Concern about battles in AE

[Oryx]

Hi AE team first id like to say how happy i am to see that you guys are getting a first release playable campaign, been following the mod for very long time.

Now to my concern and i wanted to know if some of you shared it in any way. Undoubtedly the battle mechanics and the way battle is going to be fought in the mod is the most historically correct and true to what battles were like at this time, and seeing some presentations about it from you guys and now from jackiefish the youtuber, it does look amazing and with the right set in difficulty, very hard for exp players.

Ive had this thought for a while but decided to post about it after seeing jackiefish second video about your mod were he fights the same battle but in this case the AI doesnt do as it should and as you guys have moded their behavior to be. I know that this is CA fault and there is only so much you guys can actually do, but this is a present problem in many mods across total war were even when heavily moded to behave in such a way in battle, sometimes the AI will just do whatever.

The concern i have is that due to how historically accurate your battle system is were units get quickly tired and drop stats so much and where flanking and use of back up or reinforcing forces and keeping units in reserves is so important, cases where the AI doesnt do this will be extremely easy to play and very boring.

Had any of you that much concern about this? Maybe the porcentage of cases where the AI doesnt behave strategically are very few in number to worry to much about?

[Petellius]

I have thought about this yes, and its very difficult to combat quite honestly, whatever I do it will end up being ruined by the simplicity of the AI. The best I can do is give the AI buffs so that it won't flee when it gets tired. I did have a build that I never released where all units had a base scare trait and your units could sometimes just flee before the enemy. But this never really fully worked. The battle system in TW is so annoyingly shallow and broken it drove me to start creating my own game.

[MrMerisi]

The battle system in TW is so annoyingly shallow and broken it drove me to start creating my own game.

This is most interesting!

You are actually creating your own game? Pray tell!

The BAI is super annoying - worsened by its inconsistencies. I have actually been surprised a couple of times, but mostly it's predictable.

Of course we do have camera drones and pause buttons!

Has anyone played Ultimate General (made by Nick Thomadis aka Darth Vader)?

[Petellius]

This is most interesting!

You are actually creating your own game? Pray tell!

The BAI is super annoying - worsened by its inconsistencies. I have actually been surprised a couple of times, but mostly it's predictable.

Of course we do have camera drones and pause buttons!

Has anyone played Ultimate General (made by Nick Thomadis aka Darth Vader)?

I have yes, its amazing!

The game I am designing isn't too dissimilar to UG tbh. But for the ancient era. Unit scale will be 1:4 and we're hoping to have up to 5000 entities (20,000 troops) each side. We'll see how it goes I guess, very early stages.

[MrMerisi]

I have yes, its amazing!

The game I am designing isn't too dissimilar to UG tbh. But for the ancient era. Unit scale will be 1:4 and we're hoping to have up to 5000 entities (20,000 troops) each side. We'll see how it goes I guess, very early stages.

Sounds amazing dude! Are you crowdfunding that baby? 40k men on the field would be epic.

Speaking of large battles, I did ask in another thread (can't remember which) whether AE will support 40 units per army. Yes?

UG is really fun - just missing those cinematic elements and sandbox campaign, but I spent more time playing UGG and UGCW than I did playing TW in the past 3 yrs.

[Garensterz]

I have yes, its amazing!

The game I am designing isn't too dissimilar to UG tbh. But for the ancient era. Unit scale will be 1:4 and we're hoping to have up to 5000 entities (20,000 troops) each side. We'll see how it goes I guess, very early stages.

Good news. Do you have a site that posts updates on your game?

[Petellius]

Good news. Do you have a site that posts updates on your game?

We won't be doing that until we have a prototype and start crowd-funding. It's going well so far, but we've changed a lot from our first tests. Currently redesigning everything from ground up based and some very clever battle mechanics.

As I did my dissertation on the importance of psychology in Roman warfare you can expect battles to look far different to anything that's really been done before.

The battles are designed to play out something like this:
http://www.romanarmy.info/fighting2/fighting2.html

[imanube]

The battle system in TW is so annoyingly shallow and broken it drove me to start creating my own game.

I came to the same conclusion modding attila lol. What engine are you going to use?

[Oryx]

I understand, like i said i know CA didnt really give much to work with and there is only so much you can actually. Whatever the case im happy the road you are taking with battles and im sure there will be a good balance struck even if it takes time for the times the AI doesnt follow the battle model you incorporated, i hope your release comes with little problems for you guys and really good luck with it.

[ioannis76]

From what I've seen of battles they are quite interesting. One of the bugs I saw was that, in one case at least, the AI would chase routed player units and not return to the main battle, even though it was losing. That is something that would actually happen in real battles, from what I know, but the point is that even when routed friendly units had gone out of the battlefield, the AI still would not come back. But I do believe that it's an issue that will be addressed. That said, the victory was a narrow one for the player (I think it was havoc), and if the cavalry (chasing units were cav) had returned, it would possibly have been a defeat.

[Oryx]

From what I've seen of battles they are quite interesting. One of the bugs I saw was that, in one case at least, the AI would chase routed player units and not return to the main battle, even though it was losing. That is something that would actually happen in real battles, from what I know, but the point is that even when routed friendly units had gone out of the battlefield, the AI still would not come back. But I do believe that it's an issue that will be addressed. That said, the victory was a narrow one for the player (I think it was havoc), and if the cavalry (chasing units were cav) had returned, it would possibly have been a defeat.

I agree, my posting wasnt a critic about the battle system and how it was modded but across all total war games and specially in the later ones when it comes to battles sometimes the AI will do as the modders intendended them to behave in battle but others they will not, the concern i express was when it doesnt like in the following videos and what could be the outcome of those battles.

[Petellius]

I agree, my posting wasnt a critic about the battle system and how it was modded but across all total war games and specially in the later ones when it comes to battles sometimes the AI will do as the modders intendended them to behave in battle but others they will not, the concern i express was when it doesnt like in the following videos and what could be the outcome of those battles.

Yup, sometimes the AI tries to be clever but then suddenly changes to being ridiculously aggressive, this puts such a strain on the AI it causes several freezes throughout the battle as the AIs head just explodes. It's rare but it's annoying

[Archimonday]

What you might try doing is working heavily on the morale penalties/bonuses for different actions, the Battle AI, at least from my tweaking, seems to respond more heavily to morale tweaks than anything. So you might make the morale hit for exhaustion to sit on a razors edge, that might keep the AI from committing tired troops. No guarantees, but that would be my first experiment. Could even exploit the routing system, lower the rout time heavily so that routing units return to the battle after a few moments, and then up the morale hits for certain events high so that on those events a unit is shattered rather than routed. That would in some way force both you and the AI to commit fresh troops when the line falls back of its own accord. A little more chaotic, but might work.

[Petellius]

I've played around with this and it's very difficult to not make something the player can exploit.

You're correct about morale though, it's not a perfect system though.

[_Tyr_]

Extremely interesting, thanks for the link Petellius. Needless to say I'm insanely curious how you are able to implement some of those idea's (and maybe answer some of those questions).

[Petellius]

It's mainly down to morale being either positive or negative. Positive pushes a unit forward, negative and the unit retreats. Then you've got discipline as a stat too, which effects how much control you have over a unit and also how close it's formation is.

Having it gradual in this way means you can get a good variety of scenarios instead of just fighting or running away. There are gradients inbetween.

[_Tyr_]

Man, that sounds very exciting. I can't wait to test this out. I hope it works within Attila's game mechanics.

[Petellius]

Man, that sounds very exciting. I can't wait to test this out. I hope it works within Attila's game mechanics.

This is for my own game title, entirely from scratch.

[Colest]

Is this mod keeping the more dynamic fatigue from base Attila or will units get tired and re-energize closer to Rome 2 speeds?

[Petellius]

Somewhere in between. Fatigue is the most notable effect to morale, so I didn't want 2 minute battles.