battle ai is a mess

[sarpedon21]

battle ai is vanilla lvl braindead, next version there should be an option to use germanicus reallybad ai.
at least the ai forms a coherent battle line with that mod.

[Shoebopp]

This problem is especially true when the AI has elephants and phalanx units. The elephants get deployed waaaaaay too far out in one flank and engage first while the phalanx lags behind delaying all other infantry from supporting the elephants. We've probably all experienced an anti-climactic showdown against Pyrrhus because of this incompatibility.

[BailianSteel]

I wouldn't say the AI is *that* bad. Outside of sieges and having to coordinate Phalangitai and elephants, they've managed to organize themselves into coherent battle lines in most of my battles.

[sigurdr]

I think the ai is fine. (admitedly the ai never has elephants when I play.) Battles sometimes degenerate into a confused mess but this is normally caused by enemy re-enforcements turning up, seige sallys or the enemey having lots of cavalry. Even this feels fine if you don't pause the battle and especially if you restrict yourself to the generals view on the camera. (not that I do this with nomadic nations.)

[Bast39]

The AI can be quite decent with infantry (except maybe phalanxes), but it is very bad with cavalry. Against infantry-based armies, it almost always uses it for unsupported frontal charges against infantry at the beginning of the battle. It can give good results with cataphracts, but the AI does it also with horse archers (they don't even try to weaken the infantry with their bows!). Defeating nomadic factions in battle is really easy because of this.

[z3n]

Phalanxes move slower than other infantry or mounted units, and the ai does not understand how to match speed.


99% of the battle ai is hard coded. The rest is very minor tweaking at best. Cav are placed on the extreme edges to encourage their flanking maneuvers in battle formations but the engine was designed for frontal charges by knights with lances or cavalry with large mass effects and charge bonus vs infantry.

"Modded" battle ai's are a placebo effect at best aside from the crashes introduced by germanicu5 scripts after battles or even during. Instead I spent many hours testing to see effects of minor tweaks and if there was anything worth using in those scripts, but not much really aside from one idea we already used.

[Satapatiš]

If the AI was deploying its elephants closer to its battle line then it'd be giving an even better outcome of focusing on making them amok. Elephants are way too easy to force into amok on TW engines. Thankfully they're also very expensive and recruitable in a few locations only so the AI almost never uses them.


I had instances of the AI charging the battle line with its cavalry, but that was close to the flanks of an extremely long battle lines made with huge unit sizes. Or in deployments when the AI had no option of getting around a defensive position. They usually retreat fast unless the AI army is made suicidal brave by their General's stats.




Now, if only the campaign AI for the named factions could restrain itself from using the basic pantodapoi for anything else than the settlement defense...

[z3n]

You're welcome to try modding that in yourself, but formations have negligible effect. The AI reforms into a default hard coded marching formation.

[Satapatiš]

You're welcome to try modding that in yourself, but formations have negligible effect. The AI reforms into a default hard coded marching formation.

Nah. I'm not asking for moving elephants anywhere closer to the AI lines. I was addressing the idea that they should be any closer. It'd be making battles easier for the player because of how CA made those units. If it can amok it will amok sooner or later and the AI will never take precautions. As it is now at least the elephants force the player to redirect some of the missile part of the army to take care of them.