1.3 RTW Comments

Had an interesting non-siege battle that reveals the depths of the problem. It was trees and plains, with rolling hills in lower Gaul. The AI was on defense, and I had about 50% more men. I had three partial units of Balearics in front, with spearmen, cav, and some merc spanish infantry, and general. The AI had some legionary cohorts, some auxilia (spears) a heavy cav unit, and an archer auxilia.

The AI had the archer auxilia in the center of its formation in a clearing and I wanted to keep its army out of the woods. I advanced my army through the trees. stopping near the tree line as my balearics reached range. At this point, the archers should have gone to town on the slingers, but they sat there not firing. I let auto targeting hit the enemy infantry. The archers standing just behind took a worse beating than the heavily armoured/shielded infantry. They never fired. Finally the AI turned tail and ran, never firing a shot. I chased down much of the force.

Then again, I had one siege battle where the AI actually engaged with its force of archer auxilia. I started counter targeting its two full units with my 3 partials. At that point it started the traditional charge forward. Not much exchanging going on before it tried to melee. That is unfortunate, because it had the opportunity to give my missile units a pounding.

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Originally Posted by Red Harvest

The AI had the archer auxilia in the center of its formation in a clearing and I wanted to keep its army out of the woods. I advanced my army through the trees. stopping near the tree line as my balearics reached range. At this point, the archers should have gone to town on the slingers, but they sat there not firing. I let auto targeting hit the enemy infantry. The archers standing just behind took a worse beating than the heavily armoured/shielded infantry. They never fired. Finally the AI turned tail and ran, never firing a shot. I chased down much of the force.

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I don't know why the AI archers didn't want to shoot, but it's pretty clear that the AI doesn't realize its going to take casualties from ranged fire. So, it stands there when under long range fire until it's weakened to the point where it runs away. In my custom battle test, the AI hastati charged when I moved my slingers inside their own maximum range. Apparently, my slingers moved within the necessary proximity distance to trigger the charge. Baleric slingers are longer range, and can shoot effectively from outside this proximity distance therefore never triggering a charge. Maybe those slingers are outside the distance necessary to trigger a shooting response as well. STW didn't have different ranges for different types of shooters. All shooters had the same range which meant shooters engaged shooters because melee units would be out of range, and melee units engaged shooters when they moved up within a certain distance. I wonder if the RTW AI is still designed for that situation, and the introduction of vairable ranges is beyond what the AI can handle intelligently.

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Originally Posted by Red Harvest

Then again, I had one siege battle where the AI actually engaged with its force of archer auxilia. I started counter targeting its two full units with my 3 partials. At that point it started the traditional charge forward. Not much exchanging going on before it tried to melee. That is unfortunate, because it had the opportunity to give my missile units a pounding.

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It was the other way around in the slinger vs archers tests that I ran. The slingers beat the archers easily despite their shorter range and being under archer fire constantly. I didn't even use loose formation with the slingers and walked into firing position while the AI did switch its archers to loose formation once they started taking losses.

One thing I noticed with archers is that, if there are friendly units in front of them and the trajectory is too low, no arrow is released. However, the archers are still doing their reload and firing animation. I guess this is the result of the high velocity being used for the arrow. In my custom battle test on flat ground, the AI had its archers too close behind the hastati, so when I moved my slingers closer only a few archers who extended beyond the sides of the hastati were actually releasing arrows. It's possible the high velocity was introduced to help ranged units hit moving targets because, in STW, archers could not hit moving targets unless the targets were moving directly away. This helped cavalry beat archers because the archers would overshoot cavalry which was charging at them, and was purposefully designed this way to help the cav > ranged > spear > cav RPS. Some MP players picked up on this and would try to make you waste arrows by moving the units at which you were shooting.

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

STW didn't have different ranges for different types of shooters. All shooters had the same range which meant shooters engaged shooters because melee units would be out of range, and melee units engaged shooters when they moved up within a certain distance. I wonder if the RTW AI is still designed for that situation, and the introduction of vairable ranges is beyond what the AI can handle intelligently.

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While I didn't mod any STW/MI stats I don't think that is correct. The troopstats file shows quite a few different weapons: the ninja's had very short range, as did the Korean javelinemen and thunderbombers. The two firearms had ranges longer than the bows. The projectiles files show differing ranges and speeds.

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One thing I noticed with archers is that, if there are friendly units in front of them and the trajectory is too low, no arrow is released. However, the archers are still doing their reload and firing animation. I guess this is the result of the high velocity being used for the arrow. In my custom battle test on flat ground, the AI had its archers too close behind the hastati, so when I moved my slingers closer only a few archers who extended beyond the sides of the hastati were actually releasing arrows. It's possible the high velocity was introduced to help ranged units hit moving targets because, in STW, archers could not hit moving targets unless the targets were moving directly away.

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In addition to the motion effects, the velocities are problematic in that they produce unrealistically flat trajectories and give the missiles too much reach vs. elevated targets. This also allows them to "chase" targets well out of range who are retreating when their firing sequence starts. Accuracy against stationary targets is greater with flat trajectories (imagine looking at a unit's site profile from above vs. head on.) This is the only distance attenuation effect I have noticed by the way, so reducing velocities does reduce hit percentage at distance.

(I think most of what changed with respect to movement vs. archery was actually automatic "lead" targeting in RTW. This is an improvement.)

The "range" stat is actually a "targeting range." It won't allow intentional targeting out of that range, but the extra velocity can be used to hit things out much, much farther when the unit is running away, or if some part of it can be targeted while the center is far away. (You can hit war dogs trainers this way from well over 300 meters using slingers...)

Another issue is the max angle allowed is probably too great (70 degrees). I suspect it should be limited to 45 degrees or so. Otherwise you get some strange "indirect fire" effects as if they were shooting mortar rounds. This probably allows too many units to actually shoot men on walls.

Back in 1.2, I reduced velocities for most rounds and set them to values that would only let them reach a smaller X % above their stated range. I created several new archery rounds with velocities to match. (This way I didn't foul up anything already used for stationary defenses, etc.) Going from memory I had long range archer rounds (composite bows), vanilla archer rounds, and an intermediate for mounted archers with composite bows. I'm going to dust this off and reapply it soon.

Alternately, you can also knock down the range of flaming arrows this way, just reduce the velocity of the flaming round (you can't change its range directly.)

Another fellow was using this trick to put in flaming pila as used by the Spaniards.

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Originally Posted by Red Harvest

While I didn't mod any STW/MI stats I don't think that is correct. The troopstats file shows quite a few different weapons: the ninja's had very short range, as did the Korean javelinemen and thunderbombers. The two firearms had ranges longer than the bows. The projectiles files show differing ranges and speeds.

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I was refering to STW. There are no ninjas, javelins or thunder bombers in STW. Foot archers, cav archers and muskets were range = 5000. The arquebusiers were 4000. All those new ranged units in STW/MI were problematic and had to be completely reworked in the v1.02 rebalance patch. The javelins would never fire because their range was shorter than their skirmish distance. I don't remember if the AI was able to handle thunderbombers or ninja. The xbows were a lot like guns without rotating ranks, and I think it handled them ok.

The 70 degree max angle is so the archers can choose a second trajectory if the low trajectory is blocked. Since the velocity is so high, 70 degrees is going place the arrow so far away I would guess it effectively makes the second trajectory useless for distances inside the normal targetting range. Are you sure archers lead their targets? I can't imagine why the high velocity is being used if not for increasing the chance of hitting moving targets.

There is no reduction a projectile's power with distance in the previous engine and I doubt that has changed in RTW, so there's no attenuation in that sense. Accuracy is a small random error added to a projectile's initial path, so the further away the target the more likely the projectile will miss. The flatter the trajectory, the more likely the projectile will hit a secondary target, and the cross section of the targets will also be greater as you say.

17. In some instances, the AI fails to use its "warcry." It seems to do so on defense, but not when it decides to attack. I had wondered if I was seeing this right in the campaign. In custom battle the difference was clear.

Example: Scutarii vs. British swordsmen. Fairly even match up. Try playing as the scutarii, toggle Brits to defense at times. When not on defense they advance without using warcry. On defense, they will actually use their warcry, as they stand waiting for you to attack. Unfortunately, they do a lot of other things wrong...like trying to withdraw from melee only to run in circles around your formation. (As either side this is a very easy win for the human 1vs1.)

I think 1.3 *might* be doing a better job of positioning its army altogether, and is less apt to commit suicide with the general, but when it comes to employing the units it actually has taken a step backward. :ahh: It doesn't seem to use key strengths of individual units consistently or well.

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

I was refering to STW.

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Ok, thought that might be the case, but didn't have the original in standalone install anywhere.

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The 70 degree max angle is so the archers can choose a second trajectory if the low trajectory is blocked. Since the velocity is so high, 70 degrees is going place the arrow so far away I would guess it effectively makes the second trajectory useless for distances inside the normal targetting range.

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I've seen some really wild "bullets" whizzing by at super steep angles after those wardog handlers. ~D (I swear that once I thought my men were firing straight up as I was doing a "flyby.")

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Are you sure archers lead their targets? I can't imagine why the high velocity is being used if not for increasing the chance of hitting moving targets.

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Reasonably certain. I was checking a bit with my scutarii's pila tonight as the British swordsmen ran in a circle around my formation. ~:rolleyes: I went ahead and threw with the camera right behind my men and noticed that the pila were being launched with a few degrees of lead. Maybe I'm only fooling myself, but those 25 meters/sec pila appear to be leading the target.

One thing I noticed about RTW early on was the "intercept course" approach that was being used for regular attack (which differed from previous TW lag intercept approach IIRC.) I think the same method is used for missile targeting vs. a moving target.

Is 1.3 RTW even worth playing. Reading all these issues discourages me.

In BI this seems also to be an issue right? I have been decimating hordes with just 4 units of archers covered by com's. Even horse archers don't seem to help.

I have a challenging RTW v1.3 Julii campaign (M/M difficulty) going in 142 BC. I made some mistakes managing my cities which has made it harder, and I might not be able to win now. I find the battles to be much better in v1.3 than in v1.2 where I played a Julii campaign out to 166 BC, but never finished it. My last battle in this RTW v1.3 campaign was with 1487 men under a 3 star general against 1404 Brutii under a captain. It lasted 15 to 20 minutes, and I was just able to win with each side suffering over 1200 casualties. I only had about 50 men on the field at the end. I never had any battles like that in RTW v1.2 except when using Mordred's Community mod, but the broken sieges when reloading and the suicide general killed RTW v1.2 for me. Overall, most of the battles in this campaign have been good with some exceptions. In my next campaign, I will play with fatigue off because the AI doesn't manage its fatigue and is therefore at a big disadvantage. I'll also have to play as Scipii because that faction's strategic AI is not working.

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Originally Posted by Veresov

Is 1.3 RTW even worth playing. Reading all these issues discourages me.

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Tough question. I'm asking myself the same thing. There are some aspects that are better, but CA has broken quite a few bits as well. Another very mixed bag.

Some of the good stuff:
A number of the unit stats and misc. mistakes are corrected, command stars work better (you don't end up with max stars after 6 or 7 battles), and the AI does a better job of combining its forces. Traits seem to work better overall. (They were so badly bugged in 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 that it would have been better had they not existed at all.) The save bug seems to be fixed. Coastline bug is gone. Speeches are more varied and interesting (wonder if fixing the traits had some impact there.)

Some of the bad stuff:
The memory leak is a killer. Perhaps it would be acceptable for a beta release before the game is published, but not up to snuff for anything else. If I wasn't running XP I would expect the machine to lock up during shut down. As it is, it takes several minutes just to get out of the game and shutdown after playing for a few hours. So RTW 1.3 fails on technical grounds.

The AI still has trouble expanding. It seems to have lost the ability to conduct naval invasions more than once or twice. (Carthage is much easier as a result.)

Britain and Egypt still are powerhouses. Carthage/Spain still get the short end of the stick infantry wise until fully upgraded.

The AI combines its forces, but still attacks/sieges with undersized forces far too often, when additional troops could be added.

AI can't use many of its units' abilities properly: pila, archers, slingers, javelins, even war cry at times. Ranged combat is about half broken.

Conclusion: Neither good nor bad, just different. Too badly bugged to really feel it is complete. There are some fundamental improvements, but new bugs take the luster off of this patch.

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Originally Posted by Red Harvest

The memory leak is a killer. Perhaps it would be acceptable for a beta release before the game is published, but not up to snuff for anything else. If I wasn't running XP I would expect the machine to lock up during shut down. As it is, it takes several minutes just to get out of the game and shutdown after playing for a few hours. So RTW 1.3 fails on technical grounds.

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See this is strange for me.

I experience the leak once in a while, but I can leave the game for hours (or play for that matter) and it is still good when I return. So for me it is at worst a limited nuisance as I have yet to only experience a single battle becoming affected by this (in fact it CTDed).

How much RAM are you running with?

Kraxis... my:2cents: Yeah, it's perhaps a "limited" nuisance, but it's a "real" nuisance nevertheless.
For what it's worth, I used to just fold down my laptop screen as a "screensaving" move and leave the game running, sometimes overnight. I would swear that even with no actual play that the "memory leak" continues to build up. I have 512MB of memory and I think I have seen BI showing MORE than that in Task Manager when I am forced to kill BI (so I don't have to wait many minutes just to get the GUI up so I can exit more gracefully).
:huh:

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I have 512M RAM too and the leak is the rule with no exceptions.
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Ahh... I have 1GB RAM, so that might explain it.

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Originally Posted by Kraxis

See this is strange for me.

I experience the leak once in a while, but I can leave the game for hours (or play for that matter) and it is still good when I return. So for me it is at worst a limited nuisance as I have yet to only experience a single battle becoming affected by this (in fact it CTDed).

How much RAM are you running with?

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512. Since you have 1 GB, this illustrates that it is indeed a memory leak. It just keeps using more and more space.

512 MB and I have seen it CTD just at the launch of one battle so far.

Last night in a large battle versus the AI Celts in which I had two armies versus their one, they had a tendency to use their slingers in melee situations. It seemed that they also had trouble firing at will when I was clearly in range.

It wasn't consistent throughout the battle, since at times they did manage to shoot and cause damage, but whenever my cav in particular had their backs to them they'd charge and proceed to get massacred as the cav then turned to face them.

I play on Hard battle difficulty so the bonus to attack may play some role in the AI's poor decision making. Does the plus to attack at Hard also get added to the missile attack value? Or is it simply the melee stat?

Strange.

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Originally Posted by Red Harvest

512. Since you have 1 GB, this illustrates that it is indeed a memory leak. It just keeps using more and more space.

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Yeah... I will add i to the bug-thread right away. Should have done it earlier but nobody mentioned it and I didn't experience it much myself.

[EDIT] DOH!!! I had already added it...

Last night in a campaign battle I had 120 Julii men attacked by a 750 man Brutii AI army. I didn't have any ranged units and waited on a hill. The Brutii army moved up in a semi-circle around my army and stopped. They had one archer auxilia behind their line protected by a melee unit. The archer fired at my men for about 5 minutes killing some. The AI then charged with its main line, the archer unit stopped shooting so as to not hit their own men and it moved forward.

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Originally Posted by Jambo

Last night in a large battle versus the AI Celts in which I had two armies versus their one, they had a tendency to use their slingers in melee situations. It seemed that they also had trouble firing at will when I was clearly in range.

It wasn't consistent throughout the battle, since at times they did manage to shoot and cause damage, but whenever my cav in particular had their backs to them they'd charge and proceed to get massacred as the cav then turned to face them.

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Yes, that is about what I normally see as well. Sometimes they shoot a little, sometimes they stand there and do nothing, sometimes they charge...often in the same battle. A lot of piecemeal work too, feeding in one unit at a time.

There is definitely an issue with the AI using skirmishers or whatever is close to try to charge the back of cav, etc.

Is it just an issue with slingers or short ranged units like skirmishers? Does increasing their range make them operate more cohesively?

The battle I had was rather unusual in that they AI had to split its forces to deal with my two attacking armies approaching from different directions.

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Originally Posted by Jambo

Is it just an issue with slingers or short ranged units like skirmishers? Does increasing their range make them operate more cohesively?

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I see the same with slingers, archers, and javelins. Range probably helps, because it makes them more likely to get a "shoot" signal before something else happens closer to them; but all three still prefer to enter melee rather than to stand and shoot.

You can kill off the Numidian missile cav fairly easily now. They come rushing forward at other Numidian cav or skirmishers, trying to scare them away. If you take the men off skirmish, the cav will take some casualties then decide to complete the charge. If you have cavalry behind, etc. then it is fairly easy to charge the Numidian cav and finish them as they make contact. No need to chase them down anymore.

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Originally Posted by Jambo

Last night in a large battle versus the AI Celts in which I had two armies versus their one, they had a tendency to use their slingers in melee situations. It seemed that they also had trouble firing at will when I was clearly in range.

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I play campaign on medium difficulty, and I'm seeing ranged units hang back and shoot. Of course, they don't shoot if one of their own units might get hit. I'll watch the behavior of AI ranged units more closely in future battles.

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Originally Posted by Jambo

It wasn't consistent throughout the battle, since at times they did manage to shoot and cause damage, but whenever my cav in particular had their backs to them they'd charge and proceed to get massacred as the cav then turned to face them.

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I think the AI is overestimating it's chances to win in melee even in frontal fighting. Also when making a rear attack, I don't think the AI considers that your men will turn around once they are engaged. I think it's just looking at the combat comparision of its unit vs the back of your unit which is a huge advantage in RTW. I've watched a lot of individuals fighting in RTW, and it's almost a sure kill when striking at a man's back.

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Originally Posted by Jambo

I play on Hard battle difficulty so the bonus to attack may play some role in the AI's poor decision making. Does the plus to attack at Hard also get added to the missile attack value? Or is it simply the melee stat?

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I don't know, but, if melee capability is what's being used to make the decision to charge, it doesn't matter if missle attack is affected.

23. I had forgotten to check earlier, but one improvement with 1.3 is that two new horse skeletons (speeds) have been added. The new ones are:
fs_medium_horse
fs_cataphract_horse

In testing the speed hierarchy is as follows (fastest to slowest):
fs_fast_horse = light horse
fs_medium_horse = medium horse (and "generals horse")
fs_horse = heavy horse
fs_cataphract_horse =cataphract horse

The cataphracts are in between camels and heavy horse in speed. (There doesn't seem to be any speed penalty for cataphract camels though, as there is only one skeleton.

The choices of horse for various units are still a bit different than what one might expect: equites are on light horse for example, meaning they can keep up with Numidian cav and the like, something they were incapable of. However, one now has the power to fix this to a greater degree: (and chariot speeds too, since you can swap out their mounts!)

The AI is acting kind of strange when I have a reinforcement army on the battlefield. What happens is if I enter a battle, and the reinforcements are on the other side of the enemy, (for example, I'm entering from the north, my reinforcements are coming from the SW, and the enemy is coming from the SE), the enemy army will get stuck constantly running it's army around to face both my army and the reinforcements, even if my reinforcments are a few units of Hastaii. All the constant running around makes the enemy army tired, making it too easy to rout them with one charge. It helps when I'm outnumbered, but it doesn't help me kill most of the enemy forces since they all run at the first hit.