A concern for sally battles in EB and EB2

To start with, I would like to say that I have little experience with Medieval II so I don’t know if this problem that is in EB will be in EBII.

The problem I have with EB is the way sally battles take place. The definition of sally, provided by merriam-webster.com, is “an action of rushing or bursting forth; especially: a sortie of troops from a defensive position to attack the enemy”. Based upon this definition I imagine that while I am besieged I send my troops from inside my city to outside the city to fight the opposing force. While I’m playing EB this not always the most sound decision.

To illustrate the problem I will demonstrate how I normally fight sally battles. During the troop deployment phase I place all of my archers and slingers on the walls in front of the enemy or to the corners of my walls to the right or left of the enemy. When the battle starts the enemy units start in range of my archers and slingers, but instead of moving out of range of my missile units most times they move to another spot, still in range the whole time, either to the right or left of their starting position at a corner of my walls. Knowing that the AI will do this every time, I am able to take full advantage of their poor placement and movement habits by inflicting heavy casualties and most times forcing them to retreat without ever leaving my walls. If there are still some leftover then the next turn I do it all over again.

The problem with this is that not only is this unrealistic but it makes the game too easy to beat. I can go entire campaigns without losing a single city. Even though the other factions spam out stacks and stacks of units I can easily and cheaply destroy entire stacks without fighting them out in the open. By being human you have a tactical advantage over the AI anyway but this kind of exploitation is just ridiculous. When I play a game I want it to be fair on both sides.

I have a simple solution to the AI’s problem with sally battles, make the starting position of the enemy army’s far out of range of the cities walls and then to stay out of range during the battle. This will force you to fight them outside your walls or to fight them during the siege battle. There are virtually no cons to adjusting the starting position but there are many benefits effecting realism of the game:

1. It will force you to garrison more troops in your cities, draining your economy.

2. Putting more troops in your cities makes having military campaigns more costly to your economy or dangerous if you leave your cities undefended.

3. This will hamper your expansion and force you to expand slowly and cautiously instead of quickly and erratically.

4. When an enemy army advances into your country you will be on edge, and have to devise a defensive strategy to stop the incoming invaders.

5. Instead of having half of the world conquered in the first 50 years of the game you will not get bored so easily and be able to expand at a checked pace.

The overall outcomes are enhanced gameplay and more realistic gameplay scenarios. I don’t know if this is even a problem with Medieval II, but I think it is a rational concern that should be looked into to help create a more perfect EBII.

Not really up to us in EB, afaik it was a bug in rtw, don't think it happens in m2tw though which is nice.

In the meantime you could just not use the exploit, its not like you are forced to.

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Originally Posted by (:Baktra:)

The problem with this is that not only is this unrealistic but it makes the game too easy to beat

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Originally Posted by bobbin

just not use the exploit, its not like you are forced to.

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Bobbin hit the nail on the head. Really, you only have yourself to blame if this is a problem for you Baktra.

I would have to disagree, it's always best to do the most effective method there is. While people have many different reasons for playing a TW war game I'm willing to bet that Baktra likes the challenge aspect of it greatly. When you know there's a better way of dealing with a challenge it's hard to ignore it even though it could be something like an exploit.

And then there's players like me that suck at the game but are addicted to impossible factions like Saba so have to rely on exploits just to survive. I actually don't realize that I'm using exploits until I read about them here, I think I'm coming up with cool strategies. :on_xd:

Interestingly enough whenever I do sally battles the enemy army just runs all the way to the back of the battlefield as soon as I press the start button. I never put archers on walls because I can't ever get them to do anything useful. If it's a sally the enemy just runs out of range as soon as the battle starts, If I'm being attacked in a siege my archers don't manage to cause very many casualties or set the towers on fire before they get slaughtered.

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Originally Posted by TylerX5

I would have to disagree, it's always best to do the most effective method there is. While people have many different reasons for playing a TW war game I'm willing to bet that Baktra likes the challenge aspect of it greatly. When you know there's a better way of dealing with a challenge it's hard to ignore it even though it could be something like an exploit.

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But it doesn't give you the right to complain that the team made EB too easy, if you use an exploit that we can do nothing about the only person you have to blame is yourself.

In M2, or at least in Stainless Steel which is the mod I play, if you sally then the enemy army instantly retreats way, way out of range of your walls. Of course the problem here is that then the battle becomes just like a regular battle. They run away, form up and give you time to deploy properly and approach them, as if it were a normal field battle.

This is great news! So far it sounds like Medieval II sally battles will be play out better than the RTW sally battles. I’m sorry if it sounded like I was complaining. I just wanted to point out this weird movement choice by the AI that never really gets talked about.

In response to TylerX5, that’s exactly how I feel. It would be a dream if the AI could exploit and outsmart me; turning a simple error I made into a life and death struggle. That would be awesome.