improved artificial intelligence

[sirgzu]

Hello!

I am new at RTW mods, I haven't been playing RTW for years and digged out my old CDs pack and reinstalled it, that game just amazes me I haven't tried that many mods but yours seems to be the closest to what I wanted that game to be (in vanilla).

I started a campaign with Rome (I highly appreciate that there is only one Roman faction now) in VH/VH and crushed Pyrrhus at the first battle and killed him. Well that was the only hard battle I had to fight really :/ The only challenge left now is to send reinforcements qickly enough to sustain the army's progression. I nearly finished the campaign and still no Marian reforms...

I know Rome isn't the hardest faction to play ever but, I'd like a bit more challenge! I've had a look in the modding portal and there is one mod that seems to be focused on AI, DarthMod. I tried it and it proved way more challenging indeed! Is that possible to include that mod's AI in you mod? The modder (DarthVador) apparently gave away all his methods and stuff here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=64097

Sirgzu

[florin80]

You can`t mod the AI in rtw. That file only changes the formations that the ai uses in battle. Nothing else.

[sirgzu]

I don't know what modification he brought to the game. All I know is that the result is stunning

[Quinn Inuit]

Hmmm...I recommend you try to play with more restrictive house rules then, and set up your battle lines in a more traditional way (i.e., with everyone close together, not taking advantage of the fact that you have perfect communication with every unit every time during a battle). I use Sinhuet's AI formations (slightly modified in some ways to be more like Darth's) in the ExRM because I find his formations cause the AI to hold its battle line better. However, if you examine your ExRM directory, you'll find an AI formations file with the suffix ".Darths." That's Darth's formations for the ExRM, so if you prefer those you can use them. Some of Darth's other changes actually have no effect, and I haven't tested out the rest.

[sirgzu]

Oh really? I didn't know it was just a matter of moving a few files
All those moded AI, is it just about unit formations? How many files should I move then? If I understand, the descr_formation_ai.txt is the default (Sinuhet?) one, and I can just rename descr_formation_ai.Darth to use Darth's AI instead? Is it that simple? I am always cautious when things go too simple, there is often a trap
Also I don't know what you mean by house rules, could you explain me better please?

Thanks a lot!

[Caesar Augustus]

I don't know about the whole AI thing, but by house rules Quinn means deliberately limiting yourself and restricting yourself to playing in a particular manner. For example, Candelarius Guide (The Ultimate Guide to Playing RTR Historically as Rome), others can just be as simple as not re-training units simply to replace casualties.

[Quinn Inuit]

You're correct in how you swap out the formation files by renaming them. It's really quite simple. (I like to leave lots of ways to back out changes in my work in case I need to do it later.)

CA's right about what I meant about house rules. The idea is that the AI has certain limitations, so you don't play in such a way that you exploit those. For instance, when I play Rome, I don't launch naval invasions of Carthage directly. I send an army to sit in North Africa for a bit to let the AI catch up to me, then fight my way to Carthage. Doing otherwise exploits the AI's tendency not to have any sort of defense in depth.

[sirgzu]

I had a look at the descr_formation_ai.txt files there. It looks pretty messy :/ Is there any language specifications I could use to make my own one? Or did Darth and Sinuhet just reverse ingeneered the syntax and all? I do programing and I've done that sort of stuff before for robocode if anyone knows. It is a simple tank battle simulator written in Java and you don't realy play it, you just write the AI for the tanks and you let them fight, realy funny ^^

[Quinn Inuit]

Here's a primer on that file: http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Descr_formations_ai.txt

It's pretty complicated--learning how to work with this file was much tougher than any of the other text files. I've done a little modification of the ExRM's default file, but Darth and Sinhuet are the only ones who've really managed to effectively work with the whole thing.