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View Full Version : 1.6 Suicide Generals



Papewaio
04-26-2006, 03:56
Playing Huns VH/VH on patch 1.6

First thing I did is rearrange my armies. Best 6* general is in the Vanguard with all my best mounted troops. This pure Cav army is all melee orientated bar the one elite missile Cav. My faction leader has the next best army with a couple of spearmen thrown in to counter Cav, this slows down the army but he leads the rest of the horde. On the flanks facing the approach lines of the Vandals and Samaritans I have my other two family members with the rest of the second tier troops. In the center of my horde are the third tier of the troops, these are my future citizens. Two captained armies of second tier troops guard the rear bridge as the horde passes through.

My diplomacy is blunt with the locals, Alliance or I will attack. So I have a couple of alliances and the horde is more or less beside the Sarmatian capital on its way south early on in the campaign. I haven’t fought any battles yet, however this is rapidly about to change.

The Vandals appear north of the Samaritan capital and then they attack my Vanguard unit. Now as the Vanguard has my best general, is composed purely of the best Hunic cav and is standing on top of the bridge south of the Samaritan capital I don't believe that the Vandals strategic AI has made a very good choice of targets :wall: :oops: .

Now to make matters worse he is attacking with standard mixed horde on a bridge battle. Half of it is Horde Horse Archers (HA), 1 quarter of it is spearmen the rest is peasants. Lead by the faction leader no less. So how does he attack me?

Simple he lines up his HA on the wings so that they can attack my lone HA across the river who I retreat. They stand around awhile, I hit the fast forward, and they form up the melee troops. Nice thing is the peasants start to swim across the river with the HA covering them. Bad thing is he leads the bridge crossing with his Heavy Cavalry against my pure Heavy Cavalry waiting on the other side. Now that is pretty bad as I have 20 units of Cav, of which 1 is a Horse Archer and 2 are Light Cav, my Lancers alone are 3 units, the rest are all Heavy Cav. His Heavy Cav is his faction leader :charge: ... so he is across the bridge before his spearmen have started to cross the bridge and the Vandal leader is outnumbered 17 to 1 by Heavy Cav. He dies about the same time the spearmen make it across the bridge. The spearmen actually stay around for a little while and don't insta-rout, they don't as much as they could of had the general been alive.

So instead of leading a bridge battle with his infantry that are specialised at fighting Cav which could have inflicted heavy losses with plenty of HA he a supporting role to pepper anyone who attacked them on the bridge... the Vandals tactical AI throws away the faction leader in a suicide charge :wall: .

Mind you even if he had lead with the spearmen all I would have done is retreat back away from contact until the HA's followed up and crossed the bridge. I would have then outflanked the spearmen and slaughtered the HA's and enveloped the spearmen. However I would have taken a lot more losses and the AI would not have lost the general.

So at the next thing the Vandals do is to attack with another stack. I have saved the game at that point. When I get around to playing it again I will see if I get another suicide general. :bow:

Alexanderofmacedon
04-26-2006, 04:28
Vandals are idiots.

Let me rephrase. Vandal AI's are idiots.

Avicenna
04-26-2006, 08:07
:shocked: racist!

JK. All AI are stupid, it's not just a Vandal thing.

TheViking
04-26-2006, 11:07
AI in this game have become more stupid IMO then in the other totalwar games.

i attacked the ERE our forces was even but the ERE army had a big hill that they could defend, i had to go around the hill so my men wouldnt have to climb so high ((hope you know what i mean)).

the AI turn his army around with mine, but instead of going to the highest peak they move down a bit instead so i can get up there with no causulties and get the advance, when im up there then they start to attack, instead of keep going back so they could meet me on plain ground.

in the end i had killed their entire army about 1500 men and only lost around 100.



if the AI only would have done like this a few time would be ok, but not every time they have a big advance ((or whatever its called))

gardibolt
04-26-2006, 15:45
I was playing as ERE against the Seleucids last night, and was looking at fighting a larger and superior Seleucid force and not thinking my chances were good.

But then the Clibinarii Immortal general left his army behind and spurred right into my spearmen. :dizzy2: I was happy to accept the gift, and surrounded them with my troops. Still the rest of the Seleucid forces sat on their hands. I let my spearmen beat on the Clibs and eventually killed him, which wrecked the army's morale and I ended up driving them from the field, in a massive slaughter. Never would have happened if the general had stayed put, or even been accompanied by 2 more units. Or just about anything.

Grumfoss
04-26-2006, 17:03
I know exactly what you mean about suicidal AI..
I am currently in a BI campaign, playing the ERE. I have just been attacked by a full stack of WRE troops, many of them being silver shield quality!

My defending force of 4 archers, 2 units of Generals body guards 2 units of Onagers and 4 units of Comitenses (Spelling (?)

The WRE started to siege me ( backstabbing bunch of ba:furious3)
Well I decided to sally forth and give them a damn good thrashing.. so I started the battle with my archers on the walls, and my Onagers firing rocks at their massed ranks.

The WRE troops looked really impressive running back and forth to avoid my rocks, but every time they changed their formation they were in range of my archers who caused chaos in their ranks.

Then half their army broke off from the main force ( including the General) and marched straight towards the city walls, on the top of which my massed archers looked down with grins on their faces. The wall towers opened up and their combined mass of arrows soon cut these troops down to size. Overall they did this twice.

Well eventually I ran out of arrows and rocks, and had to send the foot boys in... well my two general units charged the enemy general just as the rest of my infantry charged the remainder of the army. The General was killed and the remnants instantly routed and were cut to ribbons.....

WRE 1500 lost
ERE 10 killed.

very stupid AI

Avicenna
04-26-2006, 18:32
Gardi.. that's the Sassanids not the Selucids. The Selucids were long gone by the time of BI, and the Parthians are more similar to the Sassanids (both Persians) than the Selucids are (Selucids are Greek).

econ21
04-26-2006, 20:47
I really like the setting of BI, but am getting disenchanted by the prominence of bridge battles (at least if you are Roman).A decent (ie full stack, archer heavy) Roman army can destroy a horde in a couple of turns by defending a bridge. It reminds me of the one thing I hated about the first Total War game, Shogun. A decent garrison can also stall a horse archer based horde, but that is more historical.

I guess I should discipline myself to not defending the bridges, but it is just too tempting.

Papewaio
04-27-2006, 02:04
The problem as I see it is that Suicidal generals have been patched in every version of TW.

Where is the quality control that goes with a quality product?

After all SEGA bought the TW stable to have a quality product and it is certainly underperforming if the same issue is reoccurring again and again from:

STW to STW:MI to MTW to MTW:VI to RTW to RTW:VI.


==============================================
Shogun: Total War (TM) - Version History
==============================================
Patch V1.12

* Generals will no longer be designated by the
AI as primary attacking units unless they
are Warrior Monks, Naginata or Samurai
spearmen. General's units are now always lower
priority attacking units. This means Daimyos
will never lead a charge if there is an
alternative, drastically reducing the
"Suicidal Daimyos" problem. All generals are
more cautious.


MEDIEVAL: TOTAL WAR Update V1.1 README FILE
===========================================
19) The AI will be more careful with its
generals and kings in combat.

I'm not asking for an 'AI' = Artificial Intelligence, I'm just asking for 'AI' not to equal Artificial Idiot.

Enough with the eye candy. Get the fundamentals right. AI doesn't matter in MP, but MP is under supported and the reason is often stated as this is because they are not the primary market. Well if that is the case then actually put your honour and money where your mouths are and at the minimum avoid having the same issues reoccur again and again in the so called primary market of SP who play against the AI. The AI is the challenge, it is the meat of the game.

The AI and combat system may have changed or stayed the same. The end result of the engine is that it is making the same mistakes again and again.

That is poor quality control. And since the publisher is normally pointed at for the QA side of things then this reflects on SEGA. Who are not only the publisher for CA, but now the owner of CA.


Naoya Tsurumi - CEO: SEGA Of America & SEGA Europe commented "This news is direct evidence of SEGA delivering it's strategic objective of strengthening our emphasis in the western market. As our first developer acquisition in the West since we became a publisher it clearly demonstrates that we have set our sights on working with the very best talent in the industry".

"Acquiring such a well respected and talented company as The Creative Assembly is a huge boost to SEGA, we are thrilled to be working with a development team renowned for its quality and highly commercial products", commented Mike Hayes, President & COO of SEGA Europe. "We are selectively building a portfolio of triple A titles to fulfill our objective of becoming a world-wide leading force within the gaming industry".

Tim Ansell, Managing Director of The Creative Assembly adds "We are delighted to have signed with SEGA, a company which we quickly realised shared our creative vision and were appreciative of our ambition to not only enhance stability but also position ourselves for future growth as a developer. SEGA have extremely impressive plans which will take shape throughout the coming years, and this is something which we were very eager to be a part of".

gardibolt
04-27-2006, 16:05
Gardi.. that's the Sassanids not the Selucids. The Selucids were long gone by the time of BI, and the Parthians are more similar to the Sassanids (both Persians) than the Selucids are (Selucids are Greek).

Yes, I know. Slip of the tongue/typing fingers. Sassanids, of course.:wall: