Indian suicide

[HomoErectus]

Hi, everybody

Last night I began my first EB campaign with Baktria, as I'm fond of eastern factions. After gathering my spare units and taking the two nearby cities, I waited several turns in order to build an economic infrastructure. In the meanwhile, I sent two spies in scouting missions. After that, I decided to go for the indian towns. I thought it would be hard, as a stack of indian longbowmen supported by indian elephants looked pretty impressive. My army was essentially formed by those crappy persian archers/lancers whose name I don't remember (Eranshar Somethingelse?). I had also a few akontistai to smash elephants and three family members with its bodyguards. So, I laid siege on the city. It was big and with huge walls: it could resist for eight turns. To my big surprise, the enemy army decided simply to stay behind the walls until the last turn despite they could receive no help. And when they tried to break the siege I had to confront about only one third of the original stack. Furthermore, with ten or so units of archers, the enemy was even unable to deploy their army, they simply died as soon as they passed through the gate. And the indian elephants had also a very deceiving performance: my akontistai took care of them easily (too easily, I would say).

To sum up: in my game experience I have observed that enemy armies always wait until last turn to try to break the sieges. This is obviously suicidal, and, what seems to be a paradox, this behavior is much worse as the attacked city is better fortified (more turns to resist implies higher starvation, I guess). And although I'm possibly the worst player ever (I managed to lose a game even in vanilla RTW), I don't want such an advantage. ¿Is this related to difficulty settings or it is an AI flaw?

PS: As this is my first post, I'd also like to thank all EB team for creating such an outstanding mod.

[zarkis]

From your description your army was superior from the beginning (3 generals with bodygards weight a lot...). So the AI will do what everybody would do: hide behind the walls and hope for either some help or that the besieging army has to break of the siege because of other reasons.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I just had a decent army besieging a rebel town, but another faction attacked me and reduced my numbers a little - and the rebels sallied out immediately to attack me (I had to run away). That's not usual I know, but it does happen. What difficulty level did you play on by the way? I can rarely take the two other cities (kophen and the one to the northeast I'm sure) in the first few turns myself (since the second one has a half a stack of horse archers). VH/M is the recommended settings, though I usually don't even play that difficult myself.

[HomoErectus]

Well, of course, my army was superior! (although I admit that in this case I thought enemy army would be stronger, those elephants are imposing!) As I said, I'm a very bad player, and I myself have the traits "likes easy battles", "lazy" and "coward". Thus, I only enter battle/sieges, when I know I will surely win. Also for this reason, I play on M/M settings (which I know it's not the reccomended way...). However, AI behavior is still very strange for me, as I'd say a rebel town can expect less help than a normal faction which may have some other armies around. Eleutheroi cities should fight when they still have a strong army. It is true that sometimes, even with eleutheroi, I have seen an allied army trying to help the besieged one, but that was not the case in my indian raid: those poor half naked archers just perished from starvation in their hometown and nobody came.

By the way, I'd like to emphasize again that IMHO akontistai are too effective against elephants. And, probably, Eranshar and Thanvabara are also overpowered against horse archers. That's how I managed to take the town northeast of Baktrian capital: just disbanded all other units and send there an army (less than half stack!) of Eranshar Whatever+Thanvabara backed up by a family member. With my foot archers slaughtering horse archers and my bodyguards sneaking between enemy thanvabara, no problem at all. And, later, this combination of cheap units has proven itself very effective, I don't even need hoplitai-type of units. But perhaps it's because of the difficulty settings...

[Chester]

There in lies your problem. WHen playing on VH/VH, I can assure you that you're going to lose the first few campains with Baktria, to the rebels!

I play exlusively on VH/VH. I've only really played three factions seriously.

Roman (got to 190ish)

I failed to take carthage so moved my armies into Gaul, and promptly took over the entire area. I then buttheads with the Iberians. I lost one fully stacked army to a fully stacked fully experienced (almost) Iberian army, had a pyrrhic victory over an Iberia army with my better legion, and lost my third barbaian legion to another Iberia army. Campaign was over since I bankrupt myself building ships to blockade their ports, Iberia was exceedingly wealthy.

Sweboz (got to 235 BC)

Built up a great little empire, had all of germania and most of Gaul under my belt, Rome came in with 3 fully stacked armies mainly consisting of Triarii Phalanx, and crushed me. Barbarians don't fair well against the phalanx, I had more exp. good armour, and a general with stars to boot. Yet for some reason they kept getting bogged down by the Phalanx. I tried to surround them and out maneouver but sadly the more mobile priceps kept me at hold whilst the Roman general unit did murder to my general unit (who has a ground body guard)

Bakrtia

Early on in the game I clumped my army into one unit and seiged a neighbour city. Lost some men but eventually took the town. My capital was under siege shorty after so I rushed my troops over to stop the rebels from taking it. I won, but lost many men. I now had a withered army and two more rebel attempts to sack my towns, they eventually won.

Never have I lost to rebels. So I restarted the game and this time left a garrison in my town and disbanded the rest, saved up some money, built up a better army, and I'm doing good.


What I'm trying to say is if you're looking for the best AI, EB on VH/VH is what you want. It plays a bit more smart since the strong factions never go bankrupt.

[GeneticFlea]

i found those indian guys quite annoying on an open map though...not only is their
bow range insane, but once i charged them with my heavy cav general, they proceeded
to pull out big two handed swords and kill about 5 or 6 of my generals's unit
sbefore i had him pull out and charge again...in the end i lost a good 11 out of 47
of my generals units against the indian longbowmen alone...there pretty bad ass..

also i was wondering what is the difference between thanvera and the ernanshar guys?
they have the same missle damage, and long range missles, and actually the eranshar
seem to be one up on the thanvbera because they have a two handed spear and the
thanvera only have a knife...yet the thanvera cost alot more...why should i buy
them, when i can buy the versatile and cheaper eranshars?

oh ya and these rebel stacks of eranshars are starting to get annoying, takes
forever to run em down across the map and kill em, specially when my exhausted
general cav unit cant catch exhausted running men! seems to me like a tired horse
could still kick a tired humans ass.

[Chester]

Ok, i just put to test what the author of this thread was talking about. He's right, the indian garrison dropped 10 men per unit card on the first season of the garrison, then 13 on the second season.

[QwertyMIDX]

Yeah, that's an RTW thing.

Also, the Eranshar have the wrong attack factor, it should be 4 not 6. That should be fixed in the next patch.

[pezhetairoi]

And here I was wondering why the Eranshar were a lower level than the Thanvabara... But anyhow, the Thanvabara die a lot faster than the Eranshar. Or they just get targetted by enemy archers first. Either one.

[Mr Jones]

And, probably, Eranshar and Thanvabara are also overpowered against horse archers. That's how I managed to take the town northeast of Baktrian capital: just disbanded all other units and send there an army (less than half stack!) of Eranshar Whatever+Thanvabara backed up by a family member. With my foot archers slaughtering horse archers and my bodyguards sneaking between enemy thanvabara, no problem at all. And, later, this combination of cheap units has proven itself very effective, I don't even need hoplitai-type of units. But perhaps it's because of the difficulty settings...

i'm no expert, but i thought these units developed as a counter to the horse-archer armies of the steppe nomads. at least that is what it said in one of their unit descriptions. and i would not want to send phalanxes chasing down HA's, they are too slow and would simply get drawn out and shot too bits. i would much rather use the 2 units u described.

[GeneticFlea]

another quick question here...i just wanted to know what the difference is between the bactrian archers and the indian longbowmen? these indians are incredibly expensive compared to the rest of the archers and only have 20 more men..thanks!

[Conqueror]

As I explained in the other Indian thread...


The thing about those longbowmen is that they have more men/unit than other archers. With unit size set to Huge, a max strength Indian Longbows unit has 200 men. This makes them more effective at archery than another unit with same missile attack value would be, and it also makes them better at garrisoning cities.