It was really dumb of CA to put Howitzers and other explosive artillery in this game

Whats the point? Who cares if its historically accurate, it makes multiplayer a pain in the... The benefits of being historically accurate are totally out weighed by the hassle of making sure games don't regress into WWI BS style games.

Howitzers, Motors, Rockets and especially Unicorns really do not belong in non siege multiplayer games.
CA needs to fire some people, srsly.

Originally Posted by LiveWithCourage

Whats the point? Who cares if its historically accurate, it makes multiplayer a pain in the... The benefits of being historically accurate are totally out weighed by the hassle of making sure games to regress into WWI BS style games.

Howitzers, Motors, Rockets and especially Unicorns really do not belong in non siege multiplayer games.
CA needs to fire some people, srsly.

perhaps you should live up to your name and instead of complaining go bravely into the storm and discover a solution to what vexes you so as to snatch victory from the jaws of indirect fire defeat.Or perhaps find a good group to play with that is willing to stick to historically accurate army compositions

How's about give them a realistic rate of fire?

ROF is alright, given the time and unit size proportions. But just the idea of WWII style artillery is just so dumb. Even Howitzers are ridiculously over powered.

Or perhaps find a good group to play with that is willing to stick to historically accurate army compositions

That would be nice but the way CA lined up all the incentives is totally opposed to such army compositioins. Why waste a slot on conventional artillery when you can have GPS assisted M777's?

Artillery of the time DID include canon and howiters

Perhaps they too accurate.

Hm. Officially, every Russian artillery company contained:
8 12lb cannons and 4 1/2 pood (20lb) unicorns (Heavy companies)
or
8 6lb cannons and 4 1/4 pood (10lb) unicorns (Light companies)
or
6-8 6lb cannons and 4 1/4 pood unicorns (horse companies)

I believe that the Russian army did have conventional howitzers, but they were heavy and used mostly as siege weapons and not in the field. Regardless, the other European nations of the era generally had similar arrangements with their artillery. Howitzers were used in the field.

Accuracy IS something of an issue, however. But then, to my, it seems like my gunners are often deliberately missing rather than hitting with laser-guided accuracy. Of course, I've been playing with mods for forever, so yeah. I can't speak well of what it's like in vanilla.

Or you could just make an agreement with the other player beforehand not to use indirect artillery.

This is one of the main reasons I play NTW3. Howitzers and unicorns are still there but the accuracy is more realistic. If you are after historical gameplay, download it when V2 comes out very soon. There is always games available but unfortunately you cannot see modded games from the vanilla game lobby.

Is there anything worse than people whining about what is actually a tremendous range of games? I mean just think of the alternatives out there to the TW series - zilch basically. NTW is bloody brilliant in my book, sure its got faults, what hasn't (including thread starters apparently) but we get several interesting campaigns (not just the one scripted campaign that you play once then sell on amazon), then not only can we try out our strategies on a lovely 3d map, BUT we can fight battles exactly with painstackingly detailed historical units where there's a meeting of forces on the map in realtime! Excuse me but is that common in other games of this genre..................no didn't think so. Then it can be modded too (although to be fair the original game is a heck of a lot more stable than most of the mods I've tried.
I don't think we've really got too much to moan about here.

Artillery of the time DID include canon and howiters

Hm. Officially, every Russian artillery company contained:
8 12lb cannons and 4 1/2 pood (20lb) unicorns (Heavy companies)
or
8 6lb cannons and 4 1/4 pood (10lb) unicorns (Light companies)
or
6-8 6lb cannons and 4 1/4 pood unicorns (horse companies)

I believe that the Russian army did have conventional howitzers, but they were heavy and used mostly as siege weapons and not in the field. Regardless, the other European nations of the era generally had similar arrangements with their artillery. Howitzers were used in the field.

Accuracy IS something of an issue, however. But then, to my, it seems like my gunners are often deliberately missing rather than hitting with laser-guided accuracy. Of course, I've been playing with mods for forever, so yeah. I can't speak well of what it's like in vanilla.

Big deal! It ruins the game, I just played another match. We made an agreement - no indirect fire artillery- we start the game and? What do you know, 4 rocket units.

Can I blame him? When its a ranked battle and there is no penalty when one breaks such weak player to player agreements? If CA wanted to make a good game they could have foreseen this. They did not make a good game.

Not only is there no rule infurstructure, there is a massive incentive for people to break the rules, given the ridiculous over powered "historically accurate units"

Who cares if its historical. They ruin the game. Maybe they could include a max 1 limiter or something, but its practically a game ruining thing. NTW is crappy work. And a studio's work is often an indicator of the studios worth.

Originally Posted by Alcibiades429

Big deal! It ruins the game, I just played another match. We made an agreement - no indirect fire artillery- we start the game and? What do you know, 4 rocket units.

Can I blame him? When its a ranked battle and there is no penalty when one breaks such weak player to player agreements? If CA wanted to make a good game they could have foreseen this. They did not make a good game.

Not only is there no rule infurstructure, there is a massive incentive for people to break the rules, given the ridiculous over powered "historically accurate units"

Who cares if its historical. They ruin the game. Maybe they could include a max 1 limiter or something, but its practically a game ruining thing. NTW is crappy work. And a studio's work is often an indicator of the studios worth.

Whine some more.
While, yes, the artillery (especially howitzers) are too accurate and overpowered, CA put them in the game for some semblance of historical accuracy.
If CA hadn't put in artillery in NTW, could you imagine the s everyone would lose over it? If you can't it would be tremendous.
And you do know cavalry is supposed to counter artillery right? It works pretty well for me.


For the record I do care if it's historical, and I will bet you almost everyone else here does too.

Complaining about the multiplayer only makes me less sympathetic to you.

Whine some more.
While, yes, the artillery (especially howitzers) are too accurate and overpowered, CA put them in the game for some semblance of historical accuracy.
If CA hadn't put in artillery in NTW, could you imagine the s everyone would lose over it? If you can't it would be tremendous.
And you do know cavalry is supposed to counter artillery right? It works pretty well for me.

What are you talking about? I said get rid of the indirect/explosive artillery, not all of it.

And its not historically accurate, howitzers often play a larger role in multiplayer games than what is historically accurate. People usually do not bring direct-fire cannons at all. How is it historically accurate? What a dumb argument.

And you do know cavalry is supposed to counter artillery right? It works pretty well for me.

I'll host a ranked game right now. For artillery I'll have one howitzer, you bring a conventional direct fire unit. Accept? We will see if your cavalry can save you.

Complaining about the multiplayer only makes me less sympathetic to you.

The crappy multiplayer would be saved if the single player was any good. But unfortunately its even worse. CA has done utterly pathetic, crappy work on the AI, compared to what regular people like Darth Vader could do. It's almost unbareible after you play some mods and realize how good it should be.

Originally Posted by Alcibiades429

The crappy multiplayer would be saved if the single player was any good. But unfortunately its even worse. CA has done utterly pathetic, crappy work on the AI, compared to what regular people like Darth Vader could do. It's almost unbareible after you play some mods and realize how good it should be.

The game is made for the masses. Most people don't care about historical accuracy. Just take a look at the best selling games. Unfortunately, history buffs don't make up a majority of the sales anymore.

CA has done utterly pathetic, crappy work on the AI, compared to what regular people like Darth Vader could do.

Sorry, but that's a very stupid comment. No one including Darth Vader can make an AI. We are all using the AI made by CA.
What modders do is balancing the game, not making an AI.

An AI is a set of "behaviour rules" and with parameters. Depending on the parameters and the thresholds, behaviour rules will trigger or not.
We have no access to the behaviour rules, only to the parameters. The behaviour rules are all from CA.

So your sentence should be:

"CA made a good job with the AI, since regular people can exploit it to make nice gameplay, but CA did a poor balancing"

Originally Posted by Alcibiades429

Big deal! It ruins the game, I just played another match. We made an agreement - no indirect fire artillery- we start the game and? What do you know, 4 rocket units.

Can I blame him? When its a ranked battle and there is no penalty when one breaks such weak player to player agreements? If CA wanted to make a good game they could have foreseen this. They did not make a good game.

Then quit and never play a match with the little bastard again.

Was that so hard?

Not only is there no rule infurstructure, there is a massive incentive for people to break the rules, given the ridiculous over powered "historically accurate units"

Who cares if its historical. They ruin the game. Maybe they could include a max 1 limiter or something, but its practically a game ruining thing. NTW is crappy work. And a studio's work is often an indicator of the studios worth.

Since when did this game become an MMO?

Originally Posted by Steph

Sorry, but that's a very stupid comment. No one including Darth Vader can make an AI. We are all using the AI made by CA.
What modders do is balancing the game, not making an AI.

An AI is a set of "behaviour rules" and with parameters. Depending on the parameters and the thresholds, behaviour rules will trigger or not.
We have no access to the behaviour rules, only to the parameters. The behaviour rules are all from CA.

So your sentence should be:

"CA made a good job with the AI, since regular people can exploit it to make nice gameplay, but CA did a poor balancing"

I include here what you have asked me and the answer I gave you in your PM:
December 20, 2011, 08:14 PM / Re: AI

Originally Posted by Steph

Thanks for the answer. I had a look at bin formation, but it only contains the position of the units relatively to each other. nothing about behaviour.
How did you manage to prevent the General from charging?
Also, do you know what's the exact effect of the attack_dir (left, right, front, rear) in kv_rules?
Nobody is using the same values in any AI mod
I have the impression that 95% of battle AI is actually the groupformation and very little else. Am I right?

Originally Posted by DARTH VADER

I am very sorry for the very late reply but I was busy these days and I could not reply to most of my PM. Yes, you can use my files as a base but please mention it like that, that "you use as a base AI and gameplay files of DarthMod Napoleon".
I cannot really offer clarifications about AI formations but if you can open them and study them you will probably understand what I have done. (Best is to use it as is). The groupformations is a very vital file which tells the AI how to position troops and interact. According to the hard coded AI parameters and the position it decides, so by manipulating formations we direct by a big proportion the AI in battles.

Originally Posted by Steph

Hello

I'm working with l'Aigle on Masters of Europe mod, and we want to improve the AI, mostly on battles.
Your AI seems to be a very good starting point, but it's important to me when is happening in a mod so I can tweak it if necessary.

So I have two questions for you
1) Can we integrate part of your mod in ours?
2) Could you explain to me a little what is the influence of some parameters on the AI, and how you achieve some effects?
For instance, in a test we did, the AI general was moving behing the lines instead of staying as a fix target for art.
And the AI was keeping its line to fire when we charge, instead of trying to change formation consufely.
What controls that? The groupformation.bin determine the initial position of the troops, but where do you tell the AI what to do after the battle begins?

Thanks

Steph

Probably because you do not understand what the formations do and because I did not continue to answer your questions (as I mostly do to people I do not know and ask me tons of things while I am busy) you post this "excommunicating" mentioning about my work.
DarthMod is unique because I am of the few in this forum who understand what this file does and I can mod it.

Originally Posted by DARTH VADER

I include here what you have asked me and the answer I gave you in your PM:
December 20, 2011, 08:14 PM / Re: AI



Probably because you do not understand what the formations do and because I did not continue to answer your questions (as I mostly do to people I do not know and ask me tons of things while I am busy) you post this "excommunicating" mentioning about my work.
DarthMod is unique because I am of the few in this forum who understand what this file does and I can mod it.

Pretty amazing work you have done. I wouldn't say CA does pathetic work if I wasn't bench marking it on your quality of work.

Originally Posted by DARTH VADER

I include here what you have asked me and the answer I gave you in your PM:

Probably because you do not understand what the formations do and because I did not continue to answer your questions (as I mostly do to people I do not know and ask me tons of things while I am busy) you post this "excommunicating" mentioning about my work.
DarthMod is unique because I am of the few in this forum who understand what this file does and I can mod it.

From your own answer

The groupformations is a very vital file which tells the AI how to position troops and interact. According to the hard coded AI parameters and the position it decides, so by manipulating formations we direct by a big proportion the AI in battles.

The point I made here is that the AI behaviour rule are hardcoded. I looked in the formation files. Including yours. It doesn't contain anything describing how the AI behave. Only the relative position of AI units. You admited yourself that you didn't change the behaviour rules. Where you have talent is to exploit these rules, and to find good position and parameters to help the AI behave better. But you cannot change the rules. No one except CA can.

This was an answer to

CA has done utterly pathetic, crappy work on the AI, compared to what regular people like Darth Vader could do

What I said was that the AI was done by CA, not by you. You are finding "better" settings to get a reaction from the AI that you and others find better. Good job. But now, can you show us where you actually changed the behaviour rules of the AI? Without the behaviour rules programmed by CA in the first place, and that you cannot change, your work would not be possible.
So I think their AI work is not that bad. Since it allows you to make your mod.

To each his own merit. CA made the AI behaviour. You exploit it to the best. Happy with that?

Now, I have the impression you consider my statement of a fact as a personnal attack because I sought some revenge after you didn't answer me. That's completly wrong. You go mentionned in my answer only because your named appears in the initial statement I answered to. And my answer was "no one, including Darth Vader". It's not a personnal attack, but a general statement.