superior tactics video

[knoddy]

During this time period most armies lost no more than 20% of their men in a losing engagement. Most battles were not decisive, and if faced with such a situtation, the enemy army would not have charged up hill at him, but pulled its army together and either waited for him to attack again, or make an ordered retreat. He fights and and runs away, lives to win the next battle he fights. That is what people did back then. They were not such fanatics.

this could be said of ANY of the total war games. ALL of the Total war games have broken history to make the game more fun to play and more interesting. Lets look at RTW and more specifically at battles between Greek nations perhaps because it is the most obvious example.

A Greek hoplite battle would have very very low casualties and the idea was to outmaneuver your opponents and most battles came down to the strength of the hoplite unit as a whole and the majority of casualties were caused when one army routed and were killed while fleeing.

Of course casualties are going to be higher than historically accurate and of course there is going to be alot more pitched chaotic battles. its because the game wouldnt sell if u had a battle with little to know casualties on each side and u spent the next 10 turns chasing a fleeing stack around killing 100 guys each turn.

ALL that said i know why game designers dont like releasing stuff b4 the game now. one gameplay video which mite i add u could hardly see anything in, and people are already screaming that the AI plays poorly.

THIS WAS A SIMULATION he stated himself he wanted to see how the AI did with the square. for all we know that might have been all the AI was programmed to do in this simulation, they mite simply to have wanted to show how the square worked and broke down, after that perhaps all it was designed to do was fight and die, who knows. so for the love of all that is holy stop complaining about it and wait for either a demo or the full version.

Cheers knoddy

[gollum]

The other alternative is that the AI automatically adopts that formation if it sees the enemy has a massive detachment of heavy cavalry, as was the case here. Though I won't get my hopes up.

Indeed - and if thats the case, it might be not that bad, although as i mentioned there were other ways to deal with the stuation that might have been more helpful under the circumstances.

There is also something to be said about cavalry beeing able to charge frontally musket infantry to the effect they did in the video and the movement speed rates as other posters noted. The whole seems too fast - and although i am sure that SP players and CA will say that there is a speed/slow option this does not distract from the fact that there is an effective working pace for troop movement, relative troop movement, reload rates, reload rates and fire power and melee resolution rates.

!it burnsus!

[Vuk]

this could be said of ANY of the total war games. ALL of the Total war games have broken history to make the game more fun to play and more interesting. Lets look at RTW and more specifically at battles between Greek nations perhaps because it is the most obvious example.

A Greek hoplite battle would have very very low casualties and the idea was to outmaneuver your opponents and most battles came down to the strength of the hoplite unit as a whole and the majority of casualties were caused when one army routed and were killed while fleeing.

Of course casualties are going to be higher than historically accurate and of course there is going to be alot more pitched chaotic battles. its because the game wouldnt sell if u had a battle with little to know casualties on each side and u spent the next 10 turns chasing a fleeing stack around killing 100 guys each turn.

ALL that said i know why game designers dont like releasing stuff b4 the game now. one gameplay video which mite i add u could hardly see anything in, and people are already screaming that the AI plays poorly.

THIS WAS A SIMULATION he stated himself he wanted to see how the AI did with the square. for all we know that might have been all the AI was programmed to do in this simulation, they mite simply to have wanted to show how the square worked and broke down, after that perhaps all it was designed to do was fight and die, who knows. so for the love of all that is holy stop complaining about it and wait for either a demo or the full version.

Cheers knoddy

I agree, it could be said about all the Total War games. That is why I (as much as I like them) have been complaining about this flaw since MTW. You do not seem to understand, that is why formations and maneuvering is almost useless in the total war games. I think that if they tried it, they would find that it makes very good game play. Chasing down an army over 5 turns only to be outmaneuvered and wiped out in the end because you were over confident and let them lead you right into their territory. It would make diplomacy much more important, because now people would have a reason to avoid wars...they would be much longer, harder, and more costly. It would also no long be possible to play the game on the hardest difficulty and conquer in 5 hours. (the whole map) It being harder does not mean that it would not be fun though, and of course of easier difficulties you could make the AI do the crazy charge up a hill thing. :P

[gollum]

For the love of all is holy, i stoped complaining about the RTW demo, then the M2TW demo; after that i made the decision to speak my mind mr Knoddy if not for anything else but for the love of all is holy.

!it burnsus!

[Monk]

@knoddy

Hey man, take it easy! have a on me.

As to why we are all nitpicking and worrying... well, that's kinda what we do. We're fans. It's our area to nitpick about things and offer feedback about what we thought was good, or bad, or in some cases woefully wrong about what CA releases to the public. CA reads this forum, if we are not honest about what we want or what we think then how will they know where they need to tweak things?

Obviously, we don't outright bash CA, but that doesn't mean we cannot (or should not) voice criticism and frustration right alongside our optimism.

Also download the 170 odd mb video that hoom linked, not the 1.2gb one, the second one he linked. It's in reasonably high-def and you can see pretty much everything right down to the unit counts. However Sega has a speed cap in place so it may take a while.

[knoddy]

@knoddy

Hey man, take it easy! have a on me.

As to why we are all nitpicking and worrying... well, that's kinda what we do. We're fans. It's our area to nitpick about things and offer feedback about what we thought was good, or bad, or in some cases woefully wrong about what CA releases to the public. CA reads this forum, if we are not honest about what we want or what we think then how will they know where they need to tweak things?

Obviously, we don't outright bash CA, but that doesn't mean we cannot (or should not) voice criticism and frustration right alongside our optimism.

Also download the 170 odd mb video that hoom linked, not the 1.2gb one, the second one he linked. It's in reasonably high-def and you can see pretty much everything right down to the unit counts. However Sega has a speed cap in place so it may take a while.

cant drink im still at work :P im not really that worked up but after rome and medieval 2 one gets sick of the negativity some times. but then after being part of countless forums pre release to games u kinda get used to it.

however i still think everyone is being overly critical of a system they have not played yet. leave your judgements for the demo which we will hopefully be getting soon. you can only tell so much from a 10 minute (or however long it was) video of someone else playing the game.

i was involved in beta of another game recently and alot of the criticisms of the early footage of the game was that combat was very very slow. However once i got into beta i found this was def not the case. combat was quite fast paced and u had to think on your feet.

what im trying to say is dont judge too harshly too early.

I agree, it could be said about all the Total War games. That is why I (as much as I like them) have been complaining about this flaw since MTW. You do not seem to understand, that is why formations and maneuvering is almost useless in the total war games. I think that if they tried it, they would find that it makes very good game play. Chasing down an army over 5 turns only to be outmaneuvered and wiped out in the end because you were over confident and let them lead you right into their territory. It would make diplomacy much more important, because now people would have a reason to avoid wars...they would be much longer, harder, and more costly. It would also no long be possible to play the game on the hardest difficulty and conquer in 5 hours. (the whole map) It being harder does not mean that it would not be fun though, and of course of easier difficulties you could make the AI do the crazy charge up a hill thing. :P

i would suggest the europa universalis games. much more indepth, wars are alot more drawn out alot harder to win, alot more time spent chasing AI around the map as u fight it win and only kill a 1000 or so troops in a 40000 man stack.

i will await the demo for my judgement. and then buy it neway :P

cheers Knoddy

[Vuk]

cant drink im still at work :P im not really that worked up but after rome and medieval 2 one gets sick of the negativity some times. but then after being part of countless forums pre release to games u kinda get used to it.

however i still think everyone is being overly critical of a system they have not played yet. leave your judgements for the demo which we will hopefully be getting soon. you can only tell so much from a 10 minute (or however long it was) video of someone else playing the game.

i was involved in beta of another game recently and alot of the criticisms of the early footage of the game was that combat was very very slow. However once i got into beta i found this was def not the case. combat was quite fast paced and u had to think on your feet.

what im trying to say is dont judge too harshly too early.




i would suggest the europa universalis games. much more indepth, wars are alot more drawn out alot harder to win, alot more time spent chasing AI around the map as u fight it win and only kill a 1000 or so troops in a 40000 man stack.

i will await the demo for my judgement. and then buy it neway :P

cheers Knoddy

If there are flaws though that are important to gameplay, we want them to know now while there is a chance of improving the game, not later on when the demo is released.
I am just looking at what they showed us realistically. They showed it to us so we could judge it.

EDIT: The fact that I am on this forum posting shows that I have a strong appreciation and fondness for their games.

[Jack Lusted]

Copy paste from official forums:

Hi chaps!

Thanks for all of the comments! I just wanted to make the point that - what I was really hoping would come out of the video - is the concept of the AI using a "special tactic", where it responds to the make-up and advance of my army, and uses it's units coherently and together in a way in which only an expert player would be able to (i.e. surrounding it's cavalry with line infantry in a manually-constructed square, leaving it's General's bodyguard and support cavalry inside the square for protection of both it and the line, positioning it's artillery and light infantry tactically outside for covering fire), and then going on to try to maintain this formation over time by repairing "holes" in the wall. I deliberately picked a massively over-powered heavy cavalry army to freak-out the AI into using this behaviour, and eventually overcame it, although the battle actually went on a heck of a lot longer than the video and I took a bit of a beating in the process, including getting my General wasted!

Anyway, the video was filmed quite a while ago, and we've obviously made a tonne of logic and animation fixes, and unit balancing since then. I think bayonets against Cavalry were maybe a little underpowered when that battle was played out, for example.

Putting together an AI opponent which both allows new players to the series to enjoy themselves, and satisifies the hard-core veterans, is always a tough prospect, and you guys rightfully have huge expectations, so I hope you enjoy the game in a few weeks time. We certainly are here!

And if you don't, at least you know what I look like now so you can hunt me down and kill me (- joke image).

All the best image,
Richard Bull
Battle AI Programmer

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/reply...l#reply-581966

[Sir Beane]

Thanks Jack!

[Merak]

CA have said they rather like their rapid zombiefans...

but i realy do know that much about how they battleld beside that sweden has some realy easy to move cannons and thats it so i think it will be a rather steap hill for me to climb if it is realy diffrent from mtw2. but that just part of the fun.

and i wounder if the ai had much more technology then the dev if he would be able to do the same then or if he would be forced to adapt the strategy.

hopefully not to much spelling errors

[gollum]

Originally posted by Richard Bull
Anyway, the video was filmed quite a while ago, and we've obviously made a tonne of logic and animation fixes, and unit balancing since then. I think bayonets against Cavalry were maybe a little underpowered when that battle was played out, for example.

Its good that this was reckognised the cavalry should have taken much more of a beating frontally - this is good stuff. I hope the pace of the battles is similarly tweaked.

I just wanted to make the point that - what I was really hoping would come out of the video - is the concept of the AI using a "special tactic", where it responds to the make-up and advance of my army, and uses it's units coherently and together in a way in which only an expert player would be able to (i.e. surrounding it's cavalry with line infantry in a manually-constructed square, leaving it's General's bodyguard and support cavalry inside the square for protection of both it and the line, positioning it's artillery and light infantry tactically outside for covering fire), and then going on to try to maintain this formation over time by repairing "holes" in the wall. I deliberately picked a massively over-powered heavy cavalry army to freak-out the AI into using this behaviour, and eventually overcame it, although the battle actually went on a heck of a lot longer than the video and I took a bit of a beating in the process, including getting my General wasted!

All of it appreciated - no word relative to the charge uphill though, especially in the light that the AI was outnumbered - it was evident that Mr Bull used almost two armies for the battle. Why then the AI in light of being overpoewred charges uphill?

It seems that Mr Monk was right and the AI was prompted to use the square.

And if you don't, at least you know what I look like now so you can hunt me down and kill me (- joke image).

I bet no-one told him about the TW community in the job interview.

thanks Mr Lusted

!it burnsus!

[Vuk]

Copy paste from official forums:



http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/reply...l#reply-581966

Thanks for talking to the community! I am relieved to hear that it is from an earlier play test. I was wondering if it would be possible to say anything about the charging up hill thing though?

PS I love the end comment. :P Great sense of humor, but maybe also an indication that some people are getting a little too upset. :P

[hoom]

Another point with regard to the AI there, this was almost definitely a custom battle rather than a campign battle.

Custom battle should be fought to the death regardless the casualty ratio.
Campaign battle you & the AI will generally want to protect the strength of the army and fight more cautiously.
Campaign AI supposedly gives prompts to the battle AI about whether this is a battle to the death for the capital or just a minor skirmish for an unimportant backwater too.

[gollum]

You are absolutely right Mr Hoom - yet if last man standing victory means charge no matter the conditions to the AI - you can bet that this is a very very poor one.

!it burnsus!

[Vuk]

Another point with regard to the AI there, this was almost definitely a custom battle rather than a campign battle.

Custom battle should be fought to the death regardless the casualty ratio.
Campaign battle you & the AI will generally want to protect the strength of the army and fight more cautiously.
Campaign AI supposedly gives prompts to the battle AI about whether this is a battle to the death for the capital or just a minor skirmish for an unimportant backwater too.

Yeah, but you can fight to the last man wisely. That was just stupid....

[PBI]

Here's a thought: Maybe the AI is supposed to panic when its battleplan has gone completely awry?

A pretty optimistic interpretation I know, and as far as I know there has been no indication from CA that the AI is capable of this, but if an enemy commander charging uphill against superior numbers isn't realistic, then a commander who reacts with mechanically cool-headed and precise decisions to even the most dire and unexpected of battlefield upsets certainly isn't, especially if that commander is supposed to be some low-ranking, inexperienced garrison commander rather than Bonaparte. If the AI is supposed to act like a human, then it stands to reason it should be capable of making mistakes and panicking under pressure.

[Vuk]

Here's a thought: Maybe the AI is supposed to panic when its battleplan has gone completely awry?

A pretty optimistic interpretation I know, and as far as I know there has been no indication from CA that the AI is capable of this, but if an enemy commander charging uphill against superior numbers isn't realistic, then a commander who reacts with mechanically cool-headed and precise decisions to even the most dire and unexpected of battlefield upsets certainly isn't, especially if that commander is supposed to be some low-ranking, inexperienced garrison commander rather than Bonaparte. If the AI is supposed to act like a human, then it stands to reason it should be capable of making mistakes and panicking under pressure.

*grasping at straws*

[CBR]

Finally got the high quality video working.

Ok bayonets might have been under powered and will be changed. But that is one thing I noticed: where is the shooting? Heavy cavalry charging straight into infantry without taking that many losses from firepower and infantry charging other infantry.

The video shows lacking firepower and too fast running speed IMO.


CBR

[Vuk]

Finally got the high quality video working.

Ok bayonets might have been under powered and will be changed. But that is one thing I noticed: where is the shooting? Heavy cavalry charging straight into infantry without taking that many losses from firepower and infantry charging other infantry.

The video shows lacking firepower and too fast running speed IMO.


CBR

I agree completely. During this time, guns were extremely inaccurate, but also extremely powerful. What it resulted in is that every man shooting with his musket was like one piece of bird shot from a shot gun. (the shot gun being the entire body of men) They were not stupidly standing in lines at shooting at each other, it was the best way to fight for the weapons they had because of their long reload time and short range. These two factors along with their inaccuracy neccesitated that they needed to be extremely concentrated so that the volley they fired would have the effect of a round of bird shot on the enemy. If they were more spread out, the guys on the far sides would not be in range, and only guys in the center could fire, and if it closed to melee, they would be cut to pieces. Reason I am saying all of this is because they DID form very dense lines (usually 2 or three of them) and when they shot it was like a shot of bird shot to the enemy formation...devastating. Three lines of muskets firing at that range into the cavalry should have wasted half of them. The importance of cavalry was their speed, not their ability to take 500 bullets. If they slowed everything down, but esp infantry, then cavalry would have the realistic advantage that it did in real life. Just my 2 cents...

[knoddy]

Finally got the high quality video working.

Ok bayonets might have been under powered and will be changed. But that is one thing I noticed: where is the shooting? Heavy cavalry charging straight into infantry without taking that many losses from firepower and infantry charging other infantry.

The video shows lacking firepower and too fast running speed IMO.


CBR

one thing about this, when u think about it, they were light fast cavalry so they would probs get into melee with only 1 volley being fired. wether or not they should have been annihilated once in melee who knows, and again i havnt watched the vid in that much detail but realistically if they were being charged they mite get 1 or maybe 2 volleys off.

Cheers Knoddy

[Freakk]

one thing about this, when u think about it, they were light fast cavalry so they would probs get into melee with only 1 volley being fired. wether or not they should have been annihilated once in melee who knows, and again i havnt watched the vid in that much detail but realistically if they were being charged they mite get 1 or maybe 2 volleys off.

Cheers Knoddy

A good thing to point out. I believe though what is worrying some fans is that the fact that in the video the infantry units do fire a volley(may have been 2) and not many horses went down at all. Which is understandable if the units weren't at such close range, but they were. Maybe CA can add something about that?

[CBR]

Based on unit selected, green arrows on the map as well as how the unit looked like in closeups, I'm pretty sure was heavy cavalry doing both the flanking attack on the light infantry as well as the frontal charge against the line infantry.

Sure the infantry should not have had time for more than one or two shots if it started firing at very long range (historically) but that is really all it needed. Unless a rabble infantry that would run away, cavalry would generally get shot up and not close in.

It didn't even look like the unit took one casualty at all, sure it is down to 44 (from 45) but that loss might have come earlier. But OK I guess it's gonna be bayonets that stop cavalry in ETW.

It is nice to see the AI respond to the player army composition. Would have been nice to see that it also meant an AI victory though.

The video did not give me a 18th century feel of a battle in the Age of Muskets and then it doesn't matter if the programmer had a "massively over-powered heavy cavalry army" And that quote gives me the shivers really, does this mean we can gather armies of 20 heavy cav and bowl over AI armies?

Ok I admit the shivers bit is an exaggeration as its more as my expectations were low anyway.


CBR

[scipiosgoblin]

one thing about this, when u think about it, they were light fast cavalry so they would probs get into melee with only 1 volley being fired. wether or not they should have been annihilated once in melee who knows, and again i havnt watched the vid in that much detail but realistically if they were being charged they mite get 1 or maybe 2 volleys off.

Cheers Knoddy

I believe you are right about the speed at which the cavalry would get to the battle line. I think that horses do not like to charge into solid things. And horses that see a wall of men wouldn't know that the wall was made up of things that it could probably knock down. Therefore the horse would veer away from the wall of men in any case.

From personal experience, it takes months to train a horse that it can move an object the same size as itself. They are very skitish creatures. And before you guys tear me apart, yes I understand that these were battle trained horses. Fine. Battle trained horses of the time were expensive and would not have been wasted charging into bayonets unless there was no other alternative. Even at Waterloo, the British and French cavalry veered away from the infantry squares of the opposing army instead of charging home.

SG

[Polemists]

It was a good video, not done of course as all the videos we are shown of late were taken from a while ago, but we can all be hopeful that soon a up to date prenstation will be offered in a demonstrative form


That said, if it is slow I'd recommend go find it on youtube or similiar stream site. I have no luck with ca's site usually.

[lars573]

I believe you are right about the speed at which the cavalry would get to the battle line. I think that horses do not like to charge into solid things. And horses that see a wall of men wouldn't know that the wall was made up of things that it could probably knock down. Therefore the horse would veer away from the wall of men in any case.

From personal experience, it takes months to train a horse that it can move an object the same size as itself. They are very skitish creatures. And before you guys tear me apart, yes I understand that these were battle trained horses. Fine. Battle trained horses of the time were expensive and would not have been wasted charging into bayonets unless there was no other alternative. Even at Waterloo, the British and French cavalry veered away from the infantry squares of the opposing army instead of charging home.

SG

But Polish cavalry didn't.

[gollum]

But Polish cavalry didn't.

Indeed Mr Lars, it used its wings instead to fly over bayonet walls and evade bullets and deliver the blow.

!it burnsus!

[CountArach]

Even at Waterloo, the British and French cavalry veered away from the infantry squares of the opposing army instead of charging home.

SG

That had nothing at all to do with the horses. That had to do with the fact that this is what cavalry were trained to do. And with good reason - I remember reading about the Battle of Quatre Bras where some French squadrons charged into the rear of a Scottish Battalion and the rear rank of the Scots just turned around, fired at point blank and lowered bayonets. They successfully repulsed the charge because cavalry was not supposed to charge into ordered ranks of disciplined troops.

But Polish cavalry didn't.

The Poles were crazy in the Napoleonic Wars. Seriously they just never stopped fighting...

[Sir Beane]

Indeed Mr Lars, it used its wings instead to fly over bayonet walls and evade bullets and deliver the blow.

!it burnsus!

They must have used those wings for something .

I wonder if Winged Hussars will suffer from 'fantasy unit' treatment, given their fame and outlandish appearence?

[Colovion]

Hmm that video reminds me of the first videos of RTW

I want to see a video of 1 unit of cavalry charging 1 unit of Muskets where the Cavalry actually seem to be taking damage.

One flaw which seems to be still around in the AI is that when the Cavalry charges in, even though there's only a few cavalry in melee with the infantry, the infantry on the wings don't automatically take the advantage of the open flanks of the cavalry left exposed. To make only units within a certain range of the enemy soldiers to melee and the rest to continue firing would make any bogged down charge really hurt. That's one thing which would be great to see because it would really make cavalry that much more fragile - not merely big masses of whirling steel galloping around the map.

There were some pretty graphics and I suppose they did show that the AI can adapt somewhat to the human opponent. One difficulty the programmers have is that when we humans look at the screen we can see a charge happening and think "ok well I should do XYZ to counter that, so I'll do that now" whereas the computer has a more abstract sense of the battle but can make multiple commands instantly.

I'm sure that the AI does have some fancy tricks to play; unfortunately I haven't seen them play any tricks but CHARRRGEE since MTW; maybe MTW's combat was just paced well enough that it allowed the computer to fully utilize their units while now the battles are so fast that it's over before they get the chance. It seems most fights in RTW and M2TW consist of "charge + cavalry = win" since the battles end after the first few units run - and the collision/momentum of cavalry is enough to break up and slaughter most unit formations.

Hopefully there'll be more battle recordings released to show the speed of combat and perhaps :gasp: an unsuccessful cavalry charge!

[Oleander Ardens]

I guess we will all have to wait and see. IMHO CA tried and tries to make the AI more challenging - we will see how it is done. And we will see how the various unit types face off each other.