OOC Thread and Chatroom 2

[TinCow]

I didn't think about exploiting the AI.

Then I take you at your word and apologize if you were offended by my words. I will proceed exactly as I outlined in my initial post. I have to take control of Egypt this turn anyway, so I will park both armies right on top of Armatos and leave them there. If he remains blocking their path on the next AI turn, the battle will be autoresolved (because I cannot start a battle that can be fought by the Byzantine player - if I could, this wouldn't be an issue). As I understand it, this fits in perfectly with your plan anyway, so it shouldn't cause problems.

[Privateerkev]

Then I take you at your word and apologize if you were offended by my words. I will proceed exactly as I outlined in my initial post. I have to take control of Egypt this turn anyway, so I will park both armies right on top of Armatos and leave them there. If he remains blocking their path on the next AI turn, the battle will be autoresolved (because I cannot start a battle that can be fought by the Byzantine player - if I could, this wouldn't be an issue). As I understand it, this fits in perfectly with your plan anyway, so it shouldn't cause problems.

Ironically, if I was trying to exploit the AI, I would have really screwed up. Because I was operating off of faulty assumptions on the AI's behavior.

Plus, don't AI controlled Jihad/Crusader armies attack enemy armies in their way? They don't just wander like automatons towards the target do they?

Also, if Cecil was attacked, and lost the battle, wouldn't his army just run to Adana? So the fear of "obliteration" didn't make sense to me.

And yeah, what your outlining is very much in line with what we intended. Sounds good to us.

OOC I knew we were outnumbered and outgunned and we should just step aside. IC however, we couldn't do this. We're playing good brave Crusaders so Armatos and Mak wanted to at least try to make a dent in the evil armies.

[TinCow]

Plus, don't AI controlled Jihad/Crusader armies attack enemy armies in their way? They don't just wander like automatons towards the target do they?

Actually, yes. Anyone seen any news on the ETW AI?

For the record, since I had to take control of Egypt myself this turn to prevent them from walking into Russia, the game considered them player controlled and made 3 units desert from one of the armies (AI controlled Crusade/Jihad armies do not suffer desertion). If you aren't up for the battle in the current situation, you can RP it that you've managed to kill off those 3 units through skirmishing. That's at least helping somewhat. I wouldn't worry about the Jihad armies too much, though. Under AI control they are very unlikely to end their movement adjacent to one another, and those stacks are not of good enough quality to be too much of a threat individually.

[Privateerkev]

FRAPS is refusing to take screencaps for some reason. To summarize, it was a close defeat. They lost 48% of their army, we lost 2/3 of ours. (Not counting the ransom) They lost the general in their larger stack, we lost no avatars. (Although Armatos is the only one left in his bodyguard, and Nathanail only has one other guy left in his)

Also, after the battle the enemy Sultan offered to ransom away the soldiers. Since their's no mention of ransoming in the rules, and Armatos is a do-what-you-can-and-damn-the-consequences kind of guy, I accepted that. I hope that's not a problem OOC.

Love your work Cecil!

That was about as good of an outcome as we could expect.

I can't wait for a battle report.