Sindar Elves H/H AI (With screenshots)

[Zbereznik]

Hi Guys (and girls if we have any ) after two or three failed attempts at Isengard campaign and subsequent visit here just to learn that I chose hardest faction I decided to lead forest kingdom of Sindar Elves.
Mirkwood is great and that promise of Forest ambush based gameplay. Yet what is troubling me right now are slight issues with AI. And I don't know if generic Kingdoms AI is so stupid or I ditched something during installation? Stainless Steel has it's own AI maybe here I should install something similar as sub mod?

Let me show you specifics.



So my first concern with AI is that Goblin Infantry just stood there (A) under fire for a while and done nothing. Ok this battle was impossible to lose but if AI charged at me from the beginning they still might done some minor damage.
Second issue is balance. Why they had to lose 90% of their numbers before they routed? According to Palantir v6.2 unit guide goblin infantry has 10 or 12 morale does that mean "unbreakable by arrow fire". And yes I used flaming arrows mixed with regular ones.

Another issue was again standing under fire.



I was withdrawing to hold my position on that hill while goblin army was chasing me. And when it came to make a stand and try to survive their charge two heavy infantry units backed with some snaga decided to .... make a camp... under rain of arrows.

And last one this time human rebels.



What happened here? They just run back and forth in this corner allowing me to shot them. Ok not that they could do something vs skirmish mode unit but still...

So as I wrote on topic I play on H/H difficulty which I heard is BAI on it's full so what can be done to remedy that kind of behavior? Have you experienced similar issues or it's just me?

I play on Steam copy of Kingdoms and Third Age 3.2.

[baggers]

Look strange to me.

What is "normal" to me: If I have way more archers than ennemy A.I in a open field battle, it usually result in a quick A.I charge at the beggining of the battle, even if they are defending, as expected.
If it's just "a bit more" archers and I am the attacker, they usually move/attack when under arrow fire. I usually use that for trying to move A.I units away from the "last square" on sieges. (that don't alway work, sometime they just move in "loose" formation and sustain fire)

But Yes, I have never rout an unit just by arrow fire. I can rout an A.I unit charging under fire at one of my unit standing, but not an A.I unit standing under arrow fire.

I rarelly have some glitch in siege battle, with an unit or doing strange moves, because of poor pathfinding. But it usually involve houses corners.

I noticed that in your second pic, the goblin you depicted "standing under fire" have "marching" in their description. It's probably a pathfinding issue. (A.I issue an "marching/charge" order correctly, but the system could'nt find a correct path to reach your unit, and stand still, even with the "marching" attribute)

[Patronus]

Weird. I've rarely encountered those scenarios. The AI will normally charge my HE/SE armies (which consist of 55% archers, 45% infantry). I've never noticed the AI change its tactics when my army composition varies. Are you playing TATW 3.2?

[Itza]

The MTW2 is stupid, thats why it is impossible to have fun playing elves or men, its just to easy with their archers or their quality infantry in choke points. Only way you can avoid "gaming the system" is by playing the evil factions and use swarms of orcs and goblins. What a masterpiece Third Age would have been if only the AI would have been better.... Creative Assembly should have added some sort of feature to so that it would have been easier to modify the base AI

[baggers]

The MTW2 is stupid, thats why it is impossible to have fun playing elves or men, its just to easy with their archers or their quality infantry in choke points. Only way you can avoid "gaming the system" is by playing the evil factions and use swarms of orcs and goblins. What a masterpiece Third Age would have been if only the AI would have been better.... Creative Assembly should have added some sort of feature to so that it would have been easier to modify the base AI

Some tips for having fun:

- Never let more garnison in cities than the free ukpeed ones.
- Limit yourself to 1 general per army.
(- Play VH/VH ^^ )

It add a bit of challenge and "lore" in the units/army managements, without beiing to restrictive or difficult to manage or restrain yourself, I think.

[Vifarc]

Some tips for having fun:
- Never let more garnison in cities than the free ukpeed ones.
- Limit yourself to 1 general per army.
(- Play VH/VH ^^ )
It add a bit of challenge and "lore" in the units/army managements, without being too restrictive or difficult to manage or restrain yourself, I think.

Yeah, that's almost what I do:
I have up to 2 generals in an army (the second is for backup if the main unluckily dies).
All other generals stand in cities, mainly in the front/borders to help grow and defend the city.

[Patronus]

The MTW2 is stupid, thats why it is impossible to have fun playing elves or men, its just to easy with their archers or their quality infantry in choke points. Only way you can avoid "gaming the system" is by playing the evil factions and use swarms of orcs and goblins. What a masterpiece Third Age would have been if only the AI would have been better.... Creative Assembly should have added some sort of feature to so that it would have been easier to modify the base AI

That has less to do with the game's core mechanics and more to do with how this mod is setup. Elves and the good factions (generally speaking) have much better quality infantry and the elves have the best archers in the game, which is why they perform so well on the battlefield. This is one area where the mod (thankfully) focused more on the lore than on just making everything a rock/paper/scissors kind of strategy (like MTW2 is).

The disadvantage that these factions suffer is that their troops cost more, have less men per unit and take longer to recruit (particularly for the elves) relative to the evil factions, again the spirit of being lore friendly but also giving some measure of balance to the game.

Honestly, I bought and played Empire Total War recently and I still find myself enjoying this game (both modded and unmodded) much more simply because its core mechanics work so well. Yeah, the AI acts well, like an AI. But that's always been the case, even with Rome 2. Gameplay, content, the way units actually engage each other (as opposed to running to each other like in Empire) just makes M2TW and its mods an instant classic.

[z3n]

Check here, I fixed the issue with enemies not attacking you when under fire or being charged repetitively.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...he-AI-Workshop

Skynet AI (the resource) includes the fix, among others and instructions on how to implement it. Alternatively you upload your descr strat and campaign script I will edit them for you, even if I did write all that so people could do it themselves and even improve it.

[Zbereznik]

Hi guys interesting input thanks. As of VH/VH i really don't want it. Im affraid that on this AI bonuses I can't put one unit vs another and hope for "just" outcome. Ok I can win by outmaneuvering AI and throwing 3 units on one but thats not the point. If my 12 melee attack forest wardens attack some snagas I want them decimated not "Nah screw you knive ears we have cheats bring more friends or die".

Z3n i will send you PM. Basicaly how to install it on third age

[Hummingbird]

Check here, I fixed the issue with enemies not attacking you when under fire or being charged repetitively.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...he-AI-Workshop

Skynet AI (the resource) includes the fix, among others and instructions on how to implement it. Alternatively you upload your descr strat and campaign script I will edit them for you, even if I did write all that so people could do it themselves and even improve it.

This looks interesting. Do you think you could tell me, in detail, what sort of effects this tweaked AI provides?

The fix for the masochistic AI just sitting there and ignoring the hundreds of arrows massacring it's troops would be massive in itself but I'd love to know the precise details of everything involved here, might be a great addition to DAC.

[baggers]

This looks interesting. Do you think you could tell me, in detail, what sort of effects this tweaked AI provides?

The fix for the masochistic AI just sitting there and ignoring the hundreds of arrows massacring it's troops would be massive in itself but I'd love to know the precise details of everything involved here, might be a great addition to DAC.

It's written in insanelly details here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...XML-and-the-AI

[Hummingbird]

It's written in insanelly details here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...XML-and-the-AI

Ah, sorry if I was unclear. But I was asking about the specific effects z3n's Skynet AI mod would have on the game if I was to implement it as is into the sub-mod, rather than a general tutorial on modding battle and campaign AI.

[z3n]

Ah, sorry if I was unclear. But I was asking about the specific effects z3n's Skynet AI mod would have on the game if I was to implement it as is into the sub-mod, rather than a general tutorial on modding battle and campaign AI.

The CAI will be act more aggressively, treat its allies like allies, honour requests for military assistance, commit to naval invasions, manage to plot simultaneous attacks against an entire front of cities at times, use spies and assassins rather effectively and buildup forces before attacking. That's just off the top of my head, in fact as I type this I'm already remembering other functions like a random alliance generation, military buildup taking place on the front line and allies marching into your homeland to defend against invaders or attack invaders.

The BAI has quite a few different changes as well, explained in detail, my main achievements was in writing an extremely efficient script limited to less than 20 monitors which does just about everything one could ever want to achieve within a battle script. It addresses reinforcements, the general unit getting attacked by melee or ranged during a defensive battle which will trigger an aggressive state after a set amount of casualties, a similar army wide mechanic, a small boost for captain armies when being attacked by player FM armies (80-90% of the players who voted wanted to see that in EBII), the AI defending when it is supposed to defend, attacking when it is supposed to attack, reinforcements behaving better. As for the battle configuration itself, there was a fair bit changed here or added as well, for example the defensive siege AI underwent a series of changes, it won't immediately run to the town center once the walls/gates are breached instead it will fight on the walls and defend them to the best of its ability and then all the way through the streets. It will still respond to the town square being entered, it just won't immediately run to it. There's also been changes to the way the AI flanks, it will try to flank more often and make a fair attempt to avoid phalanxs/spearmen compared to before where it would always prioritize them for some reason. Cavalry will usually flank or double envelop the player. Unit resourcing in a battle by the AI is more sensible and the AI will make efforts to take the higher ground when defending. The AI will take a better position when defending against a sally out (far away from the arrow towers), the AI will also make efforts to attack up two streets instead of just one if it has the troops. Though this can be dependent on pathfinding unfortunately. There were some minor pathfinding fixes as well, for example siege equipment can now traverse a higher elevation without getting stuck on a custom map, alongside some tweaks to unit based pathfinding and responsiveness.

Hopefully that was what you're asking, no doubt I may have skipped over something important or failed to mention something that slipped my mind. The finer points are definitely covered in the tutorials however along with a more detailed explanation. I apologize for the entirely unstructured post, I just got home and I'm rather tired.

[baggers]

Haha, when I play an Orc faction on VH/VH, I was usually able to kill at least 2 pointy eared speed-running elves for every snaga down.

(OK: usually, it's not the snagas that kill the elves, but the real warriors ^^ Snagas are for meatshields. Cheap, disposables kleenex for cleaning arrow fire or charges mess. Just dispose a line on your front line and hope they catch as much pointy or cutting steel things as they can. )

The AI heavy bonuses on VH/VH are on the money incomes, settlements satisfaction, garrison and full stack of free ukpeed units scripts. Not really noticeable on the battlefield.

[Yvesdlv]

The AI heavy bonuses on VH/VH are on the money incomes, settlements satisfaction, garrison and full stack of free ukpeed units scripts. Not really noticeable on the battlefield.

Well, back in the early TW games, the effect of the difficulty level on battlefield was similar to:
H: +4 in experience
VH:+7 in experience
In RTW1 this had a huge impact as the +1 in experience translated directly in +1 in combat (+1 in close combat attack, +1 in missile attack, +1 in defense, +1 in moral, +some effect on speed too).
So a totally inexperienced AI unit behaved as if it already had one golden chevron (+7 in all combat fields). And a reasonably experienced one (say 1 silver chevron = experience 4) could receive bonuses beyond those of a 3 chevron ubnuit (+9). For example, a silver chevron 4 + VH bonus 7 = +11 bonus in attack/defense/morale, that is ass kicking.
This boosted the crapy units most. Imagine some inexperienced peasant unit with an attack of 1, by virtue of the difficulty level it became a decent unit with an attack of 8. Even crappy AI missile units were devastating.
You felt the bonus a little bit less on 2nd or 3rd tier units.

Now in MTW2, the experience system does not grant 1 combat point for 1 experience point. And certainly no bonus at all for missile attacks.
A +7 bonus on a an inexperienced AI unit would give "only" +3 in combat.
On VH,
You:
exp 1-3 units get a +1 in all combat fields
exp 4-6 units get a +2 in all combat fields
exp 7-9 units get a +3 in all combat fields

AI:
exp 0-2 units get a +3 in all combat fields
exp 3-5 units get a +4 in all combat fields
exp 6-8 units get a +5 in all combat fields
exp 9 units get a +6 in all combat fields

[baggers]

That mean that a A.I unit is very tough on the front impact due to added VH/VH bonus, but theses VH/VH bonus don't make a notable difference if the A.I unit is stormed by archers, or charged in the flanks/rear.

[Yvesdlv]

That mean that a A.I unit is very tough on the front impact due to added VH/VH bonus, but theses VH/VH bonus don't make a notable difference if the A.I unit is stormed by archers, or charged in the flanks/rear.

Correct.
Except for the moral breaking due to a rear charge. With higher moral, they can take more damage before breaking.

[Jmonstra]

Yeah I still get this on occasion. AI is dumber than a bag of rocks.

[eugenioso]

Quote removed

[Ngugi]

If you have nothing to say, please do not post, eugenioso.