ai response to seiges...

Would you say this is a fixable bug or a permenant problem brought about by poor ai programming?

In two games, one played as Carthage and the other as Epirus, I conquered Rome relatively painlessly. Now before you rush at me, I didnt do it immediately. As Carthage I took over all of Spain, and that took a while because of those damn Lusotanians and as Epirus I conquered the Balkans and then Sicily. So they had roughly 40-50 turns and in the Carthage game they were basically on their way to whiping out the Gauls while in the Epirus game they made peace with their northern neighbours so I was their only foe.

This is the pattern in both games.

Battle 1. Forces are more or less equal or I have a slight advantage in troops, I win. Boom. After this the Romans never, ever, send unified troops at me but rather armies of 2-3 elite units which, through sheer numbers I overpower and flank and kill with something like 5/99 casulties for me/them...

Then, whenever I besiege a city, no matter how badly its garrison is outnumbered, as soon as 1 single stack of Roman troops arrives they sally. So whereas if the Romans just stayed in Capua and Rome and waited for reinforcements I would have had to wait around for 8-9 turns each I conquer and sack both cities within 4 turns because of the Ai's hyperaggressive response....

So by sending troops in piecemeal AND sallying from cities the Romans speed up my conquest substantially. Now if they actually combined 3 of their elite detachments so I would face 3-4 triari and 3-4 Elite Italian Allies then my army of Levy Phalanax might actually have a challange on its hands...

It's a typical AI thing to be Epimetheus. (Thinking afterwards.) This becomes specifically clear when you siege a city - the AI will desperately try to save its inhabitants from slaughter under your hands... :juggle:

EDIT: To slow yourself down: you could choose to split your armies, have one part besieging the city, have another preventing all reinforcements from making it to the city.

This is indeed typical ai-behaviour :wall:

I wonder if there is a console command that lets you merge 2 armies :book:

Just watch the AI trying to siege the slaves, they never merge the second army with the one already sieging they just queue up and get beat one by one.

Ok, I found a method of merging armies,
It works, but it's kinda crappy :no:

As I'm bored, I'll post the method, but like I said it's not something I would use all the time + most of you already know it :embarassed:

The RTW engine doesn't have a "merge_armies" command, but there is a workaround:

Say you want to merge the army commanded by "Captain Jvlivs Appvlivs" with the army commanded by "Gaivs Sextvs Cotta".

1) Look at the army composition of Captain Jvlivs Appvlivs's army,
let's assume it exists of three units of Cohors Reformata (1 silver chevron, "silver" armour and "bronze" weapons).

2) Add the units to the army of Gaivs Sextvs Cotta, by opening the console and entering the following:

Code:

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create_unit "Gaivssextvs Cotta", "roman infantry legionary cohort i" 3 4 2 1

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-> 3 units of Cohors Reformata will spawn in Cotta's army, each will have a single silver chevron, "silver" armour and "bronze" weapons.

Quick explanation of the code:

Code:

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"Gaivssextvs Cotta" -> Characters name, Gaivs and Sextvs
have to be joined together. Sextvs has no capital letter.
You could also use a settlements name instead of a characters name.

"roman infantry legionary cohort i" -> The unit label, this can be found
in the "export_units.txt" file. Don't use '_' !!!

3 4 2 1 -> 3 units / 4 chevrons / 2 armourupgrades / 1 weaponsupgrade.

Don't forget to place a "," between the name and the unit label !!!

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Their are some drawbacks though: every spawned unit is at full strength.
I don't think you can lower the amount of soldiers in a group.
A second drawback is that you can't "merge" general units.

3) We still need to get rid of Captain Jvlivs Appvlivs's army, there are 2 ways, a short and a longer way:

3) a) For the short way, just enter this in the console:

Code:

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move_character "Captain Jvlivsappvlivs" 2,48

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Explanation of the code:

Code:

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"Captain Jvlivsappvlivs" -> The characters name with Jvlivs and Appvlivs
joined together. Appvlivs has no capital letter.

2,48 -> x and y coordinates of a tile on the campaignmap.

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This code will move our Captain to tile 2,48 where he is stranded inside a small piece of desert.
Moving 2 armies onto the same tile causes a graphic glitch, to avoid it, use different coordinates each time.
if you let the x-coordinate range from 0 to 8 and the y-coordinate from 46 to 53, the moved unit will always end up in that isolated area.

Keep in mind that the army still exists and its upkeep will still cost Mnai.

3) b) The longer way is actually the same as the short way, but you don't only move the army, you also destroy it.
Just do this:

Hire/Spawn a single unit of mercenaries and move it next to the army.
Type into the console:

Code:

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auto_win attacker

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Attack the army with your mercenaries, when the battle screen pops up click on auto-resolve.
You will win the battle. After the army is destroyed, you can disband the mercenary unit.


If anybody knows a better/faster way, please don't hesitate to tell me, I would appreciate it :yes:

One last question, is there a list with all the unit labels/names?
Looking them up every time isn't really that practical :shame: