[VIDEO] Petellius's Video Previews - Naval combat video 1/29

[Petellius]

[Lü Bu]

Indeed, very nice work

[Maetharin]

Hey Petellius!

As always nice work on your side!

But in the animations preview, we see f.e. the romans kinda dribbling forward in a piecemeal kind of fashion, one per one, would it be possible to reduce that?
Maybe by reducing the charge_distance_pick_target in battle_entities?

BTW is it possible to port over the bigger hoplons from WoS?
And if we already are at hoplites, you mention that they have Formed Attack, but I recently read that Attila doesn´t have it, could you clarify that?

Best regards

[Causeless]

Hey Petellius!

As always nice work on your side!

But in the animations preview, we see f.e. the romans kinda dribbling forward in a piecemeal kind of fashion, one per one, would it be possible to reduce that?
Maybe by reducing the charge_distance_pick_target in battle_entities?

BTW is it possible to port over the bigger hoplons from WoS?
And if we already are at hoplites, you mention that they have Formed Attack, but I recently read that Attila doesn´t have it, could you clarify that?

Best regards

In Attila, no units have formed attack in vanilla. However, it does still have it within the database and it can be activated via mods - which is what we are doing.

[Cpt. Cortes]

Maetharin, those hoplons are already ported, take a look the Pergamon preview, I used these bigger hoplons from WoS in the hoplite style units and hoplon-sword units:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Pergamon-(WIP)

Seleucids and Bactria will keep the smaller hoplon (same as the cavalry units equiped with hoplon) because historical reasons.

PD: I love those bigger hoplons!

[Maetharin]

could you provide me with a source about the smaller hoplons for the seleucids & Bactria?

And in the videos carthaginian hoplite units also have smaller hoplons, is this also intended?

I´d also give sword hoplon units the original version, since swordfighting takes more agility, at least I imagine it to^^

Thx and best regards

[Julio-Claudian]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFIG3yCAN-Q

Only just saw those two videos. Amazing! How has that come along?

[Petellius]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFIG3yCAN-Q

Only just saw those two videos. Amazing! How has that come along?

It hasn't, if anything it doesnt work quite as well now, still trying to figure out what defines it.

[The Wandering Storyteller]

The video screenshot and the naval stuff looks awesome!!!!!

Though can the AI be scripted to maintain its defense at beach landings? It seems any fire and it seems to run away.

Naval landings do look much much better this time round.

[McCarronXLD]

It hasn't, if anything it doesnt work quite as well now, still trying to figure out what defines it.

I must admit those videos had me hyped more than anything else! Never before have I seen the AI in any Total War game do anything other than send in every melee unit it has into a massive blob. Wish it were possible in Rome 2.

[Petellius]

I must admit those videos had me hyped more than anything else! Never before have I seen the AI in any Total War game do anything other than send in every melee unit it has into a massive blob. Wish it were possible in Rome 2.

It might be, maybe one day I will test if it does. Also it still works in Attila, though it works best once you rout some units as they return to the reserves, the instant reserves like in the second video I did arent as constant now :/

[McCarronXLD]

How does multiple ships per unit perform in Attila? In Rome 2 it is disastrous (with crashes, even) but in the video you provided it seems rather hopeful.

[Petellius]

Yeah works fine, little bit messy on the larger battles but no more than vanilla naval battles. Ships seems to be able to support each other quite well, with two ships being able to attack one or even two against two.

[Petellius]

[Causeless]

Hey, I'm just posting an update about some of the AI and scripting stuff that was mentioned earlier in the thread.

It turns out that all the battle lua scripts in Ancient Empires don't work, including the earlier mentioned routing script which was meant to make routing units die at a slower rate.

After I joined the team, I saw that the lua scripts had syntax errors, so wouldn't be able to be run. After some experimentation it was found that custom battles don't seem to even load even fully correct battle scripts, so it was impossible for changing scripts to actually have any effect. Later, in the CA modding Q&A, it was finally and certainly confirmed that custom battles cannot really use battle scripts. These broken lua scripts are going to be removed, as the only affect they could've had is breaking other battles that use scripts (like historical battles).

However, I did figure out a way to run scripts on campaign battles which may give some interesting opportunities. I have not tested any actual gameplay or AI modifications through this yet, but I have verified that my test scripting files are actually being run. Full testing needs to be done here, especially to see if it's safe to use battle scripts in multiplayer, but it's a good first step.

I'd like to point out that this doesn't mean any of our previous scripts would work, as they were mostly syntactically incorrect and actually did nothing. For example, the routing script didn't actually call any functions, and as far as I can tell it's impossible to modify a unit's stats in runtime via script anyways.

As said before, scripting custom battles is not possible. Only campaign and historical battles.

This also means that AI wasn't being changed through scripting. As the mod currently is, there is no full AI overhaul. However, one of our battle designers (Petellius) has managed to manipulate the AI into doing certain things, like using reserves more, by tweaking unit stats. The differences in unit stats manipulates what decisions the AI decides to make. This method of modding is what caused the AI to use reverses, but there's very little rhythm or reason behind it - we cannot "tell" the AI to do something different. We can only tweak stats and hope the AI acts differently by it's own accord.

We cannot change the actual decision-making process of the AI, which is hard-coded into the game, and is "vanilla" in every mod out there, no matter how much they claim to change BAI. As far as I know, no game after Medieval 2 has managed to actually fundamentally change the decision making within the AI. Any mods which improve the AI are ultimately just tweaking certain stats and database entries to modify how the still-vanilla AI handles the game.

[KAM 2150]

Yeah, the same conclusion I had when I made 1.1 overhaul for battles in DeI, AI is way more connected to unit stats then we are aware of and in some places I've managed to make AI close into short distance but non melee range and then only attack from its stronger wing, while keeping players troops at bay, but I also have no idea when it triggers and how does it work.

[Petellius]

Yeah thats similar to my experience here KAM, that said I have been able to make the BAI more stable over time with endless tweaking and testing and what was shown in those videos is still fully possible, its just not guaranteed.

[McCarronXLD]

Thank you for the insightful posts!

[Petellius]

Testing out new AI formations. We'll see how this pans out but I hope I can get different faction types to form different formations

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

Nice work Petellius and that would be awesome if different factions could have different formations.

Maybe if possible you can make a script for generals so that they would wield different formations on the batlefield, So experience also shows in how AI Gen's use there men on the battlefield and attack style's..