Bug with battering rams! Please help!

[Galain_Ironhide]

Unfortunately I must concur. Whilst have had many a great battle defending a city or a first level castle, there has literally been nothing in my experiience where the AI can successfully carry out a siege against anything at Fortress level or above. Not even the great people who have made all of these great mods/battle AI for m2tw have even come close to making the AI being able to come close fpr the AI to being able to take on a second tier of defence (or third). Its just not in the AI's intelligence.

Maybe they just should not have spoilt us with the whole city / castle thing. Its all great sieging and winning over a citadel, but defending one is just a walk in the park.

I stand to be corrected but pictorial proof shall be required.

[Naja]

I'm telling you guys, this is very new to me.

Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but I have frequently seen the AI use battering rams to make it to the last tier of a multi-ring castle.

[Marauder]

Of all the shortcomings of this AI, I think the lack of a decent (any?) siege AI irks me the most. The AI gets to have all the fun of defending a castle against a brutal onslaught, of using all 3 layers of defense in a citidel. The AI performs in a mediocre way on the battlefield, but at least it does a few things right.

I would love to defend a citidel against the swarming mongul hoard and face a real threat. That would make turtling more fun at least. As it is, castle-heavy factions (those with poor miltia troops) are boring in the mid-late game and its more of a logistical challenge than a military one: you know you can't lose a fortress/citidel with even a few decent troops in there.

[Naja]

I think I got it worked out, somewhat.

I downloaded Lusted's AI for Kingdoms, and somehow combined it with the latest version of the DarthMod. I forgot the exact combination, but I ended up with about 7 files that I just copied into each of the "Data" folders of my 4 Kingdoms campaigns.

Now the AI isn't exactly brilliant when it attacks my castles, but it now always makes it to the very end (doesn't struggle to reach the 3rd wall of the Citadel anymore), makes aggressive use of combining ladders, rams and siege engines, and tends to storm multiple sides of the same wall at once. This is on Very Hard difficulty, of course.

It's kinda fun to defend now! So I call that an improvement.

[Gaiseric]

Cool. Finally a fix for the broken seige AI. Lol, fixed a month before the release of EmpiresTW. Has anyone else switched their files to confirm if it works? It could still be used in the modding comunity.

Even though vanilla might be borked, players should not take advantage of the stupid AI when it is asaulting your fortress/citadel. Turn on Ironman mode and fight the AI at the first teir.

[Naja]

Just went through the files. Turns out it was just Lusted's battle AI that I used (sorry Darth).

You can download the files here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=138529

Just download them, copy them into each of your Kingdoms campaigns' "data" folders, click "yes to all" when prompted to over-write any files, and voila! Your AI pathfinding during sieges and field battles should be markedly better.