Various changes in battlemechanics

[OpusDei]

Update with formations AI to support the balance between attack and defense.


http://www.mediafire.com/download/ge...lemanager.pack

Changed attack (radius, senseless following and tumbling into new unwanted fights they cant win), defense(closer to own lines and lesser counterattacks and breaking up own line) and routingbehaviour (when outnumberd.)


The new package has Scripted slower battle. Please let me know if you think it should be slower or faster..


Grtz.
T.

[Indus_Valley]

I've been using this for a while now, but I dont want to give ffedback because I use so many other battle mods in a soup.

It was the defense behavior that I was really interested in , in lieu of a Guard command.

I'll use this update and see how we go , but again I have mods that slow the battle down already.

I just keep adding thngs until the battle flows like I think it might in reality. Right now its pretty good. Thats the best I can do in terms of feedback

[OpusDei]

Thank you very much Indus_Valley! I am still finetuning the battlemechanics, only I have very little time to test it. I know by now that the defense script works fine. the soldiers stay closer at line because of the closer defense and counterattack radius.
The routingbehaviour should be working fine also, only I want to know if this does not lead to completely dying armies...
At the moment I am working on the give up on attack settings, to stop soldiers following routing units to far from their own line and getting isolated and leaving a gap in their own defense.
The slowing down is a very complex mechanism, exists of many scripted subroutines, which impact a lot of things. The programmers have made a really good job already I have found, so it is a real challenge to make this even smarter.
One thing that really annoys me is the instant massive attack of the AI's army at high speed. I have not yet found a good answer to a tactical better and differenced approach for this. This attack at once" resulting in the whole melee army standing in fight with the players army (where only the first row really fights). I know that you can change various settings on groundspeedbehaviour and fatigue, etc. via the db and there are Fine mods out there that arrange this already. I focus only on the scriptmechanism, the programmed behaviour. The testings takes hours and hours and here lays my problem, because I work 10-12 hrs a day. So again very much thanks for giving me feedback.
Grtz
T.

[Cesco]

At the moment I am working on the give up on attack settings, to stop soldiers following routing units to far from their own line and getting isolated and leaving a gap in their own defense.

I'm very interested in this too...good luck

[Sheridan]

Interesting mod. I played it two days ago, there was a little bit of lag in the early phase of combat but ran fine otherwise. Units seemed to behave differently - I had a spear unit which ran around in circles basically (turning every other second) while in combat with an enemy unit. Cannot tell whether the combat was slower or not, didn't try it extensively enough, but it's an interesting and pretty unique thing you have going here. Relatively few people know how to script - only a portion of those focus on battle mechanics.

I'm sort of wondering, is it possible to change the routing behaviour so that fewer men get caught in the process? As you may know, retreating from combat or outright routing is very penalising, which is a major issue for cavalry if you want to charge and pull back to repeat a cycle. A change to this would be most welcome, so the tactic once again becomes viable.

Thanks, and +rep for your work

[OpusDei]

Hello Sheridan,

I know this is a problem. The programmers did not write scripts for this. They just send every soldier in the same direction via the Patrolmanager. This is a different script, which I have to look into someday. Right now its all this way or that way.. I will look into the combatbehaviour of horses when I have the time.
Grtz
T.

[Indus_Valley]

I can give some more feedback now.

With the Suebi patch I had a couple of days playing vanilla as I slowly worked out which mods were making the game crash.

Somehow battlemanager got deleted but I didn't notice this. The battles I fought during this time were a mess. Particularly units chasing off into the sunset.

Once I found that battlemanger was missing and replaced it, the battles held together much better.

With the mod in place I'm focusing on tactics, particularly infantry tactics, and the infantry behaves as I think they would.

[OpusDei]

Hello Indus. Thank you for your feedback. I have updated the mod for more balancing between AI defence and attack and (i Hope) better holding formations. Perhaps you can test this too and give feedback. I am testing some other stuff after my release of a mod that allows the players to play as the Huns with a complete scenario.

Thank you again for the feedback!

Kind regards,
T.

[OpusDei]

Hello viewers,

This mod works just fine, it does what it is supposed to do, enjoy it. I am not making more mods for Atilla, so the horsesproblem of the original game will stay, unless someone else takes on this challenge (you need patrolmanager).

The reason I stop is because of lack of time and because I think Atilla lacks the nice gamefeeling (map, trade regions, technology, etc), I just don['t get excited playing this game, like I did with Rome I(infinit), Empire Total War (5000 hours) and in some respect Shogun Fots. The game is not worth more energy.

I wish you all much gamingpleasure, see you later.

Kind regards,
T.

[Petellius]

If you ever decide to come back drop me a message. I'm working on bringing Rome 2 era to Attila as well as making it as realistic as I can. I am at the moment looking for tired units to be replaced and retreat from combat. You are the only person I've seen with any knowledge on this area and I would love to even just talk about what would be possible.

If you see this please add me on steam. I'm Petellius.

[OpusDei]

Hello Petellius,

I have seen you are working with the team on Rome 2, I like the thought of it! I have sent you a reply in your messagebox. I thought to direct you immediately, but it's more complicated. You will need the 'halt' routine in the misc_battle script and this should be called by a routine in the patrol_manager or script_ai_planner. I don't have the time to look it up, it may take some time. See my message furthermore.

You can change many things, just test it everytime because the syntaxis must be precisely! So every change needs a save and a test. Save multiply good in between mods until you reach the end, what you want to achieve.

Good luck, kind regards