Battle AI mod

[joedreck]

I played some rounds single battle. The open fields maps are great with your changes, but with maps, where the AI must march closer, the AI have same bug. It's seems the problem of the AI is, that the AI don't have the right reaction after 2 or more units stand on one place.

Is it possible to change, that they should not move forward, if stand on each other, but move left or right? Sure it's not the way to fix that, cause if left or right are units, we get similar bug, but without melee attack.

[♔Dignan♔]

I played some rounds single battle. The open fields maps are great with your changes, but with maps, where the AI must march closer, the AI have same bug. It's seems the problem of the AI is, that the AI don't have the right reaction after 2 or more units stand on one place.

Is it possible to change, that they should not move forward, if stand on each other, but move left or right? Sure it's not the way to fix that, cause if left or right are units, we get similar bug, but without melee attack.

What you describe is the crux of the melee bug problem. I don't think we can fix it with our limited modding programs. CA has to fix it. We can hope that they do this for the upcoming BAI fix.

[Tan Zhi Han]

There is no miracle fix for the AI. All the modders on here have tried their hands at different things. I don't believe any of it can be considered failures. The last thing we can do is give up and fail. :p One day... we will find that source code and make the game 10x better... Until then... We must indulge the CA machine just a little longer... Bwahaha?

[♔Dignan♔]

So I've been thinking about this whole BAI problem. This and other mods like Darth's have made good advances in minimizing the amount of blobbing, maneuvering and clustering. They did this by altering settings that help prevent AI units from overlapping in the first place. Overlapping units is the primary culprit of the melee bug.

Then I thought.....what does this "avoidance logic" try to avoid??? It tries to prevent AI units from shooting each other in the back. Therefore, they continually leapfrog each other to get out of each other's way.

Then I thought.....are there any units in ETW that don't mind killing their own troops???? Artillery. Artillery still shoots it's own soldiers in the back. So, are there any settings in the db files for artillery that look drastically different from infantry? If we can make it so AI infantry units don't mind shooting their own guys in the back on occasion maybe we can further fix this bug. If not, I just hope CA has realized this and remedied it. Maybe....and that's a BIG maybe.

[FelixTheBong]

Luntik, overall excellent work. But I do have one piece criticism that I would like to share.

The morale levels seems to be upped a bit too much. On the whole, a unit fights down to last few men in protracted melees and massive firefights, resulting in an increased rate of casualties.

As a consequence, the concept of morale becomes marginalized to non-significance. The value of high-morale gunpowder units diminish. The balance of quality vs quantity shifts in favor of quantity. Becaues of high morale, a cheap 150-man melee militia unit can hold the line against line-infantry, and wear them down during the long melee as they themselves get chopped down to last man.

Can anything be done about this? Do you think increasing the effect of morale will have an adverse effect on your mod?

[Luntik]

Thank you, ♔Dignan♔ , your arguments are sound, and give further impetus to continue the search.

FelixTheBong, yes, I'm working on it (morale levels)
+ reduce suicidal for the general
+ most defenseless for artillery
+ greater vitality for cavalry

[irish437]

Thank you, ♔Dignan♔ , your arguments are sound, and give further impetus to continue the search.

FelixTheBong, yes, I'm working on it (morale levels)
+ reduce suicidal for the general
+ most defenseless for artillery
+ greater vitality for cavalry

Any updates on this?

[Luntik]

Ok, be patient a few days

[Turbo]

Luntik,

A couple of questions. Is there any particular unit size that works best for your AI mod? I don't play on ultra settings as there are all sorts of issues with town movement and buildings. I noticed my CTD's went down when I quit using the ultra setting. I suspect that the AI sometimes gets "stuck".

I have a mod request that I'd like you to consider -- making the militia spawn more units and larger sizes. A larger militia spawn in capitals would also be nice. This would help a great deal in adding challenge to the game. Another promising mod would be the elimination of sieges with field battles instead.

Overall, excellent work! You deserve a lot more credit and recognition. Have you thought of asking for a place in the hosted mod area? I'd be pleased to help.

[FelixTheBong]

Turbo, there are mods floating around that remove fortresses from the game. I'm using once such mod (sorry, dont have its name handy) that just removes the forts, but replaces them with towns (idk about off-town constructable arty forts). It's not exactly what you're looking for, but just fyi.

Luntik, great to hear you're still playing around with this mod. Your work has ressurected ETW from the grave for me.

[irish437]

Its just the battle AI

v1.1 -> no chickendancing

It all changes, which makes my mod:
groupformations.bin
_kv_morale (many changes)
_kv_rules (3 lines)
battle_entities (2 lines)
unit_abilities (1 lines) removed F&A
unit_stats_land_experience_bonuses (increases Morale_Bonus)

Download Link http://www.filefront.com/15615989/ce...e_AI_v1_1.pack

Download cetw_Battle_AI_v1_1.pack and put it to your [...]empire total war/data folder

Please note that the record
mod cetw_Battle_AI_v1_1.pack;
should be in the first top row of file user.empire_script

To make the mod better, I need to know your opinion

So all I have to do is download this and place it in that folder? I don't need to delete anything?

When you say, "mod cetw_Battle_AI_v1_1.pack;
should be in the first top row of file user.empire_script"

What does this mean and where do I verify this at?

[irish437]

^^Can anyone answer the above question?

Also can you look into what variables the Maratha use that are different from everyone else? They attack better, invade better, etc. They do everything better than every other nation.

[Luntik]

Hi, irish437

Download cetw_Battle_AI_v1_1.pack and put it to your [...]empire total war/data folder

put file user.empire_script.txt in folder
Windows XP - C:\Documents and Settings\(Your User Name Here)\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\Empire\scripts
Windows Vista - C:\Users\(Your User Name Here)\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Empire\scripts

add in file user.empire_script.txt record:
mod cetw_Battle_AI_v1_1.pack;

it all

[WesW]

Luntik, I have noticed that Fire and Advance is still in my tech tree (I have already researched Plug Bayonets). Does your change simply remove the button from the battlefield display?
Also, I have modified the morale settings by simply halving all the negative factors, and it seems to be working well. Units don't break nearly as early, but there is still a lot of difference between militia and grenadiers, for example. You might want to try that and see how you like it.
Finally, I plan on releasing a mod soon, and I would like to include your mod in it, with appropriate credit of course. Is this ok?

[Luntik]

Luntik, I have noticed that Fire and Advance is still in my tech tree (I have already researched Plug Bayonets). Does your change simply remove the button from the battlefield display?

I removed the Fire and Advance other way for greater compatibility with other mods.

Finally, I plan on releasing a mod soon, and I would like to include your mod in it, with appropriate credit of course. Is this ok?

Yes, ok.

[♔Dignan♔]

Luntik and anyone else who may know .... do we have the ability to change how long AI stays in formation. The melee bug problem happens when the enemy formation comes into musket range, at that point all units begin targeting individually and start walking through each other. Can we force the AI to stay in formation longer?

Also, is it possible to change how far apart units are spaced in a formation? For example.

Normal ETW unit spacing goes like this.

==== ==== ==== ====

Can we make it so AI formations look more like this? I think it would help AI units keep from tangling up.

====---====---====---====

[joedreck]

Also, is it possible to change how far apart units are spaced in a formation? For example.

Normal ETW unit spacing goes like this.

==== ==== ==== ====

Can we make it so AI formations look more like this? I think it would help AI units keep from tangling up.

====---====---====---====

this could be a good way. It would be not looking nice, but it could work.

[Sinuhet]

Luntik and anyone else who may know .... do we have the ability to change how long AI stays in formation. The melee bug problem happens when the enemy formation comes into musket range, at that point all units begin targeting individually and start walking through each other. Can we force the AI to stay in formation longer?

Also, is it possible to change how far apart units are spaced in a formation? For example.

Normal ETW unit spacing goes like this.

==== ==== ==== ====

Can we make it so AI formations look more like this? I think it would help AI units keep from tangling up.

====---====---====---====

Hi,

I have stopped to play and to mod formations in ETW several months ago. But I see I should share some my knowledge with community. I am more and more involved in the other things in my life than gaming and modding, so be patient if I will not react quickly (it is not my arrogance, but the lack of free time). I will try to devote some my free time to the matters related to formations in ETW, which are already "invented" by me in summer 2009 (to use the wording of my old "enemy" and friend DarthVader) but I was not motivated till this time to use them and to share them. I was not also motivated to improve my old ETW formations, which are defective as for their naval formations usage - simply fixable with my current knowledge. I need some other suggestions for changes in groupformations to implement them. In other words, I need some ideas and historical sources.
Well, to the question above - it is very simple to do it technically, you must define only the formations for which you could do this.

Bye, see you later
Sinuhet

[♔Dignan♔]

Hi,

I have stopped to play and to mod formations in ETW several months ago. But I see I should share some my knowledge with community. I am more and more involved in the other things in my life than gaming and modding, so be patient if I will not react quickly (it is not my arrogance, but the lack of free time). I will try to devote some my free time to the matters related to formations in ETW, which are already "invented" by me in summer 2009 (to use the wording of my old "enemy" and friend DarthVader) but I was not motivated till this time to use them and to share them. I was not also motivated to improve my old ETW formations, which are defective as for their naval formations usage - simply fixable with my current knowledge. I need some other suggestions for changes in groupformations to implement them. In other words, I need some ideas and historical sources.
Well, to the question above - it is very simple to do it technically, you must define only the formations for which you could do this.

Bye, see you later
Sinuhet

Sinuhet, I think the community would be very receptive to this if you could do it. In my opinion, the biggest cause of the BAI bug (aka "melee bug") is that units overlap and never stop reshuffling. If their formations start out with more spacing they will be less likely to overlap in the first place. Now, the obvious downside to this is that the line would be stretched out even longer than it is now. I wish the AI could properly use a "stacked" deployment formation where one line is put behind another. THis can never happen properly because they will "leapfrog" each other trying to get a free line of fire. They will do this until they walk into the player's lines without firing a shot.

I don't really have any historical information to help with formation but a start would be just creating a formation mod that spaces the units out farther apart than they are now.

[Nikator]

Hey Luntik, thanks for your great mod, I like it very much. Just one small, maybe stupid question: Did you change the amount of ammunition the infantry has? Because somehow I've got the feeling my infantry runs out of ammo sooner than before I used your mod... but that maybe just a misapprehension.

Thanks and keep up the great work,
Nikator.