A.I scared to siege? Bastion onagers used by the a.i? Diplomatic penalties to large?

[Totalheadache]

So my impressions of vanilla are overall good. This is a decent total war which hopefully will get better. My main issues are...

1. Armies milling about not attacking. And when they do they predominantly go for the smaller settlement. (which might seem obvious but they circuit around the larger one).
So far in several campaigns have seen this.

As Saxons (very hard) I own all of Britain and there are three stacks sitting off my shores doing nothing. Yes I do have tier 3/4 settlements with half stacks but the A.I doesnt seem to want A)attack B) Raid C) sue for peace.

As the Visigoths I settled in Alexandria. The Sassanids declared war and there at least 8 or so stacks roaming about...

As the Franks so far have been attacked all over. Probably the most entertaining campaign so far.

Ostrogoths am in Carthage and working on Africa.

Norse campaign as the Jutes have taken Scandinavia and am taking Britain. Have been attacked by Rugians mostly..

Overall the A.I doesn't seem to want to attack my larger settlements.

2. I attacked an enemy settlement which had bastion onager...they werent there. Perhaps I need to study this more. In custom battles they are there...but have problem with targeting siege towers?

3. Getting trade agreements seems very hard. I have tried even paying 10k and still they refuse. Diplomacy seems a bit screwy.

Oh and the movement ranges? It seems armies can travel too far maybe...doesnt this make the chances of open country battles less...? So far have only fought one land battle I think (which didnt involve a settlement).

[Yerevan]

I agree with 1 and 3. The difference is that maybe because I don't recruit enough, but usually when ennemy stacks come in my direction, they attack me if I'm in a small settlement, or if I'm protected behind strong walls, they try to get me out by staying in raiding mode. Which is well done I would say.

[Ulfgard the Unmaker]

2. I attacked an enemy settlement which had bastion onager...they werent there. Perhaps I need to study this more. In custom battles they are there...but have problem with targeting siege towers?

What's this "problem targeting siege towers" then? It's an exceptionally vague statement that doesn't give any information on what kind of oddities you've observed. What sort of things make you think there are problems?

[Totalheadache]

What's this "problem targeting siege towers" then? It's an exceptionally vague statement that doesn't give any information on what kind of oddities you've observed. What sort of things make you think there are problems?

As it pretty much says. Does the A.I use onagers when it has them (bastion/for defence)? And if you try using them in a custom battle and give the attackers siege towers you cant fire upon the siege towers.....

Got it?

At least thats what I think is happenning (well have tried several campaign battles and custom battles). Would be nice if yourself and others try this out so we can put it to bed as it were. I.e bug or no no bug

[Ulfgard the Unmaker]

As it pretty much says. Does the A.I use onagers when it has them (bastion/for defence)? And if you try using them in a custom battle and give the attackers siege towers you cant fire upon the siege towers.....

Got it?

At least thats what I think is happenning (well have tried several campaign battles and custom battles). Would be nice if yourself and others try this out so we can put it to bed as it were. I.e bug or no no bug

Alright, I was a bit rude the first time around.

I'm curious as to what's going on with this siege tower business. Can you not target them at all? Can you target them, but the onagers refuse to actually attack? If it's either of these, I think we can call it a bug pretty safely.

If the problem is that the attacks target the men pushing it and not the tower itself when you specifically click on the siege tower, I'm afraid that's how it's been for a while now and is established as standard behavior.

[Totalheadache]

Alright, I was a bit rude the first time around.

I'm curious as to what's going on with this siege tower business. Can you not target them at all? Can you target them, but the onagers refuse to actually attack? If it's either of these, I think we can call it a bug pretty safely.

If the problem is that the attacks target the men pushing it and not the tower itself when you specifically click on the siege tower, I'm afraid that's how it's been for a while now and is established as standard behavior.

When u control your own bastion onager it wouldnt let me shoot at the siege items i.e the towers and the rams. I could target troops ok....

Cant u see for yourself? Or anyone else for that matter? This surely needs attention...unless am somehow imagining it...

[Ulfgard the Unmaker]

When u control your own bastion onager it wouldnt let me shoot at the siege items i.e the towers and the rams. I could target troops ok....

Cant u see for yourself? Or anyone else for that matter? This surely needs attention...unless am somehow imagining it...

This isn't anything new. Unless I'm mistaken, it's been this way at least as far back as Medieval 2: once there are men attached to the siege tower and moving it, any attack orders will target the men and not the tower itself. This is true for artillery, archers, etc. It's just more noticeable with bastion artillery. With skirmish troops, the tower is usually coming directly at them, so many of the projectiles they fire at the enemy troops hit the tower anyway; with artillery, you're usually shooting at the troops from an angle, so it becomes much more clear that you're shooting at the actual troops and not the tower.

Honestly, the only way I think you've been able to target the towers themselves is if there wasn't a unit currently manning it.
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EDIT:After reading back over your last post, I may still be missing the point here. When you say "control your own" do you mean manually issue attack orders (rather than letting it fire at will), or do you mean take direct control and personally aim and fire all the shots?

[stevehoos]

Yeah the trade stuff is awful right now, CA better patch that.

[Huberto]

As Saxons (very hard) I own all of Britain and there are three stacks sitting off my shores doing nothing. Yes I do have tier 3/4 settlements with half stacks but the A.I doesnt seem to want A)attack B) Raid C) sue for peace.

They will continue to sit on the water waiting for you to leave a minor settlement open or suffer some calamity. Then they will attack - maybe.

Overall the A.I doesn't seem to want to attack my larger settlements.

In over 50 hours the AI attacked one of my walled cities once, and it was on the first turn because they brought an onager.

Diplomacy seems a bit screwy.

More than a bit I'd say given the attitude of the faction doesn't seem to matter much in what happens. If there's a system here it's very obscure. There's an acute lack of deal making including marriage deals. Needs an overhaul.

Regarding the campaign,by mid/late game you can set your watch by a couple of enemies sending stacks and agents your way every two years, getting crushed, rinse repeat. No peace/diplomacy ever, just their love of suicide again and again and again (including agents). I guess the point is to keep the player tied down and unable to realize objectives, but gets very predictable.

[barry12]

I'm in late game and have my borders secured with stacks in my border settlements. However, I can see at least two neighbouring enemy factions with huge amounts of stacks around their settlements. I have waited more than 50 to 70 turns now and they haven't once tried to attack. And yet the minute I wonder into the forests of their regions (supposed to be hidden like in Rome 2) they will immediately attack me. That's great - that shows they can defend their territory when I come to attack or even attack my full stack when it knows I'm in open terrain and outnumbered.

However there is something clearly preventing them from besieging well defended settlements, even when they have a HUGE numerical advantage and many siege weapons. This is ruining the late campaign for me as most of the map is a desolated burnt wasteland and none of the enemies that still exist have any intention of smashing down what remains of my Western Roman Empire, which, if they could just try to invade, they could crack with one or two big victories over my walled settlements.

[MKeogh]

Yes, the vanilla CAI is so intimidated by garrisoned towns that it won't attack them even with a massive numerical advantage which makes the late game a bit of a yawnfest.

I wanted my first Attila WRE campaign on Hard to be strictly vanilla except for a few "fix" mods to stuff that was clearly broken such as certain traits and retinue items not providing the extra experience that they described as providing. However, the "All Quiet on the Western Roman Empire" situation in the late 420's got to be too much. So, I used this CAI mod: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...om-his-Slumber)

I use the "Very Easy and Human" version which avoids the stack spam of the other versions, but it still "wakes-up" the CAI into at least a semi-coma. With it installed, the Huns FINALLY attacked Aquileia which they had been looming around for DECADES doing nothing except occasionally looting. Even with an large garrison due to upgrades to the town and garrison encampment, a large army stationed within the town, and a large reinforcement army, I barely managed to hold onto the settlement against three stacks of Huns. It was clear that the Huns had the strength to take this town, but with the vanilla CAI they did nothing for turn after turn after turn. It really is disappointing to see how little has improved with the vanilla CAI and in order to get any sort of challenge in the late game I had to use a mod.

I can't say this CAI mod is a "miracle worker" because I still watched the ERE having almost its entire army loaded onto ships sailing aimlessly around the eastern Mediterranean, but it did manage to make it seem that it was semi-functioning.

[legoras]

About 2 point.. I attack a lot of city with walls.. never.. never AI use bastion onagers. Never.. so yeah.. it doesnt working.

[Totalheadache]

Two pics to show you what I mean. Had trouble with imageshack so used mediafire...

http://www.mediafire.com/view/fa7m82..._16_37_160.bmp

http://www.mediafire.com/view/axuv91..._17_41_325.bmp

Very irritating. Ruins campaigns...The huns been sitting there for 4 turns or so...same as the Sassanids plus their chums. Crap!

[arcaoon]

The AI is scared shiftless of sieges and rightfully so! with a few javelin men you can murder hundreds of the bastards before they can do anything in return!