Some thoughts during a pause of a Makedonian campaign

[BelzebuMaio]

Hi,


I've been playing a Makedonian campaign and, when the Late Hellenistic Reform event was triggered and while I was reading the text - very interesting stuff, btw - I noticed that the 1st paragraph has been written twice! The 1st and 4th paragraphs are exactly the same.

I thought I should flag this in case no one had noticed it before.

Btw, I'm having a wonderful time playing this campaign, I've been playing the mod since day 1 and this version is absolutely enjoyable! Very rare CTD's, which appear to occur only when right clicking on units to show or hide - mostly to hide, actually - their stats. The immersion and the game mechanics - colonization, governments, recruitment variety and pool refreshment systems - really work together and make sense. Battles feel good, except for the phalangitai units, which seem to not be able to keep other units beyond their sarissa points, allowing them to come to close quarters and attack them easily. I think it would be great if this could be adressed some time, so they would be able to play their role of pinning units and allow other troops to outflank the enemy smash them from there or their rear.

I'm aware that there are limitations to the phalanx formation in Medieval 2 engine, but I dream that one day some modding guru will be able to make phalangitai units perform more like they did in EB I, in Rome TW engine.

Can't wait for the new stuff to come!


Greetings

[Dooz]

Hmmm, you're playing the latest release, 2.2b? I don't remember phalangitai underperforming in the way you describe it, I thought they did their job of defensive stalwarts, keeping enemy units at bay while not necessarily doing a whole lot of killing themselves. But it's been a little while, maybe I've forgotten the fine details, or even just never noticed in the first place the issue of having too many enemy units close in too close too often...

Speaking of Makedonian campaign though, I've been daydreaming a lot lately of my on-hold campaign... especially of my favorite for some reason Mercenary Hoplite units. Despite massive time limitations, I think I might sneak in for a bit of fun soon. I'd left off in a pretty good state, with one immediate short term goal on the horizon. Maybe I'll just do that... yeah, yeah that's it. Just one, quick, excursion....

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[Genghis Skahn]

They're good at slaughtering troops head on, sure--but they do have a problem with soldiers running through their lines. Try placing them on one end of a bridge/river crossing on one of those battle types. You'll notice eventually the enemy will just walk through your forces(not without casualties of course).

Then again, phalanxes with the M2TW engine were never meant to happen. We've done pretty good though IMO, considering the limitations we've been handed.

[Headshotkill]

I'm enjoying my Koinon Hellenon campaign a lot lately, I'm about 30 turns in and have captured 2 Makedonian cities but one thing I'm worried about is the AI's army composition.

I'm using the new 2.2c ai and it seems the ai uses a lot of haploi hoplites wich fail against my regular hoplites, I hope that prosperous factions start recruiting higher tier units soon.

[betto]

maybe giving directly historical ready stacks would solve .

[QuintusSertorius]

maybe giving directly historical ready stacks would solve .

How do you propose to do that? Scripting? That would be lengthy, complicated, and would make a mess of the existing recruitment system.

[betto]

How do you propose to do that? Scripting? That would be lengthy, complicated, and would make a mess of the existing recruitment system.

sorry man...not a criticism...more to a dream ok.

if this is possible if ... check if the faction need it and have income to support another full stack and spawn it by script and discont it in next turns... its possible to spawn units by campaign script right?

[QuintusSertorius]

sorry man...not a criticism...more to a dream ok.

if this is possible if ... check if the faction need it and have income to support another full stack and spawn it by script and discont it in next turns... its possible to spawn units by campaign script right?

It is possible to spawn units through the script. Except you'd have to do it by checking every province every turn to see if the conditions are met, which is going to add a lot of monitors and slow processing down. What you're talking about would essentially be a mirror of the recruitment limitation script for size.

[betto]

It is possible to spawn units through the script. Except you'd have to do it by checking every province every turn to see if the conditions are met, which is going to add a lot of monitors and slow processing down. What you're talking about would essentially be a mirror of the recruitment limitation script for size.

would be that huge script using

[TD="align: left"]

[TD="align: left"]FactionScoreRank military and

[TD="align: left"]SupportCostsPercentage ?

do some test like ...my faction is at war with faction B ... and their military is bigger than mine and i have less then 50% of income than summon a stack on capital province..[/TD]


[/TD]


[/TD]

[Beckitz]

Scoundrel, you chose poorly. Getai for life! (Just teasing )

Any shots of the campaign map? What did you think of the starting position? I've played it out a few times where I go right for Pyrrhus, but I've wondered if attacking the KH right away would be better...

~Bobsy

[BelzebuMaio]

Hi again,


I took a screenshot today when playing a battle against Koinon Hellenon. There you can see my Phalangitai Deuteroi unit holding their ground while a Hoplite unit charges them head on. You can notice how their first row bypassed all the sarissas turned towards them and engaged the first row in close quarters. In EB I only with a charge of an heavy cavalry unit like cataphratcs would be able to do that. Any other unit would be unable to pass through and you would see it spreading slowly around the phalanx, eventually engaging their flanks.

https://s12.postimg.org/50eausxl9/phalanx.png

Currently, I'm in turn 261, 207 BC, here's the screenshot:

https://s17.postimg.org/d0xm57rhb/CAMPAIGN.png.

I'm using the 2.2c version of both CAI and BAI and I've been noticing very interesting CAI behaviour:

- the AI actively uses naval invasions, even to attack places not immediately next to their territories - I was bemused when a full carthaginian stack landed in Aitolia and attacked;
- random naval attacks on ports from other factions never happened - this is much better than that time when a Swëböz fleet came all the way from the Baltic to blocade my port in Utica during a carthiginian campaign;
- aliances are respected by the AI, backstabbing is rare;
- after a war starts, if you defeat the AI on the battlefield or take a city from them they will consider themselves beaten and will be willing to come to terms and make peace. At last, no more need to wipe out an AI faction or use FD because they irrealisticly reject peace offers no matter how beaten they are - this allow the campaigns to last longer;

Not so interesting:

- i've seen factions trespassing other factions regions to attack regions they had no land borders with - this happened when Sauromatae came by land to attack Sinope or when Saba bypassed Characene (which I controlled) - to conquer Persepolis from AS. Shouldn't the AI negotiate miltary access before doing so? Or take a naval route if available?

In this campaign I decided to spare KH, Epeiros and the Getae and focus on expanding south and eastwards, a recreation of Alexander's campaigns. I made an ally out of Epeiros and they went westwards, nearly eliminating the Romans. As for KH, we became allies but I chose to turn them down when they went to war with my other ally, Epeiros. Soon they attacked me in Egypt, which they invaded by sea through Kyrene, having then conquered Ammon from the Ptolemies and besieged Alexandria, so I decided it was time to finish them off.

The game really forces the player to expand slowly and to consolidate well new provinces before moving on. So, to recreate Alexandrian-style lightning conquests is very hard.

Can't remember anything else important. I'm looking forward for the new patch! Keep up the good work! Regarding the campaign map, I hope you can do for Iran and Southwest Asia what you did to the Nile Valley and Kush areas of the map, they are really needing some love!


Cheers

[z3n]

Trespassing I cannot do anything about, that is pathfinding behaviour by the CAI which is almost completely hardcoded. I'd love to make the AI always prefer naval invasion routes or negotiate access first but that is tied to how the dijsktra algorithm is used in the exe. It's a very complex issue to begin with though so I understand why CA was unable to solve the problem as it ties into multiple major components of both the dijsktra and LTGD algorithm.

[QuintusSertorius]

Hi again,


I took a screenshot today when playing a battle against Koinon Hellenon. There you can see my Phalangitai Deuteroi unit holding their ground while a Hoplite unit charges them head on. You can notice how their first row bypassed all the sarissas turned towards them and engaged the first row in close quarters. In EB I only with a charge of an heavy cavalry unit like cataphratcs would be able to do that. Any other unit would be unable to pass through and you would see it spreading slowly around the phalanx, eventually engaging their flanks.

https://s12.postimg.org/50eausxl9/phalanx.png

It's an issue we're trying to address, but be aware the engines are completely different in this regard. Cohesion and solidity are major problems in the M2TW engine in a way they never were in RTW.

[Headshotkill]

Considering Belzebumaio's post I'm starting to doubt wether or not I've correctly installed the new ai. I'm almost up to turn 100 with my KH campaign (H/M) of wich I will write a small report here later but during my wars with Epeiros and Makedon I was never offered a ceasefire even though I've pushed Makedon north into tribal regions. The only thing I noticed was that when I used my Diplomat to offer ceasefire it was 'Very generous'. Now I'm fighting Pergamon and have already captured Byzantium and the city east of it, no diplomat of them in sight.

I just dropped the new Ai file in the ebii folder and told it to overwrite, maybe I did something wrong?

[z3n]

It depends on if they even have a diplomat as well I suppose. If you offer them peace they should accept it (very generous) as well unless they have a larger army close by.

You installed it correctly by the way.