How to turn off default guard mode for phalangites (USED BY THE AI)?

[Pooploop]

The dreaded lone individual that broke through from the front and is now in the rear (reason why dev team thinks guard mode should be on)



This is the captain's personal phalanx. Current number of men after slogging it out after some time against opposing hoplites



Now look at the opposing Greeks. From 161 down to 78. The Macedonians were 242 to 214...This is in the place in the field where it's truly neck to neck...

[Pooploop]

So now the right wing Greeks on MY left wing rout



Because my Macedonian captain is of the school of AI, he doesn't disengage, reform, and properly envelop the enemy's former center...no he just right clicks the nearest hoplites and some phalangites redirect themselves...or they try to



Some mercenary hoplites flee their left wing...my right wing where that phalanx is enveloped. This is a phalanx with no captain and guard mode is off, and is curving inward from the stress of getting flanked...you'd think guard mode off phalanxes would have turned useless by now right?

[Pooploop]

My center phalanx does its job...and routs the opposing center



The hoplites on my right flank, so close to crushing my rightmost phalanx, now see that they're the only section left and my other phalanxes finally closing in. They run...



Yeah...victory for the Makedonians. Soldiers are probably wondering why the captain didn't lengthen their battle lines and avoided the whole mess of getting flanked on the right...would've been way easier...what the heck is guard mode?? Not one unit had it turned on....

[Pooploop]

See that losses and kill disparity? That's from a clash with no special tricks, and with one wing partially enveloped. Note that most of the kills are actual combat kills, not capture or slaughter of routed individuals...



Let's break it down shall we? Note that the rightmost phalanx (last on the list) is the one with the heaviest losses. Also note the captain's phalanx. That's the prowess of regular phalangites if facing another unit one-on-one with no other factors...and then note the center. That one had to face 2 or 3 hoplite units at once with no guard mode on...how'd they do?

[Pooploop]

This battle was conducted on hard difficulty. I mean you can doubt this and think I edited the whole thing. So I hope this inspires you guys to try out phalanxes with no guard mode on yourself. Like I said the numbers prove that no guard mode on is what truly brings out a phalanx's potential...

[Pooploop]

For guys who only skim...I want the ai's phalanxes to be able to do this too. This is something that shouldn't just be potentially limited to the player.

[Dooz]

For testing purposes where you don't have to simulate being the AI yourself, I believe you can group your entire army and assign it to AI control? Not that I'm suggesting redoing all this lol. Just a little fyi

[Pooploop]

A little extra kick to my point....custom battle of 4 Makedonian units (1 agema, 3 regular phalangites) vs 14 Koinon Hellenon units (Including a somatophylakes strategou, 1 epilektoi, 2 spartiate units, 3 regular hoplites, 3 mercenary hoplites, and 4 levy hoplites). All of the Makedonians were silver in experience, the Greek side had their elites all silver, while the regulars were a step or 2 steps below a silver. This is really a player test now, so I lengthened the phalanxes a bit, did Phillip's oblique order trick (to encourage more Greek units to get caught in the front as my forces were attacking theirs from an angle) and when I could, tried to reform the phalanxes when they could flank. However, one iron-clad rule I followed was that I never turned off spearwall, so no speedy redeployments, and for most of the battle (like 80% of it) the phalanxes just tried to form a straight line....


Yeah...the end result. Take note, all units had guard mode off, and those kills were vastly in actual combat, not kills among routed troops. Like I said, no turning off spearwall for sudden redeployment...Might I also give a bit of praise for the AI? They did it a bit late but they actually got their epilektoi to loop around to the rear of my leftmost phalanx. That particular phalanx was nearly obliterated. However, I urge the ai devs of the EB2 to hasten the flanking maneuvers of the ai. I'm not sure it was because they were an all infantry army, but their flanking detachment took too long to form and actually flank my forces...



Yeah, tried to recreate a more historical order of battle...so my agema was on the right, and was faced with the four levy hoplites. They just crushed them. The leftmost phalanx (2nd on the list) was not so lucky though, and was hammered by the two spartiate units and the flanking epilektoi force...only 20 of them remained...None broke though
Sniff...Phillip would be so proud...

[QuintusSertorius]

I don't like the way they blob up with Guard Mode off, but this is interesting. I've flagged it to Ibrahim to discuss.

Are you doing these tests with Release 2 (which has a higher melee kill rate) or Release 1?

[Pooploop]

Hmm...I have my EB2 patched to the latest fix? R1 was it? Suddenly got a flurry of crashes today though. SOmething about the building files not showing up or whatever. Uninstalled all of eb2. Might reinstall it, might just wait for R2.

[Pooploop]

Woah woah woah, just checked out the thread. Seems R2 is up! If that's the case, I've been doing all those tests with R1. Also got that weird crash related about corrupted building while playing only custom battles for days...

[QuintusSertorius]

Woah woah woah, just checked out the thread. Seems R2 is up! If that's the case, I've been doing all those tests with R1. Also got that weird crash related about corrupted building while playing only custom battles for days...

Yes, R2 was issued yesterday. I'd like to know if that crash persists. Note the building files stuff is completely irrelevant, that's the game complaining that many of the buildings in the EDB have multiple upgrade options.

I'm most interested in the reverse case - how does an AI army of phalangites handle being attacked with guard mode off.

[Martin N]

I made my own tweaks to Javelin and Roman infantry especially that i think improves the feel of how they charge and fight, 1 javelin per man instead of 2, deeper and closer ranks with the option of shield wall etc. But that's all they are, tweaks, even if i think they improve the gameplay i wouldn't expect them to change the whole mod due to subjective things that i am sure they have tested extensively.

Should definitely upload your end result as a submod though that's what it is there for, i like the idea of fighting an aggressive version as they are quite easy to outflank, although that was true in reality as well it was rarely the phalanx itself that won the battles but combined arms.

[QuintusSertorius]

One thing to beware of with changing the javelins to 1, it makes that "reload-freeze" by the AI more frequent. That's why we gave all the precursor infantry two missiles.

[Martin N]

One thing to beware of with changing the javelins to 1, it makes that "reload-freeze" by the AI more frequent. That's why we gave all the precursor infantry two missiles.

Is there any particular reason why it doesn't work for the AI? Considering one right click charge always works really well in Med 2 for keeping formation i figured 1 javelin seemed like a great accompaniment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RkKckMGCFM.

Never actually looked in depth at the AI though guess ill revert them for the other factions, always figured that they never got off two anyway, and i hardly ever could before receiving or giving a charge because of the range.

[Aleksander the Average]

I'm thrilled to see this is being considered for the main game.... however, it might detrimentally affect the "lesser" phalanxes (Pantodapoi, Machimoi, etc).

Anyway... if I wanted to upload a submod, would an edited campaign script be the only file I'd need to upload?

[QuintusSertorius]

I'm thrilled to see this is being considered for the main game.... however, it might detrimentally affect the "lesser" phalanxes (Pantodapoi, Machimoi, etc).

Anyway... if I wanted to upload a submod, would an edited campaign script be the only file I'd need to upload?

For this change, yes. Literally the only thing you'd need to do is remove that section from the battle scripts inside the campaign_script and share that edited file.

[Pooploop]

The great Basileus, Alexandros Megas! Or should I say Aleksander the Average...haha, I'm kinda shedding a tear you'd even consider making a publicly available submod. It seems only a really small portion of EB2 players even care about this facet of a specific type of unit. I seriously believe this will have larger implications on the campaign as a whole, as, well, half the civilized powers of this time period are the Successors to Alexander and Phillip before him. Now the anvil of the Macedonian war-machine is finally realized in full!

[QuintusSertorius]

The great Basileus, Alexandros Megas! Or should I say Aleksander the Average...haha, I'm kinda shedding a tear you'd even consider making a publicly available submod. It seems only a really small portion of EB2 players even care about this facet of a specific type of unit. I seriously believe this will have larger implications on the campaign as a whole, as, well, half the civilized powers of this time period are the Successors to Alexander and Phillip before him. Now the anvil of the Macedonian war-machine is finally realized in full!

There's an easy way to test how the AI handles it. Find one of the historical battles which features phalanxes. In the folder in which they appear (data\world\maps\base\battle\custom\ ) and delete the battle_script.txt. Don't worry, they're all identical, you can copy it from another battle's folder to restore it.

[Hellenikon]

I remember in older versions what happened with machimoi, pantodapoi and deuteroi when you turned guard mode off. Phalanxes without guard mode will walk all over the place, break their formation and get murdered, particularly those with less than 7 armour. Feel free to experiment with it.