Hunnic Army spawn issue

[Radious]

Hello everyone,

maybe you will be able to help me with this.

I noticed that att_preservation_data is somehow broken, since AI always spawns just 1 type of the army for Hunns in each campaign era (3 eras, after some turns it moves to next). Since it was annoying to fight always against exact same armies i wanted to add way more variations, but not exactly sure how to do it and how to fix that file, when even vanilla game has 2 variations for each era, but always spawns just 1 type of the army - the first one in that file and never the second type.

So before adding more army variations, it must be fixed.

Any help from anyone with some scripting skills wil lbe greatly appreciated.

[Radious]

1 month and nothing..... Nobody cares or nobody knows?

[Litharion]

I was unaware of this issue. I think the function responsible for selecting and randomizing which army template to spawn is the one we need to look at.

att_preservation.lua

function get_hun_army_string()
    local turn_number = cm:model():turn_number();
    
    -- verify we still have at least one army template
    if #hun_preservation_army_template_list < 1 then
        script_error("ERROR: get_hun_army_string() called but we have no army templates to look through - returning an emergency force but this needs fixing");
        return "emergency", "att_nom_steppe_levy";
    end;
    
    -- for each of our army templates, work out if the current turn falls in the min/max range
    
    local possible_armies = {};


    for i = 1, #hun_preservation_army_template_list do
        local current_template = hun_preservation_army_template_list[i];
        
        local min_date = current_template.min_date;
        local max_date = current_template.max_date;
        
        if (min_date < 0 or min_date <= turn_number) and (max_date < 0 or max_date >= turn_number) then
            
            table.insert(possible_armies, current_template);
        end;
    end;
    
    if #possible_armies > 0 then
        local possible_armies = cm:random_sort(possible_armies); -- Sort the table randomly
        return possible_armies[1].name, possible_armies[1].army_string; -- Pick the first one, which will be random
    end
    
    script_error("WARNING: get_hun_army_string() called but couldn't find any matching force for the current turn " .. tostring(turn_number) .. ", using the first force string");
    
    return hun_preservation_army_template_list[1].name, hun_preservation_army_template_list[1].army_string;
end;

At a glance I don't see a problem with the function.

[Radious]

Well from the preset armies it always picks the first 1, never the second. So you constantly fight always vs same 1 army type. I would like to fix that, so it realy picks them randomly and then even add more Hunnic army variations. Now they have 2 army types for each campaign phase - yet picks always just 1 same in each phase.

[Walrusjones]

I would try making it so it randomly picks a row, even if the script is written completely fine when it comes to standard lua scripting, there is no gaurentee saying that the games hardcoding isn't going to mess it up somehow, resulting in a seemingly fine implementation breaking down.

Having a redundant layer of randomness might provide a failsafe against this.

[Litharion]

Pseudo random number generators outside the functions provided by the Game are somehow tricky to implement as they cause Multiplayer Desyncs if both players generate different random numbers. It can be done but it is a bit more complicated.

[Radious]

Script itself is pretty much based on random spawns. If it works as it should, then it randomply spawns different Hunnic armies.

[Radious]

Problem solved, issues fixed, new juicy stuff released in recent Radious Update. This changes how AI handles Hunns and mainly what it drops on your heads!

[SharpEyed]

Congratz Radious