AI reinforcements: they finally did the right thing!

finally, finally, i had a pleasant experience with AI reinforcements... scipii were beseiging mesina (my city for a while now) in sicily. i had 5 militia units in the city and a no-star but high acumen governor in it. my high command star general was at the other end of the island with a small army (which included the elephant unit though). i looked at the parchment of the governor and decided i could sacrifice him if he chose to do the suicide run. so i marched my small army right to the city walls and attacked scipii. to my amazement, the reinforecements did not rush to the enenemy. they came in flanking scipii and distracted them so i could do my elephant charge followed by the 3 gold expererience general wiping the floor with them, while the other two cavalry units i had were mopping up... but my amazement was the AI general: he did not charge on his own: he basically chose the same targets my general had and reinforced the charge, consistently through the attack :) and... he did not died :)

Lucky Slaists. To me, disaster struck while sieging with 2 armies, one led by a captain and the other by the 5 stars faction heir. The garrison sallied and attacked the captain. The faction heir acted as reinforcements. The enemy was badly beaten and retreated behind the city gates. The beloved imperial hope parked his fellowmen exactly in front of the gates. My desperate efforts to get up the walls and capture the gates where futile. The moron waited to die and died while waiting for a smarter AI.

That's hopeful news! I too saw a feat of AI cunning yesterday as I sallied a seige held by to AI general armies. I had a garrison force and a relief force coming around the side of the fort. I then stopped short as I watched the AI army form a smart v shape a that allowed both falnks to be covered, and allowed the reinforcements to smoothly come in! I muttered "what the hell? It's.... thinking! It's... adapting?" Well, probably not, but I'd love to know what sparks off these sudden moments of genius for the AI.

Sadly, it did not continue.

From three directions, roughly an equilateral triangle & all under my control, I attacked an army of three archer units, one archer cavalry unit, & one barbarian peasant unit. To my surprise, the enemy changed its formation to face each direction with a unit of archers, one backed by the cavalry archers & the peasants formed between the other two. I was able to prevail, but my casualties were higher than usual.

& I still have not had the suicide general problem. My AI allies/reinforcements have performed well so far.

I believe, the suicidal AI reinforcement behavior is most prominent if they come onto the field closer to the enemy than you (also, if you control the really miserly part of your army on the field, for example some militia garrison unit, that actually is not able to do anything to tilt the battle balance): in this case, the general is likely to "lead by example" disregarding the fact that his foot army is not able to catch up and follow the valuable "example"... It is even more troublesome if there are wall towers involved ;)

imagine how much better the game will be when they fix all of the obvious bugs

If the AI reinforcements actually did the right thing, that means only one thing - :end:

Imagine how much more fun all games would be if anyone ever bothered to write a really good ai? Personnally, I would pay again just to get a decent ai. This one is too boring to play against. I might actually be forced to play MP again if this keeps up. Hopefully someone like Wes is working on a make-the-game-hard mod as we speak.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colovion

imagine how much better the game will be when they fix all of the obvious bugs

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Right now I'm imagining how much better this forum will be.