and cannot see in general and i hope anyone eolse who has any questions on this topic will submit them, for now i will restrict it to this , if i hide my troops on the battlefield, can the ai "see" them as if they were on the overview map, can they see that there are some troops in that location? if so that sucks

[Imperator Sulla]

I have wondered about that myself from time to time. Every now and again an opportunity presents itself to try and surprise the enemy with a few hidden units in the woods. But every time I do this, a portion of the enemy army detaches itself from the main force to intercept my "hidden" units. I know you can't hide generals so I'm just talking about regular units here. I can only remember 1 or two surprises working and that was when I hid reinforcements behind a nearby hill.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

My theory is that the AI can see everything, because after all they are the game engine. Then they are programmed to ignore certain things like a well hidden ambushing army. Although, I may just be paranoid.

[dvk901]

There is quite a long thread somewhere where a number of fellows did quite an indepth study on the ability of the AI to 'see'. Their results, along with my own tests regarding this, lead me to believe that the AI is just as 'blind' as the player when it comes to hidden armies that were not 'initially' seen by them....that sight being limited by a 'horizontal' vision that is blocked by forests, hills, mountains, bends in the roads, etc.

My own theory on this is that the AI can see as far as the movement allowed in 'descr_characters.txt', assuming nothing is blocking it. This is why, on much larger scale maps, it is imperitive to have much larger movement points, not just for the reality of how far your armies might move in a 6 month turn, but also to give the AI a reasonable ability to 'see' what's going on, and respond accordingly. It's also important to prevent 'stuck armies'....which are armies initially sent off to attack something, but which lost sight of the target because the 'second' turn needed to reach it required a longer 'sight' than the AI had. The army therefore gets 'stuck' because the AI has lost track of it. Multiple armies 'stuck' in the same area that never move is a good indication of a movement distance that's too small. (but not the only problem)

The simple fact that there ARE stuck armies, Marcus, has convinced me that the AI in RTW is pretty limited in what it can see. A theory reinforced by the Free People faction I implemented that has a hard time even seeing itself, because the regions it controls are mostly beyond it's ability to see them all at once. That probably sounds funny, but in practice, what it means is that the Free People...able to recruit Barbarian units in Western Europe, don't send them to Anatolia to reinforce a beseiged settlement there..or vica-versa.

And again, my theory is that diplomacy in RTW is also as stupid as it is because (at least in part) of this sight issue. Say I ally myself with Parthia and I'm Roman. If I get attacked, and they have gobs of armies to send to help me...do they do so? No...because they don't really know where I am. I've even tested this with an ally where I asked them to attack a faction that was ridiculously far away. They had more than enough armies standing around doing nothing...but did they send even one to attack that faction? No. They don't know where it is. My two cents anyway.

[Imperator Sulla]

Ok, that's some interesting insights on map level and it explains some weird situations I' ve encountered. But I think me and chomskola were refering to battlefield line of sight. Has anybody done some research in that part of the game that you know of, I'de appriciate it? Thanks for your info anyway

[konny]

From my experinces, I would say that the AI isn't able to see hidden units. In a battle I had placed all units in one long line in a wood with the general in the second line on the far right. The result was that the enemy run diagonal to my line in the direction of the only unit of mine that was legally visible. They did so until they were in javelin range of the hidden units, who rose and showered the enemy on his right (un-shielded) side. The outcome was a massacre.

May be that was by random, but for me it was the evidence that the AI is not cheating in this point.

[Renegen]

What happens if the AI has watchtowers, will they be able to respond in the areas illuminated by the watchtowers? Or by spies?

[konny]

I think there is a difference between what the AI faction "sees" and what leads to asinging a target for to a specific stack and the LOS of the single stack that leads to the pathfinding problems.