Weird AI behaviour with melee infantry armies

[czeresniak]

I've been playing as Silvan Elves on vh/vh with huge units and have to fight with some mordor full stacks lately. I had a full stuck consisted of 12 silvan spearmen units and 8 silvan archer and i slaughtered 5 mordor stacks build of mostly melee infantry (orc raiders, morannon guard, uruk halberds) The battles were even lamiest than in Empire:Total War . The enemy form lines started to walk towards mine and when I expected masive charge they just stopped maybe 20 yards from my soldiers. One or two units attacked my line in two random points ant the rest just standing and geting slaughtered by my archers. When those fihting units get routed another one unit attacked. After one more shift they,ve lost 90% percent of orcs and retreated. I,ve seen the same "tactics" in 5 different battles (even repeated some of them). so my casualties were maybe 10 men per battle. I,ve tried stock 1.0 AI (save files before patching) and Germanicu5 one and no change. When mordor had some better units (trolls, uruks) they actually attacked immediately like it should be. The rest was probably too feared. I know that raiders are no match for silvan spearman but standing and waiting for arrow in the eye is not a better solution .

[Flavius Alberticus]

Weird al behaviour? I've got a funny feeling, they don't love you anymore...

Actually, an orc unit with hair like wierd al would be really sweet!

[JonSnow]

Huh, I didn't even have this with the vanilla TW AI... and germanicu5's certainly doesn't do this for me. Possibly a file fragmentation? I really don't know..

[Germanicu5]

Hmm... that doesn't sound much like my AI, I don't use settings causing such behaviour, some other modders may though.

Regards

[xaldin]

Actually the ReallyBadAI can be made to do similar though it eventually will actually charge it ends up doing it piecemeal. The way I force it to happen every fight is to put archers up front with stakes, infantry behind then first commands of the fight move the infantry to just behind the stakes and the archers to the back line. When the ai melee starts getting up close it just stops then after a bit the units will move forward but they'll absorb extra volleys before deciding. Also the Nazgul and their bodyguards will run right up front then stop and stand there until they're killed off, scared to charge through the stakes and the battle lines are long enough (or I curve the stake placement) that flanking isn't considered by the AI. Standard AI just stops and stands there infinitely until killed/routed, but all the AIs I've seen (SS/etc) the combination of stakes with pikes/spears behind the stakes brings them up short while they go 'well hmm do I really want to do this'.

[Germanicu5]

Heh, that's 2nd exploit reported tonight... I'll try to recreate such conditions and see if something more can be done, thx for the info.

Regards

[xaldin]

Any time, Here's the composition of the Gondorian Army I use to cause the situation: 6 Gondor Archers, 4 Fountain Guard, 3 Citadel Guard, 1 General, 2 Swan Cavalary and 1 Trebuchet. Have the 6 archers put stakes down, take the guard put them into shield wall, then group them, formation shift-1 (line) place them in the center. Take 2 foutain guard and put them on each end of the guard line. One Cavalry far flank and behind (make sure they're behind the lines). When the fight starts the Citadel and Fountain guard move up so they're just behind the stakes, you want to be sure the enemy has to go totally through the stakes. The Archers move so that there is a slight space between rear of the melee line and them but be sure they 'bunch up' a bit more so that the far right and left sides of the archers are totally behind the melee. Trebuchet and General sit behind them centered in the formation.

s s s s s s
a a a a a a
F F ccc F F
SC T G SC

becomes
s s s s s s
FFcccFF
aaaaaa
SC T G SC

Note that the stakes go out on the ends farther than the melee does, don't leave gaps between the melee formations. Bonus points if you have a hill to sit up on.

That's what I do to cause the AI to go 'OMGWTFAIERUNSTOPSTOPGORUNSTOPGO' every time.

BTW if the AI has you outnumbered by about 4-5 to one then it won't pause it'll just keep going right through. It only happens on stack vs stack even numbers.

[xor0]

Here's the composition of the Gondorian Army I use to cause the situation: 6 Gondor Archers, 4 Fountain Guard, 3 Citadel Guard, 1 General, 2 Swan Cavalary and 1 Trebuchet.

The AI is screwed whatever it does trying to attack an OP army. In this situation it should just sit on the nearest hill and wait for the player to attack, and retreat if being shot by arrows.

Orks would need to use several stacks to be aggressive vs an army like this. Or lots of trolls, and it sounds like it has no problem when using lots of trolls.

[czeresniak]

OK, I've run some tests in custom battles on vh. I,ve been giving AI full stack of orc raiders. My stack was build of one kind of infantry for making the first line and some archers to buil the second line (I use them to provoce enemy units to attack). Here the results for different infantry units.

Silvan spearman (34 defence, 12 attack) - no enemy unit attacked my lines, completely passive. Whole formation standing very close to my lines.

Silvan swordmen (27 defence, 17 attack) - only attacks on my wings. Middle of the line free.

Forest warderens(?) (22 defence, 9 atttack) - no respect from my foes. Whole line attacked

I, ve made the same tests for Guards of the white tower, gondor militia, giving enemy uruks, orc maulers etc. and the results are obvious.

Enemy unit won,t attack your forces front to front if your unit are really overpowered to them

When enemy unit attacked first unit standing on my flank and run onto my second unit and this second unit change angle of formation to intercept them, second enemy unit attacked my second unit. If I change formation of my units to stand with their backs to enemy I, ve got rapid charge on that units.
I mean these tactics are really smart not send your units into suicidal attack and wait for formations changes (it,s also a good defence against any cavalry) but it don,t work in the battle where i, ve got several archer units. If the whole enemy army would attack my lines they wont suffer mucd damage from these lob shots of my rangers. If they are standing close to my lines but still far away from my troops they are perfect target . Any chances to do something about this? That strategy is perfect for AI with superior skirmisher units targeting my skirmishers only.

[Gigantus]

I am having similar AI behavior that makes it ridiculously easy to beat full stacks. Playing the Dwarfs and Mordor sees me putting down a line (6) of archers with stakes, flanked by a spear unit right and left of them. A line of infantry (10) behind them and last not least the leader and a cavalry unit.

It doesn't matter if I defend or attack, I just wait for the AI to come, and 9 out of 10 times he comes, silly enough that 10th time is when I have siege equipment with me. The archers have the melee mode switched off so they can be rapidly withdrawn if necessary, but normally I simply move my infantry forward into the line of the archers.

The behavior is as described in the previous posts. Casualties: AI=98%, own=10 to 20%, mostly archers.

Haven't fought the elves yet, guess my casualties might be slightly higher, but the result on their side should be the same.

Might have to have a chat with my friend Xeryx and try out his AI as well to have some comparison.

[czeresniak]

A moment ago I,ve played awesome battle against mordor stack with 6 olog-hai units. Olog hais charged my lines first and after doing some breakthroughs in my formation weak orc infantry charged me aiming in these breaks especially, which was preety awesome. Some of infantry even flank me from both sides and enemy skirmishers standing in safe distance shooting at my guys. I,ve lost 30% of men when normally i lost maybe 2% on vh (silvan spearmen are too freakin op -34 defence). So this behaviour is good when enemy has heavy infantry and skirmisher but otherwise battles look like crap when all enemy troops just standing and looking stupid. Maybe nerfing some elven units could be solution but as i see real combat is going into opposite direction (previous version elven spearmen - 150 guys, 29 defence, current one - 120 guys, 34 defence).

[xaldin]

Alternatively the AI could go 'hey they're tougher but I have more people lets get them'. I think that's a better route in the long run if only for the 'large unit sides' like Mordor/OOTMM and such. The Elves high numbers will be at a cost of not being able to field a great many of the units rapidly so they have a low number of places they'll be able to project their strength, the orcs and other larger unit sides will project their power in multiple places through sheer volume and their AI needs to be tweaked to account for that I believe.

[Germanicu5]

I'll have some more time for testing soon, although I'm afraid this behaviour may not be AI-dependant that much. It looks like a certain combination of circumstances provokes bugged hardcoded behaviour. In theory all settings are fine (and there aren't too many that would influence it), I'll try some counter-logical values.
Is everybody using default TATW 1.1 AI (aka ReallyBadAI)?

P.S. I've been busy lately, I'm gonna investigate that issue soon.

Regards

[Aqidah]

I've been playing as Silvan Elves on vh/vh with huge units and have to fight with some mordor full stacks lately. I had a full stuck consisted of 12 silvan spearmen units and 8 silvan archer and i slaughtered 5 mordor stacks build of mostly melee infantry (orc raiders, morannon guard, uruk halberds) The battles were even lamiest than in Empire:Total War . The enemy form lines started to walk towards mine and when I expected masive charge they just stopped maybe 20 yards from my soldiers. One or two units attacked my line in two random points ant the rest just standing and geting slaughtered by my archers. When those fihting units get routed another one unit attacked. After one more shift they,ve lost 90% percent of orcs and retreated. I,ve seen the same "tactics" in 5 different battles (even repeated some of them). so my casualties were maybe 10 men per battle. I,ve tried stock 1.0 AI (save files before patching) and Germanicu5 one and no change. When mordor had some better units (trolls, uruks) they actually attacked immediately like it should be. The rest was probably too feared. I know that raiders are no match for silvan spearman but standing and waiting for arrow in the eye is not a better solution .

I have this problem as well.
My enemies just stop and stand there and do nothing.
An Example was when I played as Gondor, They just stopped in the middle of roads in the City, I had to attack them. They weren't even aiming for the Town Center, And once they were standing outside the gate when it was open (they had destroyed the gate).
This problem appears to me every time I defend castles and sometimes in non-town battles.
I try to avoid battles in Towns just because of this.

[Germanicu5]

So far I can't confirm the bug with AI army not attacking when it faces stakes+spears. I did several tests, stakes deployed tightly with no spaces in between, infantry line totally hidden behind them. I'm currently using an unreleased AI (will be something like v0.87), which introduces no changes that'd seem to influence that behaviour though. I'll run full stack tests when I have some more time.

@Aqidah
That sounds very odd, which TATW version/mods are you using? You can produce a savegame with expected dumb AI behaviour and upload it, so that I can investigate possible reasons, if you like ofc. Although latest versions pretty much fix any likehood of such behaviour.

Regards

[Aqidah]

So far I can't confirm the bug with AI army not attacking when it faces stakes+spears. I did several tests, stakes deployed tightly with no spaces in between, infantry line totally hidden behind them. I'm currently using an unreleased AI (will be something like v0.87), which introduces no changes that'd seem to influence that behaviour though. I'll run full stack tests when I have some more time.

@Aqidah
That sounds very odd, which TATW version/mods are you using? You can produce a savegame with expected dumb AI behaviour and upload it, so that I can investigate possible reasons, if you like ofc. Although latest versions pretty much fix any likehood of such behaviour.

Regards

I got Patch 1.1 and no sub-mods installed.