Clever AI

[Jaeld]

So there was a neat little moment in the demo where the AI pulled a clever, if minor, move that I'm not sure -I- would've even really thought about for a while. (yes yes, feel free to collectively say "well duh, of COURSE you should do it that way! it's obvious!" once I explain, but it seemed clever to me at the time)

I'd crushed everyone in the land battle except for one last unit of Long Rifles that had been on the other side of the map. They marched half way over, but then took advantage of their defensive perrogative to stand and wait for me over by the town hall.

So I started all my cavalry walking out towards them.

They had been in a standard formation about 4 ranks deep. Now, they respond to my advance by spreading out into a single rank, as wide as possible, and THEN lay stakes at this maximum width. Then they return to a more standard formation, now safely behind a really wide barrier of stakes that also happens to block off almost the entire valley (though I'm still not sure whether they were intentionally standing in the narrowest part, or just happened to be there...until they spanned it with stakes there was still plenty of room to have encircled them anyway)

I must say I was rather pleased. Sloppy AI would've just tossed down some stakes in front of rank 1 of 4, missing out on the opportunity to create a much wider barrier. But instead they very deliberately spread out for the sole purpose of laying a much longer stake line, and then condensed back into the middle of it with their flanks safely stake-protected.

Of course, then I just brought up my artillery and started bombarding them, and they realized that they couldn't just stay there and get torn apart, so they left the protection of their stake line in a desperate attempt to advance on my artillery, and I ran them down with cavalry anyway.

But it would've worked great if not for the cannons. :)

[miniwally]

:D nice to know they improved the AI and have some solid evidence shame you didn't get screenshot :(. Any units you get given lay down stakes. Also bullets absolutely destroy that horse artilletry that i've seen.

[Jaeld]

Yeah, I never think to take screenshots, sorry.

The light skirmishing type troops seem to be the ones with stake-laying abilities.

I tried a counter-battery war on the enemy artillery with my artillery once, and I wiped out their accompanying horses pretty quickly but the actual cannons were unscathed. Not sure if it was just the angle I happened to be at or what. Was much more effective to sneak my skirmishers up to the edge of the creek and fire across at the cannon crews. Drove them off pretty quickly.

[miniwally]

So any of the units you get in the land battles able to lay down stakes?

[TB666]

So any of the units you get in the land battles able to lay down stakes?

Only the light infantry I think.

[miniwally]

Only the light infantry I think.

dam i could've used that to help me at least i still won :D Do you know what level of difficulty the battles were on?

[Monk]

dam i could've used that to help me at least i still won :D Do you know what level of difficulty the battles were on?

They are on normal, but you can edit the script files to make them harder.

edit:

Found the link to the post at Yuku, but I dunno how to change difficulty on Vista. I dont seem to have this directory.

c:\Documents and Settings\**your name **\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\EmpireDemo2\scripts\preferences.empire_script.txt


and change the value:

battle_difficulty

[Sheogorath]

The AI seems a bit schizophrenic to me.

At one point in a battle I was playing with it, it lined up all of its line infantry to meet my main force advancing on its flank and started marching forward to attack me en masse.

Then suddenly it changed its mind and drew back all but three units, two of which stopped and one more of which advanced on me.

I felt kind of insulted, to be honest. It's like the AI wanted me to know it was going easy on me

Psychological warfare, maybe?

[ratbarf]

Overall I wasn't that pleased with the AI from the battle, though the ambushing Long Rifles where rather cool. They never once moved their artillery to a better position to shoot my troops. Also, I had General Washington suicide charge my Dragoons all on his lonesome...

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

Scripted historical battle does not mean the AI got better . Take a deep breath and think about it.

[quadalpha]

In vista, you go to C:\Users\[name]\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\[etc.] You will need to show hidden folders to see AppData.

The difference between Vista and XP is because Vista tries to control which parts of the hard drive applications can access a lot more and tricks the application into thinking that the "AppData" folder is the old "Application Data" folder.

[Sir Beane]

Scripted historical battle does not mean the AI got better . Take a deep breath and think about it.

It would be difficult to script responses to everything the player can do. Scripts can handle the initial setting up and initial tactics would would be nigh-useless in a fluid combat situation. You can't script for something you can't predict.

I've played the battle multiple times with multiple different approaches just to see what the AI does. In most situations it handles itself much better than the M2TW or RTW AI would manage. The only problem is that it seems to have a blindness for properly using it's cannon advantage, which might in fact be the result of the scripts that are there working against it.

[Megas Methuselah]

In the carnage after a charge, I noticed one of my highlanders was skewered in a stake. He was the only one to earn such a fate. Poor bugger.

[Sir Beane]

In the carnage after a charge, I noticed one of my highlanders was skewered in a stake. He was the only one to earn such a fate. Poor bugger.

Stakes can kill infantry now? Oh God. I still have nightmares from the time when I managed to run both my King, my Heir and a ten star general onto stakes. Not once, but twice. It was horrible.

The worst part is I had won the battle and was chasing down routing men.

The even more worse part was that the stakes were my own. And the enemy didn't even have cavalry.

[Megas Methuselah]

Yeah, I accidently killed my King and a hired general with my own stakes in the Carribean once. Not twice, though.

Anyways, it was only one highlander who got run through by a stake out of 2 units that charged. It must have been pure chance.

[Sir Beane]

Yeah, I accidently killed my King and a hired general with my own stakes in the Carribean once. Not twice, though.

Anyways, it was only one highlander who got run through by a stake out of 2 units that charged. It must have been pure chance.

Poor bloke should have looked where he was going . It's the best way to weed out the useless recruits from the good. Just run 'em at a field of pointy sticks and hire whoever comes out the other end.

[Daimon]

Scripted historical battle does not mean the AI got better . Take a deep breath and think about it.

Look at this:

Brandywine - Main force of AI is under AI control but only held in position, is then released to AI control after different times based on which ford you go to.

Lagos - not scriped at all.

[Sir Beane]

Look at this:

Interesting . That means that the AI you fight is indeed the full game AI (on Normal). Which is reassuring, because it fights rather well. Or atleast well enough to be a mild challenge.

[Megas Methuselah]

Or atleast well enough to be a mild challenge.

Yes, that's a huge improvement on RTW and M2TW.

[ratbarf]

"Poor bloke should have looked where he was going . It's the best way to weed out the useless recruits from the good. Just run 'em at a field of pointy sticks and hire whoever comes out the other end."

Actually, quite a few armies in the time period considered a death rate of about 1 in 10 in training ideal. Especially the Prussians.

Edit: Anyone know how to use the ships? I don't know if its just because I suck but I keep getting whooped everytime I play this battle.

My Tactics: I try to rake all of first wave of French ships by getting infront of them or between their formation. I generally ge the first two enemy ships, but then they blow my sails off and get really badly beaten as my units are all clumped together and cannot move...

[imperialus]

Edit: Anyone know how to use the ships? I don't know if its just because I suck but I keep getting whooped everytime I play this battle.

My Tactics: I try to rake all of first wave of French ships by getting infront of them or between their formation. I generally ge the first two enemy ships, but then they blow my sails off and get really badly beaten as my units are all clumped together and cannot move...

I haven't even touched the land battle yet, but I've played the navel scenario about 4 or 5 times now and I think I have it figured out.

You need to learn the Tao of formation fighting and remember that in a standup fight in this senario you outgun the french by almost 2:1... In other words, force a sandup fight.

One thing to remember, Nelson may have made the whole idea of breaking into a line and performing raking shots famous, but there was a reason he became famous for it. It was not exactly an easy maneuver. More conventional tactics are easier to pull off, and a conventional line of battle works fairly well in this scenario. The goal should be to disrupt your opponents line with minimal risk to your own formation.

What I found worked quite well was to separate my ships into two groups. Group one was the main line, group 2 consisted of the 2 5th rates.

Group 1 went into line astern formation, switched the group to chain shot and angled them so they would be passing the french fleet head on. The chainshot from the entire line shredded the sails of the lead ship (as each ship fired it's broadside I swapped it back to round shot) causing a major traffic jam behind it. The main line marched the rest of the way down the french line as they crashed into each other and screwed up their firing angles to try and avoid each other and pumped cannon shot into them.

Then they turned around to face the second french force while my 5th rates did a pass with round shot sinking all but two of the french ships and they did a pass with grape and boarded.

In the mean time my main line did the exact same thing with the french re-enforcements. Once the formation was disrupted they just circled around and finished them off.

End result, 4 French ships sunk 3 surrendered at the cost of 1 5th rate surrendered.

[Thermal]

Are you all mad! it was the land battle I struggled on and the sea battle that was mad easy for me!

Basically get your ships into a straight line, as the french come down get your whole line to fire at the nearest boats, as they get closer have boats in groups of 2 huddled together in each direction so you can fire at the enemy all the time, concentrate on one boat at a time so he gets a number disadvantage and use the sail and hull bullets primarily for max damage, being accurate when executing your attack helps to of course.

[Greyblades]

I pretty much had the same ease as ares, allthough I just set out the targets to my fleet at the start and then spent my time micromanaging my 1st rate for the rest of the battle. The surprising thing was I won with no ships lost and minimal damage to all but my admirals ship. CA either did a realy good job on the players naval AI or screwed up the enemy AI when I won a battle without doing anything with 5 out of the 6 ships.

[Beskar]

Yes, that's a huge improvement on RTW and M2TW.

I thought the AI in R:TW just massed all their units at the City centre except for a group of peasants which charge your horses?

[Polemists]

For my part RTW and MTW 2 seemed to function similiarily in that if they had ranged units they went up on walls and 1-2 units would guard gate with majority holding the city center. I havn't had a chance to test out the Ai yet so no opinions at the moment.

The Ai does sound more clever then in the past, if anything I would say do not judge the AI postively or negatively bassed on the scripted battle.

The fact the AI seems to pull some tactics once the scripted events ends leads me to believe AI is improved (as do superior tactics videos), the fact the artillery never gets moved I assume is do to a scenario bug as even in mtw2 the Ai moved it's artillery at times.

[peacemaker]

....hold up. Light infantry can set up stakes? That would explain all my cavalry getting slaughtered....Is there a specific button for this? Or does it go automatically? I'm gonna go on the demo right now to try out this naval battle strategy.....

[quadalpha]

The artillery definitely moves (there needs to be a sign saying that or something). The Americans redeployed two units of artillery to the farmhouse and kept two facing the other ford when I tried to encircle.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

quad, I've noticed the AI doesn't move their arty well.

I usually move my entire army through the second ford (no sense using half measures, I figure). Their arty can continue to harass (but mostly miss) my army the entire way - the batteries are blocked by hills but continue to fire. I've only ever seen it move the arty until after the real fighting by the town hall was effectively over. Then I just mop them up.

[Polemists]

but isn't sneaking through the ford supposed to be the whole point of scenario?

[peacemaker]

that's the point but since you can play the scenario over and over, you come out with lots of different ideas since "oh, I've already tried this method so I'll go try something else"