Terrible unit behaviour

**Barbarian-Bob** · May 13, 2006, 02:59 PM

This problem is described in a post made in another thread, and I too was really annoyed, so I started a new thread to see what others thought about this. Well, I'm just gonna shamelessly quote him so I won't have to describe to problem to you (lazy me):

Originally Posted by Neb

A little off topic but here it is.

I just registered on gamespot to dl the videos they have up on there. I was really, really optomistic about M2TW, but the video's actually killed some of it for me. The biggest issue that has made me give up RTW was the AI. But very slightly behind the AI issue was a number of smaller issues that really, really annoyed me.

One was troops halting for no reason, only to stand for a second and start running again. This happens several times in "Game play video 1". Cavalry get the order to charge a unit, and several times, they stop for a second, raise their lances, lower their lances and start the charge again.

Another issue that really annoyed me, was the pathfinding for cavalry while chasing a unit. At the end of "Game play video 1" that same group of cavalry are chasing a fleeing unit. The cavalry practically miss the fleeing mass of people.. start another charge, and just before they intercept the fleeing unit do that quick turn around that cavalry love to do while pursuing.

I know they still have months of development left.. but these are fundamental flaws that really annoy me when I play RTW. And it's made worse by these flaws not being present in the earlier games.

-Neb

Any thoughts on this?

**God-Emperor of Mankind** · May 13, 2006, 03:13 PM

One was troops halting for no reason, only to stand for a second and start running again. This happens several times in "Game play video 1". Cavalry get the order to charge a unit, and several times, they stop for a second, raise their lances, lower their lances and start the charge again.

This happened because the dumbass playing gave the cavalry the order to charge all the time.
If he would have clicked once I'm sure we would have seen a very smooth charge.

**thomonkey** · May 13, 2006, 03:13 PM

the guy kept on clicking charge over and over again so they reformed over and over again.
...

edited because i was mean

**Barbarian-Bob** · May 13, 2006, 03:24 PM

Yeah, I noticed that too, but if you look at the end of the video, the knights just stop and hang back (even though he didn't do any click click all the time) when they chase the infantry. Getting flashback from rome where you had to babysit cavalry chasing broken enemies, otherwise they'd just run beside them, behind them, or even stop.

**The True Roman** · May 14, 2006, 12:06 AM

Originally Posted by Barbarian-Bob

Yeah, I noticed that too, but if you look at the end of the video, the knights just stop and hang back (even though he didn't do any click click all the time) when they chase the infantry. Getting flashback from rome where you had to babysit cavalry chasing broken enemies, otherwise they'd just run beside them, behind them, or even stop.

The reason the knights hung back is because the unit had split in two (some of the men were in front of the knights and some were behind them) and in the end of the clip you can see some sort of unit about to crash right into the knights so they back off.

I just watch it agin to make sure you can see once the knights hit the unit they killed all the men in the center cuting the unit in half and that is why they didn't out right get the guys in front for there were men behind them that need to be killed.

**HorseArcher** · May 14, 2006, 12:29 AM

yeah, as some of you guys already said, just think that there are probably another 4-5 months to go developing this game. I understand the horror of seeing that stop-charge bug we have seen in RTW, but remind you that was in the final product and it didn't become obvious until we were already playing it.

And also, that guy who did the video, was clicking all over the place, possibly never played RTW in his life, actually he looks like he was expecting that the units will act , like the mainstrieam "RTS" type of game similar to AOE or C&C. where you just keep clicking stuff madly with absolute no battlefield tactics involved, but just some mad rush into the middle of everything.

**thomonkey** · May 13, 2006, 05:44 PM

if they did a great job killing fleeing enemies youd kill and entire army when it routed. you really want that?

**Ewan** · May 13, 2006, 05:57 PM

i'd like to point out that this game is barly in alpha so anything in the videos that doesnt look to smooth will no doubt be fixed by end game

**thomonkey** · May 13, 2006, 06:03 PM

ya, its barly in alpha...

**Angarah** · May 13, 2006, 06:45 PM

One gameplay video made by a guy who obviously had no experience with the Total War series put you off the game? Riiiiight. Ok, have some patience. When we're a month away from release, then you can look for any flaws. But not now...

**God-Emperor of Mankind** · May 14, 2006, 04:52 AM

Originally Posted by Angarah

One gameplay video made by a guy who obviously had no experience with the Total War series put you off the game? Riiiiight. Ok, have some patience. When we're a month away from release, then you can look for any flaws. But not now...

No, finding flaws are good. It will help CA fix it.
But this flaw lied with the actual player then in the game which you could clearly see.
So complaining about it is kinda pointless

**Barbarian-Bob** · May 14, 2006, 01:04 AM

Ah, ok. You've put me at ease for now, it's a long way till november. Still, I can't get rid of the feeling that this is just Rome with better graphics and new units. Of course, I could be 500% wrong.

Just my 2 denarii.

**Sitarus Originalus PM-30+** · May 14, 2006, 01:40 AM

hmmm... i will wait untill winter and then see ... maybe in demo, not in the 10 sec movie..

**Neb** · May 14, 2006, 05:08 AM

I actually see this as a problem (I should agree with my own quote, right?).

The lesser of the two is the stop, reform and start the charge again problem. The game should be intelligent enough to figure out that the new order is exactly the same as the current order and just let the unit continue. In STW, and MTW this isn't a problem. Units don't re-form to charge if order them to charge the unit they are aleady charging.. they just keep going.

The greater of the two in my opinion is the lack if individual pathfinding in exchange for only whole unit paths. This is easily apparent in RTW while chasing routers or navigating cities. If a troop or twenty fall behind the main unit in a city, they will often get stuck on buildings edges and walls while trying to use the path that is being used by the rest of the unit that is already in the next street. If you breaka routing unit in two, with 5 men on one side of your chasing cavalry, and 5 men on the other, your cavalry will be happy to run between them the whole way to the edge of the map without killing any more. In STW and MTW these weren't problems. The city pathfinding wasn't a problem because there weren't cities... bad example. But the interception of units in STW and MTW was far superior to RTW and from what I've seen, M2TW aswell. In MTW, chase a routing unit with a unti of cavalry; you will see each individual man in your cavalry unit chase someone in that fleeing unit. You will see your men run directly at each fleeing man, and not some averaged path of all the fleeing men in that unit, killing any of them they happen to cross. This, in my opinion is a huge step backwards from MTW to RTW, and it doesn't look like they've taken that step back forward for M2TW.

-Neb

**~~removeduser_487563287433~~** · May 14, 2006, 05:20 AM

People complaining about games that they haven't played and aren't finished. Always welcome humour.

**Adherbal** · May 14, 2006, 05:33 AM

this is most likely one of the downsides of the animation system. Movement is now dependant on animation, and not the other way round. For example in RTW an archer will not respond to a move order while it is playing it's "aim" or "fire" animation. In MTW the animation was probably dependant on the movement/action, not the other way round. I certainly think this approach is bad for the gameplay.

**Neb** · May 14, 2006, 06:59 PM

Originally Posted by Adherbal

this is most likely one of the downsides of the animation system. Movement is now dependant on animation, and not the other way round. For example in RTW an archer will not respond to a move order while it is playing it's "aim" or "fire" animation. In MTW the animation was probably dependant on the movement/action, not the other way round. I certainly think this approach is bad for the gameplay.

That's exactly it. And while there's little that can be done about it, outside recoding half the battle engine, it still bothers me.

Originally Posted by Ferrets54

People complaining about games that they haven't played and aren't finished. Always welcome humour.

How is it humourous? I've been playing games of all genres long enough to know when something isn't an issue. I didn't complain about things like not seeing men on walls. It's obvious troops will be able to go on walls, it's the RTW engine.

But the issues I'm concerned about here are based on them being present in RTW (codebase for M2TW), and in the M2TW trailers. You can't assume that because there are 6 months of development left that everything is going to be fixed. In fact, you can assume that these issues will be present in the final version of M2TW because fixing them would require a major rewrite of how troops operate.

If you see the welsh riding dragons into battle, you can complain. It doesn't matter if there's 6 months of development left.

-Neb

**Pritzl** · May 14, 2006, 07:17 PM

While I too think it's too early to tell and that the video was equivocal in that regard, this is a serious issue. Remember that afterall we will now have even more impassable terrain on battle maps and I've voiced my concern before over path-finding on the official forums. It will have to be head and shoulders above RTW to avoid mass suicides by frustrated clickers.

**Beiss** · May 17, 2006, 01:54 PM

I think one of the main reasons to worry here is that the same problem exists in RTW. Like Neb said, the problem didn't exist in MTW or STW. I also think he's right about the click-issue - why is the game not intelligent enough to realize you're re-issuing the same order again and that there's no need to halt and recharge? And even if you're issuing a new order to charge at something else, why stop? Just keep running and turn a little to the right.

I started another thread about this, which was locked because this one already existed. Oops. Anyway, my point there was that... this looks the exact same way in RTW, and since it doesn't look the same in MTW or STW, there's reason to believe that the AI has not been reprogrammed in any major way since RTW. AI was the one thing that players complained the most about in RTW. Why would CA leave this unfixed?

To those of you who blame these flaws on the fact that the game has 6 months until release - CA said themselves that they've been developing this game for 7 years. Why wait so long with fixing something so crippling and horrible? Also remember that this issue remains in RTW despite numerous patches.

To thomonkey: yes, I want my army to do a great job killing fleeing enemies. I don't want to have to babysit them at every turn, pausing the game every 10 seconds just to ensure that they're doing as they're told. I don't want them to fight the battle for me, but I want them to follow orders. Telling my cavalry to go killing the routers means "kill the routers", not "ride around/along the routers until they reach the end of the map". I agree that if this particular part of the AI worked the way it should in RTW, a routing army would be killed in 2 seconds. Morale was pretty weird in RTW - all of a sudden, entire units of 100 soldiers would turn and run, suddenly becoming painfully fragile. I've been running down large numbers of routing peasants using 5 or less light horsemen, and all the peasants did was run. Even a peasant has to realize that his chances of survival is better if he stands his ground together with his peers than if he tries to run away from trained horsemen with his back turned! Surely morale can flinch sometimes but a large group of soldiers of any rank or skill should soon regain their senses and stop running away. There are a lot of other issues with morale in RTW, and I'd hate to see any of them survive to the day that MTW2 is released - but you don't solve issues like balancing routing by making the AI so bad that your units can't seem to catch up with the routers.

Back on topic - As I said, there's reason to believe that the AI in MTW2 has large sections of it taken directly from RTW. CA says diplomacy has been improved since RTW, but remember diplomacy and strategy map AI was ALSO better in MTW and STW than in RTW. I understand programming the AI for a dynamic map such as the one in RTW is different from programming the AI for an area-based map like that in STW or MTW, but considering what we've seen so far, it's easy to suspect that the enemy factions in MTW2 are going to act like in RTW - sitting around waiting for you to conquer them, make you their ally and then invade you the next turn, refusing ceasefire when you've surrounded them with 10 times their army, even when they only have one province left. (RTW also allowed for some really strange diplomacy situations - like being allied to your ally's enemy's ally. (imagine France being allied with England, England being enemies with Germany, Germany being allied with Spain, and Spain being allied with France, for example). In the real world, being allies pretty much means you have the same enemies, and being enemies should mean you can't share allies.)

Anyway - these are all things that could possibly cripple the AI in MTW2 just as it did in RTW - and my reason for believing so is this very video clip. If this part of the AI is exactly like in RTW, why would the rest of it be any better? Maybe the soliders besieging a settlement will still run around in circles below the wall instead of climbing the ladders? I also don't think that CA would advertise their game with a clip that shows it from the worst possible perspective - flaunting the flaws instead of portraying the perfection, but if this is how the game actually plays, I really do wonder how much of the hi-q trailer is actually in-game. The trailer for RTW sure made things look better than they really did.

**Lusted** · May 17, 2006, 01:59 PM

The reason that orders get reissued when you click again and again in RTw is to do with the way the animations are done, not because of the ai. And as for the campaign map ai, Ca have said they are improving this, im pretty sure they weren't happy with the way it was in RTW either, but RTw was a bit rushed in development. CA had to ccreate a new engine for RTW, because of the leap from 2d units to 3d, and the new campaign map, which meant recoding everything. So i think that is a pretty good reason to not have everything the same as STW or MTW, given the amount of changes that would have had to be made. I have faith in CA, i will wait until the game is out before passing judgement on it, and if CA says they are working hard on improving the ai, then i believe they are, and look forward to seeing the results.