Campaign and Battl AI?

[Haddon]

I think it was Petellus in another thread somewhere that said something along the lines of "a whole lot of work has been done on the campaign and battle AI". What has been done? Probably too much to list out here, but can we get some info on maybe the ideas behind the AI changes, what we might expect, things you would like to put in but have been mechanically limited in doing so far or finding difficult to change? I would love to see individual AIs for the different factions that use their strengths well (like Celts having so many light units that are great in forests, so they try to lure their enemies into forest in battle, and set up in forests often on the campaign map). That would be difficult, I know.

[Petellius]

I think what I said may have been taken out of context here, or at least this isn't what I said one or the other.

So far I'm not too sure what has been done to the Campaign AI but I do know that it will be enhanced a lot, simply through increased movement points, and of our use of existing campaign AI editor mods and our own personal tweaks. As far as the battle AI goes it has been improved over vanilla but not a huge amount, the main thing I've been working on is to get the BAI to consistently use reserves which while I have got to work, is not yet as reliable as I would like it to be and trying to get the BAI to play ball is hugely difficult and precise.

What I did say though was that different factions will play differently on the campaign, due to their culture, army stances and unit abilities all factions will act differently. Civilized factions will be able to occupy places easier and will be better at sieges as well as being able to place colonies, while barbs aren't great at sieges and occupying land owned by civilized factions will be difficult as it will take a long time for them to accept you as their ruler.

Another example of this is the Iberians, who have large amounts of units who can hide on the campaign map, also all CAI armies have been weighted to try to get them to ambush more often.

[12oz Jesus]

Does combat system still use the 1 hitpoint model? That system sounded interesting to be sure.

[Willhelm123]

It does, works well especially regarding missiles.

[Haddon]

With the 1 HP system, everything will die in 1 hit like in the old days, but this worries me due to the disengage penalty (when disengaging, or even just repositioning or reforming ranks sometimes, you have 0 defense). On units with higher HP, the repos can be handled sometimes, only suffer a few casualties, but on lighter units it just gets them killed in droves. Have you figured out a way to work around this? As I understand it, you can't mod out the disengage penalty, nor can I find any way of changing what the penalty is.

Disengaging and repositioning should make you suffer a penalty, for sure, but not drop you down to zero defense. That just means the defensive capabilities of armor and helmet are doing nothing as far as turning aside blades or arrows or rocks. Everything hits. And from what I can tell, hits with the increased damage from the kv_rules table for rear coefficient, even if only half of the unit is being hit from the rear as they remake their formation.

[Petellius]

That is a problem for sure, but it's still pretty bad even with higher HP systems.

[Haddon]

Yes it is. The only thing I have really been able to do about it is turn down all melee hit, and turn down the decreased defense from the rear.

It didn't seem as bad in R2 or S2. I just looked at the kv_rules table for R2 and couldn't find anything majorly different that might have an effect.

[Petellius]

It's hardcoded, don't know why.

[FlaviAug]

If the AI understands what retreat means in a battle, then you could add a "Retreat Button" which will give bonus to speed + defense for 6 sec, but it will reduce fatigue (a little bit). Therefore, the retreat will be successful.

[Petellius]

I've thought about this but believe it would likely be abused by the player.

[KAM 2150]

For now I know that effect like that can be only successfully applied in nonabusive way in Warhammer, where units can get certain effect depending on % of their morale so if a unit would go below certain % of morale (that is correlated with broken unit status) it can get new effect applied, like +25% to speed and armour.

[Petellius]

that would be super useful, dammit.

[Commissar Caligula_]

Edit - Wouldn't work, there's no "is broken" flag for Attila. It is only in Warhammer.

This wouldn't be the neatest way of doing it, and I'm not sure if possible in Attila (should be though). Make it so every unit gets a trait that does something like -25% armour and melee defence or whatever and put an auto-disable flag of "is broken" on it. So they've always got -25% armour and defence, EXCEPT when they're broken and in effect they GAIN +25% armour and melee defence.

But then you'd have to buff every unit, and it'd be quite messy. What would be your way kam?

[Causeless]

This wouldn't be the neatest way of doing it, and I'm not sure if possible in Attila (should be though). Make it so every unit gets a trait that does something like -25% armour and melee defence or whatever and put an auto-disable flag of "is broken" on it. So they've always got -25% armour and defence, EXCEPT when they're broken and in effect they GAIN +25% armour and melee defence.

But then you'd have to buff every unit, and it'd be quite messy. What would be your way kam?

That's actually a really clever idea, if it works! Could any battle balancers test this?

[Petellius]

I don't believe there is a 'broken' de-activation flag. Unless we can somehow create one, which I doubt. I'd thought about this in the past unfortunately :L

[Commissar Caligula_]

I don't believe there is a 'broken' de-activation flag. Unless we can somehow create one, which I doubt. I'd thought about this in the past unfortunately :L

Ah right there isn't a "is broken" flag, that's only in Warhammer. Well at least I got 1 rep before my mistake was found =P

[Petellius]

Ah right there isn't a "is broken" flag, that's only in Warhammer. Well at least I got 1 rep before my mistake was found =P

Warhammer has an abundance of deactivate flags I wish I could use but alas.

[Haddon]

What about an ability to grant 90 melee defense for 5 seconds, but reduces all attack by 100% for the duration, and zero missile block and greatly reduced entity mass. Using this ability at the right time would let you re-position, but just abusing it would allow enemy units to break your line easily and you would be a sitting duck to missiles. Of course, it would mean you could also turn this ability on right before a charge so the horsemen are able to charge into your lines where they are quickly surrounded and cannot pull out. But it is worth trying, methinks.

[Causeless]

I've used script to give units temporary invincibility for around 5 seconds and a fatigue buff when they rout. This stops units getting immediately slaughtered when disengaging after routing and there have a greater chance of regrouping, but they can still be chased down.

Sadly, however, this only works in campaign battles, not custom battles, as the battle script environment isn't run with custom battles.

[Haddon]

Well that at least works as a little band-aid for the routing units getting obliterated. I feel like this idea could be worked into something to at least help with the problem. Sometimes that is the best thing available, due to the limitations in modding. I don't know scripting in the least, or I would make something like that. As it is, I will just try to think up things. I am a pretty decent thing-thinker-upper.