Request to CA liasions

[WesW]

I don't know if you guys have any input on the AI side of things, but we (and by "we", I think I include everyone who plays the game) would greatly appreciate it if you pass along the following exerpt from a post I made recently, which has been confirmed by others. Thank you.

"After computing defense, the AI then goes into its offensive evaluations, comparing provincial attractiveness, enemy forces, its own troops and whatever political modifiers (though these last are set way too low I think we would all agree).
And here is where the programmers really dropped the ball, imo. If a neighboring province passes the initial tests for attacking it, the AI *should* run the defensive routine again, to see if it will have enough troops left in or moving into its province to defend it from the remaining border provinces' troops. If it doesn't, it should not attack, but in MTW it does attack, even if it means leaving no troops to garrison its base. I think we have all seen this time and again, and, coupled with the current setup of buildings being destroyed without the castle being taken, is the number one remaining reason, with the current improvements made to finances, that the AI doesn't develop into a worthy opponent over the course of an era. This is what causes the merry-go-round of desertification that everyone complains about. And this stuff should be basic "ones and zeroes", to borrow a sports term, for a strategy programmer. I mean, I am just a lay person really, and if I know this, then anyone with a degree and a little experience should have learned it a long time ago.
(ECS, if you are out there, I would really like this pointed out to the AI coders.)"

This next section is not absolutely necessary to pass along, but it does illustrate the effects of the flaw.

"If you want a really cheesy strategy to try sometime, just send at least one unit into every enemy province that you can reach every turn. You will probably ride into an empty town once every couple of turns.

I know that every development house has its guys to "plat-test" the game, but normally these guys are looking for bugs, and in MTW's case fighting pitched battles, and not sitting back and observing how the AI is performing strategically.
CA made some big improvements and tweaks to the tactical AI in the patch, but their not seeing the giant hole in the AI described above even by the time the patch came out spells out in black and white as to what all their emphasis was on. And they did a great job with the tactics, I think we will all agree. I have played the game since September, and I am still learning things from the AI in almost every battle. It's just too bad that the strategic shortcomings don't allow the great tactical AI a chance to show its stuff like it should."

[eat cold steel]

> ECS, if you are out there, I would really like this pointed out to the AI coders

That coder would be me...

> comparing provincial attractiveness, enemy forces, its own troops
That include forces needed to defend already, the strength of the invading force does not include the force needed for defence, unless the region you are attacking is much more attactive then it will abandant the previous region. I've however "upped" the size of the defender for VI.

> and not sitting back and observing how the AI is performing strategically
Very true, this has been rased many time in our team meeting, hopfully we'll get a much bigger focus group for future projects.

[Wellington]

ECS,

Another question on the AI for VI.

Currently when I'm playing and one of my castles is under siege I sometimes get an adjacent ally to "relieve" the siege and a message saying something to that effect. This does NOT start a war between my faction and my ally.

However, if I try the same (attempting to help an ally who's castle/province is under siege) this immediately results in a declaration of war

Is this remedied in VI? It would be nice to be able to help allies in such ways - perhaps the AI could allow such a relief attempt and providing you vacate the allied province immediately (next turn?) this is not a declaration of war.

This may have been requested before so my apologies if I'm asking an already answered question.

Welly

[eat cold steel]

What should happen is your force will retreat as soon as the battle is finished, if you allies are under siege. This happens automaticaly. If the people besieged are not allies but neutral, then you declare war on them if you win the battle. Anyone else see any weird outcome when breaking siege for allies?

[Lord Of Storms]

No but I have a different question I have noticed while in a defensive situation notably in a province with mountanous terrain say Tyrolia the AI goes through some very strange and erratic movements. I was defending tyrolia against the HRE I had taken a positon high o the mountain face my back to the map edge to avoid a flanking manuever. The AI sent some units forward while some marched the other perimeter back and forth and would not engage this erratic movement went on for some time it was strange the HRE royal knights stayed on the edge of the map walking back and forth erraticly . Others have posted erratic AI movement also some involved hilly terrain any ideas?

[eat cold steel]

No idea on the battle map side of things. And before anyone asks for any changes, the game is now out of our hands, activision has our submission already.

[econ21]

On balance, getting the game to Activision is good news, East Cold Steel. Congratulations I can't wait for it to hit the shelves. You've already enabled modders to do more tinkering than is possible with most other games.

[Apeboy]

eat cold steel:

Quote[/b] ]And before anyone asks for any changes, the game is now out of our hands, activision has our submission already.

Then can you be a bit more specific on tweaks that were made, if any, concerning the more talked about problems people are having?

1. GA
2. Crusade Tracking (man, this can be most aggravating)
3. Diplomacy


-Apeboy

[eat cold steel]

> GA
Points were not being given or being given to the wrong faction, now fixed in VI.

> Crusade Tracking
Nothing since patch, the rules are quite simple, I don't see how people still get confuse over crusades - see thread on 2 crusades.

> Diplomacy
As in all out war after you become the biggest faction? Threadhold still same as patched.

[Apeboy]

ECS:

Quote[/b] ]I don't see how people still get confuse over crusades

Er..I'm not confused on crusades as it is discussed in that thread. The tracking is still hosed. Two examples taken from the last two sessions:

1. English start a Crusade to Tunisia which is held by the Elmos. I'm playing the French and hold the province directly to the west. The English arrive from the east and the parchment tells me the English have decided they can't win the battle and retreat to the east. This happens about 10-15 times. Then they retreat west to my province and they've been camped out there ever since. No battle what so ever.

2. Spain launches a Crusade to Algeria from a central Spanish province. They move North to my French held Aragon, next move they cross the Med to Africa. I hit End Year and they pop back to Aragon. Lather, rinse, repeat for about 15 years. After that they track north through a few more French provinces and then head south, down the Iberian pennisula to north Africa.

Edit: This second example took place while Spain was being ripped from the south by the Elmos, they put most of their resources into the Crusade, leaving their southern border very weak. Not only that, they declared war on me, the French. At this time I had only taken 2 English provinces and was in a defensive posture.

-Apeboy

[eat cold steel]

All have reasonable explaination.

> retreat to the east. This happens about 10-15 times. Then they retreat west to my province and they've been camped out there ever since

Something happened the the east and now it's not possible to retreat that way so they go to whatever friendy region that is available. Each turn they are not making progress they pick up half as many troop as before, so it'll die out soon. Retreating counts as not making progress.

> They move North to my French held Aragon, next move they cross the Med to Africa. I hit End Year and they pop back to Aragon.

They lose the battle Africa and retreated.

> After that they track north through a few more French provinces and then head south...
Breaking and forming of new ship links, construction and destruction of ports.

[Apeboy]

ECS:

Quote[/b] ]They lose the battle Africa and retreated.

ECS. The battle never took place best I can tell. They just bounced back and forth, never remaining there for a year. The computer shows them moving into the province but never remaining to fight. The armies in the Crusade never changed.

You are right about the sea lanes. Spain declared war on me. The Crusade was in Aragon, intead of moving south to it first turned north hanging out in France before moving direct overland to Africa.

[Spino]

Quote[/b] ]> and not sitting back and observing how the AI is performing strategically
Very true, this has been rased many time in our team meeting, hopfully we'll get a much bigger focus group for future projects.

Has CA or Activision considered implementing public beta testing for RTW or future titles? I think it would be an incredibly sensible solution, especially in light of the considerable number of dedicated modders the TW series has (not to mention that public beta testing is also incredibly inexpensive to boot... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif ). Activision's in-house testers could concentrate on hunting down bugs while the public beta testers could concentrate on giving the AI a workout and addressing certain 'ergonomic' issues that 'official' beta testers can often overlook.

Is this the sort of thing Activision might entertain after serious discussion or would they simply respond with icy stares and looks of horror?

[eat cold steel]

> Has CA or Activision considered implementing public beta testing for RTW or future titles

Donno, I am only a lowly programmer, but I've heard talks of a public beta for the patch of MTW but it never happened in the end. We have however invited a selected few members of the forums to test the patch, I guess it's a good start.

I doubt it'll ever happen, mainly due to the possibility of pirates hacking our games apart.

[MonkeyMan]

Quote[/b] (The Sword Of Storms @ Mar. 05 2003,11:40)]No but I have a different question I have noticed while in a defensive situation notably in a province with mountanous terrain say Tyrolia the AI goes through some very strange and erratic movements. I was defending tyrolia against the HRE I had taken a positon high o the mountain face my back to the map edge to avoid a flanking manuever. The AI sent some units forward while some marched the other perimeter back and forth and would not engage this erratic movement went on for some time it was strange the HRE royal knights stayed on the edge of the map walking back and forth erraticly . Others have posted erratic AI movement also some involved hilly terrain any ideas?
The AI has a tendance to absolutely refuse to attack up a hill. It will always try to attack by gaining a height advantage or attacking a units side or rear. Given we are not stupid, we ensure this can't happen. A human in this situation would either back off and wait for you to move or charge in regardless. The AI is seemingly 'dumbfounded' by your mastering of the terrain and so sits its troops a few game meters away from you while you pepper them with arrows and charge at them.

ECS this does seem to happen far too often IMHO, any chance you could pass on our comments?

[Spino]

Quote[/b] ]Donno, I am only a lowly programmer, but I've heard talks of a public beta for the patch of MTW but it never happened in the end. We have however invited a selected few members of the forums to test the patch, I guess it's a good start.

Well that makes me somewhat hopeful that a public beta will happen for RTW.


Quote[/b] ]I doubt it'll ever happen, mainly due to the possibility of pirates hacking our games apart.

No offense but opting not to do a public beta in lieu of the possibility of piracy is a bit like tackling the tide with a leaky bucket. I suppose if you lock up the beta code tight enough they'll still be able to copy it but not molest it to the point where they could seriously alter the game. And there's always the possibility of encoding each beta copy that is released so that any tester who violates his/her agreement by passing it off to piraters can be tracked down and threatened with legal action. But even if the public beta never makes its way into the hands of wrong doers the retail release sure as hell will.

Take a quick trip to Kazaa or certain newsgroups and you will see that there is simply nothing that piraters can't get their hands on, whether it be software or movies. As I understand it many games and movies that make their debut in the West are often found on store shelves all over Asia soon after. Not that it's completely hopeless though. People are fairly decent when it comes to this sort of thing and good games still sell well no matter what.

[WesW]

Thanks for responding, ECS. I am surprised that you had to send in the game so early. I was one of the players asked to beta-test Call-to-Power II, and I seem to remember them tweaking things right up to a week or so before public release.

I got to asking things, and I ended up with quite a few below. I did my best to be brief and to the point with the questions, and stuck to what I consider the biggest issues in the game. I apologize if you have covered any of them before, but this would seem a good time to ask if you guys have already sent in the game to Activision.
Btw, what will Activision be doing with it for the next two months?

Also, if you need or want a play-tester for R:TW, don't hesitate to ask me. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
I started the Medieval Mod series in August of 1999, and I have been active in just the kind of stuff I am doing in the Medmod IV ever since, with Call-to-Power I and II, and Civ III. I wasn't sure if I would ever go back to RTS, but I have really fallen in love with the Total War battles. What I am offering, though, is help with the strategy side of it, like I have done in my own mods.

I am glad to hear that the AI won't be as prone to abandon their bases in VI. I have been specualting about something related to this, and if you could confirm or deny, it would answer some questions for us:
Does the AI place a value on the strength of the castle when deciding how many troops to leave in defense of the province?
This would make sense with the VI modification that structures are not destroyed unless the castle falls, but it has been killing the AI with the current rules, especially the Byzants and Constantinople.

I hate to keep asking things, but there are a few other things I have been wondering about in regards to castles:
1)Would decreasing the troop capacity of castles increase siege duration?
So often the AIs lose the heart of their armies in a couple of turns to sieges that I have thought about doing this both to save troops and force more castle assaults.

2)Have castle defenses been made less lethal?
They seemed really over-powered to me in real-time mode.

3)Has the auto-resolve feature been fixed to account for castle strength?
I think most would agree that it is broken. The resolve for open-field battles also places too much emphasis on quantity over quality, but the castle assault is what really needs fixing.

4)Have the AIs been taught to build and use siege engines, and does the auto-resolve for castle assaults take them into account?

Also, the AIs have a habit of not stationing ships in secure seas along their coasts, most notably the Italians in the Adriatic and the Byzants in the Sea of Marmara, which kills their trade. In the latest edition of my mod, I removed the Sea of Marmara and the Ionian Sea from the game, and the AIs have responded well to this.
Has this behavior been addressed in VI?
Given the low priority initially given to shipping, I fear that this may be an oddity that didn't come up.
We have found that simply increasing the priority of ships did wonders for AI trade, and therefore development, with the added bonus of making naval superiority a vital part of the game.

[longjohn2]

I did fix a bug in VI relating to the AI getting stuck when attacking on mountanous maps. The example I looked had them just stopping, but I suspect could also have lead to them wandering back and forth.

[Spino]

Quote[/b] ]I did fix a bug in VI relating to the AI getting stuck when attacking on mountanous maps. The example I looked had them just stopping, but I suspect could also have lead to them wandering back and forth.

Wow, I think I experienced that exact same bug I was being attacked by the Almos in a mountain map. I parked on a hill near the rear of the map and barely beat off the first wave (mostly AUMs) and routed or captured their general. The second wave came on and about half of the units simply parked themselves on a mountainous slope near their map edge while the other half marched towards my lines where they proceeded to do the 'indecisive dance of infamy' in front of my lines. After beating those troops off subsequent enemy units would simply march onto the map and park themselves next to their comrades on that steep sloped mountain. On rare occasion a high valor unit or two (usually Royal Ghulam Cavalry) would venture across the map to my position but they rarely ever attacked. Even worse was that the AI refused to remove itself from that moutainside for the longest time. I didn't have sufficient troops to dislodge them from their position so I maxed out time acceleration (I removed the time limit for battles) but they stayed there with little or no movement for the better part of 10-15 minutes

I do not think the 'indecisive dance of infamy' is related only to mountain maps. I've seen it in many other map types and climates. Many people have reported this phenomenon and it usually happens when the AI is presented with a fairly solid wall of spear and sword units, typically backed up by missile troops in the rear and no weak flanks.

On a different note during that same battle I mentioned a good number of the AI's non-cavalry reinforcements would arrive and then stretch themselves out into long, single rows. It didn't matter whether they were AUM, Desert Archers, Murabitin or Muwahid. From what I could tell these units were at full strength. I've seen this happen before but it is extremely rare and it only happened to a single unit here and there, never several at once.

[cugel]

My question is simple. Is there going to be a patch for VI? Every game I've ever seen has certain bugs and problems emerge after launch. While the game engine is quite stable, there will still be flaws that need fixing. It would be nice to know.

[deejayvee]

Quote[/b] (eat cold steel @ Mar. 05 2003,06:27)]What should happen is your force will retreat as soon as the battle is finished, if you allies are under siege. This happens automaticaly. If the people besieged are not allies but neutral, then you declare war on them if you win the battle. Anyone else see any weird outcome when breaking siege for allies?
No, I've found it works perfectly and I help my allies out quite a lot, the ungrateful b**tards

[Brutal DLX]

Well, I just find it appropriate to thank ECS and Longjohn2 for actually visiting these forums and taking time to answer questions. It is very much appreciated and could serve as a splendid example for other companies, if I may say that...

[Red Harvest]

Quote[/b] (longjohn2 @ Mar. 05 2003,15:43)]I did fix a bug in VI relating to the AI getting stuck when attacking on mountanous maps. The example I looked had them just stopping, but I suspect could also have lead to them wandering back and forth.
Yeah, I've seen a few semi-bugs like this and what the other fellow described. Sometimes units get sort of stuck on mountainous map edges where they can't be shot, attacked, or enter. In all cases it has eventually cleared itself, although I sometimes had to pull back to get them to fully re-enter the field, then chase them off.

There are still a few "hesitation" problems when the AI attacks. I had a recent desert fight where the AI attacked with the French King and a bunch of royal knights and feudal knights. I had some sergeants and Italian infantry with arbalesters and a catapult. Command was about equal and the AI probably had an edge because of the number of its small very powerful units vs. my few big powerful units, though it's edge was not overwhelming. While a portion of the AI army with the King's unit marched about in front of me at the edge of catapult range, most of the knights parked off very close to my right. I shot them to to about 50% of their original number before the remnants of the now utterly exhausted AI army attacked my spear wall of sergeants and Italian infantry.

At times I do like the crossing patterns the AI frequently uses on the final attack. If I try to target specific units, the crossing patterns can end up throwing me into disarray and I can lose easily as my units get hit from behind or on the flank as they run after some unit headed out laterally. However, if I respond properly by halting or switching targets, then the AI units get hit on the flank and quickly falter. In American football these moves by the AI (as linemen) would be called "stunts". The misfortune is that the AI uses them a bit too frequently and with too much of its army at once.

[hoom]

What pisses me off is the left-click-and-drag-right algorythm for unit placement.

With multiple units selected, and especially if at least one is a different unit size or depleted, way way way too often it will wind up with at least one unit about 5 people wide and 10 deep while at least one will be 3 deep and 16 wide.
This REALLY NEEDS TO CHANGE
I hope it has already been dealt with for VI http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[longjohn2]

Arrrse. Click the right mouse button while you have the ghosts dragged out, and unit depths will be reset to the defaults. It's a shame this was left out of the manual.

[Kraxis]

About a public beta test.

Right now the Blizzard beta for the WAR3 expansion is going on... And so far I can see it is going very well. If there is any pirating it is limited, and who want to play a bugged, unfinished game such as a beta??? Not me... Not as the main game.

I would love to beta test, even if it was riddled with bugs and imbalances... Why? Simply because I could help CA get rid of those bugs and imbalances. We could easily find the problems and they could get sorted out fast, something an internal beta has some problems with.

I'm very happy to see some problems have been addressed, such as the abandoning provinces attacks. I simply hate to see a faction abandon a province which is vital to production of troops, then it would get ravaged by another faction... First faction would now be unable to train say knights and men-at-arms...

[Spino]

Quote[/b] ]About a public beta test.

Right now the Blizzard beta for the WAR3 expansion is going on... And so far I can see it is going very well. If there is any pirating it is limited, and who want to play a bugged, unfinished game such as a beta??? Not me... Not as the main game.

I would love to beta test, even if it was riddled with bugs and imbalances... Why? Simply because I could help CA get rid of those bugs and imbalances. We could easily find the problems and they could get sorted out fast, something an internal beta has some problems with.

When you consider that games like RTW offer infinite replayability then beta-testing can be all the more enjoyable. However, I do not feel I would experience the same pleasure if I was beta testing a 'finite' game with a set storyline (i.e. adventure, rpg, shooter). Repeated playtesting of such a game would only leave me jaded and indifferent when the time came for it to go to retail.

[Kraxis]

Well Spino, as the beta-tester you would have to put up with massive bugs, CTDs all the time, techtrees that don't work. Units that makes the game crash... Whatever... It would stress anybody to the limit.

300 people can in a few weeks test the game more than the company can hope to do itself before release. This would also leave out the continual screaming for patches as we would not need it that much.