Grand unifying theory on deployment and other related bugs.

[Modestus]

Grand unifying theory on deployment and other related bugs.

As some of you may know I have being looking at the Zone of control, the tactical maps and deployment bugs I know feel I am close to an explanation as I will ever get.

I now believe that the main cause is the misinterpretation by the game of the role of each army has in any given battle.

First I must explain how I believe the game generates a tactical battlefield.

Obviously any tactical battlefield that you experience can only be caused by the meeting of two armies this is the catalyst for the Warscape game engine to generate a tactical battlefield. I believe unlike in previous games there is a element of randomness about this but one of the most important bits of information that is used I believe is the determination by the Engine of who is the attacker and who is the defender, what role each army has in the battle.

If the game engine misunderstands this and if an armies role determines its position on the tactical map then the first indication of a problem will be the incorrect deployment of your first army it will be in a reversed position. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the first real indication of a problem will be the arrival of any reinforcements.

However I believe it does not stop there, I believe that the reversal of roles caused by Warscape also is reflected in other issues some listed below.

1\ An AI army sallying forth to break a siege, the game considers the players besieging force to be in fact the army under siege so the players army is not allowed to retreat in the battle screen.

2\ A players army attacking a city and you find that you must attack twice, here again the game misinterprets the roles of the Attacker and the Defender. It considers the first attack by the player to be in fact a defence of the city and therefore if you are victorious the game will reinforce the AI city with fresh troops because the game believes the AI won the first battle.

3\ If you are being besieged by the AI and you decide to sally forth the battle window will appear with both armies and reinforcements. If instead of auto resolving or clicking on play battle, you click on surrender the siege will be lifted!

See link here: http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic...or-battle.html

Again the game is reversing each armies role.

4\ AI armies in prepared defensive positions willing to leave those defences and attack even though they should be the defensive army.

5\ One incident that puzzled me was in only one of my battles when I attacked a Spanish force with an army from Paris did the positioning seem correct.
I now think that the reason this turned out to be the case was that the game again misunderstood my role and instead of considering me to be the attacker of a Spanish army it considered me to be the defender of the city and as a result and purely by accident placed me correctly with Paris to my rear.

Anyhow that's as far as I can tell what is happening there may be other factors such as the Zone of Control or the removal of large city maps but if if people can understand what I am saying they should perhaps keep an eye out for unusual results and see if a reversal of roles could be an explanation.

[Modestus]

Another example of the same issue.

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/55099

I am amazed no ones picking up on this.

[KindredBrujah]

To be honest, you seem to be onto something there. A lot of the things I've seen could be explained by your theory. I don't play with time-limits though, so I haven't experienced the issue raised in the second of your posts there.
I've seen the reinforcement issue, and as such never attack or defend where reinforcements are present if I can possibly avoid it.
I've also seen the 'Attack a City Twice' issue, which I considered freaking stupid at the time, but didn't give it a lot of thought. In itself it's far from the worst bug (they're only militia-recruited peasants after all; no match for a real army).

[skullman86]

Well, in the April 7th patch update it was noted that they "corrected the bug whereby reinforcements entered the battlefield from the wrong direction".It could be that they found out what was causing the general reversal of roles and fixed it or maybe they just fixed reinforcements :\

...I guess we'll find out

[LT Mor]

wow it happen to me so many time.

and until now i was sore that i disbanded the army after battle.

the one that you win a battle in a city and need to start the siege again.

I don't understand how after 4 full games and more then 10-15 expansion the (CA) doing so man mistake.

look at the AI of Darth mod and the vanilla for example ... the are getting paid to write the code, we do we need a 3rd party to do the job better ?

all I can say is " I am waiting to the patch "