Idling AI + Naval and Siege weapon Autoresolve

[Tyiallyradil]

Hello there,

first of all I think this is the best mod every happened to any game.

On the other hand some things are really bugging me

http://imgur.com/a/YxWv1

1. Our allies, client states are always camping in our territory, not willing to move (first picture)

2. Enemy stacks are usually idling at some point, not even moving their stacks after some distance. (Athen's stacks)

3. The naval overhaul is really nice, however the AI can't handle it.

When I have a 10-15 unit ship stack raiding, blocading or trespassing the enemy territory, the enemy just send full stacks of transports without professional navy backup, and I constantly getting heroic victories with only a few losses, making the campaign too easy, even on legendary difficulty.

4. If my army contains some siege engines, like ballista, with autoresolve I can beat a much better quality army, fighting a late Roman stack on the battlefield is so boring (can't rout those late elite units, even when surrounded like hell with a dead general)

5. Soemtimes the AI just starves its army to death while trying to capture my territory, and idling in fortified stance.

I have only been playign Carthage in 1.1, my experience is that the difficulty seems really easy because of the mentioned thingies.

Is it much more different playing a non naval faction constantly fighting on land?

Is there a way to change the 1. and 2. point AI behaviour?

I go to like turn 1500 in my recent campaign, having third of the world my ally or client state.

I don't want to be negative, keep up with the good work, I am really enjoying this mod

Best regards

[Fanest]

When I have a 10-15 unit ship stack raiding, blocading or trespassing the enemy territory, the enemy just send full stacks of transports without professional navy backup, and I constantly getting heroic victories with only a few losses, making the campaign too easy, even on legendary difficulty.

I can confirm this in my HatG campaign if i just park a fleet near a city and army inside will sail out on the sea in transports and loose horribly to my 5 ships. Otherwise i like the speed of naval battles however i would love to know the damage of ramming ships and hull strength of transport ships. Lots of useless data there but the ramming damage that would really matter is nowhere .

[JCB206]

I too wonder about the AI constantly using transports to attack fleets. I wonder if lowering their stats to basically zero while on the water wills top the AI from attacking. They usually only attack if they have a big Auto-resolve chance.

On the other thing, if you use realistic movement mods, it REALLY makes the AI be more aggressive. They can finally bring 3-4 stacks to attack almost anywhere. Truly epic battles. Doesn't work on IA Campaign map for DEI 1.1 but Grand Campaign is working. I would have to check the the other maps.

[Moonflower]

as moderators have made clear time and again, if you use the auto-resolve function, you are effectively cheating-- the auto-resolve function is broken for the player in various scenarios. I can guarantee for example that if you fought a 20 stack transport ship army vs 15 naval ships, you would probably win but at about 3/4 cost to your navy.

as for idling ai, that's another story. for me, i've noticed if i play the campaign on VH the ai acts dramatically different than it does when set to normal for example.

[JCB206]

as moderators have made clear time and again, if you use the auto-resolve function, you are effectively cheating-- the auto-resolve function is broken for the player in various scenarios. I can guarantee for example that if you fought a 20 stack transport ship army vs 15 naval ships, you would probably win but at about 3/4 cost to your navy.

I didn't know auto-resolve was broken for the player? I take less losses if I fight the battle. The example you gave an example of winning a battle by playing manual and losing more in auto-resolve. How is this "cheating?" Auto-resolve will mostly cause more losses, but I still don't see how its cheating? Nor do I consider it broken. Mods?

Or are you saying you lose 10-12 warships when fighting transports? If so, you need to brush up on naval matters. Your ships are stronger, faster, and more maneuverable. That would be like levies taking out elite troops. What battle difficulty do you play on? DEI is optimized for "normal" battles only.

I take it as I let my lieutenants fight the battle in my place. I have even played a campaign where if my character was not with the army, then I would auto-resolve. Hannibal could only be in one place at a time. You could still replace him in calm regions and send him to the front in others. A game turn is 3 months, plenty of time to travel to another part of the empire.

[Tyiallyradil]

i've noticed if i play the campaign on VH the ai acts dramatically different than it does when set to normal for example.

What are those diferences? I always play on legendary, no matter what.

As for autoresolve, I tested it, and it is quite accurate at most scenarios.

You can win with 10 navy vs 20 trasnports without autoresolve with only a few casulties mostly from their missles (heroic victory)

Every professional navy ship can sink an enemy transport with 1 ram hit, its pretty unbalanced.

As for the realistic movement mod, I concern that it would be pretty weird, as I love the pace of the campaign as it is currently.

I also discovered a bug, if I can call it, that even if I have the technology and money, I can't build slave trader III, when I click on it, the sound of the start of construction appears, but nothing happens with the icon.

[MagicCuboid]

I can guarantee for example that if you fought a 20 stack transport ship army vs 15 naval ships, you would probably win but at about 3/4 cost to your navy.

Well... that's not entirely true. I just defeated a 20 stack Carthaginian transport navy with about 11 Roman ships, and I only lost one ship. That said, I did maneuver extremely carefully to avoid being boarded, and basically used my superior maneuverability to split their navy in half and rammed them to death.

I actually found the encounter extremely fun, though, and I felt like I earned the victory. Like I said, any ship that became boarded took heavy losses and basically a lost ship given how outnumbered I was. Also, a boarded ship was just one less ship I could ram with. So basically, I find the naval encounters really fun, but it is possible to entirely dismantle armies with your navy even on the battle map.

[Dresden]

Our goal was to make it so that transports get really beat up by professional navies. One of the side effects may indeed be that the AI throw transports at some navies and get that army destroyed.

I am trying to think of a solution that both keeps transports at a disadvantage but fixes the issue.

[rjacko10]

I am trying to think of a solution that both keeps transports at a disadvantage but fixes the issue.

Any headway on this yet? The only negative point in my campaign so far (having a wonderful time ).

I've actually started my own house rule: When this happens to me I can only use autoresolve or retreat.

[Dresden]

We may need to increase transports defense against ramming. Previously in the game, transports were overpowered and that was a large complaint. We wanted to make it so that a real navy could easily destroy and unescorted army. That really isn't unbalanced if you think about it, it actually makes sense.

The level 3 slave building requires the trained slaves resource.

[JCB206]

We may need to increase transports defense against ramming. Previously in the game, transports were overpowered and that was a large complaint. We wanted to make it so that a real navy could easily destroy and unescorted army. That really isn't unbalanced if you think about it, it actually makes sense.

Not unbalanced AT ALL. Please do not increase transports defense. Then we get back to "auto boarding" that was in previous versions. Even if the ship takes out 90% of the hull on the transport, you automatically (almost automatic) get boarded by larger numbers. Very realistic for professional navies to sink transports easily. In previous versions, my 10 stack professional navies ran from transports. I stopped building navies.

Maybe, since the AI cannot figure it out, can there be a "escort" script? I know scripts can be a bad thing and can slow the game, but even 2, 4, 6 escort ships can ruin a small navies chance to take out a 20 stack transport fleet. Maybe the size of the escort fleet be based on the rank of general or something, since high ranking generals wouldn't leave port with out an escort?

Just some thoughts, thanks for listening.

[Tyiallyradil]

Maybe, since the AI cannot figure it out, can there be a "escort" script? I know scripts can be a bad thing and can slow the game, but even 2, 4, 6 escort ships can ruin a small navies chance to take out a 20 stack transport fleet. Maybe the size of the escort fleet be based on the rank of general or something, since high ranking generals wouldn't leave port with out an escort?

Just some thoughts, thanks for listening.

This sounds like a really good idea, but it only works if the transports and the professional navy arrives at the same time, not as reinforcement, because until they arrive, all the transports are gone.

Thanks Dresden, I totally forgot about the slave resource.

[Fanest]

I agree nerfing ramming is not the way to go, otherwise transports with more men always win, because they just board the ship if they survive ramming. This is also pretty much the only reason to keep navies around and the way they are balanced now is pretty good. Do not try to give bonuses to units just because AI is stupid.

[tum0]

I must say that the balance in the mod are generally much higher than in the original game. Balance between transport ships and the fleet is now good. Maybe just to add to the garrison several small and fast ships. The Romans in the imperial period are very strong, yes.
By the way could you please add a top ships for Greek factions, not only Egypt.

[Dresden]

Athens, Carthage and other naval powers have customized rosters.

[Best2nd]

Transports engaging navies is a issue that persists even in Attila where sea sick penalty is harsher.

I don't think this is something that can be fixed.

[BMLlednar]

How are so many of you winning these battles? My 15-stack navy was just crushed by a 20-stack group of transports. The melee ships were boarded and taken out when I tried to ram, and the archer ships didn't seem to accomplish much of anything. Auto-resolve was also giving me "close victory" at best. I imagine I'm doing something very wrong here, but I have no idea what.

[Fanest]

Just ram straight into the transports - into their head not sideways - if u want to ram the side of ship-bows do it at the 90° degrees or close to it, otherwise u can just slide along the side. Also it may be that some support ships that aren't strong enough to take a transport ship with one ram therefore be ready to ram that transport with another ship. Also after ramming try to get away as soon as possible (use that ability) so that u can ram again and u dont get boarded by the second line of enemy ships.

[BMLlednar]

Well nobody but my general was killing transports without at least two rams (sometimes three), so I guess I need to be able to make an actual military port before my navy can handle transports. Unfortunately that's three techs into military for Saba, which is a lot to ask considering how long it takes to research anything.

I think I'll just stick with ground forces for now. Sabean Nobles take 0 techs in military, and have proven to be highly effective against pretty much everything. Alternatively I could go back to playing as Egypt since they start with a military port now, but then I'd need an answer to Sabean Nobles that isn't "have more of them than the opponent". It might also be worth noting that a lot of the transports I was trying to sink carried Sabean Nobles. Do transports for better units have more heath, or did that not actually matter? I was targeting those transports first, but if they're more durable it may have been better to start with the weaker ships.

[MagicCuboid]

That's true, BMLlednar, my campaign has a military port and I'm mostly using assault ships (above Trireme, below Quinquereme). All transport ships should have the same health.

Once you get military grade ships, use their speed to your advantage and use formations. I break my navy into a left wing, a center triangular "wedge" of 2 Quinquereme ballistae + Flagship, and a right wing. I use the center wedge to protect my weak supply ship (I was supplying a land army and this was important not to lose). Then as the wings advance, I drive the wedge (slowly) toward the enemy force to split them. Never get totally surrounded; the wedge will be docked firing ballista bolts most of the time. But, once your wings have to begin maneuvering a bit, the wedge is able to fan out and ram any ships which the wings don't have a good angle on.

On the wings, I hit ships head on as Fanest said and then steer away outward, always being careful to never stop moving until you're clear of enemies! If they stop to "pivot" the ship, you will probably get boarded. It involves lots of micromanagement to defeat a larger force. Also, ram enemy javelins/arrows units first. So long as you're not boarded by the heavy infantry, they can't hurt you.

Once I got the hang of it, naval tactics started feeling pretty natural. I developed my system on my own, and I'm sure there are even better ways to divide an enemy and use your ships strengths to your advantage. By the way, 80 solid marines should be able to defeat a force of 100 heavy infantry at sea, but it can be a coin toss.