Wierd but amazing battles?

[BeingOwned:)SPQR]

So, ive been playing a while and everytime i fight in battles, the battles sort of... go all over the place, i just fought a battle and the AI made me fight on the whole map, in other mods it might just be blob or section of mass dead bodies but this, this is insanely long and hard to fight.

Example
As you'll see, the battle started at that hill over there with the tiny pixelated corpses and ended right here at the opposite end.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

What i would like to know how to change the AI from doing that to me, and making them just turn into blob and try to destroy by numbers by overunning me?

[Neige]

That might be so because BC uses a lot of missile units. And you shouldn't just rush all of your units to attack them. BC battles take longer and are harder fo several reasons. One of them - units have huge defence values. [A little bit too much for my liking actually.] So it takes a lot more time for the units to die. But it is more realistic. Historically such battles didn't take 5-10 minutes as vanilla M2 introduced. Simply charging all your units won't do either. You must have your tactics worked out even before the battle. BC is all about strategy. Since the battles are so long, units get tired soon and that reduces their battle capabilities. So you should always keep fresh reserves.

change the AI from doing that to me, and making them just turn into blob and try to destroy by numbers by overunning me?

Why would you want that? AI is smarter than simply charging everything at you. What you want is basically making the AI dumber.

[wudang_clown]

Why would you want that? AI is smarter than simply charging everything at you. What you want is basically making the AI dumber.

That's true.

Besides, it would be wierd to fight on a patch of land - what would be the purpose of having the rest of the battle map?

[BeingOwned:)SPQR]

Ok, so what your saying is, continue to fight battles that last 30 minutes?
Well to that point i shall decrease the unit pools so it takes longer to recruit Horse Archers, and Archers, I just want some melee action, I know egyptians have crappy melee units but ill increase thier unit pools so they can recruit multiple and... i'll just change things manually, thanks for replying.

[Neige]

Umm.. yeah.

I don't know. My battles aren't so long usually. But 30 minutes aren't that bad also. And most of my battles usually do not take all the battle map. Only when the enemy starts routing, it gets messy.

Just don't try to catch missile cavalry with your infantry. Try to keep the main body of your army together. (Playing KoJ as I see from the screenshots.)

[Wei.Xiadi]

Yeah. I like the current AI, although there is one problem. The AI follow a pattern in how they engage and fight - it is actually 'very' easy to trick the AI. In a big battle I did yesterday 600 KOJ troops (only had 2 elite units) took on an overwhelming force of roughly 1300+ and we won easily with only 200 or so losses. I think the AI is too easily tricked/predictable. Maybe it should be enhanced even more - make them have more commands to follow (XAI I think was doing the same thing with expanding the ai command lines). I suppose I want an AI that won't fall for a very basic 'harrass, flank and flee' trick since it wins me all of my fights. I need a better opposition

[BeingOwned:)SPQR]

I dont understand you people, everytime i try to flank they spring up a reserve out of nowhere and cut them down with missile fire aswell, so far ive edited the Campaign AI.xml which now makes the enemy lay back, ive noticed that now they build up 3 full flags and when you move your armies to capture a settlement they counterattack and besiege one of yours with a horrendously huge army of cavalry, mostly horse archers, now i am gonna lower the horse archers recruit pool to 0.14 and increase all melee units to 0.78...
Well, if you change your AI's Campaign Style to what i did, they try to get 2 full flags on your largest armies, one consisting of missile units and the rest of infantry, first they piss me off buy blurting out the sun with volleys of arrows which makes me chase them, then then there infantry force arrives and encircles me...

[Tintin2]

I dont understand you people, everytime i try to flank they spring up a reserve out of nowhere and cut them down with missile fire aswell, so far ive edited the Campaign AI.xml which now makes the enemy lay back, ive noticed that now they build up 3 full flags and when you move your armies to capture a settlement they counterattack and besiege one of yours with a horrendously huge army of cavalry, mostly horse archers, now i am gonna lower the horse archers recruit pool to 0.14 and increase all melee units to 0.78...
Well, if you change your AI's Campaign Style to what i did, they try to get 2 full flags on your largest armies, one consisting of missile units and the rest of infantry, first they piss me off buy blurting out the sun with volleys of arrows which makes me chase them, then then there infantry force arrives and encircles me...

Isn't that good that the AI is much better than vanilla?
I play BC for quite some time and what I've experienced is that you at many cases need cavalry tactics.
With only infantry and some archers your going have some hard times, like early ERE for example.

Also, I think the middle east used to use alot of archers and horse archers. Just by looking at the unit rosters of the BC factions almost every faction has at least 1 or 2 horse archers.

At the moment I am playing a campaign as The Ayyubids, I sieged a town of The Great Seljuks with a force of 1200 vs 320 them wich included their sultan.
They only had two levy spearmen units and 2 of their best foot archers and their sultan obviously.
What they did was using their 2 levy's to keep my infantry busy while their archers was shredding my inf to pieces. I lost something about 350 men.
Can you imagine how a battle would be if they had a force of 1200men aswel?

Archers and horse archers are just plenty in BC and they are very effective, and I asume they were aswel in history.

[damnmap]

Get lots of cavalry
stick on hill
charge enemy that run up hill
??????
everything dies

what is it with the total war obsession with sloped terrain?

[wudang_clown]

Chasing HA is worst thing you can do. Screen your troops with your own missile troops and there will be no problem. You won't have melee with HA because they aren't suppose to go into melee.

@Wei.Xiadi
I guess having few patterns of AI behaviour and a switcher that activates them randomly before the battle (like Germanicus AI) would be good solution...

[Wei.Xiadi]

I wouldn't say this AI is intelligent. Yeah, it will move to try and counter you, but it pretty much stops if you can counter their counter. Just harass them - they'll keep breaking formation to try and send spearmen against your raiding cavalry and then your infantry and archers/crossbows can just keep shooting.

I think the KOJ crossbowmen are deadly, I've used them to kill 50% of the enemy when they decide to 'chill' inside their little spot when they're trying to defend a castle and my crossbowmen just shoot them all to death. Lots of people have commented on how good the AI is, and yes it is ok - but it isn't the best by far. Also, I've been having issues with HA, whenever I command 2 untis of HA and I have them form their circle and start shooting 1 of the units always moves right next to the enemy they're attacking, they'll start shooting - lose about 5 horses and then start fleeing. it's so annoying that they continously do that.

[Borgoroth]

HA units often requiers lots of attention to avoid going to close, fighting melee etc, micro macro

[damnmap]

and charges cannot be performed if they get too close

[The Noble Lord]

On which difficulty level you are playing??

[BeingOwned:)SPQR]

VH/VH although i dont know if you meant me though?

[Supermoler]

Do you know how to take Varna with a small army? (when they have that full army with the Asen' lead)
Just siege the city and the city's army come out then in the battle you send your all units inside the city(they open the gates to come out)then you take with cavarly the centre and your spearmens stand at the gate the stupid Asen sends his cavarly on one gate and meets with your spearmans


lol and your hold the gates until 3 minutes
I think you can do this strategy at all city which have a full army nearyby
and btw if u take the city the nearby full army will disappear