Siege AI any good?

[Cruelsader]

I have not played MTW2 but own RTW. One very irritating aspect of RTW is the dumbness of AI when attacking/defending cities. Is the MTW2 better? How much? Thank you for time and answers!

[Mithrandir]

This is the forum for MTW (not MTW2), I'll transfer the topic for you.

[Ramses II CP]

Short answer: No. Some of the mods improve the siege and sally AI somewhat, but even at it's best the AI won't provide a whole lot of challenge when attacking your city or defending their own.

[Eikon the Magistrate]

MTW2 sieges are a wonderful improvement over MTW1 by far but it is still relatively simple to defeat just about any AI stack that comes at you with the exception being the Timurids as usual. My complaint would be related more to the sally (sallie?) attack where the terrible AI thought process is far more apparent. With cannon/ballista towers and enuf sacrificial units *it* (a sally) becomes almost impossible to lose with a no time limit battle.

[Zenicetus]

The only major improvement I've noticed in siege AI between RTW and M2TW is the pathfinding inside cities. It's much better, at least with normal-sized armies. That used to drive me nuts in RTW. It's still not perfect... sometimes a unit outside the walls that's ordered to a point inside the city, won't take the nearest open gate or wall breach to get there, but run waaaaay around the outside to a different gate. But overall that aspect is much better. You can focus a bit more on tactics instead of micro-managing just about every step a unit takes inside a settlement.

Unfortunately the combat AI in sieges doesn't show any major improvement. The AI still does dumb, illogical things, especially on defense. I just took a settlement in my Danes game, where I breached the wooden walls at two different sides of a settlement with ballistas, then moved my army inside. Instead of trying to hold my two attacking forces at the wall, where they'd get some help from wall towers, they just ran to the town square and milled around, where they're easy targets for my artillery and archers.

The only way to have an enjoyable siege defense or attack, is to do it with an under-strength army relative to the enemy, and use house rules to avoid the cheesier exploits... like mowing down the defenders in the town square with artillery or missile units, or sallying and luring the enemy in range of your towers.

[pevergreen]

@Zen's middle paragraph: I imagine the scripting is such as "walls have been taken, fall back to defend the town square as the last point." When you think about it that way, its the correct idea, the AI is making a last stand attempt to defend the city.

I am playing with a small mod (forget the name already, the first one in the download section here). I have migrated to Jerusalem as Sicily, and Egypt has about 3 full stacks around me, constantly sieging. Last battle I fought, they had 2 siege weapons, 1 siege tower, 2 rams and some ladders.

The treb's broke my walls in three places then they charged all three breaches simultaniously as well as the wall assaults and the ram to the gate. They also knocked down towers before they got in charge range. One of the hardest fights I've had.

[trickydicky]

Unlike pevergreen I haven't had anything half as interesting as that.

I still find the AI does eminently stupid things in sieges. Like shoot 3 sections of walls to bits, and then charge through 1 hole. They also have a tendency to take forever to do anything, especially in castles.

In fact in my current France campaign, I'm busy in the holy lands with a full stack of troops in Acre fighting the Mongols, and a half stack in Gaza fighting the Egyptians.

Every other turn I get attacked by the Mongols with 1-2 full stacks, and by Egypt with a full stack. After about 10 years, which is 20 turns in my campaign, neither has taken out more than 10% of my defenders in any one battle. In fact I worked out that the mongols would probably need to attack me with 6-8 full stacks to take out Acre. Even then I wonder wether they would do it.

Anyway after that little rant, I can confirm it is better than previous titles but still needs work.

[Cruelsader]

Thanks for the replays! No improvements besides better pathfinding? That is a disappointment.

The only way to have an enjoyable siege defense or attack, is to do it with an under-strength army relative to the enemy, and use house rules to avoid the cheesier exploits... like mowing down the defenders in the town square with artillery or missile units, or sallying and luring the enemy in range of your towers.

Interesting idea, I should try this in RTW. I guess, though, that the AI would be still too dumb to provide much challenge, e.g. it probably wont defend all entrances to the plaza so it will be easy to charge into their rear.

MTW2 sieges are a wonderful improvement over MTW1 by far but it is still relatively simple to defeat just about any AI stack that comes at you

MTW sieges were boring (not much variance and AI rarely assaulted) but at least they worked better. With enough siege equipment it was easy to take any castle but if you went against stone walls then you were guaranteed to lose some men. In RTW the cities are death trap for AI forces .

This is the forum for MTW (not MTW2), I'll transfer the topic for you.

Dang, how did I manage to do this? Anyway, thanks!

[CynicalP]

The only time I lost a siege defense was against the timurids. Once they made their appearance they headed straight for Antioch and attack the town with 3 stacks. If if weren't for the elephants I probably could have pulled off a victory. It was the funnest siege defense I experienced even though I lost.

The AI is really dumb when you sally forth against an enemy seige. The enemy army just seems to stand facing the gates making it very easy to out flank them and crush them.


The AI seige defense is absolutely horrendous too. It's a shame it doesnt seem there are any AI scripts that would allow the clever modder to improve the defense. I am playing LTC 3.1 and I havent seen any improvement in the AI siege defense.

If there is one area I wish CA would patch is improving the battle AI.