Seen Advisor Reset Bug?

[RLucid]

I'm under Vista, and to my surprise the Advice seemed to reset. Anyone else seen this one?

I set it to Low, occasionally I see new messages, which are interesting, so I've not moved to None yet.

[Quirinus]

Not sure about this, since I neither have Vista nor use the advisor. I turned it off almost within a few days of starting to playing the game. Is it any good, though? I don't recall much about it.

[RLucid]

Well in part. Sometimes it makes an interesting suggestions at start of battle. Guess I've had it turned on, out of curiosity. The rare interjections were mostly interesting. Perhaps it cycled round, when I'd heard every message?

Most of it is pointless waste like the manual. Victoria explains, the obvious, like "You have just opened the Settlement scroll, from which you can see all settlement statistics". So I prefer asking for her suggestion, it took me ages to figure out what all the figures meant, simply due to volume of factors. The stuff that should have been in the manual, and help isn't there. Those details about the underlying model, so you can understand what's causing unrest for example.


However it would appear that more ppl should have it turned on, as it explains things like not fighting a Phalanx unit head on! *wink*

It is unfortunate that you can't ban Victoria (who rarely interjects with anything useful), and permit Marcus (whilst turning off his spam messages about Siege Equipment already being deployed).

Similarly, the distraction can make for problems in the battle. I'd like to be able to auto-pause, on the rare occasions he interrupts.

For new Generals, I would actually recommend, playing the Prologue, and using the battlefield advice. Some of it, like having a gap in centre of your line, you can ignore, when you set a trap, and have a plan.

There's a lot of unit v unit infantry comments in the forum, eg) Hastati see off cissy Gaul warbands; or my chosen axemen destroy unit X.

War's not about having fair fights 1:1, the General is meant to tilt things in their favour, either exhausting opposition, terrain disadvantage, unfavourable troop matchups, and obviously holding in certain areas (low casualties) whilst having favourable concentration of force in others.

Scipio's battles are particularly instructive. Sometimes he put low quality infantry in centre, so they couldnt' desert, opposite carthagian veterans, but told them to stand off. The Phalanx men, could not advance and engage the weakies, without exposing their flanks to crack troops. Nor could they retreat and re-deploy without being exposed to missiles, attack and follow up attack.

So they basically ended up watching their allies on flanks being massacred, until they got surrounded, and massacred themselves.

[Quirinus]

:yes: That's what I like to do as well-- almost all my battles are played with better units at the flanks. I find that it's sometimes pretty risky: if the better troops at my flanks rout, the battle is pretty much lost, and I sometimes take heavy casualties on my center. It's not for everyone, it's just a personal favourite.

Are you sure that's Scipio you're talking about though? It's Hannibal, right?

[RLucid]

Yep. The Gauls embarressed me a few times, by hitting a the centre with cavalry. At minimum inflicting heavy casualties on Hastati, but sometimes destroying my precious archers after crashing through thin Hastati lines eg) 3 deep with normal unit size. Flanking spearmen unable to intervene in time. When I first played, I'd often have a Hoplite unit, as centre of line to provide a solid centre.

Then I got into using bait, the fleeing Velites get chased, go through the channel, and the charging cavalry crash into a solid block of Town Watch held back from frontline initially depriving them of momentum. At which point charging Triarii have their say, and velites can settle to throw more javellins.

So many things got rather realistic in game in practice, like crowd control issues.

It's a shame, you're limitted to rectangles in the formations. For instance Spartan Hoplites could deploy in a wedge, or in a slanted formation. Facing of individuals ought to be seperate from the Unit shape. They also had oblique attacks, not just accidental ones, which unbalance opponent or force them to redeploy by shifting forces rapidly.

The Roman infantry, designed for flexibility must have been even more imaginative. Classical army, gets order, attack those men, and then they all shift off and get rotated round... now what????

Obviously with mobs, I suspect that the shield was the main weapon, pushing and shoving, with Sword striking openings. That would mean, each man could probably slam forward with shield, create a space for 2nd man in rank, and then fall back to rear of unit for a rest. Whereas the mobs of hyped up barbs, would all be milling at the battleline, unable to move back, getting more and more tired, until despatched. Unless the whole unit, withdraws slightly for a pause in battle, which apparently was frequent.

Because Hastati's job was holding, wearing down, and Romans did field auxilliary slingers and such like, they may indeed have conspired in this, as it suited them to have unarmoured opposition within missile range for as long as possible. After all, someone probably would roll up with extra ammo, more pila etc.

[RLucid]

Are you sure that's Scipio you're talking about though? It's Hannibal, right?
Absolutely.

First off he campaigned in Spain, after having been on wrong end (they think) at River Trebia and Trasimene and learning from Hannibals exploitation of every advantage.

One neat battle, he lined the troops up every afternoon, in conventional order, no attack, then stood them down. On battle day, they all turned up early, breakfasted, with water, and in different order. Carthaginians couldn't re-deploy and had their Vets, against the Iberian allies, with the flanks set up cleverly, combined Infantry + Cavalry attack, routing the Carthage cavalry, yet also preventing quality infantry phalanxes advancing and engaging in centre.

As a General on the field, he rates way above Caesar, who appears to have been rather hasty and relied on his boys to pull the irons out the fire. I suspect Caesar would have lost his head, facing Hannibal after being out maneuvered. The only battle of Caesars, that stands out to me, is the defeat of Pompey, who outnumbered him, and had cavalry superiority (albeit with greenish troops).

The Zama battle, Scipio out Hanniballed Hannibal and got him at every disadvantage. It was also 100% decisive.

[Quirinus]

Ou...... I thought you were referring to Hannibal's tactics at the Battle of Cannae.

But yes, Scipio Africanus deserves every scrap of fame he got.

[RLucid]

Cannae was a kind of invert of it. Hannibal started off with convex centre, knowing it'd be concave and then he could turn in on centre from flanks.

Wonder if he did, put Gaul allies in centre, to ensure they fought. Hasdrubals defeat in northern Italy, they were drunk and other side of hill on the left, and didn't help one iota.

Scipio's battle was a surprise unorthodox move, with double line flanks and weaker centre, beginning linear, then convex, when the weak centre just stopped in front of the Phalanxes.

Get up early, Carthaginians had to scramble and go without breakfast, then they spent morning without water in the sun to weaken them further. Scipio's men, OTOH of course were well prepared. The timing probably meant they had the sun behind them to on their backs.

Well worth having look at some of the literature, far more to the battles and campaigns than sticking men in lines, and having the most 'leet troops. Greek & Roman Warfare, "Battles, Tactics & Trickery" John Drogo Montagu is an entertaining read.

In one battle the mighty Alexander, couldn't get through a valley with heights held by light infantry ambush style troops. So he has his men drill, down on the bottom. The natives all get curious, more and more watch.

Eventually Alexander says "Next time, Spears to Front" round again, then "Charge that lot there!" all nicely served up on the flat, and disordered, with no option but to flee & surrender.

[RLucid]

Think I know how it may have reset.

If you go into Single player and just click on Prologue, to compare the line up, I think it reset's the advisor and sets advice level to High, which is pretty bad form.