Mission Impossible and Re-inforcements

[TTRouble]

Hi Guys...

Suffered my first defeat against the Parthians in the Selecuids campaign (BI, H/H, 0 turn) and boy is it hard to take ! My 3 full stacks was attacked by 4 Parthain stacks deep in Parthian territory and I thought as it was fairly balanced that there was agood chance of winning.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The battle itself ended up being pretty one sided towards the end my single army was simply unable to fight and win against 3 full stacks in a single battle. I was able to beat the first two Parthian armies and had lost a few units by then and everyunit had taken a number of losses hoping that I could run eth clock out or re-inforcements should arrive before the 3rd and 4th Parthian armies make it. Re-inforcements didn;t show up and against the 3rd Parthian army there was simply no chance of winning. Before the armour upgrade to the Parthian's I think I would have beaten the 3rd army just about but that would have been pretty unrealistic. Also the AI's tactics were very good even though I gave the 1st Parthian army a bit of a pasting .. made me really have to think how to take on and beat the 2nd army when it showed up.

Now how does the AI decide that it will allow the opposing forces re-inforcements to arrive and fight but not yours ? After routing the 2nd Parthian's .. it was tough but felt good... fighting the 3rd and having to watch my units simply get crushed just seemed really unfair. I know I gotta loose some time but not like that

Cheers

TTRouble

[tone]

I'm not sure how the AI decides these things.

My suggestion....get a few phalangites in your army....you'll find their anticavalry bonuses pretty helpful.

[TTRouble]

Hi Tone

Up until this battle the Thoraktai were doing really well against all of the different Cat cavalary the Parthian's have used and even in this battle had taken minimum losses agiants the 1st Parthian army. I've changed their formation slightly in that they are 8 men deep instead of the usual 4 and usually have them wait until heavy cav is in range before giving them the order to throw their jav's. Its simply the 3rd army was impossible to fight - my archers (foot and horse) no longer had any arrows left, the infantry units and what was left of my heavy cav were engaged fighting what was left of the 2nd Part army when the 3rd army appeared and out flanked mine and used their cats to charge the rear and sides of my units causing them to rout. I just found it odd that the AI could bring on reinforcements for the opposing side but decide that it didn;t need to do so for me, even though 2 Selecuid armies were close at hand.

TTrouble.

[Lucius Aemilius Scaurus]

Or its just sheer bad luck, OR its something in your preferences. I have no idea if this is the case in RS2, but in RS 1.6 my reinforcements never showed because the game just thought my pc was too bad to handle all the units. Maybe look it up in the preferences file, you might find something there. (If i remember correctly it was something you had to change from FALSE to TRUE, about All units on the battlefield or something).

[apple]

Or its just sheer bad luck, OR its something in your preferences. I have no idea if this is the case in RS2, but in RS 1.6 my reinforcements never showed because the game just thought my pc was too bad to handle all the units. Maybe look it up in the preferences file, you might find something there. (If i remember correctly it was something you had to change from FALSE to TRUE, about All units on the battlefield or something).

Yep you can toggle that of and on in the preferences.txt

[Tankbuster]

It's indeed a line in the preferences file; you need to look for the one that says UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_THE_BATTLEFIELD (or something). It's a setting that deals with the balance between the amount of units on the battlefield your computer can handle, and those that you want on the field.

If set to true, then all armies will arrive on the battlefield simultaneously at the start of the battle: both those of your enemies and your allies. The advantage of this is that you get to fight the battle actually as you anticipated it on the campaign map, but the downside is that you might experience heavy lag: your computer will literally put all the necessary men on the battlefield, whether that leads to really bad lag or not.

If you set it to false, then your computer will only allow as many units on the battlefield as it thinks it can handle without producing too much lag (your computer judges this but it's usually not very accurate), however it will give preference to enemy reinforcements!!
So for example, if your computer judges that it can take 10,000 men on the field, and you do a battle of two of your 4,000-men stacks against two 4,000- men enemy stacks, then it can only fully process two full armies on the battlefield. So it will pit your first army against the enemy's first army to begin, and when you've beaten them, the second army will arrive; your second army will sit on the sidelines the entire battle.
Where it gets really annoying is if you have - for example - two of your 3,000-men armies face two 3,000-men enemy armies. In this case your computer can handle three full armies on the screen, and so it will pit the enemy's two armies against your primary army; while your second army will again sit on the sidelines. Charming eh?

Unlimited men on the battlefield is undoubtedly preferable, but if your computer really can't handle it, then there's an alternative: after your primary army runs out of steam (for example after it has beaten two of the enemy armies), you can let them all retreat (using the Withdraw button - white flag) so that another army of yours can fall in. You need to let at least one of your units stay on the battlefield though (until the second army makes it onto the battlefield), otherwise the computer will think that you're planning to forfeit the battle.

Hope that makes things clear.

[Brusilov]

As Tankbuster has posted - the entry in the preferences.txt file is as follows: UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD:FALSE

Personally, I hate to have the AI control an army due to past experience. I've seen the AI take my second army (a balanced army with infantry (both phalanx, swordsmen and archers) and cavalry) and run the archers, without firing a single arrow, straight into the enemy phalanx line.

This is one of the reasons I play 1 turn recruitment as there is smaller chance of having such a large battle as you've been playing.

I'd suggest taking a save of your game prior to the battle. Then change your options to reduce the graphic requirements and maybe even the resolution and see if that makes any difference to your armies turning up or not.

If I have reinforcements available (under my control) I will withdraw units as Tankbuster has suggested. I guess typically missile units and cavalry (if they've had a hard time of the battle will be the units that I withdraw. Obviously there is no control over which units will arrive on the battlefield. However, missile units once depleted of ammunition are only good fo chasing down routing units.

[Burninator]

I had my reinforcement general act like a complete tard the other night as the Spartans. I tried to fight 2 full Macedonian stacks, coming from opposite ends, but my AI just sat in the corner of the map, in a column formation. He didnt even try to approach until much of my army routed. I almost had a conniption. This is where the feature in MTW2 where you can drive your AI reinforcements and give them directions would make RTW better.

[swhunter]

I had my reinforcement general act like a complete tard the other night as the Spartans. I tried to fight 2 full Macedonian stacks, coming from opposite ends, but my AI just sat in the corner of the map, in a column formation. He didnt even try to approach until much of my army routed. I almost had a conniption. This is where the feature in MTW2 where you can drive your AI reinforcements and give them directions would make RTW better.

Hi Burn, good seeing you again.
Your playing the Spartan campaign?
If so post pics, I'm also.

[apple]

I had my reinforcement general act like a complete tard the other night as the Spartans. I tried to fight 2 full Macedonian stacks, coming from opposite ends, but my AI just sat in the corner of the map, in a column formation. He didnt even try to approach until much of my army routed. I almost had a conniption. This is where the feature in MTW2 where you can drive your AI reinforcements and give them directions would make RTW better.

Did you enable unlimited troops on the battlefield in the preference text?
If not troops will only come once you got a free unit spot. (aka one of the 20 spot you got)

[Burninator]

Hehe, unfortunately that particular debacle triggered the massive amount of troops = ctd upon returning to campaign map, and messed up my savegame. So now it's back to where I was a long way prior to that incident.

[Burninator]

Oh, the general came in to the field, but he came from the corner. I've seen problems where if the AI comes from the corner, it gets "hung up". And yes unlimited men was enabled. This was just an issue of the AI taking it's sweet frakking time when I needed them to SWIFTLY come in and flank the first AI that I was fighting. Had they done precisely that, I would have been able to about face and collectively beat the second army...

[apple]

O ok.

[Burninator]

Honestly, the "perfect" tw engine would be a combo of RTW, ME2, and Napoleon. I want the advanced sieges, advanced animations, and AI commanding from Kingdoms & varied unit skins/equipment; the Naval battles, scalable unit sizes, and other nitnoids from NTW, all smooshed into rtw. They changed the way animation speed is decided in MTW2 based on fatigue, and I hate it. instead of guys legs moving quickly but not changing position quickly, in MTW2 when guys are fatigued its like they are in slow mo, running in molasses. The RTW way of doing it is way more realistic. Beleive me, I've been in that situation. Running when exhausted means your legs are going, but your steps end up being tiny.