Sally: worst Mordor AI pain

[Myshkin]

I base my experience on VH/VH games as Gondor, and I have noticed the AI plays unbelievably bad when the human player tries a sally.

The first problem starts because Mordor AI does never consider to attack when human tries to sally. It drops all its sieging weapons and retreats far away from the walls.

Since most of the time orc armies are composed solely from heavy infantry and seldom have any archers at all, the following tactic does wonders.

Place three units of archers at the walls and one by the gate. Place three units of cavarly close to the gate.

Sally with the archer unit by the gate, and try to lure them closer to the walls by harassing them with arrows. Usually Mordor AI will charge the archers with the a signle unit of heavy infantry, so the human player can run back inside the gate.

After taking heavy casualties from the archers on the walls, the AI will find the door closed and will be forced to retreat. At this point I pause my archers on the walls and charge from behind with my cavarly from three directions (front -which is their back as they retreat- and flanks). Doing this I have time to quickly inflict heavy casualties to the retreating unit, or even destroy it.

After the initial charge the cavarly retreats behind the gates, before orc hordes, which now come massively, get it.

I repeat (with a new unit of archers to keep them all as fresh as possible) till all my archers run out of arrows.

After returning all my inits inside and close the gates, I am allowed to escape. The sally is considered succesful and I can exit the battle. Using this tactic I often reach a 1:20 kill ratio.

My suggestion is either force AI in general to use its sieging weapons aggressively, or force Mordor AI to recruit more archers.

I have noticed when Mordor AI had archers, it used them wisely to counter my archers.

[Shocked]

I cbf doing all that for one battle, I just do a basic defense consisting of, putting all archer units on walls and putting most of my infantry at the gates backed up by Cavalry (for some reason cavalry helps push infantry forward) and I just hold out, this works very well, I can win big battles when i'm outnumbered greatly.

[Chyeaaaa111]

I cbf doing all that for one battle, I just do a basic defense consisting of, putting all archer units on walls and putting most of my infantry at the gates backed up by Cavalry (for some reason cavalry helps push infantry forward) and I just hold out, this works very well, I can win big battles when i'm outnumbered greatly.

This has always been my strategy for sieges. It works quite magnificiently

[Hermes Trismegistos]

Well, Germanicu5 is in charge of the AI.

Here is what he wrote in a thread a few time ago:

I hope such exploits will be eliminated in the next official TATW version, it's hard to program some universally applicable behaviour though.

At this point I can confirm that sally-out revamp enabling AI to attack settlements will most likely be applied.

So it seems work on this subject is in progress right now.

[The Mouth of Sauron]

Sally out means going out of the wall to face them and the Al just gets back to be ready for the attack.

[Myshkin]

Exactly. The trick is to never let them attack you. It's a piece of cake if you attack first!

Thanks Mouth of Sauron! Good to know!

Let alone I think you lose less troops per turn when under siege, if you attempt to sally out. So, if you don't expect any reinforcements sally out no matter what -even if AI behaviour gets fixed.

If you don't sally and don't expect reinforcements you risk taking casualties by bunkering inside -you get starved out gradually- and also risk the AI will bring more troops.

So hell yes, always sally out!

[Kawee]

Exactly. The trick is to never let them attack you. It's a piece of cake if you attack first!

Thanks Mouth of Sauron! Good to know!

Let alone I think you lose less troops per turn when under siege, if you attempt to sally out. So, if you don't expect any reinforcements sally out no matter what -even if AI behaviour gets fixed.

If you don't sally and don't expect reinforcements you risk taking casualties by bunkering inside -you get starved out gradually- and also risk the AI will bring more troops.

So hell yes, always sally out!

Well...the AI rarely ever starve you out. They'll attack eventually, and then you can crush them at the walls then.

[Muffer Nl]

They have very often starved me out (1:1 on autoresolve, village)

[trueblaze]

What the AI almost needs is a random script to decide how they act during a sally out. Sometimes they might back off, sometimes they may stay put, and other times they may just charge in head long. Or maybe if the AI losses 10% of it's men but still has a 1 to 1 or better ratio, they'll switch from defencive to offencive.

[Myshkin]

Why should they be defensive at all? If they lay siege they got the power to attack.

[Seleukos_I.]

Because you attack.

[The Mouth of Sauron]

the Al doesnt know when u will attack,and why he should come fight at the gates?5% of his army will probably die from the towers

[Evan MF]

It is a rather wise move of the AI to retreat from the walls, otherwise they'd just sit there getting shot at, and you would allow the towers and archers on the wall so to do all the work, without even exiting the city. - This would be far worse.

Also, why would the enemy attack you, if you are attacking them? They know you are planning a sally out, so they get ready defensivley. The enemy would not want to attack you whilst you sally out because then its troops and siege engines are at a higher risk.

If you want to sally out and have the enemy attacking at the same time, just wait for them to attack you, in a siege battle.

[Myshkin]

Hell, no! If it's laying siege on you, it's got to attack. Else it shouldn't lay siege at all.

The way it defends is poor. It's always better for the AI to play aggressively at a sally out.

When it attacks I get even 30-40% losses. When it defends I selddom get more than 5%.

the Al doesnt know when u will attack,and why he should come fight at the gates?5% of his army will probably die from the towers

Only 5%? That's minimal. I am talking for a 60% casualty toll, just because it plays defensively. All of them are arrows and cavarly charges when it retreats at the gate. Then I retreat and let it attack against the walls anyway, only this time with half the force...

This is suicidal. At least let it have some archers to defend...

[Louis Lux]

This is kind of a desperate measure, when my garrison is too small, I normally have to wait for the time to run out and have the draw. It takes a lot of time and it's not that fun so I rather not do it. There are many other ways to exploit the AI but it takes away too much of the fun.

[Kinnas]

I don't see anything stopping you from simply avoiding this. It's an exploit, you say? Then don't do it.

[Myshkin]

Not an exploit. It's the logical way to fight them. Harass them till they have to fight you at the walls, where you have an advantage. The way they defend is bad though.

Why should I risk waiting one more turn, and fight the AI with extra reinforcements?

From what I know germanicu is currently addressing this...

This is kind of a desperate measure, when my garrison is too small, I normally have to wait for the time to run out and have the draw. It takes a lot of time and it's not that fun so I rather not do it. There are many other ways to exploit the AI but it takes away too much of the fun.

Louis, when you sally out, you can exit the battle right away from 0sec. If your gate is open you cannot. If your gate is open and you have units outside, you take casualties, which they seem to be randomly distributed on your whole army...

[Freek]

I was baffled by a harad AI the other day, I was sallying from Barad Harn and whilst forming my formation outside the walls I was harrassed by enemy horse archers. I sent my cavalry to intercept, and the Haradrim sent 4 cavalry melee units to attack my still forming units. I managed to rout them a couple times, but they'd come back to harass me again. In the end I did win, but I lost over half my army to their raiding.

I have had several situation with Mordor though, where it just retreats out of shooting range of my walls, forms a normal formation and waits for me to attack (I basically have freedom to do whatever in the range of my wall towers)

[Myshkin]

One picture is a thousand words, they say...

Only militia archers and militia garissons and I eliminated two troll teams with 50 casualties.

We run out of arrows, let them attack next turn...

PS If you wonder on size, it's set on normal.

[Maxamus]

huge is better hehehe