battle map terrain

[gaaxure]

i don't know if it's a deliberate or accidental or even a very, very, very suspicious coincidence but every time i considerably outnumber enemy there's always a convenient hill in the corner of battlemap on which AI positions his troops. don't get me wrong it's totally cool that AI can recognize terrain and advantages it gives him but it just can't be right. every time i have advantage in numbers it's: go fight uphill. and it's not like there's big mountain or something it's just some random bump in the land that has enough space for AI army.
not cool AI, totally not cool.

anyone else encountering this or something similar?

[Ovidius Empiricus]

If you vastly outnumber them, they will retreat on the campaign map. Then what the AI seems to do whenever possible is to go to higher ground (on purpose, I would bet, so it can have whatever defensive advantage it can get), the biggest, most absurdly steep mountainside it can find, so you'll just leave the poor little AI alone. If you don't outnumber them so much that they retreat, it might be more likely they won't be on such steep terrain. Even when it is hilly to start with, your position as you approach (if you set it up well) might not be coming from lower terrain but just more hills. In any case, you can try to circle around them and drive them away from the mountains so that even if they retreat they won't have the option of going farther into the mountains. This has worked for me before, and what I'll do is zoom in on the campaign map so I get a clearer view of where the terrain is generally higher and lower. And depending on the general area where you've been fighting, it might also be coincidence that there aren't many flat areas anyway. The game does a decent job so that even a "flat" meadow is rolling up and down quite a bit, so it looks pretty realistic to me. But it seems like the AI almost always picks the higher ground and camps there, even if it's not really a significant hill, unless the forces are nearly even or they outnumber you, in which case they'll probably start front and center (no matter the terrain) and pretty much charge straight into your line as soon as they can.

EDIT: Also, if they're seriously outmatched, it looks like they're doing a little mountain-climbing, and they're mostly archers or horse archers (worst case scenario, in other words), what I do sometimes is just autoresolve it. Their archers or horse archers tend to cause way too many casualties if I play it myself, whereas with autoresolve it doesn't seem nearly as bad (apparently because it's not accounting for how much the terrain helps them). You might call it cheating, which I wouldn't necessarily disagree with, but I get tired of fighting all sorts of mini-battles with handfuls of brigands anyway.

[gaaxure]

leaving them alone is not an option in most of cases because they just come back and do more damage in some way or if i'm on the enemy territory besieging town that small army will come and attack me from behind. i've tried outflanking them and forcing them down the hill and it is the best tactics i've come up with against this scenario but it's just so time consuming.

[Darth Bane1]

Don't worry. The 2.6 version, which I hoooope it gets released today, will fix this. tone has remade the terrain and even battle lightning.

[Paedric]

Well it's not on purpose, I can tell you that.
But while it's annoying, it's quite logical for the AI. It's already bad enough we shouldn't complain when it's acting sensible.

The terrain should be a little less steep in 2.6.

[gaaxure]

Well it's not on purpose, I can tell you that.
But while it's annoying, it's quite logical for the AI. It's already bad enough we shouldn't complain when it's acting sensible.

The terrain should be a little less steep in 2.6.

im not complaining about AI acting sensible. see >>>>

don't get me wrong it's totally cool that AI can recognize terrain and advantages it gives him

i'm not complaining about anything to be honest i'm just sharing my thoughts about this situation

[dvk901]

It is interesting that the AI has this tendency to find the high ground, because Vanilla landscapes were your basic golf course fairway. You would think, then, that CA had not even designed any expedient into the game for the AI armies to see high ground. And yet, when we reworked the geography and terrain in RS2, this anomaly started appearing often. I think it is completely reasonable, actually...and admirable that the AI is a little smarter.

Also, in another vain, in my 2.7 test bed I have seen a very cool behavior by the AI that I hadn't seen much of...ever....until now. When a battle is going poorly for an AI army, and that army has a General, I have seen troops sent to engage my lines while a good portion of the AI army quickly retreats. Again, I have only seen this when the AI had engaged...perhaps thinking it was well matched with me, only to find that it was going to get wasted if it didn't get out of there. This only enhances my conviction that steps need to be taken to ensure that the AI has as many named characters (Generals) as possible to use in armies, because the behavior of said army is different when there is no General.

[gaaxure]

It is interesting that the AI has this tendency to find the high ground, because Vanilla landscapes were your basic golf course fairway. You would think, then, that CA had not even designed any expedient into the game for the AI armies to see high ground. And yet, when we reworked the geography and terrain in RS2, this anomaly started appearing often. I think it is completely reasonable, actually...and admirable that the AI is a little smarter.

Also, in another vain, in my 2.7 test bed I have seen a very cool behavior by the AI that I hadn't seen much of...ever....until now. When a battle is going poorly for an AI army, and that army has a General, I have seen troops sent to engage my lines while a good portion of the AI army quickly retreats. Again, I have only seen this when the AI had engaged...perhaps thinking it was well matched with me, only to find that it was going to get wasted if it didn't get out of there. This only enhances my conviction that steps need to be taken to ensure that the AI has as many named characters (Generals) as possible to use in armies, because the behavior of said army is different when there is no General.

I've noticed that AI does the same in 2.5 version too although not very often.
but one very dumb thing AI does and annoys the hell out of me is when it calmly takes the shower of arrows and does almost nothing to counter it. occasionally it will send one unit into a suicide charge but nothing more. something needs to be done about it if possible.

[Ovidius Empiricus]

It is interesting that the AI has this tendency to find the high ground, because Vanilla landscapes were your basic golf course fairway. You would think, then, that CA had not even designed any expedient into the game for the AI armies to see high ground. And yet, when we reworked the geography and terrain in RS2, this anomaly started appearing often. I think it is completely reasonable, actually...and admirable that the AI is a little smarter.

Heh. Yeah. When I said "the game" does a good job with the landscapes, I meant Roma Surrectum. Vanilla RTW has been the farthest thing from my mind for years, pretty much as soon as I discovered this mod.

I've noticed they do apparently have at least one mechanic for it in the battles: you can see that a unit is "feeling secure on the hill." Well how does it do that? The "AI" has some way to "see" the overall situation, apparently by sorting out where that little morale boost can happen. It's probably similar to the way it determines the units feel better when their "flanks are secure," which itself is probably part of what allows it to generate organized lines of troops, dynamically in the midst of a battle, as well as engage in flanking behavior especially with cavalry, instead of it always being a total mess. (Or being near a command unit or hiding, which could allow for other behaviors but really don't seem to be put to good use in my experience. It's too stupid to be making a lot of really complicated choices, but I'm sure it has a few little tricks up its sleeve to work with some of that.)

Anyway, CA had something available for a basic kind of terrain-recognition (at least according to the UI), even though as you said they provided little opportunity for it to make a difference in the Vanilla game. That's yet another reason to love this mod so much (but I agree with toning down the more extreme elevations, because it can be annoying in terms of gameplay and makes for an unrealistic battlefield). And since the battle maps and campaign maps are so integrated (which is pretty neat by itself), I figured the battle behavior is basically extended in a simplified way in campaign mode, given how predictable it is that they run to the hills in campaign if that's an option. I bet there's less detail to work with at that level and obviously many fewer options about where to go. (That is, there are just these large squares to pick from that each represent an entire battle map, which have different average elevations, rather than all of the variation within each battle map.) I'm not sure if there's a good way to test what exactly it does in the battle, except getting some statistics on custom battle maps designed for that, if it's worth finding out. And like dvk mentioned about the behavior with generals, it kind of makes me wonder if there are some other surprises like that which could be used to improve the game.