EB II Mechanic and M2TW AI (and other stuff)

I was unsure if I should creat a new thread, post it in the FAQ's one or necro the Stele, sorry if I did it wrong.

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Originally Posted by "Stele #2

In EB2 we are planning on using the Pezhetairoi as the backbone infantry for the Seleukids & Ptolemaioi, representing them as the “pikemen on field duty”. The Klerouchikoi Phalangitai will still be around and probably almost identical in stats, just slightly worse. The Klerouchikoi Phalangitai will be used to represent reserve pikemen, who unless in time of emergency are back home on their farms tilling their lands. In game terms this means that they will cost about as much as Pezhetairoi to recruit and will be free upkeep as long as they are in cities. This again to represent that they are tilling their land allotments, but should an enemy approach they will quickly arm themselves. But, wouldn’t the Seleukid & Ptolemaic players have an advantage then as they can have pretty decent line infantry garrisoned for free in almost any city? Yes, if it hadn’t been for the drawback the Klerouchikoi Phalangitai has. If the soldiers aren’t tilling their lands, they aren’t producing anything for the authorities to tax. This means the Klerouchikoi Phalangitai will have a much higher upkeep than a unit like this should have, which means if you use them in battles outside your settlements they will put a drain on your treasury. This is to represent that taxable produce isn't made and also because soldiers called into duty would receive a salary. But this unit is meant to be good garrison troops and also to join your armies in times of emergencies, like if the enemy invades and you quickly need to scramble an army or if you see your neighbour has left a settlement virtually unguarded and just need a few units quickly to bolster your numbers.

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How will AI react to that? Does it know what are the free upkeep troops and use them as guarrisons or spam and wander around with them (with terrible efect on the economy and thus needing more money script)? More than one people asked this on the stele thread but I see no answer by the team.

How many free upkeep troops would be able to harbour, lets say, a town like Pergamum, Sinope or Oxtraca at the begining of the campain? One of the things I like less in Eb is being forced to either disband or blitz in the first turns and not being able to turtle in starting province and still being able to sustein some military power.

I readed in TWC (I'm a lurker there) that the team is having problems putting the Phalanx formation to work as it should. But afaik you have been working in that since a long time ago, I know that this things take time and that you have lack of animators but wouldnt that be a crippling blow to EBII if not soluted? ~:(

And since Phalanx formation isnt in vanilla M2TW how does the AI react to phalangites? Does it charges them head on, use it as flanking troops or its possible to give a idea to it about how to use it?

And how will it use chariots?

And will normal chariots still being cavalry murders as in EB? That doesnt seem to make much sense to me, (but makes them super usefull :laugh4:) unless they have Scytes on them. Or was it one of their historical uses?


Btw, in the All the Previews In One Thread... the link that says Stele #7: Making the Models leads to the same topic as Announcement and Video, about the Gaza campain, I gess isnt supposed to be so, am I wrong?

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I readed in TWC (I'm a lurker there) that the team is having problems putting the Phalanx formation to work as it should. But afaik you have been working in that since a long time ago, I know that this things take time and that you have lack of animators but wouldnt that be a crippling blow to EBII if not soluted?

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We may need to remove their secondary weapon, otherwise they quickly drop their sarrisa and use only their swords... still it doesnt mean that they are not "working" at all, they make an efficient pikewall, but they will need careful stat editings (for now they are VERY powerful :beam:).

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And since Phalanx formation isnt in vanilla M2TW how does the AI react to phalangites? Does it charges them head on, use it as flanking troops or its possible to give a idea to it about how to use it?

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We don't have a proper battle AI yet so I can't tell, but I heard that some modders managed to make the AI avoid pikes with its cavalry, so it should avoid the phalanx as well. But with M2TW's AI you should not expect miracles.

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And how will it use chariots?

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They will be rougly ther same as in EB1 : they can make effective missile platforms but you should avoid melee at all cost.

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And will normal chariots still being cavalry murders as in EB? That doesnt seem to make much sense to me, (but makes them super usefull ) unless they have Scytes on them. Or was it one of their historical uses?

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I don't think so, now they die quickly when caught in melee, even against cavalry.

Does that mean they'll be freaking powerfull from the front but butchered when flanked (keeping formation and ignoring attacks from other sides)? Or they'll wave the sarissas around trying to hit the surrounding enemies? And how will it work while not in formation, kinda like Speutagardaz in EB?

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Originally Posted by LusitanianWolf

Or they'll wave the sarissas around trying to hit the surrounding enemies?

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Yes that's what happens. I wish we could import RTW's phalanx formation.

What about the guard button?

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Originally Posted by Centurio Nixalsverdrus

What about the guard button?

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it helps to keep the unit's cohesion, but it doesnt change anything to the main problem : as soon as a phalangite comes close to an enemy he switches to sword. As far as I know its a M2TW's bug and theres nothing we can do. Of course if someone knows a way to get rid of it please tell us.

so we have a cruddy phalanx?

I have a question about game mechanic too:
In EB I had problems with occupying cities during the AI turn. It is when unsuccesfull sallies or destroyed relief armies are destroyed together with joining garisson, and then I have to deceide what to do with the town. That caused sometimes CTD after epic battles and other times I figured out that enslaving coud have been needed, or I wanted my ally to take the city to avoid border issues etc.
For me it would be more convinient if the sieging armies did not march into the city during the computer turn, but wait outside and then the in my turn I can deceide if I march in or not. Is there a way to make this possible for MTW2 or RTW?
There is one thing that I thougt to be useful: When a faction had only a couple cities left, and all family members are killed in a sally or relief battle, then the faction is destroyed and the player will not march into the besieged city because some rebel unist appear in it, thus the siege just continues with rebels inside. So something like this could be scripted for cases whren sally armies are wiped out, a few slave units appear in the town to prevent the player to march in during the AI turn, and then stormed easily during the player turn. As I am not a computer guy, I need some help to see if this is possible to be done and if yes, how.

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Originally Posted by Gustave

it helps to keep the unit's cohesion, but it doesnt change anything to the main problem : as soon as a phalangite comes close to an enemy he switches to sword. As far as I know its a M2TW's bug and theres nothing we can do. Of course if someone knows a way to get rid of it please tell us.

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No offense, but I am surprised to read this from EB team, IIRC this particular bug was resolved long ago in major M2TW mods... I am worried about EB2 AI as well, because I guess you are so used to old RTW mechanics you may not be able to make it work properly in early releases... maybe you should ask for suggestion to people who have modded M2TW for years before you: I suggest asking Point Blank, creator of the amazing Real Recruitment/Real Combat mod for Stainless Steel about everything regarding combat in M2TW, he should be the more experienced modder in this particular matter.
Hope it helps.

EDIT: found this thread that explain the pikemen issue pretty well. Apparently, there's some room to improve the situation, but in the end people found the less annoying way to deal with the problem is to delete the secondary weapon... for example RR/RC in older versions had pikemen with secondary swords, but in more recent updates Point Blank get rid of them, so it seems it's nigh-impossible to have infantry with 2 melee weapons working properly...
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...light=pike+bug

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No offense, but I am surprised to read this from EB team

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Why ? We are modding a game, not creating a new one, and unfortunately there are some limitations we have to work with..

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EDIT: found this thread that explain the pikemen issue pretty well. Apparently, there's some room to improve the situation, but in the end people found the less annoying way to deal with the problem is to delete the secondary weapon... for example RR/RC in older versions had pikemen with secondary swords, but in more recent updates Point Blank get rid of them, so it seems it's nigh-impossible to have infantry with 2 melee weapons working properly...
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...light=pike+bug

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Exactly. Several EB members (including me) have already spent countless hours trying to solve it, with no success. Actually, even if you keep the secondary weapons you can manage to make them fight more or less as a phalanx, with a lot of micromanagement, but unfortunately the AI is unable to do that. The common solution is to remove them, but then the phalanx becomes very powerful and doesnt have any real weakness from flanks or rear anymore...
Removing the swords is very easy, its just a matter of editing one line in the EDU, so after the first release people will be able to try both configurations if they want to.

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Originally Posted by Gustave

Why ? We are modding a game, not creating a new one, and unfortunately there are some limitations we have to work with..

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Well, I believed the pike bug was a thing of the past, because some time ago several modders on TWC claimed to have more or less fixed it. It seems they were wrong, from what I saw today: I downloaded bugfixer and minimods of several major mods to check their EDU, and saw they almost all in the end decided the best solution was to remove the secondary weapon from pikemen... I hadn't more luck searching through threads, so I'm quite confident no one have still found how to resolve the problem. Sorry if I sounded rude. :bow:

Can you give every unit multiple HPs but phalanxes 1 HP and delete the secondary?

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

Can you give every unit multiple HPs but phalanxes 1 HP and delete the secondary?

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What munky said, its going to have be solved by some careful and creative stating somehow.

I also wonder if you are going to use HP to get around the lack of moddable leathality in M2TW? I mean, units with 10 or 11 HP could represent a weapon that doesn't kill on hit.

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Originally Posted by Blxz

What munky said, its going to have be solved by some careful and creative stating somehow.

I also wonder if you are going to use HP to get around the lack of moddable leathality in M2TW? I mean, units with 10 or 11 HP could represent a weapon that doesn't kill on hit.

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How would the HP of a unit represent anything about a weapons effectiveness? We still wouldn't be able to differentiate between weapons.

Foot

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Originally Posted by Aper

No offense, but I am surprised to read this from EB team, IIRC this particular bug was resolved long ago in major M2TW mods... I am worried about EB2 AI as well, because I guess you are so used to old RTW mechanics you may not be able to make it work properly in early releases... maybe you should ask for suggestion to people who have modded M2TW for years before you: I suggest asking Point Blank, creator of the amazing Real Recruitment/Real Combat mod for Stainless Steel about everything regarding combat in M2TW, he should be the more experienced modder in this particular matter.
Hope it helps.

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Just so you know: we were some of the first modders to create new models for MTW2, back in January 2008. We helped in the beta tests of KnightErrant's first versions of the model and animations convertor (which would later be expanded to GOAT). We started modding the phalanx in March 2008, and made many animations for the phalanx which haven't been disclosed yet. We have tested the phalanx more than anyone else in these last 3 years. When many mods where just making small changes to the vanilla models and others were converting RTW models to MTW2 we made all our models brand new, each one with thousands of possible variations when rendered ingame.

I won't go further on this because I think you are smart enough to learn the lesson: get yourself well informed before you post offensive remarks.

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Originally Posted by JMRC

I won't go further on this because I think you are smart enough to learn the lesson: get yourself well informed before you post offensive remarks.

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There's no need to be so touchy. He just wanted to help.

Will the free upkeep of higher tier(Klerouchikoi Phalangitai ) units be used for other factions or is it only for Ptol and Selc.

Only the hellenic factions can recruit them, easy bet it will be free for only those factions (all of them, those you mentioned and the new ones)...

Surely all factions will have some kind of free upkeep troop, this is a major part of making M2 a superior game to Rome, allowing the player to form large armies very quickly - especially in defence. Just that whereas most factions will get cheap levies as free upkeep troops, the AS etc get phalangites. Seems reasonable to me.

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Originally Posted by JMRC

Just so you know: we were some of the first modders to create new models for MTW2, back in January 2008. We helped in the beta tests of KnightErrant's first versions of the model and animations convertor (which would later be expanded to GOAT). We started modding the phalanx in March 2008, and made many animations for the phalanx which haven't been disclosed yet. We have tested the phalanx more than anyone else in these last 3 years. When many mods where just making small changes to the vanilla models and others were converting RTW models to MTW2 we made all our models brand new, each one with thousands of possible variations when rendered ingame.

I won't go further on this because I think you are smart enough to learn the lesson: get yourself well informed before you post offensive remarks.

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What exactly you find offensive? Misinformed, I can understand, but offensive it's something different. It seems you get offended very easily man... Anyway, I have already apologized, so your "lesson" come too late, I fear.

Ah, and thanks for getting me better informed about your work, great as always (no sarcasm here).

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Originally Posted by Cambyses

Surely all factions will have some kind of free upkeep troop, this is a major part of making M2 a superior game to Rome, allowing the player to form large armies very quickly - especially in defence. Just that whereas most factions will get cheap levies as free upkeep troops, the AS etc get phalangites. Seems reasonable to me.

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AFAIK the problem is that the AI can't handle the free upkeep feature, so it will be an unfair advantage to the player: the AI just doesn't understand that keeping units in towns helps to save money.

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Originally Posted by Aper

AFAIK the problem is that the AI can't handle the free upkeep feature, so it will be an unfair advantage to the player: the AI just doesn't understand that keeping units in towns helps to save money.

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Well, that's what the money scripts are for, I gess! :P


Thanks all for answering my questions :bow:

The only solution I've seen for phalanx is a very large shield value. That way fighting to the front and blocking arrows is great, sides somewhat weaker, while the back is much more vulnerable. Of course its hard to do that and stay consistent if you are trying to make stats follow some rules but sometimes the effect trumps the consistency- at least I think so. Not sure how the EB team will do it. I can think maybe HP could be used but HP and effective against armor are difficult to balance since they don't scale as well as other stats.

I've recently played around a bit with different stats helping test some mods and it can be interesting results. IE- 1 HP unit vs 2 HP is very stack difference and makes the rest of the states very secondary. However 2 to 3 HP or more improves that alot but does still make balancing difficult as to make the battles not take forever it requires some large offensive stats and is basically a huge amount of work since it starts to make armor and some other things relatively less important. So to model skirmishers without much armor or a shield requires 4 HP while high armor elites with high defense skill and a shield might get 3 HP and then the skirmishers don't die to some things so quickly but get them into melee with that elite unit and even with much lower stats they do a bit too well just because of the 1 extra HP.

I could see the shield stuff but the main issue is attacking from behind because men in RTW/M2 engine just kinda turn and then the shield value applies and poos all over the AP trait. Of course we haven't really seen the phalanx yet (Macedon Preview Plz?) so its too early to judge. Is it not possible to just increase the poke animation fast enough that people get poked away like in RTW?

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Originally Posted by Ichon

The only solution I've seen for phalanx is a very large shield value. That way fighting to the front and blocking arrows is great, sides somewhat weaker, while the back is much more vulnerable.

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This could work if they wouldn't turn to face the enemy even if engaged, not to mention the switch to secondary weapons...
Maybe a solution is to have the AI with phalanxes in guard mode, and the player should avoid exploiting that XD

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Originally Posted by Arjos

Maybe a solution is to have the AI with phalanxes in guard mode, and the player should avoid exploiting that XD

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I always leave my phalanxes in guard mode since they just behave to odd if you let them loose. That said I'm an old guard-moder anyway hehe. I would definitely welcome the AI using guard mode.

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Originally Posted by Foot

How would the HP of a unit represent anything about a weapons effectiveness? We still wouldn't be able to differentiate between weapons.

Foot

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Well aware of that. But having slower battles trumps not being able to show the differences in weapon leathality; provided you haven't found another way around it. Also, you could use different attack values in an effort to represent the lethality of particularly lethal weapons. But hey, I was just throwing it out there. I know its no where near ideal. Still eager to know how you will work around this.

Want some game mechanics stele/previews !!! :yes:

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Originally Posted by Centurio Nixalsverdrus

I always leave my phalanxes in guard mode since they just behave to odd if you let them loose. That said I'm an old guard-moder anyway hehe. I would definitely welcome the AI using guard mode.

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They are in guard mode by default, so the AI will use it.

We'll probably remove the swords an give a very low attack value to the spears (1 or 2). Many mods did that, third age TW for exemple. It's actually not so bad.

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

Is it not possible to just increase the poke animation fast enough that people get poked away like in RTW?

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Pokepokepokepokepokepokepokepokepokepokepoke...... it's a poke phalanx! ;)

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Originally Posted by Gustave

They are in guard mode by default, so the AI will use it.

We'll probably remove the swords an give a very low attack value to the spears (1 or 2). Many mods did that, third age TW for exemple. It's actually not so bad.

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The axes as secondary were very useful, pitty to lose them :P

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Originally Posted by Arjos

The axes as secondary were very useful, pitty to lose them :P

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Yes, that is a problem. Phalanxes will be even less useful in flanking maneuvers and in towns. But in a way it's good, getting away from town battles is good.

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Originally Posted by Titus Marcellus Scato

Yes, that is a problem. Phalanxes will be even less useful in flanking maneuvers and in towns. But in a way it's good, getting away from town battles is good.

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A wall of pikes with flanks protected by walls? Thats how I defended towns from entire stacks with just 3 units of hoplites in vanilla. Less usefull where? =P
Maybe less versatile but thats ok at least for me :P Anything is best than having them kinda like the Iphikratous Hoplitai in EB 1.2, phalanx only the name and when standing still in guard mode.

Yeah the main problem with removing secondary weapon is the siege battles. Phalanx vulnerable only on rear or somewhat on flanks means defending in walls becomes so easy. Just hold the position and the towers kill the enemy. However there doesn't seem a good way to deal with this. Good shield value, medium armor, very low attack, high cohesion and the phalanx formation can still make fighting in frontally incredibly brutal.

It might not be so bad if sieges didn't last so long. In most MTW2 mods sieges of decent walled cities can last 8-12 turns before forcing a sally. I think at least half that would be more appropriate especially if there is a way to make the attacking force in a siege also lose some casualties while engaged in the siege.

I think it would be wonderful to lay siege to a city that will surrender or sally in 6 turns and have the AI attack with a relief force in 4 turns and even without fighting a battle my army has lost 20% of its strength in laying siege. (5% per turn). Winning the battle but not capturing all the enemies so the survivors retreat into town and finding now have 50% of the original army alive. 2 more turns of siege equals 40% of the original army remaining and even if gaining the city it requires reinforcements to hold or move on in the campaign.

% might be difficult to script but it might work as well to make it so a certain level of walls causes a certain # of casualties for besieger per turn based on unit size. Lower size walls might cost only 50 men on normal size where a full stack is usually just over 1,000 so slightly less than 5% but large stone walls might cost 100 men per turn. Dividing the 100 by number of units and each units size seems a bit much scripting even if possible. I'd prefer just making the number come for 3-4 random units each turn as some elite units might make a foolish attack and suffer and next turn a low tier unit eats bad food and gets sick and many die.

Perhaps a CA insider can help out of the phalanx dilemma? As I understood it, the same happened with the battle map settlements, so why not with the phalanx issue? Surely it's not a big deal, just toggling some value here or there ... (I understand that the M2TW engine is based on the RTW one?)

I believe in the team to come to a satisfactory conclusion to this unfortunate issue!

Threads like this always made me very peeved at how M2TW was structured by CA. You would think the same engine that handled these kinds of units would be able to still handle them after its upgrade. Not really an upgrade if you muck around with it so much, backwards compatibility becomes an uphill battle.

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

Threads like this always made me very peeved at how M2TW was structured by CA. You would think the same engine that handled these kinds of units would be able to still handle them after its upgrade. Not really an upgrade if you muck around with it so much, backwards compatibility becomes an uphill battle.

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I think it might be even worse than that; I didn't play M2TW a whole lot but IIRC there are units that use a medieval pike formation in the game. If people can't get the Macedonian phalanx to work than I'm assuming the vanilla pike units didn't work correctly either.

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Originally Posted by Centurio Nixalsverdrus

Perhaps a CA insider can help out of the phalanx dilemma? As I understood it, the same happened with the battle map settlements, so why not with the phalanx issue? Surely it's not a big deal, just toggling some value here or there ... (I understand that the M2TW engine is based on the RTW one?)

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Do you think we would have had this problem for all these years if it were that simple? The phalanx as it was in RTW does not exist, its code in the exe has been rewritten to make the M2TW pike wall and in the process CA have broken the formation.

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Originally Posted by bobbin

Do you think we would have had this problem for all these years if it were that simple? The phalanx as it was in RTW does not exist, its code in the exe has been rewritten to make the M2TW pike wall and in the process CA have broken the formation.

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IIRC you had the settlement problem quite a long time until someone came around with CA insider knowledge. Often, when a new version of an engine is developped, things get occultus, if you get me, and sometimes it just takes toggling the switch again. No offense intended.

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Originally Posted by Centurio Nixalsverdrus

IIRC you had the settlement problem quite a long time until someone came around with CA insider knowledge. Often, when a new version of an engine is developped, things get occultus, if you get me, and sometimes it just takes toggling the switch again. No offense intended.

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The circumstances are quite different. The settlements was that we didn't understand how the files worked, and CA were able to point those modders in the right direction. The phalanx in M2 was a design decision. Its not that we don't understand how it works, its that how it works just doesn't.

Foot

Ah yes I see. And you cannot alter existing formations to make them look like a phalanx, right? Shieldwall, for example?

We use M2tW's pikewall formation. It's the most appropriate.

Problems like that have me worried about the final quality of the game. I have no doubt that the team will do all that is in their power to deliver a great mod, but it's a different game than RTW, a game which wasn't even set in the antiquity to begin with. One can almost be sure that there will be problems...

Don't worry about that too much. Even the vanilla Pike wall is decent so I'm sure the EB team will come up with something even better

IMO the RTW exe had more issues. Though I may be biased as I typically use thorakitai based armies when playing as Greek factions so this doesn't affect me too much.

Don't be biased beforehand. RTW phalanx formation had issues as well. Overall I think I will prefer MTW2 formation of pike wall for the most part. The trickiest part of MTW2 will be getting skirmishers done better. I didn't really like it in RTW but some of the skirmishers had such long range they could be quite deadly. MTW2 the range is much shorter and the throwing animation is a bit long.

The range of missiles is defined in the edu so you will likely see range like in EB.

Is there a way to make it so charges don't carry past the initial 1st ranks of the pikes like monkeying with mass or monkeying with unit cohesion?