Siege A.I

**Reiksfart** · January 10, 2011, 03:16 AM

Has it changed? I don't remember it being this bad before. Earlier only one orc army out of two entered my settlement, so I had to go out to meet the other one after defeating the first. Even then each orc unit only responded individually.

Now, vardek crom's invasion hit my dwarven capital, all three armies have just been standing around for over an hour doing nothing after some entered the castle, the rest just hanging around outside. My army was in the central ring since it was the only chance I would have. Finally decided to open the gate and storm out, but again, the enemy units only respond individually, doing nothing until directly attacked in melee. That would have taken another three hours of hunting down three armies so I gave up and having a break for a while.

Something very wrong here...

**holynevil** · January 10, 2011, 03:18 AM

agree with you on that. Everytime i sail out to meet my enemy, they only use their missile units, the rest, i have to go for them myself, with is stupid imo.

**sithi** · January 10, 2011, 03:28 AM

It is also sad that, if you have ballista towers and the enemy brings forth his rams, rams get destroyed 99% of the time, just as the Siege Towers do, the enemy then brings forth a set of ladders...so, about 4000 guys climb those 4 ladders...

**KNavis** · January 10, 2011, 07:25 AM

I sustained two sieges from beastmen. Two full shack armies. Exactly the same behaviour. One tower, two rams, one ladder. The tower and ladder on my walls, one unit on each and stop. The rest of the attacking army almost wiped out by my towers without using any siege equipment, in both occasions

(then CTD

)

**jthewonder** · January 10, 2011, 02:59 PM

Originally Posted by KNavis

I sustained two sieges from beastmen. Two full shack armies. Exactly the same behaviour. One tower, two rams, one ladder. The tower and ladder on my walls, one unit on each and stop. The rest of the attacking army almost wiped out by my towers without using any siege equipment, in both occasions

(then CTD

)

So similiar to what i've been experiencing that im close to thinking you must be standing outside my window, peeking in

the CTD's seem to be random however, every ctd i've had in a battle could simply be replayed and in the second or third (sometimes fourth) try i eventually win or lose the battle with no ctd.

**Wicked_Joker** · January 10, 2011, 02:21 PM

As Tzeentch I ran into a similar problem being seiged by High Elves. They all dropped their seige equipment (even their balista units walked away?) and set up a formation out of reach of my ranged units. There archers seem to have longer range so they sat there and killed half my units on the walls, I ended up winning by sending 3 Calvary units in there to hit and run. That fight ended in a CTD. The next try I expected them to pull the same thing, this time I set up everyone out side the walls and had a skirmish battle. But yea, they don't seem to care that their buddies are being attacked 20 meters away.

Also in any field battles where they refuse to move I can usually sit back and hammer them with a seige weapon until I either kill about 40% of them or I run out of ammo.

**Wicked_Joker** · January 10, 2011, 03:34 PM

Yes all my CTD's are random as well. I guess the game just isn't very stable. Sometimes it crashes during AI turns, some times it crashes after a battle, It even crashed once while in battle. In windowed mode it seems to have slowed to a somewhat bare-able rate, like every 5-6 turns, if I am lucky.

**Yarkis de Bodemloze** · January 10, 2011, 03:53 PM

I had a siege where the attackers moved the ram to the door, then after one or two hits moved it to the side, then back to the door, again to the side, and so on. It took them forever to break down the gate.

**jthewonder** · January 10, 2011, 04:39 PM

I had something similar to that too, after their units manning their ladder and siege tower had died they waited for quite sometime and then finally move the ram to the gate and startet pounding it until it was at about 70 % damaged, then they moved the ram away and dropped it, then moving all their units in front of my gate where i killed allmost everyone with my crossbowmen before running them over with my cavalry, their losses was about 2200 - 2400 and mine were around 2-300 (those bestigors still hurt like hell, even though they only had 2 of them reach my walls)

**metalguy24** · January 10, 2011, 04:45 PM

Yes the siege AI does sit there, but for me this has saved many a city for me! I have battle timer on so the AI has only so long to take my castle. I was playing as Averland and my capital got attacked by two full stacks of Orks. I held onto the wall with a skeleton defense force and fought the orks for as long as possible trying to inflict as many casualties. The other army did nothing, content to just fling waaaaagh magic at me. The rest of my force I pulled back to my center and established a line there. I then pulled my skeleton defense back and the remaining orks from that army came on. I easily routed them with cavalry charges and heavy halbreds. The other ork army finally assaulted but with little time left it did them no good. So my city was safe for now!

**Jerat** · January 10, 2011, 05:36 PM

The siege AI is really having great problems. In my dwarve campaign the two scripted noght goblin stacks which attack Karak Eight Peaks did nothing. one Army destroyed the outer wall (I kept my army in the inner ring) walked inside and waited till the time ended. The other army placed all units in front of the main gate and got slaughtered by the towers.
I think one problem is that the AI is waiting till all (!) siege weapons have no ammunition anymore because there are no problems if a non-scripted army attacks you with no siege weapons.

**jthewonder** · January 10, 2011, 05:39 PM

Yeah i've been saved a couple of times aswell due to this bug, but in a way that kinda ruins the experience, at least for me. Sure, i could just sally out or whatever, but a siege should imo be a siege, not a regular battle where you have to push your troops through a bottleneck to get at the enemy, ending in a kamikaze style defence.

**Wicked_Joker** · January 10, 2011, 09:59 PM

I think the AI is stuck on that sniper setting or Shootout or whatever its called. They just seem to get their ranged units into position, and leave the rest of their army behind them. They do position spearmen if they have some right behind the archers to repel calvary i guess. If there is a way to set them on Full out attack they may actually try to use seige equipment.

Maybe it is because I attack them before they weaken my forces too much, maybe if I let them attack when they are ready to the battles will go different?

**Klierowski** · January 11, 2011, 07:13 AM

Maiby some1 from cow team coud say anything to us about this problem ?.

**Werebear** · January 11, 2011, 08:04 AM

ehh i wanna know myself (

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=415878

**Mikail Mengsk** · January 11, 2011, 08:12 AM

Really really strange. does the bug still happens without ANY artillery piece for the AI? As someone else said, i've the impression that the AI never attacks until all of his artillery's ammo are depleted.

**jnecros** · January 11, 2011, 08:57 AM

Seems like Xeryx is saying that the strange AI behavior may in fact be a result of CoW's code, and he is concerned over the many reports of CTD's in 1.4+..
Could we find this out by trying CoW 1.4 with the old CoW AI from 1.3, not sure how hard that would be to do, but I can help test it.

This issue is more than just a problem with rams, because when you sally forth the AI acts very strangely, in my game they sent one unit of mounted archers charging at my army and the rest just stood back. After this, I could attack each AI unit as the rest of the army just looked on, so I just moved from one AI unit to the next killing them off one at a time.

Maybe the problem is with AI pathing in general?
Would placing the player army under AI control be an effective test for this? Does it use the XAI when you put units under AI control or no? If so, I could do a siege without rams and see what my army does.

**Reiksfart** · January 11, 2011, 10:02 PM

I've been testing some custom sieges and I'm certain siege engines (i.e cannons, catapults etc) are the main cause for some of the behaviour (or lack of). It's still far from perfect, but the A.I does make its way to the inner ring, even pulling ladders off walls and re-using them to take the next line of walls. This is against 3x khorne armies and 3 x greenskin. I believe flaming arrows from the towers kill off rams too easily, which makes it far harder for the A.I to assault.

I'm going to have a look at the scripts later and mod out some of the scripted armies siege engines and make sure they have enough rams, ladders and siege towers (at least 2 of each). The A.I don't really use cannons/catapults very well and will be better off with extra units of regular troops in my opinion. Even more so if it allows the A.I to perform a siege better in the campaign.

So far I think the best course of action is to turn on campaign battle time limits and defend as best you can all the walls from outer to inner. This is how I tested the A.I earlier. Less gamey this way too, since no real life commander would have given up part of a castle without a fight.