CA why are you so economical with the Truth? Siege AI.

[Humble Warrior]

Not had time to play this game as much as I`d like, but finally got round to doing a proper siege with plenty of units and siege engines.

As the ERE, I besieged Garganthan (or whatever they`re called) in the southern most part of North Africa after they declared an unprovoked war. I had many more troops than him and the WRE were also supporting, so basically, the enemy never stood a chance.

Ok, so I used my catapults and made two holes in his walls easily. I was going to move in my Towers, but saw the WRE catching up quickly, so I waited for them to see what they would do. I decided in the meantime to send my two rams forward to open the gate for the WRE. I had several ladders and two towers doing nothing, free.

Well the WRE caught up and his archers started firing while his main troops rushed on by. OK. But then they completely ignored the nearby holes in the walls and bumrushed the closed gate that I had my Ram going for. They broke through that gate in seconds - and they all rushed in. Some of the WRE did use the open walls a little after that.

I didn`t move one soldier to attack and the WRE basically took the city for me.

Observations:

1. Reinforcement friendly AI goes straight for bumrushing the gates if its nearest, NOT as a last resort. It completely ignored the open holes in the walls and the spare siege weapons.

2. The gates collapsed in about 10 seconds game time. I thought even if the AI goes for the gates it`s supposed to be a risky endeavour? Yes, i had sieged it for a few months, but still, the Gates were far too weak just to hand collapse like that!

3. As usual, one can take advantage of the AI by letting it do all the work and it doesn`t seem to think, `Waitaminute! maybe I should stand back and let HIM do some of the attacking- i`m losing lots of men here!` or maybe have the WRE AI occupy the city because it did the most work! that would`ve been pretty cool and teach me not to take advantage of the AI.

So, the AI needs to make use of gaps and unused siege weapons first, not head straight for the closed gate, like you, CA said wouldn`t happen except as a last resort! I guess once again you lied or your AI programmer lied and you still didn`t test to see if he was telling the truth! How many times do we have to whine before you make something work as advertised? I guess you hoped no one would notice, eh?

[RGA]

Firstly, AI cannot use your siege engine and you could not use its either. That's the way the game is programmed. Don't blame AI for what even you cannot do

You said yourself that AI did use the gap in the wall that you created before. It however wants to have more and decided to attack the gate. I think two gaps are better than one

And I don't think it takes only 10sec to chop down the gate.

[Patrician]

3. As usual, one can take advantage of the AI by letting it do all the work and it doesn`t seem to think, `Waitaminute! maybe I should stand back and let HIM do some of the attacking- i`m losing lots of men here!`

This is a terrible suggestion which, if implemented, would have people up in arms about the passive A.I. in cooperative sieges.

[Totalheadache]

Ahh the Humble the day when the siege A.I plays like a human...will it ever come? Still my main issues with sieges is the inability of the CAI to launch them in the first place. Maybe it knows am 2 clever and gets scared!

Very often I have stacks floating around my cities without attacking.

[Humble Warrior]

Ahh the Humble the day when the siege A.I plays like a human...will it ever come? Still my main issues with sieges is the inability of the CAI to launch them in the first place. Maybe it knows am 2 clever and gets scared!

Very often I have stacks floating around my cities without attacking.

I have heard a lot about the recently created Deep Thinking AI. Now while it`s a bit scary in what it may mean for us in daily life, I am particularly interested to see if it will ever be implemented in games. I suspect something like a Deep Thinking AI will be a separate software package much like Microsoft`s DX 11 that you buy and install to which games will be designed to utilise it.

Such an AI would be great because all you`d need to do is present it a walled city to attack (held by the Player), make sure gates would be too tough for bashing or torches and give it just siege weapons and leave it to figure out what to do.

That said, CA might still nerf such an AI due to spite and it would probably still bash its way through the Gates.

[The Despondent Mind]

Are torches still in the game? And that AI still seems miles ahead of the RTW2.

[Destin Faroda]

Are torches still in the game?

As far as I know, they're out. However, now you can destroy massive metal gates with swords and axes.

[Humble Warrior]

Are torches still in the game? And that AI still seems miles ahead of the RTW2.

Yes and no.

1. No, torches are used to open gates, they just bash it now when no siege weapons; unless they`re reinforcements where they will go straight for the gate.

2. Yes, they use torches and throw them at towers to burn them.

So torches are still technically in the game.


What annoys me most of though is that attacking the gates is NOT a last resort, at least for the reinforcement AI. This goes directly against what CA told us. IT`s BS. I`d like CA to explain themselves about this.

I will have to play more sieges to see what else it don`t do that CA said it does.